Tag Archive | giraffecall

Summer 2016 Giraffe Call

Jun26

Welcome to my summer giraffe Call!

The theme today is “When the best answer is FIRE”

Please feel free to leave as many prompts as come to your mind!

The Prompt Call is now closed to everyone except: tippers, new Patreons, people who have never
prompted in a Giraffe Call of mine before, and people whose signal boost brought me a new person. However, if we cross a combined new friend/new Patron/tip threshold by 9 p.m. 6/27, there will be a second day of prompt-calling with a new theme!

I will write a short flash fiction or the beginning of a story (approx 150-300 words) for the first twelve prompters who post their prompts within the next 24 hours.

I will start posting stories around 7:30 a.m. Eastern time and continue until I run out of prompters/until 9:30 p.m., and then pick up again tomorrow morning with whatever’s left.


I’ll write a second (or more) story for you if:

  • You tip or pledge to my patreon
  • You are a new prompter – don’t forget to tell me!
  • Your signal boost brings in a new prompter

If you qualify for a second-plus story, I will also waive the twelve-prompter limit and the 24-hour limit for you.

Please remember to tell me if you are a new prompter, AND what/who brought you to this Giraffe Call!
If your Paypal or Patreon account name does not match your posting/prompting account name, please remember to leave a note letting me know you tipped/pledged.

Any tip you leave will buy you more words, at my reduced Giraffe Call rate of $5/300 words.


In Addition, if I receive $25 in tips, $10 in new Pledges, or 10 new followers between LiveJournal and Dreamwidth – or a combination thereof – I will run the Giraffe Call for a second day, with a second theme, and a second chance to prompt! The prompt options for tomorrow are currently tied at “Green Thumbs,” “Impossible Ideas,” and “Summer ritual celebrations.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1130610.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Strong Enough? A side story of a fic

Apr4

Written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s suggestion of a continuation for this piece, written for the Dungeon and Cave call in 2014.

“Babe, I’m strong enough for whatever you want.” He could taste the beer on his belch. Could she smell it?

She wrinkled her nose. Yes. And no; she shook her head. “I don’t think you are.”

The woman walked away from Craig, the turn of her heel dismissing him. Craig let out a breath slowly, as inaudibly as he could, and did not turn to watch her.

Still, even through the noise of the bar, he could hear Rick’s answer. Maybe Rick was. Maybe Rick would walk out the other side intact. Craig didn’t know. He barely knew Rick to talk sports with him, much less…

…well, there were things you didn’t talk about with your buddies, and there were things you didn’t talk about at all. That lesson, Craig hadn’t needed to learn the hard way.

With any luck, there’d only be the one lesson he’d had to learn hard: When a certain kind of woman thinks about challenging you…

…don’t let it get to the challenge. Don’t even let it get to the thinking, if you can avoid it. Be pitiful, be lamentable, be ridiculous. But don’t let her challenge you.

Want to see more? Drop a tip in, ah, the tip handcuffs:

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1083422.html. You can comment here or there.

On the Lifeboat, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call/Kuro_Neko

Jun1

Written to Kuro-Neko’s commissioned continuation of Survival, of Fae Apoc, sometime in late 2011/early 2012.

Three, two… “Are you saying…” Ross Wetherschilde spoke slowly, as if not quite wanting to get to the end of his sentence. “…that there is a ‘fae’ onboard this life raft?”

“Of course that’s what she’s freaking saying, you freaking nincompoop!” Tanya Jones spoke fast enough for three Ross Wetherschildes. “The question is, how does she know! And who?”

“I think it’s obvious, don’t you?” Yonrit thought she knew every voice on the raft, but this one made her open her eyes: small, sardonic, and very quiet. Aah, the slender woman who had barely spoken since the crash, of course. “There’s one way to know for certain that someone is fae.”

She met Yonrit’s eyes; Yonrit didn’t look away. Around them, the conversation seemed to roil and bubble.

“…stab ‘em with rowan, that’s how!”

“Iron, you hang a horseshoe on your doorway.”

“We don’t have any horseshoes and we don’t have any doorways. Or rowan.”

“You spill rice, don’t you?”

“No, that’s vampires. Hey, do you think vampires are real, too?”

“Taylor, you’ve asked that at least seventeen times since we ended up here. Nobody knows.”

“Except maybe the fae on the boat.”

It kept going, people talking over each other, people shouting and swearing and repeating themselves. Yonrit kept her eyes on the other woman. After this many days on a lifeboat, she looked as unwashed as the rest of them; like Yonrit, her clothes were already beginning to hang loose on her body.

“So, who is it?” In the end, it was Tanya Jones who asked Yonrit. “If there’s a fae here, and you know who – who is it?”

“You still haven’t answered my question.” Yonrit swallowed around her nerves and repeated herself. “Would you rather die or be helped by a fae?”

“That wasn’t the question,” the slender woman pointed out. “The question was, would we rather die or be on a boat with a fae?”

“They’re both important questions.” Yonrit could feel every eye in the boat on her. She tried not to shrink in on herself.

“So,” Tanya Jones tried, “we have to answer the question, and then you’ll tell us?”

Yonrit nodded mutely. What was she going to do if they said die? What was she going to do if some of them said die?

“Well, I’ll go first.” Tanya Jones leaned forward in her seat. “Look, if it was Poseidon or the dick who called himself Hades or that cadre of bitches that ruined his town in Illinois or someone like that, yeah, I’d die trying to kill them. But what was the news saying just before we went overboard? Hundreds of thousands of fae have been living here on earth forever? I mean, that’s what some of the awful ones have said, too. ‘We were born on Earth.’“ Her voice dropped down to a deep super-hero imitation. “‘We want to defend Earth.’ While they’re ripping up buildings. I guess what I mean is, if it’s a fae saving my life, well, my life is still saved, isn’t it?”

She nodded to the man next to her. “What about you?”

“I’d die. I don’t want any of those filthy creatures touching me.”

And so it went.

Yonrit struggled to keep her face calm, to not show fear or anger or even hope. She struggled to not look like she agreed with anyone. For the most part, it was wasted effort — the whole lifeboat was watching whoever was talking at the moment. Everyone but the thin girl, who had not yet stopped staring at Yonrit.

Finally, they were back to her. Tanya looked down at her fingers. “That’s fourteen people saying ‘please save my life’ and seven saying ‘screw everything fae, even if I die.’ And you.”

Yonrit took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, Tonya, Miss Jones, since you took the vote, I’m saying you’re in charge. Anyone argue?”

One large, obnoxious guy looked like he wanted to argue, but in the face of a boat full of nodding, he only got out half a sound.

“All right. Okay, remember what you all said.”

“Are you going to tell us who the fae is now?” The woman was still staring at Yonrit. Her eyes were drilling through her, and her voice held an unpleasant urgency.

“I don’t think that’s really the necessary part.” They might kill her. They were going to die either way, she was likely to die either way. It was that or start eating each other. “All right.” She closed her eyes and cupped her hands in front of her. “Meentik Huamu delta αβοκάντο.”

She heard the gasps. She heard the swearing. She heard nothing at all from the thin woman. More importantly, she felt the thud of four avocados in her hands.

“Now.” Yonrit’s voice was very quiet, but it didn’t need to be any louder. “It’s up to every one of you if you eat what I provide or not. It has its limits — if I do too much, I’ll pass out — but I believe I can make enough food to keep us alive until we’re rescued.” She set the avocados down in front of her. “These first, because they’re easy to eat and more calorie-dense than, say, an orange. And then some beans, I think. That is…” Yonrit swallowed hard and looked around the lifeboat. “That is, if you’re not going to kill me.”

Everyone squirmed. Everyone but the thin woman, who was looking at Yonrit now with mostly confusion. Finally, one woman spoke up. She had been the most vocal about hating fae; one of the returned gods had killed her husband.

“They say that the fae can’t lie. That if they promise to tell the truth, they have to. Is that true?”

Yonrit nodded slowly. “That’s true.”

“Can you… can you swear that you’re not one of those fae who’s been causing all those problems? Because so far, you’ve only acted like a normal person. No pointy ears, no blowing ships up. And I haven’t seen any of these ‘gods’ raining down avocados.”

That was relatively easy. Yonrit nodded, a little less slowly this time. “I can promise you that I have never, through action or inaction, caused a human death. That’s, that’s why I spoke up.” She hugged herself. “Because it would kill you all if I didn’t say anything.”

She shared a look with the slender woman, who looked away, frowning. The widow was speaking again, just as slowly.

“Then I can’t see any reason to punish you for risking yourself to save us. Can you make enough without straining yourself?”

“It won’t be haute cuisine. And it won’t be enough to gorge ourselves. But yeah, yeah, I think I can.” Yonrit might still be stuck in a lifeboat, but for the first time in weeks, for the first time since the gods had returned, she felt like she was on solid ground again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/948171.html. You can comment here or there.

Outrunning the Fireball, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@jeriendhal)

May23

Written to [personal profile] jeriendhal‘s prompt here to my Giraffe Call.

Aiden is the grandson of Shahin and Emrys from Addergoole, via their son and daughter Morganna and Arturo. So when he thinks about his grandparents, ah, there’s only two of them. (And only three great-grandparents).

Year 53 or so of the Addergoole School, 2047

The problem with leaving the family business, Aiden was discovering, was that it didn’t really leave you.

He was trying, trying very hard, to be a good guy. Which, he supposed, his mother and grandmother and so on had as well, but let’s be honest, his grandparents were the sort of people who would take over a city for its own good and take ten percent off the top for living expenses and wardrobe before they worried about the starving children in the streets.

Aiden was trying not to be that person.

The problem was, when your only tool was a hammer, as the saying went — or, in Aiden’s case, a fireball — everything started to look like potential targets.

In this case, he had been moving through a small town when he found out that something or someone had been stealing livestock. “I can help with that,” he’d said, because right, that’s what he did, Mysterious Stranger who wandered through towns and helped fix problems.

And he’d found himself sitting up in a tree, watching for the something or someone, all ready to scorch a wyvern or tiger or whatever and save the city. He’d literally had a fireball to hand – well, of course he did. He was named Fire. He always had a fireball to hand.

The zip of motion that went by was too fast for him to catch. It was too fast for his fireball to hit; it had ended up lighting a portion of the pasture on fire, which had further delayed Aiden as he tried not to set the town alight. That would not be helping.

He was pretty sure the unknown… whatever… had come back twice more while he was doing that, but at least they’d only taken the one sheep. It was only when he was done with the fire and beginning to spin an actual tracking Working – dead gods alone knew if it would work on something that fast – when he actually saw her.

She was skinny, wild-looking, probably-blonde with a dark, burnt-in tan, wearing scraps of rawhide and not much else. She was staring at him, or, at least, he thought she was. She was also vibrating.

“Don’t follow me,” she hissed, and she was gone, very literally outrunning Aiden’s thoughtlessly-thrown fireball.

He stared at the streak where she had been, and thought, a little desperately, that he might be in love.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/944921.html. You can comment here or there.

Unless you see the Body, a story for the Giraffe Call (@InspectrCaracal)

May19

Written to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my Giraffe Call!

This is at least in part due to watching Far Too Much Venture Brothers and contemplating a semi-Venture-Brothers-style webserial recently.

“Well?” Dragonfly looked around her minions. “Did you do it right this time?”

One of the more nervous minions stepped forward. Faceless in her smooth mask, featureless in her robe-and-loose-pants, the minion’s glove held her only identification. Seventy-two.

It had been a very bad year for henchwomen.

“She fell off the edge of Tanaron Cliff, ma’am. She doesn’t have flight powers, she doesn’t have super-science. She’s dead.”

Dragonfly sighed. “Take me there.” When they hesitated, she raised her voice. “Take me there!” The problem with henchwomen was that you either ended up with smart ones that betrayed you or loyal ones that just weren’t fast enough. “Come on. Let me see the place where she fell off the cliff.”

She was going to have to run Henchwoman Training School again, she could see. If this particular group survived their own mistakes.

~

“She’s gone! That blight on the face of femininity is dead!” The Matriarch did not often engage in ranting or raving, but she felt the situation deserved it this time. “She will never survive the death trap; nobody ever has.”

“Um, ma’am?” One of her perfectly-clad minions bowed cautiously. “The death trap is empty, ma’am.”

The Matriarch hissed. “Well, then, fix the problem! What happened to her?“

“I, ah, I’m not certain, ma’am. But we did find three of your Techniors naked and unconscious in the observation room by the death trap.”

The Matriarch hissed. “Next time, next time I’m going to put a bullet through her myself. No matter how male that might be.”

~

The Firebrand brought up the giant fireball that was her namesake power and most favorite trick. She flooded the room – the room which had one exit, which she was blocking – with her superheated flame.

When the flames died away, the room was empty, without even a charred bone remaining. She was gone. Dead. Eliminated.

~

“Well.” She pulled another, identical, super-suit from the closet and dusted off the charred remains of her last one. “Note to self,” she called to her computer. “Check up on the Matriarch next week. That death trap has to be completely dismantled before some other schmoe falls into it. And then send Dragonfly a sympathy card. She really ought to have better henchwomen.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/943402.html. You can comment here or there.

Survival, a story of the Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@dahob)

May16

Written to dahob‘s prompt to my Giraffe Call!

Set in the world of Fae Apoc, sometime in late 2011/early 2012.

Day five. They were beginning to run low on supplies, no matter how carefully Yonit parceled everything out. Carl had a massive cut running down his calf, and it gotten infected, despite all of their care. They had spent the last four days complaining about the fae, wishing them all dead, and pacing the tiny, cramped life boat.

A massive fight between someone calling themselves Llŷr and someone who claimed to be Poseidon had swamped the Atalus in the middle of a trans-oceanic trip. Yonit had been one of twenty-two people who had made it into this lifeboat; they’d lost radio contact with the other boats two days ago.

And now – now they were running low on supplies, and the bitching about the fae was getting worse, and Carl had a fever. She’d done what she could in whispers and muttering, but there was no privacy in the little tube of a boat, and she needed to be able to concentrate.

“I guess,” Carl muttered, sounding half-delirious, “you guys will have to eat me first. I hear the heart’s good eating. Save that for the women.”

Yonit swallowed hard. “Would you guys…” She was going to die. She was going to die one way or the other. Maybe she could manage to save them. “Would you rather be… be reduced to cannibalism? Or would you rather be on the boat with a fae? ‘Cause, um… some fae have the ability to make food. And water.”

She closed her eyes and waited for the shouting to start.


Having trouble picturing the lifeboat? It’s this sort.

If you want more, I’m sure I can manage more of this one! Drop a tip in the tip pack below.

Giraffe Call rates apply: $1/100 words.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/942014.html. You can comment here or there.

Home Sweet Home

May15

Written to Anke’s tweeted prompt: “building a shelter in the wilderness”.

This follows:Leaving Town, A New Flower, and Outnumbered. I don’t write about these guys very often <.<

Despite being Fae Apoc, no warnings apply.

*~*

The four of them had been walking for a while. To hear Nila’s son Allan tell it, they had been walking forever. Finally, they had come into the mountains proper, into places which had been, before the war, relatively uninhabited.

It had been over four days since they could see the city at all, and longer than that since they could hear it. They were moving slowly, but they were moving, and after the first attackers, people were, for the most part, leaving them alone. Perhaps it showed, on their faces, that they’d stand for no threat to the children. Perhaps they just looked too poor to bother. Nila wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She was, however, done walking. She led her little crew – she was carrying Allan right now, and her companion Tros was carrying her infant daughter Susan – off the narrow road and down an overgrown driveway. Nobody had come down here, from the looks of things, in at least a decade. They could camp here, and see what they could find.

What they found was two walls of an old stone house and a chimney, the rest of the house having fallen to the ground. Said ground was littered with the old rocks, but the surviving walls would make a nice wind break. It was going to be getting cold soon, after all. And from that… from that, maybe they could build a proper house.

There was an old car rotting to the side of the small clearing, and a half-collapsed well house. Nila leaned against the wall and smiled. “Home sweet home. Or, at least, it will be.”

She popped her pop-up tent up in the lee of the walls while Allan got to work picking up small stones and Tros scavenged for firewood. Their tent was a bit worse for wear after the days on the road – and a couple attacks – but it was still better than nothing. If it rained – and it looked like it would – they’d need more.

She got Allan picking up pine boughs instead of rocks while she cut long sticks from the surrounding trees. She still had some rope in her pack, enough to work as lashing. The sun was setting by the time she was done, but by the time it kissed the horizon, they had a roof over their little shelter and Tros had a roaring fire going in the pit he and Allan had made.

“Home sweet home?” he asked, softly, when both kids were tucked away in the tent, fast asleep.

“Well.” She looked at the rough roof. “It needs two more walls and a proper roof. But then it would be ours.”

“Ours?” He was supposed to be passing through, watching them for ten days in return for the healing Nila had done for him. But she watched him rolling over the word in his mind. “Yeah. We could make it ours.”


If you want more, I’m sure I can manage more of this one! Just drop me a tip.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/941546.html. You can comment here or there.

White Flag, a story beginning of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@Lilfluff)

May15

Written to lilfluff‘s prompt here to my Giraffe Call!

Set in the world of Fae Apoc, sometime in late 2011/early 2012.

Mossliden’s spine was twitching. Her hands twitching. Her wings were twitching. But she raised her chin and very carefully held the white flag visible.

The Ashanevai were camped in a small, inaccessible cavern, very defensible and almost impossible to sneak up on. Mossliden approved, and she was not trying, at the moment, to sneak anywhere, but it still made her very uncomfortable.

A bearded man – humans would probably think him about 50, because he had grey in hair and beard and lines on his face – stopped her. “I know you.”

Mossliden nodded her head carefully. “We fought last week, at the waterfall. You took my left hand.” She waggled the healed fingers carefully at him. He was a fierce fighter. This entire band were hard fighters, or Mossliden ‘s people would have won already.

“Ah, yes. You fight pretty good for a Nedetakaei.”

“You fight pretty fiercely, for an Ashanevai.” Mossilden bowed her head again. “My leader sent me to talk about peace.”

“You mean surrender.” He grinned at her with yellowed teeth.

Mossliden didn’t take the bait. She’d been chosen to carry the flag in part because she was very good at not taking bait. “I mean peace.”

“Give your word that this is not some sort of trick.”

“I swear I’m here only to talk about peace, and for no other reason.”

“Hrrmph. Stay here. I’ll get the boss.”

Mossliden waited, as patiently as she could, pacing in short loops around the very small entryway. They kept her waiting. Of course they did. They wanted to be certain that they weren’t being ambushed.

When the leader came out, followed by a thin, stoned-looking mutt with greasy hair, Mossliden forced herself to a polite smile. Halfbreeds, all of them, of course. Not for nothing were the Ashanevai called that. But Mossliden’s people had a need now, and thus she must talk to them.

“I come to talk peace,” she said, carefully. Even more carefully, she repeated the words in the Old Tongue. “These come-lately ‘gods’ threaten our world. They threaten both my people and yours… and the humans. My Queen sent me to offer truce.”

“Shit.” The tall woman in front of Mossliden – all horns and fangs and dreadlocked hair and leather – cleared her throat and smirked. “Well, shit,” she repeated. “The world really is ending.”


If you want more, I’m sure I can manage more of this one! Drop a tip in the tip pack below.

Giraffe Call rates apply: $1/100 words.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/940772.html. You can comment here or there.