Haunted House 39: Honest

Mar2

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous:  Upset

🌳

Once again, Mélanie was in the wagon, this time back in the front. Once again, she was leaving the House behind. She waved as they left; two of the shutters on the second floor clacked back at her in what she was going to assume was a wave.

The horses seemed to like the trip to town. Their ears were pointed forward and their clip-clopping hooves seemed happy, like they were going someplace they knew and liked.

Jasper caught Mélanie looking more than once.  “You can still talk to them if you want,” he encouraged her, the third time he’d smiled at her as she’d turned away blushing.  “They like the apples the carter in town feeds them, I think, but I don’t really talk well to them.”

“I can?”  She leaned forward happily and muttered a Working, slipping into their contented minds. They liked going this way.  This way came with happy places. They was way easy, and the Human was happy when he left here.

She chuckled. “Aw.  They like you, I think.  They like you being happy.”

Continue reading →

Running in the Bear Empire 36: Guests

Mar1

First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous: Hunting
Next: 37: Halorans

🐻

She watched the pebble flow true and thunk hard against a forehead before she had time to process who was standing there.  No weapons out, no Imperial insignia, not someone she knew — they looked startled and took three steps back.

She dropped her slingshot in a pouch and grabbed her longknife.  “Hello.” If they had darts, they’d be going for a pouch; a wrist-dagger, they’d be shifting their wrist, a sword or blade, reaching for their back or thigh.  Sher shifted her weight to her back leg and got ready to block with a wrist or an elbow if she had to.

The woman had her hand halfway to her neck when the “Hello” seemed to make her pause.  With her hand still hanging in the air over her shoulder, she cleared her throat. “Hello.”

“Are you here to kill me?”  The woman had the same blonde Bear-family hair as Deline, the same blue eyes and broad shoulders. Probably not a Deklegion bounty hunter, but it didn’t do to take stupid risks.

“Depends.”  The woman rubbed her forehead where the rock had hit her.  “Who are you?” Continue reading →

Month of Letters / Int. Correspondence Month round-up and plans ahead

Mar1

It’s March! Aaaaa!

Okay! So, in February, I:

* Sent out 26 initial letters or postcards, to which I received 6 replies, to which I’ve replied, so far, to 4, with one more almost ready to mail
(32, 6 in)
* Received 6 initial letters, to which I’ve replied, so far, to 4, with one more almost ready to mail
(32+4 = 36; 6+6=12)
* Received one reply to my reply, which I’ve replied to.
(Total: 37 out, 13 in)

I mailed out two letters already today as well, both initial.

I wrote to:
* 5 relatives, with 4 more planned
* 10 complete strangers (from Twitter and the LetterMo and InCoWriMo sites)
* People I’ve known for years
* People I only know on Discord or Mastodon
* 1 person who used to live with me
* 1 person I met through 4TheWords

And, as far as I know, I have had one piece of mail completely lost in, well, the mail.

I plan to:

  • finish my list of people-to-write-to, so if you haven’t gotten a letter yet and you asked for one, have faith!  It will get there.
  • Write back to everyone who wrote to me
  • Take the 10th, 20th, and 30th of each month to write out letters to people or reply to letters I get in the meantime.
  • Finish my STAMP card eventually (LetterMo Bingo, shown below)
  • Make some envelopes
  • Keep making Letter art.

Continue reading →

Sick Day

Feb26

I’m home sick!  And I’m home sick with something banal!

When I woke up Saturday with a cold, I was actually excited.  There’ve been so many obnoxious “what is WRONG with me?” “Is this a symptom of something extant or is it something new?” “What did my medicine DO to me?” in the last two years that having something whose symptoms I recognized completely, something that I understood what to do about, was more than a relief; I was cheerful!

Of course, on day 4 (maybe 6) of this, I am not so bright and excited, but hey, I have been taking naps and drinking lots of fluids and husband has been making me lots of tea.  A nap in front of the fire is a pretty nice way to spend part of the day, especially with a cat asleep on my belly (That would be Merit, the one of our three who has really mastered sleeping-on-people).  Continue reading →

In The End…

Feb26

Originally posted on Patreon in February 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

A story of Addergoole, Hell Night, and friendship.

~~

It came down to the two of them, back to back, the darkness and the monsters all around them.

They hadn’t even really talked before this.  They had three classes together, but Pramod had been trying to make friends with the closest to jocks that this school had, and Swanhild was trying to find the artsy sorts – easier to find than jocks, at least.  Pramod had been on the top of the heap before coming to this place, and Swan had been used to being ignored by guys like him.

Now she had her back against him literally, and the shadows were snarling at her, at them, and somewhere outside their pod someone was sing-songing “come out, come out, wherever you are,” which wasn’t creepy at all.  But Swan had seen plenty of horror movies, and had come to school with four things that didn’t really look like weapons until she needed to swing them at someone – or to have Pramod swing them, since he was bigger.  Swan had thought she was tall until she met Pramod, who was a full 8 inches taller than her and made it look surprisingly good.

So he had the baseball bat and she had the antenna from her dad’s old car – an in-joke that had already left two people swearing – and they had each other, back to back.

“I don’t even know you,” he whispered, in a moment between attacks.

“That’s all right.  I don’t know you, either, and I already know I like you better than any of these assholes.”

He laughed at that, as he was meant to, and then they were under attack again.

When the lights came back on, both of them were panting, sweating – laughing.  Both of them were aching, bruised, bleeding – smiling.  Both of them were free.

“Friends?” Swan offered, holding out her hand for Pramod.

He grinned down at her. “Friends.  Hey, that jerk with the whip.  Wanna gather up a couple others and go after him?  I bet we could take him down with enough of us.”

“How about we go get lunch, instead,” she countered.  Jocks, she thought, but it was affectionate in a way she’d never felt before. “Then maybe we can smear his name so that he never gets laid again, how’s that?”

“Nerd.”  He smiled down at her, and she felt warm at the label the way nobody had ever managed.

“That’s me.”

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Beyond Rules

Feb23

Originally posted on Patreon in February 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

This is a story written to @Eseme’s prompt to my Valentine-day Prompt Call. 

💕

There were things that had rules, rules they had established through the years of their relationship.  There were things that were too small for rules, or too mobile, or simply too unpredictable — they had a Rule about neighbors but not one that encompassed the entirety of living next to dragons, for instance.  And then there were things that were too big for Rules.

Their Time was one of those.  They didn’t call it date night, because more often than not, neither of them wanted to deal with crowds or even quiet, intimate restaurants.  They didn’t call it parents’ time, the way some of their friends did, because it was time to not be parents, or a warlock and a witch, but simply Aud and Sage.

Jin had agreed to watch the younger children, as he did most weeks, for a reasonable going rate that meant they didn’t have to try breaking in a new babysitter — a situation always fraught with difficulties when one lived in Smokey Knoll.  Aud and Sage took their dinner up into the tallest tower in their house, into a room they saved for times like this; the children were instructed to only interrupt in the direst of emergencies.

Sage lit the candles.  Aud poured the wine.  They sat together on the divan and looked out over the city, watching the lines of magic flow through the enchanted viewing-glass in their observatory.  They held hands, each of them eating one-handed, and smiled, letting their own private magic flow between them.

They didn’t talk much.  There was plenty of time for talking, and they had said many of the things they might need to say already. They simply were, and when it was Their Time, that was enough.

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