Tag Archive | character: spring

Family Distancing

Why, no, I’m not going through all my settings and seeing how they’d reacting to a pandemic. I mean, well, maybe a little. Any you want to see?

😷

Winter, Autumn, Summer, and Spring.

😷

“6 p.m. Eastern,” Summer was saying as Autumn logged on. “You were early, Winter, of course. Spring’s late, of course.”

“She is on the West Coast,” Winter retorted mildly. He was wearing his work shirt and tie sans jacket and he’d loosened the tie. The whole image looked very professional against his home bookshelf, if you ignored the fact that he was holding Tortuga, his half-grown cat, while Myrrh, his ferret, climbed the bookshelf and Dehradun, his kitten, napped on the laptop keyboard.

Autumn giggled, even though it might not be kind. Of all of them, she’d have expected Summer to be the pet owner, not Winter.

“She is,” Autumn agreed, “and being on time would disagree with her. How are you both?” Continue reading →

Protected: Come Fly Away

Oct22

Stranded Cat

Apr15

The cat was trailing strands behind itself, so thickly that at first Spring could not see the color of the cat or the shape of it, just a cat-size ball of Strands.

“Did you-”

Her partner snorted. “That’s Ginger Tom. Well, that’s what I call him.”

Spring squinted, and noticed a line from her partner to the cat, no, several, thin but intense.

“Ginger Tom?” she prompted. This was… interesting.

“Well, Anna down the street, she calls him Pumpkin.” He strolled up the hill of his neighborhood as if it were flat. “And then Geordi down there, he calls him Nightmare. And Candid-and-Cariadad, they call him Only Man, and the redhead who won’t tell me her name, she calls him brother.”

Now Spring could make out the cat, a big orange – no surprise – ginger tom. “They all know him?”

“Know him, love him, feed him. you can see it, can’t you?”

“The way he’s connected to the whole neighborhood?” Spring paused. “No, that’s not right. Not quite connected.” She found herself smiling. “Smart cat. I didn’t know they could do that. He’s made himself the neighborhood.”

“Not a mouse or vole in a mile radius.” Her partner was definitely proud. “And he brings the other cats around like a posse, too.” He gestured towards several other cats. “Shares the food. He’s a good cat.”

Watching the strands twisting around the hill, Spring had to agree.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1307202.html. You can comment here or there.

Private Party, a story of Stranded World, now up on Patreon for patrons

May19

The story that began with this little series…

A Wink…
Nothing Could Possib-lie Go Wrong (Summer)
Places One Doesn’t Go (Winter)
At Home (Spring)
Sight and Sense (Autumn)

…is completed here on Patreon.

The man glared at Summer through the tilted fence panel. He wasn’t a pleasant-looking man; he had stringy hair and a weedy beard, a greasy, pallid complexion and notable body odor. But he was an important man, at least at the moment. “This is a private party!”

Summer’s cheeks were flushed and she was just about ready to die. She’d gone through this fence before — with her mother, when she was very young, then later with Winter and Autumn, and later still, all five of them together. She’d stepped a little sideways, and… what had gone wrong this time?

She coughed. “Sir, I’m sorry… (read on…)

Pledge now and read all my stories!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1108032.html. You can comment here or there.

Private Party – A Patreon Story

May19

This story of Stranded World began as a series of connected vignettes on Dreamwidth, all of which are collected here; the story then continues to an actual conclusion of sorts.

There was a man at the festival with an eye-tattoo that winked.

Autumn hadn’t been sure the first time. There were several beautiful pieces of ink wandering around this ‘fest – it was pushing a hundred degrees out, and everyone was wearing just about as little as they could get away with. And there was this man, topless and wearing short khaki shorts and Birkenstocks, and the eye centered on his spine had a perfectly-shaded iris. And then it was closed. And then there was the pupil again. Continue reading →

At Home, a story of Spring

Apr18

After/concurrent with Nothing could possib-lie go wrong and Places One Doesn’t Go.

The fest was wild, and Spring and Lance were in the heart of it. A place like this didn’t need too much tangling – so many people here were already quite twisted up, wound in with other people, braided in with their own stories. But it was still fun to watch the tangles and knots, and it was still just a fun place to be, where nobody would look sideways at the girl with chaos tattooed on her chest or the handsome man in the very-well-fit pants and silky shirt who somehow seemed at home in the sea of tie-dye and batik, ripped denim and torn flannel.

“You look perfect,” Lance told her. “You’re aligned exactly with this place, did you know that?”

Spring stretched up, fingers tickling the air. “I know. This place is my place. It’s my people.” She dropped her arms so she could wiggle her fingers at a man covered in black-ink tattoos. “It’s like home, you know, like family? Can’t stand to spend all your time there, but it’s awesome when you go back for a bit.”

“Excuse me.” The voice cut across the cacophony, although it sounded both quiet and calm. “I believe you are mistaken about some important matters.” There was no speaker visible. The sound was coming from the back fence.

Spring grabbed Lance’s hand. “Speaking of family… we need to be over there. Now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089751.html. You can comment here or there.

The Thing about Tangling… (an experimental fic of Spring/Stranded World)

Apr8

This follows Tangled, Day Job, and Tangling isn’t just a walk in the park.

“Ready to go?”

The thing about being a tangler…

“Hold on, just give me a minute…”

Is that you were touching strands all the time.

“Spring, my love, can you be organized for more than fifty seconds?”

And running your hands through other people’s lines all the time.

“If you wanted someone organized, Lance, you should have bothered someone else’s stars.”

But you couldn’t touch other people’s strands…

“I didn’t want anyone else’s stars. Here’s your left shoe.”

…without getting tangled up yourself.

“Awesome. Now, where’s my purse?”

And the thing about knots was…

“You didn’t leave it on the bus again, did you?”

…they tended to manifest in strange ways when you weren’t paying attention.

“No, no, you brought it home for me. Remember?”

…and when you were distracted, tangled up in someone else, it was easy to not pay attention.

“That’s right… here it is. What would you do without me?”

“Oh, I’d get by. But it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”

And the thing about being a tangler was…

“Well, I do aim to please.”

…When you got tangled up, you got really tangled up.

“And that’s what I love about you. Well, part of it.”

Close with a kiss, and find yourself even further tangled.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1085749.html. You can comment here or there.

When the Time Comes Around (turn, turn, turn)

Dec3

I asked for Non-Addergoole Prompts here; this is to rix_scaedu‘s prompt mashed up with ankewehner‘s

Stranded World has a landing page here.

🕯️

It was the season for candles. Autumn settled in her van/RV, approximately eight thousand miles from anyone she knew, and lit a candle on her table.

Just one candle, and hers was red. This was how this thing was done. She sat down on her beanbag, and studied the flame.

🕯️

It was the time for the flame. Winter excused himself from the quiet social obligations of the party to set a glass candleholder in the North-facing window.

He pulled up a chair in front of the window, and settled in before lighting the candle. Just one, and his was white. There was an order to this, as in all things.

🕯️

It was just about that time. Spring kissed New Boy deeply, did something somewhat obscene to Slightly Less New Boy, and left the two of them to entertain each other or complain about video games.

She dug the candle – spring green – out of her underwear drawer and stuck it in a metal can in her East-facing window. There was a way to do things, but she was the tangler, so she added two birthday candles for contrast.

She lit all three and stared into the flame.

🕯️

Everything happened when it had to, and in its own time. This just happened to be the right time to light a candle.

Summer was alone, tonight; she had arranged it that way. She lit the orange-yellow pillar candle and set it, carefully, on the plate from home. Things went the way they needed to, and this way needed one light, and no more.

Summer stared into the flame and thought of home.

Icons all by the wonderful djinni

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/858731.html. You can comment here or there.

The Language of the Strands

Mar24

To kelkyag‘s prompt to my other bingo call.

This fills the square “The Three Languages,” and is from the Stranded World, from the seasonal siblings’ mother Eugenia. The Stranded landing page is here.

The Three Languages: talking about Strands

“They say a child found the strands.” Eugenia had gathered her children for storytime.

She cleared her throat. “A child who had no skill. So her father sent her out to the woods to learn a language.

“She came back the next night. ‘I know how to speak to the wildness,’ she told her dad.” Eugenia always did the voices. “‘Bah,’ he said, ‘try again.'”

“She came back the next night, again. ‘I know how to speak the calm order.’ And ‘Bah,’ he said, ‘try again.'”

“And the third night. ‘I know how to speak to kinship.’ And that was that for her dad. ‘Out,’ he bellowed.

“And out she went. But she had learned the language of the Strands, and she did not return.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/696176.html. You can comment here or there.

Chilly Spring, a 100-word fic of Stranded World

Jan18

To meridian_rose‘s prompt to my other bingo call.

Content warning: grief.

The air was still crisp, this far north. The sun was bright, the sky clear, but it was still in the mid-forties.

Spring had missed proper spring, proper weather, and now she was back for all the wrong reasons. She strode blindly, her fur coat and her anger tightly wrapped around her.

All things pass, Spring What words to end on. All things go around. She was left with that.

Tears were streaking hot down her face. Above her, the cherry blossoms declared it was Spring. Her time. She pulled them into the air, a transient dance. All things pass.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/639534.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder