Tag Archive | giraffecall

X is for Xeno-everything, a story for the Giraffe Call

All of my X prompts were to people for whom I had already written all of their allotted prompts, so I mushed them all together; have something strange for free.

When the Introductory Team went to a new planet, they made sure to bring samples of their culture with them.

There were three reasons for this.

The first was the human habit of hospitality and guest-gifts; if you were going to drop in on someone unannounced, it was polite to bring a present of some sort.

The second was to test for xenophobia. A new culture’s response to common human artifacts would tell the Team a lot about the culture: did they fear the new? Did they step back from common, everyday objects?

The third reason was very related to the first and second, and was what the Introductory Team was all about, in the end.

When they landed on Cunnel Six, the Team brought three of their best xenolinguists, their xenobiologists, and their xenoempaths. They also brought their gift bag of common items – a xylophone, a box of xocolatl, knitting needles and yarn, bread, and so on – and their gift-giver.

Matthiew Ornan had done this now on seven planets. He bowed carefully to the first representative from the Xantusia people, and then, even more carefully, imitated their greeting as best as his human body could.

The Xantusia – an approximation of the words they used for themselves – looked to human eyes like large bipedal lizards; their greeting involved clasping their hand-like appendages together tightly and then turning their back on the person they were greeting. They made clicking sounds – the xenolinguist told Matthiew they were approval, and his own empathy agreed – when he did a similar gesture.

“We bring you gifts.” He paused while the xenolinguist translated. “Things from our home, as tokens of our good-will.”

He watched the Xantusia as it picked up the box of gifts, its claws tinkling over the xylophone. Early studies of their broadcasts had shown that the Xantusia had a similar instrument.

“Xinpahzian.” It tinked its claws against it. “Lii-eer.”

Matthiew needed no interpretation to recognize kin.

He bowed again, hiding a smile. If the Xantusia could be made to recognize them as kin, than the rest of his job would be so much easier.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/524123.html. You can comment here or there.

W is for Whisk(e)y

Apr30

To thnidu‘s prompt.

“There’s a reason it’s called the water of life.”

David was drawing circles on the floor of his dorm room, linked circles around a central circle, and in the middle of it all, an open glass of whiskey. “Uisce beatha,” he continued. “Hey, Wayne, pass me that second bottle, would you?”

His roommate, who had been walking a careful circuit of the room, wanting only to get to his desk, his computer, his tequila, and his chat with his girlfriend, nevertheless passed over the second bottle. “More whiskey?”

“This one’s whisky.” He turned the label so it was visible, the missing E clearly absent, and poured out two shots, and then a fractional third shot. “No e.”

“No E. Okay, I’ll bite. Isn’t summoning demons supposed to be a weekend activity? Elizabeth got awfully pissed at you the last time you started mucking about with the forces of good and evil on a weekday.”

“No kidding. And Miranda hasn’t talked to me since that thing with the bog monster.” David poured out two more shots, drank one, and passed the other to Wayne. “Go talk to Steff. It’s fine, I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“You’re sitting there in a chalk diagram drinking whisk-no-e.”

“Yes, but I’m not going to fuck around with the forces of good and evil tonight. No demons, no bog monsters.”

“Then what in the unknowable Names are you doing?”

David grinned up at him. “Math homework.”

“Math homework?” He poured himself another shot of whisky.

“Finding e.” He drank down another shot himself. “Like I said. Water of life. This stuff is going to be a life-saver.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/523921.html. You can comment here or there.

V for Vindicated

Apr29

For @KissofJudas’ prompt. Fae Apoc, Addergoole Grad.
Via is a character in the Baram’s Elves sub-series; this takes place after she graduates and before she ends up at Baram’s.

Via left the body where it fell, cleaned the weapons with three cloths and a quick Working, and left those sitting on the body’s chest.

The man wasn’t dead, yet. He wouldn’t be dead, if someone got him to a hospital. And he was Faded, with enough strength to be held to an oath, so the chances were, in time, long enough time, he might heal. He might, however, wish he was dead.

“You’ve gotten a vindictive streak lately.”

She should have been surprised to see the man standing at the mouth of the alley, but she found that she wasn’t. “Could we take this conversation somewhere else?”

“Probably best.” If she hadn’t known better, Via would have thought the man sounded amused. “There’s a cafe down the road with the sort of sense of time that’s useful in cases like this. I know the owner.”

“That works.” He probably knew where she lived, but that didn’t mean she wanted to bring him there. “You took longer than I expected.”

“Your graduating class is more active than most.” He tilted his head down the road and, not wanting a fight, not here, Via followed.

The cafe was exactly the sort of place she’d expect him to pick, with deep booths and ambient noise that covered casual conversations. They sat across the table from each other, drinking beer and eating fries, both waiting for the other to speak.

“How many?” He broke first, or perhaps accepted the role of inquisitor.

“Seventeen.”

“You have a reason?”

“Rapists. Monsters. Torturers and creeps.”

The man across the table looked, she thought, as if he was contemplating her list. “We didn’t educate you to be a vigilante.”

Viatrix raised her eyebrows. “You could have fooled me.”

At that, the man across the table laughed. “You’re doing a good job of it, Via. And not even a whisper of chance you’ll get caught. Well done.”

Vindicated. Viatrix smiled. “Thank you, Luke.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/523210.html. You can comment here or there.

U is for Under the Weather Unexpectedly, a story for the Giraffe Call (@RealBriGang)

Apr29

To @RealBriGang’s Prompt, with a side order of pretty much everyone eles’s U (Except probably the Uranium; I couldn’t work that one in. 😉

Uma wasn’t feeling well.

That much, everyone could tell. Her crowd of urchins gathered around her, bringing her little offerings – stories, food, drink, anything they could find in the ruins of the city, anything they could drag of carry or, in one case, force at broken-bottle-point into their little sanctuary.

They had thought she was immune. The olders had, one by one, gotten the Sickness and then had to leave. Some had come in with it, and been driven out just as quickly. Some had just gotten old, and, as they got old, gotten Sick.

But Uma was special. Uma was twice as old as any of them, at least, and, she had never gotten the Sickness. She was immune, she was precious, she was their leader.

She had brought the children in – some as infants, like Uli, slung by her shoulder in a baby-hammock, some old enough to remember that once, before the Sickness, they had known parents. She had brought them in one at a time, or in bunches. “We are your family now. You are my urchins.”

Oli was old enough to remember that there had been others, that, once, Uma had not been the oldest, and they had been Kelly’s Kids. And Kelly had said, before that they had been Tommy’s Tots.

The broken world yielded endless children, it seemed, endless children and endless Sickness striking the old, the grown-ups. The children watched after the younger children, because there was no-one else to do it anymore.

“Don’t get Sick, Uma.” They all whispered it; she was past hearing them anyway. “Please, Uma. Don’t do the thing.”

But it was too late. Her skin was already shifting, her ears stretching, her teeth growing.

Crying, the urchins drove the confused wolf-woman out of their sanctuary. Oli wielded the largest weapon, shouted the loudest. When they were done, when the wolf-woman who had been their leader was gone, Oli turned to the children. “You’re Oli’s Orphans now.”

And maybe Oli would not get Sick.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/522596.html. You can comment here or there.

The Strength, a continuation of the Aunt Family for the March Giraffe Call (@rix_Scaedu)

Apr28

This is rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of:
Intimately Involved (LJ) and
Precedent (LJ)

“Oh?” The other women turned as one towards Hessa. Hessa, in her own turn, had shaded towards a sickly pale green color.

Deborah found both of her hands going over her stomach protectively. “What is it, Hessa?”

“I think I found something out. I think I found another time it happened.” She smoothed the pages with both hands. “I think it happened to great-great-great-Aunt Pearl.”

“Great-great-great…” Deborah counted on her fingers. “That was the one who… vanished, isn’t it? Her diaries went missing with her.”

“I don’t think she vanished, Debs. I think someone vanished her. I think the Grandmothers vanished her.”

“The Grandmothers?” Deborah found herself looking back and forth between her cousin and sisters. “You mean her contemporaries?”

“Oh, relax, Debs. We’re not going to vanish you. We’re your friends, you know. This isn’t like the cousins over in Johnsonville.”

Deborah swallowed, hard, and found herself grabbing and clinging to the hand that Linda offered. “So you don’t mean Aunt Pearl’s sisters and cousins, anyway.” She looked up at Hessa, to find that both Hessa and Danielle had reached their hands out, too. She clasped them both with her free hand, and Linda put her free hand on top of that hand-pile.

“I think it was Pearl’s mother’s sisters, and their mothers and aunts. I think there’s something about the family that works badly if there’s a pregnant woman in the Aunt house, and I think they do everything they can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“I think that nothing like that is going to happen to our Debs.” Danielle was firm. “We’re not going to let the grannies get in the way, and we are going to come up with a solution.”

Deborah found her sister’s confidence reassuring to hear, even if she didn’t share it. She might be the Aunt, but there was tremendous power held in the women of the family, especially the Grannies, as the younger generation called the older (but only when they weren’t listening). It did not have to be magic to be strong; the Grannies had the power of family behind them.

She wasn’t the only one not entirely reassured. “We still don’t know-” Linda began.

This time it was Danielle who found it. “I think I found something important.”

Linda, always the youngest, and thus used to being talked over, shut her mouth with a snap. They all turned to look at Danielle, who was holding up a hand-bound book, the covers looking suspiciously like home-tanned rawhide.

“Listen to this. ‘It is not that the power of the family’s Auntie rests in the womb, as some have speculated. Nor does it, as others had complained, rest in the mother’s milk.‘” She looked up at her sisters and cousin.

“Well.” Deborah didn’t want to get her hopes up. “That sounds like a good start?”

“Did anyone really think all the power sat in your belly?” Hessa was grumbling. Of course it was Hessa that grumbled.

“Clearly you haven’t heard the men of the family talk. Or, worse, some of the far-cousins who haven’t a spark of spark but still think that maybe they will be the next Auntie, or start their own line, because they have an empty womb.” Linda was getting grumbly as well. They needed refreshments.

Of course, they needed answers more.

“Keep reading, Danielle.” Deborah stood, noting as she did that she wouldn’t be able to hide her little problem much longer. Standing was beginning to get tricky, and the Grannies would definitely notice that.

“‘The power of the Aunties, indeed, of all our family, lies deeper still. After all, there have been men who have carried the power – not many, of course, and of course they cannot be trusted with it, but they do carry it, and they have no womb and no milk.‘”

Deborah set the tea kettle on the stove, and measured out the loose leaves into four cups that had been her great-great Aunt’s. “Interesting that they acknowledge the Uncles. The Grannies certainly don’t.”

“The Grannies don’t ever acknowledge anything that might mean change.” Linda, who had married a tall, handsome black doctor, might have been a little more aware of this than most of them.

“They’re supposed to be the anchor, like the cousins are supposed to be the sail.” Deborah had read that in another Auntie’s journal. “So that the boat of the family moves, but very slowly, and without tipping over.”

“Seems like that would just break the boat.” Hessa had her own opinions on matters. She always had.

“I think the assumption is that it’s just a really sturdy boat.” She pulled out bread and meats and cheese, and began throwing together a lunch tray. “Danielle?”

“‘The power of our family has always been twofold. First, in the family itself, root and stock, branch and bough. Second, in the thing that is sometimes called the Spark and sometimes referred to simply as the Legacy. The family has been carrying this spark as far back as any records I can find.‘” Danielle looked up. “Debs, what happened to the old records?”

“We hold on to them. When the family splits, like it did with Aunt Arvis, we make copies of some and just split up others. So, for instance, we have a hand-made copy of Aunt Fortune’s diaries, but we don’t have her Aunt’s diaries at all anymore.”

“It seems like we ought to digitalize it.” Linda frowned. “Or is that against the Auntie creed?”

Deborah clasped her hands over her belly. “I don’t believe I’m one to stand on tradition. Dani, is there more?”

Danielle frowned at the page. “‘The thing,‘” she read, “‘that one must always remember about this spark, the reason that, like cloistered monks and nuns, the holder of our power is always virgin, always female, always childless, is that it is only in our control because of concentration. The moment that concentration fails, we run the risk of doom.'”

“Oh.” Deborah curled around herself, unwilling, for the moment, to pretend to be strong. “Oh.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/522247.html. You can comment here or there.

T is for The Impossible

Apr28

For itsamellama‘s prompt; after Time Travel Does Not Exist.

“So that’s where that went.” June flipped through her notebook. “Something’s still missing, though.” She glanced from her notebook to her machine, a closet-sized device that was covered all over in clockwork. Stepping inside was like getting into the middle of a time-piece, with the slightly threatening feeling that something was about to grind just the right way and crush one.

But it worked – it worked mostly, and with a tolerable amount of precision. Forwards and backwards, the machine worked very well enough. But it should be able to go sideways, as well.

She read her notes again. Still, she needed… hrrmm. “Well, then.” She stepped into the machine and began turning the crank. The mechanisms whirred to life, as June cranked with one hand and flipped toggle switches with the other.

An unbiased observer would see that, moments later, the machine vanished from June Heruon’s living room.

clicky

June stepped out of her machine into her living room, a sheaf of notes in her hands. She and Daniel had reached a critical realization, just as they were realizing, also, that they could not stay in love with each other with their daughter gone.

She stepped into her machine again, and popped back to the university. While Dr. Guddenkind had his back turned, talking to a young woman with brown hair and a red sweater, she swapped notebooks. With this piece of information, she and Daniel would be able to get sideways time travel right.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/522101.html. You can comment here or there.

S for Shahin, a story of Addergoole Post-Apoc for the Giraffe Call

Apr26

To natalief‘s Prompt of the same name. After Mimosas.
The hermaphrodite – known alternately as Ty, Tya, and Red Sun at Night, and now known as oro’Shahin – studied its mistress uncomfortably.

The mimosas, Ty thought, had been a good idea. They had melted a bit of the ice Shahin kept around herself like a shield, gotten the vestiges of a smile of out her. Ty found, and was surprised and enlightened by the discovery, that those smiles had become a bit of an addiction.

I will allow you in my bed, she’d said, when you have learned what it is to serve. And it had been, so far, an education. Not just in serving, although Shahin had been an apt and firm instructor. But in the life she and her people lived, in the hunt for the monsters that survived – and in Ty’s mistress herself.

Ty kowtowed. It was a position with which the slender fae had more than a little experience, although generally in situations more playacting than real. Now, with the feel of Shahin’s metal-and-leather collar weighing down its neck, the position took on far less playfulness and far more gravity. It could stay down here forever.

“I would send a message to sa’Lady of the Lake.” Ty spoke to the floor. “It has been long enough that she’s going to be sending someone to look for me.” There, mistress, take that information for what it’s worth.

“And what would you tell her?” Ty didn’t dare look up at Shahin’s face, not yet, but he thought she was not too displeased.

“Ah. Well, mistress, therein lies the rub.”

“And what rub is that?” She had not, yet, given her new Kept a pet name; most of the time she used no name at all. Ty wondered at it, being nameless. Would it eventually forget its name?

Ty coughed. “You asked what I wanted. What if I want to stay?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/520908.html. You can comment here or there.

R is for Runaway, a story of Tír na Cali for the Giraffe Call

Apr26

For Rion’s prompt.
“You have a thing for runaways, don’t you?” Roberts leaned back against the wall of the van and smirked.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Reggie tried for prim innocence, but didn’t manage to pull it off, ending up grinning instead. Prim really wasn’t her thing. “I haven’t picked up more than six or seven of them this month.”

“Nine, counting the red-head.”

“The redhead was a special case.”

“There’s always special cases, Reggie.”

“This one is…”

“If you say he’s different, I’m going to hit you.”

“If you hit me, I’m going to break your arm. No. Well. I suppose.” She looked down at the unconscious boy, draped across the floor, arms bound, feet bound. She hadn’t hooded him; there was no need. Identifying her would do him no good at all. “He’s interesting.”

“That’s just a fancy way of saying different.”

“Would you two shut up?” In the front seat, Sirocco was getting cranky. “Yay, you picked up your load. Now can we get home without your bickering? Because otherwise I’m going to pull over and break all of your arms.”

They fell quiet; Roc could do it, and would. Reggie looked down at the boy, and at the other three in the van, all unconscious. The blond runner Roberts had taken was blindfolded; she would make good ransom money, and ransoming off every third or fourth kidnapee confused the authorities. The American authorities, at least. The Californian ones probably knew what they were up to.

The other two were hooded and bound out of normal expediency – a junkie and a skater-boy, neither of them weighing more than a hundred pounds. Reggie found her gaze settling again on the runaway. Runaways were fun because they tended to run again, among other reasons.

“Different.” She mouthed the word, rather than saying it out loud. There was something different about this one, no matter how many times she’d said this.

Reggie reached down and stroked this one’s cheek, ignoring the mock-gagging expression on Roberts’ face. This one was going to be different.

Continued! http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/535800.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/520206.html. You can comment here or there.

Q for the Queen’s Quilt

Apr25

For moonwolf‘s prompt, ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt, and stryck‘s Prompt. I feel like it needs some polishing to get the point across better.

In a few generations, they ended up calling it the Queen’s Quilt, when they remembered what it was, what it had, once upon a time, been, and who had created it.

A few generations after that, they remembered nothing but that the stars had been gods once, and not how the latter had become the former, or why, or by whose hand.

And a few more generations past that, they remembered only the names, and thought their ancestors had been fanciful. Qat, who created the world. Quaoar, the force behind Qat. Orion, the hunter. Ursa, the mother bear. How shiny and creative were our ancestors, how credulous, to believe such absurd things.

A few generations beyond that, they learned what had really happened. But that is beyond the scope of our story.

The Queen had a problem.

The world was not young, not by any means, although history would pretend that this was a Dark time, a muddy and deadly time. Certainly, humanity had already risen and fallen more times than anyone was allowed to recount, than anyone could recount, if they spent their entire life counting.

And while Europe, or much of it, sat in muddy unhappiness, on a few special places, people had risen to amazing prominence, to brilliance and strength and magic unknown elsewhere in the sloppy world.

Risen enough, indeed, that when they visited other places they were hailed as gods.

And they were bored.

They were creating islands now, and a small mesa in what would at some point be named North America. And they were creating animals, and people, because they were bored, and then hunting them. They had conquered sickness (Again, although they did not know they were not the first). They had conquered old age (again). Boredom, however, they had not yet beaten.

And they were creating, on top of everything else, wars. And that was where the Queen had a problem. The others who had become enlightened would tolerate making islands. They would tolerate playing at Gods. But they would not, in the end, tolerate bringing down the muddy people, the ones who didn’t have the high hand this time around.

It was considered cheating, in the long, long game of enlightenment.

So the Queen pulled together all her best minds, and all her troublemakers. She drew the lines on the ceiling of her observatory, and she pointed. “There, you, Qat. Take one hundred men, and this ship I have built for you. Light up the sky for me, Qat.” And he went, out to the sky. “There, Quaoar, out there. Take one hundred men, and find me something brilliant.” And it went, out into the sky. “There, Orion. Go and find me something new to hunt.” And he went, out into the sky.

They called it her quilt, for the lines of stitching drawn on her observatory: not just those three, but all who were difficult. The lines where they left, and then, the lines where they landed, like patches in the sky.

What happened to Orion, they did not know, save that the sky exploded with his sign, and he never came back. Quaoar went further and further, and never came back, save to send a message that he had found the brilliance.

Nothing at all was heard of Qat, not for generations and generations, not until the Queen had been forgotten entirely.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/519825.html. You can comment here or there.

P is for the Possum Postulate, a story of Science! for the Giraffe Call

Apr25

For stryck‘s prompt.

“It’s the Possum Postulate.” The new applicant seemed promising, for such a young face. Cara had thought, at first, that he was going to be an intern, but the boy – Platya Perdido Proda – fresh-faced and with no beard to speak of, although that could have been ancestry rather than youth – was signing on to be their new point scientist.

(The Lab had no “lead scientist” except Liam; Point Scientist was more or less “person who gets all the attention,” and was always a newcomer.)

“Possum.” She and Alex had gotten stuck with doing the interviewing after Liam had killed off three candidates – two in a fit of pique, one when his test experiment threatened to blow up the entire Lab.

“Postulate.” Alex was no more thrilled about this than Cara was. He hadn’t even bothered to dress up, and was wearing old jeans and a shirt with, Cara thought, the bloodstains of a former Point Scientist still on the collar.

“Yes.” Proda cleared his throat. “It’s a probability postulate, designed to predict within ninety-nine point nine seven percent accuracy a range of events given a certain set of parameters. It’s immensely complicated, and thus I’ve programmed it into this piece of equipment-“

“Not into a standard lab computer?”

“Well, I did that first, of course, but a computer requires certain things to run. This, on the other hand, requires sunlight and liquid. You could run it on a dessert island.”

“You created a probability generator that works on piss?”

“Precisely.” Proda was un-fazed. “I needed something as simple as possible.”

“How do the possums come in?”

“Well, they’re a metaphor. No possums were harmed in the making of this machine.”

“Pity.” Cara was beginning to enjoy herself. “So…?”

“The machine has as it’s default, ‘everything dies,’ and as its secondary default ‘play dead until the threat is gone.'”

Cara and Alex shared a glance, and then looked back at Proda. “Let me get this straight.” Cara spoke slowly. “You made a machine to test the probability of different outcomes, given a series of inputs.”

“Yes.”

“And its default answer is ‘everyone dies?'”

“Yes.” The boy was beginning to look nervous. Panicked, even.

“Perfect.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/519571.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder