Early for Snow
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!
Written to sauergeek ‘s prompt.
❄️
It seemed like summer had left the door open and autumn was sneaking in. Xarissa threw on a coat and went outside to pull in her plants. The weather ap was calling for a hard frost tonight – never mind that it was mid-September and even this far north, not the sort of time that you got frost. It wasn’t supposed to frost for at least another month!
Tomatoes, peppers – she picked everything that was full-sized, regardless of ripeness. They’d ripen on the counter or they wouldn’t. Cabbage, broccoli – the potatoes could wait. The carrots might be happier for a wait.
The wind was blowing damp and cold in her face. She turned to adjust her coat – and realized it wasn’t just wind, but snow. Heavy snow, the sort that shouldn’t come till maybe early November, coming down so hard she could barely see the house.
With a muttered “screw it” to the rest of the plants, she hurried back to her house, skidding inside with a shove from a wind blast, and turned to look out the window at the weather.
The snow had moved from flying sideways to flying upward.
“That is just not right.”
She pulled on her winter boots, dug out her mittens, found a scarf and a hat and her long winter coat. “By the time I’m dressed,” she muttered, “it’ll be spring again.”
It was still upside-down winter when she stepped back outside, the snow heading at a diagonal up towards the old maple tree. Something was wrong; something was definitely wrong.
She dragged her fire pit out between the two maples, the old and the new, and piled every bit of yard waste she could in there. She wanted smoke more than heat, lots of smoke.
With hands made clumsy by cold and feeling like her face was going to freeze off, she managed to light the fire. The smoke blew upwards with the snow, pushing upwards above the tree.
Xarissa looked at the shape outlined by the smoke. It was big, too big, and it was high up in the air, and all the snow was flying right into it.
“We are going to have to have a talk about your timing,” she muttered, “whatever you are. Shoo! Shoo!”
Startled, the invisible outline seemed to dart further away. The snow subsided, falling back to the ground the way it should.
“’Winter is coming,’ my ass,” Xarissa muttered. “Someone went and summoned winter. Damn kids…”
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Happy Monday! Giraffing Will Continue Until Morale Improves!
Happy Monday, guys! My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is still going strong:
Here on WordPress and Here on Dreamwidth.
Tell your friends! Tell your enemies, especially if they like fiction! Tell your dog, especially if he has a Paypal account 🙂
Speaking of telling people, the Signal Boost story continues apace. Let me know if you have boosted and I haven’t credited your boosts – and yes, you can boost again, especially if I have written to your prompt.
If I haven’t written to your prompt, I am working my way through the list and will get there soon.
If you haven’t prompted…. go prompt? The theme is Autumn, Autumn, fall, and falling. It’s got a lot of room for interpretation and I encourage you to interpret as broadly or as narrowly as you wish.
The stories written so far include:
- The Empire Falls; The Emperor Stands
- Mad Kings and Handmaidens
- Giraffe-Zebra Linkback Story
- Catalog People
- Down to Talen Hall
- Turning Leaves
- The Seasons Turn?
- Falling Out Of The Noose
and more are coming every day!
Check in, give ‘em a read, and then come back and prompt 🙂
Cheers!
Rabbit Hole
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!
🐇
At forty, Gemma considered herself to be relatively practical.
She’d put aside the ridiculousness of her teens and the experimentation of her twenties. She had staid hobbies and a staid job and, to be quite honest, staid clothes. She had a very comfortable, safe, secure rut.
So when she was raking leaves and a rabbit in a waistcoat ran by, she shook her head and went back to the leaves. They had to get raked, after all, or the grass would die and she’d just have more work in the long run…
Then it ran back in the other direction, followed by a coyote in a suitcoat and what she was fairly certain was a red fox in a Queen’s Guard hat and jacket, and Gemma just had to follow.
