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Thimbleful Thursday: A Piece of Cake
“Okay, so, first we need to break into the Library…” Asha ticked it off on an invisible white board.
“Piece of cake.” Tonya didn’t even look up from burnishing her nails.
“Then we need to break into the Rare Books Vault…”
“Cake.”
“And then we need to break the spell on the book, which will include casting a ritual circle in less than a three-foot-wide space, and not setting off either the spell-based alarms or the motion detectors while doing so.”
“What, all of that while balancing on our heads? Come on, give us a challenge. Piece of cake.” Tonya grinned over her well-filed nails at Asha.
“…and, once we have the book in our hands, we need to get out of the Rare Books Vault, get out of the Library, get off campus and back to the apartment, and then we’ll need another ritual circle, which, at least we have, to get the information properly out of the the book. And then put it all back – though that’s the easy part.”
Tonya’s grin grew bigger. “I’m telling you, Asha. It’s a piece of cake.”
“And what do we get out of it?”
Her roommate gestured broadly. “The world’s best piece. Of. Cake.”
To Today’s Thimbleful Prompt, “Piece of Cake,” 204 words
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/833488.html. You can comment here or there.
Amongst the Wrifflites
It was fine for Tan, moving through the Wriffle crowds. It was fine, dealing with the way that Wrifflites would flirt and grin and pat-ass and cuddle and kiss. Tan found it relaxing, actually, chatting up a boss or a co-worker and having a comment about sex slide into the mix; going out to the bar and having drinks bought, one after another. It was fun. Tan had never been an introvert, no matter what the family thought.
The problem wasn’t the Wriffle. The problem was when family came to visit, or friends from home, or, worse, friends from home with their friends from home. Then things got mixed, messed, and tangled.
“So you’ve finally gotten over this no-sex thing?” Roan would ask, or
“I don’t see why you’re so bent out of shape. You’re the one who teased me,” Je would complain, and Tan would be left trying to decide whether to explain or just move on. Everyone in Wriffle, not just in the cities but out in the farmland, everyone kissed hello and good-bye, everyone made outrageous suggestions. Nobody expected you to follow through; that wasn’t how flirting actually worked for Wrifflites. Truth be told, Tan wasn’t entirely certain how sex worked for them – and that was entirely fine.
If only the friends and family would be fine with it, too.
Want more? I’m sure I could have fun with this one. Commission more words via Paypal at the Giraffe Call rate of $1/100 words.
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Probably a Rescue, a continuation for the Dungeon Call
Previous: The Rescue? Continues?
First: A Rescue, of Sorts.
“Was it really that obvious?” Daxton let the mercenary woman half-guide and half-help him into the hunting cabin. He couldn’t have run away if he’d wanted to and, concerned as she was with the ransom, she’d probably catch him. “I mean, that I’m not interested in…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence the way she had, interested in rutting. “Um. Bedroom games? I thought I hid it pretty well.”
She opened the door with her foot. “You flirted with married women, grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers, and the occasional woman devoted to the gods. In other words, you were immensely friendly with anyone who would never take you up on it.”
“…You really noticed that?”
“I was looking.”
“I never noticed you.“
“Well, you’re not supposed to, are you? I mean, you’re the Duke’s son and I’m a mercenary. But I had reason, too.” She helped Daxton to a chair – a surprisingly sturdy one, that looked big enough to hold a bear comfortably. “I’m going to see to the horses. I’ll be just a moment.”
“But what was your reason?” He found himself calling after her back.
“We’ll get to that. Horses first.”
Daxton took the moment to look around the cabin. His first thought had been hunting cabin, the sort of place that nobility took to when they wanted to go deep into the woods. But this place was, while every bit as sturdily built as his father’s cabins, small, hardly bigger than the dungeon room Daxton had spent the last three seasons in.
