Patreon! Patreon! PATREON!

May23

When I posted The Gardener I was asked (and now I can’t find where, sigh) about Damkina and the apocalypse. So here is Damkina and the apocalypse, considerably longer than I’d intended. 🙂
🏡

The sky was black and red, and in the distance an unearthly howl echoed through the city. But the squash would not forgive her skipping their bug treatment and the weeds in the pepper garden were unseemly.

Damkina muttered wards against bugs as she slammed her hoe into the ground with more force than was strictly necessary.

Free for all Patrons!


Originally posted on 2012. If you sense a theme, it’s likely because “Wine and/or roses” was the Giraffe Call theme in Feb. 2012.
💐

It was, as fairy gifts went, rather strange.

As wedding gifts go, it was even odder.

Read On!

It was hot so the ganache frosting melted and my food photography really needs work, sorry!
🍓

When baking chocolate things in my household, there are two things that we almost always do to up the chocolate flavor, and two more we do as we remember to:

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Toot Planets

May19

Because [personal profile] inventrix‘s Mastodon instance is tootplanet, and because Catterfly has been making a tootplanet a day, I’ve been writing a series of little 500-character-or-less survey logs of planets for an exploration ship.

There’s a thread of them here: https://tootplanet.space/@aldersprig/79825

And here’s one

Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub. 13

We came upon a lovely system-2 planets in our search parameters, orbiting close together.

The further one sported vast ruins, but only around the equator. They were taller than anything back home, almost belting the planet-but no radio signals, no signs of current occupancy. We sent several probes. We may send a team when we loop back around.

The closer planet showed life just above stone-age. We sent a stealth probe, nothing else.

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It took me 30 random clicks to get a Fae Apoc Icon… Patreon Posts

May18

More of a vignette than a true story, a bit involving two pure-bred Ellehemaei some time not too long before The War. Verena has appeared recently in “…There is a Military Group in the Area. …”

💍

“I’m sorry, Tancred, but our family is depleted and this was the deal we could make.”

Tancred‘s mother didn’t look all that sorry. If anything, she looked pleased.

That was like her, though. She’d solved two problems with one stone.

Free for all Patrons!


Originally posted during the run of Addergoole: The Original Series, so sometime between 2009 & 2012.
☔
It rained at Martin’s funeral; Meckil made sure of it.

She wasn’t allowed at the funeral; ancient ancestral promises banned her from hallowed ground across the continent. So she stood outside, under the branches of the linden tree that had Named her, dressed in mourning as befit a widow, heedless of the scandal, and watched, working the Words of the rainfall into Martin’s eulogy.
Read On!

After Beryl and one Specific Boy, which is after B is for Beryl and her Boys.
🌙

“I know,” Jake admitted, “a cemetery isn’t really the ordinary sort of place to take a girl on a date. But I figured, you’re not an ordinary sort of girl, and, really, I’m not really all that normal myself, so why would we go on an ordinary date?

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“…There is a military group in the sea…”

May17

Fae-Apoc, at the apocalypse, California, 2011.

Verena Truth-Blade was rich. She had gotten that way through patience and dedication, two things her breed were not known for, and by knowing when the time was to spend and when to save.

She had learned that throwing experts at a problem, not money, was the best idea, properly-motivated experts, and had cultivated stables of such experts throughout the centuries.

So when the gods started attacking her home, she got on the phone.

“We’re not going to make it into space in time,” she told the head of her design team for the very-long-term space-station project. “Because our infrastructure is about to be destroyed out from under us. New project. We’re going under water.”

“We’re what?”

She laid out the project, ending with “give me specs, I’ll take care of the manufacturing. We’re in a hurry, we’re not cutting any corners but we are taking shortcuts.”

“Are those like…”

“Like that, yeah. We’ve got two weeks.”

“You know that’s impossible, right?”

“So’s surviving when the building falls down on your head. Work.”

Then Verena called in another set of experts and got them working on something she steadfastly refused to call an ark: a boat that could withstand the roughest seas they could imagine. She told them the same thing: “I’ll take care of manufacturing. Get me specs.”

She hung up the phone and wrote a list of everyone she cared about and wanted to save. Then she started contacting them.

Two days later, she went to the local sex-slave salesplace, first the legit one, where every potential Kept was vetted and had volunteered, and then to the shady one, where none of that happened. “I need everyone who can handle Meentik, Shape, and Transmute,” she told them, “I’ll pay well and they’ll be well-taken care of,” she said at the first place, and “I won’t ask any uncomfortable questions,” at the second place.

With her new team of six workers assembled, she informed them, “you’re going to work your asses off for six months, but I’m going to do my damndest to save you from the returned gods, and then you can live out the remainder of your five-year term pampered and Kept in the way that best pleases and suits you. Understand?”

