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Flying Squirrel: Frying Pan, Fire?

Sep11

A continuation of Flying-Squirrel’s Freedom (or Fetters)

“Freck, freck, freck!” Farley was still fighting against the fetters when the Fondly sisters came for him.

The foremost one – Fanny, probably – was dangling a set of keys from her finger. Her red-furred ear sported a new notch, but she and Fiona were otherwise unscathed. “Finally.” Fanny’s smile had way too many teeth. “Do you know how long we’ve been looking for you?”

“And we only had to kill half a pirate ship to get you.” Fiona looked around ostentatiously. “I wonder where we can get some more crew…”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/808481.html. You can comment here or there.

Trek-Style Geek, a story for #3WW

Sep10

To Three-Word-Wednesday (Today’s words are Carcass, Geek, Slash).

“When you said you were really into Star Trek, this is not what I expected.” Anna stared at the refridgerator carcass which currently took up the large part of the shared living room. “Hector, what are you doing?”

“I didn’t say I was into Star Trek. I said I was a ‘Star-Trek-style Geek.'” Hector pulled another piece from the guts of the fridge. “This isn’t our fridge, don’t worry. I got it off craig’s list.”

“That aside – and good – what is it doing in the living room?” Anna picked her way closer through the debris.

“The dining room wasn’t big enough.” Hector didn’t even bother looking up at her; he was performing some sort of hack-and-slash excavation of what was left of the fridge’s internal organs. “There, that’s what I was looking for! And, besides, this is closer to the basement door.”

“Closer to the… Hector if you’ve done anything to the woodwork…”

“Relax, re…” Hector shook his head. “No, sorry. Anna, I promise I read the entire lease and haven’t done anything to hurt any part of this house. It’s just that the doorway there was exactly what I needed. And now that I have this piece…” He pulled himself to his feet with an arcane piece of circuitry. “There. That’s the last thing I needed. I’ll clean up the rest before dinner, but you have to see this, Anna, please?”

He was being so sweet. Were Star Trek nerds – Star-Trek-style geeks – supposed to be sweet? “O…kay?” Anna trailed Hector to the basement door – the precious door with its 19th-century woodwork.

Very carefully set in and around the door was some sort of – metal frame? – although to call it that did it a disservice. Anna thought she could recognize parts of the ‘fridge door and parts of a destroyed table a previous roommate had left. But what Hector had made – well, it was somehow beautiful. And, she noticed, very carefully set in the ancient wood frame, not attached to it.

“With this, I’ve got it.” Hector knelt down and screwed something to the right foot of his – um, archway? – still not quite looking at Anna. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? And I knew that this house had capital-H-History. So I figured out the last bits, and…” He flipped a switch Anna hadn’t seen before. Something whirred, something else zzapped, and in the space that should be leading down to the basement, a field of blue sparkles appeared. “See?” Now Hector looked at Anna, a wide smile crossing his face. “I told you I was a Trek-style geek.”

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/807238.html. You can comment here or there.

Gender Funk Test story-beginning (more Reyn)

Sep8

“Best of travels and a sharp spear on your travels.” The Jesharian, Koyl, had served as Reyn’s translator and go-between with her people for the last year. Now she engaged in an elaborate bow, bending at both sets of hips, one arm sweeping the floor.

“Best of blessings in your stay, and may your rapport with the next human you meet be as smooth as it was with me.” Reyn tried to keep any trace of reluctance or misery from the blessing. The Jesharian were very, very sensitive to such things, and the last thing Reyn wanted was to hurt Koyl’s delicate feelings, especially now. “And Koyl… in the human fashion?” Reyn held out a hand. “Thank you.”

They had been working together long enough that Koyl no longer hesitated. Two spindly blue hands wrapped around Reyn’s. “It has been my pleasure as well, Reyn. It…” Here the blue alien ducked her head in to one side: Jesharian embarassment. “If the world were ordered in the way I please, you would not be leaving.”

“If I had my way, I wouldn’t be leaving, either.” Reyn patted Koyl’s shoulder, an intimacy Koyl had allowed only recently. “I like it here better.”

“We are honored.”

