Tag Archive | giraffecall

May Giraffe Call Summary

May19

2012-05-12
Theme: Origins and Creation
15 stories written.
9 total prompters, 0 new
3 people donated a total of $41, 0 of which were new.
$41 of donations were left unclaimed.
Link to Call: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/337249.html
Summary:
Addergoole
Cursed (LJ)
Breeding Plan (LJ)

Aunt Family
Building the Homes (LJ)

Tir na Cali
Gods (LJ)

Reiassan
Roots (Lj)

One-Off
Creation Story (LJ)
When the Storm Came(LJ)
C.A.K.E(LJ)

Being First(LJ)

Remembering Earth (no crosspost)

Out of Nowhere(LJ)

Family Souveniers(LJ)
before
Souvenir(LJ)

Science!
Making Friends (LJ)

Fairy Town
Eggshells and lineman’s hopes( LJ)

F.Anon, You have not yet claimed your April words.
Everyone who donated in May: What would you like to see continued?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/343312.html. You can comment here or there.

Gods, a story of Tír na Cali for the Giraffe Call

May18

To [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt

“You can’t just do this to people!” Charles was struggling against… Well, against everything, but at the moment, the cuffs holding his wrists to his ankles, the collar chained to the wall behind him, and the general concept of slavery, not to mention the woman standing in front of him, looking far too amused and far too obnoxiously hot.

“As a matter of fact, we can.” Svetlana sat down in a comfortable chair that seemed to be placed in this otherwise-bare room for the sole purpose of gloating at him.

“This is bullshit. Just because you have a couple tricks…” He’d seen their “tricks” already, and if he weren’t so pissed, he’d have to admit they were impressive… “doesn’t give you control over other people’s lives. You guys have some sort of god complex or something.”

The woman laughed. “As a matter of fact…”

“Oh, hells no, don’t tell me you people think you’re gods or some such fucked up shit.”

She smirked at him. “Don’t say it like that to anyone else around here. But, as a matter of fact, my people – grey eyes, red hair, long names? – call themselves the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Children of Danu. So yes, we do think we’re gods, or descended from them.”

“Seriously?” He stopped struggling against the chains and looked at her in shock.

“Seriously. The story goes, in the days before history, Danu kissed her Consort…”

“…kissed?”

“It started with a kiss, at least.” She could not be fazed by lewd comments. He’d already tried that anyway. “And from she and her Consort came the people of Eire, our people.”

“So you seriously believe you’re gods?”

“Me? I believe I have power, wealth, and a royal title. That suits me better than godhead.” She leaned forward in her chair and tapped his shoulder. “And I have you, which is a pleasant perk.”

He studied the crazy woman in front of him, and tugged ruefully once again at his chains. “Gods.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/342975.html. You can comment here or there.

Out of nowhere, a story for the May Giraffe Call (@shutsumon)

May17

For [personal profile] becka_sutton‘s prompt. Names by @Anke.

“We’re so screwed.”

They were not, technically, screwed yet. Their ship was set up for
three years of subspace travel or up to thirty of semi-cryo
hibernation; they had over half of their time left. But if they did
not find a planet to terraform by the time they reached their halfway
mark, they were going to be very screwed indeed. And the sensors were
showing them nothing.

“We can send out the last three probes,” Jeanne offered. “Those might
find something.”

“Or we could turn back.” Daniele didn’t look at her senior science
officer as she said that. They both knew it was a last-ditch option.
There was nothing left for any of them back home.

“Look, I’m going to make some modifications to the next probe. Maybe
it can find something everything else is missing.”

Something everything else was missing would probably be a
planet they could barely survive on, even after fifteen years of
terraforming. But it would be better than earth. Daniele nodded.
She’d let her officers do everything they could, because the death
decision would have to be hers in the end.

“What in the nine billion names of Bog is that?”

The distressed exclamation came from behind them; both women whirled around to find Yori Tagani, their navigations expert, staring at the monitors.

Seconds ticked by. When Yori kept staring at the screen and said nothing, Daniele asked, rather impatiently, “well, Yori, what is it?”

“It’s a creatio ex nihilo.” His tone was between awed and terrified.

“What?”

“Something from nothing. Basically the universe just spat it out to spite us.”

“The universe…”

“Spat out a planetary seed in the middle of our path. Collision in about three hours if I don’t divert.”

“So why in the bloody hell aren’t you diverting?”

“Well…” He turned to look at her, letting her see the ‘planetary seed’ growing on his monitor. “I kinda thought you might want to stop.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/342436.html. You can comment here or there.

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

May17

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Reiasson has a landing page here And a wiki here.

Rin opened up one of the oldest books in the library. “How good is your Old Bitrani?”

“Wouldn’t you mean Old Callennan?” Girey leaned over her shoulder, studying the old, creaky parchment. “Unless you’ve been raiding our libraries.”

“I’m sure we have. But the thing is, when you go back this far, a good number of our record books are in Bitrani. Well, in Tabersi.”

Behind her, he went very still. “Say that again?”

“Tabersi. She glanced over her shoulder at his face, which, for once in his life, revealed nothing at all. “You’ve heard the word before,” she hazarded.

“Only in the heretical texts.” His voice was very careful. He didn’t want to call her a heretic, not again, she guessed. Unusually wise of him.

“Mm. It’s not a common word in Callenia, either. Not so much heretical, here, as the stains behind the tent walls.”

“Stains behind…?”

“Hidden secrets. The things you want to cover up.”

“But you, what, brushed the tent wall aside?”

“Not I. I’m no scholar. But a friend of mine in University was. And for her thesis, she researched our first Emperor.”

“And found…” There was a great deal of tension in his body, and his voice was tight. Did he already know some of this?”

She read from the book instead of answering, translating it into Bitrani. “It is here, on this tenth day of summer in the fifth year since landfall, that the independent cities of Lannamer, Aneksundon, and Terrekya declare their sovereignty and their nationhood, separate from and free of Tabersi rule and law. Let it be known that Eszhettozh, son of Emanek, claims rulership of this newly formed nation, and will be known henceforth as Emperor of the Callentate of North Reiassannon-land.”

Girey, behind her, nodded slowly. “Callentate. It means ‘tribe-leaders,’ I think. It’s older than Old Bitrani. Heh.”

“Indeed.” She closed the book, smiling. “Our nation began as a rebel state of tribe leaders.”

“And now you rule the whole continent.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/342141.html. You can comment here or there.

Family Souvenirs, a story for the Giraffe Call

May17

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s Prompt.

The prelude to Souvenirs.

It started with my daughters.

We used to vacation a lot, back Before. And we’d pick up a little something here, a little something there, before the girls were old enough to really pay attention.

But once Emily was five, she started picking out things she wanted to bring home. Postcards. Sea shells. And then she and Mary, with Candace and Patience “helping,” made a little shadow box and hung it on the wall.

We did one big vacation and one little vacation every year, and so that was two shadowboxes every year, Emily, and then Candace, and then Patience helping to pick out the souvenirs, and all of them arranging the shadow boxes.

The girls loved those things. When Emily was packing for college, she asked if she could take one with her. Candace and Patience wouldn’t hear of it. It nearly turned into a Family Fight, but Mary and I intervened.

We went through the house, and put together a Visiting Home Souvenirs Box, as pretty as the ones from our vacations, and sent that off with her. Two years later, we did the same for Candace.

A year after that, the world ended.

We were too close to the trouble, so we packed up everything we could into the van and headed for our cabin in the mountains. Patience insisted on taking the shadow boxes, so we did, giving up a couple summer shirts and my suit for the space.

Candace had a car by then, so that gave us a bit more space. The problem was Emily.

The problem, more specifically, was Emily’s college. Candace had been at a local school; Emily had gone four hours away. Four hours closer to New York City, closer to the mess. Her school had been evacuated by the time we called, and she’d never been good about carrying her cell phone.

So I got the family to the cabin, got the shadow boxes on the wall, and then I went looking for my daughter. Town by town, city by city. And every place I went, I picked up a souvenir, so she’d have something to see where I’d been.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/341784.html. You can comment here or there.

Eggshells and Lineman’s Hopes

May15

For flofx‘s second prompt.

Long before Guarding the Church and referencing Strange Neighbors.

Tia Lian was born, as her kind were, in an eggshell watered with the tears of an unmarried woman and fertilized with the hopes of an unemployed man.

Or so she liked to tell people… and in her childhood, she was so small, so clearly fay, so touched by the other, that people tended to believe her.

The truth might have been more prosaic, but it was no less magical. Born to a fairy mother in the doorway of the Stanton Arms, gotten on that mother by a goblin line worker who couldn’t find work (the unions were going through an era, back then, where they didn’t like the fay), left on the doorstep of a church and from there taken to an orphanage, Tia was a midsummer baby, touched in magic and born in the mundane.

Although her mailing address was the Antwerp Orphanage, the place was only two blocks from the Stanton Arms in one direction and three from the church where she’d been left in the other, and a young Tia Lian ruled all and the places in between, running the small gangs of children and fay by the time she was old enough to spin a lie.

“Born in an eggshell,” she fibbed proudly, “blessed by my father’s hopes and my mother’s tears. As fay as they come and as wild as they can’t cage.” Her elders, fay, priest, and state, despaired of teaching her discipline. Her peers despaired of ever being as cool as she was. Soon, boys despaired of the chance of a kiss. She was as she’d made herself, fay and wild.

And then she met Bao Bao.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/340941.html. You can comment here or there.

C.A.K.E., a superheroes story for the May Giraffe Call (@Rix_Scaedu)

May15

For Rix_Scaedu‘s second prompt. After Creation Story and When the Storm Came.

Names from Fourteen Minutes and Seventh Sanctum, human name from @Anke

“…and the rest was cake.” Fusefauna leaned back in her chair, making an expression they had learned to interpret as a smile.

“C.A.K.E, she means.” Chloroshining had never really gotten over being paternal over his daughter, which, at the moment…

“Which sounds exactly the same, spoken, unless you’re being an asshole.” Switchphase glared over his wife’s head at his alien father-in-law. “Seriously, Chlor. Give her a break.”

“Do not presume to tell me how to…”

“Father. #’$hi*sth.” Fusefauna clicked out the short Thundesitioni admonition. “Daniel, please.”

Modificationnaut listened to the three of them and silently vowed to never marry. “So C.A.K.E?” he prompted. “It’s an interesting acronym.”

“It is a very arrogant acronym,” Fusefauna allowed, “but it was the seventies, and we were very arrogant at the time. This was of course before the explosion of altered beings, when there were only a handful of us on the planet. It stands for Combined Altered Kyrie Elite.”

“Combined…” It didn’t take Modificationnaut long to piece that together. “The altered gods, more or less.”

“Lords.” It was almost nice to know Chloroshining was an ass to everyone, not just his daughter. “The Amalgamated Lords of the Altered Genome… but that was too arrogant even for us.”

“And now… it’s just the three of you?”

“The two of us. Switchphase belongs to another group.” He seemed very firm on that one. “Yes. The others retired, as much as one can do that, or died, or went off-planet.”

“And we are left.” Fusefauna click-churred a Thundesitioni laugh. “To be our C.A.K.E., just us two.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/340552.html. You can comment here or there.

May Giraffe Call with Extra Second Prompt Winner!

May14

My May Giraffe Call is open (and on LJ). The theme is Origins and Creations.

For every $25 donated, I will choose at random a prompter and write an additional prompt for them.

We are $9 from the $50 level!

For the $25 level, the winner is [personal profile] becka_sutton!!

I am still taking prompts!


Donate below

Art by Djinni!
I also take payment by Dwolla

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/340339.html. You can comment here or there.

When the Storm Came

May14

For flofx‘s prompt.

After Creation Story. Thanks to @Anke and @inventrix for help coming up with the idea.

“And when I came to, well, I was kind of part of the machine…”

Cobalt Deus, who called herself Eve at home, listened to the young members of her team talk about their so-called origins, how they had gotten the “sparks” that kept them going.

Silently, from the corner where she watched most things, she shot blue sparks between her fingers, the sparks that gave her both her “superhero name” and her power, and thought about the storm that wouldn’t end.

She had been young, barely past her menses, and mankind had likewise been in its early teenaged years, struggling with the concepts of reality, morality, permanence and transcendence. The storm had been, she had later learned, the product of sorcerers in the next town over, working not out of malice, but in a desire to bring water to their own valley’s fields.

Weather magic was then, and continued even into the modern age to be, the most dangerous and most volatile of the high arts. Cobalt Deus had spent millenia quietly eliminating those who refused to learn this.

There had been nothing left of the next town over except one scared child, and very little more left of “Eve’s” village, when the storm passed. It had rained for weeks, thundered, and shot lightning at every raised thing, poured until the rivers flooded, until the buildings burned, until “Eve” and her few surviving family could no longer count the time, because there was no light through the clouds to tell the day from night. It had rained until they had given up the thought of life altogether… and then the lightning had touched them.

There had been five of them holed up in a cave high on the hillside. Of them, only “Eve” had survived the lightning, making her and four who had been on another hill the only members of their town alive. And Eve had been marked by the storm.

Cobalt Deus stared at the lightning between her fingers. The children spoke of their creation stories, embarrassed that they weren’t dramatic enough. Cobalt, who had been living under the storm that would not end for longer than mankind kept records, wished, herself, for an origin and a life that had been less marked, and less dramatic. She hoped the children never reached the point where they, too, wished that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/340009.html. You can comment here or there.

Being First, a story for the May Giraffe Call (@shutsumon)

May14

For [profile] shutsumon‘s prompt

This, ah, came out a bit odd. Sorry!

Ayam was lonely.

Lonely, that was a new word. Ayam had made it up, sounding out things until it found something that worked. Lonely, the feeling of being alone in the world.

There were the others, of course. The long-limbed creatures from who Ayam had been born certainly thought of it as one of theirs. But Ayam could not talk with them, could not share ideas with them. Ayam needed a companion.

The going was hard. Ayam first tried taking a baby from the creatures when newborn and raising it, talking to it, trying to teach it. Whatever had happened in Ayam’s case, however, didn’t hold true. The stolen babies could not learn to do more than parrot speech, and that awkwardly.

Lightning? Lightning was an early memory of Ayam’s, but when exposed to the bright flashing shockiness, the children – or the older creatures, Ayam tried everything – only ran away, or died, or sat there twitching for several days before dying. And Ayam was still alone, and still lonely.

Ayam made up writing, to scratch out everything h’ was feeling, to scratch out all of its experiments. And then Ayam had to create paper and ink, because the rocks h’ drew on were not easy to carry around. And then a way to put the paper together into books, long tubes wrapped in hide. And then came tanning, to make the hides last longer. Ayam was keeping busy, slowly busy, but Ayam was still, at its core, so very lonely.

And then, into the valley where Ayam had retreated when the creatures grew too loud, another creature walked. This one had fur that was pink-streaked, in a way Ayam had never seen before. It stood upright, the way Ayam had learned how to. And it was carrying in its paws a pile of tools, which Ayam had never seen any creature but itself use.

And foremost in that pile of tools was a spear. Ayam, muttering to itself, began to create a new word. Oh, Shit.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/339882.html. You can comment here or there.