Okay! So the next thing on my list of things to write this weekend is a setting piece.
Dragons next Door won the setting-piece poll (Dreamwidth) by a landslide, 7 to 4 vote each for the 2 runners-up.
So I’ll be writting a page of Encyclopedia Draconica this evening.
And then a piece of Encyclopedia Stranded Or Reiassan.
What would you like to know about these settings?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239831.html. You can comment here or there.
For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of yesterday’s installement: Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)
Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
In today’s installment, our plucky protagonist and her slave get names!
“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”
I chewed on my lip, and then, immediately, stopped myself. That was a girl’s habit, a childish trait. He’d helped me break myself of it – why was it coming up now? I could see in her eyes that she’d noticed, however, and judged me for it.
“You are, I’d agree, quite unforgettable.” The audacious words were out of my mouth; again, my voice was working without having asked my common sense what I should do. That wasn’t her power, was it? I struggled to recall, and couldn’t. If so, what a masterful use!
But she was smiling. “You have some spark in you, don’t you? I like that.” She gestured, cutting off my objection: she’d snuffed the spark out of him long before she’d discarded him. “Slaves are slaves. A woman who will be ruling part of my territory, that’s a different matter. Do you think we can get along, Treanna?”
“I believe we can work together, your Ladyship.” There, now my brain and my vocal chords were working together. “I believe I can serve very well under you.” Wait, what? Was I flirting with my liege lady? I hated her! I didn’t want to flirt with her!
But her smile was growing. “I believe you would. However, as you’ve noted, when someone serves under me, there is rather less of them to enjoy when I am done. That’s why I sold him, you know.”
“I’m sorry?” I blinked, trying to change gears. What was she doing to me, this Ice Queen? “You sold Michael because…”
“There is a length of time one can serve under me. I kept him longer than I’d intended; he serves so beautifully, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and he is, himself, so flawless.”
Except the brand. But for her, that, too, could have been part of his perfection. “He is a beautiful man, and a wonderful servant,” I agreed, perhaps more warmly than I should have – but I was in love with him, so painfully so. “But he will not love me.”
“Not will not,” she sighed. “Cannot. I had hoped that, with enough time away, he might recover, but I’m not sure he will. Will he let you remove the brand?”
It should have been illegal, but he might have consented. Probably had consented. And would not consent to me having it smoothed from his skin. “No, your Ladyship.”
She sighed again, deeper. “Well, then, sadly, there is our answer. He doesn’t fail to love you, Treanna, because you are not a beautiful young lady – although you are very young – but because he cannot stop loving me.”
“Can’t you stop it?” I almost wailed. Later, I’d remember this with mortification and humiliation, but being around the Ice Queen opened all of your stops, eliminated all of your self-control. “Can’t you make him love me?”
She shook her head slowly, looking almost sympathetic. I hadn’t thought she had an emotion like sympathy in her. “No. No, I cannot. But I can tell you this. In a year, you will look at him, and you will know that, as much as you love him, you can’t keep him anymore. You can’t look at that face, that face that knows all of your youthful silliness, any longer.” She held up a hand. “I know this, Treanna, because, believe it or not, I was nineteen once, myself. And when this happens… come to me again, and we will talk.” She sipped her tea, her eyes smirking at me. “I’ll enjoy it.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239537.html. You can comment here or there.
Because the January Giraffe Call (LJ) reached (exceeded!) the $201 level, I will hold a mid-month one-setting Giraffe Call.
Manually xposted from – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239185.html
For flofx‘s prompt, with information from this site.
I do not know how to protect my church from this.
I have been protecting this land for centuries, since they buried me at the front gate of the church-yard. I have warned them of trouble, frightened off vandals, and, on more than one occasion, reminded the good people of the town that there were things beyond the mundane.
I was a lamb, once. Once long before this existence. I can remember, vaguely, the warmth of my mother, the green of the grass, the sweetness of milk. And then there was the dirt, and then this life, this non-life existence, protecting this land.