They were wide-eyed, shell-shocked, and worried, but they nodded.

Then the real work began.

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Inordinary Date – a Patreon Story

May17
After Beryl and one Specific Boy, which is  after B is for Beryl and her Boys .

🌙

“I know,” Jake admitted, “a cemetery isn’t really the ordinary sort of place to take a girl on a date. But I figured, you’re not an ordinary sort of girl, and, really, I’m not really all that normal myself, so why would we go on an ordinary date?  Besides,” he added, with amused candor, “there’s nothing good at the movie theatre, my friends can be a pain and they tend to eat at the diner nights like this, and if I’m going to go for moonlight and stars, the park’s more likely to have kids smoking weed and the cops like to check out the playground.”

Beryl grinned at him and made sure he saw it.  “That sounds like very good logic.  What would you have done, though, if I was the sort to get creeped out by cemeteries?”

“Apologize profusely for misjudging you and take you out for ice cream?  And then maybe down to the creek.  It’s pretty this time of year, too.” Continue reading →

The Hidden Mall Part II

May16

Part I
💰 💸 💰 💸 💰
Abigail reached out her hand without thinking. “What – oh.” It was an amulet, bronze-like in color, the script swirling around it looking similar to that on the awning.

“What is it?” Liv crowded in close. “What – hunh. What is it?” she repeated.

“I’m not sure,” Abigail admitted.

“It is,” the old woman interjected, “a key and a shield, a sword and a lock. It will do what you need it to. And for you two, it is free. Now, should you want something else, do come in and look around.”

Oh, a freebie. Abigail slid the amulet on its cord around her neck and stepped into the old woman’s shop.

Inside seemed like a tent more than a shop, with blankets layering the walls until you couldn’t see the shape of the room it was in, shelves stacked here and there and hangers dangling from ropes criss-crossing the ceiling. The skirts and dresses hanging from the hangers were the prettiest things Abigail had ever seen.

Liv, on the other hand, seemed drawn to the cases of jewelry and strange things arranged in a back corner. Abigail found her digging in her pocket. “I’m down to five dollars,” she moaned. “I never should have gotten that stupid necklace from Spencer’s.”

“I will trade,” the old woman suggested. “The ‘stupid necklace’ for this piece you want.”

The piece looked like scrimshaw, a twist of bone carved with an elaborate pattern.

“Is that even legal to own?” Abigail wondered.

The old woman smiled. “The animal it comes from is not endangered. A trade? The piece you regret for this piece? It will look lovely with that blue dress in your bag.”

Liv looked down at the piece, sighed, and nodded. “A trade, thank you. That’s very nice of you.”

“I deal in trades,” the woman told her, “and regrets. Thank you for your custom, young ladies.”
Without seeming as if they were leaving, they were outside her shop again.

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1328765.html

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Family Ties – a Drabble of Cynara

May16

See Also Plans
Let’s see, Math.
Cya starts year 6, 2000 AD
Yoshi starts Year 24, 2018 AD
The White Stag grandson starts… year 41? We’ll say 41, 2035
The next one is year 60, great-grandson, 2056
So call this 2064.

There were two people at Iasthai’s front door: a woman with a red streak through chocolate-brown hair and a very skinny man with hair so blonde it was nearly white. They weren’t part of the neighborhood, that much Iasthai knew; it was a small enough, isolated enough village that she knew all her neighbors — and they were clean and well-dressed like Addergoole people, but they weren’t anyone Iasthai recognized from there either.

The woman looked familiar, but Iasthai couldn’t quite place where or why.

“Iasthai?” She asked like it was a formality.

“That’s me,” she agreed carefully.

“I’m Cya Dayton, called Doomsday, and this is Charno, called Speedforce.”

“Ah? I see?” Oh… Oh! She took a step backwards.

“I swear to you, I come here meaning no harm to you or yours.”

Iasthai relaxed slowly. “How can I help you?”

“I’m hoping we can help each other.” She didn’t ask to come in; Iasthai appreciated it.

“How’s that?” she asked, carefully. One didn’t want to offend Red Doomsday.

“I like to keep track of my kin, to help them out. Unfortunately for that urge, my line tends towards boys.”

Iasthai glanced unwillingly to the back of her cottage, where her sons were playing. “…And?”

“And I’m willing to offer you and your household a home in Cloverleaf, five years’ living expenses, and pre-Addergoole education for all of your children if you will agree to allow me visitation with my grand— hrrm… great-great-grandson,” she murmured that part even quieter than the rest of her speech.

“You, not his father?”

“His deals are his own.”

“He — he said you suggested me.” She found her shoulders tightening.

“Ah, well, it’s harder and harder to find those that aren’t related to us or to Boom as a whole, the more generations go to Addergoole.”

“So you could find him for me?”

