So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, sends out a weekly writing inspiration e-mail, which includes a writing prompt.

And I used the generator inventrix made me for Addergoole/Fae Apoc, so:
The character is female
5 ft. 5 in. tall.
slim athletic build.
shoulder blades perfectly straight light brown hair.
greengrey eyes.
light skin.
posture is notable in some fashion

Aria strolled down the streets of what passes for a downtown in Burchester, NY. She’d been here less than a month – moved here for work, for a dream job in terms of pay, benefits, duties, co-workers – pretty much everything except location, which just happens to be in the rustiest of rust belt cities, in the coldest of Great Lakes areas, in the armpit of America.

And that was fine, because she didn’t want all that much to do with her family anyway. Go… Orange, or Red, or Slightly Reddish-Orange, or whatever the college colors were around here. Go being in Burchester and not Springfield.

Burchester was weird, though, and she was never quite sure if it was because she was new, or because the city was just weird. Something about it got under your skin.

Like the street art. Someone had put a lot of money into this bus stop, the one shaped like an umbrella, and that was lovely. But somehow, it never seemed to quite look right. Any angle you looked at it, it looked just a little bit off.

Not everything was creepy – except in that city-that-was-past-its-prime way, like these sad flower boxes. Maybe sometime, once, they’d held flowers. Now they held trash. Aria picked up a few pieces and dropped them in the nearby garbage can, trying to ignore the slimy feeling they left of her fingers.

And some things were beautiful. She rounded the corner – she wasn’t even all that sure where she was going – and came across a rose garden, striped across three acres in the most brilliant rainbow of floral beauty she had ever seen.

Aria took in the scent. Maybe Burchester wasn’t all that weird. Maybe she just shouldn’t have moved in in February.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/719502.html. You can comment here or there.

Jason Walker
Media Arts & Technology

Jason is the music. He’s known so all his life. He feels the music in ways that nobody else seems to understand; he can compose songs which seem to change people’s emotional state, seem to change the weather, sometimes, if he hits just the right note.

It’s not your typical psychic power – at least, it’s not something he’d ever heard anyone else talk about. He assumed, back in high school, that it was “just” a talent with music and lyrics, nothing “special.”

Then he saw a poster for the Oak & Rowan group, and things started becoming a little more clear to him. He was expecting a bunch of new-age mumbo-jumbo, but figured it was at least good for meeting new people. What he got was Jo, who ran the group, sitting down in private with him and having a two-hour conversation about the forces of the world.

There was no question after that: he kept coming back to Oak & Rowan. He met Craig there, who liked to pretend to be a werewolf on the weekends but, more importantly, who played the guitar and the violin, and Craig introduced him to Raven, and that’s how he ended up at Raven’s group, drinking beer out in the swamp on Thursdays and passing around an old guitar.

Jason is tallish and pretty, 5’11” and skinny, with blue-black hair in curls just past his chin and blue-green eyes. He’s paler than his hair color would suggest, and prettier than his near-gauntness would seem to allow.

When he’s not making music, he’s a big fan of climbing things – the taller, the better.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/718544.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the fifth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

But before they flee, many of them knew each other – and knew Raven.

Dorian likes a lot of things.

She likes the way Terry’s lips feel on her neck. She likes the way shot of whisky tastes on her lips and burns in her throat. She likes the way a particularly complex problem comes together like pieces clicking into place.

She likes machines, and how they talk to her, how they smell, how they work.

Whisky and Terry brought her into our circle, into Anelle’s parties and, possibly more importantly, into the the Oak and Rowan group. She doesn’t really hold with any of the psychic shit, but the people are nice, and, well, maybe once in a while there are phenomena that she hasn’t come up with an answer for. Yet.

Terry got her to the parties, because Terry does that. “Come on, get the car will still be there tomorrow. I know some nice people.” Whisky got her to keep coming to the parties, because Anelle notices things, and when she noticed that Dorian adored good whisky, she bought better whisky for the next party.

And a curiosity about the way things ticked got her to Raven’s drinking parties in the swamp.

Dorian – Mary Dorian Smithsen – is a short girl, not quite five foot tall. She wears her auburn hair cut close, so that it just curls over the tops of her ears, and spends a lot of time reminding herself not to hunch, because she spends every moment of free time bent over mechanical projects.

She’s got pale skin, usually stained brown with oil, grey-green eyes, and a ready smile. She’s skinny enough – and has short enough hair – to be mistaken for a boy on occasion, and does not mind at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/716649.html. You can comment here or there.

So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, sends out a weekly writing inspiration e-mail, which includes a writing prompt.

This story comes after
A Scene Description and
A Place Description
A Deletion – written earlier today, read first!

Marje Allise reached Kara before Ket’s screaming stopped. She was a presence, neither warm nor comforting but intensely familiar, while Kara’s finger clicked on the shutter release, over and over again, like a mantra, like a prayer.

“What did he do?” The Sergeant waited to ask the question until both noises had stopped, the screams and the clicks, and until Kara had dropped the device that looked like a camera to her waist, swinging like a hangman’s victim on its neck strap.

“I don’t know.” Kara took a breath and another, and tried again. “He kept repeating that he used to live here.”

“He did, of course. Most of us have.”

Kara nodded. The Mayflower was just – had been, at least – one of those places. It had the echoes, even now, of a city full of stories and memories. She had seen them in her viewfinder. “He kept talking about it – I should have noticed – he was getting a verbal tic.” She rubbed her hands on her pants. “And then he took off.”

“The resonance of the building called him.” Marje nodded sharply. “And then…?”

“We’ll have to look at the images to be certain. But his aura changed as he hit the doorway.” Kara pointed, careful to aim her knuckle and not her pointer finger at the glass eye settled above what had been the entrance. “That’s where it came in.”

“Makes sense.” The sergeant nodded crisply. “Good job keeping the C.A.M.E.R.A. moving, Kara. You did the right thing.”

Kara swallowed around a lump in her throat. “I did the only thing. Marje…”

She shouldn’t be calling the sergeant by her first name, not in the field, but right now it didn’t seem like the most important thing.

“You did the proper thing, Kara.” Sgt. Allise’s hand landed gently on Kara’s shoulder. “You got the data. You did the job. And Ket…”

The two woman shared a sigh. “Ket went out like he lived.” It was a horrible thing to say… but it was all she could think of at the moment. She wanted to miss Ket, silly as he’d been. She wanted to sit down in her car and cry.

“We’ll honor his death.” The sergeant tapped the device hanging from Kara’s neck. “Keep clicking. Likely we still have an unfriendly to contain.”

“Yes, sir.” Kara picked up the device and kept clicking.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/716050.html. You can comment here or there.

This is the fourth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

The story follows a group’s flight from Rochester and the challenges they meet along the road to someplace safe, although, in the midst of the apocalypse, where “safe” may be might be the hardest question.

There would have been easier career choices, but Jordan (Taylor) has been into computers since her first-grade class was introduced to them.

She could have gotten into M.I.T. – she did get into M.I.T., as well as R.P.I. – but R.I.T. was a lot closer to home (her family lives in Greece, a suburb of Rochester), and with her maternal grandparents aging, she felt it important to stay near her family.

Near, but not with. She lived in the dorms for the first two years, and then moved to the apartments with a handful of newfound friends, two from her major and one from an elective, Anelle.

She didn’t really mind Anelle’s parties, since she helpfully kept them to non-study weekends, but the people that showed up were a stranger mix than she was used to. It meant that she found herself drinking with a guy who claimed he was really an elf, and playing Strip Jenga with a girl who pretended to be a vampire on the weekends, discussing philosophy with neo-nords… and kissing two lesbians under a full moon.

It was the lesbians that really did it, but it was Anelle’s fault that Jordan ended up visiting Raven’s little drinking parties in the swamp, and it was Anelle’s fault that she tried one – and only one – D&D game.

Sometimes all it takes is one game.

Jordan is tall, 5’8″, and built round in the chest and the butt, slender most other places. She wears her hair short and natural, but platinum blonde, liking the way it contrasts against her dark, near-ebony skin.

Her eyes are grey and slightly canted at the sides, her lips are full and her nose is long and aristocratic.

She has a fascination with the physics of time (as well as the psychology of such) and takes as many electives on the subject as she can.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/715357.html. You can comment here or there.

So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, sends out a weekly writing inspiration e-mail, which includes a writing prompt.

This story comes after
A Scene Description and
A Place Description

The Mayflower scene had been horrible on the projection scene. In real life, it was nauseating.

The glass eye in the front of the building should not exist; the pac-man style bite out of the back of it was physically impossible.

The impossibility, of course, stopped neither those nor any of the other horrors from existing – the stench of flesh already rotting, the more terrifying smell of cooking meat. Kara put a handkerchief up over her nose and breathed in deeply, once, twice, three times.

“I used to live here.” It wasn’t the first time Ket Vasquez had said that. It wasn’t even the first time since they’d arrived on scene, and they’d barely been there long enough to pull out the equipment. “Right up there.” His hand pointed, shaky.

Kara did what she was supposed to. She shouldered the piece of equipment that most closely resembled an expensive camera, attached the item that mostly looked like a telephoto lens, and plugged in the attachment that looked mostly like a USB drive. She pulled out the small, flat, shiny piece that could be mistaken for a smart phone, and tucked it where the lens would show, out of her jacket pocket. And she began taking… “pictures.”

Her movements seemed to fascinate Ket. He stared at her hands as she shifted the pieces around, finally falling silent. “Is that…”

“It’s the ‘C.A.M.E.R.A.'” She didn’t so much cut him of as preempt any suggestion of a question. “Could you hold up the ‘light meter?’ please?”

“I… the.” She could hear his swallow, although he wasn’t that close to her. “Kira, do you…”

“I need the light meter, Ket.” Where was Sergeant Allise? Kira wasn’t paid enough to deal with… “Ket! Tentacle under the sewers, Ket, what are you doing?”

What he was doing was running into the building. Kira bit her lip and took ‘pictures,’ her finger moving as fast on the shutter release as the button would push.

She saw him move in flashes of otherworldly-octarine-on-black: Running towards the door. Stepping inside the door, itself a portal of acid blue and blood dripping-red. His colors shifting from green to yellow to purple as he hit the few stairs that still worked.

She saw the moment his colors vanished: a tentacle of shadow ripped out of the seared edges of the hole and wrapped around Ket’s shining beacon of violet. The shadows squeezed, and then he was gone.

She kept taking ‘pictures’ until the screaming stopped.

A Scene Description and
A Place Description
A Deletion
A Conversation

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/714897.html. You can comment here or there.

* Tulips. I have tulips all over the front of my house and I love them. Warm fuzzies every time I look at them.

* Darling husband helped me wake up in nice ways yesterday.

* We bought a couch! Well, it will be here in 3 weeks but WE GOT IT!
– (The pillow fabric name is “wild rose wineberry,” which makes me giggle more than the fabric itself, which looks more like chive flowers)

* Mint, mint mint mint mint (plants make me very happy)

* I jogged with Rion the other day! That was new, and oddly fun. Also, hanging out with Rion, which is fun in and of itself.

* Kitty! Kitties. Merit makes me very happy. They all make me happy, but Merit is an adorable spring wrapped in sleek black fur.

* Happyfun RP

* And I have a new project, and that always pleases me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/714544.html. You can comment here or there.