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Dream: The King’s Castle

Oct3

Story based on a dream I had

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The King was raving.

Not that anyone would ever say that; he was the king.  You didn’t mention he was raving  — or hallucinating, or having fits — if you wanted to hold on to your head, your soul, and your volition.

But the King had gotten it in his head that one of his trusted advisers and lieutenants had betrayed him, and was going around the castle, using The Voice that filled every corner of that huge edifice, declaring that when he found that Lieutenant who’d betrayed him, he would kill them, rend them, destroy them.

And because this wasn’t just any King or any edifice, all of his lieutenants were running around shooting one of their lieutenants in turn, which was getting more than a bit exhausting and very bloody.

And me?  I was staying out of the way and trying not to be seen.  When you are a human in this place, in The Castle of the King, you do your damndest not to attract any attention save that attention that brought you there – and since the one that had brought me there was currently chasing his lieutenant around trying to shoot him and complaining that the man wouldn’t hold still for it, well, I didn’t want his attention either.

And that worked fine until the King called a general assembly.  You didn’t not go to those, but even sitting in the back, I felt someone come up behind me.  Not my paramour, such as he was; no, he was in front of me, eyes glued to the podium and the throne at the front.

No, this was another human-like person, and he had a hand on my shoulder.  And then, while the King talked about traitors in his midst, a bag came down over my head.

I was going to die.  I had never known anything so clearly as I knew that.  I was dying, here, too far from home, with a burlap sack over my head to hide my shame.

An image flashed into my mind. No, a vision.  I did not see visions, I who did not belong here.  But there it was, a creature all scales and plates, green and blue as the sea it was crawling out of, our sea, the sea the Castle of the King hulked overlooking.  

It was coming.  And it was the reason the King was raving.

I lost consciousness, only then understanding that that was why the bag was there.

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Bereavement Leave – a bonus story for Patreon

Sep25

A bonus story of the occurred-to-me-in-a-flash sort.  Warning: a bit of morbid humor here.
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“Miss Hemlock, you have been on Bereavement Leave seven times this year.  Nobody has that many—”  The HR manager clearly changed what she was going to say “–grandfathers.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Harris, but I do.”  Juniper chose to answer what the woman had meant instead of what she’d said.  “Dead relatives, that is, not grandfathers.  I had six of those in living memory… No,  I’m afraid it was something of a chain reaction.”

“…Chain… reaction?”  Mrs. Harris had heard a lot of things in thirty years in HR.  From the look on her face, this was not one of the things she’d heard.

“So, it all started with my grandmother’s second husband, my Grandpa Rich.  You know about that one.  He lived a long life and passed away easily, may the spirits take his soul.”

We commend his soul to any god who can find it.  The funeral had been quiet, a little snarky, and full of tension. Continue reading →

A New World: Carrenonna

Sep14

First: A New World
Previous: Artle

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Kael struggled to hide her horror.  The cliff.  They had…  done something to it.  Something about an edict and a gift?  How did you give away a cliff?  Or power it? Power it away?  She needed to drink this potion quickly; there was far too much missing in her vocabulary.  “They did what to the cliff?  The large one into Artle?”

The clever daughter looked at Kael sharply.  “You have to have seen the bridge.  If you flew in, it is big enough that you can see it from space.   And if you drove in, well, almost everyone comes in from Artle. The train, the bus – did you come in from Carron?”

Kael had the sense from the way the girl shifted topics that she was being thrown a lifeline.  She took it.  “Carron, yes.”  She was going to have to look it up.  “I’m sorry, it is just something that I read about – that is.”  She was supposed to be in character.  She cleared her throat and winked at the girl.  “I know not of these places you speak of.  A bridge over the River Meadon?  A place called Carron?  Is that Carrenonna’s Annex?”

The girl leaned forward.  “Caronn- Caronn, say that again?  Please,” she added hastily, presumably before her mother could tell her to be polite.  Or her father, who seemed very engrossed in the leaflet.

“Carrenonna.  Carrenonna’s Annex, a tower much like this one with several buildings around it, making up a small village of sorts.  It was granted to Carrenonna in the same year that this tower, Kaelingrade Torrent-Step’s Black Tower, was built, and it stood such that on a clear day, you could see one tower from the other.”

