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30 Days Second Semester: 5, The Water Knot, Stranded World (Summer)

Aug1

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “5) write a story using an imaginary color.”

Stranded World, Summer & Winter, some time before she goes off to school. Landing page here and on LJ

I think Summer and Spring are very close in age. Does anyone remember her hair color?.

“Tell me what you see.”

“The water, the boat. The sky, and fish out in the distance.” Summer kicked her feet in the water. “Splashes.”

Her brother smiled indulgently at her, with that warning note in the cant of his eyebrow that said she should stop messing around soon. Stupid Spring, using up all the messing around. She obediently stared back out at the lake.

“The water moves the way it should. The strands are mostly blue, but there are a few lines of green, and some tangles of darker green. Algae blooms? And there’s sort of an… indiburple splotch there,” she pointed at a twisted triple-braid of color. “Someone did that on purpose; the strands don’t line up in celtic knots by themselves.”

“‘Indiburple?’” Her perfectly-orderly brother wrinkled his nose at her. “‘Indiburple?’” he repeated, incredulously.

“Yeah, indiburple. You know, that dark midnight color with too much red in it to be blue or indigo, and just a hint of absinthe and snow in the flavor?”

“Indiburple.” He shook his head. “You sense more colors than any of the rest of us, anyway; if you want to make up imaginary colors, I suppose that’s your right. Tell me about this celtic knot.”

“It’s not imaginary,” she retorted. Winter could be unbearable sometimes, holding his few years’ advantage over them. “It’s just not in the visual spectrum.”

That, as she knew it would, made him pause. He was always startled when she talked science, especially about the Strands. “All right,” he allowed. “It’s an indiburple knot.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/90593.html. You can comment here or there.

Bringing Home the Bacon – Autumn/Stranded World – KC_OBrien’s Prompt

Jul9

I am taking prompts tonight; this is from [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt “Brining home the bacon”

Stranded World, Autumn

Autumn chuckled to herself every time she picked up bacon for dinner.

“Bringing home the bacon,” she murmured, although most nights, it was only to herself and the quiet walls of her van/RV/studio/home. “I’m such a good husband.”

It was a private joke, between herself and the thing that served her in lieu of a conscience: she was the good housewife, the good kid, the good husband. She was bread-winner and bread-baker and, in the end, bread-eater and crumb-picker too.

It wasn’t her only one-person inside joke, of course. She spent a lot of time, most of her life, really, alone with her own thoughts. On the road all the time – she spent, on average, a week with each of her siblings each year, and a week with Mom around Christmastime – she rarely had company with any staying power. Most people liked to have roots, a roof, a solid foundation. Most people liked to know what their role was. Autumn shook all that up.

She snipped the bacon into her pan, still chuckling, albeit ruefully. She’d made the bread-winner bacon-home-bringing joke to her last lover. Adam, although that hadn’t been the name she’d met him under. Her Gawain. He had bristled and tried to hide it, sulked (his busking wasn’t all that profitable) and tried to use that. He’d been lovely, friendly, and willing to throw his rucksack in the back of her van and travel with her. She was glad she hadn’t harbored any illusions beyond that. She wished that he hadn’t, either.

The bacon crisped and popped, making the place smell delicious and her mouth water. She toasted some bread and sliced a fresh tomato over her craft-fair mustard. The company was nice, once in a while, but she’d always be her own breadwinner, her own bread-maker… and probably her own crumbpicker, too. And that was just fine with her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/73597.html. You can comment here or there.

Kink Bingo, Stranded World – Love Letters

Jun30

kink_bingo – G-1 – phonesex/epistolary – from my card.

Stranded World; Autumn in a private moment. Stranded has a landing page (LJ Link)
.

The mail drop was hidden in a hole in a tree, twisted around with magic to keep the squirrels from using their letters as nesting, to keep prying eyes from seeing.

One function that Autumn and several other itinerates of her ilk served was as couriers. E-mail could be read, phones tapped, postal mail interrupted. Messages travelling by courier were far less susceptible to tampering or loss; second best were messages left in strand-locked mail drops like this, then moved to the next drop by courier.

There were seven envelopes and one small box in this load; Autumn shuffled through them before sliding them into her backpack. The Tribe in Kansas. The Barony of Thescorre in New York. Autumn, who works the inks.

She’d expected the last one, although not the fine calligraphy in which it was written or the soft rag paper it was written on. He’d been practicing, was leaving her this in lieu of flowers that would die or jewelry she might not wear. She smiled warmly, and hurried back to her camper to read it.

My autumn leaf, my harvest moon, my darkest ink, my brightest day…

She couldn’t help but smile at the hyperbole. He’d played Shakespeare at a couple festivals she worked, and done the Bard one better such that even the lit majors were often fooled. But oh, did he love his overwrought turns of phrase.

I write these words on this paper, because this is the closest I can come, right now, to touching you. If I had my way, instead of dead trees, I would be drawing these words on your skin. I would start just below that tiny scar on your ankle bone, the thin line whose story changes every time I ask…

She’d tripped and fallen on her sister’s doll as a child. But that was secondary to the full, urgent shape of his letters, the way that he’d pressed in heavily on “I would start,” the way that his ink had blotched (he was using a real pen and ink, then) at “scar.”

And, starting there, I would write my love. I would write it in every language I know, twine it into the strands of the ink, whispering as I worked up and around your calf: this flesh, here, this line, this tendon. Let this leg carry you closer to me. Let this knee bend like the willow in the wind. Let this thigh…

Oh, the things I would write on your thighs, my midnight muse. The story of our love, of our lovemaking, spiraling up and up, until my ink ran with your wetness. Until my pen brushed your labia and I was writing around your pretty clitty of our secrets, words I would never utter, words no other soul could take from me.

And there on your sex I would write my love.

She lay on the picnic table, reading his letter again and again, picturing the lines of his calligraphy wrapping around her body, imagining how the pen would feel, scratching ever so lightly into her skin while his breath blew warm and humid, so close. He had sweet breath, she recalled, and sweet sweat.

It was a beautiful gift he had left for her. She picked up her stylus and dipped it in the good ink, the deep indigo she saved for special occasions. Starting just above the scar, she wrote to him:

If I could fold myself into a letter for you, and wait here in a mail drop for your touch, then I would. If I could press my skin through the postman’s slit, stamp my love, scan it and e-mail it, I would. I would become a letter so that you could always carry me.

“Carry me” wrapped around the base of her knee, tickling her, and she giggled, laughing at herself, laughing at the tickling.

But we are people, my love, and so, in lieu of myself, I give you these words on my skin. Your name on my thigh, my highwayman, my poet, my tattercoat bard.

She wrote in lazy spirals, so that “tattercoat” drew across her hip, and “bard” on her smooth mons. The photos would have to do, until she could see him again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/67560.html. You can comment here or there.

Beginning of a Winter story, per ClareDragonfly & @Inventrix’s request

Jun13

There were times when Winter thought his mother had chosen to have him first, to be there for the girls when their father died.

It wasn’t a possibility he ever talked about; Mom, who would know, he’d never ask. Other people would either think he was crazy for at least three facets of that thought, and the ones who wouldn’t, well, were either just as close to the situation as he was, or would have reactions to it he wouldn’t like.

Pre-planned or not, he had been the father figure to his sisters since he was seven years old and now, as an adult with his “daughters” grown up and out of the house, he found the habits hard to put aside. His nature, the way the strands of the world reacted to him, was either created by that situation or exacerbated it, and either way seemed to solidify it.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/56094.html. You can comment here or there.

DailyPrompt Drabble: Stepping around.

May31

From [community profile] dailyprompt and Stranded World.

It had the feel of an optical illusion, this party. People moved around in that way that they do, chatting, sliding from grouping to grouping, finger foods to drinks to bathroom to the best jokes. They moved as if everything was normal.

Autumn, in the center of the party through no volition of her own, tried to mimic their movements, tried to ignore the niggling feeling that she didn’t belong here. Of all her siblings, why did it have to be her? Summer was an actress; she could fake this better. Spring, Spring loved being in the middle of the hoity-toity, the rich, the well-bred. And Winter was implacable. But here she was, Autumn, the gypsy artist, the vagabond with the wind-blown hair, trying to pretend she belonged.

She’d been invited, of course, or she probably wouldn’t have made it through the front door. Her younger sisters had consulted on her outfit, and she looked as if her dress, at least belonged. Since the dress looked like it belonged to her, the illusion seemed to pass: this dress passes muster, thus its wearer must as well. And she’d kept the ink to a bare minimum for the occasion.

All of that, and she’d still expected to be awkward, unhappy, and uncomfortable. She hadn’t expected, quite, to be invisible, but that was how she found herself, passed over by dozens of people who, it seemed, all knew each other. It galled a bit, enough that she took a quick five minutes in the bathroom to scrub off the nothing strange to see here she’d drawn over her heart.

That didn’t seem to do it – and, as she circled the room again, Autumn realized there was something else going on, something beyond her own class-conscious insecurities. The guests weren’t just ignoring her. They were milling, walking around the room like everything was normal, but there was something in the center of the room that they were just ignoring. She, she realized, was ignoring it as well; no matter how hard she peered, she couldn’t quite see it. It was like the old saw about addiction being an elephant in the middle of the living room: Everyone moved around it, but nobody mentioned it.

But it didn’t seem like anyone could even see the elephant (or maybe they could, and she was just not a part enough of their crowd).

prompt: “can you not see the elephant?”
Not really done, but a fun intro

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/47745.html. You can comment here or there.

Drabble: Keeping a hold on things

Apr28

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “knowing where your towel is.”

Autumn/Stranded world, goes along with Enclosed

“The shawl is a new look for you,” Anja commented over tea.

Autumn plucked the edge of the rainbow-hued garment in question, tucked around her hips like a skirt. “Always know where your towel is,” she explained cryptically. “Besides, Aunt Happy knit it for me.”

“Aaah.” Autumn’s Aunt Happenstance making something was reason enough to hold onto it; she was a Weaver. But Anja still tilted her head. “Hitch-hiker’s guide? I didn’t figure you for a fan – and, besides, your towel’s a bit prettier and a bit more handcrafted than Ford’s.”

“Well, it’s also more socially acceptable.” She smoothed the cloth, feeling she owed her old friend more explanation. “The book has a couple good points, even if I’m not a fan. And, face it, I live an essentially itinerant lifestyle. A multi-tasker that I never have to leave behind is a pretty useful thing to have around.”

She should have left it at “Aunt Happy.” Anja, no fool, raised one questioning eyebrow. “Autumn, what happened?”

She slumped a bit in the patchwork Queen Anne chair. “Someone stole my van last month at Rhinebeck.”

“Oh, god, the poor thing! What did you do with the body?”

Autumn glowered over her scone at her friend. “An, my van does not eat people.”

“No, no, of course not, but it’s been known to chew on them.”

“Only a little, and only when they really deserved it.”

“So, I repeat, what did you do with the body?”

“I drove him to the hospital,” she admitted in a mutter. “But it took me three days to find him – and the van.”

“Aaaah.” And the lovely thing about friends like Anja was that they really did understand. “Thus the sudden connection to portable belongings. Where are you hiding the tent?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/38140.html. You can comment here or there.

“…or both…” the third 200-word request, for @Inventrix

Apr27

There was a hole in the universe. Autumn stared at it, curious and a little bit horrified. Sometimes the strands split a little bit, letting things leak through from one world to another, but this was a genuine hole, visible not just in the stranding, but to mundane sight.

This couldn’t be good. And yet, it could be very interesting. She eyed the edges of the portal thoughtfully. It was just a bit wider than her shoulder-span, maybe three feet tall, and glowing blue around the edges. She could step through it easily. (Anyone could step through it easily; it was hanging out there plain as day).

She ought to call a weaver to seal it. And she would, right? She grinned wickedly to herself, feeling more wild than she had in years, as she stepped through the portal.

She had been standing in a hayfield; she tripped as she stepped through onto a mountainous cliff. Strange; the world-holes she’d stepped through before had been mirror-worlds, not all that different in the broad details. This didn’t even feel like home; the strands were different, the air was different. She took a steadying step forward.

Ahead of her, a proud-looking woman hailed her in an unfamiliar language. She was, it seemed, astride a very tall, broad-backed, saddled… goat?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/37787.html. You can comment here or there.