Passing the Torch

Aug18

a story of Doomsday/Cloverleaf

Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues
Crew, Continued
The Day
A Pact
The Pact Slips, Part I
The Pact Slips, Part II
A Solution

Several years after the above stories – more than 50 years after the apocalypse.

There were five students loitering near the fence at Maureen’s, and the last parents had come and gone. Luke rolled his shoulders and pulled his wings close. There was nobody coming for them. There never had been someone coming for three of them — raised in the creche, the only time they’d been out of the Addergoole complex was on field trips. The last two had been dropped off by their parents four years ago. Luke had honestly thought those parents would come back.

It had been years since Cya Red Doomsday had stopped showing up, long enough that the rumors had almost stopped. She’d never have taken the girls, and he could only remember once that she’d taken two, but she could have done something. Luke stepped forward. He was going to have to have the talk abut the Village and Other Options with these kids. He was going to have to pull their Mentors in and ask why they hadn’t prepared their Students. He was going to have to growl if one of Mike’s old Students showed up, the way they did some years, offering snake oil and a slave collar.

A blue man teleported in front of him with a whiff of sulfur and an apologetic grin, followed a millisecond later by Cya Red Doomsday and… another woman. Luke didn’t recognize her, althugh her face shape remind him of someone else — black hair, golden-brown skin, and a ready and wide smile that looked ready to cause trouble.

“Usually I’d come earlier,” Cya was telling the other woman, “but I wanted to be sure that you saw what happens when we don’t come. sa’Hunting Hawk,” she bowed politely in his direction, “this is Sunitha the Bright Idea, my former student and current protégé.”

Protégé.. “Red Doomsday.” He returned her bow. “jae’Bright Idea. Are you…”

“It really doesn’t work for me right now.” Luke thought that Cya sounded apologetic. “And… i thought that the ones who didn’t look like Howard, Leo, or Cabal deserved a chance.”

“Ah.” There was a “Howard”-type among the five — broad-shouldered, blond, big horns — but he wasn’t one Luke was most worried about. He bowed again at Bright Idea. He shouldn’t feel as relieved about this as he did, but… “I trust Red Doomsday’s judgement, ma’am.”

Cya smirked at her protégé, but there was warning in the expression. “Don’t let him down.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1158751.html. You can comment here or there.

Conlang all year round – Polysemarch in August

Aug17

Turns out I missed conlanging, and as I’ve missed many months of “365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember,” I decided in the remains of August, I would cycle through the first 8 months twice of conlang-exercises twice.

Today is Polysemarch – Add a new meaning a day to an existing word in March. This might be challenging for my Old Tongue vocabulary of 15-or-so words…

So I looked up Polysemy, assuming that was the basis for this challenge. It includes this phrase… “…usually related by contiguity of meaning within a semantic field.(11)

We covered bunnies in Calenyen in Lexember.

A kaler is a domesticated fur rabbit. When in the wild, or in a burrow, it pops its head up to look around, much in the way early steam-pressure-relief valves did. (See also pressure cookers). Thus, a kaler in engineering terms is a pressure-relief valve, especially but not always a pop-up valve.

And in my 15-Word Old Tongue, we have a plot-based word, aeosthena, which means, in essence, “father-of-many,” “desirable stud.”

A tongue-in-cheek use of the word appeared in the early 18th century, mostly by Grigori scholars: in a manner similar to the Erdős number, a scholarly aeosthena was one whose papers had “spawned” new ideas or new papers, or one who had created many protegees, in part by co-publishing.

Morphambruary
Febmanteau
✒️
DisMaycourse
✒️
Polysemarch 2/ Juneme 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1158480.html. You can comment here or there.

Conlang all year round – Febumantau in August

Aug16

As I said yesterday, I decided I missed conlanging, and as I’ve missed many months of “365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember,” I decided in the remains of August, I would cycle through the first 8 months twice of conlang-exercises twice.

Today is Febumantau – Create compound word a day for February. It specifically says it doesn’t have to be a portmanteau, but I decided to try for the challenge, especially since…

Portmanteaus are actually the rule rather than the exception in modern Calenyen, which tends to mush words together in compound words and then drop syllables. Yesterday’s words began as portmanteaus.

A modern-to-Edally-era would be

taabaam, pipe (from baam, tube and Taabo, an artifice, a “work”, i.e, pipes themselves are “tubeworks.”)

tyaala, a clog, from aatyaa, to obstruct.

tyaabaam, generally a figure of speech, a clog in the works.

Old Tongue is a much less active language; it is more or less dead, used for code and private conversations, for scholarly texts on Ellehemaei, magic, and the nature thereof, and sometimes for artwork.

Still, when you teach a school full of teenagers a language, eventually someone will come up with some mash-ups.

Although the word daetoshiar, “Sanctity”, already existed, some students of Addergoole decided “doorway-smash” better explained the feeling of discovering the sanctity of a doorway for the first time (i.e., that moment when you find you can’t enter a room without invitation because of the Laws of Sanctity).

Hiashebbana is a doorway, a threshold, the place you welcome people into your home.

Onussie, “to smash,” the sensation of smashing.

From those you get “Hiashebonussie” or just “Hiashebonus.”

(or, from some, Hiashe-smash.)

If you are not already following Haikujaguar, I suggest you check out her post today – 581 Words: on Language as Intermediary. Edited to add: MCA Hogarth deleted all social media but Twitter and moved to Patreon for reasons I completely support.

Morphambruary
✒
Polysemarch
✒
Febmanteau 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1157471.html. You can comment here or there.

Conlang all year round – Morphambuary in August

Aug15

I decided I missed conlanging, and I’d missed many months of “365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember,” so I decided in the remains of August, I would cycle through the first 8 months twice.

Today, Morphambuary – Coin a bound morpheme a day in January.

Starting with Calenyena: Bekkut comes from two words no longer used on their own, beka, fish, and tukut, river. These words have been replaced with new words with similar meanings, but a bekkut is still a river-fish, and torkut, from Tora, grass, is still a river-grass.

In Addergoole/Fae Apoc’s Old Tongue, there are a number of morphemes only used as modifiers of other words. In the old ideograph system, they are often modifying diacritics.

-eleg is one of those. It means base in the sense of baseborn: lower, less-worthy, illegitimate.

In the word shenera, child, this would become shener/eleg/a, for instance.

next: Febmanteau
✒️ ✒️ ✒️
Morphambruary 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1157032.html. You can comment here or there.

Awakening, Accompanied – a continuation of Fae Apoc

Aug12

This is written to thnidu‘s commissioned continuation of Shedding Skin and The Nightmare Sated

She woke to find a trembling body next to hers. Before Akazha opened her eyes she sniffed the air and focused on the pressures on her skin, taking in the situation. Her body was back to its humanoid shape, her fingers still feeling twitchy where the claws had slipped away. She felt no metal on her, no hawthorn or rowan. They hadn’t chained her down while she was comatose, then.

The ground beneath her was hard and cold. Something soft covered her from her feet to the shoulder — a blanket? Her clothes would have torn in the shifting, they always did. The teddy bear was still pressed under her hand, and there was not one but two bodies, a small one in front of her and a larger one behind her. The larger one was trembling.

Akazha let out a sigh and opened her eyes. A toddler lay pressed against her, looking out at the world. Not far away, she could see chair legs and booted feet. Behind her, the trembling body shook more.

“Well.” She recognized the voice of the town’s mayor. “You’re awake, and the citizenry of the town has declared that we cannot kill you. So… having ‘rescued’ us, what do you want?”

“Food.” The answer was out of Akazha’s mouth before she could recognize the tension in the mayor’s voice or pick a suitable, safe answer. “Food, please.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1156124.html. You can comment here or there.

Buffy: the Invitation (an Addergoole Crossover), Part X

Aug11

Buffy: The Invitation

Part I: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1096503.html
Part II: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1100922.html
Part III: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1104619.html#cutid1
Part IV: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108537.html
Part V: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1112216.html
Part VI: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1124762.html
Part VII: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1134781.html
Part VIII: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1139412.html
Part IX: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1146552.html

Help! I’d like clever individual titles for these chapters as well – now taking suggestions for 8, 9, and this one!

“So the whole school is underground?” Xander was the last down the narrow staircase, and he was taking his time, looking around as if the old barn would suddenly reveal something more exciting than a concrete stairway hidden under a trap door. “Doesn’t that get a little, oh, I don’t know, crypt-like? Grave-y? Dank and claustrophobic?”

“Spend a lot of time in crypts?” Luke shot a look over his shoulder at the three of them.

“Of course not,” Willow offered brightly. “It’s just that the whole underground thing is a bit — well, it’s a bit creepy, you have to admit. No offense, I mean, some people like creepy; it’s a valid decorating style, I’m sure, but…”

“But it’s still a bit strange.”

“Being underground lets us spread out more,” Luke offered. “And gives us privacy.”

“Oh, good. Privacy.” Xander swallowed. “Not selling me on the crypt-school here, man.”

“It grows on you.” The lights came on as Luke led them down into a broad room, warehouse shelves flanking a wide receiving area and a big Jeep on some sort of lift. “Through this way is the school. There’s some students here over the summer. Magnolia’ll show you around. You want to talk to Regine, right?” He nodded at Giles.

“I need to impress on her the oddities of our situation — ah, yes.” Giles coughed. “Yes, I need to explain to her, that is —”

“You said ‘yes’, Giles, it’s fine.” Buffy patted him on the shoulder. “I think he got that part without all the extra yesses.”

“Thank you very much for that, Buffy.” Giles frowned at her. “And this tour, I assume it will be of the grounds and accommodations and…”

“All down here.” The warehouse opened out into a wood-panelled hallway, the carpet lush and soft underfoot and the light hidden somewhere in the ceiling. “Greenhouse and dorm rooms, Store and Arcade and the pool and the weight room—”

“You have a greenhouse? Underground? The ‘green’ part isn’t supposed to be mold, is it?”

“Store? Are there shoes? What?” Buffy looked around, although only Giles was really sighing. “I was promised shoes for this trip, and then I broke a nice one when we were in — wherever we were. Also, what about the nightlife? Clubs? That sort of thing?”

“Students with suites throw a lot of parties, and there are dances every other Friday.” Luke didn’t sound all that thrilled about it. “It’s a small school. There’s plenty of chance to get to know everyone.”

“And what about computer classes? Don’t huff, Giles,” Willow scolded. “It’s just that I have a need to keep learning, and if this place is going to challenge me even less than Sunnydale High…” she shrugged. A gesture around the place suggested she didn’t think much of the decor. “Old-fashioned law firm look doesn’t mean challenging teachers.”

Luke cleared his throat. “You could come up with an independent study program with your Mentor. I’m sure there are a couple teachers here who could help you with that, although we’re kind of… old-fashioned here.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Giles muttered.

“Mmph.” Luke shot Giles a look.
Buffy sighed. “More tweed? More old men hiding in rooms and reading books?”

“Nothing lik — more?”

“I have a very interesting life, but it involves way too much tweed,” Buffy explained. “Right, Giles?”

“Ahem. Well, there is quite a bit of tweed, that is, as Buffy says. There are a number of scholars who are less than useful in a difficult situation and who have, ah, insinuated themselves into Buffy’s life. This is all going to come out in the meeting I should have with the Administration, of course, and that would include you, wouldn’t it, Mr. Hunting-Hawk?”

“What… yeah. Yeah, it would.” He rolled his shoulders. “I guess I oughta… Magnolia!” He waved down the hall. “These are the visitors.”

“Oh, I was wonderin’ when they’d show up.” The voice came first, a warm southern drawl. A moment later, they could see the girl around Luke’s shoulder — tall, taller than Xander, with dark tan skin and black curly hair twisted up into a sloppy chignon. She was wearing a halter top and shorts with heeled sandals that made her even taller. “Oh, aren’t y’all cute!”

“Tell me she’s not a demon,” Xander whispered. “Tell me she’s not a demon… ow!” He rubbed his arm where Buffy had punched him.

That left Willow to step forward and offer a cautious hand. “I, um, hi. Willow, that is, I’m Willow, this is Buffy, Xander, and Giles, our, um, our Librarian.”

The tall girl shook Willow’s hand. “Ah’m Magnolia. And the only people that call me a demon are the ones ah’m sleepin’ with, so take that as you may.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1155478.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole: the Original Series – Buds

Aug9

This story is written for Capriox’s request, thanks to the “Addergoole Wants You” comments-for-fics promotion. It follows directly after Bare Necks.

Bowen was sitting in Yngvi’s room.
He was sitting in another student’s room, without Aggie. He kept fighting the urge to look …

Read on: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/archives/1065

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1153643.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole Still Wants You!

Aug9

I’ve posted three new Addergoole Bonus stories for the “Addergoole Wants You” comments-to-fic promotion. You can find them here.

I’ve still got slots open – just one more 250-words-for-a-comment (with bonuses!) option, but 15 more at decreasing wordcount after that. And, of course, every subsequent comment gets you more words.

If you DO leave a comment, make sure to tell me what you want your words to be about. thnidu, what would you like your words on?

Check out the new Addergoole page, tell me how lovely it looks, and help fill out its comments section. 🙂

In the meantime, I’m going to be over here, doodling Old Tongue (the original Fae Apoc Language), looking at neanderthals, and thinking about bookbinding…. doot, doot…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1153867.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole: the Original Series – No Apple for Teacher

Aug2

This story is written for Clare K. R. Miller‘s request, thanks to the "Addergoole Wants You" comments-for-fics promotion. It follows Useful, itself one of the stories in the Addergoole-50-years-later stories following Retirement and Retirement 2.

Rozen was not sure about teaching…

(Read on: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/archives/922 )

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1149965.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole Wants You! (To leave comments)

Jul28

So.

I have almost finished migrating all of Addergoole: The Original Series to WordPress, here: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/

But with the slow death of the old forums and moving to the new site… it looks sad. It wants comment-love.

So I’m going to bribe you, the readers, to leave comments.

Thus:

The first 20 people** to leave comments* on the new Addergoole site (http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/) may request any Addergoole or fae-apoc based short-short stories:

The first 5 commenters will get 250 words
The next 5 will get 100 words
The next 5 will get 50 words
and the next 5 will get 25 words.

Each additional comment after your first will increase that wordcount by 10%, up to 500 words.

Leave a note here with your requested story. Stories will be posted within the next 2-3 months, as time permits.

* A comment, for the purposes of this post, must be at least 10 words long, excluding typo-finds, and must be relevant in some way to the post you’re commenting on. No credit for spam!

** This option will remain open for three weeks, or until I have 20 commenters, whichever comes first.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1146833.html. You can comment here or there.

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The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder

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