A Tale of the Circled Plain (beginning): Meeting

Nov3

The woman who bought Saffron had sat behind a screen for the questioning and auction process. She had insisted Saffron be blindfolded once purchased and bound, wrists to thighs, so there was no chance of messing with the blindfold as she led Saffron by the arm to her home.

Thus, Saffron had very little to go on. Her voice was smooth and sweet, her laughter easy and not so unkind as some. Her diction was easy to understand, her words simple, not the convoluted mess many inner circle people spoke. And she lived close enough to the auction center to walk home, which meant she was either in the Second circle or very close of the walls in either First or Third.

Most importantly, she owned Saffron now. She’d bought the contract, and for the next ten years, Saffron would be her Servitor, to do whatever she wished, whatever she commanded.

“Stairs,” she murmured. They were the first words she’d spoken since leaving the auction hall. Saffron let a shin hit the first stair and climbed up carefully, trying not to lean on the woman. “Just a couple more. There.”

Was she going to leave the blindfold on forever? The inner circles had some odd habits, Saffron had heard. The Flow changed them, the way it changed everyone, but some people said that the Inner circles were more twisted, far further from normal than the outer circles. Was she afraid he would freak out? Afraid he couldn’t handle her? It was far too late for any of that now.

“And here. And a few steps.” She steered Saffron down a hallway, or what could be assumed to be a hallway at least. A door opened. “Here, sit.”

Saffron sat. There was a chair there, soft and cozy. From the sounds of things, the woman sat as well.

“Saffron Techon. Normally by the time people get to four syllables, they’ve picked a gender for at least one of them.”

Saffron coughed. “Hadn’t decided yet.”

“Well, I suppose that’s a sort of decision in itself. Tell me, Saffron, why did you decide to become a Servus?”

Saffron’s gesture was cut short by the chains. “Like this, I wouldn’t survive long out on the Tenth Circle. Too skinny, too weak.”

“Mmm.” Her tone of voice suggested she agreed with that assessment. “And do you think, then, that the Second Circle will be that much safer for you?” There was danger in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

The blindfold was suddenly a shield, suddenly all that stood between Saffron and terror. A swallow did nothing to clear the lump in Saffron’s throat. “Ma’am?”

If only running was an option.

The Circled Plain has a landing page here

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1003442.html. You can comment here or there.

Priorities

Nov2

Laurelia was in the library when the lady found her. She was deep into the science section, reading up on botulism and how to avoid it when your only food source was Mystery Cans Of Food From Before The War, taking notes and wishing (privately, because she’d never admit it out loud), that she’d paid more attention in class before the school blew up.

The polite clearing of a throat was so out-of place, she didn’t register it as real at first. It was her imagination, a librarian who was offended at her note-taking or the way she’d made a nest out of the books. It was that teacher she’d been ignoring back in classes – Mrs. Enil.

The second throat-clearing made her look up. There, in clothes that were clean and tidy – brown pants and a white silk shirt, boots and a jaunty hat – with her hair pulled back in a low bun and even her make-up perfect, was a librarian, offended at her note-taking.

Laurelia went back to her book. Clearly, she was going nuts.

“Laurelia Dziedzic, daughter of Amie Sanchez-Dziedzic?”

“Hallucinations are not supposed to know my name,” she informed the librarian. “Much less my… do you know where my mother is?” If it did, she could forgive it being a clean and well-dressed hallucination.

“I’m afraid not. However, your mother, when you were born, signed you up for an exclusive school some distance away from here, and, as fate would have it, the school is still intact.”

She looked up at the hallucination. She might not have imagined a librarian with such a wild look about her, just held in by the professional outfit. She might not have imagined an exclusive school. “Slavers.”

“I promise you, there are no slavers working for or employing my school, nor working with them.”

Promises were important. “Is there food?”

“There is good food. Safe food.” The librarian looked both amused and concerned. “Will you come with me, Laurelia?”

“You promise on the food?” She was already shelving the book on botulism.

“I promise there is good and safe food where we are going.”

“Then let’s go.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1002799.html. You can comment here or there.

A Bear in Winter – a story of the Aunt Family for Patreon (free to everyone)

Nov1

A Bear In Winter



Rosaria is known in the family for her fairy tales, in all of which you can find a thread – or sometimes a hole tapestry – of truth. On occasion, Rosaria deigns to write down one of her tales. This is one, and I won’t say that it’s true or that it’s not, simply that this is how she chose to write it.

The bear had been coming around for quite some time before he vanished.

Nieves and Rosa called him that – at first it had been their private joke, but as time went on, they liked to tease him with it. It wasn’t that he was so very hairy, but he’d been wearing a dark brown coat when they first found him wandering in the snow, and his hair and his beard were long and tangled.

They lived alone with their widowed mother…

Read on…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1002690.html. You can comment here or there.

November Theme Poll!

Nov1

Hello! It’s time for the November Theme Poll!

These polls determine the theme for Patreon writing for the month, spurring the prompt call and from there several stories.

Want to check out my Patreon? Look here.
For just $1, you can read all the Patreon stories; for $5/month, you can prompt in the prompt calls!

Don’t have Dreamwidth? Please feel free to vote in the comments.

(Please pretend the poll below says “November Theme”; I can’t change ’em once they’re entered and I was sleepy last night).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1002461.html. You can comment here or there.

Into Lannamer First and Last lines, 1st day of nano

Nov1

First line of today, Into Lannamer:
The war was over.

Last line of today, Into Lannamer:
But he was unlikely to be swinging any scythes either way.

1053 words into this project, 2268 words today and I’m not quite done yet.
(there was a write-in, and then I spent some time sitting outside feeding sticks into a fire. The wifi doesn’t reach to the firepit, soo…)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1002055.html. You can comment here or there.

Bear in Winter

Nov1

a Fairy Tale of the Aunt Family

Rosaria is known in the family for her fairy tales, in all of which you can find a thread – or sometimes a whole tapestry – of truth.   

On occasion, Rosaria deigns to write down one of her tales. This is one, and I won’t say that it’s true or that it’s not, simply that this is how she chose to write it.

❄️

The bear had been coming around for quite some time before he vanished.

Nieves and Rosa called him that – at first it had been their private joke, but as time went on, they liked to tease him with it. It wasn’t that he was so very hairy, but he’d been wearing a dark brown coat when they first found him wandering in the snow, and his hair and his beard were long and tangled.

They lived alone with their widowed mother, and if they had been normal girls and their mother a normal widow, they might have been afraid to let a drifter in. The world was a dark and scary place in those days, and most people could not trust strangers. But these daughters and their widowed mother were not normal; nobody in their family was.

Even most of Nieves and Rosa’s large family chose not to entrust much in the hands of those that weren’t kin, but it was not because they were afraid. Indeed, if anything, the family they came from was too bold and too brash, forgetting that there were other powers in the world. But that is a story for another day.

The bear, as Nieves and Rosa called him, had been visiting them for months and months – not every day, but on the coldest days, the worst days, he would knock on their door, as they’d assured him he could, and they would give him a place to sleep, and a warm meal, and stay up into the wee hours talking to him.

They’d found their drifter, their bear, in the middle of a blizzard, trying to sleep in the shelter of their wood-pile. And sometimes, when he was feeling shy, they still found him there. So when he didn’t show up for days and for days, as the snow fell and fell, Nieves and Rosa took to lighting a lantern out there, in hopes that their bear would return to them.

When a month had gone by without him – and it was a long winter, and a hard one; he’d first shown up in October and now it was nearly the end of March – they went to their mother. “We need to look for him,” Nieves declared.

“We need to find our Bear,” Rosa agreed.

The three of them sat down in their living room, the lanterns burning and the fire hot, and they did what it was that their family did.

They called upon the spirits and the powers, the strings that bound the universe and the little threads that bind humans. They reached and they stretched, searching through the dark places and the demons’ hidey-holes, looking in every cave and pit they could find.

The minutes stretched into hours and the lanterns burned low. The fire sank down to coals and still they reached. Their family’s power stretched to its limits – for the family was tied to their little intersection, their blood and their bones, and so was its power – and still they reached.

And there, so far out that they could barely brush him, there, lost in a cave so deep the light never shone, there, stuck in a pit of misery that locked around him like chains and held him down like giant rocks, there they found their bear.

They were cold, but they were so close to their goal. They were tired, but they could brush their fingers against his soul. They were in danger, so far out in the woods of the world, but they had come this far.

“If we just nudge here,” Nieves said, and

“If we just poke here,” Rosa said, and

“If we file a little bit here,” their mother said, for she, too, was fond of the bear. And they nudged and they poked, they filed and they shaved, until the chains that bound him were loosened. And then their mother took a step back, holding a lantern made of love and made of family. And Nieves and Rosa leaned in, and, in their spirit forms, they kissed their bear’s cheeks.