It was a study in contrasts – tiny, but sturdy, everything made of humble materials and dull, faded dyes, but everything made with care and very very well. It was more comfortable, he supposed, than a dungeon, although every bit as much of a trap. But he had no chain here, and he didn’t know what she expected of him.
Bath she’d said, and he could see the big hook where a kettle might heat up over the fireplace. He couldn’t walk very well, but it was only a few steps to the hearth, and the wood was stacked – dry, split, cured wood – within arm’s reach of that hearth.
By the time the mercenary came back, Daxton had gotten a nice little fire going. It might be the end of summer, but that did not mean the nights wouldn’t be cold.
“Good idea.” She latched the door – it had a sturdy hasp, he noted, and a bar as well – and began shedding her leather armor. “You asked why I was looking. I thought you’d figured it out already.”
Daxton shook his head. “My brothers are more handsome and before me in succession.”
“Yeah. So a woman looking to marry or bed power or looks, they’ll go after your brothers. I’m not looking to bed anyone – and in a merc company, that stands out. I bet it stands out in a Duke’s son, too, if you don’t learn to hide it.”
It finally sank in, what she’d been trying to tell him. You’re not the only one who’d rather do anything else than rut.
“I thought…” He found he was staring at her as she stripped down to her underclothes, and found that he could still not look away. “I was born early, my father always said it stunted me. I thought it stunted, you know…”
“I’ve found a few others. Not many. A farmer, an armorer, another merc – and you.” The mercenary shrugged. “I figured, when your father raised the reward to your hand in marriage, that it would kill so many birds with one stone, if only I could manage to make the throw.”
Something about the way she said it made Daxton take a second look at her face. “Those people the Red Queen said had come for me -”
“Yeah.” She sank to the floor, her knees within touching distance. “I don’t know how many she told you about, or what she said, but we lost some really good fighters.”
Daxton swallowed. “Dead?”
“Some of them. I mean – we know about some. And there was nobody else in the dungeons, so if they were captured, they weren’t kept there.” She shook her head. “They were such better fighters than me, but I knew I had to try.”
“I was – “
“You were in danger, I know. And now – well, now we get to see what your father will do.”
That was a good question. “My father keeps his word.”
“But did he really expect a common mercenary to succeed? And does he really plan to give me your hand in marriage? To let us rule the little rocky earldom by the border?” She shook her head, this time more fiercely. “If he holds true on the marriage, that will be enough.”
Daxton blinked and blinked again. “You… you want to marry me?“
“That is what I’ve been trying to get across, yeah.”
“You want to…” Daxton coughed over a sudden lump in his throat. “You don’t know me yet.”
“Of course not. Neither would any noble or rich woman your father sold you to. Neither would the Red Queen. Neither would any other merc or knight or soldier or their sister or cousin or partner who found you. But what I know is that I can marry you and give us both a little respite, and that seems like a good thing all around.”
Respite. Daxton had feared marriage – and the likely-inevitable angry dissolution of such marriage – more than he had feared the Red Queen. But this had to be a trap. “You’d get an Earldom out of it, too,” he pointed out.
“We would. And I never claimed not to be a mercenary.”
“That… that is true. But you really want to, want to marry me? Me?”
“You are the one I rescued, aren’t you?” She poked his knee gently. “You’re not a spectre or a doppelganger, are you?”
“No, no, I’m me. Daxton.” He looked up at her, an unfamiliar smile touching his lips. “That was who you were sent to find, right? Daxton?”
“The one and only. Son of Duke Tebrin and the Lady Prediwan, right?”
“That’s me.” He suppressed a chuckle. “You should know them, if you want to be their kin-by-marriage… oh, dust.” His good mood soured as quickly as it had come. “What about babies?”
“Well, there’s always gritting our teeth and bearing the necessity, which I’m told works for most people. But,” and she had not stopped smiling, although the expression now was a bit more grim, “the war with the Red Queen has left a lot of orphans, many of whom are at least ethnically similar to your family line. If we time it right, nobody will ask unfortunate questions.”
Daxton found his jaw dropping. “You really have thought of everything.”
“I told you.” She bowed, as deep and as courtly as one could manage from a sitting position. “I do my prep work.”
If you want more of this story – and there is still more just dying to be written – drop a tip in, ah, the tip handcuffs:
This story written as ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
technoshaman‘s commissioned continuation
Next: A Rescue in Hand
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Bring to the Table, a story for the Giraffe Call
Shonie came over for game night, the same way she always did. She brought the same things the guys did – dice, books, a habit of complaining about the rules – and the same things the other girls in the group did – which included some snacks, some bottled water, and a bribe for May, Dave Carter’s girlfriend and co-renter of the apartment in which they were gaming.
She brought something nobody else did, too – of course, in a group like this, everybody had a specialization. Shorter-Dave brought a habit of playing explosive rogues and a way of smoothing over conflicts. Jenn With All the N’s brought the half-elf girls, always the half-elf girls, and an ability to find any loophole, anywhere, everywhere. SeKDillimn brought the snake – and other things, but usually the snake. And Shonie brought Handling Dave Carter.
They were taking bets already, SekDillimn and Jenn-n-n-n and Shorter-Dave, Red and The Gangrel and Cass and the rest, about how long this one would last. It had been a month, and May was already beginning to show the edges of wear. She accepted the bribes, of course – she liked chocolate, she really, really, liked Imagine Dragons and Neil Gaiman and PS4 games – but she shifted her weight to one foot when Shonie got there, and moved closer to Dave-Carter the minute that the hug began.
It was a long hug. Shonie’s hugs were always long, longer with Dave-Carter than with, say, SekDillimn or Cass, but she ended her hug with Dave with a light punch in the arm – either not noticing or not caring that it make May flinch – and a list of demands. “Did you remember to do your homework?”
“I’m not in classes.”
“Doesn’t matter. Did you do the cat litter?”
“May did it.”
“Wrong answer.” They’d lived together for a couple years, and it seemed like Shonie forgot, sometimes, that she lived across the city now, that Dave-Carter lived with May. “Come on, did you at least remember to eat a vegetable this week?”
“Ketchup is a vegetable?”
“Dork.” Shonie flopped into her seat and May was suddenly cuddling Dave-Carter very aggressively. The group passed bets via text and pretended nobody could see them – and everyone ignored the fact that Dave’s shoulders had relaxed when Shonie hit him and he was, the way he always was when she bullied him, smiling.
May probably wouldn’t last that long. But Shonie was a constant.
Okay, first, names: That’s a combination of a friend’s childhood group (everyone is firstnamelastname) and my own gaming group from a few years back (Jen vs. Jenn-n-n-n, Other Dave and Other Jeremy, key-mash screenames and things from gaming & the SCA. We had first Bob the Gangrel & then Mark the Gangrel, so. Gangrel it is.)
This is written to ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whuffle‘s prompt and is not in any current setting.
If you’d like to see more of this story, I bet there’s more to be written. Just drop a tip in the the tip handcuffs:
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A proof, of sorts, a story for Thimbleful Thursday
Thimbleful Thursday is a new microfic prompt site (mine!). This week’s prompt was “Cut the Mustard” and the word limit was 500 (450-550).
This piece is 547 words, and it might soon become obvious what prompted it.
“You’re never going to be able to do it, you know.”
Shut up.
“You’re never going to make it. You’re just not good enough.”
Shut up!
“You might as well face it. There’s people who can do this sort of thing – and then there’s you.”
Shut Shut Shut UP!
“Why don’t you just give up?”
“Shut UP!”
There was some merit to the nay-sayers points, of course.
If there had been no merit, there would have been no sting – no bite, as it were. If they had simply been spitting into the wind, then they’d have been easy to ignore. But they weren’t, and thus they weren’t.
