Archives
Leaving Town
For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn”
From dailyprompt: “highway” and “that awkward moment when…”
Set in Faerie Apocalypse. You can find Nila also in Hey you Kids get off my lawn!
*~*
The city lay in ruins. Nila didn’t know when, if ever, Michael was coming home. Power had gone out a week ago, and the looters had come through the neighborhood like locusts. She’d held them off when she could, hid with the children when she knew she couldn’t, but it was time to leave.
She settled Susan in her Kevlar sling and from there into her car seat, and made sure Allan’s backpack was balanced and light enough, taking the far heavier pack for herself. She checked all of her weapons and both of Allan’s, stared for a while at the note to Michael, and led her children out of their home.
The highways were buckled and bent, twisted like a ribbon in ways that would be unbelievable, if you didn’t know that god-monsters walked the earth now. Nila took the back roads near there, keeping an eye on the gas gauge. If she’d planned this right – yes. The car ran out of gas just as they reached the edge of the worst devastation, past the mobs and the crazy people, past the banks of less fuel-efficient cars and the toll-takers.
She settled Susan on her back and held Allan’s hand with her left, and sited a path south. South, she’d heard, the devastation was less complete. South, the winter would be warmer and more survivable.
She focused on the path in front of her, on her children, and tried to ignore the ruins around them that had been home.
~
They had been walking now for three days. They had to take it slow; Allan was sturdy for his age, but he still tired easily, and Nila couldn’t carry him, not and Susan, too. The kids were taking it like champs, but she could tell, as the sun began to inch downwards, that it was time to stop.
She was focused on the children, ignoring her training in a way that would have horrified her former Mentor, ignoring the surroundings, when they rounded a bend in the long country road and found it blocked.
There was a long awkward moment when she stared at the man-creature and he stared back at them. “Creature” because he was clearly not entirely human, “man,” because the part of him that was looked like a boy in his mid-twenties. “Awkward…” because the thing was clearly trying to decide if they were a threat. Them, a twenty-two year old girl and her two young children. She took a long look over him, cataloguing his injuries, noting that he wasn’t Masking the things that marked him as inhuman – or perhaps no longer had the energy to?
His doglike ears canted in her direction, and she dropped her own Mask, letting him see the flower-like patterns that swirled across her skin, and the blue “petals” of her ears. “We just want to pass,” she told him carefully.
He stepped out of the way awkwardly. “I won’t stop you.” From the way he was swaying, he couldn’t if he wanted to.
Nila sighed, and set her pack down. “Swear you mean me and mine no harm.”
The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight (LJ)
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn
30 Days Second Semester: 22, White Knights?
For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “22) Prompt: White Knight
Fae Apoc, Addergoole, Year 23 (a generation after the story)
Audra never saw whose foot tripped her – she had been studying the paintings on the walls, her head, as her brother would say – in the clouds – but she noticed the boy who offered her a hand up. He was, she had to admit, rather handsome, even if the single black curl hanging in his face looked a little silly.
“Thank you,” she said, as he helped her to her feet, and then, because it seemed like thanks were kind of lame, she said the next thing that came to her head. “My mother told me all the white knights were dead.”
“They aren’t,” a voice from behind her rumbled. “But you have to know where to find them.”
The boy in front of her tensed, a frown coming across his face like a cloud. Audra turned, carefully, setting her back to the wall as she’d been taught, to see the other… rescuer?
“And where would I look for them?” she asked the pale-skinned tall boy with the prominent nose.
“Right here,” the first one insisted. “I’m Carrig, by the way.”
“Carrig,” the second one inserted warningly, “there’s something to be said for not misrepresenting yourself. Miss, I’m Chaney.”
“Audra,” she answered, feeling less and less rescued and more trapped between two dragons. “sh’Kailani,” she added, feeling petulant. See: the new student wasn’t entirely ignorant of the Laws.
“Pleased to meet you, Audra,” Chaney smiled. “Need help finding your room?”
She looked between the two of them uncertainly. “Yes?” she offered. It was going to be an interesting year.
The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/123052.html. You can comment here or there.
Protected: The History of the Ellehemaei Part One – Draft
Belated rescue
This is to Dulcinbradbury‘s commissioned prompt “A rescue that happens long after the physical need for it has passed. (But it’s just as necessary all the same.)”
Author’s note: This is set in Addergoole, my webserial, which in turn is set in my Fae Apoc setting (Landing Page (LJ Link)) – the Year 8/9 stuff happens several years after the serial’s main timeline.
In this setting, a twist of magic allows people to Own (“Keep”) other people in a mind-control manner, which often is imposed on new students via trickery their first year. Also, Dyfri is a merman of sorts.
Dyfri hadn’t been able to help Evie last year. He’d done everything he could to get to her first, but Calvin had grabbed her, Owned her, and that was, as they say, all she wrote. Calvin being what he was, she’d soon been forbidden to talk to him at all, and he’d stayed away so as to not make life harder on her. He couldn’t, he knew, take Calvin on in a flat-out challenge. He’d struggled with a way to make it happen, but the bigger boy wasn’t stupid enough to come into the water, where the bias in the fight would have swung the other way. So he waited, and swore a lot, and plotted.
Calvin, like most Keepers in Addergoole, wouldn’t hold on to a girl more than a year. The teachers got really unhappy about it, and so did the other students. So on the last day of classes, Dyfri waited, and was there when the asshat kicked Evie out of his room with two garbage bags of stuff.
“Let me help you carry that?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“Go away, Dy,” she answered tiredly. “I don’t need this.”
“Just a bag, Evie,” he countered, and, raw from the crying she’d obviously been doing, she agreed.
A bag, that day. Dinner the next week. He treated her like a feral animal, plying her carefully with simple, innocuous things: food. A walk out in the Village. A sarong his mother had, inexplicably, sent from Hawaii. Every time, she’d tell him to go away. Every time, he’d coax her into one small thing.
It took half the summer for her to invite him into her room, cautiously, an invitation laden with assurances that he wouldn’t touch her without her permission, wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t work magic on her. The door had just closed when she turned on him, pounding her fists against his chest.
“You didn’t stop him. You just stood there. Just let him take me. Just let him…” Her words broken down into sobs as Dyfri took the punches and the accusations, knowing he deserved them all. “You…” another sob, and then, in a tiny voice they would both, later, pretend she hadn’t used, “hold me?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/120691.html. You can comment here or there.
Three-Way
To Rix_scadeau”s commissioned prompt in my Call for Prompts: “an Addergoole student being rescued or assisted in rescuing someone by a teacher or another student whom they fear with good reason.”
Year 9, after “It’s Going Down.”
“This is ridiculous.” Ahouva, pressed between Jovanna and Aeowyn on the lounge couch, shook her head again, staring at the upperclassmen. They had pushed all the furniture to the walls, clearing a wide space in the center of the room, and now Kendon and Jeremiah were talking, quietly and intently, in the middle of the space. To one side, Jeremiah’s creepy little girlfriend, Lolly, bounced up and down like a kid
“It seems kind of romantic to me,” Jovanna sighed.
“It has that façade, doesn’t it?” Aeowyn shook her head. “You’re right, Who, it’s creepy.”
“Kendon and I are fine,” Ahouva continued, too aggrieved to be sidetracked. “There’s nothing wrong with us, and this creep with his creepy girlfriend has to go and get medieval like I’m some sort of possession..”
“Well, technically..”
“Oh, stop that, Aeowyn,” Jovanna snapped. “It’s just as creepy as the upperclassmen when you get into that.”
“I’m just saying…”
“I know, I know,” Ahouva handwaved unhappily. “But do they have to get all medieval?”
“There was that one time…” Jovanna began hesitantly. “At the dance?”
“Just a misunderstanding,” she insisted firmly, rubbing her shoulders. “He had a bit too much to drink, and I was being a bit loud…”
“Well, maybe he’ll win, then,” Aeowyn interrupted pragmatically. “He seems very strong, and the other guy seems kind of like a beanpole.”
“But he wants her enough to challenge for her.”
“For some reason…” She’d seen the look in his eyes. She shook her head. “It’s not romance, Jo. It’s… I don’t know, but it scares me.”
“After Kendon, I wouldn’t think a skinny nerd would scare you.”
She glared at Jo. “He’s not scary. He’s just enthusiastic.”
“Mm…”
“Hush, you two, they’re starting.” Aeowyn leaned forward in her seat as the upperclassmen began formal-sounding proclamations.
“If I lose this challenge, I promise that I will immediately transfer to you my Ownership of the Ninth Cohort Ahouva sh’Ruth,” Kendon said, the words formal but his body posture suggesting he had no fear of losing.
“If I lose,” Jeremiah picked up, just as certain-seeming, “I promise that I will immediately transfer to you my Ownership of the Eight Cohort Liliandra cy’Linden, called Lolly.”
What? Only Kendon’s order kept her in her seat. She glared knives at his back, suddenly wishing his failure. That weird little doll… why would he want her? Why was he risking losing what he already had?
“The terms of the challenge,” Kendon began, to be interrupted by the arrival of another group: Thorburn, with his girlfriend Ceinwen and his cronies, Curry and Basalt.
“We’re just here to witness,” the big man said easily, when Kendon and Jeremiah looked askance at him.
“What are the terms of the challenge?” Basalt asked. As the two explained it – again – Ahouva studied him nervously. She didn’t trust him or his friends; she’d seen them on Hell Night, stomping around like monsters, and she’d seen Ceinwen crying in the girls’ room. They were thugs, straight-out. Why were they interfering.
“Interesting.” Basalt was grinning in a way she definitely didn’t like. “What if I win? Do I get both girls?”
Kendon and Jeremiah started talking at once, shouting, arguing, until little creepy Lolly murmured, “if he challenges you both…”
“Stop helping,” Jeremiah snapped.
The tiny blonde fell silent, as Basalt, pleased, declared, “then I add myself to this challenge, challenging you both for your Kept.”
“And what are you putting up, if you lose?” Kendon snapped, while Ahouva tried to become part of the couch. No, no, not him. Jeremiah would be better…
“Myself,” the big man grinned.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/119485.html. You can comment here or there.
June Again –> Boom: 30 Days Second Sem, Addergoole, Abduc. prompts.
For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.”
Also for the Abduction Prompts: here
Cya/Cynara is a RP character from the Addergoole roleplay. Her Wiki page is here This takes place sometime post-year-9 but before-the-apoc.
June again. Cynara packed the boys off to school, called the younger’s father to remind him to pick them up afterward, then spent a good couple hours helping Hroderich move into his own apartment. He was a good kid, got along well with her sons, but, well, like his brothers, wasn’t really into girls.
Once she had him tucked in, with one last you-were-a-good-Kept hug and a now-be-a-good-man punch in the arm, she double-checked her packing and started driving.
It was a ten-hour-drive from Hroderich’s new place to the Village outside of Addergoole. Cya found it meditative, a way of spring-cleaning her brain of the cobwebs and trailed her most recent Kept had left, of sweeping out the dust of former loves and lovers. She slept at a motel halfway there – the old lady winked at her. Didn’t know what she was up to, but after four years of this trip, recognized her. Cya smiled back at her, left her the tray of cookies, and slept.
It was late morning on move-out day when she drove into the Village and started waking up her power. If she let it ride most of the time, she could push it, times like this, ask it to Find things that were esoteric and a bit vague. Find me the boy I can take home with me, she asked it. Someone who’ll fall for it, someone who might need it.
The tugging in her head was like a compass. This way. Down Main Street and up the hill, to the gate of Maureen’s house. Hunh. A linen shirt and a thatch of auburn, a bit untidy, khakis and no shoes. Leaning against the outside fence, staring in.
She leaned up next to him, studying the kid-pack playing there, picking out the girl that was probably his.
“She’s lovely,” she murmured. When his attention turned reluctantly to her, she offered a hand. “Cynara.”
“Pellinore.” His grip was firmer than his effete look suggested, and she swallowed a smile. Ambrus’ sons were fun.
~~
Pellinore had accepted Cynara’s offer of a ride; his mother’s home, the only place he knew other than Addergoole, was only a day’s drive from the school, and his mother, in a state of denial, it seems, had left him to find his own way home.
It took him about an hour to realize that something was up, an hour they spent cheerfully gossiping about Addergoole professors and ignoring any of the really uncomfortable topics, such as who’s the bitch who won’t let you get near your daughter? or so, who Owned you and how bad was it?. Mike seemed a safe topic, so they joked about cy’Linden, and cy’Luca, and how some things never changed.
And then he happened to notice (because she allowed him to; she had practice, by now, at very subtle Mind Workings) that they were going very fast down a road in the wrong direction to get him home, and his Addergoole-honed caution reminded him that she, too, had gone through the School of Hell.
He didn’t stop to ask questions, she gave him that. He began rattling off a combat Working as fast as he could speak, pointing at the road beyond the car.
Boom! A wall of force and earth began rolling towards them with a crack like thunder. Cya swerved to miss it while she muttered her own working, destroying the earth wall with another boom and then throwing in a fast mind-control while he was still trying to make her emotions twist.
“Stop,” she said, as gently as she could with his created panic twisting inside her. “Release the Workings.”
He stared at her sullenly, her control forcing obedience, his own panic clearly rising. Torn by his resemblance to another son of Ambrus, she patted his knee. “Look at it this way,” she offered. “It could be a lot worse.”
The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/117884.html. You can comment here or there.
30 Days Second Semester: 17, Misery Loves…
For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “17) write an uncomfortable story.”
Faerie Apocalypse (LJ Link), Addergoole Year Nine, the day after “Say Yes.” (LJ).
Thorburn seemed jittery and uncomfortable on Wednesday, as if somehow he’d been the one to get the wrong end of Tuesday night. It grated on Ceinwen, set her teeth on edge. What right did he have to play the victim?
“I still hate you, you know,” she informed him, since he wouldn’t let her leave the room.
“Stop saying that,” he snapped, without looking away from his homework.
Bereft of even that pleasure, she pulled up a second chair and sat next to her Keeper, staring at him. He was Masked, handsome, his dreads tidy, his eyes improbably hazel-green. “You’ve never shown me,” she said abruptly. If she was going to be uncomfortable, she’d find a way to share it. “Even on Hell Night, you kept your Mask up.”
He frowned, closing his book, finally, to look at her. She plowed on, a little nervously.
“I know there are people without physical Changes, one or two of them, at least. And I know that some aren’t visible with their clothes on, but I’ve…” she swallowed hard and forced herself to continue, “seen you with your clothes off. No Changes. Why haven’t you shown them to me?”
He was still frowning, and she struggled against the urge to quail backwards. His orders last night left her uncomfortable with talking about what had happened, but this… if he wanted her to stop, he’d tell her.
“I mean…”
“When you Change,” he interrupted her. “When you Change, I will show you. I promise.”
The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/116889.html. You can comment here or there.
Changes!
So, I have these two characters. Ceinwen and Thornburn
Ceinwen’s name means “blessed and beautiful,” loosely. She is a maternal cousin of Aelgifu – that is, she comes from the side of the family that provided the glowy light bits but not the horns. She looks loosely like the Meez in the DW icon.
Thornburn was apparently a typo *headdesk;* THORBURN comes “From the Old Norse name Þórbjörn, which meant “Thor’s bear” from the name of the Norse god Þórr (see THOR) combined with björn “bear”.” http://www.behindthename.com/name/torbjo12rn
I know about him that he is generally brown, and well-spoken. Also, taller and broader than Ceinwen.
They need Changes. Ideas?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/115830.html. You can comment here or there.
Addergoole Year 57
From Rix_Scadeau‘s commission: Something happening at the school during the time of the post-apoc stories. I fudged this a year or two to get the generations right.
Addergoole Year 57, Hell Night Morning
Ardah had intended to sleep in on Saturday. It had been a busy week, and she was still trying to figure out exactly what was going on around here. People were weird-shaped, sure. She’d seen a few weird-shaped people here and there, although her parents always tried to hide them.
More than the strange body shapes, however, was the strange way people were acting. You’d think the weirdest of it was over, but no, they all seemed to be twitchy, like the worst was yet to come. It made Ardah’s skin itch.
So she was awake, trying to pretend she was sleeping, staring at her dark ceiling, when someone pounded on her door. Years of duck-and-cover training had her out of bed, shoes on and a long shirt over her nightclothes, before the second knock came.
Her brother stood on the other side, lit strangely by red emergency lighting, looking even more demonic than his Changes normally made him. “Ardah. Hard choice time. Trust me, take the quick way. It won’t be the easiest but it won’t be what you’ll get out there.”
She eyed him cautiously. Ferris had changed since coming here, not just Changed but changed in personality. He seemed less trustworthy with every passing day. “What’s the other option?”
“Head out into this,” he gestured at the hallway, “and take your chances with the rest of the school.”
“So it’s trust you… or trust myself to be able to handle the hallways of the school.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Come on, Ferris. What gives?”
“Come on, Ardah, just say you Belong to me and I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”
She shook her head, staring at him. “I don’t want to belong to anyone, Ferris. And you’re scaring me.”
“C’mon, don’t be like that. When have I ever hurt you?”
“Well, there was that time you got me stuck in the bramble bush…”
“That was the brambles hurting you, Ard.”
“Semantics.” She frowned at him, but she could tell he was getting agitated. Good. He paid less attention to his words the angrier he got. “How about the time you locked me in the cooler?”
“That wasn’t, exactly, hurt.”
“Except the part where I nearly died.”
“Come on, Ard, trust me. I’ll take care of you.”
“Or,” came a voice over Ferris’ shoulder, “you could trust me.”
“Go away, Marlon, this is my sister.”
“She is, indeed, and a lovely girl. Does she know what you were planning?”
“Crew business, Marlon, butt out.”
This was kind of fun to watch. Ardah leaned just inside her doorway and watched them. The slim, hawkish boy, who either didn’t have a Change or hadn’t un-masked yet, was smirking at her brother, half again his size. Challenging him, she realized.
“She’s not your Crew. I’m not your crew. She could be mine, though.” He held out one long-fingered hand to Ardah. “Which will it be? Me or your brother?”
Genealogy:
Ardah’s four sets of grandparents come from the following parings: Jamian/Tya, Eris/Shad (Wolf), Sarita/Finn, Kailani/Tolly
Her half-brother Ferris comes from: Jamian/Tya, Eris/Shad (Wolf), Mea/Taro (Petra), Mea/Rozen.
All I know about Marlon so far is that one of his grandparents is Raven, son of Wren and Phelen.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/110704.html. You can comment here or there.