I was the first buried here, or at least, the first buried in the hallowed ground here. Others who came before me, animals and human, were chased off, pushed off, by the blessing of the land, only their physical remains staying to sweeten the ground and grow the daisies. But others came, human and animal, some lingering, some moving on quickly.
They are all gone, too, every one of them. Nothing but a chipmunk has been buried in my ground in more years than I have ways to count. The people don’t come as often, either, nor as many, to pay homage to the dead, to remember those that have gone. It is harder and harder to make them know me, to chase off thieves and vandals.
And now… now this problem is bigger than I am. Now, this land which has only me and the old priest to protect it is being encroached upon. The city has gotten bigger and bigger, growing from a small town to a behemoth. It has pushed at the edges before, toppling the old stone wall, but always before we could hold it back, him and I. Always before there were others to help.
Now they would dig up the church-yard, they have already begun to dig, to move the remains to cold crypts, to make room for their new building. Now they would take the land from me, and me from the land, and what will i do? Guard a landfill? I am too much of this place to leave it. I am too proud to let them ruin my churchyard.
They say, those who buried me, that one must be buried alive to serve this way. And they have dug such a deep hole, there by the first of the graves. If they could see me, if they could be frightened enough by me…
…then the priest and I would have another to protect the land with us.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238941.html. You can comment here or there.
For @DaHob’s prompt, based on a Cali idea.
Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
When the Countess called me in for tea, I didn’t know what to think.
I knew why, of course. My mother was ailing, young as she was, and I was her heir. I would be the Countess’s loyal Baroness soon enough, and I was (so I had been told a thousand times), young for the position. She needed to get the measure of me.
The problem was, I had the measure of her already. I had the feel of her hand and the chains she left on a mind – not in person, she wasn’t the sort of liege to do that to her vassals – but in proxy, in the slave who was mine, who had once been hers. I had it in the brand on his hip that I couldn’t avoid, every time I touched him, and the marks in his mind, the way that, even after she’d set him aside, he still loved her.
I went, of course. You do not turn down an invitation from a Countess unless you’re the Queen herself. I put on the proper clothes and the proper smile, mouthed the proper words, and spoke business of her for a while.
But it made me twitch, when I heard phrases from her lips that I’d first heard from his, or, worse, when I found myself echoing one of her phrases, because I’d picked it up from him. He’d been with me for five years, my first sex slave, my first Companion, my first “grown-up” slave, fresh from the market where she’d sold him, the Ice Queen, my Countess. He’s seen every woe and misery, every triumph, held me while I cried and celebrated with me when I succeeded. He knew all my secrets, and all my buttons. And he was still in love with her.
“He remembers you, you know.”
I didn’t realize at first that I’d said it. It was in the middle of a conversation on something banal, trade rights, I think. Important, but not what was on my mind. Nor hers, I think, because she didn’t ask “who,” merely raised an eyebrow, one perfect, impossible eyebrow.
“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238721.html. You can comment here or there.
This is a story of my RP-in-Addergoole character, Cynara, some years after the apoc but not that many, sending her oldest son Yoshi off to Addergoole. She’s shown up in (see landing page) a couple stories before.
“All right, Yoshi, is everything packed?” Cynara knew the question was stupid. Of course everything was packed. She’d taken care of the first run herself, and the third run, and let her oldest handle the middle stuff himself. Everything was in its place, and Yoshi was heading off to school like she had, so many-so few years ago.
“Everything’s set, Mom.” To his credit, he tried not to let her see him roll his eyes. “I hid the rowan like you said, left the steel where Luke can see it, and I have the throw-away knife for him to take off of me. I’ve got food for two weeks and clothes… for an entire school… for at least a week. Who wears this many clothes?”
“Boys who want to meet girls who don’t think they stink,” she answered, the mom part of her brain working on automatic pilot. “Which I assume you eventually will, once your… ‘cousins’…. stop leaning on you.”
This time, he didn’t bother hiding the eye-roll. “No interest in being a lap-pet, thanks, Mom.”
