Originally posted by ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmith at New Crowdfunding Project: "Nightlights"
Also:
recessional is having a book sale. Lots of good stuff there!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/82393.html. You can comment here or there.
Yesterday (note: while the Finger Lakes of NYS are buffered by being, a, surrounded by water and b, northerly, the heat wave the US is experiencing did push the high into the 90’s yesterday), Spouse!man and I scraped, sanded, and painted three window frames, a utility door, and the front door frame on the-house-that-isn’t-quite-ours-yet.
We’re on the final lap, I think; we’re handling things that have to be corrected for the mortgage to be approved: rug (argh), boiler issues, paint, and handrails. And then we get to start the REAL fixing up!
It’s going to reach 100 today. I may put off that walk.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/82092.html. You can comment here or there.
This is a short story in response to rix_scaedu‘s commission in my Giraffe Sale: More of Ceinwen & Thornburn.
Addergoole Year 9, next in order with the rest of them – Dark Corners is a good pre-read to this for context.
By Tuesday, Ceinwen was beginning to get used to the collar, or, at least, to the way it felt around her neck. She didn’t find herself reaching up at every opportunity to touch it, and the movement it made, shifting with every move of hers, didn’t cause sudden, unwanted reminders of Thornburn and his arrogant, knowing smile.
She hadn’t yet gotten used to the way everyone’s eyes seemed to go to her throat, though. Sometimes it was other Ninth Cohort students, their own necks circled by something, looking lost, or still bare-necked and looking like they’d missed the memo. Sometimes it was upperclassmen and teachers with sympathetic looks.
The worst, however, were the other looks, the vaguely disappointed ones, especially from someone like Taliesin, who she’d really liked, who’d invited her to a poetry reading next weekend. Somehow, she didn’t think Thornburn would let her do that. Worse, she doubted the invitation was still open.
She didn’t mean to start crying about it – she’d been so good, holding in the tears, not letting Him see how upset he’d gotten her. She could have kept going, except the leer that Curry gave her as she walked into the Dining Hall, the whispered insinuation that he couldn’t wait until Thorn was ready to share her.
She fled before anyone could tell her to stop, relieved that He hadn’t thought to give her any orders about lunch yet, and kept running, choking on the tears she was trying to hold back.
She fell into the girls’ room almost accidentally, looking for a place to hide, somewhere He wouldn’t come looking. The bathroom seemed to fit the bill perfectly, so she slipped in, hiding in the last stall, and let the tears come.
She was his. She was a possession, and everyone knew it. Everyone who looked at her knew he’d marked her, caught her. From the leers some people were giving her, everyone thought they were having sex. And his friends thought, eventually, He’d get bored with her and share her with them.
Share her. The sobs bubbled up, and escaped, one after another. Things got shared. You lent your favorite CD, your favorite pants. Not your girlfriend. Not your friend. She gulped air, trying to calm down, and kept sobbing.
It felt as if every tiny thing since Saturday morning was coming out all at once. Basalt, who she’d thought was an okay guy, grabbing her arm and yanking her down a hole. Curry laughing and leering at her. Thornburn’s gentle, calm voice. “I’ll protect you. Be mine.”
His smirk, afterwards, as he showed her exactly what kind of power he’d given over her. The box where he’d locked a quarter of her stuff, then another quarter of it when she complained about the first bunch. The collar around her neck. The weight of it when she was naked, pressed against his clothed body for sleep. The darkness of his shadows, even in her dreams. The shadows all over this school. The light she’d shined on all of it.
She caught the next sob, swallowed it, and stood, slowly, remembering that light, and the warmth of it. She scrubbed at her eyes and stretched her back, talking herself into some semblance of calm. Curry was an ass, yes, but Thornburn had said, over and over again, that he Kept her (at least in part, and the “in part” worried her a bit) to protect her. Did she really think Thornburn would share her? Did Curry think it would happen? Or was Curry just trying to freak her out, to see how much he could affect her?
She scrubbed at her eyes in the sink, trying to work her mind around the uncomfortable feeling of being a possession, and the even more uncomfortable part of her that wanted to accept it, to accept Thornburn’s rule. She was so tangled in the internal argument, she didn’t notice the door had opened until, glancing in the mirror, she saw a face behind her.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/81915.html. You can comment here or there.
meeks has posted an updated sketch (LJ Link) of Shine On, to ysabetwordsmith‘s poem of the same name
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/81598.html. You can comment here or there.
Thisis a short story in response to clare_dragonfly‘s commission in my Giraffe Sale: “More of that Rozen and Aviv”
Addergoole/Fae Apoc. After Devil Deals (LJ Link) and before Into the Woods (from Sugar Cat) and the subsequent events in Retirement and Retirement 2
Fish Gotta Swim explains what Aviv is up to.
One year, six months after Devil Deals
Aviv left Rozen to the terrified girl, a lovely sorrel brunette, careful not to let his disgust show on his face. “I’ll take the other one back to her home, and see you next year.”
“Pleasure doing business with you.” Of course it was. Rozen delighted in making people uncomfortable. Aviv picked up the unconscious blonde, last year’s victim, and, carefully working an invisibility, carried her home. He left her on her father’s doorstep – her father who had sold her to a monster for a year of peace – tucked in a blanket, and went home, almost holping Rozen would break their deal.
One year later
Three refugees that had come through his camp had mentioned Rozen’s name; one, a tiny girl with lightning in her eyes, had been escorted the whole way there by the giant man. The beast having kept his end of the bargain, Aviv travelled back to his protectorate to keep his end.
The villagers tended to come up with an excuse to send the girls into the woods when it came time to pay the tithe; since the rest of the year it was safe, kept so by Rozen himself, the girls didn’t seem to suspect anything. This year, one had brought her friend, however.
They could handle two girls. Aviv Worked his invisibility and ghosted out into the path, the trees moving eerily around them, the path seeming to close in from behind. He’d used this trick before, when humans were hunting down Ellehemaei in his territory. But these were innocent girls.
They screamed, all the rumors of beasts in the woods, monsters who eat little girls, coming back to them all at once. One of them tried to run, and smacked straight into Aviv. He wrapped a tentacle around her and held her fast.
The other one was holding her head with fingers that seemed to be elongating and splitting, looking more like tendrils or vines than fingers, while pools of ink spilled out of her pants legs. Behind her, Rozen laughed and picked her up.
“Looks like we trade,” he joked. “This one’s got to be yours.”
Aviv held the girl in his non-arms tighter as he watched Rozen, wondering if the beast was going to go for a deal. But the big man was shaking his head, even as he hauled the weakly-struggling girl across the clearing. His voice was solemn. “The girl I dropped off with you? She all right?”
“Ashni?” He nodded. “We got her settled in. Seems she’s pregnant.” He kept any question out of his voice. He didn’t want to know.
“Good. Here, you take your cousin-niece-granddaughter-whatever here home. I’ll keep an eye on her family. You have my word on that.”
Aviv exchanged girls, murmuring a quick Working to put them both to sleep. “Thank you.” Balancing the sleeping maybe-a-relative on his shoulder, he wrapped invisibility around them and headed for home.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/81020.html. You can comment here or there.
This is a short story in response to rix_scaedu‘s commission in my Giraffe Sale: “What happens in Rozen’s territory after he’s packed off to Kailani?”
Addergoole/Fae Apoc. After Devil Deals (LJ Link) and Into the Woods (from Sugar Cat) and the subsequent events in Retirement and Retirement 2
He’d thought he’d have trouble moving among humans. He’d never had a particularly normal upbringing, after all, and then he’d spent decades in a sealed enclave of Ellehemaei society.
But humans, now, it seemed, were more interested in basic survival and less interested in shunning someone for odd behavior and, besides, for all he’d been cloistered away, he’d learned people. He could move from settlement to settlement, talking with his – Regine’s, really – contacts there, following the trail – without anyone suspecting he was anything more than a Mysterious (Human) Stranger, one of the Outriders who connected the sparse settlements. After all, that’s what he was.
He followed the trail for four months, the urgency growing with every stop, every step along the way. They’d known it would take some time to find his quarry, but they had thought a month, maybe two. Not four. While he’d traveled away from the enclave plenty of times since the Devastation, but never for more than two months. The distance, the separation, was beginning to wear on him as the months passed, and it made him a touchy, cranky Outrider, short with his contacts and cold with strangers. Someone who had known the young Ambrus, if they’d still survived, would not have recognized him in this cold and angry man.
His contact – her contact, but willing to talk to him – in the cold Northern township of Regina Beach was a young woman, at least in appearance, a blonde blue-eyed waif with a smile that reminded him of someone from a long time past. He worked through the required rituals with his best manners, transported for a moment to a time even longer past, when he was a child in his master’s home. And then, the spell broken with the bitter herbal tea, he cut to the chase before she could distract him into something Regine might regret.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“I know.” She gestured at the blue bowl on the table, the covered mirror. “I saw you’d come this way.”
“Then you can point me to his path?”
“I can do better than that. But there’s a price.”
There was always a price. “It’s not my mission, and there are only so many things I can promise on her behalf,” he warned her.
“This, you can give me.” He’d last seen that smile on the most poisonous child he’d ever sired. Was this sweet-looking girl her offspring? He suddenly wanted to see her Change, to see her ears.
“What is it you would have of me?” he asked instead. Wondering if she was his granddaughter, his great-granddaughter. Wondering if his orders would allow him to deny her, if she asked what he was afraid she would.
The look on her face, the sly twist of her emotions, told him she knew what he was thinking. “Not that. I imagine someone ought to ask you for something else, especially someone who has already had that blessing in her family line once or twice.”
So she was his descendant. Not surprising, all things considered; he allowed his relief to show in his face.
“Then what?”
“It’s not your only skill, I’ve been told. When you’re done with this mission, in the next six months, come back to us. There’s someone here who could use… your other skills, and your knowledge.”
He nodded slowly. “I will do that,” he agreed. No use in pretending to promise. “I can do that.”
“He’s North,” she told him. “One village up, about a day’s travel. Avoid the old warehouse; you don’t want to know what lives there. “
“Thank you.” Anxiety dropped from his shoulders. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you within the next half a year?”
“You will,” he nodded, and left, not stopping to sleep, not stopping to eat. The pressure of the mission had gone too far for that.
He found his quarry where she’d said he would be, in a cottage in a small town, with a young wife and a young child. He had no room left for even the smallest niceties at this point; “Regine needs you,” is all he managed.
“Regine can bite off and die,” Abednego answered just as bluntly.
Ambrus leaned weakly against his horse. It had been a long night, and the creatures in the old warehouse were nocturnal. “Of course,” he said, summoning up some fragment of his legendary charm. “But her enclave serves a useful purpose.”
“Others do, too, without being evil bitches for spice.” The lanky man paused, reading something in Ambrus’ face. “I know you love her, but…”
Ambrus shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m aware what people feel.”
“You would be, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t be in your shoes for anything.”
Ambrus looked down at his dusty boots; right now, he didn’t want to be in them, either.
Abednego misread the gesture; his voice softened. “Why don’t you come in, stay the night? I’ll hear you out on her ‘needs,’ at the very least.”
Ambrus pushed the need into a little corner, and nodded tiredly. “Thank you.” Given all night, he could do what his mistress needed him to. And then he could go home.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/80644.html. You can comment here or there.
lilifluff‘s response to my giraffe sale: more of the slave school!
The first two entries of the slave school are:
Frying Pan, Fire (LJ Link), from lilfluff‘s prompt regarding a slave school.
Final Exams (LJ Link), from wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt of the same name.
“Room 1, right there. Choose the seat with your name on it and sit down.” The proctor reminded Debbie of the guards at their first prison, except that, instead of a uniform, he wore a shirt and tie. She had no doubt he could be just as rough, though, so she found the seat with her name on it – just Debbie, like everything else here, like she’d left her last name at home with her freedom. She wondered what they’d have done if they had more than one Debbie.
She didn’t ask, though. She sat, instead, tugged her uniform skirt down, and looked at the notebook on her desk. It had her name on it, too, as did the pen sitting at a precise line parallel to the top, just above it.
So they were back in school. She ought to be upset, she supposed, but it was the first thing since she’d gotten kidnapped that made sense. Classroom, notebook, uniform, pen. Nun?
The woman that stepped in to the classroom was almost certainly not a nun, at least not of any faith Debbie had ever encountered (“The Faith” was on her schedule as her third hour class, however, so she imagined she’d be encountering at least one new religion pretty soon). She looked more like something out of a Sexy Teacher video: tight skirt, tight blouse, steel collar.
The proctor hadn’t seemed to be wearing a collar, although his shirt and tie could have covered it; the matron who’d greeted them yesterday certainly wasn’t. All of her fellow students were – identical bands of metal gleaming under their uniform shirts. Was it a good sign or a bad one that the teacher was, too? She’d be more patient with them, right? More forgiving? She turned to find Jill, sitting catty-corner behind and to her left. “Maybe this won’t be all bad,” she murmured.
The ruler came down hard on her hand before she even noticed the teacher had moved. “There is no speaking in class unless you are spoken to. Do you understand?”
Debbie gaped, staring at the woman, and the ruler cracked down again. “Do. You. Understand?”
Tossing out any hopes of another slave going easy on them, Debbie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Miss,” she corrected. “But you’ll learn terms of address in the next hour.”
By the end of that hour, Debbie felt as if ‘terms of address’ were leaking out of her ears. She had filled three pages with complicated diagrams of who was above whom and who the should acknowledge first – with the oft-repeated, “but remember, with whoever you are dealing with, you are beneath them. You are beneath everyone.”
That had made Steve complain. More than complain; he’d shouted. “Fuck that shit, lady. I’m as good as the next guy.”
Debbie had bitten her tongue on anything except a warning “Steve…” but it had been enough to get her another smack across the hand. He, on the other hand…
The teacher had grabbed the proctor from the hall. Steve wasn’t a small guy, wiry and athletic – all six of them were the sporty sort, actually – but the proctor was slabs of muscle, and had a food of height on Steve. He’d bent him, struggling the whole time, over his desk, and pulled down his pants so the teacher could lay the rule down, hard enough leave welts, eight times across his ass.
“If anyone in this class makes such an outburst again, you will not only be caned, you will be gagged. This is your only warning.”
Shaking, Debbie had kept her eyes forward and her attention firmly on the teacher for the rest of class. Steve, miracle of miracles, had been quiet, but when they escaped the classroom at the hour bell, he was muttering curses under his breath.
“it’s not right, not fucking right,” he told her. “We’re not beneath anyone.”
“No,” she agreed quietly. “But they’re bigger and stronger. It might behoove us to play along for a while.”
“You play along,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to let them indoctrinate me.”
She was pretty sure that indocrination was more or less the point of the school, but Steve would either learn or he wouldn’t. Right now, there wasn’t much she could do to help him.
She went through her classes, soaking up their lessons, writing down everything, trying not to catch the teachers’ attention, not to be bad. It was hard, sitting quietly through every class when her friends were right there, but it took only two more welts before she got the knack of it. Instead, she wrote down in the margins everything she wanted to say, notes for later discussion.
That night, in her dorm with Jill and Indira, a pretty girl who barely talked, she stared at her first marginalia.
Acculturation. They’re training us to be them.
It wasn’t a comforting thought.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/80567.html. You can comment here or there.
Last Saturday and Sunday for 24 hours, I opened up a line for prompts: ask for anything, and I’ll write 10 minutes or 250 words on it. I got quite a bit of short fiction out of it!
It’s all listed here – http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/226171.html
It was quite a bit of fun! I’m having a giraffe sale (it’s like a fire sale. Only it’s giraffe.(*); from now ’till this time next week, I’ll continue any written piece at a rate of $4 for 400 words.
(*)You see, there’s this carpet I want for the new house, and it looks like a giraffe pattern.
last Saturday and Sunday for 24 hours, I opened up a line for prompts; ask for anything, and I’ll write 10 minutes or 250 words on it. I got quite a bit of short fiction out of it!
In my Addergoole ‘verse:
Joff Gets a Pony (LJ Link), for @daHob’s prompt of the same title.
Devil Deals (LJ Link) from Rix’s prompt, wanting more of Rozen/Aviv in the post-apoc.
Keys (LJ Link), for jeriendhal‘s prompt “You mean it was supposed to have a key?” (Half of this is Addergoole Year9; the other half is Planners).
Dark Corners (LJ Link), Addergoole Year9, to @shutsumon’s prompt “the things that lurk in dark corners.”
Plans is in Addergoole’s current timeline, to @dahob’s prompt asking how Regine sees her students.
Stranded World got:
Bringing Home the Bacon (LJ Link), for kc_obrien‘s prompt of the same title.
Tir na Cali got a new subsetting:
Frying Pan, Fire (LJ Link), from lilfluff‘s prompt regarding a slave school.
Final Exams (LJ Link), from wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt of the same name.
The rest of Fae Apoc got an early history, apoc and a post-apoc story:
eseme wanted goddesses. She got Coming of Age (LJ Link)
(LJ Link)From kc_obrien‘s prompt: “Can I get a short piece from another perspective of some of the internees/guards in the community featured in Discovery Channel/Invisibles (LJ Link)?
First Planting (LJ Link) came from clare_dragonfly‘s prompt of the same title
Reiassan got two stories:
Old Friends (LJ Link), From fayanora‘s prompt “An unexpected ‘Hello.'”
Mighty Sword (LJ Link) from the_vulture‘s prompt – “An intelligent and mighty enchanted sword… that’s afraid of the dark.” In an older era of Reiassan.
Facets of Dusk got another story:
Trouble in Doubles (LJ Link), from kc_obrien‘s request for Josie/Facets and elfling_eryn‘s prompt: “There’s only so much trouble you get into in a day…unless, of course, you have a clone or two at hand.”
And, as always, there were a couple things from no known ‘verse at all:
Waiting Vigil (LJ Link), from lilfluff‘s prompt”The beach, overnight in winter.”
Three Inches (DW Link), for @Inventrix’s prompt for a pookah
Want more of something? I’m having a giraffe sale (it’s like a fire sale. Only it’s giraffe.(*); from now ’till this time next week, I’ll continue any written piece at a rate of $4 for 400 words.
(*)You see, there’s this carpet I want for the new house, and it looks like a giraffe pattern.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/80372.html. You can comment here or there.