Archive | May 2020

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

“You never said anything at all about the Organization,” Lina pointed out to her father, glad she was too tired to sound anything but calm. “Or about Mom being able to fold a house out of a suitcase, or about — about anything,” she trailed off. There really were a lot of people here. “Or about the way you can just — link your power to someone else’s.” She paused. She knew the woman kneeling in front of her. She loathed her. She was a business partner of her father’s, and she had always spoken down to Lina like she was younger than her brothers were now. “Camilla Stane.”

“Miz Stane,” her father normally would correct her.

Not today. Continue reading →

How it Should Have Ended

May28

I needed to write this to write something else, which I haven’t written yet.

This is a roleplay fiction, written about a character I played back in the early 2000s. The short version: Jhonny is an Eshu (Changling: The Dreaming) who has very strong connection to her past lives, which also happen to be her ancestors, in her case. She has a very very long history of being connected with another, we’ll call him Xavier because I can’t remember how to spell his name, a connection which has often led to both of them dying young.

In the life I was roleplaying, it was an amazingly bad relationship, which is, all things considered, not surprising.

Anyway, in order to write the story I wanted to write, I needed to end her story differently. So here we go with a How it Should have Ended.

Continue reading →

Malina and the Border Banners, Chapter 14 (A Story for B)

May27

Began 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.

Malina paced. “This is – this is strange,” she complained.

The silks of her new clothing brushed across her legs with every step. The sandals made shhussshing noises on the tile floor.

That in itself was strange. Everything was different from her normal clothing, from her normal floors, from her normal shoes. The carved stone screens were like nothing she had at home. The bed, even, was made differently from any bed she’d ever slept in before last night. Everything was like living in a storybook, which –

You were named to this position. We have been waiting for you. Continue reading →

Know the Ropes

May26

Once again I asked for prompts on the FediVerse and Ciel offered me a lovely one.

Content warning: bondage.

*~*

The noise of the city vanished in Mackenzie’s lair; everything vanished in her lair. The floor was soft, the walls were painted a very pale blue, and the hooks overhead were painted to match the slightly darker blue of the very durable ceiling. The cabinets along one wall were placed so that they more or less vanished into a shadow; the door itself was hidden in the shadows of those cabinets.

When you walked in, when Mackenzie set the lights just so, you could pretend there was nothing else in the world but you, her, and the room.

Right now, Bran was feeling as if Mackenzie’s smile was its own fourth participant. “I saw you with Antony the other night, your video.” She licked her lips.

Bran raised his eyebrows. “That’s the thing Antony and I do,” he answered carefully. He and Mackenzie had a very well-defined relationship, both inside and outside of this room. Jealousy had never entered into it, jealousy for either of them. She had a boy who kept her bed warm most nights and cooked her dinner. He had Antony he tied up on camera, and Kef most weekends, in and out of the club. Continue reading →

The Bellamy, Chapter 16

May25

📚

It’s never really taken anyone forever. The woman across the table smiled around a nibble of pocket quiche.

“You know,” Veronika mused. The sandwiches looked delicious; they even smelled delicious. “None of this was anywhere in the job description. And the first half of the day -” She frowned. “It wasn’t, was it?”

“Well, it depends on how you look at it. It depends on some other things, as well.” Amanana put two sandwiches on her plate and gestured to the platter, then to Veronika’s plate. “How much do you want to know?”

Veronika picked two that looked the best. “I want to say everything, but I suppose the question needs to be what’s the danger in knowing too much?” Continue reading →

In Allen O’Dale’s

May24

I wanted something to write and, forgetting I still had a stack of prompts, I asked for prompts on the FediVerse and @Milouchkna linked me to this prompt. What came from it is definitely interesting. Little dark – content warning, blood mention, alcohol mention, some violence.

*~*

Allen O’Dale’s was the sort of place you didn’t walk into twice if the clientele didn’t want you there.

You’d think that the proprietor would complain when someone walked up to a stranger, looked them over once or twice, and said “find another place, friend,” but not the eponymous owner of the little tavern on a side road just outside a small town that itself was on the borders of a medium-big rust belt city. No, O’Dale would just tut and say “that’s good money you sent away,” not really sounding like it mattered, and the jar on the counter would fill up with coins and bills.

Any other place, someone might complain about the antecedents of the money, but not here. After all, if anyone was going to know where to spend those strange iridescent bills or the weird hexagonal coins, it was going to be O’Dale.

And nobody else was going to complain about what their change got made in. For one, you complained at Allen O’Dale’s, you had to find someplace else to drink, to play pool, to shoot darts, and to find… friends. Continue reading →

Purchase Negotiation 41: Orders

May23

First: Purchased: Negotiation

Content warning in this case – discussion of consent, the lack thereof, and of rape.

💰

Eventually, they’d gone through two movies and this moment of relaxation had to end. Mr. MacDiarmad gently moved Leander’s legs off of him so he could stand and patted Leander on the knee. “You two should head to bed. Take it easy tonight, Leander – Doctor’s orders. And in the morning we can talk about what we’re going to do about this new threat.”

Leander found himself standing up, the order moving him before he’d really managed to process it. He offered a hand to Sylviane. “Bed?” He tried to sound polite or suave or, well, anything, but he was pretty sure he sounded more like a caveman.

She took his hand and stood. “That sounds good, yeah. You need anything before we go to bed?” Continue reading →

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

May22

“Places, everyone,” Dylan commanded.

Lina hadn’t been into theatre, hadn’t really been into anything dramatic or performance based, and had ended up joining business club just to have an extracurricular on her college applications. She wasn’t sure what a conquering hero was supposed to walk in like.

“Shoulders back,” Jackson murmured. “That’s it. Smile a little, if you can. You’re tired and that’s fine, but you’re happy you saved lives, right? There you go. It’s like going into a charity ball, except right now you’re doing what our moms and dads do, they just don’t know it yet. The cameras are on you; don’t give ‘em anything.”

“Way to give me a panic attack,” she murmured back at him, but she did what he told her. The cameras are on you. She could do that. Continue reading →

Family Distancing

May21

Why, no, I’m not going through all my settings and seeing how they’d reacting to a pandemic. I mean, well, maybe a little. Any you want to see?

😷

Winter, Autumn, Summer, and Spring.

😷

“6 p.m. Eastern,” Summer was saying as Autumn logged on. “You were early, Winter, of course. Spring’s late, of course.”

“She is on the West Coast,” Winter retorted mildly. He was wearing his work shirt and tie sans jacket and he’d loosened the tie. The whole image looked very professional against his home bookshelf, if you ignored the fact that he was holding Tortuga, his half-grown cat, while Myrrh, his ferret, climbed the bookshelf and Dehradun, his kitten, napped on the laptop keyboard.

Autumn giggled, even though it might not be kind. Of all of them, she’d have expected Summer to be the pet owner, not Winter.

“She is,” Autumn agreed, “and being on time would disagree with her. How are you both?” Continue reading →

Malina and the Border Banners, Chapter 13 (A Story for B)

May20

Began 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.

The Princess Malina – Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre, who had always considered her long name to be more of a formality of being born a princess, rather like a carpenter’s child would have some sort of wood in their naming and a weaver’s child would have some sort of fiber, but now was learning that her name was some sort of way of anchoring her to some ancient magic, along with everything else she was learning during this particularly weird time – finished her breakfast and dressed herself in the silks and sandals provided by fish-sprites.

She smoothed the clothes down over her body and found that she looked very old-fashioned, but so old-fashioned it was like she had stepped out of a history book, rather than like she had borrowed her grandmother’s clothing. Continue reading →

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder