Tag Archive | giraffecall

Run for it, a story of Reiassan for the June Giraffe Call

Jun25

For [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt. Set in the same era as the Lyuda stories.

The rain started an hour before dark, and three hours out of camp. Krynia and Engot had shared a look, then another, and then they’d spurred their goats into a run up the side of the mountain.

There was no going back, not for either of them. He was a deserter, now, and she – well, they’d call her worse than that, if they found her. Losing her commission in the priesthood would be only her first problem.

So they ran, on stolen goats, into the storm, seeking a shelter, anything, anywhere. “Look at it in this light.” Engot’s Bitrani was not the best, but it was clearer, still, than the Callenian Krynia could manage without divine intervention. “The storm this bad, our tracks covered. Nobody will search.”

“Nobody will find our bodies.” She muttered her answer into her cloak, in hopes that he wouldn’t hear her. The storm provided, cracking thunder across their path. “Your country is wet.”

“So is yours.” Then there was nothing at all to say for a while, just the steady thumping of their goats’ hooves on the dirt road and the loud cracks of the lightning. Night fell with little change, the sky already black with clouds. Krynia risked a tiny pull on the sira, enough to make a small globe of luminescence to light their path. She hoped the gods would forgive her. She could not worship them if they died here. She could not worship them if she was killed for heresy.

“Here.” Here, in the deep back hills of Callenia, Engot was as much a stranger as she was. But in every corner of this land, you could find the sturdy wayfarer’s cabins of those who had come first. And this one, though the roof was beginning to fall, was still mostly intact. “This will be enough for tonight.”

“Tonight.” She knew he couldn’t see her smile, not through the gloom, the rain, and her hood and veil. “And then…?”

“Once we go through this pass, we’re out of land that the Emperor’s Army patrols. Then…” she couldn’t see his smile, either, but she could hear it. “Then we do as we please, Krynia.”

“As we please.” It was a new thought, but a nice one.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/357130.html. You can comment here or there.

June Mini-Giraffe Call: Reiassan

Jun25

The June Mini-Giraffe Call is CLOSED!! (Although, if your name is Eseme or Cluudle (or you want to donate ;-), you may still prompt. I understand job busies)

For the next 36 hours, leave your prompts on My Reiassan ‘verse.

Reiassan has a landing page here (and on LJ)

Because this is a mini-Call, there will be mini-perks!

* For every $10 donated, one prompter chosen at random will get an extra 500-word story – up to 3!
* If the call reaches $30, I will write to second prompt from everyone.- reached!
* If the call reaches $60, I will post a setting piece chosen by the readers and write Callenian poetry.reached!
* If the call reaches $90, I will throw a party! For 2 hours on a Saturday, you can ask anything and everything! With photos!
* If you donate, as always, you have sponsored 100 words continuation on any Giraffe story for every $1US donated, and I will write to at least one additional prompt of yours.

* For every prompter I will write 50 words on an extra story. For every linkback, 25 words. Every donation, 75 words!

At least 1/2 the proceeds of this Call will go towards hiring crowdfunded art or editing for the Reiassan e-book.



Donate below

Art by Djinni!
I also take payment by Dwolla

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/356644.html. You can comment here or there.

50,000 (+92)! (and giraffes)

Jun25

/falls over/

Last night, I hit 50,092, also finishing Chapter 12 – one semester of Addergoole Year 9 roughed out!

Now I get to write other things again!

Yesterday, I posted a list of settings which had been suggested for today’s Mini-Giraffe call. Right now, Stranded, Fairy Town, and Unicorn/Factory are in a three-way tie.

I will post the Giraffe Call when
(1) One of these gains a two-vote lead
or
(2) 4:55 p.m. EST arrives.

I’m also taking suggestions for a sub-theme. I.e., “Addergoole, summer camp” (Which will be the theme of July’s mini-call).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/356562.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffing it soon!

Jun24

So, a few days ago, I mentioned that there would be a mini-Giraffe Call tomorrow.

And I asked you what setting it should be.

So far, my answers are:
* stories outside [my] main settings
* Dragons +1 vote
* Reiassan +2 vote
* Faerie Town,
* Stranded +1 vote
* Space Accountant,
* Science!,
* Unicorn/Factory +1 vote
* Shadow Rebellion,
* Planners
* Fairy Town +2 votes

Exceptions – not Aunt Family nor Addergoole, which are the most recently done and next to be done, respectively.

Do you have an opinion on the matter? 🙂

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/355861.html. You can comment here or there.

State of the Giraffes

Jun15

There will be a mini-Giraffe Call this month, but it shall not be until late – June 25th.

It will be on any one setting; what would you like?

Exceptions – not Aunt Family nor Addergoole, which are the most recently done and next to be done, respectively.

The July Mini-Giraffe Call shall be Addergoole Summer Camp on July 14th; this will kick off 52 days to 52 stories, a lead-up to my new serial, beginning on September 4th.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/353852.html. You can comment here or there.

Faries in the Church

Jun9

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of

â›Ș
“There are fairies in your church.”

Bishop Macnamilla was of an older school of thought, practically antediluvian. Most of the time, Father Nehemiah avoided conflict by avoiding the Ninth Street house where the Bishop kept his residence. The Father’s church was new, and not entirely conventional, and not near Ninth Street, and the Bishop’s body as well as his mind were old, and did not move easily.

But someone had said something, the Father was certain. The jowls on the Bishop were shaking in the way the once-fat man only did when he had been being yelled at by a parishioner who Didn’t Like Something. Probably not one of Nehemiah’s regulars. But sometimes the gossips from the other churches liked to stop in and visit.

“There are fairies.” Sometimes he could get away with just agreeing with the Bishop until he went away. “Margaret and LaKeisha are in there now. They’ve been helping Mrs. Bao with the cleaning, as it’s almost Easter time.”

“You have fairies in your church services, Father Nehemiah.”

He wasn’t going to be able to dance around this. “Better than having them standing outside the gates, glaring.”

“Do you know what happens when you allow – INVITE the fair folk into consecrated ground?” He was bellowing, or trying to. He must have been an impressive man before the long waste of age started eating him away.

“I’ve heard the stories. Mrs. Bao told me some of them. The kirkevaren told me others – and the fairies told me another set.”

“Ruin and ruination is what you get. Sin and sinners. Filth and the filthy.” The Bishop shook his head. “It leads to nothing but badness.”

“And blood?” Nehemiah drew himself up. He was tall, taller than the Bishop’s shrunken form by nearly a foot. “I know why there were no fairies in the church before, sir.”

“There are no FAIRIES in the church,” the Bishop shouted the word as if it were an obscenity, “because to allow them into out sanctified ground taints not only the ground but the entire city.”

Father Nehemiah was boggled enough by this to lose the edge of his anger, although he did remain standing straight, staring down at the top of the Bishop’s head. “You are aware, sir, that you live in the densest population of fae in the country, correct? The city is teeming with fairies.”

“The city is rotten with them. The elders did not listen to me. They were squeamish.” The older man’s voice finally dropped. “No. It was me. I was squeamish. I knew what needed to be done, and I could not do it. I failed my superiors. I killed them, Nehemiah, I killed those fairies you have heard of. I spilled their blood in the name of the city and its sanctity. I scrubbed the floors with the blood. I blessed the altars with it. But, in the end, I could not do what needed to be done.”

He didn’t have to ask, although he wished that he did. He’d already heard enough to put the rest together.

“You killed them before you buried them, you mean.” It hadn’t been meant to be another lamb under the church at all. “You blessed their deaths, instead of leaving them to roam.”

“I could have saved us all. I could have protected us all from what’s in the wind. But they look human, Nehemiah. They look human. And that was my undoing.”

Taproots, a story of Rin & Girey for the May Giraffe Call

May31

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s commissioned continuation of Roots.

Reiasson has a landing page here And a wiki here.

Girey wasn’t sure she’d heard him at first. She didn’t answer, at least, instead continuing to flip through the ancient book in front of her.

“The papers go back further,” she said, instead of answering, after a while. “Not much more, and most of it is incomprehensible. But it’s clear we came here, my people, yours, the Arrans, all of us.”

He was not yet used to her speaking heresy as if it were truth, and, more so, as if nobody would stop her. “That’s what…” He trailed off, frowning. Rin picked up the thread of the conversation.

“You said the heretical texts mentioned Tabersi. You’ve heard of those texts then, or read them?”

“It’s a crime against the throne to read the texts. The priests keep them locked up.”

“But you…” She paused, and looked around, and raised one black eyebrow in question.

Son of Tugia, she taunted in his memory. But she was asking the Prince of Bithrain this question.

“I did. And the Tabersi are mentioned, them, and the callentate of barbarians, the Ideztozhyuh.” The word was uncomfortable on his tongue, the consonants sounding harsh and alien.

“The Idez… the people of the old earth. Interesting.” She flipped through a few more pages of the book. “So my texts speak of the origins of your people, while yours -“

“Talk of visiting barbarians who decided to stay.” He frowned at her head. “Not about how they set up shop here, on this continent, though.” And not how they’d beaten his people at war.

“Interesting.” She flipped through the book. “This one’s too old, it doesn’t say where the wars started.”

“Didn’t it say your people rebelled?”

“The looks of that, however, was a bloodless rebellion. The cold season was hard, the passes were closed, and it was long into the hot season before anyone noticed anything had changed.”

Girey frowned, and didn’t say what he was thinking. That seemed wrong, somehow, but it had been many years ago that he’d read the proscribed texts. “The Bitrani don’t speak much of that era.”

“I think it has something to do with your priests.” She held up both hands, forestalling a complaint he hadn’t been intending on making. “I am not speaking ill of your people or your priests.”

“The Bitrani and the Callenians have the same faith.” It came out like the complaint he had been trying not to make, and he frowned in frustration. “We worship the same three gods, in the same temples, with the same words. You took me to a service,” he reminded her, “to show me that.”

“We do. I’ve been to Bitrani services, as well. In disguise, and with the headscarf some women wore covering her hair, but she had been. “We worship the same gods. I believe that. But your priests hide things by calling them heresy…”

He couldn’t help interrupting. “We don’t have priests anymore, remember? ‘We’ don’t have anything anymore.”

Her hand in his hair was surprisingly tender. “You still have a culture. We couldn’t wipe that out if we tried. And that’s the thing.”

“What’s the thing?” He was both lost and angry now, his confusion making both worse.

“We couldn’t erase your culture if we tried – but I’m beginning to wonder if somebody else tried. And from the inside, maybe it was easier.” She set a finger on the book. “Where did the Tabersi go? And the Ideztozhyuh? And why?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/349330.html. You can comment here or there.

Being the Monster

May30

For rix_scaedu‘s Commissioned continuation.

Addergoole has a landing pagehere.

After Cursed.

Barypos ended. Ended, in a way he had never imagined possible, Ended, Name and name and soul and memories. He ended in a twist of pain and a gut-punch, air lost, while the world burned around him.

He dreamt of death, of spears, of the lamentations and screams of women following him through the years. He dreamt of blood and pain, and of fire, and more fire, and more.

When he awoke, Barypos was gone. He woke to consciousness of a sort, remembering nothing but pain and fire.

Slowly, he stood, and brushed the sand off of his skin. White skin, skin like a dead thing, rippled with muscle and lined with scars that were, as he watched, vanishing into the whiteness. He looked around; sand, and the long-gone remains of buildings. To the north, sand, to the east, sand. To the south, sand, and to the west, sand and the sun.

That was a direction, at least. Not knowing what else to do, he walked into the sun.

A caravan found him, some endless time later, coated in dust and parched. “Where do you come from?” they asked, and he could not tell them. They gave him water, and asked his name.

“Buh-” was all he could remember, so Buh he became, for the few moments before the women brushed the sand off of him, before the men saw what he was.

“Monster,” the youngest woman screamed. “Beast, corpse-eater!”

Those who had welcomed and rescued him drove him off again, screaming monster, beast, creature! and, confused, Buh ran off into the dessert.

Baram woke sweating and swearing and reached across the bed for the girl. There was a girl there. That was the deal; there was always a girl there.

The girl pressed against him in her sleep, stroking his back, her hands firm. Viatrix. Vi’s hands were the strongest. Like Etheldreda. Like Joan.

The memories were beginning to sneak back in, around the edges, when he was sleeping or nearly so, when one of the girls was holding him, and, sometimes and most painfully, when he was holding one of the children. Ethldreda, who had been able to stand him the longest of anyone before these girls, who had stayed with him when the torches lit, stayed with him until the very end. Joan
 Joan who had gritted her teeth and tried.

That wasn’t him. That was some other guy, some monster in his nightmares.

He looked down at his body, at the slabs of muscle, at the pale, corpse-like skin. This didn’t change. He died and was born again, died and died and died again, and this returned, white and death-looking. Monstrous.

“I’m here,” Via whispered in his ear, and he clutched her closer. He had never understood what had brought them to show up on his doorstep, Jaelie and then Via and Alkyone, nor what, aside from his protection, drove them to stay, but he knew their warmth and their – he wouldn’t call it love. Nobody could love him. He’d never Kept anyone, that he could recall, to not force the imitation of affection – their friendship seemed to push back the dark.

He knew he would die again. But until that death came, he could be their monster.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/349081.html. You can comment here or there.

First Nesting

May29

For fflox‘s commissioned continuation of First Wind.

Yilly was falling, dropping like a rock, every attempt of his to fly, to find the air, falling, failing, freaking out. He had always been going to learn the feel, going to try the short drops with his high-level classmates, but there’d always been something more interesting, something more fun. Now there wasn’t any more time, and he was dropping from the high levels, right down to the flood zone and the river.

And then, there were his friends, his crawling-in-the-catacombs and splashing-in-the-river and staying-up-dancing friends, and there they were, just below him. Yilly cupped air and tried to slow himself. He didn’t want to hurt them, didn’t want to bring them down with them. But they were getting closer, closer. Mirro and Tanny swooped under Yilly and came up under him, grabbing his hands, pulling him up into a wind with them, while Lonoll did something complicated so she was standing up, looking Yilly in the face.

“Feel the air, Yill-ne-yill, find it in your face and your vents. Right there, right… there.”

As always, Lonoll could make sense when nobody else could, and Yilly found, for the first time, the way the air whispered across his vents and pushed up against his glides. “Oh…” It was more a prayer than an exclamation, as he suddenly understood what his parents had been speaking of. “Oh… I’m flying!”

He deserved the chittering Mirro and Tanny gave him, teasing him mercilessly for that one. “You’re flying me,” he allows. They were flying him. “You saved my life.”

“We need you.” Lonoll’s smile was broad, and her vents were tinged with red. Was she…

“Oh.” Another prayer. “But we don’t have a nest.”

“We do.” Mirro’s vents were turning red, too. “We found one. While you were in your high-classes.”

Yilly twitched his vents guiltily. “No more of those for me, not after today. You
” He could feel the wind, now, and shifted his glides and his vents to allow for the warmth of the updraft.

Lonoll took the opportunity to talk over him. “You brought us books, and those worksheets.”

“You went swimming with us, and showed us the secret caves.” Mirro picked up the thread. “And we didn’t mind your high-classes. You brought all that fun stuff back with you.”

“Besides.” Tanny was always more pragmatic. “We need a fourth to be a proper nest-group, so we couldn’t let you fall.”

Yilly laughed, dropped a body-length, and managed to restore his balance. “Good to know you’re thinking of me.”

“Flutter-brain.” Lonoll rubbed against him in a very pointed manner. Yilly swallowed an egg-sized lump of panic; he wasn’t up to that sort of flying yet, even if everyone was getting very red in the vents. “we’re always thinking of you.”

“And our nest.” Mirro rescued him, more or less, tugging him towards the cliff-face. “And our nest-group.”

“Come on.” Tanny fluttered and chattered in amusement. “Let us show you.”

Yilly managed to roll onto his back, catching the drafts as his friends – as his nest-group – tugged him towards the cliff face. Far above, he could see his parents’ nest, up in the highest levels.

He turned back to his nest-group, watching the girls’ vents flutter redder and redder. This was home now.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347907.html. You can comment here or there.

House-Schooling, a story of Addergoole-Apoc for the April Giraffe Call (@Rix_Scaedu)

May26

This story contains magic and references to Addergoole but no slavery, sex, or violence.

For rix_scaedu‘s Commissioned Prompt.

Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here here (and on LJ).

After These Walls Can Talk, Housewarming, and As Safe as Houses

Dodger is from When the Gods Attacked..

Bethseda hadn’t meant to eavesdrop; it was just that the eaves and everything under them were her, and, like anyone, when her name came up, she paid attention.

So when Clare and Tobias started talking about her, and about houses that might bite (She would have been offended, but that grandmother who had become a castle? She’d heard some disturbing rumors about Grandma), and, more than that, when they had started hinting at what they thought they might be, she had devoted a little attention their way.

When they had mentioned Dodger, she knew she had to pay true attention. He had stopped by her place a time or two, the itinerant Crime Dog, and she always welcomed him with open doors and a warm bed. He had, learning what she was, tried to Mentor her – only to be pleasantly surprised to find out she was already an Adult, with her own Name and her own responsibilities.

(He had suggested she Keep someone to handle the sweeping and the errands. She was still considering it, but, unlike some of her classmates, she couldn’t very well go out to the bars looking).

If these two were “Students” of Dodger’s, they were going to need help. He did a good enough job at slapping down the basics, but basics was all he handled. And with a war going on… no wonder these kids were a little lost.

“I believe I can be of assistance,” she suggested. She thought probably Sana could as well, but it wasn’t her job to out people.

Tobias answered the door, uncertainly and very cautiously. “There’s no-one out here.”

“It seemed rude not to knock.” As a shrugging would be very disorienting for everyone, she settled for a sound like a chuckle. “I’m sorry. I know it can be disorienting to not have a face to talk to.”

“Do you have a face?” Clare glared at Tobias when he tch’d her. “It’s not a rude question. I don’t think it is…”

“I had one, once; this is my Change, after all. But now… not that you would find comfortable to look at, I’m afraid.”

“I knew it. You eat people.”

“No, I really don’t. I generally take in sustenance from the rain and the ground, more like a plant than a mammal. It was strange to get used to.” It had hurt, and she’d been sick over and over again. But she’d gotten used to it. “But I adjusted.”

“When you put it that way…” Tobias was clearly thinking of something. “It makes our Changes really not seem all that bad.”

“To!” Clare was half on her feet. “You can’t tell her that!”

“I think she already knows. And she did say she could help.”

“We don’t need any help.”

“We need something. We know how to not die. Barely. I think we can do better than that. Think about the fight we saw, when we were leaving Philly… if the monsters and the angels are the same sort of thing…”

Now they were beginning to understand. Bethseda made a noise of agreement. “Then you can learn to be an angel, yes. And I can help you learn.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/347359.html. You can comment here or there.