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Funerary Rites 25: Marked

Oct3

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Senga showed Ezer the back staircase for his side of the rooms, made certain Allayne was doing something reasonable and not fighting with anyone, and then, after a couple deep breaths, headed back to what had been her grandmother’s suite with Erramun.

After a brief reconnaissance, Senga opened up the room next to her newly-redecorated bedroom.  “It’s not the biggest room, but I think it will hold your things and anything else you want to bring here.”  She gestured in. “All yours.”

She was not expecting Erramun to freeze, nor the very slow movement he made towards the room after searching her face for – for something she couldn’t quite guess at.  After a moment, he growled quietly. “Three exits.”

“Two.  And the windows.  That door is a closet…. no, three,” she corrected.  “The closet has a stairway up to the attics.”

“Four exits.”   He moved slowly into the room, as if trying to keep an eye on her, and opened the windows.  They opened – it made a little noise of protest, but her family had always been pretty good at Preserve Workings – as all the second-floor windows did, more than wide enough for his wide shoulders and lanky body.

He left the window open and went to the door on the far side of the room.  It opened into, as she had said, a closet. He found the stairway and left that door open as well.  Then he paced to the door to the hallway, opened that, and left it open. Continue reading →

Turn, Turn, Turn

Oct2

Originally posted on Patreon in October 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

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Something about Autumn tends to lean towards long stories, I suppose.  

Here’s Autumn in autumn.

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By the nature of her travels, Autumn tended to see places, if she saw them repeatedly, during the same season every year.

So she might have been forgiven for missing this particular place, since for five years, she saw it only in the stage when spring slides into summer.

She thought it a particularly bright place then, cheerful and full of excitement and a little bit too chaotic for her tastes, even when she was feeling a little excited and a little eager.  She would stay a night, dance in their party – there always seemed to be a party – and move on with a smile, leaving behind one more drawing in their bustling bar.

It was autumn now, coming into the time when she would have to go further south or find a warmer place to settle for a few months, and a broken part in her van had pointed her in a direction she would not normally have taken. Continue reading →

A New World 27: Burning Books

Oct2

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After a moment, Kael realized that Gemma was staring at her.  She cleared her throat and, when that didn’t stop the staring, took a long sip of her drink.

“You know….” Gemma said slowly.  “The first thing you said to me started with idiots.  But I don’t see how making a plant extinct is a good idea.  And ah -” If she had been irked about the bar, she was trying not to be angry now.  “Is that how you see everything? Beautiful painting, oh, look, a potion ingredient. Lovely landscape, look for potion ingredients”

“Pretty girl,” Kael offered dryly, “either talk too much about potion ingredients, take her looking for potion ingredients, or think about the forbidden potions where a lock of her hair would be the final touch.”

“There aren’t- those are fairy tales, aren’t they?  Drop of blood, lock of hair, that sort of thing?” Continue reading →

Hidden Mall Thirty-Eight: Open Air ☁️

Oct1

☁️

Abby’s heart was pounding and her stomach was churning.  She sternly told both of them to calm down.

“I want air.”  She glared at the doorway.  “I want open air and rain and nature.  I want out.”

Vic-French murmured to one of the Livs.  The Liv responded in French. Vic started to pull back.

“I don’t know if she can get back to her own mall from here,” Abby admitted.  “Or even go through a door without help. She might be better off staying with us.”

One of the Livs translated that, just a murmur.  Abby caught a word here and there, enough to be pretty sure Liv was actually relaying her message.  Then she glared at the door again.

The Liv on her right released her hand and grabbed on to her belt loop.  Abby wondered if, when they got out of here, she’d ever stop needing to know where Liv was all the time.

They had to survive, first.  She grabbed the door, turned the handle.   Continue reading →

Haunted House 23: Magpie

Sep29

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Tap Twice for Yes

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She and the house were talking – one-sided but it was still something of a conversation – up in MĂŠlanie’s bedroom when she realized that the sun was starting to set.

I’ll be back by dark with all luck, Jasper had told her.  She looked out the (now very clean) window and wondered how long it would be until true dark.

A plate bumped gently at her arm and she jumped.  “Oh!” The plate was full of what looked like a very tasty meal.  “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that, you know!”

The plate started dancing out her bedroom door and down the stairs.  She followed the plate – there were so many halls she hadn’t gone down yet, but I’m going to ask you to only go places inside the house that I have shown you, he’d said, and he might have phrased it as a request, but she was not unwise enough to think that it wasn’t an order.

She’d cleaned the dining room, his bedroom, and her bedroom.  The kitchen was already sparkling clean; she had a feeling that was where the house spent most of its – her – energy?  Time? It was hard to figure out what, exactly was going on when the house very clearly didn’t want to tell her. Continue reading →

Twenty: Surprises in the Bear Empire

Sep28

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: “Disputes” in the Bear Empire
Next:  Revelations in the Bear Empire

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They walked – catching rides from local farmers twice – until the sun was just threatening to disappear behind the mountains. By the time they clambered into the slight curvature of the hill that made something that could, with generosity and broad definitions, be called a cave, they had been trading bad jokes and worse stories for more than an hour, started when Carrone told her one about a bear – the animal sort – that walked into a tavern.

“Can you…” He waved his hands.  

“I can.  Are you sure you want me to?”

He pointed at the sky.  “It might not be planning on one of your stupid man-killer storms, but it’s going to do something tonight, and I don’t want to sleep wet.  Or bug-eaten.”

“I don’t, either.”  She dug into her bag until she found everything she needed; he, in the meantime, laid out the bedrolls (there was just enough room for the two of them pressed against each other in the dubious shelter they’d found) and then dug around for cooking supplies. Continue reading →

A Splash Of Color

Sep28

Originally posted on Patreon in September 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

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This story is not, per se, for this month, but since it’s about Autumn, here it is. This is because Eseme made an Autumn doll, but her hair faded, leaving me with the urge to write a story about Autumn’s hair fading. 

The working title of this story, right up ‘till today, was ‘Autumn Hair.’

At over 7000 words, it’s a bit of a read. 

🍂

The fest was just beginning Day Four — Thursday — when Autumn came into town to set up her booth.  That was within the festival rules; as long as you were there for the weekend and as long as you paid for the time you were there, you could show you whenever.  It was part of what had attracted her to the fest in the first place.

She unloaded her gear from the back of her van, set up her tent, and, from the pleasant shade of its canopy, looked around. Continue reading →

Funerary Rites 24: Arrangements

Sep27

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When they left the master suite – Erramun had redecorated the bedroom into shades black and blue that made it feel much more like a space Senga lived in and had somehow made it smell fresh and aired-out and not at all musty – they found Chitter and Ezer arguing over the other wing of the upstairs.

“Senga!” Ezer called.  “Tell Chitter that I need this space to coordinate the three of you on your ridiculous death-defying missions!”

“Senga,” Chitter whined, “tell Ezer that I need all this space for my computers!”

“Guys…”  Senga looked between them.  “There’s literally two wings of residential space, not counting the servants’ quarters in the back.  There is literally room for each of you to have a floor of a wing to yourself. Why do you need this space?”

“The view” they answered as one.  Then Ezer added, a little sulkily, “Allayne got the wing below yours.  And that’s the next nicest.” Continue reading →