Now she couldn’t help but chuckle. Looking over at Ankara, she wasn’t surprised at her oldest’s assessment of “meeting girls,” but…
“Your father was never a lap-pet,” she lied. “Your Uncle Howard, Uncle Leofric… not all men are puppy dogs.”
“No,” he laughed, “some are rabbits. Cursed gods, I’m not going to grow ears like that, am I?”
“You can’t blame Ankara for his heritage,” she answered, but she was smiling, too. “Well, one of your grandfathers has antlers. I can’t guarantee how you’ll turn out, but I’m sure you’ll be handsome.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238292.html. You can comment here or there.
Reiassan has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ; this is a story of Steam!Reiassan, far in the future of the Rin & Girey story
The city had been mapped before.
Everything on the continent had been mapped in one reign or another, the oceans around it charted, the flows of rivers, of aether, called sira now, even the ice movement diagrammed. But as the science grew, so did the methods of charting, mapping, and diagramming, and now, under the Emperor, the entire city of Lannamer was being mapped again.
They picked a corner to start from, drove a deep bronze pole into the ground, surrounded that with a stone compass rose, and settled the whole thing against flood, earthquake, and storm with judicious use of aetheric shifting and quite a bit of praying.
From there, engineers who would otherwise be idle, now that they were in a time of peace, were turned to surveying, measuring with a stick marked off in precise hoof-widths (the hoof in question having been cast in bronze off the original goat some centuries past).
Katyebah, who had joined the Emperor’s engineer team to design weapons of war, was a little disgruntled to find herself measuring buildings and surveying sun- and moon-lines down the streets. But the Army had paid for her education, so the next seven years of her life, whatever her feelings on the matter, belonged to the Emperor, so measure and survey she did. And because her team-mate was a pleasant sort and a grandson of His Majesty, she tried to do so with a smile.
“These old buildings,” Oton told her, “with the sixty degree angles? They were paying homage to the Three. But it certainly makes mapping the streets tricky, with nothing in the old neighborhoods at a right angle…”
“…And everything in the newer neighborhoods all square,” she agreed. She was, at the moment, frowning over a place where one of the oldest neighborhoods met up with a shiny-new set of construction, built on fill over what had been swamp and flood plain. “Pass me the protractor?”
“You think they’re difficult to draw, you should try getting a laden cart around these corners when you’re coming down a hill.” The voice surprised both of them; Oton dropped the brass protractor with a clatter. “Or, worse yet, coming down a hill in winter during the busy time of day when someone’s planted a stand in the middle of the road. If the Emperor wants the city easier to navigate, my lord and lady, he might think of widening the intersections.”
Katyebah had, during this speech, turned to look at their visitor, who appeared to be, from his dress, a carter of some skill and success, with the most astonishing blue eyes she had ever see (to be fair, they were the first blue eyes she had ever seen, as well). She worked her mouth, trying to find the words to tell him that this was just mapping, not decision-making, that she didn’t know if the Emperor even knew he had a traffic problem, that she sympathized with his troubles… But all she could make out, from a throat suddenly dry, was “I’m not a Lady.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/237859.html. You can comment here or there.
The Giraffe Call is Still Open (and on LJ)! It will stay open until this evening.
Also, if you have prompted but only left one or two prompts, please feel free to leave a couple more! We’ve gotten to the incentive levels where everyone gets at least 3 prompts written to, whether or not they tipped!
At $211, we are just $29 from reaching the next incentive level, where I will hold a chat session with characters! (At this level, I’ll almost have paid off the carpet as well as the furnace bill!)
Claim your words! If you have donated to this call, or to any call, you can ask for $x100 words continuation on any story posted here!
Back to writing!
Linkback Incentive Story (and ON LJ)
Summary so far:
One-offs
First Steps (LJ) The city remembers
The Dark Places, the Numbered Streets (LJ) – Ance seeks a real adventure. And finds it.
Recovering the City (LJ)
The Tuesday Map (LJ) Life in the BAELZ.
Souvenir (LJ) A little something from every city
Birth of a City (LJ) It started with asteroid miners…
Breaking Ground (LJ)
…On My Parade (LJ)
Down in Human Town (LJ)
The Cracks
Through the Cracks (LJ)
“China is Here” (LJ)
Unicorn/Factory
Unicorn Chase (LJ)
Dragons
Origins of Smokey Knoll (LJ)
Planning Board Woes (LJ)
Facets
Underneath (LJ) [Josie[
Shadow Rebellion
Evoloution (LJ)
Planners
a Growing Plan (LJ)
Vas
Further Exploration Reveals… (LJ)
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/237788.html. You can comment here or there.
For ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lilfluff‘s Prompt, with thanks to @inventrix and fourteen minutes for the names.
The humans hadn’t been the first to Landfall-Etrian, but they hadn’t been latecomers, either.
The lush, Earth-like planet had been discovered in a prime location in a solar system not all that far, as galactic scales went, from Earth; the Fordante had discovered it (at the same time as the Ngedik, and totally ignoring the Exxonoth who were native to the planet).
(Actually, humans could be grateful to the Fordante and Ngedik, because without them “inviting” other races to “their” planet, the potentially-sentient status of the Exxonoth would have precluded their settlement. But that’s another story).
The various races had their own settlements, their own towns, their own desires from this beautiful, resource-rich planet, but in the two main port cities, they all came together, melting into a messy, loud, fragrant salad of multi-culturalism, governed by the Fordante and primarily financed by the Ngedik. And in these port cities, there grew up a human-town, ripe with the flavors of home and all the variations Landfall-Etrian could provide.
“What is this?” The translation program wasn’t perfect yet, but Alukri could get the gist of the Ngediko’s question.
“It’s called sushi.” She stretched the word out, enunciating the sounds the Ngediko’s mouth-parts could handle and not leaning too hard on the susurrations. Most of the Ngedik called it loo-lee, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. “It’s fish – lina-in-the-sea from the Rion Ocean here in the port – wrapped in rice and seaweed. Try it; it’s a human delicacy.”
“You humans eat the strangest things,” the Ngediko muttered, but it wrapped its mouthparts around the spicy tuna roll, clicking in appreciation. “Wooo! This is almost as attacks-the-mouth as the [5] yll-yoll-loll! You should try some of that, human.”
“After you try our bomber roll. We imported the wasabi roe from Earth. Here, just one…” Alukri smiled wickedly, knowing that the Ngediko would not translated the gesture properly. Tourists were the same wherever you went.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/237531.html. You can comment here or there.
No matter how much they tormented him, Eilon insisted to the last that it had not been intentional. With no proof, no Law against it, and a seeming inability to force the truth out of him, the Jiminies had to let him go – but they held a grudge against the narrow-hipped dryad boy as long as their memory held out.
Luckily for Eilon, the length of a Jiminiy’s memory was just barely longer than the next shiny thing, and that meant he only had to lay low (harder than you’d think for a dryad in the city; he spent most the time hiding in penthouse gardens) for a couple months. It did mean he missed Christmas, but that’s what he got, I suppose, for messing with the Macy’s Day Parade.
He shouldn’t have been awake at all, really. Dryad, as I pointed out to him in the time, generally meant “dormant in the winter like a good tree.” And, indeed, he got in more trouble in winter than any three boys or three hundred trees ought to.
But he claimed that, never mind the name that called him an oak tree, he was more of a conifer (hence hiding in someone’s shrubbery for the winter, though I admit I thought that was a euphemism at first), and thus could get away with staying up and out all winter.
And raining on parades. No matter how many times he denied it, no matter how quickly the Jiminies forgot the whole thing, I knew, deep in my heart, that it had to have been Eilon responsible for that spot rainstorm in the midst of the parade. For one, I was busy laying down a flood of rainbows on a political float. For another, no-one else in the city had his skill with rainstorms.
And for a third, no-one but Eilon had the hatred for the Jiminies that he did. And no-one else would else would have the pinecones to do it again the next year, with the scars on his bark still fading.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/237223.html. You can comment here or there.
