Archive | December 2017

Hiding in the Bear Empire

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Moving through the Bear Empire

🐻

“…a bodyguard who is happy with his work is more effective.”

Carrone snorted at that answer, but took the moment to open a door in the wall that was so effectively sandwiched between two other buildings she’d almost missed it.  “I should go first, in case Teshone is in.”

“As you wish.”  She gestured up the stairs.  Was he leading her into a trap?  She had one hand on her knife-hilt as they navigated the narrow stairs, her senses on high alert.  There was nobody moving upstairs.  Something like a mouse scratched in the wall to her left.  To the right, the sickly smell of a hatter’s seemed to leech through the wall.

“Here.” The staircase terminated in a narrow landing with three doors; he unlocked the one to the right.  Over the hatter’s, then.  From there there were three more doors.

“This is beginning to look like a puzzle box,” she muttered. Continue reading

Beauty-Beast 27: Memory

FirstPreviousLanding PageNext

🔒

Ctirad, at Timaios’ gentle suggestion, put some pants on before Sal came upstairs, Danny immediately behind with a large tray of what must pass for finger foods in a household of fae.

“I want you to unlock Ctirad’s lost memories,” Timaios told Sal, with no preamble except a “thanks for coming up here.”

Ctirad was watching Sal closely.  From the expression, this sort of thing was not unheard of in this household, nor was it beyond Sal’s capabilities.

“What’s the boy think of that, sir?”

“It was his idea.  Well, it was my idea, but he agreed without prompting.  The impression I get is that a lot of it was done with orders.  Thus, there’s no Workings to work around—”

“With all due respect, that’s just going to make it trickier.  His own mind has decided — well, had it decided for him, but it comes down to the same thing — that he needs to not have those memories.  I’m going to have to invade him pretty deepl—” Sal trailed off and turned to look directly at Ctirad.  “I’m going to be really far into your mind.  You understand?  I’m going to see things nobody else has seen.” Continue reading

Two Microfics/Tootfics From Last Night

I was feeling a bit meh last night, but I wanted to write *something*, so I took a couple prompts for toot fic – fic that fits in a 500-character toot on Mastodon. 

This is what I got.

👶

The thing about a baby was, it was literally made of connections. Polly finished spinning wool from her friend’s sheep, twisting into it a strand of the feelings she had for her friend.

She wound the yarn into a ball with sororal affection and the big-sister feeling that never went away, then reached for the line that connected the mother & father to the baby.

Babies were born of connections. She knit the echo of those connections into a tiny sweater of protection & love.

🐑

To @DialMforMara‘s prompt: Knitting with Strands. 

🖋️🖋️🖋️

“Damn.” The book hit the tile. “Fuck. Shit.” Amy’s arms went up. “This… fuck.”

“Fuck,” Tod and Amy saw eye to eye for once. “We can – can not…” The word he had need for was too long. Every word was too long.

“Draw!” Amy went to work with a pen on the tile. “Pic-”

“Icon.” Tod did the same. “Icon.”

The 👿 was the 1st of its kind to be sent to hell with a 😀.

👹

To @tomasino’s prompt

A grammatical demon has been summoned at Oxford and was let free accidentally by the lack of a third comma. It has already devoured all words longer than four letters.

Shadows in the Old Park -a story for Patreon

This went a little left turn from where I’d planned. 

I was picturing Sprucewood Nature Center, by the by, even though it’s not quite… wood-y enough. 

🌲🌲🌲

The twenty-acre forest had become thick and overgrown in the decade since the world had fallen apart.

Vic remembered it from elementary school field trips, middle school solo explorations, high school one-on-one adventures with just the right second person – or at least the person that had seemed right at the time.  Several persons, several times.

Now, you couldn’t step between the trees except at the path, and the path had been blocked with a parked truck.  It looked safe.  It looked like a good place to hide out.Vic used the back wheel as a step-stool to look over the beast of a vehicle, only to end up looking at the tip of a rifle. Continue reading

Advance Notice: LiveWriting

In one week, on Dec. 27th, I am going to do a thing!

That is, I am going to spend a day livewriting.