The woman smiled slowly. “As long as you agreed that you meant him no permanent harm and would Keep him no more than, say… four years.”

“You’d agree to that?” What kind of grandmother was she?

“My grands make their own mistakes. Besides, it might allow him to know his sons, and that would do him good.”

“Sons?” Iasthai asked, despite herself.

The woman’s smile grew to something sharp and amused. “I already negotiated with his first-year Keeper.”

Iasthai looked back at her tiny cottage. She took a breath. It wasn’t a great place, but they’d accepted her with no questions and liked her medical ability. “I’ll do it. WIth those caveats. Come back in… a week, if you can, and we’ll be ready to go.”

“I’ll see you in a week. Thank you, Iasthai.”

A house, a stipend, and her first-year Keeper tracked down for her. And Red Doomsday acted like Iasthai was doing her a favor. “You’re quite welcome, sa’Doomsday.”

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Fourth Date: Cya and Manus

May14

A bit later than:
Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up and Getting to (re-)Know him
and Also Needs a Title
and More Cya Date and So, Tell me About your Day

See also: Red Thorns.
🍽️
For their fourth date, Manus brought her a town.

It was more of a settlement, really, a very small grouping of people who all looked at her with big, worried eyes and seemed to be very worried about their lot in life.

She’d known something was up when her normally-peaceful boyfriend was armed and suggested she do the same. “Should I bring a bodyguard?” she’d asked, mostly joking.

“no, that will spook them too much.,” his answer was a lot more serious. “You’ll be safe. you outpower all of them.”

“Them” was this settlement, twenty-three people in a burned-out town that probably hadn’t seen real inhabitance in decades. They looked up at her, and looked at Manus, and looked back at her.

“They want to fly the Cloverleaf flag,” he told her. “We caught them raiding, and stopped them pretty thoroughly, but they looked more hungry than fierce – sorry, guys – and, well..”

She walked up to one who had dropped his Mask and looked like a ragged, sad, coyote. She pulled aside his shirt and saw two red thorn marks. “Raiders?”

“Former Raiders,” Manus clarified. “They agreed to stop raiding, but one of their terms was that I try to get you to talk to them. Since I know you, well, I agreed to that.”

“So.” She looked them over. “You want to fly my flag.”

The coyote one cleared his throat. “It gives us a little bit of protection, ma’am, and considering where we’re from, we could use that protection.”

She looked at the next one over. No thorn-marks on his skin, but he had the old scars of a collar. He looked worried, and too thin, but they all looked too thin.

“And where exactly are you from?” She aimed the question at the one in front of her. She thought he might be human.

He shied away but forced himself to meet her eyes. “We belonged to the Shenera Oseraei. We didn’t want to belong to them anymore.”

“Halfbreeds,” muttered the woman on the other side of him, “and slaves. We ran away.”

“I hope you ran far, because I’m not in the mood for a war.”

The one on the end waved their hand weakly. “Teleporter, and Eo’sedek there can mask anything. So we should be safe. We came here, this far, because of Cloverleaf.”

“What do you think?” she asked Manus, although she could already guess, since he’d brought her here.

“I think they could do with some structure, and with some protection, and probably with some running water and a little help with food.”

“All right.” She studied them. “You fly my flag, you follow my laws. You want my support, you do what I tell you.”

One of the ones that were probably human stepped forward. “We want to be free, not just under another master.”

“And you will be. I won’t force obedience, but I will force lawfulness and I will give you homework.” She looked around the group. “In return, I’ll give you aid, help you rebuild this place into something comfortable, and you can fly my flag, with all the protections involved.”

“Homework?” asked the coyote suspiciously.

“Ah. Sometimes I forget I’m a teacher. Assignments to do or think about when I’m not here, as a – a human teacher might give a student.”

They shifted, looked at each other. “Like what?” asked the human one who wanted to be free.

“Well. First assignment, and I’ll be back in two days with food, water, and some other things: come up with one to four rules for your community that you can all agree on. Things to bind all of you. No bullying people into them; they have to be comfortable for everyone.”

“And we can fly the Cloverleaf?” The coyote’s ears were back. Poor thing was worried.

Poor thing had attacked her city at least twice.

“And you can fly the Cloverleaf. And those of you with thorns, I grant you the obvious exemption that you can enter your own town within the three years of your oath. Do we have a deal?”

They looked at each other. After a moment, the coyote nodded.

“We have a deal, sa’Doomsday.”

“Excellent. I’ll see you in two days.”

They wandered off slowly, Manus and Cya, to where Isra was waiting to teleport them home. “You looked like you were having fun?” he asked.

“That was a wonderful gift,” she assured him. “Thank you.”

“Do I get homework, too?” He grins insouciantly at her, and she found herself grinning back.

“Only if you want it, my dear, only if you want it.”

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