I have found a flying animal.
I held it in my cupped hands for maybe an hour.
They have no fear of humans, although we have found a thing that predates on them. They are about the length of my arm, and they look like a fiddlehead fern that unrolls and rerolls as it wishes.
They are nesting on our habitat roof now.
First: Purchased: Negotiation
Previous: Purchased: Learning the Way Around
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Leander stood still, his hands moving behind his back, his chin up. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, but he could see Sylviane anyway. And she did not look like he had just defied her.
“I just mean…” She faltered and tilted her head. “Here, come downstairs with me.” She reached for his hand, dropped her hand, and led the way.
Leander followed. If he tried to gauge forty feet when he couldn’t see her, he was going to get a headache.
Even more of a headache.
She waited until they were downstairs, through what looked like a very well-appointed bar, and into a gym some colleges would kill for, before she said anything. “Okay, look. It’s your body, and you can do what you want with it as far as I’m concerned. You’re a fae bodyguard. You could look like Poindexter and still kick ass, right?”
“…Right…” He had no idea what she meant by, well, anything anymore. Continue reading
First: Spoils of War I: Surrender
Previous: Spoils of War II: Shelter
Their bed that night was not the most restful, but the horses made the cave plenty warm and exhaustion made the ground soft enough with the addition of stacked bedrolls. She slept close to her prisoner, not because she was particularly fond of him, but because she would wake if he started to leave. And he was warm, too, the way men seemed to be.
She woke before he did and made a sort of porridge from the rest of the food in the saddlebags. While the mush was cooking over the fire, her prisoner woke and sat up, groaning.
“You cheat,” he complained.
“What were you going to do if I didn’t order you to sleep? Aside from sleep badly, I mean.” Continue reading
We spent the first hundred days here just trying to stay alive – and with variable results.
We lost three people; Fedder lost a foot to frostbite but survived; Auren lost two fingers to a Fuzzy and nearly lost the hand.
We also found out how to kill the Fuzzies, how to survive their attacks, and how to garden in a cold and dreary place.
Only in the strange “autumn” that we’re in now have we started to worry about more than mere survival.
We’re starting with domesticating Fuzzies.
People who have domesticated predators have not done so under such duress. We lost one more member, but we also have lots of Fuzzy hides to keep us warm.
We’re going to need it. Winter is coming in with a vengeance and the Fuzzies are circling.
The glitter hormones are turning out to be more complicated than we ever thought they would be. And in turn, they are also more useful than we ever thought possible.
We’ve replicated the hunting style of three of the bigger predators and started making “runs” for food animals lined in different glitter pheromones.
That’s useful, but more useful is what we discovered in the accidental isolation of the bad time: Each line of glitter eliminates certain issues or diseases.
I still don’t want to stay here one day longer than we have to, but I believe this is almost worth the stay.
First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Waiting in the Bear Empire
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“This is why Halor hates the Empire. You know that, don’t you? It’s probably why Dekleg hates the Empire, too.” Carrone wasn’t looking at Deline. She didn’t blame him.
“Probably,” she agreed. She walked alongside him, pacing him. As long as she kept walking, he would probably keep walking too. “It’s also why the Empire has issues with Halor and Dekleg – and a few others I could name. It’s mutual.” She smirked tiredly. She’d heard those arguments more times than she cared to remember.
“You used… what’s the difference, anyway?”
“Sorcery uses spirits and, ah, spirit-like beings to get done what it must. Magery uses a combination of the natural forces of the world and scholarly understanding. Sorcery requires moving around living things – souls, spirits, sometimes creatures. Magery usually only requires natural elements – usually stones and sands, sometimes plants.” Continue reading
First: A New World
Previous: Taking Stock
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Half Yordiy off was better than she’d expected to get, if she was being honest, and all she had to do was draw up a safer version of things she’d been doing for years.
“Thank you, Mr. Vibius.” He reminded Kael strongly of the people she had known before she’d become a potion-mistress and ruler of her own domain. She knew how to act around him, but that didn’t make it the least bit pleasant. “You said the food was on the third floor?”
“Yep. It’s always there. I don’t get it, I really don’t, but it’s always there.”
Kael suppressed a smile. Jaoan had been working on that for years. She wondered how long it had taken him to perfect it. “Thank you. If nobody is here to ask me about potions, I will go and eat now.”
“You’re really taking this seriously.” He looked at a small glowing piece of glass for a moment. “There’s three people in the museum, but they’re taking their down in the Lives of the Ancient Natives and Potions Then and Now displays. The Lives one really gets a lot of attention,” he confided. “People like going through how people lived back before, uh,” he coughed, “before the modern era. We get a lot of yelling, too.” He smiled grimly. “People who say there’s no way things could have been like that.” Continue reading