“There’s no tower in Carron.”  The older daughter had heretofore been engaged with her tablet, taking notes of some sort.  Now she looked up and turned the tablet so that Kael could see a map – no, a tower’s-eye view of a large town or a small city, rendered in shining glass.  “See?  This is Carron, and there’s nothing taller than maybe six stories.”  She smirked, and considered Kael.  “In the terms of the age, Lady Kaelingrade Torrent-Step, the entirety of Carron reacheth not to the top of your secondary annex.  Which has way too many stairs.  You should consider an elevator.”

Reacheth?  Wait, elevator? Something which raised, that was easy enough. “But then…”  She glanced out the window.  Quite some time had passed.  “Then Carrenonna’s Annex is fallen to dust, and likely Carrenonna with it.”

“Well, uh, Carrenonna, if she lived the same time as Kaelingrade – I mean, as you – lived a thousand years ago.  Even if the old people back then were like Methuselah or something, their towers weren’t.  Right?  I mean, this place is a replica and all.”

Metuselah!  Kael struggled to maintain her composure.  “It would take a great deal of work for a tower to stand for a thousand years, yes.”  She’d thought Carrenonna had such work in her.  Perhaps she hadn’t.  

“So, I do have a question.”  The daughter turned the map back towards her.  “Why’s that one named after Carrenonna, then, and this place isn’t named after you?  After Kaelingrade, I mean.”

 

 
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Patreon Posts!

Sep13


Originally posted February 27, 2015

🌶️

The fighter pilot with the callsign Spice was new to the team and, although all her credentials assured that she was not, indeed, new to space fighting as a concept or a skill, still the team had to be reassured.

Read On

Fancy Dresses, long lingering kisses, awkward moments with your friends, bullies… Prom!

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Anton had figured he didn’t have a chance.

He was new to Hieder Hill High, he wasn’t one of the popular kids – was the new guy ever the popular guy? – his family wasn’t rich or even that well-off, and he didn’t dress like or act like the popular guys.

Open to All Patrons!

I live!  It’s been a hell of a month.  But here I am. 

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This story originally posted June 4, 2011.

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He came to the school in autumn, once the crops were in. They’d gone back to old habits and old practices in the Academy, as in so much of the world, knowing that the old existed and had survived for so long for a reason.

Read On!

This Emperor’s Son, a surprise continuation

Sep12

This was meant to be a comment fic like thus after this comment by Kelkyag, but it turned out a wee bit long. So… bonus ficlet?

After (Before) The Empire Falls, the Emperor Stands.

The young son-of-the-Emperor (they were all sons of the Emperor, although their fathers were all several years dead) waited until two of his cousins were making an appropriate fuss and two more seemed to have decided to climb the bookshelves all the way to the top.

There were seven nursemaids for the lot of them, but, from the things the nurses said when they thought their young charges weren’t listening, there were more of them, the sons, then there had been in recent memory — “recent” in Hildeh’s case and Galleh’s, at least, being a number that stretched back quite some time — and the bureaucracy that funded their employment did not seem inclined to send them any more help.

This particular son — whose name, like easily half of his brothers, was Eranodi, after Eroni, the first Emperor — was glad for the overwork and the subsequent distraction, because it gave him a freedom he was fairly certain young Emperor’s-sons were not supposed to have. Continue reading →

Rabbit Hole

Sep10

My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!

Written to kelkyag‘s prompt.

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At forty, Gemma considered herself to be relatively practical.

She’d put aside the ridiculousness of her teens and the experimentation of her twenties.  She had staid hobbies and a staid job and, to be quite honest, staid clothes.  She had a very comfortable, safe, secure rut.

So when she was raking leaves and a rabbit in a waistcoat ran by, she shook her head and went back to the leaves.  They had to get raked, after all, or the grass would die and she’d just have more work in the long run…

Then it ran back in the other direction, followed by a coyote in a suitcoat and what she was fairly certain was a red fox in a Queen’s Guard hat and jacket, and Gemma just had to follow.

It wasn’t like she believed it, she told herself, it was just that this was far too strange for her to not look into.  After all, that was her yard, and her – where did they go?  She stopped short, just as the rabbit ran past her one more time.

“Damnit,” she muttered, and hurried after the creature, which was definitely wearing a waistcoat.  And now she, too, was being chased by a fox and a coyote, who, like the rabbit, come to think of it, were rather large for their species, at least as she understood it.

“I moved to the suburbs to get away from – oooohh shit.”  

She was falling, falling, and as she thought this hole should not be big enough for me, the hole seemed to enlargen.  She passed what looked like a picture-perfect 1950’s bomb shelter, except that she could see right into it.  She passed through what loked like a large underground swimming pool, except she didn’t get wet at all.  And then a library, the biggest library she’d ever seen.