It wasn’t like she believed it, she told herself, it was just that this was far too strange for her to not look into. After all, that was her yard, and her – where did they go? She stopped short, just as the rabbit ran past her one more time.
“Damnit,” she muttered, and hurried after the creature, which was definitely wearing a waistcoat. And now she, too, was being chased by a fox and a coyote, who, like the rabbit, come to think of it, were rather large for their species, at least as she understood it.
“I moved to the suburbs to get away from – oooohh shit.”
She was falling, falling, and as she thought this hole should not be big enough for me, the hole seemed to enlargen. She passed what looked like a picture-perfect 1950’s bomb shelter, except that she could see right into it. She passed through what loked like a large underground swimming pool, except she didn’t get wet at all. And then a library, the biggest library she’d ever seen.
She was falling quite slowly, she realized, and none of the animals were anywhere to be seen.
I’ve fallen and hit my head, she thought, I’m going to bleed out in my back yard. Wake up, Gemma, damnit, Wake Up!
At the second wake up, she came to a stop. Not awake, not in the least, but she was standing on solid ground in what looked like someone’s living room.
No. Not someone’s. It looked like what hers might have looked like when it was new, if it had been a 1920’s Display Home at the time, except that the doors were missing. No… no, there was the front door, smaller than the cat door she had in it now. And there was the door to the kitchen, even smaller.
On the quaint occasional table was a piece of cake and a cordial full of blue liquid. The cake had a sign next to it that said, in tidy if spidery handwriting, Eat me; and the cordial was labelled, as one might expect, Drink me.
Gemma sat down on the floor and swore.
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Falling Out Of The Noose
This story is part of the Addergoole: The Original Series backstory/Sidestory
It comes after Loose Ends and Tying Off; if you are following Addergoole: a Ghost Story, Shad and Meesh are Abednego’s older brothers, Eris and Joff’s former Keepers, and all around bad guys.
It is written to chanter_greenie‘s prompt.
🔒
Shadrach had last track of how many times they’d gone through this. Keeper, Kept, Keeper, Kept. They went through whole months where they were both as gentle as they knew how, hoping the next month would be kind back to them. They went through seasons where they were rough, violent, nasty. He’d almost died at least four times. He’d almost killed Meshach at least twice.
Once, Professor VanderLinden, Professor Solomon, and Professor Pelletier had taken turns living with them for two months. It had made those two months very tense, but it hadn’t fixed anything. Continue reading
The Seasons Turn?
“I don’t see why I should step down. Everyone knows Winter is evil.”
There were four seasons and four courts. There had always been, as long as the words went back and before that as long as the stories passed, four seasons and four courts.
“He’s not evil, he’s simply… still.” Spring was not known for being the most eloquent of seasons. Hers was the time of bubbly abundance and joy, not of long eloquent speeches. “Besides, you have to give up the throne and the crown. Who knows what will happen if you don’t?”
“Nothing will happen.” Autumn was impatient, at times, harsh at others, and right now, stubborn. They were, of course, people, people wearing hereditary crowns, and as such they had their own personalities and their own quirks, but there was a certain amount of folklore attached to each of the crowns and to the great throne, and there were some that said that the crown and the throne became the people as much as the people became the crown. “That is a silly myth. We’re people. This is a tradition. The movement of the sun in the sky is not swayed by who sits on the throne. It just means that we cut Winter out.”
“What if it is, though?” Summer was sleepy, but he leaned against a post and studied the two women who bracketed him. “What if you cut Winter out and… winter doesn’t come?”
“Then it’s not cold?” Spring offered. “Things don’t freeze… oh Spring isn’t special anymore.”
“-seeds that need the frost to crack don’t crack. Animals don’t know if they should hibernate or not. People don’t rest.” Summer raised his eyebrows. “Spring, if she doesn’t let Winter take his seat, who is to say she’ll let you take yours? And if the world doesn’t grow…”
“Oh, come on, Summer.” Autumn glared at him. “You’re being ridiculous! It’s a myth! In our grandparents’ time, there was a whole two years where we had no Summer King! Autumn and Spring split it up between them while they waited for a new Summer to come of age!”
“And, as I recall, those were very chilly summers, weren’t they?” He yawned. “It’s up to you two. Winter doesn’t like me, he doesn’t talk to me, and he won’t fuck me. If you want to split his throne up between you, that’s your business. If it breaks the world- then it becomes my business.”
“Wait, who said anything about splitting it?” Autumn glared at the lanky ginger king. “Like I said, I’m not giving up the throne! He’s crazy!”
“Crazy now?” Spring frowned across the room. “I thought he was evil. And – come on, Autumn, splitting it would only be fair…”
“Both of you!” Autumn flung up her hands in frustration. “I’m going to talk to Winter! At least he makes sense!”
“Makes sense about… you taking his throne…?” Spring’s confused whisper followed the Autumn queen out of the throne room.
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Turning Leaves
Written to rix_scaedu‘s prompt.
🍁
The leaves were turning wrong.
When you lived in a wooded area for a while, you got so you could feel the rhythm of autumn. The leaves closest to the road, closest to the prevailing wind, closest to anything that chilled them down, turned first. The biggest trees turned slower. The middle of the woods turned slow and last.
But in the forest behind Erato’s house, there was an almost circular place where the leaves had starting turning quickly, almost before the little maple that faced the wind all alone to the west of her house. Continue reading
Giraffe (Zebra) Call Day Two: Prompt Away
Good morning everyone!
(or good afternoon, good evening, good night)
It’s Day Two of my Giraffe (Zebra) Call, and it’s looking to be a good one!
Check out the Call for prompts, read the stories I’ve already posted, and, if you haven’t left a prompt, go and leave some.
I’ll be here, writing about falling leaves 😀 Continue reading
Down to Talen Hall
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!
Written to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt. It wandered a bit from the prompt…
“Talen” is an homage to someone who will likely never read this… And obviously the poem/song in this is an homage to
O I forbid you, maidens all,
That wear gold in your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.
🌕
Do not go by the TalenHall
Where ruined Talen’s Holdings Lie
Continue reading
Catalog People
My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!
Written to ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt.
🛋️
Every payday, Edrio very carefully opened the Sears catalog and very carefully placed an order.
It wasn’t always Sears; it wasn’t always a catalog. Sometimes it was Penney’s, although their catalog wasn’t as good, or the furniture store, or the hardware store for some paint or some molding.
But it was always payday, and it was always a very considered purchase.
Edrio’s house wasn’t all that large. It was the smallest house that had been for sale, as a matter of fact, and he’d gotten a very good deal on it because it was old, un-updated, and a one-bedroom. The Cape Cod house had last been updated in the 50’s, if the wallpaper was any indication.
The wallpaper was the first to go, the carpet, the trim. Everything was carefully replaced, everything chosen from the catalog spreads or the display lay-outs in the stores, the colors from Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens or color-matched to a Sears spread. The effect, were anyone to walk into his house, was slightly like being inside a catalog.
In the bathroom it was the most obvious, the small room showing the carefully-coordinated shower curtain and drapes, towels and garbage can and rug. His bedroom showed the only signs of personality, a stack of battered paper-backs in between leather-covered Barnes and Noble books on a display shelf. His closet was much the same, outfits picked from the pages of the catalogs, bought and worn as exact to those pictures as possible.
The catalog purchases covered over strangeness, of course – the circle of glyphs under the living room rug and the other one in the bathroom, the tone-on-tone runes on the carefully-picked out molding, some to keep monsters in, some to keep them out. But mostly, they were to cover over Edrio.
At night, he would lie in bed, as he had since he was a child, flipping through the pages of an ancient Sears catalog. “This is real,” he’d tell himself, in a ritual as battered and as old as the pages. “This is how real people live.”
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