15-minute-ficlet, 30daysmeme, “Damn dragons, get off my lawn!”

Jun5

Day 2 of 30 days of Fiction: “2) Write a scene with a drunken mythological creature.”
15 minute fiction prompt: “Obnoxious Dragons.”

There was a drunk dragon on my front lawn again.

The new neighbors had moved in six months ago, at the beginning of winter, into the cavern-and-castle system the ogres had vacated, mom, dad, two kids and an egg, with a pet that they called a dog, I think out of a sense of misplaced irony. And, for a while, everything had been fine. I mean, we’d been living next door to ogres. We were just glad to have the carrion smell gone (fumigated, even. Dragons make good fumigators.)

But once the weather had warmed up, their oldest kid (again with the misplaced irony; they called him Jimmy) had started joyriding and taken up drinking in a big way. Everything they did was big, of course; now take that and multiply it by teenage hormones and rebellion.

My oldest had already gone through the worst of it, and our younger two weren’t there yet; I could spare some sympathy for the Smiths (yes, really. And they were. Smiths, that is, and quite good ones at that). Their fights weren’t any louder than the harpies three doors down, after all, and everyone had had a kid slam the castle gate in the middle of a fight.

But it was a lot easier to spare sympathy when their kid wasn’t snoring a scorch-hole in my lawn. I pulled out the broom and the leather apron I used for cleaning out the incinerator, and headed out to do battle.

“Jimmy.” I poked him below the last ribs with the broom, mindful of the flame-gouts. “Jimmy, you’ve got to go home.”

He blinked at me blearily. “Oh, come on, Mrs. S., can’t I stay here?” Ever hear a dragon whine? Dogs in the next county covered their ears.

“Afraid not, James. You’re welcome to come over for biscuits and gravy when you’re sober, but drunken dragons belong in their own beds. Or down by the waterfall.” This time of year, it could handle him.

He sighed, and he couldn’t have been that far gone, because it didn’t light my lawn on fire. “All right, Mrs. S. Biscuits, really? With the brown gravy?”

“I promise, James. If you’re off my lawn before you set the gnome on fire.”

My brown gravy is the talk of the neighborhood; Jimmy was flying woozily for the waterfall before I’d finished, calling back over his scaly shoulder, “Sorry about the table, Mrs. S., I swear I’ll pay for it.”

I poked the remains of the lawn table my husband had made, and thought wistfully of ogres.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/50200.html. You can comment here or there.

30DaysMeme – Hello.

Jun4

Okay, this setting officially needs a landing page and an icon now. via [personal profile] kc_obrien, via [personal profile] ravenswept, the first of the 30 days of fiction meme. It’s in the same setting as the Library/Academy/Foundation. Which also needs a NAME

1) Write a scene saying “hello”

He came to the school in autumn, once the crops were in. They’d gone back to old habits and old practices in the Academy as in so much else of the world, knowing that the old existed and had survived for so long for a reason.

He was young enough, fifteen, the youngest they accepted students full-time, that this was the only world he remembered. That he had likely never seen a building still standing as large as the Academy, or as many books in one place as the Library. But he didn’t stare like a hick, the way some of them did. He didn’t gape, or gawk. He looked around, calmly, taking it all in. She got the feeling he was looking for escape routes, although he didn’t have the fight-or-flee set to his shoulders, either.

She hadn’t planned on coming down until the rest of the students arrived, probably within the week. She had under-Deans to handle admissions. But something about the way he looked around made her descend the stairs from what she thought of, somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, as her ivory tower.

“Hello,” she said, trying not to smirk when he finally deigned to notice her. “I’m Dean Theresa.”

His slow smile in return was everything she had been expecting. “Hello. I’m Thomas.”

The 30 in KC’s Journal, and the original post

Forbidden
A Kiss Under Duck & Cover
Beginning With a Kiss

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Gulp.

Jun3

Okay, they accepted our offer. Now comes… everything else. Lawyer. Inspection. Radon test. Mortgage.

Cross your extremities for us, please

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/49040.html. You can comment here or there.

Kink Bingo!

Jun2

kink bingo card image cardset5-348.jpg || row 1: | uniforms / military kink | service | sensory deprivation | phonesex / epistolary | possession / marking || row 2: | consent play | mirrors and doubles | dressup | gender play | drugs / aphrodisiacs || row 3: | gangbang | washing / cleaning | wildcard | tentacles | virginity / celibacy || row 4: | whipping / flogging | breathplay | authority figures | spanking / paddling | wet, messy, dirty || row 5: | begging | wrestling / grinding | tattoos / tattooing | shaving / depilation | vehicular

B I N G O
uniforms / military kink service sensory deprivation phonesex / epistolary possession / marking
consent play mirrors and doubles dressup gender play drugs / aphrodisiacs
gangbang washing / cleaning wildcard tentacles virginity / celibacy
whipping / flogging breathplay authority figures spanking / paddling wet, messy, dirty
begging wrestling / grinding tattoos / tattooing shaving / depilation vehicular

[community profile] kink_bingo

I have a plan. It is an awesome plan. Stay tuned for more details.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/48511.html. You can comment here or there.

Random Ficlet of a semi-erotic nature

Jun1

From [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt “dojo, scarlet, thunderstorm,” and it wants to be the same world as the Foundation and the Library, but pre-apoc. Written in 15 minutes on Write or Die.

The silk sheets were strewn around the dojo like long streaks of blood, bright and shiny and scarlet.

They were not even the first thing she noticed, though; by the time she’d gotten that far, she’d already noticed that the building inside the couryard had no windows, and that the walls were very thick, the doors heavy and with double deadbolts.

She hadn’t walked all this way to turn around now, even if that was the goal of the trappings – intimidate, weed out the weak, weed out those who weren’t suited. But (even if, in the core of her heart, she wasn’t certain she was suited), she was determined not to be weeded out. She had a stake in this, a stake beyond the blisters on her feet, beyond the road dust and the gnawing hunger in her stomach.

She bowed to the tatami. Her feet, blisters or no, were at least clean, as were her hands; the attendant at the first gate had seen to that. She’d also taken all of her possessions and locked them into a storage locker, everything except the clothes on her back.

It had the feel of a pilgrimage, or an imprisonment, and, from what she had been told, it would be a little bit of both and, in the long run, less of either and more of an apprenticeship.

It would be wrong to say that she was either eager or nervous. Both of those emotions had had a long time to work out of her system. She had been walking, after all, for weeks. In that time, every emotion she had about this place had come, and, in the slow repetition of her feet on the dusty road, faded.

Outside, a gong rang, echoed by a thunderclap. Through the door she had left open behind her, she could feel the wind whipping up. A storm was coming. She had known that before she began her journey, though: a storm was coming, and it would wash away levees and dams, villages and cities. What it would leave in its wake, what would be left, remained uncertain.

But what she would have here, in the dojo, would be an education that would serve her in almost any world; there were some things that were nearly universal. What she would have here would prepare her for her future, and so she had come, in lieu of summer school, to learn.

“Strip.” The voice was as loud as the thunder, and so close behind her that she wondered how she could have missed them coming up behind her. “You bring nothing, except your self, into the school.”

Such had the attendant at the gate said, but she still struggled with the blush as she stripped off her dusty pants and sweat-stiffened T-shirt. She almost hesitated at her bra and panties, but the blisters on her feet reminded her that she was already invested. The lavender underwear joined the rest in a tidy pile on the floor.

“Drop to your fours,” the voice commanded. She balked, now, but her knees, after all, and her palms, were less blistered than her feet. She dropped to the mat, arching her back as attractively as she could.

From here, the world looked different. She could see a doorway ahead that only came to the current height of her shoulders, draped in another swath of scarlet. She could see the smooth spots in the mat where others had come before. She could see where she had lain aside her pride, and where she had, in doing so, only reinforced it.

She bent further, and kissed the mat.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/48097.html. You can comment here or there.

DailyPrompt Drabble: Stepping around.

May31

From [community profile] dailyprompt and Stranded World.

It had the feel of an optical illusion, this party. People moved around in that way that they do, chatting, sliding from grouping to grouping, finger foods to drinks to bathroom to the best jokes. They moved as if everything was normal.

Autumn, in the center of the party through no volition of her own, tried to mimic their movements, tried to ignore the niggling feeling that she didn’t belong here. Of all her siblings, why did it have to be her? Summer was an actress; she could fake this better. Spring, Spring loved being in the middle of the hoity-toity, the rich, the well-bred. And Winter was implacable. But here she was, Autumn, the gypsy artist, the vagabond with the wind-blown hair, trying to pretend she belonged.

She’d been invited, of course, or she probably wouldn’t have made it through the front door. Her younger sisters had consulted on her outfit, and she looked as if her dress, at least belonged. Since the dress looked like it belonged to her, the illusion seemed to pass: this dress passes muster, thus its wearer must as well. And she’d kept the ink to a bare minimum for the occasion.

All of that, and she’d still expected to be awkward, unhappy, and uncomfortable. She hadn’t expected, quite, to be invisible, but that was how she found herself, passed over by dozens of people who, it seemed, all knew each other. It galled a bit, enough that she took a quick five minutes in the bathroom to scrub off the nothing strange to see here she’d drawn over her heart.

That didn’t seem to do it – and, as she circled the room again, Autumn realized there was something else going on, something beyond her own class-conscious insecurities. The guests weren’t just ignoring her. They were milling, walking around the room like everything was normal, but there was something in the center of the room that they were just ignoring. She, she realized, was ignoring it as well; no matter how hard she peered, she couldn’t quite see it. It was like the old saw about addiction being an elephant in the middle of the living room: Everyone moved around it, but nobody mentioned it.

But it didn’t seem like anyone could even see the elephant (or maybe they could, and she was just not a part enough of their crowd).

prompt: “can you not see the elephant?”
Not really done, but a fun intro

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/47745.html. You can comment here or there.