Inside the Walls

Oct17

For Lilfluff‘s prompt.

Planners ‘Verse, in the after-the-apoc by about 10 years. Planners have a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 8

It seemed safe out past the walls, but Tess knew it was an illusion. As the junior elder at the Library, it was her job to take the stories of the refugees they let into the camp between the inner and outer walls, and the far fewer students they let into the inner sanctum. She knew from those tales that even now, ten years into what they were calling The Collapse, things were hard out there, and dangerous, and the bandits were only getting worse; with all of the country to gather in, they still had more refugees coming to their growing-cramped camp than they could handle, and the story was the same from every Family outpost they could reach. The world was a dangerous place, outside of their forts.

Tess wondered, as she took the long stairway down from the wall into the inner courtyard, if the elder Elders would make the decisions they did if they heard the stories she did. She was haunted by those stories, by the expressions on the faces of the refugees, by the injuries they would show – and the ones they would only hint at. She was haunted by the violence she sometimes saw just outside their walls, when those that weren’t allowed inside tried to set up camp, and the marauders were feeling brave.

“We should expand,” she’d told the elder Elders, and “we don’t have the resources,” they’d come back; “we’re already stretched thin with the farmland inside the walls. Maybe when the marauders aren’t such a threat.”

By then, of course, it would be too late for so many hundreds of refugees. By then, the ghosts haunting Tess’s nightmares would have doubled or quadrupled in number.

“Elder Tess,” the guard called, as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “We have more refugees than we have farm work, and the others are asking for something to do.”

Like that, it fell into place. “Do you have a few guards to spare?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ma’am, from a man probably old enough to be her father. Rank had its privileges. “We are over full strength right now; everyone wants to join the guard.”

The guard got full rations and a better place to sleep, and the test wasn’t as hard as becoming a Scholar. “Take those that want to out about two hundred feet beyond the outer wall, and begin prepping to build another wall. I’ll send an engineer with a plan while you get them gathering rocks and clearing the ground.”

If they didn’t have enough room for more refugees, the answer was clearly to build more room.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/151216.html. You can comment here or there.

Fears – Dragons Next Door – for the Giraffe Call

Oct17

For kelkyag‘s prompt.

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

Yes, I do have an idea what an erbiss looks like.

Commenters: 7

Juniper was surprised, when she came to visit Baby Smith one Saturday morning, to find the Smith house in what her mother would call an uproar, although nobody was roaring, and, indeed, there wasn’t even any shouting.

But there was a lot of tail-jerking, and Jimmy’s scales were the wrong color, and the lanky erbiss that they had instead of a dog wouldn’t stop whining. (Dogs, Cxaidin had told her, both could not be trained to deal comfortably with dragons and did not have the suitable skill set. Juniper was still trying to figure that one out, but the erbiss, in the meantime, was adorable, clever, and liked having its fur brushed.)

Both the adults were too upset to tell her what was going on, and Baby and Cthannie were snuffling and making little acid-burbles, so Juniper coaxed Tay-tay, the erbiss, over into the sun where Jimmy was trying to pretend nothing was going wrong, and started brushing Tay-tay. She’d figured out this trick recently with her own older brother; sometimes if she sat quietly doing something normal, sometimes Jin would calm down long enough to talk to her.

(To be fair, she’d figured out Jin was doing it to her, first. But it worked both ways!)

The erbiss had calmed down into the rumble-happy noise that wasn’t really a purr by the time Jimmy said something – but Jimmy’s scales had settled into a nice purple, too. “Cxaidin and Tay-tay caught a poacher last night,” the juvenile dragon muttered.

“A poacher?” Juniper had heard that word in a cartoon, but she didn’t know what it meant. Nothing to do with eggs, she was pretty sure.

“A hunter, a dragon-hunter. He was going after the kids.” Jimmy set its head woefully on its paws and looked at her. “They’re scary,” it admitted very very quietly. “One almost got me when I was a hatchling.” It tilted its head and, under the jaw, Juniper could see where the scales were solid white in a circle, like the scar she had on her knee in reverse. “I don’t want my parents to know I’m scared.”

“It’s all right.” Juniper hugged Jimmy’s long neck. “I won’t tell them.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150942.html. You can comment here or there.

At the Movie – Stranded Verse – for the Giraffe Call

Oct17

For Skjam‘s prompt.

Stranded World and Autumn, though I don’t know just when. Stranded has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 6

The little town had one of those old-style movie theaters with one viewing room, the sort that showed whatever blockbuster they could get 3 months late and stayed alive mainly because the nearest real theatre was over an hour away.

Autumn could accept that; a lot of small towns had business that stayed open that way. The weird part was – well, the weird part began with the movie on the marquis, which was an unpopular horror movie from three summers back. That everyone in the town – and that was the second weird part – seemed to be going to see, at the 3 o’clock showing. The whole town.

Autumn waited until the 5 p.m. showing, paid the bored ticket-taker, and settled in to her seat. She was the only one in the theatre, as the creepy, badly-edited film worked its way around to the first murder, and the second… and then she wasn’t. A presence settled down into a seat next to her, and the film began to change.

A girl in the theatre. A teenager, alone, hanging out in the movies because there was air conditioning there, and it was 90 degrees out and rising.

A wanderer coming through. No-one hears her scream. No-one notices that she doesn’t leave at the end of the awful movie. No-one notices she’s missing for days, and by then…

Autumn reached for the apparition’s hand. “This isn’t the way,” she told the girl. “Where…?”

Behind the theatre was an old hardware store, with a basement no one went into anymore. In the back of the basement, in a barrel full of rusting nails…

“I’ll tell them,” she murmured. “I’ll make sure they notice.”

Slowly, the movie flickered, broke, and went black. Slowly, the apparition faded away. Autumn patted where the girl’s shoulder had been, and headed out to make an anonymous phone call.

Had the town noticed, she wondered? Had they known what they were doing? Or had the girl been calling out for help, drawing them all in, without anyone knowing what was going on?

While she dialed from the town’s old-style phone booth, Autumn drew a small glyph into the crook of her arm. Remembrance. She would take the girl with her – Amy, the fading missing poster told her – she would take Amy with her in her memories, and leave her story to be told by those who loved her – with a little nudge to get them going.

“Hello? I think there’s a body in the basement of the old hardware store.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150564.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Update – two other things

Oct17

the Linkback Incentive story is going along nicely; I owe you (I think) 50 words for Ysabet’s link to the story I wrote for her.
(LJ)

Right now Ninja Kitty is winning for # of commenters, with 8. (LJ)

Tied for second with 6 commenters each are:
Rude Roomates (LJ) and
The Grey Line (LJ)

Whichever story has the most commenters by the end of day Friday, I will write a short setting piece for that setting.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150280.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Update! Wow!

Oct17

Good morning!

This weekend’s Giraffe Call was very busy (If you missed it, you have until I get to the bottom of both lists to add a prompt – here or here). I’ve written 12 responses so far, over Stranded, Unicorn/Factory, Addergoole, Tir na Cali, and another new ‘verse, and I still have quite a few to go before I even get to the sponsored continuations.

Speaking of sponsoring: I’m $20 from the point where everyone gets a second microfic (if we get it within $5, I’ll fudge it 😉

Off to work-and-writing! You can read all the giraffe call stories on this tag (or this one)


–

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150198.html. You can comment here or there.

Creep – Giraffe Call

Oct16

For [personal profile] bubbleblower‘s prompt, after In the Shadows (LJ) and directly after Shadow of a Doubt (LJ).

Commenters:6

It wasn’t until a week later – when I was certain I wasn’t the only one seeing the shadows and ghosts, and when we’d determined that they were all over the City but, so far, nowhere else in America and, as far as we could tell, nowhere else in the world, either – that we really started noticing the other things.

Shadows, okay, it’s pretty obvious when a shadow points back at you. Ghosts, same thing. When they’re stealing the laundry off the line and the hot dogs out of the street vendors’ hands, obviously there’s something there doing something.

The old lights made them go away, but the old fluorescents were making people call-it-sick-we-can’t-say-crazy, and those of us who got paid to do those things made a unilateral decision that shadows pointing at people weren’t as bad as shooting sprees, and left the daylight bulbs in. We were starting to get used to the shadows and ghosts – except when they were stealing our lunch – by the time we noticed the statue.

The street-vendors were really corridor-vendors (but that sounded stupid), gathered in courtyards in the ‘plexes. Eight of us electricians met for our lunch-meetings in the same courtyard, hanging around the base of some famous chick. It wasn’t me, this time, thank god; it was Andy who noticed that the chick, who had been standing reading a book, was now writing in the same book.

Once we noticed that, well, we started looking at other statues. The ‘plexes were dotted with the things like sprinkles on cookies, and when we started asking the locals, it turned out, yeah. No-one had noticed, but they’d all started creeping, changing position. Must have taken weeks – in the week while we were asking around, the famous chick’s finger moved an inch.

They moved so damn slowly, it took us another month to realize they were trying to tell us something.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/149962.html. You can comment here or there.

Refurbish and Sell – Criminal Minds/Cali Crossover

Oct16

For the [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt

This is more of the Reid/Cali crossover fanfic, directly after the last piece.

The stories before this:
Never Been Caught (and on LJ): First written, last in sequence.

Shots Fired (and on LJ): First in sequence

“Well, Crap, Where am I?” (and on LJ), after “Shots Fired”

Sweet Iced Tea (LJ), after “Well, Crap…” and before the story below.

Commenters: 4

Their captive sipped his iced tea slowly, watching them. “You’re the team that’s been beating the BAU to the punch.”

“We are,” Morrigan re-affirmed.

“What have you been doing with the victims?”

“We’re slave runners. We’ve been cleaning them up, dressing them up, and selling them.” There was no point in sugar-coating what they did; it wasn’t like he wouldn’t find out soon enough anyway.

He studied her while he drank the saccharine tea. “You rescue them from serial killers just to sell them into slavery. It seems like a cruel joke to pull on them, doesn’t it?”

Them, still. She wondered when he would figure it out.

“It’s kinder than leaving them there and letting hem be raped, tortured, and killed, isn’t it? That last one – the guy with the birds-nest beard. Did your people get everyone out of his crawl space yet?”

He shook his head. “When we left for Georgia, they were still exhuming bodies. They had pulled out twenty-seven full remains, and three partial sets, one of them just the fingerbones from a left hand – they believe that was his first victim, due to the age of the remains. But the evidence suggested there had been two living victims there as well, one of whom who had been pretty severely injured.”

“We treated his injuries, and gave him several sessions with a very skilled therapist.” See? We can be nice, too. Morrigan would have laughed at herself, if Cym wasn’t doing such a good job of it in the other corner. “We’ll treat your injuries, too, when we’ve evaded pursuit sufficiently.”

“My injuries?” He squeaked when he was upset. It was adorable. “That’s not necessary. You can drop me at any hospital; I have very good health insurance. I appreciate the rescue, but I don’t need to burden you any longer.”

Aaaw. She almost felt bad for him as she patted his shoulder. “I think you’ll be with us for a while, Agent Reid.” Cleaned up, refurbished… but she wasn’t sure she’d sell him.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/149520.html. You can comment here or there.

Shadow of a Doubt – Giraffe Call

Oct16

For [personal profile] jjhunter‘s image prompt, directly after In the Shadows (LJ).

Commenters: 4

I gotta tell you, I got out of the city as soon as I could. No overtime for me; it was time for me to go where the sun shone and the people knew my name.

But driving out of the city nearly killed me. I don’t like the drive-by-wire roads, so I take the back streets when I can, the ghettos, the old high-rises where people who can’t afford the ‘plexes or just don’t want to move still live. The roads there are still plain asphalt; too expensive to wire for too little payback.

And there I was, driving through a once-proud neighborhood, looking up at the shoes on the line. Old shoes, shoes with holes in the soles. Shoes made out of canvas and rubber, saying “we’re still here. We’re still living here in the shadow of the ‘plexes.”

And shadows. I didn’t want to think about shadows, but there in the wires, there was a flash of white. A shimmering shape against the sun. I blinked, and it was still there – a silhouette, a human shape, a shadows done in white instead of grey. Walking on the shoes. Walking down the wire, with nothing to cast the shadow, nothing to project some sort of holograph. Not here in the neighborhood, where they didn’t need daylight bulbs because they could still see the real sun.

I stopped the car – and a good thing, too; I wasn’t the only one staring. The shadow, the apparition, I guess, walked over the shoes until it found a pair it wanted – the holiest pair, the oldest pair. The ones that were barely held together by the stitching.

And that ghost slipped right into those shoes and walked off in them, not seeming to care the laces were still tied together.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/149172.html. You can comment here or there.

In the Shadows – for Giraffe Call

Oct16

For ZiaNuray‘s prompt.

Commenters: 3

The shadows were the first thing to go weird.

I was working on one of the new mega-complexes when I first noticed it, installing the daylight bulbs those things needed on the inner corridors, to keep people from going nuts and killing everyone (I kid you not. It had happened three time. THREE TIMES! before they figured out it was the light that was doing it, people who lived and worked and shopped all deep in the ‘plex and never got out into the real sun), when the shadows started going funny.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it had been almost a week since I’d seen the sun myself – I rented a capsule deep in a ‘plex, worked in the city all week and drove home to Fredonia on the weekends to see the wife and kids – but I wasn’t feeling like killing anyone except the manufacturer of the damn fixtures. And then shadows, well, the first thing I noticed was that there was a shadow coming towards me with no person attached.

Okay, that was a bit weird, so I hurried up and got that bank of lights installed, flipped the breaker, checked them out. The shadow was gone, but, for a moment, ALL the shadows were gone. Even mine. I flipped the switch again, and looked at my shadow.

It was looking at me. Well, not “looking,” I guess, but it was reaching towards me. Sort of like it was pleading, I guess. And the longer those daylight bulbs glowed on it, the darker it got.

And like I said… that was the FIRST thing that went weird.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/148766.html. You can comment here or there.

Halloween 1988

Oct16

For an anonymous prompt.

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

This happens before the storyline of Addergoole and may or may not be canon.

Commenters: 3

“Well, this will be interesting.” Maureen studied the incoming parents and small children flowing into the well-decorated Village. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Regine?”

“Normal American children celebrate Halloween, correct?” the Director asked crisply. “And, right now, the children of our project are normal American children.”

“Well, not all of them are American, but I see your point,” Maureen ceded. Even if “normal” was open to debate. “But they’re so young – you don’t really think they’re remember this, do you?”

“They may. And if they don’t, we can see how they’re progressing.”

“Of course.” Always with her project motives, never seeing the human – the person – behind the project. Maureen tut-tutted quietly and went off to see how the party preparations were going.

“What are you supposed to be?” A tiny girl – maybe five years old, if Maureen was any judge – was looking up at a dour-faced Doug.

“A centurion,” he told her gravely, and then, much to Maureen’s surprise, knelt down so she could see the way his breastplate was put together. “You?”

“Me?” She did a happy twirl of her lavender and purple dress. “I’m a good witch. I’m Shahin.” She offered him a hand solemnly. “This is Kailani,” she pointed at the freckled ginger girl next to her, who was wearing a tailored navy-blue suit with a red tie. “She’s dressed as the first woman president. And this is Jamian.” The little boy trailing along behind had a beard glued to his chin, and giant paper-mache horns. “He’s a goat.”

“Baa,” the boy offered uncertainly.

“Very nice costumes,” Doug agreed solemnly. “I think you all did very well.”

On the other side of Main Streets, two small children were shouting at each other. Maureen stood, leaving the adorable set of children to their conversation with the dour warrior, and hurried over to break up the fight. She was already getting quite a bit of practice at that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/148609.html. You can comment here or there.