The truth was, Esharina had picked a challenge that was over her head. She’d done it on purpose, with her eyes open – although she might have gone a little further over her head than she’d planned.
(There were some that would say that everything was over her head. They weren’t worth mentioning, certainly not more than once.)
It was the sort of thing that you did when you were angry, when you had something to prove, when you were so far past winning that you had to carry your whole damn life on your shoulders, make up every failure twice over, just to not come out too far behind.
But none of that, not her failures, extensive as they had been, not her choice of a target, not her need to prove herself – not one of those things meant she couldn’t cut the mustard this time, and not one of those things meant that the nay-sayers’ commentary cut any less deeply.
“Shut UP! Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Esharina glared around the barracks. “One, it’s stupid. Two, I know that Connron and Torg and Ellory failed. I know Marchiella and Red Dav never game back. I’ve seen Caslior’s skull, thank you very much. I drank at the funerals. I pitched in, when appropriate, for the widows, the orphans, and so on. I know that better mercs than me have failed. But that is, as they say, wheat from a different bag.” She looked around the room, glaring at each merc in turn. Mercs did not, per se, have friends. But they had working relationships, and she had fought at the side of every single one of these fighters.
“I know I can do this. Not because I’m better than them, but because I’m different. I’m not as strong as Connron. I’m not as tough as Red Dav. I’m probably not as clever as Torg or Caslior. But I can do this.” She let her eyes drop back to the slim pack in front of her. “I know I can do this, and if I’m wrong, nobody but me is gonna pay the price.” When she looked up, it was directly at Senner, who served as the captain of their unit. “And I’d appreciate a little bit of cheering, and less grousing.”
Senner cleared her throat. “We hear you, Esha. And… we’ve got your back. We’ll ride you to the line.”
Esha didn’t miss the glare that Senner shot around the room, daring anyone to argue with her. She didn’t mind it, either. “Thanks. Thanks… I just know I can do it, this time.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/826241.html. You can comment here or there.
The Rescue? Continues? – a continuation for the Giraffe Call
Previous: A Rescue, of Sorts
Daxton had dealt with mercenaries before – there had been the month of assassination attempts, and then there had been the border skirmishes, since his father’s Duchy butted up again the Red Queen’s land. He had learned, unpleasantly but quickly, that you did what you were told by the people in armor, or, Duke’s son or not, they made certain you did what they wanted. He fell quiet and held still.
“This’ll just take a minute.” She pulled a leather roll from her belt and, from there, pulled a set of tiny tools. “Just hold still…” One slim tool went into the key-hole of Daxton’s shackles, followed by another, this one at an angle. “Hold still…” Daxton hadn’t moved, but, then again, she wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at her work.
Three clicks later, the shackles had released. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.” He was fairly certain he could, at least. “But-“
“Hsst, come on.” She hauled him to his feet and shoved her shoulder under his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here before – well, we’ve got to get out of here.”
He couldn’t very well let her go back to his father and tell the Duke that his son had refused to leave the Red Queen’s dungeon. “Very well. I can walk…”
“And I can support you. You’re a year’s wages on legs, man, come on. I expected this.”
It turned out that “I can walk” was slightly more of an exaggeration than Daxton had believed, but, luckily, he supposed, the mercenary’s claim that she could support him was completely true. They headed out of the dungeon, the hair on the back of Daxton’s neck prickling.
They were moving quietly, but slowly. Daxton was sure that at any moment, the Red Queen’s guards would jump out and resc- and capture him back. He’d feel bad about the nice mercenary woman, of course, but she’d known it was a high-risk job. Dukes do not give out rewards like the one Daxton’s father was reportedly offering for cakewalks.
“Almost there. Hsst, gotta hold yourself for a moment. Can you do that?”
“Where… yes.” They were in a dusty, musty corner of the white-stone castle. He hadn’t seen much of the place in his captivity, but he was pretty sure that nobody had seen this room in years, possibly decades. Certainly nobody with a mop.
It had some old papers, a lot of mud – and most importantly, a door. It looked stuck; the mercenary leaned heavily on it, shoving it one finger-width at a time.
The guards were going to be here any minute. They were going to hear the soft scrape of the door on the wood, or follow some trail or some track. They couldn’t just lose him. Could they?
And they’d put an arrow through her, right off, but if the Red Queen was telling the truth, they’d make sure to only cripple her. She liked thieves to die slowly, very slowly.
“Can you hurry a little?”
“If I hurry, it makes noise. It makes noise…”
“Okay. Okay. Quiet is good.” He leaned against a wall. The guards would find him. Nobody had even got as far as the dungeon before. He wasn’t even sure the stories the Red Queen told him were true. But if they did find him – if they didn’t find him –
“There. Come on, the horses are right outside.”
“This is insane.” He hobbled through the narrow opening into a courtyard as disused as the room had been. “How did you-“
“I do my prep work. Here.” She dropped to her knees and gave him a leg up into the saddle. Daxton found that muscle memory took over, even if his strength was lacking. “Now, now is the time where we have to really run.” She mounted her own horse much more quickly, grabbed the reins to Daxton’s horse, and, in a moment, they were bent down over their mounts’ necks as they sped towards the border.
They were really leaving. They were really going home. Daxton closed his eyes and concentrated on not falling off. They were really out of the Red Queen’s palace. He squeezed his eyes a little tighter and clutched the pommel.
The mercenary didn’t stop them until they were up in the foothills, past the Red Queen’s territory and almost to Daxton’s father’s duchy. A tiny hunting cabin stood waiting for them. “You can clean up here, and rest. We’ll go back to your father in the morning, and I can collect my reward.”
Her reward. Daxton swallowed. “I really appreciate all the trouble you went to, but I-“
“-have as much interest in rutting as you do in learning how to be a pig farmer. I know.”
“You… what?” Daxton gaped at her.
“I do my prep work. And my research.”
“But my father offered my hand in marriage to the merc – or woman of the merc’s choice – that rescued me.” He could, he supposed, run back to the Red Queen’s dungeon. But that would be pretty obvious.
“So?” The mercenary grinned at him. “You’re not the only one who’d rather do anything else than rut.”
My Dungeon & Cave Call is open!
If you want more of this story – and there is still more just dying to be written – drop a tip in, ah, the tip handcuffs:
This story written as ysabetwordsmith‘s commissioned continuation
Next: Probably a Rescue.
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Other Duties As Needed, a story for the Giraffe Call
“Miss Myers, when you I said I was willing to do anything…” Danny wiped sweat from his brow. He should just shut up. He kept talking. “I suppose the tone of your voice led me to think that, maybe, since you were looking for a ‘personal assistant’ and it was going to be work in my degree field…”
“You thought perhaps the work would either be sexual or related to business. I understand.” Lilliam Myers sat down on stone wall with a practiced skirt-smoothing gesture that did not help Danny’s concentration. She was fifteen years older than him and a thousand times richer and more successful. And he worked for her, and she was talking about sex. “You weren’t expecting to be laying walls and mowing my lawn. It doesn’t appear to be forwarding your position any, am I right?”
“Exactly.” He picked up another brick and slotted it into place.
“But you did say you’d be willing to do anything.”
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it. It’s just – “
“Not what you expected.” She was laughing at him, wasn’t she? He should have stayed quiet. He should shut up now.
“Not really, no.”
“So what you want is the ability to climb in society, not to build the walls that holds society’s lawns together. But in reality, all that we do is build walls for other people to sit on.”
Danny finally listened to his inner voice and shut up.
“We do a lot of dirty work. Yesterday, while you were working on the bushes, I know you heard the entire conversation between Mr. Donaldson and myself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hadn’t known that she’d noticed him.
“And did you learn anything?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There will be a quiz later. For now, go use the bathroom next to my bedroom and clean up. The wall will still be here tomorrow… and, in a couple hours, we have a charity ball to go to.”
“In a…” The look in her face was unmistakable. “Yes, ma’am!”
My Dungeon & Cave Call is open!
If you’d like to see more of this story, I bet there’s more to be written. Just drop a tip in the the tip handcuffs:
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Planet Rules, a ficlet for the Genderfunky prompt call (@anke)
Reyne tried to make a point of meeting all new visitors to the planet at the spaceport. For one, as cultural attache, it was part of the job. For another – Reyne liked the Mestaron, but they were extremely, extremely touchy about certain things – much as many humans were, come to think about it – and there had already been too many “incidents.” Humans might be touchy, but it didn’t mean they were cautious about others’ touchiness when visiting other planets.
(It was a bit surprising that Reyne had been allowed to keep the position of cultural attache, once that first report, the one with the bolding and the caps-lock, had gone through, but part of the bolding-caps-lock-side-bar had covered the unusual situation of Reyne and others of similar unusualities.)
This particular contingent, however, Reyne made a point of taking a shuttle up to their ship and meeting them before they even thought about touching down. Dressed carefully, in clothing that was sufficiently formal to impress, sufficiently Mestaron-like to discomfit, and specifically and entirely androgynous, Reyne greeted each of the VIPs first in the current style of the Federation and then in the human-equivalent of the Mestaron style.
“I hope you brought women with you.” It was rude to go about things quite that directly – either for the Mestaron or humans – but Reyne wanted them off-put and off-balance. They needed to shake expectations first.
“Here in the Federated Nations we don’t concern ourselves with the gender of-“
“The Mestaron will. The Mestaron will take it as a considerable insult if you don’t bring your ruling class with you. Also: did the Federated States outlaw sex drives while I was away?”
The definitely-male-bodied person – whose collar insignia said was probably in charge of the mission – sputtered and stammered for a moment. “The Federated States doesn’t speak about-“
“But they do, I’m sure, or you’d be having a population problem. Look. You know if you brought women. And if you didn’t, we’re not going any further in this briefing and I’m not letting you on-planet.”
There were some days Reyne really loved this job.
Reyne has also appeared Here and here.
This is written to anke‘s prompt to my genderfunky prompt call.
Want more? I’m sure I could have fun with this one. Commission more words via Paypal at the Giraffe Call rate of $1/100 words.
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Putting Down the Burden, a story for the Dungeon-and-Cave #promptcall
“It’s the stereotype, right?” He shed his jacket and ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. The woman smiled encouragingly and let him talk. “Powerful guy, has it all.” His shirt joined his jacket; his fingers and his speech slowed. The woman didn’t mind – he was sculpted under the shirt, sleek, and clearly a bit nervous. “But he doesn’t have any place to put ‘it all’ down. He doesn’t have any place to not be in charge.” His fingers lingered on the button to his pants.
The woman counted silently to three, waiting for the moment when he looked at her, when he looked for an answer. One, two… there. She stepped forward, gently moving his hand away from his waistband so that she could take over. “Yeah, it’s the stereotype. And that’s for a reason.” She unbuttoned him, unzipped his fly, and with the same slender fingers pushed his pants down to his ankles. “But every theme has variations. Mmm, every song has a bridge.”
“Every rose has its thorn?” he teased.
“And every night has its dawn.” From her knees at her feet, she smiled up at him. “And sometimes, a powerful man needs to let go. Yes?”
He let out a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a plea. “Yeah. Yeah… yes.”
“Then… let go. I’ll be here to catch you, and I’ll be here to put you back on your feet.”
As the fireman sank slowly to his knees, the woman reached out, both hands, to hold his shoulders. Sometimes, they needed her to put out flames.
My Dungeon & Cave Call is open!
If you’d like to see more of this story, I’m sure I could come up with some;-) Just drop a tip in the the tip handcuffs:
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