Archive | September 2020

Three and a Half Oaks

Based on a prompt found here.

🌳

Between the blink of an eye, in a heartbeat, in a breath, in things that stopped mattering, the world stopped – or at least we did.

People froze. I froze. Animals froze. Insects froze, I think. 

It was – when I thought about it clinically, it was fascinating.  My body didn’t hunger, didn’t ache, didn’t have any needs.  My eyes didn’t dry out.  I’d been sitting in the park.  The others in the park seemed the same – stuck in a single moment.  They didn’t fall over, even if in mid-jog.  The squirrel hung in mid-climb.  The ducks stopped in mid-nibble. 

Nothing moved.  Nothing but plants.  Nothing died, nothing rotted, nothing breathed, nothing but plants.  Continue reading

The Bellamy, Chapter 21

📚

The Fillion wasn’t as old as the Bellamy, or as big (assuming one could in any way actually gauge the size of a place like the Bellamy, which Veronika was beginning to believe that one – at least when one was her – could not), but it had its share of new-construction oddities, doors which led to tiny triangular closets which happened to have siding on one wall, because at one point that had been the outside, stairways which led nowhere and were used as, again, a closet, this one room in the basement which had once been a parlor on the first floor and now was used for the junior archivists’ break room – finding it two days in a row was one of the tests of actually being an archivist. 

It also had a couple ghosts, of course – any place that collected artifacts would end up with at least one eventually. 

Standing in the passageway with its ancient file cabinets and its dusty ghost, Veronika wasn’t sure if the whole scene made her feel more at home – she’d definitely made a place for herself when she was at the Fillion, after all – or even more outclassed.  Continue reading

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

Saving the Cult (If not the World) "It's time." Manfield Lee knew he was good at sounding authoritative even when he didn't know what he was talking about - he'd turned a fortune into a megafortune doing just that, after all, not to mention running the Organization - but right now, he DID know what he was talking about. After all, it was just a date, wasn't it? And if the date turned out to be wrong, well, then he knew exactly what to blame it on, and that blame would fall on the scholars and the psychics, not on him. The other thing Manfield Lee knew how to do was to place the blame in very specific ways that were not him.

I just want to, you know—

Save the world?

“Um.”  Lina cleared her throat.  “Something like that, yeah, I guess.  I mean, the city?”  She shrugged.  Someone grabbed her shoulder; she pressed them away with a shield and turned to glance.  “Mrs. Thomson?”  She was staring at her English Lit teacher from junior year.  “I didn’t know you were part of the Organization.”

“Catalina, you need to go to the training session.  You’re such a good student; why are you doing this?”  

Not her.  This was straight out of one of her weirder nightmares.  Lina was going to scream.  She was going to start throwing things. 

She didn’t have the time or luxury to do that.  Continue reading

Perdition

This is a soulmark AU Supernatural fanfiction set in an unknown time period in Supernatural except that it happens after the beginning of Season 4. 

Spoilers for that – the beginning of season 4/end of season three – and nothing else, and sort of handwave on Supernatural theological logistics, which is fine, because this is a soulmark AU. 

Definition soulmark AU: (see here for a longer take) – an alternative universe version of an extant setting (often otherwise very similar to the canonical universe) where soulmates exist and some or all people have them; all soulmates have a mark of some sort on their bodies that indicate who their soulmate will be. 

This one was prompted by Anke long enough ago that she may have forgotten – sometime in August, I think.  Might be July. 

The soulmarks in this were inspired by the way the story here – although more by my memory of the way they worked (symbolism and language important to the other) than the actual mechanism in that fic.

😇

Dean had heard of people who had soulmarks of the first words their soulmate had said to them.  Continue reading

Malina and the Border Banners, Chapter 18 (A Story for B)

Began here.
Landing page here.

In a castle that shouldn’t be, in a place that wasn’t, a girl named after too many things ran her hands over the carvings in the sandstone and tried to read them. 

She could tell they meant something, but what they meant – that was beyond her.  Wait. 

“Wait.”

She ran her fingers over it again.  “It’s – Oh, I can almost read it,” she murmured.  “I can almost feel the weave in it.  The – oh.”  She pulled her fingers away.  “It’s like reading a language that is close to one you know, but is just different enough to be obnoxious.” Continue reading

Blog Post: Calc I

Going to School

I am taking Calculus I this semester!

This is because Calc II is the pre-req for Multi-variate Calc which is the pre-req for Probability Models and Inference, which I wanted to take this semester but I’m going to take in… what, two years?

I mean, I took AP Calc in high school. I did well, too! I really liked it. I can still remember liking it. I also remember sitting next to my best friend Crystal, then. I mean, any class and every class is made better with a friend there, and Crystal was amazing.

(I miss her. I really do. I lost touch with her sometime in college and I haven’t been able to find her.) Continue reading

A Finish-It Follow-Up in leading up to NanoWrimo

NaNoWriMo 2020

Okay, so back in 2017 for NanoWrimo I did a year of Finish It.

This year I am going to do something similar.  No new poll; I’m going to start on or about Oct 1st with 100-500 words of notes on each story I want to finish and see where I get. (That’s about 2/3 of nano, the other 1/3 being finishing this nearly-done novel set…)

But!

Here are the links from 2016.

If you find something you a) really really feel strongly about or b) think I really oughta have on one of these lists that I don’t, feel free to suggest it. 

Finish It In November, a poll

Links for the Poll

Poll Links II

The Fishy Call Follow-Up Summary

Way back at the beginning of August, I opened a prompt call on fishing!

Since then I have written, well, a number of stories to the prompts provided.

If you would like another continuation of any of these – a) see the Want More; currently three people are owed continuations; b) get the comments up! The current goal is 9 – the first two posts (original or continuation) to get to nine total comments (or, say, 14 or 16 or 18 if they’ve already had one continuation written, i.e., 9 more than the first continuation cost) – will get a continuation.

The *️⃣ marks stories who have gotten a continuation.

The Stories So Far

Clean…?  The plant offered clean energy.  Cleaner might’ve been more accurate.  The fish living downstream of the runoff might’ve said something different entirely.   This is set in the universe/city/power plant featured in Saving the Cult (If not the World), a ‘verse tagged Organization.
5️⃣*️⃣comments

Cleaning Up – The problem begins Austin not understanding what’s going on with the plant.  Then it gets worse.
4️⃣ comments

Seek And…?  Long long ago, I began a story about a woman lost in a blizzard and ending up in a different world. This story peeks in on her life, as she fishes for answers and is caught in turn.
2️⃣comments

Fresh Fish  The city of Scheffenon, on the North Sea high on the edges of the Empire, is known for many things.  But one thing that it is not known for – at least in modern times – is fish, or at least fish pulled from the North Sea.  They do not fish, not as such, on the North Sea. (Things Unspoken ‘verse)
🔟*️⃣comments

The Freshest Fish – Eliška goes fishing for information about the fish in the North Sea.  She finds mostly more questions – and some gods to fish for, as well.
4️⃣ comments

Unplumbed Depths – Fishing in Minecraft can get you some strange results.  This fictional view of the fishing strips out a lot of the blockier elements but does leave a fishing pole with, perhaps, a little too much Luck enchanted into it.
5️⃣*️⃣comments

(In the Depths coming soon)

…A Break…? – Jess works security at The Facility, a place where science which nobody calls mad (in the hearing of the scientists) is perpetrated.  It’s a really good job.  But sometimes, your friend up in the top end of things asks for a favor…
8️⃣*️⃣comments

Breaking Out – Jess didn’t think she’d find herself saying okay, next year, we’ll…  with these interns, but then again, she didn’t expect to feel so protective of them, either.
1️⃣ comment

The Night Fishers – they only fished at day.  Murph was about to find out why.
4️⃣comments

Fishing Day – She should’ve done something better with the body, but it was her fishing day, and she didn’t want to be interrupted.
7️⃣*️⃣comments

Biting – She needed this fishing day.  On the other hand, the police were far too worried about this body…
1️⃣ comment

Fountain Fishing – There’s nothing alive in this abandoned mall except Abby, Liv, and the fish in the fountain. Not even a protein bar.  So going fishing seemed like the reasonable idea, right?
5️⃣*️⃣comments

Robotic – How do you get away from a robot?  Abby and Liv had tried any number of things in the neverending Mall On Infinite Earths.  This time, they find something that seems to work…
1️⃣ comment

 

 

In the Depths

In the Depths

This story follows Unplumbed Depths, which was written to my Fishy prompt call here

🐟

Bryn should not still be breathing. 

That was not the first thought to percolate up, not even the second – how do I get out how do I get out how do I get out came first and second was what is this thing?

The third thought, though, was that breathing was surprisingly not unpleasant.  Bryn had fallen in the water before, had dove in, had swum.  There always reached a point where air was needed, then where air was painfully needed.  

The thing holding Bryn, pulling Bryn towards the light deep underwater, had been pulling for long enough that Bryn should really be far past the painfully needed stage. And yet – And yet Bryn was just breathing.  

There was definitely water; Bryn swallowed a bit and it was salty and unpleasant; Bryn’s clothes were waterlogged and the boots were probably a lost cause.  

But air? Air did not seem to be a problem. 

The thing – the thing was, it seemed, a very long arm or tail of some sort, a tentacle like the squids that liked to frolic near shore, but gigantic – the thing was pulling inexorably closer to the light underwater.  And as Bryn struggled and pushed and completely failed to get out of the thing’s grip, the light became more and more clearly a building, and the building became more and more clearly a complete structure. 

Bryn and Johnie had gone diving in the ruins near the coast plenty of times.  With enough patience, they could often unearth something missed by previous divers, left behind by whoever had lived there once upon a time. 

This was bigger than all those ruins put together. 

It was more complete than any of the ruins they’d ever seen on land. 

There were doors, wide, giant, double doors, the doors were open, and the tentacle was coming out of them – or returning to that doorway, yanking Bryn inside. 

When the doors slammed shut behind them, the tentacle uncoiled, leaving Bryn standing uncertainly on blue stone floors like nothing ever seen on land.  

The doors wouldn’t open to Bryn’s touch.  There were no buttons or levers or pressure plates or even a knocker. 

Bryn took in a breath, trying not to panic.  The water was still breathable.  The water was clear, far clearer than it should be. 

If the doors in front were not available for an exit, if Bryn didn’t need to leave this moment before the air ran out, then the reasonable answer was to explore. 

For a moment, a stab of guilt attacked: Johnie was waiting. Johnie was probably worrying. 

Then the curiosity overtook Bryn, and the lights along the hallway, and the doors dotting the hall, and the tentacle that had vanished completely, they all seemed to sing you want to know, you need to know., and Bryn started looking. 

If nothing else – it was a sort of logic, even if it was a bit self-serving – at some point Bryn would need to find an exit. At some point this spell would wear off, and Bryn would need to breathe again.  

The thought was a bit chilling, and it meant Bryn moved more methodically than might otherwise have been the case.  Left first door, look inside.  Nothing.  Right first door, repeat. 

On the fourth door on the left, however, Bryn found a motherlode. 

Books. 

More books. 

More books. 

And a hole going deep, deep down, a hole that, when Bryn looked in, seemed to be nothing but blackness. 

Bryn skirted well away from the hole, tempting as it was, and considered the books instead.  How were they still here? How were they still intact

What language were they written in?

Bryn’s language skills were limited to basics – enough numbers and words to buy things at the market, enough to not get cheated, enough to know the prayers – but these, Bryn was pretty sure they were written in something complete different than the market boards or the prayer books.  Even the library in town didn’t have books like this. 

Byrn’s bag was shoved full of the books – picked at random, grabbed from every shelf in the room – by the time the tentacle began snaking back out of the hole. 

🐟🐟🐟

Want more? See here first!

Comments: 2

🐟🐟🐟

Ko-Fi Fish Link