She was falling quite slowly, she realized, and none of the animals were anywhere to be seen.

I’ve fallen and hit my head, she thought, I’m going to bleed out in my back yard.  Wake up, Gemma, damnit, Wake Up!

At the second wake up, she came to a stop.  Not awake, not in the least, but she was standing on solid ground in what looked like someone’s living room.

No.  Not someone’s.  It looked like what hers might have looked like when it was new, if it had been a 1920’s Display Home at the time, except that the doors were missing.  No… no, there was the front door, smaller than the cat door she had in it now.  And there was the door to the kitchen, even smaller.

On the quaint occasional table was a piece of cake and a cordial full of blue liquid.  The cake had a sign next to it that said, in tidy if spidery handwriting, Eat me; and the cordial was labelled, as one might expect, Drink me.

Gemma sat down on the floor and swore.


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The Seasons Turn?

Sep8
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call Is Open!

Written to lilfluff‘s prompt.  Definitely a beginning.  

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“I don’t see why I should step down.  Everyone knows Winter is evil.”

There were four seasons and four courts.  There had always been, as long as the words went back and before that as long as the stories passed, four seasons and four courts.

“He’s not evil, he’s simply… still.”  Spring was not known for being the most eloquent of seasons.  Hers was the time of bubbly abundance and joy, not of long eloquent speeches.  “Besides, you have to give up the throne and the crown.  Who knows what will happen if you don’t?”

“Nothing will happen.”  Autumn was impatient, at times, harsh at others, and right now, stubborn.  They were, of course, people, people wearing hereditary crowns, and as such they had their own personalities and their own quirks, but there was a certain amount of folklore attached to each of the crowns and to the great throne, and there were some that said that the crown and the throne became the people as much as the people became the crown.  “That is a silly myth.  We’re people.  This is a tradition.  The movement of the sun in the sky is not swayed by who sits on the throne.  It just means that we cut Winter out.”

“What if it is, though?”  Summer was sleepy, but he leaned against a post and studied the two women who bracketed him.  “What if you cut Winter out and… winter doesn’t come?”

“Then it’s not cold?” Spring offered.  “Things don’t freeze… oh  Spring isn’t special anymore.”

“-seeds that need the frost to crack don’t crack.  Animals don’t know if they should hibernate or not.  People don’t rest.”  Summer raised his eyebrows.  “Spring, if she doesn’t let Winter take his seat, who is to say she’ll let you take yours?  And if the world doesn’t grow…”

“Oh, come on, Summer.”  Autumn glared at him.  “You’re being ridiculous!  It’s a myth!  In our grandparents’ time, there was a whole two years where we had no Summer King!  Autumn and Spring split it up between them while they waited for a new Summer to come of age!”

“And, as I recall, those were very chilly summers, weren’t they?”  He yawned.  “It’s up to you two.  Winter doesn’t like me, he doesn’t talk to me, and he won’t fuck me.  If you want to split his throne up between you, that’s your business.  If it breaks the world- then it becomes my business.”

“Wait, who said anything about splitting it?” Autumn glared at the lanky ginger king.  “Like I said, I’m not giving up the throne!  He’s crazy!”

“Crazy now?”  Spring frowned across the room.  “I thought he was evil.  And – come on, Autumn, splitting it would only be fair…”

“Both of you!” Autumn flung up her hands in frustration.  “I’m going to talk to Winter!  At least he makes sense!”

“Makes sense about… you taking his throne…?”  Spring’s confused whisper followed the Autumn queen out of the throne room.


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Turning Leaves

Sep8
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!

Written to rix_scaedu‘s prompt.  

🍁

The leaves were turning wrong.

When you lived in a wooded area for a while, you got so you could feel the rhythm of autumn. The leaves closest to the road, closest to the prevailing wind, closest to anything that chilled them down, turned first.  The biggest trees turned slower.  The middle of the woods turned slow and last.

But in the forest behind Erato’s house, there was an almost circular place where the leaves had starting turning quickly, almost before the little maple that faced the wind all alone to the west of her house.   Continue reading →

Down to Talen Hall

Sep8

My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!

Written to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.  It wandered a bit from the prompt…

“Talen” is an homage to someone who will likely never read this…  And obviously the poem/song in this is an homage to 

O I forbid you, maidens all, 
That wear gold in your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.

🌕

Do not go by the TalenHall
Where ruined Talen’s Holdings Lie
Continue reading →