Underneath, a story of Facets of Dusk for the Giraffe Call

Jan16

For [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt, with a side order of comments asking for more development of the female team members and for more time in-world, not just through-the-door.

Facets of Dusk has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“It’s awfully dark in here,” Josie murmured unhappily. “I can’t feel the sun at all.” Or the trees, or the wind. There was a breeze, at least.

“But it’s rather warm,” Peter countered. “Or at least constant. It’s not a case of no solar heat, then, a burn-out planet.”

“It’s…” Aerich looked around disdainfully. “Rather dirty.”

Josie turned to look at him, trying not to laugh. He got so bent out of shape when he was laughed at. And, to be fair, the place was rather dirty. Untouched-feeling, stale, and the dim light only made it seem more so.

“Xenia and I will scout,” Cole declared, to no-one’s surprise. Xenia and he scouted, like Peter read instruments and Alexa Opened. Like Josie Knew. “You guys stay within a block of here, and see what you can find out.”

“Got it,” Alexa answered, crisp and professional like the suits she preferred. Josie smiled to herself, even though this world was making her a bit uncomfortable.

“They’re kind of cute, aren’t they?” Peter whispered, in a voice only for her ears. “G.I. Joe and Action Figure Girl?”

She swallowed another giggle. “They are,” she agreed, not admitting just how cute she could find them. “So, Science Man, why don’t we do our own exploring?”

She realized from the warmth suddenly coming off of him that there was more than one way to read her suggestion, and from the heat inside of her that she wouldn’t mind either one. But they were both professionals, of a sort. She cleared her throat, ready to backpedal. “That is…”

“We explore this world,” he agreed, rescuing her. “And then, later, perhaps…”

“Later.” She could hear his smile in his voice better than she could see it, but she could feel her own stretching her lips. “For now…” She dropped her mat on the ground and sank into a lotus position, hearing Peter move away, his instruments beeping softly to him, sending out an eerie glow.

Slowly, the glow faded from her awareness, and the beeping, Aerich and Alexa pacing out a perimeter, Peter reading the emanations of the world. Slowly, her senses stretched outwards – the Door, behind them, in a sturdy metal archway meant to last. Around the doorway, a building, still standing, tallish – about seven stories – made mostly of metal and stone. Around it, a block of similar buildings reached to slightly shorter heights.

She stretched further, tasting the dust in the air, the abandoned feeling of this place, the suggestion, beneath all the dust, of not quite abandoned, as if someone had left the light on, planning to come right back. Feeling Cole and Xenia, skulking around like thieves in the night. Feeling the edges of their world, a tall structure somewhere above. A roof. A roof above the entire city.

“We’re in some sort of created cavern,” Peter said at the same time. “And it seems like there’s another such pocket directly above this one. And above that…”

She stretched her senses, reaching for the power of the ground under her, reaching for the sunlight. “Ah,” she moaned, as the life and bustle and sunlight! assailed her, pressing in on her, talking to her in words she couldn’t understand, pushing into her. “And above that is the city.”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “Above that is where the people are.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/234171.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Monday Update

Jan16

The Giraffe Call is Still Open (and on LJ)! It will stay open until this Friday evening, or until I’ve written one prompt to ever prompter, whichever comes first.

Guys, I’m really excited at how close we are to the $150 incentive level! I’m bouncing up and down – and, I confess, I’m kind of curious to see if we can make it to the $201 level as well (not in the least because of the furnace bill, but I want to see how I handle a second Giraffe Call in a month, too). 😉

As a reminder – if you donated to this call, or to any call, you can ask for ($x100) words of continuation on any story posted here. Several people from the December call have not yet claimed their words.

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)
The Cracks
Through the Cracks (LJ)
“China is Here” (LJ)

Unicorn/Factory
Unicorn Chase (LJ)

Dragons
Origins of Smokey Knoll (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/233806.html. You can comment here or there.

Monday, with Snow

Jan16

Snow falls in inches in laboratories.
Where we live, it falls in
drifting mounds to my knees and
shallow valleys.

Wonderful weekend!! E.Mc & Piven, two of our closest friends, were down to visit, and to celebrate a late Christmas (Giraffe toilet paper holder! Eeeee!) We showed them Ithaca Commons, which we’d somehow managed never to do in the 4 years we’ve lived here, went out to Indian, as per Giraffe Call $50 incentive level (It was awesome. It always is), met up with an author-friend E. originally met at Albacon last year, and generally hung out and ate a lot of food.

I’m feeling recharged and ready for the week.

Also, it snowed. A lot. 🙂

[personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s Garden of Prose is still open; head there to give her a prompt on the theme “Paths.”

shadows-gallery has inked “Frozen.”… it’s a beautiful piece of art that seems to be wanting me to make a story from it.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/233586.html. You can comment here or there.

