Ghosts of Finals

Oct24

For Wyld_Dandelyon‘s prompt.

Commenters: 4

The old school was haunted.

No classes had been taught there since the flood, nearly two years ago now; most of the town had packed up and left, not enthused enough about the town to tough it through, not rich enough to just pour money on the problem to fix things, not picturesque enough to get the TV crews and the charity money they brought with them.

Macy’s family had been one of only a couple that had stayed – Macy’s, and Joe’s, and Fidel’s. Their fathers split the town between them, salvaging what they could and selling it at flea markets on the weekends. Their mothers grew what they could, and canned and preserved and made do the way their grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. The electric company still sent them power, as long as they paid, and the water company still sent them water, and if that was all they had, well, it was better than a lot of people did, or at least that’s what Macy’s mom had said.

Macy and Joe and Fidel, sometimes they helped their dads scavenge, or work on cleaning up or building up their homesteads, and sometimes they helped watched their little brothers and sisters, or helped their moms in the kitchen, though all of them would rather be pulling siding off a rotting building than turning the crank on the food mill. And when they could get away and do what they wanted, they went down to the old school.

Their dads wouldn’t touch it, so they’d done what they could, pulled the books that had survived up to the top floor and dried out the ones that were only a little damp, thrown everything else in the dumpsters so the whole place stopped smelling of damp and misery and sewage, run the janitor’s hoses and soap through the whole first floor until it gleamed. There was no-one to tell them to do it, but there was no-one to tell them not to, either, so it was their place, their fort. Their flooded-out swampy dreams.

Fidel said that’s what it was haunting the place – ghosts of finals they’d never get to take, and the ones they hadn’t cared as much about, ghosts of the dreams they’d had of scholarships, and college, and a better life, all washed away with the damn river. Joe said it was memories, their friends that had died, the ones that had just left with what they could take. They didn’t touch the lockers of those friends, and wouldn’t help their dads clean out those houses.

Macy thought they were both right, and both wrong. When she was alone there, in the third-floor room they’d made into a library, she could hear them. Mrs. Proctor, who’d made sure all the kids were out and safe and gotten hit by a floating road sign. Mr. Talbot, who’d had a heart attack and drowned in three inches of water. Mrs. Gonzalez, who’d been sobbing when she packed up and left. She could hear their lessons, the ones they’d already taught her and the ones they’d never gotten to. And as long as she could hear them teach her, she could still learn.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/156179.html. You can comment here or there.

Revenge of the Pumpkins, a sequel of Tir Na Cali for the Giraffe Call

Oct24

For Ankewehner‘s prompt.

Tir na Cali. Cali has a landing page here (or on LJ)

After When in Rome (and on LJ), which is after Too Hot for Prime Time (and on LJ) from September’s Giraffe Call.

Commenters: 3

A costume?

“Yes, Mistress,” Jason managed. “What sort of costume?” Some of the stuff out the window was ridiculous, some of it was beautiful, and some of it was risqué or straight-out pornographic. It looked a little like Hallowe’en at home, he guessed – brightly-colored costumes, at least – but the grown-ups seemed just as involved, if not more, than the kids.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” she chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s just for the little party we put on at the estate; you’re not going out in the streets.”

“Okay, mistress,” he choked. That was supposed to be good? Not going out in the streets? He hadn’t tried running away in a while, and in the press of costumes, it wouldn’t be that hard to get lost – but she seemed like the sort of person who’d have thought of that already. He couldn’t do anything about it, so he watched the scenery.

Feathers, there were a lot of feathers, and rich, elaborate robes, animal skins, antlers, lots of antlers, and some that looked really, really real. He could hear them laughing and shouting and singing even inside the car, stopping traffic with processions across the roads, dancing on the back of trucks.

Then a scream echoed through the crowd, the sort of thing where one person started screaming, then those near them, and then further out, like the wave. Even the people he could see screaming looked as if it was part of the game, though, some sort of ceremony? As the crowds parted in mock-fear, he could see people wearing giant papier-mâché pumpkins on their heads stomping forward, wielding large staffs that they were swinging back and forth. Every so often, someone unfortunate or slow would get hit with the staff, paint splattering all over their costume.

“What…?” Jason asked, staring in awe.

“Oh, that?” his Mistress laughed. “That’s the Revenge of the Pumpkins. It’s supposed to be a teaching lesson, about wasting food; they’re supposed to be the ghosts of pumpkins smashed or left to rot, and food left on plates uneaten.”

“People seem to really want to get out of the way of the stick,” he noted, as one woman brushed at the paint dripping down her, tears streaking her face.

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you? Considering, I mean,” his owner answered offhandedly. As she drove away, he saw two of the pumpkin-heads pick up the sobbing woman and carry her off.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/155948.html. You can comment here or there.

When in Rome…. – a story of Tir Na Cali for the Giraffe Call

Oct24

For Lilfluff‘s prompt.

Tir na Cali. Cali has a landing page here (or on LJ)

After Too Hot for Prime Time (and on LJ) from September’s Giraffe Call.

Commenters: 6

Jason was still trying to figure out what was going on, but the tall woman who has just bought him was, comments about babies or not, still better than the work camps, as far as he could tell, and he didn’t want to give her any reason to change her mind, so he didn’t ask any questions, or give her any trouble, as she steered him by the back of his collar out of the auction hall.

He hadn’t been outside, except in the back of a van, since he’d been taken; the sun was bright and the air chill on his skin. He tried to keep walking anyway, relying on his Mistress’s hand to direct him. Mistress. She might not be a work camp, but she’d still bought him, like a piece of property. He struggled against the uncomfortable gratitude that someone, anyone, had turned out to want him and the unhappy feeling that he was letting this place get to him.

“Here,” she murmured, and, like putting a prisoner in the back of a cop car, pressed down on the back of his head until he bowed and folded into the back of a car. “Try to get comfortable,” she suggested, as she belted him in. “It’s a long drive.”

And, it seemed, she was driving it herself. Jason let his eyes adjust to the sun as she maneuvered the big, expensive-looking car onto the road; by the time she was in traffic, he could study his surroundings.

The city buildings looked, more or less, like a city – a little brighter, a little taller, a little less square than he was used to, but still city-shaped. The roads had less cars than he’d expect, but maybe it wasn’t a high-traffic time? And the people…

He stared at the people going by in awe. He wasn’t even the least-dressed person around, although the lady with the feathers at least had paint. And most of them weren’t wearing slave collars, although he saw one lovely redheaded girl in an expensive-looking gold collar, wearing a high, gold crown to match her collar and an elaborate kimono and geisha face paint.

It wasn’t until he passed three people in a dragon costume, dancing around a man dressed like Uncle Sam, that Jason found his voice. “It looks like Mardi Gras,” he marveled. Mardi Gras with no morals; there were three people having a very fun naked time on the base of a statute while a fourth took pictures. “It looks like…” Like the things in the anti-California pamphlets that made the country seem so interesting.

His Mistress chuckled, looking back at him in the rear-view mirror. “It’s Samhain,” she told him. “I think it’s called Hallowe’en in your country? And, lucky you, I even have a costume for you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/155757.html. You can comment here or there.

Consulting – a Dragons Next Door story for Giraffe Call

Oct24

For MeeksP‘s prompt.

Dragons Next Door Verse. DND has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

Generally, when a call comes in at odd hours from a caller who is stressed, distressed, distraught, and dismayed, they are calling for Sage. He’s the consultant, after all, the Black Tower graduate with a decade on the police force.

But once in a very long while, the call is for me, someone who has an issue, usually with one of the smaller races – they don’t think to call in a mediator so often when it’s a Large Race Problem. They’re just as overwrought, just as hysterical, but usually, when it’s done, I get to laugh a little.

That was the case when the Museum of Natural History downtown called me. They thought they had a problem with brownies or pixies; something was messing up their doorways, all of them, knocking the plaster around and leaving holes in the cornices. They’d had an exterminator in, but they didn’t have bugs, and an exorcist had told them it wasn’t demons. That left, it seemed, me.

I left my youngest at home with Sage and caught the bus downtown, listening to the gossip bouncing back and forth, watching the way the human and mostly-human dealt with the non-humans and the non-even-humanoids – at least the ones that could fit on a bus. There was a lot more interaction than there had been even five years ago; it seemed as if, slow but sure, integration was happening.

