From writing prompt found here.
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“Did you give me this note?”
The train was rumbling on into night time, so I’d been getting settled into “my” sleeper room when the woman came in wielding a note on a lined index card.
I took it from her carefully, using two fingers on the corner, and gave it a glance.
Whatever you do, don’t get off this train until it arrives at the final stop. Continue reading
Began here.
Chapter 2 here
Chapter 3 here.
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 5 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7 here.
Chapter 8 here.
Chapter 9 here.
Chapter 10 here.
Chapter 11 here.
Chapter 12 here.
Chapter 13 here.
Chapter 14 here.
Chapter 15 here.
Chapter 16 here.
In the middle of a land that did not exist, in the middle of a time that was, it seemed, all times and none, the woman named for her ancestors who had often found the names fit like someone else’s shoe put someone else’s crown on her head and found that both seemed to fit better than they ever had at home.
“I am Malina Serafina Anastazja Dominika Naveed Jeleń nic Cecília O Alexandre. I am the daughter of Cecília Portela Dominika, the daughter of Tiago Jeleń Alexandre, great-granddaughter to Serafina who brought home the sun. I am she who wears the crown here.” She lifted her chin, aware she was speaking to the wall of an abandoned – or nearly-abandoned – castle. “I am she who crossed the border lands.” Continue reading
This is set in (one of ) the world(s) of the Hidden Mall – Abby and Liv have been travelling through a series of multiverse malls, many of them abandoned. Actually, many Abby-and-Livs, Sandy-and-Vics have been travelling – this is a different Abby & Liv than those in the main story.
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Abby glared at the fountain.
This was the prettiest mall they had found yet. This was the nicest mall they had found – empty, at least – in all of their explorations. But something about it was also just, well, sterile.
There were no food courts. There were no trees, not even fake ones, no plantings, no stores selling anything edible – even the clothing was stiff and formal and so very sterile.
There were fish in the fountains, though. There were fish in this biggest fountain especially, big ones, koi maybe, darting in and out of the very symmetrical, very smooth sculptures which obscured the bottom of the fountain, leaving it in shadows.
So Abby had figured out a fishing pole and line with various things stolen from various stores, and she had sat down here with her hook and she had, well. Continue reading
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Amanana patted Veronika’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. I’m not going to let you get hurt on my watch. If One and Two were concerned about you, I can’t very well do less than that, now can I?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Her eyes were on the woman’s horns. I would know if you were demonic, she’d said. “I don’t know all that much about you,” she admitted slowly. She was feeling something – she didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t feel nice. “But so far.” She paused, letting herself feel everything that her intuition was telling her. “So far,” she began again. “I think that you wouldn’t let me get hurt. You’ve decided that you like me, or if not like, that you think I’m worth keeping around, and thus, you won’t let damage come to me.”
Amanana looked her up and down slowly. It took a moment for the serious expression to leave her face, morphing slowly back into a smile. “You’re quite a clever one. Now, let’s see that list. I do imagine that Miriam has made it too long again – she does that, you know, to scare off the slackers – and it’s time to shorten it a bit.”
Veronika passed her the list. “Just like that?” Continue reading
New prompter! Also, this story involves murder. (Attn new Prompter: you can either ask for a continuation of this story or give me another prompt, as you wish)
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“Shit.” She was trying to get calm, get mellow, to enjoy the sun on the lake and the breeze in her hair. Her mind kept coming back to the body in the swamp, just a couple hundred feet away.
She hadn’t meant to kill the man. Well, man-thing. She hadn’t meant to be killing anything today, it was a fishing day.
Fishing days were sacred. She got up before dawn, headed out to the lake, and stayed until past dusk.
If she happened to catch something? Bonus. Continue reading
First: Purchased: Negotiation
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Leander was smiling, even though he wasn’t totally sure this wasn’t going to blow up in his face. Things did, even when everything was planned out with the best intentions. And he was – if not certain, that was too much to ask, he was pretty damn sure Sylviane had the best intentions.
“I think,” he murmured, leaning over so he could let his breath brush across her ear and lowering his voice even more, “that”… if you want a real statistical sample, well, you ought to get more than one baseline measurement, yeah?”
She chuckled at him. “Oh, absolutely. But let’s start with one? Since we can’t do them simultaneously – unless you have some unforeseen ability to Work with time that would be amazing, but really, really out there-“ Continue reading
So this story feels a lot like Things Unspoken, but it wanted to be modern-ish every time I had anything that would set an era, so I’m not sure.
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“The fish have been getting mad right before dusk.” Murphy lingered, not yet packing up the gear for the day. “And I swear, when I go diving just as the sunset touches the water, I find the best things. It’s got to be the difference in lighting, but I gotta ask – why don’t you stay a little later? I mean, I see you, and you’re out of here the moment the sun sets. And this is just a summer job for me, isn’t this – like, isn’t it your livelihood?”
Faulkner gave a rueful head-shake. “You’re still so new. You fit in so well down at the pub or up at the gods-house, or at the end of the week at the dances, I forget how new you are.”
Murphy tried not to bristle, but it was hard. “Yeah? You think I fit in – except at my job? I mean, I guess it shouldn’t care, it’s just a summer job-” Continue reading
From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!
This story is set in the same world & city as Saving the Cult (If Not the World). It’s even talking about the same power plant as in Saving the Cult.
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It was clean energy. They had been sold the device – the plant- on that line, and they, in turn, sold that line to the people for all it was worth.
It wasn’t a lie, even if it was a line. It was cleaner energy – cleaner than coal, for sure, with no chance of a radioactive meltdown, per se, and there was no despoiling a river with a dam, flooding of the people upstream, or the whole mess of the digs for geothermal.
Cleaner? Yes. Absolutely. They could have sold that line and never had a single qualm about it (If they were the sort of people who had qualms, of course. They weren’t., or this would be a much shorter story.
But it had its own problems – not on the line of a meltdown, of course, but it did have its own waste line, something that went through every filter their definitely-in-over-their-heads science team could come up with before it went into the river, and the river was still – still, despite all of their work – well, it was a little weird.
Austin went fishing down by the river, once a week, maybe twice on a bad week. At first, it was meant to be a relaxation, a way of resting after work at the plant, work trying to figure out what they were doing, had gotten just too exasperating.
Austin was a scientist. What they were doing in the plant… They could use science around it, like in the filters, like in the ways they improved the electric transmission, like in the way they found new ways to get more and more power from the same devices. But science seemed to fall into a deep messy hole when it came to the plant, the power generation, itself.
There were more and more fishing days as the plant started to increase or decrease output with no changes in mechanisms. And then when Austin actually started catching fish…
Then fishing was an every-evening activity, but it was no longer so relaxing. There was the whole question of what was nibbling on the bait, after all.
Fish with legs. That one was interesting but not horrible. Mutations happened, after all.
Fish that had never before been seen outside of tropical waters – or tropical aquariums.
Fish whose scales glowed in the dark. Fish whose meat looked to all instrumentation almost exactly like beef, or like lamb.
(Austin didn’t dare taste those. Once the weirdness started, Austin didn’t taste any of them.)
Fish with three eyes that could’ve been straight out of 1990’s cartoon.
But the thing was, the fish were healthy. Every one of them, every weird thing.
Austin started working on some new filters for the river anyway.
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Want more? See here first!
From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!
Back in 2011, I wrote this part of a story I called Blizzarded. http://www.lynthornealder.com/2011/05/16/meeting-a-furtherfurtherfurtherfurtherfurtheretccontinuation/ (Despite saying “continuation,” for some reason every time I wrote more on that story, I reposted the whole thing and added the new bit at the end…)
This is fishing for answers in that world. Short version:
Sandy got lost in a blizzard. Now there is a gnome talking to her and the train requires technology instead of tickets.
(spoiler)
[collapse]
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“If you have no tech-a-nie,” the gnome began – or, at least, it was a thing and it had suggested it was a gnome and it was talking to Sandy, it had a tiny red hat and it was definitely, while more or less humanoid, short enough without the hat that it came to about mid-calf on Sandy. “-Then seeking you must go. And if you can na’ seeking, then Sla Bless You.”
Sandy stared at the thing, then looked at the train, then stared back at the thing. Gnome. She ought to call it by its proper name, she thought. It was probably rude to go around thinking of talking beings a things. Continue reading
From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!
This comes afterr R is for Rituals and Linguistic Tricks and Finish It: Scheffenon, but the information you need to read the below story is:
Scheffenon is a city on the North See, in the norther-western part of a sprawling Empire. Eliška is an Informer, an Imperial position which is part anthropologist, part internal spy, part propaganda artist for the Empire.
And there is something creepy about the sea in Scheffenon.
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“Fresh fish! Freshest fish, pulled from the ponds and rivers to the East! Fresh fish!” Continue reading