Souvenir, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan15

For EllenMillion‘s prompt.

I like to pick up a little souvenir in every city I visit, a remembrance, if you will, a way to hold the place a little closer to me.

When I started, I was pretty haphazard about it, a postcard here, a commemorative t-shirt there, a city-opoly game in the next place.

The problems with that, though came down durability and portability. Paper deteriorates, board games lose their pieces, t-shirts fall apart after a while. They all get hard to carry, and hard to store. I wanted something that would last. I wanted to hold onto those memories for a very long time. I wanted to be able to bring them with me.

It was maybe six, seven cities in that I stumbled upon shot glasses. The ultimate solution. Almost every place has them, they’re amazingly durable, they’re distinctive in some way, and they’ll fit in a pocket if I have to. So now every city I hit, I stop in a rest stop or a souvenir shop, whatever I can find, and pick up two – one for my van, and one for the place back home, sort of a museum. Sort of a mememto… you know. That thing.

I had to go back, of course, to the first six. Now that, that was hell. Not the hardest thing I’ve done in my line of work, not by far, but it still wasn’t easy, retracing my steps, going back into the ruined cities I’d already cased for survivors and supplies, looking for one little glass.

But I like to have a remembrance that I’ve been there. A way to remember these places the way they used to be.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/233248.html. You can comment here or there.

Linkback Incentive Story: The Enemy’s City, a story of Reiassan

Jan15

This is the linkback incentive story for the January Giraffe Call. (here on DW and here on LJ. It is set in the Reiassan ‘verse, at the same time as the Rin & Girey story, but with different characters.

Be sure to tell me if you have linked to the call. Thanks!

Ciranelle did not know what to think, not just of this city, not just of this country, but of everything, of her entire life, as it had been overturned, twisted around, and turned on its head. She knew what she thought, at least, of her captor, the arrogant peasant Inalor.

“Arrogant peasant” didn’t begin to sum it up, but since Ciranelle only knew about a hundred words of Callenian and her captor knew less than that of Bitrani, it would have to do. It was enough to tell him to keep his hands off of her. Again. And then again.

She admitted to herself, if to no-one else, that she rebuffed his attentions mostly because she could, because he owned her, had claimed her fair as the sunshine for his war-bride, and yet still allowed her to push him off like a nervous plowboy. The power sent shivers through her.

Sadly, that wasn’t all sending shivers through her, and it was her only power. Her situation, as fun as it might be, was more than a little terrifying, when she gave herself time to think. And these people – not the arrogant peasant, but the rest – were so strange.

And the way they looked at her was worse than their strangeness, worse than the funny way they talked or the strange clothing they wore, clothing that Inalor had made her wear by the simple process of taking away everything else. Even in her strange-buttoned qitari, Ciranelle looked strange. Exotic.

“Exotic” was new to her, and Inalor had had to translate the word, painstakingly, slowly, with gestures. “Exotic” should mean dark-haired beauties with forest eyes and tan skin, not her, not her blonde hair and blue eyes and threatening sunburn. Not Ciranelle, ordinary enough that she should have been overlooked.

“Come here.” Inalor grabbed her arm, not roughly, but firmly enough to remind her that she had not, indeed, been overlooked, that of the twenty women hiding in the ducal manse’s wine cellar, he had taken her. The mostly-decorative shackles on her wrists clanged and jangled as he pulled her.

“What?” she asked obstinately, digging in her heels, though the stone-paved road gave her very little traction. Frustrated, she repeated herself in Bitrani: “What? What is it you want from me, you difficult little man? Why won’t you just let me go? Send me back to my mother, won’t you?”

“He will not send you back to your mother because that is not the way things are done.” The accented but clear Bitrani that answered her startled Ciranelle into silence, long enough for the speaker to come out from around Inalor. “Surely you knew that. Your people do the same.”

“I know it,” she admitted cautiously. Who was this strange woman, her hair neither Bitrani blonde nor Callanthe black but a muddy in-between color, her brown skin freckled, her Callanthe tunic a customarily Bitrani rust-red? “But I don’t have to like it, do I?” The Three help her if she did.

“You don’t have to like it, of course not. I’m assuming you don’t want me to translate your… complaints… to Inalor?” The woman raised an eyebrow, amused at Ciranelle – amused! – and a little mocking, as If she was saying I know you better than you know yourself.

The worst of it was, she was right. “Please don’t,” Ciranalle asked unhappily. “It will only make him glower. He does that enough already.” And as much as she enjoyed the power saying “no” gave her, she knew it had limits, and she wasn’t nearly ready to find those edges.

“I assumed as such. It’s more entertaining to yell when no one can understand you, isn’t it?”

Ciranelle didn’t like the way the woman smirked knowingly at her. “It’s easy to yell and holler when you’ve been taken away from your home,” she answered shortly, “taken from everything you know.”

