Archive | March 8, 2017

In Which They Stop Kissing Long Enough to Talk

Mar8

First: A beginning of a story which obnoxiously cuts off just before the description,
Previous: In Which The Kissing Continues.
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He didn’t carry her to the bed, but not for lack of offering, trying, and offering again.

“I’m not a blushing bride,” she complained, “and, besides, I like my feet firmly on the ground.”

Amrit might’ve been – not exactly offended, but put out at how brusque she could be, considering where they’d been and what they’d been doing, but she kissed both his cheeks and then his lips, the affection clear in the gesture and her expression, and he gave in.

She liked him. Amrit didn’t know what to do with that. Sure, girls had liked him before, but not like – “You’ve really got no illusions about me, do you?”

“You like to work and like to keep busy but hate authority?” Something in her smile was challenging. It wasn’t made any less so by the casual touch of her hand on his chest. “You’re overprotective of people you care about but aren’t that familiar with the concept. You have a foul mouth and no tolerance for rules.”

“…I’m not a sweetheart.” He didn’t know what motivated him to say that. Some half-forgotten long-ago girl, perhaps?

Whatever his reasons, it made her smile. “I know. Are we going to bed or do I have to carry you?”

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Next: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2020/06/26/beekeeper-in-which-they-go-to-bed/
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Cya Gets Ready For a Date

Mar8

Okay, I’m not actually sure when this is. It’s in a timeline we’re exploring where Leo and Cya actually talk. <.<

It’s * After Cloverleaf has been around for a while
* After Dysmas has been forcibly removed from the city.
* Not at a time when Leo and Cya have a pre-adult child around.
* Before Cya Keeps Leo, if she does.

And then Leo told Cya she should try dating.

Cya was too old for this.

And maybe, some rebellious part of her brain muttered, she was too young for it.

She checked herself in the mirror for a third time. She gave her Kept-of-the-year a kiss on the cheek. She checked the mirror again.

Her Kept, one of the more clever of the twenty-somethings she’d Kept over the decades, chuckled gently at her. “You look beautiful, you know. You always do. You look regal tonight.”

“Too much?”

“No.” He smiled crookedly. “I could wish it was me, but -”

“But.” They’d had that conversation. She gave him another hug. “The night’s your own. Do not do anything that will make the city guard have to come find me. Or make me have to come find you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” As far as Kept went, he was one of her better behaved, so he only smirked at the unneeded admonitions. “And you, Mayor Cya, make sure to give him a chance, and don’t try to fix all of his problems in one day.”

“…Have you been talking to Leo?”

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Funeral: Will-Reading

Mar8

This follows The Funeral and Further Funeral. It’s set in Fae apoc, pre-apoc era, possibly 2010.

“What are you doing in here?” Eaven glared at Senga as a small group of the mourners trooped into the office. “It’s not like you’re the most favored relative or anything. And you.” She glared over Senga’s head at the as-of-yet-unnamed black-clad cowboy Senga had been talking with. “This isn’t for the help, you know.”

He smirked. It was the sort of smile you might imagine on a shark, right before it had you for dinner. “I was invited here to listen to the will-reading. It falls within my agreements with Mirabella. So here I am.”

“Same,” Senga agreed. “Great-Aunt Mirabella wanted me to be here. I haven’t told her no yet.”

“You don’t dare, do you? Even with her dead, you can’t go against her, or-” Eaven ran her finger across her neck.

“I’m a dutiful niece.” She knew her voice didn’t crack on that one. “And that is, like the man said, the agreement I have with my Great-Aunt.”

“Who is dead now. In case you haven’t noticed.”

“Ahem. Ahem. Please be seated. Thank you. This is a long will, and there are many parties involved, so I am going to attempt to get through this as expeditiously as possible. If you have any arguments, please wait until the very end, when I will be taking questions in the order of the will-reading.”

The will started with Mirabella’s children, unsurprisingly, and from there to her grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Senga amused herself by guessing what the bequests would be and how much fuss the relative in question would throw.

Eaven seemed pleased enough by her inheritance, although it was a fraction of Mirabella’s wealth and none of her empire. Muirgen, Eaven’s older sister, was not nearly as content with her similarly-small share.

Everyone was holding their breath for the Black Books. It might have been the computer age, but the wealth of Mirabella’s empire lived in a small stack of black leather-bound ledgers and a much larger stack of sealed envelopes.

When they went to a cousin – not one of Mirabella’s direct descendants, even, but her sister’s child – every single blood descendant of the former Empress of the City started to snarl and yell.

The lawyer merely cleared his throat. “At this point I will read a note from Mirabella herself.”

The room fell silent, Great-Aunt Mirabella’s heavy hand coming down on them from beyond the grave.

The lawyer cleared his throat again. “Dear family, frends, and others I’ve chosen as my inheritors.” The lawyer’s voice seemed to harden. “You will either take what you’ve been given without argument or fuss, or you’ll get nothing.”

The room stayed silent.

“Very good then. Now, onto the next inheritor…”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1271293.html

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Worldbuilding Month Day 3: The Roots of the Aunt Tree

Mar8

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
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This third one is from [personal profile] rix_scaedu:
If the Family in the Aunt Family occasionally splits off anew Family with a new Aunt, where was the original Family? Is it still there? Is there some Family version of “the old country”?

That’s complicated!

Because sometimes branches die out. It requires at least two sisters, after all (or sometimes in rare occasions, brothers, but that’s, as said, rare, and very frowned on, and such), one of which (again, in most cases), remained unmarried, childless, and near her sister’s family. It requires that unmarried sister to at least have the strength to carry the power, and the family branch to have enough power to invest in her.

Sometimes branches are actually wiped out, but that is a rare occurrence in the modern day.

Let’s see.

The original Family came out of England and Germany, and for a long time (legends notwithstanding) was not nearly as formalized an arrangement as it is in the modern day. When the family that believed itself to be the root family moved to the US, they left behind no other sibling groups, but there were several members of the family who were related, carried the spark, and eventually had children of their own.

Note: Not everyone who has power is related to the Family, but they are a broad and deep family-grove with many scions over, by the point, most of the world.

The “original” family at this point would be considered the one that can trace its ancestry back in an unbroken line of Aunts to the first Aunt in America. That actually is Evangaline’s line. It was an aunt of her line who came up with the ritual that collects the power of an already-psychically-skilled family and concentrates the larger portion of it into one person, allowing the family as a whole to have more power than they would otherwise, and allowing the power to be used and directed for bigger and bigger uses.

That happened prior to coming to the U.S., but it was believed, when they moved, that they had brought their entire family and thus their entire power structure with them.

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New on Patreon: Planning the Family and Down River, repost stories

Mar8


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For March, that month when large portions of America pretend to be Irish, I bring you my fictional family of Irish in the Americas – the Tuatha DĂŠ Danann in TĂ­r na Cali. This piece was originally written in August of 2011.
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Ireland, 1685

The witch looked over the table at her cousin, a pretty young thing that, until now, everyone had assumed was just daft. The girl was floating the dishes in the air, all of the dishes, weaving them in and out in a series of loops that looked like a Maypole dance.
<a href=https://www.patreon.com/posts/planning-family-8337047Read on…


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This ficlet began my Vas’ World series of stories, a world-exploration featuring a small landing team of planetary explorers. It was originally posted in January, 2011.
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They followed the newly-named Yarthout River all day, their little craft handling its rapids with a smoothness and ease that surprised Vas. Wisely, he kept his surprise to himself; Malia and Ezra would be unbearable enough about their success without him acknowledging it. The boat had been their idea, after all: a quicker way to take a survey of this uninhabited planet.

Read On!

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