Once at the museum, however, it was another story. The staff were human. The visitors were human. There were two brownies serving as janitors, but everyone seemed to ignore them. Even the archeology was primarily human, with “the other races” having one small wing. Integration, it looked like, had no place in natural history. I nearly left right then.

But the money and the reputation gains for consulting are good, and perhaps, I thought, I could do some good for their impression of the non-humans all around them. I studied their dents and holes, listening to their anguished stories while paying more attention to what the brownie janitors were trying to tell me. Not a Small Race. They didn’t know what it was either, but the small races were afraid to come here. Not even the tinies would come in the museum – and the tinies were anywhere they could find a corner.

That was a red flag, but a hard one to explain. Some humans still called exterminators when they found out they had a tiny population in their walls. So it wasn’t the smalls, and it wasn’t the tinies. A Large Race would have left a lot more wreckages – especially if they’d seen the Other Races wing. I wandered off from my handlers when they were busy arguing, and traced the impact lines in their doorways.

They found me, ten minutes later, sitting on the floor in the Africa wing, giggling uncontrollably. When I could finally get control of myself, I managed to explain.

“The giraffe,” I told them, pointing at the skeleton proudly guarding this wing. “Your people… there’s skeletons of three of a race of very small creature wired into his skeleton. There, there, and there. Their ghosts take him riding at night. They must love being so tall!”

I had a hard time getting paid for that call, but it was worth it for the story I got to tell.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/155510.html. You can comment here or there.

Strange and neat – Addergoole Reading

Oct23

Okay, this is cool

The latest Webfiction World has readings from Addergoole and [profile] haikujagaur‘s Aphorisms of Kherishdar.

I will note that the pronunciations are off on a couple things – “Ellehemaei” is (I really need to make a recording for this) ELLE-eh-Hem-aye (the last syllable is really between rhymes-with-hay and rhymes-with-die). “Daeva” is DAY-vuh, at least in my head. And “Elasmo” is “Uh-LAZ-moe.” But the reading is awesome.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/155354.html. You can comment here or there.

Gone Fishing

Oct21

Out of town for the weekend; I’ll try to get a prompt done a day and back to lots-of-writing when I return Sunday night!

DreamWidth – call for prompts here

LiveJournal – call for prompts here

(If you only did one or two prompts, feel free to go back and add a second/third 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154931.html. You can comment here or there.

Spooks vs. Bugs – Giraffe Call

Oct20

For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt.

After Staying in the City (LJ) – from last month’s Giraffe Call.

Commenters: 6

Warning: potential squick – referenced mind/body control

The bugs had a problem.

Paula knew, now, that they weren’t bugs, but the word they used for themselves, Tillalillathianin, twisted strangely in the human part of her brain, so in the parts that were still hers, she still thought of them as “bugs.” Her symbiote didn’t seem to object.

Symbiote. She was still getting used to the feeling of it, to the double-senses inside her and the loss of control of what still seemed like her own body… mostly. She was still getting used to the additions the symbiote had brought, and the echo of its feelings against hers. They all were, symbiotes and hosts, the bonded and those who were still Just Bugs.

But that wasn’t the problem – not quite, at least. The problem was, it seemed, that the Tillalillathianin’s home planet – not their home planet, really, but the one they had conquered the longest ago within their memory; when you asked a bug or a symbiote “what happened to your real home planet?” you got an hour-long headache and no good answers – well, anyway. Either none of the planets the Tillalillathianin had conquered before had an otherworld, or they had never before merged with a race that could see them.

This was causing them some issues, more because the bugs-proper could still not sense the other-beings, the fae and the restless undead and the monsters-under-bed sort of creatures, but those that had been bonded could, and it was freaking out the symbiotes. They kept giving up control of their human hosts every time they saw a ghost, which was, if disorienting, rather entertaining for both ghosts and hosts, and upsetting for the bugs-proper.

The fairies had already figured it out; Paula had a host of the tiny pixies following her around now. The ghosts were beginning to get it, and somebody, she’d been told, had sent the monsters a message.