“That’s what my father always said,” the woman answered sympathetically. “He said there was a point where he decided to stop fighting, not for my mother’s sake, but because fighting was just wearing him out.”

“Your father?” Ciranelle tilted her head. She knew it happened, but…”

“A war groom, yes.”

She flinched. “How can you say such a thing about your own father?”

“Well, in Callenian it’s not so dirty. Not dirty at all, actually.” She paused. “That, as a matter of fact, is part of why Lord Inalor hired me to translate.”

“Part of why? Lord? Hired?” Ciranelle boggled.

“One question at a time,” the woman smiled. “First, let me explain to my employer.” She turned back to Inalor – Lord? It must be a joke. – and spoke with him in fluent, smooth Callenian for a few minutes. Ciranelle caught very few words – her name, “getting along.”

When the woman turned back to her, her expression had changed; she looked hard, businesslike, distant. “Lord Inalor hired me to translate a conversation between the two of you. It is his desire, as you enter his home city, to be perfectly clear about the situation that you are in.”

Ciranelle swallowed hard. That didn’t sound good. “When did he have time to hire you?” she asked, instead of the questions she wanted to ask, instead of screaming. Lord. Lord, again. “I don’t know what there is to explain, either. I know the position I am in. I’m his whore.”

The woman spoke rapidly in Callenian, frowning deeper and deeper; in return, Inalor frowned deeply and spoke back to her, short, staccato syllables, with broad, angry hand gestures. She hadn’t seen him that angry in all of their trip here. She hadn’t seen him that angry when she rebuffed him.

Slowly, the woman turned back to Ciranelle and translated. “I think we have having that problem again, that you had in speaking about my father. Inalor wishes me to make it very clear to you that you are not, in his mind, a whore of any sort. You’re his wife.”

“How can I be his wife?” she protested. “He dragged me from everything I know. He…”

“He captured you as legal and right spoils of war, as our people – both of our peoples – have been doing as long as there has been war, and made you his wife.”

“He…” She sat down, perplexed. “He can do that, without me knowing about it?”

“He can, although it’s courteous for him to take you to the temple. He says he intends to, by the way, when you stop yelling at him quiet so much.”

“He… he intends to marry me?”

.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/230657.html. You can comment here or there.

“China is Here,” a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan15

For [personal profile] the_vulture‘s Prompt.

I think this is a monologue directly after Through the Cracks (LJ), which makes that one a bit more sinister.

For which I apologize. This was intended to be fanciful. O_O

We came with you, you see.

We came with you from England, from Germany, from Poland, from Italy. We came with you from China, from Japan, from Vietnam and Korea. We came from Africa, from the Middle East.

Long before that, we came over on a land bridge, through Russia. Longer still before that, we came out of the trees with you.

We have always been here. We seep in the culture, soaking it in, becoming it, and then we tell it back to you. We become your myths and your stories, and then bring them with you to the new world, your baggage you can never lose, your monkey you will never get off your back. Your roots in your cultural heritage. Your memories of a simpler time (how I love how you do that. As if your nightmare monsters spoke of a “simpler” time. As if your warning stories warned of, what, easier threats?)

Germany is here. Poland is here, China, England, Russia. Every fear and every monster you have ever dreamed up, every explanation for every bump in the night, every silly rhyme to soothe a colicky baby. All of them are here with you, carried like rats in the boats, carried like fleas on the rats, carried like a priceless heirloom in your pocket. We have been following you for millennia.

And now it is our turn to lead.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/233114.html. You can comment here or there.

The Origins of Smokey Knoll, a story of Dragons Next Door for the Giraffe Call (@meeks_P)

Jan14

For [personal profile] meeks‘s prompt

Dragons Next Door has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“So tell me,” Miss Call-me-Samantha Milligan asked Audrey, over tea on what was becoming their regular Tuesday tea date, “do you know how Smokey Knoll came to be? The neighborhood around it, the Retibya Heights, is a, ah…”

“It’s an affluent upper-class human neighborhood, yes,” Audrey answered easily. “Many of your richest students come from that neighborhood. From all of the Heights, Miss Milligan, which does actually answer your question quite tidily.”

“I’m sorry…?” she blinked uncertainly.

“When… I believe, since I was still in school at the time, that it was not dragons but a family of harpies, actually, and a grouping of centaurs. The Paints… a nice group. They came to the city, as many of the non-humans were beginning to to. They may be primarily magic and not tech users themselves, but they tend to like the conveniences of human technology.”

“Back then,” Miss Milligan mused, “it must have been very hard. Everything was so segregated. There was no accessibility at all – I took a class on that in college,” she added defensively. “These days, the classes beginning to get integrated, especially in the cities, and you have to learn how to teach to all sorts of students.”

