Tag Archive | giraffecall

Fountain Fishing

Fountain Fishing

This is set in (one of ) the world(s) of the Hidden Mall – Abby and Liv have been travelling through a series of multiverse malls, many of them abandoned. Actually, many Abby-and-Livs, Sandy-and-Vics have been travelling – this is a different Abby & Liv than those in the main story. 

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Abby glared at the fountain.

This was the prettiest mall they had found yet. This was the nicest mall they had found – empty, at least – in all of their explorations. But something about it was also just, well, sterile.

There were no food courts. There were no trees, not even fake ones, no plantings, no stores selling anything edible – even the clothing was stiff and formal and so very sterile.

There were fish in the fountains, though.  There were fish in this biggest fountain especially, big ones, koi maybe, darting in and out of the very symmetrical, very smooth sculptures which obscured the bottom of the fountain, leaving it in shadows. 

So Abby had figured out a fishing pole and line with various things stolen from various stores, and she had sat down here with her hook and she had, well. Continue reading

Fishing Day

Fishing Day

New prompter!  Also, this story involves murder. (Attn new Prompter: you can either ask for a continuation of this story or give me another prompt, as you wish)

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“Shit.”  She was trying to get calm, get mellow, to enjoy the sun on the lake and the breeze in her hair.  Her mind kept coming back to the body in the swamp, just a couple hundred feet away.

She hadn’t meant to kill the man.  Well, man-thing.  She hadn’t meant to be killing anything today, it was a fishing day. 

Fishing days were sacred.  She got up before dawn, headed out to the lake, and stayed until past dusk. 

If she happened to catch something? Bonus.  Continue reading

The Night Fishers

the night fishers

So this story feels a lot like Things Unspoken, but it wanted to be modern-ish every time I had anything that would set an era, so I’m not sure. 

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“The fish have been getting mad right before dusk.”  Murphy lingered, not yet packing up the gear for the day.  “And I swear, when I go diving just as the sunset touches the water, I find the best things.  It’s got to be the difference in lighting, but I gotta ask – why don’t you stay a little later?  I mean, I see you, and you’re out of here the moment the sun sets.  And this is just a summer job for me, isn’t this – like, isn’t it your livelihood?”

Faulkner gave a rueful head-shake.  “You’re still so new.  You fit in so well down at the pub or up at the gods-house, or at the end of the week at the dances, I forget how new you are.”

Murphy tried not to bristle, but it was hard. “Yeah?  You think I fit in – except at my job? I mean, I guess it shouldn’t care, it’s just a summer job-” Continue reading

Day three of the Fish Call!

Good morning!  It’s early in the morning and I’m not leaving my parents’ house (Where I have been doggo-sitting and using their wifi) until at least 2 in the afternoon, aiming for about 3:#0

Which means I still have hours to go of writing (there’s a zoom conference, a shower, repacking, and cleaning up everything in there too, but more or less, hours of writing (and a little minecrafting) – and you still have hours to prompt – or to comment!  C’mon guys, Kelkyag is carrying all the weight here!  And I will remind you that the first two posts to reach five reader comments (then the first to reach 7, and so on) will get a continuation/sequel written.

I’m dying to use this image.

comments: 9

but so far mostly it’s

comments: 1

 

My Prompt Call is open here – http://www.lynthornealder.com/2020/08/04/summertime-prompt-call-gone-fishin/ – and I’m hoping for many more prompts!

Written Yesterday:

Clean…?  The plant offered clean energy.  Cleaner might’ve been more accurate.  The fish living downstream of the runoff might’ve said something different entirely.   This is set in the universe/city/power plant featured in Saving the Cult (If not the World), a ‘verse tagged Organization.

Seek And…?  Long long ago, I began a story about a woman lost in a blizzard and ending up in a different world. This story peeks in on her life, as she fishes for answers and is caught in turn.

Fresh Fish  The city of Scheffenon, on the North Sea high on the edges of the Empire, is known for many things.  But one thing that it is not known for – at least in modern times – is fish, or at least fish pulled from the North Sea.  They do not fish, not as such, on the North Sea. (Things Unspoken ‘verse)

 

Written Wednesday:

Unplumbed Depths – Fishing in Minecraft can get you some strange results.  This fictional view of the fishing strips out a lot of the blockier elements but does leave a fishing pole with, perhaps, a little too much Luck enchanted into it.

