Archive | January 2020

Saving the Cult (if not the World), Chapter Four

It wasn’t even a very long dream!

“Look.” Dylan shifted a little, trying to get comfortable with her shield wrapped around his throat. “You actually belong here, I mean, your family belongs here, your father is on the board. He is,” he added sideways to the tall one. “And your mother — I figured out who your mother is. You belong here.”

“Not what you were saying earlier,” she pointed out. She was not feeling charitable and they were not listening.

“All right, so — well.” The third person came up behind her. She was out of hands. Lina made a soft grumbling noise of warning, but she didn’t dare turn around.

“Okay, I think I convinced the guy that he tripped really badly trying to get up here. It’s just a pizza, you know, guys. It really wasn’t — Miss? I think Dylan’s lips are turning blue.”

“He has air.” She didn’t spare him a look yet. “They’re missing the point.” Continue reading →

The Mind

Jan30

The problem with half-breeds, the document read, is that they are ill-equipped to the longevity of the fae. Humanity are meant to be short-lived, and their minds and their spirits thus best survive in a more natural lifespan — sixty to eighty years, perhaps a hundred at the outside. The half-breeds are similarly equipped, being closer to humanity than to the gods who are our ancestors. At a certain point, the half-breeds simply stop forming memories correctly; their brains are full and they can no longer process new information.

It had been hailed as a piece of scientific truth for over two centuries among the Grigori, but to Regine, it read no more accurately than any other piece of pseudo-science racism of its era. Why were human brains and half-breed brains ill-equipped to longevity? What, other than the same grasp of genetics that called a panda a bear because it was roly-poly and shared a certain similarity of shape with Ursus, suggested that half-breeds were further from the ancestor-fae? And for that matter, who had reference that told anyone what the ancestor-fae were, or how specific traits which came to be equated with each of the pure-blood breeds were related to those ancestor-fae? Continue reading →

The Spoils Coffeeshop AU

Jan28

This is 100% Lilfluff’s fault and probably won’t go any further.

“The Mountain is following us, I swear.”

Aran wiped down the espresso machine for the third time. He’d been like for days, ever since the coffee chain The Mountain had opened their nearest branch down the road from them.

They were still plenty busy; they hadn’t — yet — seen an appreciable dip in business. The Mountain couldn’t do baked goods like they did, and they didn‘t do personal service and comfortable atmosphere the way they did.

(Personal service was a bit of a thing for them…)

Still, every time they had a lull, Aran started getting nervous. Continue reading →

The Bellamy, Chapter Three

Jan27

The Bellamy Continues!

“Don’t get used to this.”

The café was presided over by a hawk-faced woman with magenta hair coiled in a bun atop her head. Under her pristine white apron she was wearing a lime green and sunshine orange tartan vest. She was also wearing what was not a scowl but could in no way be considered a smile, and the wrinkles on her face seemed to suggest it was the expression she wore habitually.

“You only get food like this two times.” She held up a platter of delectable-smelling warm food. “Your first day and your last day. The rest of the time, you eat what everybody else eats.”

“What does… what does everybody else eat?” Veronika could only picture the buckets of kibble she’d seen in the holding area below the front desk, especially the one labelled humanoid.

“Food.” The woman rolled her eyes at Veronika. “Everyone else eats food. It’s just that on your first and last day, we make it a little special. It’s a perk of the Bellamy. The sort of thing we do to make our employees — no we don’t call them employees do we — to make our team members feel welcome.”

“It sounds,” Veronika offered carefully, “as if somebody read a book on morale building, and understood…” She hesitated over how to say this, but thought that it might possibly help her connection with the angry-looking woman. “… Understood the words.

“But not the concepts.” The woman nodded and held out the hand that wasn’t offering the platter. “I’m Sylvester.” Continue reading →

Purchase Negotiation 32: Choices & Decisions

Jan25

First: Purchased: Negotiation

💰

“When you put it like that,” Sylviane repeated, while Leander’s mouth was full, “I really want to… I don’t know, change the world. A lot.”

He blinked at her and wished he hadn’t filled his mouth up with sticky cheese.

“So everyone, I think… everyone ought to have good food, a warm and comfortable place to sleep, indoor plumbing, clothes that fit, comfortable shoes, and an education. Everyone. So if there are people not getting that – which obviously there are – then I want to fix that.”