“Come back to us,” they whispered, as one. “Come home to us.”

And their bear opened his eyes and smiled at them. “You know what?” His psychic voice was so quiet as to be a breath and nothing more, but so were theirs. “I think I will.”

And it is said that he returned to them as the snow finally melted, their bear, in a coat as yellow as gold, and knelt down in front of them to ask them to marry him. But that, my children, is a story for another day, and a very good one at that.

Into Lannamer: the final (I hope) rewrite of a novel 10+ years in the making

Nov1

The war is over. Rin wants to go home. But if she doesn’t take the recalcitrant, difficult Girey with her, he’ll either be dead, the center of a rebellion neither nation can handle right now, or both.

Girey just wants to go home, too. But chained to the back of Rin’s goat, he’s finding himself going in exactly the wrong direction.

This is going to be a long journey!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/994734.html. You can comment here or there.

The Kraken of World/Story Development, part Four: Technology (For Into Lannamer)

Oct30

I found this thing: http://kittyspace.org/leviathan0.html and I’m gonna play with it because I’m finding it instructional!

The technology in Reiassan is at roughly height-of-the-Roman-empire.

They have steel; primary weapons is a sword similar to a gladius.

Points of interest: saddles have stirrups, and are between a western saddle and an English – wider, heavier than an English but without the large pommel horn.

Items of tech needed in various scenes:
Tents (mostly ridge-style)
Saddles
Chains! Chains, shackles, but an older style and a newer style.
Clothing (narrow loom), button-making (carving knives), metal casting

Bridges and barges, Erie-style goat-pulled and… hrrm. Not sure how else they get back UP the rivers. Bridge-building technology was a priority.

Mountain pass carving: how do they do that?

Building construction – so stonecutting, since they have very little wood in the mid-north.

They heat by mostly coal, bog peat and red sira; they use scrub wood and the wind-blasted bushes as fuel as well, since they’re not very good for lumber. They have mastered a well-drafting chimney; many houses and public spaces use a hypocaust-style heating system.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1001264.html. You can comment here or there.

(Sha-la-la-la-la-la) Don’t be scared, a ficlet of Doomsday Academy

Oct30

She’d been doing well enough at hiding for so long. It seemed unfair.

Ruth had been at Doomsday for five years and was working on her sixth when the “transfer student” arrived.

Everyone else seemed to have seen the new girl before Ruth did. She heard the whispers in her first-hour class, straight-out speculation by third hour, and brand new rumors by lunchtime.

It wasn’t until her last class that she saw her, though. Tall and lovely, dark skin and full lips and little horns sticking out through her long dark hair. Tófa. Ruth smiled and shook her hand, bowed and welcomed her to Doomsday. Those were the polite things to do. Those were the right things to do. Not… not what she wanted to do.

Doomsday had been an adjustment for her, right from the first. There were fae everywhere, tolerated and – more than tolerated – accepted. The woman who ran the school was a fae! Almost all their teachers were fae! Her mother – who had moved to Cloverleaf to be near Ruth – had told her to “be patient, and all will be revealed in the fullness of time.”

…and the fullness of Tófa’s lips…. no. No.

Doomsday was far more open than her home, as was Cloverleaf. Her mother seemed to adjust quickly to the permissive culture: The women and men working in the same spaces, the lack of chaperons or morality-guardians or even just priests. Ruth had felt quietly ashamed for weeks as she learned she not only would have classes with boys – and taught by male teachers, male FAE! – but that she would dorm with them, in the same big room.

But it wasn’t boys that were the problem. If the morality-guardians knew what she was thinking now…

Her own Change, painful and slow and butterfly-beautiful, had not been so shattering as the thoughts she had kept quietly to herself. She knew she was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong. She couldn’t go home again anyway, not like this. Not fae. She wasn’t sure she would choose to go back to the priests and the chaperons, even if she didn’t look like the demons in their books.

And if she was never going home, the morality-guardians and their nightsticks would never be a problem. And her mother… her mother was becoming far more tolerant, living in Coverleaf, than Ruth had ever thought possible.

But her teachers, her peers… Ruth swallowed and looked around. They allowed so much, but would they allow…. would they truly allow her…

“Well, what are you waitin’ for?” Professor Sweetflower leaned over Ruth, whispering in her ear. “Kiss the girl, darlin’.”