We at my current job have 6 days off of work for the holidays, you see.  So on Wednesday, I am going to try to be online by 8 a.m. (Eastern time) and write, with two one-hour breaks, for about 12 hours – that means until 10 p.m. or so!

I am going to split the writing between the novel I plan on writing in the first third of 2018 – an Aunt Family novel covering the early days of Evangaline’s Aunthood (for more on the Aunt Family, check out here ) – and an open call for prompts on the theme of “What If.”

My current plan is to use two google docs for this, as they have built-in commenting and revision tracking and  are readily available to most people.  I am willing to hear suggestions for other similar programs, however.

In order for this to be fun, I’m asking that if you have a few minutes, stop in, read, leave a prompt, leave a comment.  Say hi!  

After all, if nobody’s reading, it’s not livewriting, it’s just writing.  And I can do that any day!

Wednesday, December 27th
approx. 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. Eastern Time

Watch me write!

(if for some reason you cannot come online during that time at all, you may back-channel a prompt or two by sending them to my e-mail.)

(Now soliciting at least one, preferably two volunteers to post short prompt-stories to my blog as they are written)

A New World: Made in the Ikitem Peninsula

First: A New World
Previous: Memories

⚗️

The fourth floor. She found herself smiling as she headed up the “public” stairs.  They had been cleaned up so much, she hardly recognized the area.  Of course, Joaon would not have wanted tourists getting slid back outside or put into a long sleep, not if the purpose was to bring some money in and, it seemed, educate people on Kael, or on her legend.

She stopped to read a plaque she’d missed on the first time up.

Kaelingrade Torrent-Step started her career brewing simple potions for her local village, in a time when potions were the bulk of the magic available to the common people. Continue reading

Moving Through the Bear Empire

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Caught, in the Bear Empire

🐻

Deline slept more soundly than perhaps she should have, with a bounty hunter in bed next to her and, presumably, several more on her tail.

She woke in the early morning to see Carrone pacing back and forth in the small floor space of the inn.  He wasn’t talking, but he was gesturing as if he was having an argument, and every few steps he’d glare at the Bear-stone bracelet and the bloody welts the spell-rope had left.

“Time to get on the road.  We can get a bath at the next inn.”  She was pleased to see that he was startled and more pleased to see that he didn’t jump but just twitched a little.  “I’m going to leave you with your weapons, because your job now is to keep me alive.”

He worked his jaw.  “I’d rather stab you.” Continue reading

Beepocalypse 2: Up

First: The Testers

Written in part to prompts from Wyste and Lilfluff

🐇

The elevator doors opened into a white room with only one door out of it.  Three people in masks and white suits were waiting to greet her.  The air smelled of antiseptic and some floral-like scent Kelly didn’t recognize.

“Come this way.” The voice – from the central of the three people – was muffled but understandable.  The figure pointed. Continue reading

♪Glee – Recruitment♫

Previous: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/11/28/glee/

♫♪♫

“All right.”  Rose looked at their list of potential clubs.  “So Shang first.  And then we’re going to have to start fishing around for people who can sing.  Maybe start singing in the hallways?  That might get some attention.”

“Mmm.”  Zdenka wasn’t sure it would get the right attention. “I’ll ask Shang.  Maybe he knows someone else.”

Asking Shang proved to be a bit of a challenge; he didn’t want to be caught alone.  Once, he went so far as to walk right past Zdenka when she had just managed to get him in his pod common room with nobody else around.

After two days, she finally walked up to him in the lunch room.

“Not interested.”  He put up his hands. “I don’t care about the rules of this school, I do not want a freshman girlfriend.”

“Good.  I don’t want a junior boyfriend.  But you can sing.” Continue reading

Caught, In the Bear Empire – a continuation

First: Running in the Bear Empire

🐻

The bounty hunter took a couple breaths, studying her.  “You know what they say about the Bear-stone bracelet in Halor, right?”

“I can hazard a guess or two.”

“They say it eats your brain.  They say that when you take it off, there’s nothing left of you.  And they say only certain people in the Empire’s hierarchy are allowed to use them.”

“I did say I could kill you without compunction, didn’t I?”

“Who are you?” Continue reading