“Exactly,” Aud answered soothingly. “They ran into all those problems. Bigotry. Lack of suitable housing. Lack of suitable anything. So, being of two of the most practical races, the Paints and, ah, yes, the harpies were the Rednesses. Their great-grandchildren live down the block from me. The Paints and the Rednesses found a neighborhood where builders were beginning to expand, creating upper-class housing. And they bought a large portion of it.

“Through agents, of course,” she added, smirking. “Through a very nice actor Dweomer who still lives down the street. They thought he was planning a stables and a mews, and thought his tastes were merely eccentric.”

“But when others found out,” Miss Milligan whispered in horror.

“Ah, yes. There were certainly… complaints. But by then the Paints and the Rednesses had pulled in other non-human investors, and they simply bought out anyone who complained. Democratic of the wallet.” She smirked. “It’s a lovely neighborhood. You should visit sometime.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/232501.html. You can comment here or there.

The Tuesday Map

Jan14

For rix_scaedu‘s prompt

Influences included Dark City and the folding apartments for which I can’t currently find links. Also, IKEA, and my fascination with planned communities.

The city moved.

The cluck struck seven p.m., the alarm chimed, and, all over the city, people stopped what they were doing and grabbed on to their hand-holds. Smoothly, on well-oiled tracks and risers, the Bell-Apple Experimental Living Zone, the BAELZ, shifted into its Tuesday position.

Announcements sounded. The following changes to the Zone’s Tuesday arrangement have taken place. The Seventh Ave Diner is now on the corner of Sixth Avenue and J Street. The Hairtisserie is now on the north-west corner of the Zone, above the Butcherie. The City Hall has moved one block north and one block upwards.

J-alpha-7 let go of the handle and picked up her knitting, only to realize she’d run out of yarn. “Darn it,” she swore softly.

“What is it, sweetcheeks?” her partner of the year, H-beta-six, asked, not really paying attention. At least the year was nearly over.

“I need new yarn, and I’m never quite sure where they’ve put the Woolery. How do you get there from here when today is Tuesday?”

“How have you lived in BAELZ your whole life and still not developed a sense of direction?” H complained tiredly. “You can’t get there on Tuesdays, you know that. They’re cleaning First Ave, and that’s in the middle of the Zone tonight.”

She wrinkled her nose. “There’s got to be a way. They can’t just cut off half the city for one day out of ten.”

“They can. They’re the architects, the big Grahams. They can do anything they want.”

“It’s stupid.” She stood up, setting her knitting carefully where H wouldn’t go bothering it. “I’m going to go looking.”

“J, don’t be a ditz. You know you get lost when you go exploring alone.”

“Then come with me,” she challenged, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“I’ve got stuff to do. Honestly, J, you know I can’t just drop everything on your whim.”

“Fine.” She slid on her coat – the Zone’s outdoor regions were kept slightly cooler than the indoor regions, to suggest the need for a home. “Then I’ll go myself.” Thinking to herself, two more weeks until the year is over, and trying to hold the Tuesday map in her head, she left their apartment behind.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/232365.html. You can comment here or there.

Unicorn Chase, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

Jan14

For [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s Prompt.

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

There weren’t supposed to be unicorns in the Town.

There weren’t supposed to be unicorns at all, of course – they were a myth, a superstition. But inside the Town? Such things should not even be thought of. Not in the Town, with its rationality, its science, its straight streets and straight walls and rational protections against the myth and credulity of the common Village folk. Not in the Town, with its upright people who worked hard for a day’s living in the Factory, who struggled to live in the faint miasma of Progress. There was no space nor time for unicorns in the Town. They did not belong.

And certainly not in the Factory, the heart of all those things the Town stood for, with its soot-blackened stone and its towering stacks, with its tired but proud workers, with its managers and thinkers and planners who understood how the world was supposed to work. A unicorn, if such things existed, could not survive in the Town, much less in the factory.

But Harah who worked at Gear Station One whispered to Jik, who worked the same station, that she’d seen something out of the corner of her eye. And Jik muttered about it to Tonor, who worked at Gear Station Two, and confirmed that he, too, had seen a glitter of horn, a suggestion of malice.

And Tonor mentioned both sightings to Ura, who passed it on to Pallas at the Inspection Booth, who had the sharpest eyes on the floor. And Pallas kept those eyes peeled, and told Rodder, who carried the big stick, when she’d seen the tell-tale streak of white. And Rodder chased the faintest flash through the factory floor, overturning trays and disrupting the whole processes, only to be told by Infe’s daughter, who was visiting, that she’d seen the thing leave by the shipping dock.

Infe’s daughter went home giggling, remembering the horn glimmering, and the happy face of the Unicorn munching the begonias in the Factory courtyard.

Next: Unicorn-Chased (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/231980.html. You can comment here or there.