The spooks were going to spook out the bugs. In the growing part of her brain that was still hers, Paula found this very pleasing indeed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154662.html. You can comment here or there.

Creeped

Oct20

For The Cluudle‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 4

Hell Night, Year 9 of the Addergoole School

“Hey, pretty, pretty, whatcha doing out all alone?” The man against the wall – “man,” because she still hadn’t come up with words that fit for the weird creatures she’d found herself in school with – smirked unkindly at her, and waved his hand at the ground, causing it to buckle and warp under her feet. Ceinwen gritted her teeth and kept walking, trying not to show any fear. It was like getting off at the wrong bus stop – although the people in the numbered streets had been humans, and this guy with the yellowish wood-grain-looking skin and the hair like pine needles didn’t really seem to qualify.

What was she doing out all alone, indeed. She’d lost Ahouva right away – Kendon had grabbed her, told her he had something special for her, and off they’d gone. Jovanna and Æolind had gotten separated in a corner of the hall that had gone all black and inky, and turned Ceinwen and Kay around into a corridor they’d never seen before.

Kay had, as far as Ceinwen could tell, run off through a brick wall. She was still trying to figure out how that had worked, but right now, what she knew was that it left her alone, with creepy yellow guys taunting her, and the hall slowly filling with water.

Water? That was a new one. The stuff around her toes looked like brackish water, though, and it felt like the carpet was water-logged, although it was hard to see it through the greenish liquid. The call-it-water was rising, too, lapping around her ankles. Ceinwen hurried on, trying to get away from wood-boy without looking like she was trying to get away.

“Come on, honey. You don’t want to go swimming, come play with me instead.” He held out a branch – hand, it was a hand – to her, even leaned off the wall like he was going to walk her way. “I can be a lot of fun.”

“No, thanks,” she answered – no need to be rude, it’s possible he was just being friendly, friendly in a creepy way – just as her foot slipped down, down, down, pulling her underwater.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154523.html. You can comment here or there.

Ghosts of Memory – Rin/Girey – Giraffe Call

Oct20

For kelkyag‘s prompt.

Reiassan. Reisassn has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Probably after Bed-Warmer (LJ) but maybe after after Enemy, in which case the first paragraph will have to change.

Commenters: 5

Rin had gone, over the week after they left Ossulund, from whistling to thoughtful, with glances at Girey he was pretty sure she didn’t think he noticed. That suited him; he had his own thoughts to ponder.

Sarella, the pretty little blonde who had more than a little cause to remember him fondly and fair reason to expect him to rescue her, had gotten him thinking. The thoughts weren’t the most comfortable, either, chafing like his shirt no longer did, now that Rin had dressed him up like a Callanthe noble.

“So what’s the difference?” he asked her back, in a sunny moment of quiet on the trail.

“The difference?” She hadn’t even jumped, but she did frown back at him.

“You said that your people don’t keep slaves.” He jangled his chains at her. “But you take captives.”

“A slave is a possession, yes?” she asked, her Bitrani, as always, careful and stilted. “But a captive has a chance of being anything.”

“But you’re not going to take your prisoners of war and put them to work running your towns, for instance. You have war-brides like Sarella – the girl in Ossulund? In Bitrani, we’d call her a slave. And you have captives like me.” And he wasn’t going to think about the possibility that his position might be the same as Sarella’s. “What about the rest of them?” What were they doing with his countrymen? “You told that farmer he’d go back to his family. Is that common practice?”

Now, she turned to regard him with a strange look, one he hadn’t seen on her face before. On a Bitrani officer, he’d think it was respect, but from her, he couldn’t be certain. “Enlisted men, yes,” she answered carefully. “Farmers, workers, Their families and villages need them.”

“Good.” He paused, thinking about that for a moment, before he added “Thank you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154262.html. You can comment here or there.

Brief Apperance notes on Timora

Oct20

Timora, from Fae-Bane

Her photoref pre-change is this; I’m still chewing on her Change.

She’s on the part of the family tree that involves Smitty http://pics.livejournal.com/aldersprig/pic/00044hd5 – who is a kelpie – and several non-canon characters. I *know* her change involves water/water spirits – I’m thinking a semi-water-horse-faun thing?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153952.html. You can comment here or there.