He swallowed and gulped some soda. “Like… slave’s rights reform? Or like, uh. Um. Helping people in the inner cities, or on other continents, or -“

“All of it. Every bit of it. I mean, okay, that’s going to take a few years.” She ducked her head. “But maybe there’s a way. I mean, make money, figure out how to make it into more money, and then spend a large portion of it making sure people have a place to sleep and warm shoes on their feet. And then, on the side, working with other Shener…”

She trailed off and looked at Leander. His stomach suddenly felt leaden.

“The people who did this to you…” Continue reading →

Saving the Cult (if not the World), Chapter Three

Jan24

It wasn’t even a very long dream!

Content warning for violence here.

The thing about the house her mother had — magicked up? Unfolded? — had unfolded was that, while it was plenty bigger than, say, an RV or a tent, it was not as big as their house back home, and that meant that Lina spent a lot more time bumping into her parents.

This was exacerbated by the fact that her parents were around more. Her father usually spent all day at work; now he was sitting on the porch making phone calls, or sitting in the back sun room making phone calls, or pacing in the living room… making phone calls.

She was beginning to think that all her father did was make phone calls. Endless phone calls with endless people, all of them full of endless jargon.

Or maybe he was feeling trapped, too, and phone calls were the only way he could get out. Continue reading →

A Story for B (or perhaps a beginning)

Jan23

Written over 23 posts/toots for my friend B – beginning here.

Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.
Chapter 14 here.
Chapter 15 here.

The girl, who had been named Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre (for several reasons beginning with but not limited to the little bubbling noises she made as an infant, several grandmothers, a grandfather, two prophecies, & three bequests with very specific qualifiers), who was called Princess or Your Highness by most people and ‘Lina only by her mother and her nurse, was lost.

She hadn’t intended to be lost. She’d intended only to wander off a little ways, since the party was so loud and the people were so… people.

Malina liked people fine, in small doses, but when it was a Royal Party, a birthday party for her sister, it just went on & on & on, and the people just went on & on & on as well. So, eventually, when enough people had shaken her hand & patted her shoulder & asked for her blessing, Malina wandered away from the crowd.

Lady Rosário threw a great party – this one was at her desert estate on the border – & was a friend of the crown – Continue reading →

#WIPWorldBuilders / #WorldBuildingWednesday – The Bear Empire

Jan22

I’ve discovered (thanks to @jessmahler ) this Twitter community called #WIPWorldBuilders.

I picked a world to work on this month as so:

* a Verse I’m currently writing in.
* not an Urban Fantasy world, one that’s in a completely different world
* Obv. not a fanfic setting

(though, let’s be honest, in most of my fanfic I’ve done enough worldbuilding that I could probably do this – however, they’re all urban fantasy, woe)

Which led me to Bear Empire (I’m writing Found Down Below in the Bear Empire Cyber Era.)

So here’s a tidied-up first seven days of that, with an attempt to get it into categories that’ll be useful down the road.

The calendar: https://twitter.com/pepperdaphoenix/status/1212074023926083588 Continue reading →

Spoils of War 30: And Then

Jan22

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender

PLEASE NOTE: I WENT BACK TO THE END OF CHAPTER 21 AND AM REWRITING FROM THAT POINT.

“I’m your man,” Aran repeated slowly. Good.” He held her hips more tightly. “I like that. Being your man.” He lifted up his head and kissed her back fiercely. “Didn’t think I would,” he admitted. “But you did save my life and all. Twice now, at least.” He bucked his hips up in suggestion.

She pressed her hand on his chest, just to see what he’d do; he sank back to the bed. She grinned at him as she kissed him again. “And here I thought third time was the charm.”

“That’ll be when we fight the Mountain and win. Maybe-“

She occupied his mouth with another kiss. “Later.” Continue reading →

Blog Post: Baby (Kitty) Pictures

Jan21

T found some baby pictures of the boy cats and I am on a rampage of nostalgia, remembering them when they were wee little kittens.

We went to visit them — and their equally fluffy mother cat — and brought them home the same night. They were little grey puffballs then, small enough to fit on T’s lap together with room left over.

I remember thinking — saying, even — that I couldn’t wait for them to grow into their personalities, because at that point, they were… mostly babies, adorable but not really doing a whole lot except being hyper and adorable.

Drake & Gatsby had been such personality-filled old men that having these little infant kitties around again was, well, weird.

But they pretty quickly developed or showed us personalities, probably even before we named them (They were Thing One and Thing Two for a while, or Lefty and Righty for the arm that has a full white sleeve (As you look at them, if I recall correctly.).) Continue reading →

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder