Tag Archive | giraffecall: result

Consulting – a Dragons Next Door story for Giraffe Call

Oct24

For MeeksP‘s prompt.

Dragons Next Door Verse. DND has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

Generally, when a call comes in at odd hours from a caller who is stressed, distressed, distraught, and dismayed, they are calling for Sage. He’s the consultant, after all, the Black Tower graduate with a decade on the police force.

But once in a very long while, the call is for me, someone who has an issue, usually with one of the smaller races – they don’t think to call in a mediator so often when it’s a Large Race Problem. They’re just as overwrought, just as hysterical, but usually, when it’s done, I get to laugh a little.

That was the case when the Museum of Natural History downtown called me. They thought they had a problem with brownies or pixies; something was messing up their doorways, all of them, knocking the plaster around and leaving holes in the cornices. They’d had an exterminator in, but they didn’t have bugs, and an exorcist had told them it wasn’t demons. That left, it seemed, me.

I left my youngest at home with Sage and caught the bus downtown, listening to the gossip bouncing back and forth, watching the way the human and mostly-human dealt with the non-humans and the non-even-humanoids – at least the ones that could fit on a bus. There was a lot more interaction than there had been even five years ago; it seemed as if, slow but sure, integration was happening.

Once at the museum, however, it was another story. The staff were human. The visitors were human. There were two brownies serving as janitors, but everyone seemed to ignore them. Even the archeology was primarily human, with “the other races” having one small wing. Integration, it looked like, had no place in natural history. I nearly left right then.

But the money and the reputation gains for consulting are good, and perhaps, I thought, I could do some good for their impression of the non-humans all around them. I studied their dents and holes, listening to their anguished stories while paying more attention to what the brownie janitors were trying to tell me. Not a Small Race. They didn’t know what it was either, but the small races were afraid to come here. Not even the tinies would come in the museum – and the tinies were anywhere they could find a corner.

That was a red flag, but a hard one to explain. Some humans still called exterminators when they found out they had a tiny population in their walls. So it wasn’t the smalls, and it wasn’t the tinies. A Large Race would have left a lot more wreckages – especially if they’d seen the Other Races wing. I wandered off from my handlers when they were busy arguing, and traced the impact lines in their doorways.

They found me, ten minutes later, sitting on the floor in the Africa wing, giggling uncontrollably. When I could finally get control of myself, I managed to explain.

“The giraffe,” I told them, pointing at the skeleton proudly guarding this wing. “Your people… there’s skeletons of three of a race of very small creature wired into his skeleton. There, there, and there. Their ghosts take him riding at night. They must love being so tall!”

I had a hard time getting paid for that call, but it was worth it for the story I got to tell.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/155510.html. You can comment here or there.

Spooks vs. Bugs – Giraffe Call

Oct20

For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt.

After Staying in the City (LJ) – from last month’s Giraffe Call.

Commenters: 6

Warning: potential squick – referenced mind/body control

The bugs had a problem.

Paula knew, now, that they weren’t bugs, but the word they used for themselves, Tillalillathianin, twisted strangely in the human part of her brain, so in the parts that were still hers, she still thought of them as “bugs.” Her symbiote didn’t seem to object.

Symbiote. She was still getting used to the feeling of it, to the double-senses inside her and the loss of control of what still seemed like her own body… mostly. She was still getting used to the additions the symbiote had brought, and the echo of its feelings against hers. They all were, symbiotes and hosts, the bonded and those who were still Just Bugs.

But that wasn’t the problem – not quite, at least. The problem was, it seemed, that the Tillalillathianin’s home planet – not their home planet, really, but the one they had conquered the longest ago within their memory; when you asked a bug or a symbiote “what happened to your real home planet?” you got an hour-long headache and no good answers – well, anyway. Either none of the planets the Tillalillathianin had conquered before had an otherworld, or they had never before merged with a race that could see them.

This was causing them some issues, more because the bugs-proper could still not sense the other-beings, the fae and the restless undead and the monsters-under-bed sort of creatures, but those that had been bonded could, and it was freaking out the symbiotes. They kept giving up control of their human hosts every time they saw a ghost, which was, if disorienting, rather entertaining for both ghosts and hosts, and upsetting for the bugs-proper.

The fairies had already figured it out; Paula had a host of the tiny pixies following her around now. The ghosts were beginning to get it, and somebody, she’d been told, had sent the monsters a message.

The spooks were going to spook out the bugs. In the growing part of her brain that was still hers, Paula found this very pleasing indeed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154662.html. You can comment here or there.

Creeped

Oct20

For The Cluudle‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 4

Hell Night, Year 9 of the Addergoole School

“Hey, pretty, pretty, whatcha doing out all alone?” The man against the wall – “man,” because she still hadn’t come up with words that fit for the weird creatures she’d found herself in school with – smirked unkindly at her, and waved his hand at the ground, causing it to buckle and warp under her feet. Ceinwen gritted her teeth and kept walking, trying not to show any fear. It was like getting off at the wrong bus stop – although the people in the numbered streets had been humans, and this guy with the yellowish wood-grain-looking skin and the hair like pine needles didn’t really seem to qualify.

What was she doing out all alone, indeed. She’d lost Ahouva right away – Kendon had grabbed her, told her he had something special for her, and off they’d gone. Jovanna and Æolind had gotten separated in a corner of the hall that had gone all black and inky, and turned Ceinwen and Kay around into a corridor they’d never seen before.

Kay had, as far as Ceinwen could tell, run off through a brick wall. She was still trying to figure out how that had worked, but right now, what she knew was that it left her alone, with creepy yellow guys taunting her, and the hall slowly filling with water.

Water? That was a new one. The stuff around her toes looked like brackish water, though, and it felt like the carpet was water-logged, although it was hard to see it through the greenish liquid. The call-it-water was rising, too, lapping around her ankles. Ceinwen hurried on, trying to get away from wood-boy without looking like she was trying to get away.

“Come on, honey. You don’t want to go swimming, come play with me instead.” He held out a branch – hand, it was a hand – to her, even leaned off the wall like he was going to walk her way. “I can be a lot of fun.”

“No, thanks,” she answered – no need to be rude, it’s possible he was just being friendly, friendly in a creepy way – just as her foot slipped down, down, down, pulling her underwater.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154523.html. You can comment here or there.

Ghosts of Memory – Rin/Girey – Giraffe Call

Oct20

For kelkyag‘s prompt.

Reiassan. Reisassn has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Probably after Bed-Warmer (LJ) but maybe after after Enemy, in which case the first paragraph will have to change.

Commenters: 5

Rin had gone, over the week after they left Ossulund, from whistling to thoughtful, with glances at Girey he was pretty sure she didn’t think he noticed. That suited him; he had his own thoughts to ponder.

Sarella, the pretty little blonde who had more than a little cause to remember him fondly and fair reason to expect him to rescue her, had gotten him thinking. The thoughts weren’t the most comfortable, either, chafing like his shirt no longer did, now that Rin had dressed him up like a Callanthe noble.

“So what’s the difference?” he asked her back, in a sunny moment of quiet on the trail.

“The difference?” She hadn’t even jumped, but she did frown back at him.

“You said that your people don’t keep slaves.” He jangled his chains at her. “But you take captives.”

“A slave is a possession, yes?” she asked, her Bitrani, as always, careful and stilted. “But a captive has a chance of being anything.”

“But you’re not going to take your prisoners of war and put them to work running your towns, for instance. You have war-brides like Sarella – the girl in Ossulund? In Bitrani, we’d call her a slave. And you have captives like me.” And he wasn’t going to think about the possibility that his position might be the same as Sarella’s. “What about the rest of them?” What were they doing with his countrymen? “You told that farmer he’d go back to his family. Is that common practice?”

Now, she turned to regard him with a strange look, one he hadn’t seen on her face before. On a Bitrani officer, he’d think it was respect, but from her, he couldn’t be certain. “Enlisted men, yes,” she answered carefully. “Farmers, workers, Their families and villages need them.”

“Good.” He paused, thinking about that for a moment, before he added “Thank you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/154262.html. You can comment here or there.

Fae-Bane

Oct19

For The [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

Hell Night, Year 9 of the Addergoole School
The halls were dark and the noises echoing through them sounded nasty. Timora had told Calvin she’d meet him at breakfast, though, and he was the nicest guy who’d ever shown an interest in her, so, scary or not, she headed out into the halls.

Things got worse the further she got from her room. The floor seemed sticky, muddy, grabbing at her ankles in the pretty shoes that really weren’t all that practical. The halls seemed to close in on her, and walls weren’t where they were supposed to be. Strange gooey things squirted out at her from around corners, staining her pretty white shirt and the skirt that she’d bought at the store specially for this not-really-a-date. Hands grabbed at her, tugging her in all directions.

She struggled on through, hoping that Calvin would understand, hoping that everything would be okay, until she found a quiet, better-lit hallway, a stairway in sight. There. The goo on her shirt was drying clear. Her skirt was fine, if a little wrinkled. She’d be fine. She’d be…

Hands from nowhere grabbed her around the neck, while other hands grabbed both her wrists, fingernails digging in deeply as she was stretched in three directions, tugged nearly off her feet. Startled as much as frightened, Timora screamed.

The scream seemed to rip through her, coming out her toes and her spine as much as it did out of her mouth, ripping the hallway, shaking the foundations of the underground school. The hands around her let go, and she went tumbling to the floor to the very faint sound of feet running away.

Behind her, she heard a quiet, strangled sound of anguish. She turned around slowly, to see a tall boy staring in horror at her. At her, when his hair looked like a hedgehog was sitting on his head and he had more buckles on his clothes than a gathering of Pilgrims.

“What?” she asked, her voice hoarse from screaming and, somehow, still making the walls quake. The wide-eyed boy, with another strangled sound, turned and fled.

“I don’t…” Timora began, just as a hand clamped over her mouth.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153567.html. You can comment here or there.

Estate – for the Giraffe Call

Oct19

For rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

In the same setting, 2 “generations” earlier, as Heirlooms and Old lace (Lj) – The Aunt’Verse.

Commenters: 7

“What have we here?”

Ruan wasn’t so much talking to herself as she was talking to the hodgepodge she was looking through. Her Aunt Tansy hadn’t been, as they say, The Aunt – she was a paternal aunt, for one thing, totally not the right sort, and Ruan’s Aunt Elenora was still alive and well – but the family tradition seemed to hold anyway. Her father’s sister had taken a long walk into the ocean, and it was left to Ruan to clean up her mess.

To be fair, the woman’s attic wasn’t actually messy. Aunt Tansy had had, like Ruan’s father did, a very tidy mind. Everything was on its own shelf or in its own cubbyhole, labeled tidily in a left-leaning cursive that was probably Tansy’s. (she had been told, by her father’s other sister, that nobody had been allowed past Tansy’s sitting room in twenty years. The sister had seemed offended that Ruan had gotten the job.) There was even, in the same leggy script, a catalogue.

That was what intrigued Ruan. Her mother’s family was known to collect some strange things, although not nearly as tidily as Tansy had. But the descriptions here were less descriptions and more names.

Imogene Octavia Workman – red cloche hat with blue ribbon – June 7th, 1905
Cleo Bond – broken bootlace (in manila envelope) – July 15th, 1905
Olivia Twila Saunders – Left shoe, black leather with buckle – October 12th, 1912
Duncan Levy – 3 red buttons, metal (in cigar box) – December 25th, 1914
Willard Ellison – cigarette holder, ivory with ebony inlays (in silk purse) – March 2nd, 1916
Rhoda Burks – three beads from a fringe, glass, peacock blue (in wine glass) – October 27th, 1929

There were well over three hundred entries, each corresponding to a place on a shelf and an object to match. The three beads from the fringe were the last entry, the day before Black Tuesday.

Several entries had check marks next to them – perhaps five, out of the entire book. Ruan picked one of those – the red cloche hat with the blue ribbon, high on a shelf between an ice skate and a primer, and pulled it down, using Tansy’s surprisingly-sturdy stepladder to reach.

The hat nearly jumped at her, pushing her off the ladder and landing her on a rack of winter jackets. The ribbon seemed electric, sending shocks through her fingers, while it tried at the same time to twist around her wrists. Faintly, as if from very far away, she heard: “I’ll get you, I’ll get you, you nasty old harridan, can’t stand to see others having fun! Let me out! Let me OUT of here!”

“Peace, peace,” Ruan said hastily. “This isn’t Tansy. Peace.”

“I’ll give you peace, you… what? Not Tansy? Who?”

“Her niece. Tansy… is gone. Hrmm. Imogene? Imogene Workman?”

“Yes?” Now the voice sounded cautious.

“All right, Imogene. I’m going to work on getting you out of there.”

Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/153151.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Questions

Oct18

For Fayanora‘s prompt.

Dragons Next Door Verse. DND has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 6

There are words a mother never wants to hear. I’ve got a list of them; I keep it in a notebook which is otherwise filled with very boring accounting. I don’t want to give the kids ideas.

“I only set it a little on fire” was one of the first; that was Jin, who was going through one of those phases at the time. “The neighbors invited me over for dinner” was a touchy one when Juniper came up with it.

But the worst so far, knock on wood, was “Mommy, what’s a Rakshasa?”

I lie. That just prefaced the worst one.

“Why do you ask, honey bun?” Please don’t let the Smiths be moving out. Or the Dungans. I have my limits, the sky above only knows, and that could very well be one of them.

“Our Campfire Scout leader is moving out of town and our new leader says she’s a Manushya-Rakshasi. Some sort of Rakshasa?”

“Oh… wild fates, baby.” A flesh-eating monster for a Scout leader. Not a dragon, not even an ogre, somewhere they had found a rakshasa. “Hold on, sweetie, I’m going to make you some special brownies for your next meeting.” Very special brownies. I had something in my black jars that could stop even a cannibal spirit’s appetite. Rakshasa, indeed. What were the higher-ups thinking?

Of course, they’d probably be able to beat up any other troop…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/152326.html. You can comment here or there.

Cunning Linguist

Oct18

For The_Vulture‘s prompt.

Thanks to cluudle for the Shakespeare line and Zoe_E_Whitten for the txtspk line.

Commenters: 14


The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
– James Nicoll

He was, he admitted, a bit of a hoarder. He took things because they looked pretty, or because they were a shortcut to what he wanted to say. He shifted, evolving so much he could barely recognize his former selves, except in the random piece of clothing he kept around for nostalgia’s sake. He changed ties at a whim and faces when it suited him, and his clones across the globe did the same, so that they could barely understand each other when the day was done.

Misspellings ached a little in his joints, like a cold day, but he knew, better than most, how spelling would change in time, and so he accepted those as growing pains. New words, too, felt funny around his ears, and he’d been surprised to wake up one day with a few extra digits, but this was, after all, the digital age.

He listened to immigrants (to him, anyone for whom he was not the first language was an immigrant, no matter where they lived or where they were born) sweetly twine him with their native tongue, and he pressed up against Spanish and Russian and French with equal glee; he had always been a polyglot-sexual, and that would never change.

Shakespeare had been a friend, but had a maddening habit of giving him new socks and ties and handkerchiefs and then insisting they’d always been there. Chaucer kept trying to nail things in place, but that had never suited his style. These urban poets, now, did some interesting things with their tongues, moving him in ways he hadn’t been moved since Wordsworth. (and Dickinson, but best not to speak of that).

The texters, now, that was another matter. He glared at one thumb-typer, bending him into strange contortions, bending, spindling, and mutilating him in the name of quicker communication.

“‘Quicker’ is not the same as ‘better,’ my lad,” he muttered, reaching out to touch the phone.

“R u free 2nite 4 a d8?” morphed at his touch into “An it please you, an assignation would be pleasing.”

“The fuck?” the boy muttered, but the reply was already on its way:

“Eeee! ‘Twould please me, aye.”

Giggling, he moved on, touching phones and unfolding himself as he went. He could, with a little work, stretch himself even further. This was going to be fun!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/152160.html. You can comment here or there.

Heirlooms and Old Lace

Oct18

For KC_OBrien‘s prompt.

I don’t have demons in any of my settings, so this is misc-verse

When Evangaline’s Aunt died, it fell to her to clean out the old house where her Aunt had lived and, before her Aunt Asta, her Aunt’s Aunt Ruan (family history stopped there, but Evangaline felt as if, if she tracked it back far enough, there would be an unbroken line of Aunts back into pre-history). As a childless Aunt herself, she accepted that the house would now become hers, but not that she needed to keep the piles of accumulated auntieness that filled it.

Tables were put out on the lawn, yard sales and freesales advertised, and Eva took two bright, sunny weekends to pull out of every nook and cranny, every eave and basement cabinet, every shelf and wardrobe, every piece of her ancestral Aunts’ lives.

Some she kept – the kitchen table was her self-imposed space limiter for knick-nacks, the living room itself for furniture (except for the bedrooms. The bedroom furniture she could keep for now; there were seven bedrooms in the old place, some barely bigger than a closet. For an unmarried aunt, it seemed excessive). The rest, despite family uproar (“If you think we should keep it, you’re welcome to come buy it at a family discount.”) went away.

Alone in a much-emptied house, Evangaline drank her tea and studied what remained. Four tea pots and one kettle (she’d gotten rid of seven pots!), one wide, shallow scrying bowl. Three little muslin dolls she’d been afraid to throw out – those would go back in their silk wrappings in their oak casket, and hope that Aunt Ruan or her Aunt had just liked dolly-making. One blue glass rose, and a beautiful matching vase. Three sets of tarot cards.

She’d sent the other six tarot sets to the sale, but these three had felt different to her fingers, tingled wrong, especially the oldest set, the one that was clearly hand-painted, in its oak box.

She’d finished her tea and her take-out pizza, so now was as good a time as any to figure out what it was about them, why these cards in particular had called her. She tipped the case out onto the table, letting the cards fall where they may.

The first thing she noticed was that this was not, exactly, a Tarot, or if it was, it was an interpretation she had never seen before. The second was that the tingling sensation was getting worse. The third was that the cards were moving on their own.

The woman on the card at the front – a blue-skinned woman, tall, dressed in medieval clothing and standing on the edge of a precipice – winked deliberately at Evangaline. Her card was labeled “The Fall,” and it looked like a long one.

As she winked, her card moved to cross another one – a deep, red-lit cave, with two eyes glowing out from its depths. “The Beast,” its caption proclaimed.

Evangaline’s hands hovered over the cards, loathe to touch them but drawn to see what the rest of them were. She reached for another one, just a tiny corner of lush greenness showing under the Beast.

“No, no,” the blue woman tut-tutted. “No, child, one reading at a time.” The cards burst into flames at “time,” the whole table of family heirlooms lighting on fire. “One at a time,” the voice repeated, as Evangaline jumped back from the heat.

The flames died down and vanished, the cards tucked back into their case. On the table, one teapot – that nearest the cards – was covered in soot. Nothing else was harmed.

Carefully, very carefully, she closed the card case and put it in a drawer. Her Aunts’ relics were going to require some careful handling.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/151952.html. You can comment here or there.

Hell Night – #Addergoole Years 1, 4, 7

Oct17

For Bovidae‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole – landing page here (or on LJ)

This happens before/after the storyline of Addergoole, and stars the school’s invisible librarian

Commenters: 8


Year One of the Addergoole School: Hell Night

The idea, Wysteria was willing to admit, had merit. Stress had been proven to accelerate the Change and, it could be assumed, in some cases pushed a Change where otherwise the Ellehemaei would have remained Faded.

On top of that, it was rather fun to ghost invisibly through the hallways, playing poltergeist, making things float and poking students who were managing to be too blasé about the whole thing. There, that lovely girl Dita with the excessive assets; Wysteria whispered some nonsense in pseudo-Latin in her ear, and was rewarded with a wonderful jump.

Scaring the students could be fun!

Year Four of the Addergoole School: Hell Night

The First Cohort had taken over the scary parts of Hell Night with gusto and, by now, the Second and Third Cohorts were joining in. There wasn’t any need for the staff to don scary faces anymore, but this year, Wysteria felt as if she should watch.

The gauntlet was scarier, darker, more horror-movie and less haunted house than the staff’s version. And her son was out in it (all their children had been out in it; that was part of the malice of Regine’s plan).

A scream cut the air, and the librarian drifted to investigate. Hell Night, indeed.

Year Seven of the Addergoole School: Hell Night

Wysteria frowned repressively (and invisibly) at the two Sixth Cohort students working their way through the History section. Her Library was not supposed to be part of their bloody hazing ritual. She was supposed to be left out of it.

And the child with them? A Seventh, a skinny boy, blindfolded, bound, and bruised. They were getting out of hand again, and nobody seemed willing to stop them.

She waited until they had dumped the boy in a blind passageway, and then Wysteria began to show the miserable little monsters what a true Hell Night was supposed to look like.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/151305.html. You can comment here or there.