The Jesharian were an immensely formal people, but even so, there was only so long one could drag out the good-byes. Reyn sighed. “I hope I see you again.”

“If the world turns as I bid it, we will see each other again.”

There was nothing left to do but grab bags and toss them into the shuttle, then toss onesself into the shuttle and bow, again, to the Jesharian pilot. Not many humans were allowed on the planet’s surface. It was one of the reasons Reyn had so liked it.

(I know, I know. All this and we’re not even to the gender-funk part. O-O)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/805887.html. You can comment here or there.

Beating Around the Idiom Bush, a story for Thimbleful Thursday

Sep8

Thimbleful Thursday is a new microfic prompt site (mine!). This week’s prompt was “Beat Around the Bush” and the word limit was 200 (180-200).

I barely made it in at 467.

“Look, I know you guys like the social padding and all, but I don’t have time to beat around the bush…”

Reyn knew the phrase was a mistake the moment it was uttered, but the “don’t have time” part was true, and hurry tended to make Reyn slip into old habits, childhood habits.

The Jesharian clicked a blue tongue-equivalent and tilted her head in the manner that had originally made human explorers call the Jesharian
“Cat-people.”

“What is this ‘bush’ you speak of? Is it the vestigial fur-remnant some humans have between their legs?” The Jesharian – Koyl, her name was Koyl – shifted the head-tilt to the other side. “Bush can also mean tired, exhausted, but I do not know why you would beat either of these things. A strange sexual ritual, perhaps?”

Reyn choked back a laugh. “No, no.” Koyl’s eyes narrowed, and Reyn dropped quickly into a bow of apology, with three hand gestures that suggested – as much as a human(esque) body could approximate a Jesharian female’s gestures – that the humble personage of Reyn had meant no offense, none at all, from the involuntary spasm that the humans used in place of a proper laugh. “No.” This time, Reyn’s tone was suitably sedate. “No. I don’t know why we use the same word for so many different idioms, but what this one means is to move around a subject instead of tackling it directly, or to avoid the main point of a subject.” Reyn had a lot of experience translating idiom for the Jesharian, especially for Koyl and her sister-clones.

“So you wish to get directly to the point, instead of properly doing the social dance? Why did you not say so?”

“I – I thought I had.” Reyn facepalmed with both hands, a gesture that was helpfully very similar in Jesharian body language. “Sorry. This one apologizes for the miscommunication. When I am stressed – experiencing unpleasant levels of stress, that is – I start talking like my parents. And my parents used a lot of figures of speech, that is, idioms.”

“I do not mind idioms. They are lovely and color your language, much as the social dance does for ours.” Koyl bowed, a similar gesture to Reyn’s earlier apology-bow. “If you are rushed, the gesture-of-Jeshar we would use is like this.” She planted her feet very close together and clasped her hands at her upper hips. “In our land, this suggests ‘I do not have time for the dance; please forgive me but may we be hasty?'” Koyl winked, closing three of her eyes. “And, since that is what you meant to imply, perhaps we should save the rest of the conversation on idiom for another day?”

“Yes.” Reyn adopted the body posture Koyla was demonstrating. “Yes, yes please.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/805428.html. You can comment here or there.

A Heritage Earned

Sep8

This is to [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt and comes after The Heritage that Wasn’t

“Kitsune are believed to possess superior intelligence, long life, and magical powers.”

The dictionaries were not helpful. The online databases were not much more useful. The only place – other than the letters, which were clearly not enough help – where Jen could find any information at all was an old, old, pre-space database which someone had reconstructed as a school project.

Kitsune were benevolent, or mischievous, or even malicious. They were spirits, or they weren’t, they shifted form, or they simply appeared to sometimes be human. The information was all over there.

But that one line: “…believed to possess superior intelligence, long life, and magical powers.” That, Jen grabbed on to. She could not lengthen her life, not on her own. But she could learn magic.

Of course, “magic” did not exist. Of course, “superior intelligence” was a matter of genetics and pre-birth implants and careful training. Of course, kitsune were a myth.

But Jen had been living off-planet just long enough to have learned that Central Bureaucracy had its lies that it needed to tell, and that colonists, settlers, the Modified, and the true aliens all had their own truths, truths which had more to do with what Jen needed than the Central Bureaucracy Registered Facts ever would.

Superior intelligence came from a series of illicit implants, a longer series of sleep-learning in an Earth-banned procedure used everywhere, usually to bone up on a specific subject, and an ever longer series of sessions with a Modified shaman.

The same shaman taught Jen the preliminaries of magic, and set her on the path to a second teacher, and then to an alien, native of the planet on which she & her father were now residing, who taught Jen things Central Bureaucracy had never even thought to forbid.

Kitsune were myth, but on her twenty-third birthday, Jen found herself staring in the mirror at a fox-fairy.


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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/805169.html. You can comment here or there.

The Heritage that Wasn’t

Sep4

To [personal profile] silveradept‘s prompt

It was supposed to work. It was supposed to be right.

Jen’s mother was a kitsune. Her grandmother was a kitsune. Her grandmother’s mother, and her mother, and her mother, they had all been kitsune, as far back as history went and further.

There were no fathers in the history, which Jen had always felt unfair. Her father had, after all, raised her, as her mother’s father had raised her, and so on. The women in Jen’s family did not stay. They weren’t tame, after all.

They didn’t stay, and they didn’t teach. They left a letter. At least, Jen had been given a letter when she turned fifteen. In the envelope – which her father had been saving since he first discovered he had a daughter – was not only the letter her mother had written her, but the letter her mother had written her, and so on, and so on. The letters went back not nearly as far as the history, of course, and the last ones were crumbling and yellow. but they all said almost the same thing.

Your mother is a kitsune, and that means you will be as well… The kitsune are wild and do not stay, but we always pass on our genes… one daughter and one daughter only… do well, my daughter. Thrive.

The letters had come with her when she & her father went off-planet; they took up less than 4 oz. of her weight allowance, but weighed her down with the expectations of ages. “…One daughter and one daughter only…” Kitsune found their fox by the time they were sixteen or seventeen, maybe eighteen or nineteen.

Jen’s twenty-first birthday was on her, and there was no fox, nothing but a girl with an envelope full of ancient letters.

Next: A Heritage Earned

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(the tip jar is a kitty for reasons)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802214.html. You can comment here or there.

It’s not the Prom

Sep3

To Three-Word-Wednesday (Today’s words are Bribery, clobber, skeptical).

“No, no, not like that.” Anna leaned forward to grab Joachim’s shoulders. “No. You don’t want to clobber them over the head with it.”

Joachim twitched at the grab. “What am I supposed to do, sing them a love song? It’s bribery, not the prom.”

“It’s both of those things, exactly. Thank you, Aaron. I’ll take over.” Anna shooed the older man away with a flap of her hand. “This is how we do this.” She stepped into Aaron’s place. “Greetings, Mr. Todleron. How can I help you tonight?”

The boy twisted his face up. “Anna, I don’t think this is going to work.”

“No, no, who is this Anna? I am Karl Brust, and I run the store here. How can I help you this evening, Mr. Todleron?”

“Really?” The kid had gone beyond skeptical and into flat-out doubtful, but he still held out his hand and squeezed Anna’s. He got just the right amount of tension – not too tight, not too loose. If only he could do the rest of the routine that easily. “Mr. Brust, so nice to finally meet you.” He dropped into character fine. He’d always had that part down pat. “I was wondering if I could impose on you, just a little bit…”

“It’s a lovely night, wouldn’t you say? More small talk, Mr. Todleron. Remember that this is a date, not a snatch-and-grab. Caress him with your words.”

“Your eyes are beautiful, Mr. Brust.” Joachim smirked. “And the moon, too, is quite pretty.” His voice dropped in pitch, and he stepped up against Anna as he pulled her in. “But your lips are prettier still.”

And his eyes, Anna noted, were quite pretty. Why had she never…

“I’d say you’ve gone all the way out the other side to ‘clobber’ again.” Aaron’s dry voice broke the mood. “What was the line? This is bribery, kid, not your prom.”

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/801315.html. You can comment here or there.

Oil & Water

Sep1

Thimbleful Thursday is a new microfic prompt site (mine!). This week’s prompt was “Oil & Water” and the word limit was 200 (180-200).

I barely made it in at 220.

“You have to understand.” The cultural attaché was using the high-pitched voice that meant that not only did Tyre have to understand, but that she was failing at this simple task.

Tyre was used to this from cultural-attaché-sorts, and did not take it personally. “I am trying, I promise you. Please continue.”

As always, the slightly baffled look served to soothe. “The Sureare and the Unbling, they are like – like oil and water. They do not work together, they do not talk together, they do not sit together for a fancy dinner, no matter who we are ‘honoring.'” The attaché managed to making “honoring” sound like a perversion.

Perhaps in their culture, it was. But Tyre had a job to do, and she was going to do it. “Oil and water, hrrm?”

“That is what I said, Ambassador.”

“Let us see, then. Oil and water need mustard. Somebody tangy and a little astringent who can rub up against the ‘oil.’ Would you say the ‘oil’ is the Sureare?” Tyre didn’t wait for a response. “So, that would be… the Adlyma. Invite a group of five Adlyma, say, their chiefs. And we’ll need an agitator. Pavlin Ajanae should do well. Don’t forget to limit the entourage to four.” Tyre smiled brightly at the attaché. “Or do I still not understand?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/798038.html. You can comment here or there.

Friday Flash: Intelligent Life

Aug29

Written to @ShingetsuMoon’s prompt (here but spoilers-ish) for Friday Flash

The machines started small on Earth, as they had on every planet so far.

They found the brightest, the cleverest, the most innovative – people and dolphins, elephants and corvids, apes and chimps. They picked them off, one by one or in groups.

A smart guy dies in Oxford and a grifter dies in New York City, who’s going to make the connection? A murder of ravens goes missing – who notices? An elephant at least makes a stink when she falls dead.

They noticed the dolphins first – but it was a group of researchers who noted it, and they weren’t far behind. Then the chimps, signing “help us, help us,” until the virus destroyed their brain.

The virus was the machines’ primary weapon – it ate brain cells, was tolerably target-able, and was not known to any surviving human researchers (since they’d stolen it from their first victim & obliterated his notes). But they used bullets, where that would not cause a stir; they used knives, where nobody would notice; they used electric shocks that stopped the hearts and knew they’d already killed off the smart morticians.

It took them twenty-five years, but these machines were patient. It had taken them a week on the planet called Belji(click)ton, sure, but on Martinach, it had taken over a century. They had time.

By late 2015, there was not a human left on the planet who could make change for a twenty without a calculator. The dolphins that were left thought they were fish. The monkeys – best not to talk about the monkeys, and the apes had been, as a precautionary measure, completely wiped out.

The machines surveyed their work and, contented, left. They were, after all, only ordered to destroy all intelligent life in the world.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/796034.html. You can comment here or there.

Three-Word-Wednesday – Entanglement

Aug27

To Three-Word-Wednesday (Today’s words are entanglement, death, heartless).

This one wrote itself – helps I’ve been watching a lot of Supernatural.

She intended to avoid entanglements.

They were a bad idea in her line of work – they led to uncomfortable explanations, teary goodbyes, jealous shouting matches, and, on a couple regrettable occasions, death.

So she tended to stay away from emotional connections.

There were liaisons, of course – she still needed human contact, and her cousin was, while pleasant, her cousin. Not the sort where you’d spend the evening cuddling, watching TV, necking, even when the job didn’t get in the way.

But she avoided anything more… long-lasting than a bump-and-cuddle.

It had gotten her called heartless, a time or thirty. It had gotten her called a lot worse than that, too: slut was a favorite, tease – although she never really deserved that one – bitch. But in her line of work, she was used to being called bitch.

And who wanted an entanglement with someone who called you a bitch, anyway?

But sometimes, despite all that, she found herself caring. The job could wait for a day or a week, she’d say. Her cousin could handle this case on her own. She wasn’t actually heartless, after all. She needed human contact. But the problem with entanglements was, they tended to twist you up in knots.

And there you were all tied up, when the job called. Safer to just avoid emotional connections altogether.

Following/riffing off of this: Better Left Unsaid

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/792296.html. You can comment here or there.