In search of an Heir, a drabble

Aug7

From [personal profile] meridian_rose‘s prompt “What do you do if there aren’t enough princes/princesses to go around, and/or they’re gay or asexual or infertile?”

Though this one feels like just a beginning to me, too; I’d already gone over my 150 by nearly 3x

The King and his Consort sat studying each other over tea, a list of names on a piece of parchment between them. The King was old, his beard long and grey; his Consort, his third wife, slightly younger than his oldest son.

“Caleb doesn’t like girls,” she murmured, circling the name of his first son. “There will be no Heir there.”

“I never liked girls either,” the King murmured. “You close your eyes and think of other things, and do your duty.”

His Consort, unsurprised by this news, merely shrugged. “Caleb can’t seem to bring himself to that, and he outright refuses to marry. The people like having a Queen.” That their marriage was morgantic, she didn’t mention. Like her husband’s tastes, they’d gone over that ground long before.

“Well, Andrew. He likes women.”

“Impotent and infertile. And no woman would stand his presence long enough to marry him, except a maid who had no choice… and she wouldn’t be suitable for Queendom.”

“My brother’s son? Augie?”

“Immature, infantile, irresponsible. Prefers the company of horses to that of men or woman. And dogs.”

“Hrmf. Can’t have a puppy as heir. Damnit, woman, I’m not going to live forever.”

“Well, the way I see it, you have four choices.” She kept her voice level. It wouldn’t do to snap at him; ancient, crotchety granther or not (“not,” on the last point, really being the problem at hand), he was the King.

“Four?” he peered at her over his glasses.

“You can hope Augie grows into an adult who will close his eyes and do his duty. The second daughter of the king of Tanquir has a bit of a horsey look to her.”

“I’m not sure I have the time for that,” he admitted.

“You can put Caleb on the throne, and allow him to put his lover as Consort.”

“Grandchildren,” the king pointed out.

“Well, they do have adoption. And his Consort might be more willing to close his eyes,” she pointed out.

“Hrmf, what’s the third choice?”

“Find a practical, brutal woman willing to cuckold Augie and give you an heir.”

“We’re getting further and further from the royal line here, woman.”

She forbore to point out that the royal line seemed incapable of giving their King an heir, and, instead, moved on to her fourth option.

“Well, sir,” she offered carefully, “There’s always your daughter.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/100718.html. You can comment here or there.

Soo…. What do YOU want me to write today?

Aug7

Taking prompts again… on a general theme of gender, sexuality, and how they go funky.

I’ll write at least 150 words on everything I get between now and this time tomorrow. And, as always, tipping guarantees more wordage – and helps me buy the lovely giraffe carpet. For more information, my Donor landing page is here (and on LJ)


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/100478.html. You can comment here or there.

Vocabulary! New word of the Day – Vibrissa

Aug6

I took this vocabulary test, and was, being me, a bit miffed at the words I didn’t know. But I wrote them down, so I have a new word-a-day for the next month!

Today’s word is vibrissae:

Plural of vibrissa

1: any of the stiff hairs that are located especially about the nostrils or on other parts of the face in many mammals and that often serve as tactile organs
2: any of the stiff hairs growing within the nostrils that serve to impede the inhalation of foreign substance
http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/vibrissa

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vibrissae offers in addition:
[From Late Latin vibrissae, nostril hairs, from vibrre, to vibrate; see vibrate.

I haven’t visited the Cali Catpeople in a while…, so…

Bay liked the claws; always a small woman, she had learned early to fight dirty, and liked the added advantage of a hidden weapon. She liked the teeth, although they took some getting used to, to talk around, to eat with. But the vibrissae, as their handlers insisted on calling them… those took more than a little adjustment. They felt as if the whole world was pulling on her face with every move.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/100234.html. You can comment here or there.

Vocabulary Fic: Sedulous

Aug5

I took this vocabulary test, and was, being me, a bit miffed at the words I didn’t know. But I wrote them down, so I have a new word-a-day for the next month!

Today’s word is sedulous:
1: involving or accomplished with careful perseverance
2: diligent in application or pursuit

Origin of SEDULOUS
Latin sedulus, from sedulo sincerely, diligently, from sed-, se without + dolus guile — more at suicide
First Known Use: 1540
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sedulous

 

So, taking off from our earlier story…

One of Cash’s teachers at the Tower had called him “sedulous,” which had annoyed him until he’d found the dictionary section of the library. He wasn’t a quick learner, but he was dogged, stubbornly sticking to a subject until he’d mastered it.

Warfare had not been a subject that had particularly interested him…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/99913.html. You can comment here or there.

Breaking In

Aug5

haikujaguar has begun a writing challenge for her Words of the Day: take the four from Mon-Thurs, and work them into a paragraph/story/poem/etc.

This is mine, for the words lenity, cerement, yataghan and adamant. I meant to make it funny, in contrast to the stories that kept wanting to come out of swords and grave-wrappers. I think the words weighted it on me.

“Hey, Cash, what’s this say?” Anemone jabbed a finger at the metal placard on the broken case.

“Yataghan,” Cassius read, “a Turkish saber found in…”

“Cash! What’s this?”

Of the eight, Cassius was the only one whose parents had paid for his schooling at the Tower, and thus the only one who could read with any skill. This old building they’d found, half-buried under the rubble of another one, the gate buckled open just enough for a skinny teen, had him running all over the place, translating for his friends.

He jogged to the other side of the room, staring at the rotted linen Roma was yanking on. “Holies, Rom, don’t do that. That’s…” He peered at the plaque for the correct word. “That’s a gravecloth,” he temporized, “a cerement.” He braced for Roma’s helpful…

“It ain’t cement.”

“Cerement,” he repeated. “They wrapped it around the body. The dead body.”

“Oh!” Finally getting the point, the bigger boy dropped the length of cloth.

“Ca-a-sh!” That was Ona and Ursa in concert, the way they often were. They had no lenity in them, no forgiveness if they were ignored. He jogged down the buckled and cracked floor towards the twins, Roma following him, wiping his hands on his pants and asking questions.

“What is this place, Cash? Some sort of place like the Tower, a Library? What’s with all the broken glass?”

Cassius skidded to a halt by the girls, Roma stopping abruptly behind him. “No,” he said, ignoring the quaver in his voice and the doom his friends would bring down on him for arguing. “No.” He made his voice hard, adamant, even as he backed away from the artifact. “No, it’s…”

“Cash,” Ona snapped. “Read it for us!”

He didn’t need to. He recognized it from the books, from the ones in the room labeled “Never Again.” He didn’t think, here, in the open like this, it could hurt them. Then again, vandals had broken every other case, stolen anything of use, except this, still sealed in its glass.

“It says ‘death,’” he snapped.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/99541.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 10, Coming Soon: Reiassan

Aug5

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written.”

Reiassan/Rin & Girey – landing page here (and on LJ).

Pan over a rocky landscape, following a river that wends its way south, past a white-walled cliff city, past farms cut into the mountains. As we begin, the travel up the road, running Northwards, looks like a long, ragged snake.

Voiceover: The two nations on the continent of Reiassan have been at war as long as either of them can remember.

As we grow closer, the snake reveals itself as an army, slowly marching, tired, wounded, but proud. The almost-universally dark-haired and short figures wear bright colours, and we can hear, over the crescendos of the music, the thudding rhythm of a cheerful marching song. Their armor is Romanesque in feel, and their mounts, those that have them (Officers, better-dressed, no less tired, no less wounded) ride tall, husky goats.

Finally, after generations, one nation has emerged victorious.

We see, among the short, brightly-dressed soldiers, others, dressed in bland browns and tans, wearing chains, some male, some female, mostly taller, fairer people. The camera is still moving Northwards, picking out faces on the long train of people.

The war is over.

Cut to generals signing treaties in a tent, one dark-haired, one blonde, both tired-looking.

Pan out from the tent to the mess of the battlefield. Scavengers and medics tend to the wounded and bury the dead. Near the tent, a man in rich-looking robes is forced to his knees on a platform.

The Callanthe had defeated the Bitrani. They have killed their King.

We see the axe begin to fall, and the camera cuts away, again. A dark-haired woman in a bright green tunic looks down at a scruffy blonde soldier in the remains of expensive, if dull-colored, clothing and armor. His hands and ankles are shackled.

Now they must learn to live with them.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/99133.html. You can comment here or there.

There’s a Pawnshop on the Corner, Where I keep my Overcoat…

Aug5

‘Scuse the digression.

There’s a farmstand on the corner where my lunch-walk passes by…

So yesterday I picked up a zuke, some fresh corn, and a pepper, and for dinner, we had tempura’d tilapia, zucchini, and yam, with fresh sweet corn on the side. Delicious!

This was a bit accidental – I picked up plain seltzer the other day, thinking that Alton Brown’s pancake recipe called for it. (It doesn’t. His waffle recipe is still delicious). After some searching we determined that it was his tempura recipe… so we made tempura. A nice accident.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/98968.html. You can comment here or there.

Donor Perk – Dragons Next Door: Ketchup

Aug4

anke requested some more of the “Hostage Situation” drabble (LJ). This takes place immediately after that story.

Dragons Next Door Landing Page (and on LJ)

“It’s a human.”

Staring at my oldest child, I sank down onto the couch. Slowly, as if I was a thousand years old, and carefully, as if I or the couch might shatter at too rough an impact. Blindly, I felt for their hands, all the while chiding myself.

How can I pretend to be this enlightened soul, this all-creatures-in-one-neighborhood advocate, and then be so much more horrified when the monster on TV is of my species?

“Human?” I heard myself say, despite the screaming of my internal censor. “They’re sure?”

“Stands upright, two legs, two arms, generally human-shaped and sized.” My oldest child is not known for tact or empathy; then again, it may simply be that teenagers in general cannot handle these things. “Yeah,” came the clarification, before my aggrieved sigh could become an actual complaint. “Human. As far as the news is telling us, garden-variety white-bread normal sort of human.”

“Normal,” my husband coughed. “There is nothing normal about this.”

Handwave. “You know. Not a Special Projects sort, not a White Tower sort. Doesn’t go zzzapp with his fingers. Just… appears to be holding hostages in case he gets the munchies.”

My husband was, by this point, nearly out of his seat. I sensed the breaking point was close; soon, it would either devolve into a fight, or he would stalk out angrily. With that going on downtown, he’d end up beelining there, retired or no. And this one looked bad.

“All right.” I set one hand on my husband’s knee, one on my child’s. “Start at the beginning.”

Sage took a deep breath, pulling himself back from that place. “It’s been on for about twenty minutes. The first they showed was a scrying of the inside of the bank, and then that went black, and they went to this footage.” He gestured at the TV, where police and reporters loitered around the bank as if waiting for someone to give them orders.

Jin picked up the thread, sounding, for once, almost like a kid again. “The scrying was pretty bad. He had the bank manager stretched over the marble counter, backwards, like an Aztec altar. Everyone else was hogtied, and he’d gotten apples somewhere…”

“There’s no trace of magic about it,” Sage continued. Knowing him, he hadn’t taken the TV’s word for that, either. “No accomplices. One corpse already – the security guard. I used to work with him, when I was on the force.”

“Eviscerated,” Jin murmured, and then, with a note of beginning hysteria, “ketchup.”

I gave Sage a look: do something. There was a time for territorial disputes, and a time to be a parent. With an eyeroll: duh, he moved around me to pull our oldest into a tight hug.

“The police will come up with something,” he murmured reassuringly, “or we will, for them. Someone always does.”

Next: Salt

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/98383.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

30 Days Second Semester: 10, Planning a Family, Tír na Cali

Aug4

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “10) write a story set in three different time periods”

Tír na Cali – landing page here (and on LJ).

Author’s note: the Cali royalty trace their lineage back through three clever pioneers (Istvia, Imogen, and Gwydion) to so-called witches who came over from Ireland to settle the west coast of North America.

Ireland, 1685

The witch looked over the table at her cousin, a pretty young thing that, until now, everyone had assumed was just daft. The girl was floating the dishes in the air, all of the dishes, weaving them in and out in a series of loops that looked like a Maypole dance.

The witch stood, pondering her dim-witted cousin, and nodded at her brother. ::James, Alice’s son with the lovely eyes,:: she murmured into his head. :: He’ll make a good groom. He’s always thought she was fetching.:: And he could lift more than a man ought to, and carry it for nearly ever.

Sacramento,California 1849
Istvia and Imogen studied each other over a game of chess, although both were minding Imogen’s youngest daughter, playing patty-cake with the dark-haired boy Istvia used as a fetch-and-carry page.

“She’s already showing signs,” Imogen murmured under her breath. “She has a bear that follows her everywhere, even if she forgets to pick him up. It upsets the help.”

Istvia, who already knew this, nodded sagely. “He,” she tilted her head at the boy, still feet short of his adult height, “gets things off tall shelves.”

“Mmm. Worth a try, then.”

Hillsboro, Oregon, 2011
Catherine ni Johanna ó Imogen studied her teenaged niece. The girl was playing checkers with a slave boy, a handsome teenager who, like many of the slaves on Catherine’s estate, bore a striking resemblance to Catherine’s family. This one, however, though he had the eyes and the nose, was a good head taller than the free men in the bloodline, and, on brief observation, rather more clever, too.

Catherine had carefully discouraged her niece’s friendship with the boy, disapproving in an over-the-top way only teenagers believed. With luck, there’d be a child before Yule.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/98205.html. You can comment here or there.