Tag Archive | giraffecall: result

A New Flower

Mar6

For Friendly Anon’s prompt.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

This comes after Hey you Kids get off my lawn! and Leaving Town.

Tros had a feeling she wasn’t the sort of girl you brought roses and wine for, and besides, there wasn’t any place around here to buy wine, or roses.

So he settled for helping Nila with everything he could, scouting ahead, scrounging for food, making sure when he brought down game, he gutted it out of her daughter’s line of sight.

It was puppy love, he knew. His Mentor had, more than once, accused him of that, scolding him for the attention it took from more serious matters.

But his Mentor was not here, and, it seemed to Tros, Nila was pretty much the most serious matter there was right now. She’d promised to heal him and keep him fed in return for his service; therefore, his service was the most important thing in his life for the ten days he’d pledged her.

Comfortably justified in his obsession, he spent his evening watch carving tokens from deer antler: a bunny for Susan, a small saber for Allan, and, for Nila…

That took more thought, and more time. Not wine and roses, certainly. He was unsure if, despite her two children, the girl had ever been romanced. She didn’t seem to look at him as a man, other than in that “another warrior to guard the camp” sort of way. If it hadn’t been for the kids, he would have guessed lesbian, or, like his former crewmate, just-not-interested.

The kids meant he might have a chance. So her carved her a flower, following the patterns of her ears and her markings, a Nila-flower from the remains of his kill.

Looking at it in the dim moonlight, he had to smile. That, that seemed like the perfect gift for this fucked-up new world of theirs.

Note: The views expressed by the narrator are his and his alone and are not necessarily endorsed by the writer

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/292620.html. You can comment here or there.

The Governors, a continuation of the Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call

Mar4

After The Grey Line (lj) and Productive, for [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned Prompt. Part Two of ??

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“Ah, Antheri,” Giulian sighed. “It is sad but unsurprising that you think me a fool.” He could feel the foal’s presence near his ankles, but he needed to ignore that for a moment. “It is entirely unsurprising,” he repeated, moving slowly towards the man. “After all, so many of my predecessors have, clearly, been fools.”

“All of them! Even you! Soft! Unwilling to do what was needed! Unwilling to see what it was that had to be done! They are always asking, always writing, always peeking,” he gibbered, “those in the City, the owners of the factory, the bosses, the governors. They demand progress! They demand productivity! And you Administrators, every one of you, fools, blind sheep to be steered by whoever whined last!”

“No.” As long as he kept the man talking, he was unlikely to be shot. Giulian did not want to be shot today. “My position is to stand between the unreasonable demands of the governors and the unreasonable demands of the workers and find the balance that keeps everything working.”

“Your position,” the man sputtered. “Your position? What do you know of your position? Have you ever met the governors? Have you ever stood in a room with them for more than ten minutes? Have you ever tried to answer their questions? Have you ever disappointed them?”

It was a strange question. “No,” Giulian answered, wondering at the man’s grip on reality. “I was hired through the agent that worked with my previous posting. As were you. As was every Administrator and bureaucrat here. What are you on about, man?”

“The governors,” Antheri hissed. “The governors. Their eyes. Always watching. Always judging. And you, all you fools, all you damn fool Administrators, getting in the way, worried about the people, worried about the river. The river will be cleaned. The river will trickle through the fields and lose its taint. The people will live, or they will die, and there will be more. But the governors, Administrator, the governors. Their will is all that matters, irrational demands or not. Their will is All. That. Matters.” He jabbed the gun into Giulian’s stomach with each word, his eyes even wilder, spittle flying from his mouth.

And, finally, the guards stepped in, large, sturdy men Giulian had hired when the death of his predecessors began to look suspicious. They grabbed Antheri from behind, wrestling the gun from him.

“It is becoming clear,” Giulian told him, speaking loudly to be heard over the man’s incoherent screams, “that you have been affected by the stresses of the job and the crowded conditions of the Town and need a respite, likely in a quiet place off in the mountains. I will see to your transport there, Antheri, and go about the work of training your replacement.”

It wasn’t a quote so much as it was a compilation of Antheri’s reports on Giulian’s predecessors, but it was clear that the words got through to the man. He stiffened, a slow, mad smile crossing his lips.

“Then the governors will be yours to deal with. I wish you the pleasure of them, Administrator, you fool. I wish you the pleasure of them.”

Next: Right and Wrong

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/291767.html. You can comment here or there.

Poision, a story of the Bug Invasion for the Feb. Giraffe Call

Mar4

For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt,

after:
Out of Their Minds (LJ)
All in Your Head (LJ), after
From the moment they breathed our air (Lj) after: Staying in the City (LJ) and Spooks vs. Bugs (DW)

Paula moved among the surviving bug-hosts, those that were still hosting a symbiote, those that were either too stable or too gone to reject their rider, those who simply didn’t want to, those who couldn’t bring themselves to kill another living being, even if it had taken over part of their mind.

There weren’t many left, fifteen of them out of two hundred in this camp, maybe more, in other camps. Her symbiote had stopped talking to her. She was pretty sure it was angry. But it gave her, still, these half-hours at a time when she was still herself, and she took every minute of them.

She sat down next to Fallon, who had found another bottle of vodka somewhere and was nursing it quietly. He blinked at her, human eyes replaced by bug pupils, and the bug belched and giggled.

“This stuffff,” it chittered in Fallon’s voice. “You humans. You humans, this stufffff, you poison-on-on yourselves so nicely. You poison yourselves so many waysss. How? How-how-why?”

It had asked that before. She had answered before. This time, instead, she handed it a cup of thick hot chocolate, the best she could find. “This,” she told the bug in Fallon’s body, “this thing is poison in large doses. Chocolate. Cacao. It’s a stimulant, among other things.”

Fallon’s shaking hand took the drink, while the bug’s eyes watched her. “It is good?”

“It is wonderful,” she assured it. “We poison ourselves, my friend, because it feels good. Because we can. Because we are allowed to do what we want to our bodies, and revel in that.”

Her half hour was nearly up; she could feel the presence of her symbiote crowding in on her consciousness. She took the bottle from Fallon and swallowed down a long burning gulp. “We poison ourselves…”

The symbiote took over “…becaussse their bodies are wired to accept it as good. These creatures. These creatures.”

“These creatures,” Fallon’s bug agreed drunkenly. “They cannot be defeated. Their biology has already done that.”

In the back of her own mind, forced into silence, Paula giggled. How little they understood.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/291504.html. You can comment here or there.

Trusting in History, a finale of Fae Apoc for the Jan. Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Mar4

After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ
Getting over History (LJ)
Making New History (LJ)
Part 7.5 of 7.5

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The Nightwalker led them through the ruins of the city, her tail swishing, her whole body leaned forward. “There’s a few,” she told them, “places that never got touched, places that are almost whole, even now. There’s a few that look whole, that are traps. And there’s gardens, still growing. My gardens, now.” She ducked, almost a bow, almost an apology. “Our gardens?”

“You called us correctly,” Dor replied. He was still angry, still distrusting her. Karida couldn’t blame her. “We are scroungers. We don’t plant gardens.”

“Then whose gardens will they be? If we go… you could stay here, you three and the girl, and teach me. You could stay here, and I could feed you. Show you everything I know of this place.”

She turned to look at them, a hungry look on her face, a smile that told Karida that something was seriously wrong. “And if the land betrays you, then, I have not betrayed nor hurt you, have I?”

That was all the warning they had. Karida felt the place the road below their feet would collapse as the witch said that, felt it and threw Amalie out of danger, into Dor so they both fell clear, even as under her the ground collapsed dropping her into a sinkhole, dropping her down, down, down. She twisted, trying to find up from down, trying to land on her feet, and caught her head on something hard and metal.

She lost consciousness still falling, and never felt the impact.

~fin~

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/291164.html. You can comment here or there.

Engineered

Mar4

For [personal profile] lilfluff‘s prompt, combined with [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

“I think I’ve figured it out!” Jason looked up from his table excitedly, a “eureka” sort of expression taking over his whole body. “Cara, Alex, check this out!”

Cara, who was knee-deep in bioengineering a slow, undetectable poison that would take ten or fifteen years to kill the target, and Alex, who was trying to come up with the truly irresistible scent, looked up at Jason impatiently. It was Liam, the team’s handler, who came over to Jason’s workstation.

“What is it, Jay?”

“I’ve gotten them to have retractable thorns!” He held up the length of rose stem, showing how, when he ran his hand over it, the thorns slid into the stem. “See: pet it the right way, no prickers. Pet it the wrong way;” he put on a glove and repeated it. “Bleeding all over the place.” The inch-long prickers ripped into the leather of his glove and held onto it; he pulled his hand out and let the roses keep the glove.

“Why not just make them prickerless?” Liam shook his head. Jason had a brilliant mint – one time out of ten. It was just a matter of directing him.

“Anyone can make a rose without thorns. Mine, mine only prick people who don’t know their secret. See?” He pointed to the tall hedge of them, growing around an arbor in his controlled space, the flowers a melange of rainbow colors.

Liam stared. “Jay, those are the fanciest colors I have ever seen on a rose.”

“I know,” the scientist sighed. “That, and sometimes they bite people. I haven’t figured out how to deal with that yet.”

“Forget the biting,” Liam commanded. “Once they’re cut, they won’t be biting, and those colors – we can finance another base with that. Jason, you’re… oW! Your flowers stung me!” He swayed a bit. “Jason, what’s..”

“They don’t like talking about being cut, Liam. And, ah, they’re a little bit venomous, too, but I don’t think it’s fatal. You should be okay in an hour or two.” Jason helped his boss into a chair. “I’m going to go plant these on my island now.”

“Your…”

The mad scientist smiled crookedly. “Well, it’s going to be my island, at least.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/290986.html. You can comment here or there.

Paying the Rent

Mar3

For [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt for more of the Baram-and-his-house-elves story.

Baram and his family appear in:
Monster (LJ)
Memories (LJ)
One Sharp Mother (LJ)
The Life you Make (LJ)
Safe (LJ) and
Cost of Living (LJ)

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ

“We’re taking a road trip,” Jaelie told her nervous Kept. “Pack enough clothes for a three-day stay, and then shower and clean yourself up. Trim anything that needs trimming, and make sure you’re well-scrubbed.”

He blanched, and nodded. She grabbed his arm, and clarified, “Clean, that’s all, don’t scrub yourself raw, Wish. I just want you to smell nice.”

“Yes, Mistress.” He didn’t look any less nervous, either heading into the shower or when he returned, half an hour later, so clean he nearly sparkled. It made Jaelie smile in exasperation at him.

“I know you’re not a virgin,” she teased him.

He flushed in return. “Of course not. But there’s a difference between… ah… my life before and serving you, and there’s a much wider difference between that and being hired out.”

She patted his shoulder. “Your job isn’t to please them, it’s just to get them pregnant. We – well, I – get paid by the baby, not by the orgasm.”

That only made him flush deeper. “And what if I don’t? I haven’t had children in… well, that I know about, several centuries.”

“Then we’ll come up with something else. Or test-tube it. Magic can solve almost anything, don’tchaknow?”

He nodded, relaxing a little, and picked up his bag. “Yes, Mistress. This – this woman, she directed the school you all attended?”

“And coordinated our births and, in a matter of speaking, the births of all of our children. Yes. She seems thrilled to have your blood to add to the mix.”

“And this is the school that taught you how to give orders to your Kept?”

“Yes, it is,” she confirmed.

“It seems like an interesting place, to have produced three women as tough and as sharp as you and your, ah, sister-wives?”

She barked out a laugh. “Sister-wives, that’s a new one!

“I hope you don’t mind?”

“No, but you might not want to try that on the others.” She led him out to her car and tossed their bags in the trunk. “Addergoole is… yes, a very interesting place. A crucible of sorts.”

“And the children that this Regine wants me to father, they would be attending this school? And raised by… well, by their mothers, I would assume?”

“If one of the mothers doesn’t want the kid – that happens sometimes – then I might ask for custody. We could handle another kid around the place, and mine are old enough to not need constant attention anymore.”

He studied her in surprise as they got in the car. “You’d raise my child?”

“You’re mine, aren’t you? That means taking care of you where you come from too, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking…” He shook his head. “So I’m to father children for this school. For her breeding program.”

“You sound unhappy about that.” She started the car anyway, and headed out onto the highway. The roads were still mostly clear; after Wish’s people’s first attack had been so clearly rebuffed, many of the monsters had chosen to go elsewhere.

“It’s an interesting thought, to be used as a stud horse, as an aeosthena. I suppose it hammers home how far down I’ve fallen.”

“Careful with that,” she warned him. “Your sense of superiority is going to get you in trouble.”

“Apologies, Mistress.” He shoulders slumped, and he slouched in his seat, looking disconsolate. Jaelie let him sulk for a while, while she drove, and thought about feeding more children into Regine’s grinder.

After a long while, she reached over and set a hand on Wish’s thigh. “We raise our kids good,” she told him, “tough. They won’t be in the position we were, Aly and Viatrix and I, when we went there.”

“And the children I father?” he asked quietly. “They Belong to their mother, of course. But I’ve never fathered a child before, without the mother Belonging to me.”

“Aaah.” She patted his thigh. It didn’t seem kind or useful to point out that that was what he got for trying to kill her family, so she didn’t. “I’m sure you’ll father some very tough children, Wish.”

“Thank you.” He smiled uncomfortably back at her, and then tensed unhappily as they reached the wards around Addergoole. “What the…”

She braced herself. She’d been through this before. “Sit, sit. Don’t move. Close your eyes, it helps.”

He keened deep in the back of his throat, struggling against the order as she drove them, white-knuckled, through the thick defensive wards. She’d never seen it hit anyone this hard, and wondered if it was his returned-gods-ness, his purebloodedness, or his age. “It’s okay,” she croaked. “Wish, it’s okay, I’ve got you. Almost, almost… there.” She relaxed, and felt him do so as well, as they passed the wards. “You can move now.”

“That…” he panted. “That was horrible.”

“And we’re expected. It’s pretty effective, I’ve been told, at keeping out intruders.”

“I can imagine!” He shook his head. “Well, at the very least the school is well-protected.”

“Yeah.” She fell quiet again as she drove the last half a mile. “Wish… can you do this without, without your partners knowing that it’s under duress?”

That got her a crooked, dry smile. “Are you telling me that nobody has ever ordered you to act like you’re happy?”

She winced. “Nobody’s ever whored me out,” she countered, getting a matching wince from him.

“All things considered, I’d rather this than being sold, and rather either than being dead.” He patted her thigh gently. “Mistress, this is not horrible. I’m worried, yes, but, ah, much as I hate to admit it, I’m mostly worried that I’ll let you down somehow.” He winced again, harder this time. “And there you see how far I’ve fallen.”

It didn’t seem fair to scold him for that, so she didn’t. She smiled, instead, and squeezed his hand. “You’re going to to do just fine, Wish. I know you are.” She looked over the Village, trying not to tense up at old memories. “I have faith in you.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/710878.html (Paying, Forward)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/290652.html. You can comment here or there.

Success, a continuation of Tir na Cali for the Feb. Giraffe Call.

Mar3

For moon_fox‘s prompt, after
Second Pressing (LJ)
Planting Future (LJ)

Tir Na Cali has a landing page here.

The end of this didn’t really seem to end for me, but I’m not sure what else to do with it, either

“Fruity, with just a hint of tar.”

Onyx enjoyed the blind taste testings at the smaller competitions the best. She could put on her best part-of-the-furniture expression and simply listen while people talked over her. If her Lord was in the room, of course, people watched their words, minded their descriptions, even around a minor lord like her master.

But when they were facing simply a row of slave vintners, the tasters felt no such need to be careful, mindful, or even polite. And the things one learned when people who had been tasting wine all day stopped being polite were… interesting. Often educational.

“Isn’t this in the fruit wine category?” one younger taster frowned. “I can’t taste anything but oak and ashes.”

“Ah,” an older matron answered, smirking and reaching for the boy’s glass. “I bet I know who that is. They have the same problem every year.”

Onyx didn’t smile, of course, but inwardly, she was giggling. She knew that one, too. Their vintner, a freed slave, was an arrogant punk who never took advice. Next to her, his assistant was trying not to squirm. Maybe she should talk to her Lord about buying the poor girl; she had a good feel for the wine and didn’t deserve her boss.

“Ah!” That was the third taster, sipping the purple wine that was Onyx’s offering from her master’s odd fruit. “This is… interesting.”

It was her turn to try not to squirm. Interesting could mean so many things.

“Interesting,” the woman repeated. “Sweet, with a nice oaky note and… boysenberry, I think. Nice.” She looked up at the three of them waiting, three very nervous slaves whose livelihood depended on her words. She couldn’t know which of them had worked on this wine, but her eyes landed on Onyx anyway. “Nice. Very nice.”

Onyx relaxed, her head bowed to hider her smile, as the others tasted her offering. “Cocoa nibs,” the boy exclaimed, smiling, and, “…campfire?” the older woman exclaimed. As she had expected, the color, and the strange fruit, brought out what they expected to taste: success at last.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/290497.html. You can comment here or there.

Wine of the Swan Maidens, a story for February’s Giraffe Call

Mar2

For [personal profile] avia‘s Prompt.

It was said that the swan maidens made the best wine.

It was said that the lovely women with the feathered cloaks, the red-heads with the blue eyes and the hard fingernails that were really claws, that they felt no pain.

And not only did they feel no pain, but they had the best feet for trampling the spiny grapes that grew in the highlands, the best hands, long-fingered and slender, for plucking the skins for the finest sweet wines, the strongest arms and backs for carrying the fruit and working the presses.

It was said, too, that the tears of a swan maiden were the sweetest additive you could put in the wine, that their faint saltiness was surpassed only by a single drop of their blood added to a keg, that their suffering transformed a vintage from ordinary to extraordinary as nothing else could.

Much of this was lies. The swan maidens felt pain like anyone else. Their backs were not strong, save in their swan-forms. Their fingers were long, it was true, but they tended to be clumsy.

And all this only added to the tears added to the wine: and that, the tears and the blood, that was true. Which was why the crafty vinters of the highlands spread those other lies, and why they would, on the first clear day of Spring, stalk the banks of every lake in the mountains for the swan-maidens, to steal their cloaks, to force those maids to live with them and make their wine.

They would escape, of course, they always did. But the daughters they left behind would, some day, find cloaks of their own, and the cycle would begin anew.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/289724.html. You can comment here or there.

Briars & Vinegar: Eating the Roses, a story of fae-apoc post apoc for the Giraffe Call (@rix_Scaedu)

Mar2

For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt, combined with [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

After:
Briars and Vinegar (LJ)
Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)
Briars and Vinegar: For 100 Years (LJ)
Briars and Vinegar: Sharp and Bitter (LJ)

Something kept eating the rosebushes.

This was startling enough on its own – roses weren’t the most palatable thing in the world, and Vin’s roses had thorns the size of small daggers.

But, since Darrel had moved into her cabin, and Keri and Clarence had built their own nearby, since Dame Elena had, herself, come to shelter inside Vin’s large hedge of roses, there was hawthorn planted alongside the rosebushes, twisted in with them, its sharp prickers providing a second layer of defense. And hawthorn was even less palatable than roses.

(Dame Elena, who had been Old Dame Elena as long as anyone could remember, had turned out to have a surprising wealth of information about the old fae. That had made Vin give her a sharp look and pull the old lady aside for a few whispered conversations.

Clarence tried not to mind. It was clear that Vin knew quite a bit she wasn’t sharing, and he didn’t blame her, usually. The war had hurt her quite badly, he thought, blamed for things she could neither have done nor stopped.

But when something started eating the roses and the hawthorn, and Elena and Vin went back into whispered conversations, Clarence had had enough. He pulled the two women aside – gently, very gently, but still.

“Look, you need to tell me what’s going on. Kari and I live here too, you know.”

“And I welcomed you, but you don’t need to stay,” she snapped. Dame Elena’s hand on her arm stopped her, and she sighed.

“There aren’t many things that will eat roses like this, and most of them aren’t natural; they’re constructs of the war or leftover monsters from Ellehem – from faerie-home,” she translated. “And I’ve never encountered anything unnatural that could stomach hawthorn.”

“But I have,” Elena put in. “Not a faerie creature as such, but something they made from creatures already here. Mouth like a meat grinder, could eat anything. Did eat anything. And everyone.”

She frowned at the chewed-upon bushes. “We called it the omnivore.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/289272.html. You can comment here or there.

Out of their minds, a story of Bug Invasion for the (January) Giraffe Call

Mar1

For fflox‘s commissioned continuation of
All in Your Head (LJ), after
From the moment they breathed our air (Lj) after: Staying in the City (LJ) and Spooks vs. Bugs (DW)

“You’re not real. You’re in my imagination.”

“I don’t believe in you.”

“I can live my life without you just fine.”

“Aah-choooo!”

“I’ve never seen this many fair folk. I’ve never seen anything like this many so close to a city.”

“Or ghosts. It’s like everyone who ever died here is back…”

Paula was, generally, a well-grounded, sensible, rational young lady, or so her bosses had said, so her teachers had said, so her friends had believed. She had her feet on the ground and she didn’t, as a general rule, believe in things she couldn’t see.

She was also, and had been for several months now, infested with an alien symbiote that read her mind and sometimes controlled her body.

The bugs had invaded dozens of planets, some successfully, some failures, but none, she was getting the impression, as big a failure as Earth was becoming for them. Their system of bonding with native hosts had, she had been told, served them well even on planets where they couldn’t manage a full-scale invasion. They could sit undetected that way, breed that way, and conquer large parts of the planet from “on the ground.”

They had, she was pretty certain, never faced this sort of resistance, a two-front rebellion from the un-infected outside their walls and from their hosts, the hosts they needed to survive the pollution, in their very homes and bodies.

And Paula, the sensible one, the one who didn’t believe in, say, faeries and was a fan of pharmaceuticals to help the unstable, found herself slipping from host to host, suggesting that they look at the fae, asking how they dealt with the voices in their head, reminding them to forget their allergy meds.

She was too practical and too calm for any of this to really work for her, sadly; she couldn’t really see the fair folk or ghosts that well, and she had never heard another voice in her head before, except her conscience and the echoes of her mother.

But she could help the others. She could sit down with a new friend and talk her through a panic attack, talk her through a dark moment until the friend could look up and say “this isn’t real. That’s not me saying that,” and have control of her head again. She’d done that before, for college friends, bad acid trips or just bad brain chemistry, more than a few times.

She knew it was working the day that three of her friends, all at once, sat down and said “You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real.”

And it was, finally, too much for the symbiotes, as all three fled their hosts and lay choking, dying on the ground like so many ant-fish looking things.

“You’re not real,” another friend said, and a fifth said “the ghosts are really thick here. Do you think bugs have ghosts?”

And that was it. AS their non-symbiote family watched helplessly from their controlled-environment ship, well over half the hosted bugs fled their clearly-insane human hosts, as unable to handle the strange brain chemistry as they were the atmosphere.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/288957.html. You can comment here or there.