…A Break…? – Jess works security at The Facility, a place where science which nobody calls mad (in the hearing of the scientists) is perpetrated.  It’s a really good job.  But sometimes, your friend up in the top end of things asks for a favor…

Clean…?

Clean...?

From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

This story is set in the same world & city as Saving the Cult (If Not the World). It’s even talking about the same power plant as in Saving the Cult.

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It was clean energy. They had been sold the device – the plant-  on that line, and they, in turn, sold that line to the people for all it was worth.

It wasn’t a lie, even if it was a line. It was cleaner energy – cleaner than coal, for sure, with no chance of a radioactive meltdown, per se, and there was no despoiling a river with a dam, flooding of the people upstream, or the whole mess of the digs for geothermal.

Cleaner? Yes.  Absolutely.  They could have sold that line and never had a single qualm about it (If they were the sort of people who had qualms, of course. They weren’t., or this would be a much shorter story.

But it had its own problems – not on the line of a meltdown, of course, but it did have its own waste line, something that went through every filter their definitely-in-over-their-heads science team could come up with before it went into the river, and the river was still – still, despite all of their work – well, it was a little weird.

Austin went fishing down by the river, once a week, maybe twice on a bad week.  At first, it was meant to be a relaxation, a way of resting after work at the plant, work trying to figure out what they were doing, had gotten just too exasperating.

Austin was a scientist.  What they were doing in the plant… They could use science around it, like in the filters, like in the ways they improved the electric transmission, like in the way they found new ways to get more and more power from the same devices.  But science seemed to fall into a deep messy hole when it came to the plant, the power generation, itself.

There were more and more fishing days as the plant started to increase or decrease output with no changes in mechanisms.  And then when Austin actually started catching fish

Then fishing was an every-evening activity, but it was no longer so relaxing.  There was the whole question of what was nibbling on the bait, after all.

Fish with legs.  That one was interesting but not horrible.  Mutations happened, after all.

Fish that had never before been seen outside of tropical waters – or tropical aquariums.

Fish whose scales glowed in the dark.  Fish whose meat looked to all instrumentation almost exactly like beef, or like lamb.

(Austin didn’t dare taste those.  Once the weirdness started, Austin didn’t taste any of them.)

Fish with three eyes that could’ve been straight out of 1990’s cartoon.

But the thing was, the fish were healthy.   Every one of them, every weird thing.

Austin started working on some new filters for the river anyway.

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Seek And…?

Seek And...

From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

Back in 2011, I wrote this part of a story I called Blizzarded.  http://www.lynthornealder.com/2011/05/16/meeting-a-furtherfurtherfurtherfurtherfurtheretccontinuation/ (Despite saying “continuation,” for some reason every time I wrote more on that story, I reposted the whole thing and added the new bit at the end…)

This is fishing for answers in that world.   Short version:

(spoiler)

Sandy got lost in a blizzard. Now there is a gnome talking to her and the train requires technology instead of tickets.

[collapse]
 

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“If you have no tech-a-nie,” the gnome began – or, at least, it was a thing and it had suggested it was a gnome and it was talking to Sandy, it had a tiny red hat and it was definitely, while more or less humanoid, short enough without the hat that it came to about mid-calf on Sandy. “-Then seeking you must go. And if you can na’ seeking, then Sla Bless You.”

Sandy stared at the thing, then looked at the train, then stared back at the thing. Gnome. She ought to call it by its proper name, she thought. It was probably rude to go around thinking of talking beings a things. Continue reading

Fresh Fish

From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

This comes afterR is for Rituals and Linguistic Tricks and Finish It: Scheffenon, but the information you need to read the below story is:

Scheffenon is a city on the North See, in the norther-western part of a sprawling Empire.  Eliška is an Informer, an Imperial position which is part anthropologist, part internal spy, part propaganda artist for the Empire. 

And there is something creepy about the sea in Scheffenon. 

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“Fresh fish!  Freshest fish, pulled from the ponds and rivers to the East!  Fresh fish!” Continue reading

Day Of Writing Commences! Dun-dun-DUNNNN

Hello everyone!

My Day of Writing commences (after walking the dogs, showering, being woken up too early because my folks’ dogs are on my folks’ schedule, which does NOT involve staying up past midnight, oops…).

My Prompt Call is open here – http://www.lynthornealder.com/2020/08/04/summertime-prompt-call-gone-fishin/ – and I’m hoping for many more prompts!

Written yesterday:

Unplumbed Depths – Fishing in Minecraft can get you some strange results.  This fictional view of the fishing strips out a lot of the blockier elements but does leave a fishing pole with, perhaps, a little too much Luck enchanted into it.

…A Break…? – Jess works security at The Facility, a place where science which nobody calls mad (in the hearing of the scientists) is perpetrated.  It’s a really good job.  But sometimes, your friend up in the top end of things asks for a favor…

 

Reminder!  The first 2 posts to get 5 or more substantive reader comments (more than “I like this” or 🙂 ) will get an extension!

(and the first 2 to get 7 or more… and so on…)

…A Break?

a break?

From now through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

Jess, below, is from Quick Thinking, in the Science! setting. Cara is from almost all the Science stories except that one… But her first appearance was here.

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“Just four of them, Jess?  Dr. Adpirn was supposed to take them on the annual research vacation, but I’m sure you’ve heard what happened-”

“Was that the one that the thing down in the basement levels got?”

“No, that was Doctor Waspue.  Dr. Adpirn was the one that got a little too involved in the testing of a new miracle drug.  The problem was, of course, the side effects…”

Jess winced.  She tried to stay away from the biological sciences as much as she could, although, as Chief of Security for her division, she ended up spending a lot of time in every department,including the icky ones. Continue reading

Unplumbed Depths

From now through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

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“Have you ever wondered where all this stuff comes from?” Bryn spent a moment untangling a fishhook from a book.  The book, dripping and draped in seaweed, still glowed faintly with letters in a language neither Bryn nor Johnie could read.

“Not really.”  Johnie, of little imagination but a great deal of persistence, cast again.  In the hour they had been fishing, they had both caught enough boots to shoe a particularly left-leaning army, but actual fish, the sort of things one could eat for dinner, were still in short supply.  “Figure they come from some sort of shipwreck, back before the upheaval, you know?  Same way sometimes you go to dig up your garden and instead you find old bones and pieces of pottery.”

“Pottery doesn’t glow.”  Bryn dropped the book, already nearly dry, in a box dedicated to such things and cast again.  “Okay, most pottery doesn’t glow.  That pot your parents found – that was pretty impressive.”

“‘Till my uncle started going mad, yeah.  Then it was a little less fun.”  Johnie reeled in a bowl, carved from, for all appearances, a single large chunk of wood. “Oh, good, we can make leather-hide-and-no-fish soup.  Except we don’t even have any no-fish yet.”

“I’ve got a bit.”  Bryn braced against the pier’s biggest piling.  “Oh, this one is nuts.  What did I catch, one of the shipfish?  Oh, blasted barrens-”  Bryn leaned back hard and reeled in.  “I think I’ve got it, I think I’ve got it-”

“Maybe -”  Johnie had taken a step backwards and then another.  “Maybe you should let it go.  I know it’s a really good pole – but maybe it’s, uh.  Maybe it’s a little too good?  I’m just saying…”

Bryn followed Johnie’s shaking finger to the water, where something was frothing the surface badly.  A tentacle waved out of the splashing, looking nothing at all like the peaceful squidlings that inhabited the nearby rivers.  This thing was nearly as thick around as Bryn’s waist, twice as long as Bryn was tall, and it was clearly connected to something underwater.  And now it was being joined by another, and another…

“Maybe I ought to let go.”  It was a really good pole, one that had come from a stash of the before things.  Bryn tried to make reluctant fingers release from the handle, but the hours of work spent getting this pole, cleaning it up, fixing its two small breaks…

“Bryn!  It’s now or never!”

Bryn’s fingers almost released, but the jerking of the poll made both hands tighten in reflex.  Bryn screamed as the pole flew into the water, taking Bryn with it, landing in the middle of the splashing mess of angry tentacles.

Through the inky blackness, Bryn could see lights deep underwater.  Something about the lights said temple, but something brighter seemed to say library. 

Then a tentacle wrapped around Bryn’s waist, and the only thing Bryn was thinking about was get me out of here.

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Want more? See here first!

Comments 5 Win

 

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