Doomsday is part of Fae Apoc and has a landing page here. Ruth and Tófa are new characters.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1001058.html. You can comment here or there.

The Kraken of World/Story Development, part Three: Money (For Into Lannamer)

Oct29

I found this thing: http://kittyspace.org/leviathan0.html and I’m gonna play with it because I’m finding it instructional!

Sidetrack- Army Ranks
Of 7.2 million on the continent, about 4.8 million are Calenyena. Of those, about 480,000 are active in the army.

Leaf, rank-one
Double, Squad Leader (Squad of Nine)
Trefoil, Ride Commander (9 squads – 90 soldiers)
Starred, Fist commander (9 rides – 819 soldiers)
kalōkāt, War Leader (9 Fists – 7380 soldiers)
calenkat, Army Leader (9 Wars – 66,429 soldiers)
Emperor, leader of the Forces (Up to 9 armies – currently 7,465,010 soldiers)

7. DETERMINE YOUR ECONOMIC VARIANCE.
jot down two to three sentences about the economic aspect of the setting.

Cafangnia is on the major river (Velka Ree in Calenyen) and, before the assault and occupation by the Calenyena, it was a major trade hub for the Bitrani. It was an affluent city, one of the richest in the nation, and also – because of its proximity to the Calenyena – one of the best defended.

At the time of the story, it had been fairly thoroughly plundered. Anyone who had the wherewithal to leave has long since left. Its remaining defenses have been taken over by the Calenyena.

The border territories have very little permanent agriculture and few permanent structures, at least on any travel route. Deep in the mountains, far off the river or the roads, some people live; others live just far enough off the road and the river to not be seen or easily found, not be bothered by soldiers or by deserters. Many of those people are bandits, and they are tolerated by the others so long as they take their cut only from travelers, and leave enough for the trading stations to plunder more legally.

There are former towns along both river and road. There have been long periods of peace before, and the Calenyena and the border Bitrani build in stone. Sometimes, a group who lives further back in the mountains will take up residence in a town when the army is passing through, just long enough to sell them wares.

On a separate piece of scratch paper, jot down two or three sentences about the economic background of every character who appears or lives in that city or country.

Characters encountered in this section include:

Bek and Torie, prisoner guards:

A career rank-1, Torie has made herself comfortable on her soldier’s wage by supplementing it with gambling, trading, and small plunder. She has an upscale tent, a nice brazier, her own goat, a very nice bedroll, and enough money and plunder squirreled away to perhaps set up a tavern, but only if she got a bit of financial help.

Bek has only been a soldier a few months. He comes from a goat-breeder’s family – hard work but profitable – but is only pulling basic soldier’s wages so far. He owns his own goat and that’s about it.

The Prisoners:

Some of these were farmers, some the equivalent of serfs; some were officers, one dukes, several landed noblemen. Right now, they have had everything they were carrying seized; their land is likely to be grabbed by the invaders. The difference between serf and duke right now is the quality of the clothes they’re wearing – and their potential fate.

The Calenyena spying on them:

Is a mid-ranked weasel who is good at collecting favors. They wear much of their wealth (as the Calenyena and many originally nomadic people tend to) and could comfortably buy a small plot of land and house with what they carry/possess.

Exiting check-point and another unit:
These go from basic rank-1 soldiers who own their clothing (three changes of clothes, two changes of boots), and, if they’re lucky, their goat, all the way up to a Fist Commander who has at least 7 changes of clothing and enough salary to own a decent house when they leave. A Fist Commander owns their own goat and a remount/pack animal, and has a tent big enough for comfort.

Border-people:

a fortified piece of property, several goats, enough food to get through a long winter. Individually, they often own gee-gaws and jewelry or trinkets given to them or traded to them by passing soldiers. They are not affluent, but they survive well enough.

Tracker:

Mid-ranked soldier in the special forces, outside of a squad or Ride and directly serving a fist commander. They are decently paid, enough to rent a decent place in a city for a year when they leave the army, three-four changes of clothing.

Variance runs from:

Owns nothing at all, not even themselves

Owns enough to survive, even it by scratching by

Owns enough for comfort

Owns enough for comfort and some luxury

Almost all of these people, however, have a slightly to much greater comfort level because of family and/or community; see Rin’s earnings as a mid-ranked healer vs. her family wealth, Bek’s rank-one salary vs. his family’s goat-wealth.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1000671.html. You can comment here or there.