Tag Archive | morepls

DailyPrompt – Alone together

May19

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “eight line poem” and “I want to be alone.” Originally, I had put placemarkers in for names to fill in later, but, as the story went on, I liked keeping it that way.

“I want to be alone.” [3] stared down at her notebook, the pencil limp in her hand.

“Now, honey, you know it don’t work that way.” [2] cuddled her briefly.

“It oughta,” she sighed.

“Now don’t let the bosses hear you talking that way,” her teammate scolded. “They’ll start thinking you’re defective, or, worse yet, se-ditty- itious.” She drew the word out like it was sexy, naughty, instead of terrifying.

“I know,” [3] agreed quietly. They all knew what happened to defectives. “It’s just sometimes, I can’t hear myself think.”

“And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be,” [2] nodded firmly. “That’s what we’re for, peachie, to hear your thoughts.”

“But…”

[1] and [4] had remained quiet until now, [4] because, as junior, that was his place; [1], as senior member of their Four, had left girls to girl business but now, when [3] refused to complacently back down, he spoke.

“What do you have that you can’t share with your Four?”

It was a catechism question, a trap for defectives, the root of their training. [3] answered dutifully. “There is nothing I have that I cannot share with you.” Except the burning poems inside her head that kicked and beat at her skull, wanting to get out. Except the whispers of music that went away the minute someone else spoke to her.

That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. They were too close for her Four to not notice that she was defective, but close enough, loyal enough, that they could keep it quiet as long as she could hold together. And she could, given everyday situations. The problem was days like this, where the pressure of the poetry and the pressure of duty pounded at each other like hammer and anvil, and her in between, soft and squishy like the peach that [2] nicknamed her.

“Come here,” [4] spoke up, startling them all.

The habit of obedience was well-ingrained into all of them, and she was across the room and sitting next to him on their wide, Spartan bed before it had processed that he, of all the people in the world, she didn’t have to obey.

And then, with the gall that only a spoiled, pampered junior member of a well-off Four could manage, he kept giving her orders, in a voice so gentle it was like a recording of the ocean, calm and inexorable, pulling her under. “Lay down with me,” and she did, letting him spoon her. “She’s not alone,” he told their teammates; she barely heard [2] grunt in acknowledgement.

He pulled her against him, one hand on her hip, his chest against her back, his breath warm on her neck. She waited, wondering what he was up to; they all waited, although she could hear, faintly in the background, [2] moving around, picking stuff up.

He said nothing, did nothing. He was there, close as a second skin, close as they were always supposed to be with at least one of their four, but he was junior, with nothing he could make her do. The words stopped rattling haphazardly in her skull and began lining up peaceably, forming themselves into an orderly eight-line poem.

“Write,” [4] murmured, and, at the desk, [2] began writing.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/44148.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

15-minute ficlet: Moving In

May18

Originally posted here in response to this image prompt

The planet had been, to all of their sensors, bare of tool-using life. There was nothing there that showed up using anything more complex than a stone axe. No smelting. No radio waves. No large gatherings of populations.

(Not that it really would have mattered. They had nowhere else to go, after all).

They had landed in a place that looked clear, on a body of water their initial survey told them was potable, near some purple and green vegetation that, even if not edible, would be useable in building materials. They had landed… and stared, open-mouthed, at the landscape around them.

They had seen ruined cities. They had seen corpses. All of that, they had left behind. But the ruins on this planet, where nothing was left using tools; the corpses stacked by the side of the city, like someone had been trying to be tidy; the strange architecture, built to fit those strange shapes, those twisted spines… it was like stepping into their own nightmares, twisted into alien forms.

The worst of all wasn’t the vegetation growing over the things that could be houses, the purple flowers that they soon found were flesh-eating and blood-hungry, the buildings that would never quite fit them. The worst was the statues by the waterfront, and the others, tucked in every place where a god might look, the strange and creepy edifices seeming to beg help from gods who, it seemed, had turned a blind eye.

They slept inside the ship that night, but they could not go home, and they had nowhere else to go. The next morning, they began to dig graves for the remaining corpses, to brush out the biggest of the residences, to plan their own statues to gods they hoped had followed them.

I think it’s in the same world as “Dancing for Joy” http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/43474.html and a couple others

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/44030.html. You can comment here or there.

15-minute ficlet: Walking With Him

May9

Originally posted to 15-minute ficlets in response to the prompt “brand.”

*

Shuna held still while the tattoo artist worked the ink into her beck and back, ignoring, or trying to, her mother’s hovering disapproval.

“Shune-loon,” she began again, resorting to childish nicknames, “it’s a…”

“I know what it is,” she cut her off, the pain pricking along her spine making her shorter than was prudent with Mother Dearest.

Her mother plowed ahead anyway. “It’s a brand, Shuna. It’s marking you as his in permanent ink wrapped around your neck. It’s a collar you can’t take off. Couldn’t you just get a butterfly or something?”

“Hold still, please,” the tattooist murmured, cutting off her frustrated exclamation. She made herself relax, her forehead resting on the face pillow, and tried not to wonder what her mother was up to. She couldn’t even see her feet anymore.

It was the tattoo artist who spoke again, a few minutes later, sounding apologetic. “This glyph, miss, are you sure this is the one you want?”

She knew without looking which one was in question. “That’s his Name,” she murmured in response. “And that’s where it goes.”

“His Name?” The capital N suggested the concept wasn’t new. “That…”

“You see why I worry,” Shuna’s mother put in. “A Name like that and she wants to mark herself as his?”

“Mmmn. I see. But it’s her choice, isn’t it?” There was a challenge in the question that made Shuna smile.

“It is,” her mother agreed grudgingly. “But this isn’t how I brought her up.”

“I hear that a lot, here.” The needle was still working, avoiding the central glyph as the artist continued the pattern down her spine and around the sides of her neck.

“And what do you say, then?”

“I say…” Shuna fought not to jump as the needle hit the skin at the center of her neck, beginning the glyph, “that parents set children’s feet on a road, but it’s up to them where they walk it.”

“Even with him?” Her mother’s voice was getting hysterical as the inevitable was etched into her.

“Even with Death, yes.”

*

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/41186.html. You can comment here or there.

15 minute ficlet: I Serve (Content warning: Implied abuse)

May8

Originally posted here in response to the prompt “smear.” It’s, ah, um, fan-fiction for a roleplay in my Tir na Cali setting that [personal profile] kc_obrien is running for me.

Anascha smeared the lotion down Castor’s back in long, gentle movements, minding the welts and bruises, and the lacerated rough patches by his shoulders. “Damnit, Cass, what did you do this time?” she muttered into his ear. She didn’t think anyone was listening, but you never really knew. Not here. Not in the Lady’s household, where having friends was a luxury none of them could afford. Not when even the Lady couldn’t trust anyone… and if their owner wasn’t allowed that freedom, then her slaves wouldn’t be, either.

“I…” he groaned, and then put his face back on the pillow. “Gods below, Ann, that stings.”

“I know, but it will numb everything in a moment.” She worked with a quick and practiced hand, spreading the goo over his whole back, his ass, his upper thighs. She’d done this before, and damn the risk in helping others. Even Castor. “What happened? You didn’t…?”

“I’m not a complete moron,” he hissed, as the lotion touched an open laceration. “There’s no way out, and I’m not going to sell what little integrity I have at a bullshit attempt. No.”

“I know, I know,” she soothed, moving up to his neck and working in above and below his heavy steel collar. “I just thought… she’s going to be angry at you for a really long time, you know.”

“I know.” He flopped against the bed with a sigh. “She has every right to be. But I belong to her now, Anascha. We both do. And I’m going to serve her as loyally as I served her sister. My honor demands it.”

“Right up to the assassination attempts?” she murmured against his ear. He stiffened again, and shook his head.

“Of course,” he muttered tiredly. “I will do what my lady demands of me. I always have.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/40957.html. You can comment here or there.

15 Minute Ficlet: Hallowing New Ground

Apr12

Originally posted here in response to the prompt “Hallow.”

I think it’s Fairies (Tir na Cali) in Spaaace

The ground was barren, without a place for the holy beings to call home, without a place of concretion where they could talk to their gods. Some worried that, so far from home, their gods would not hear them, even if they did the rites to hallow the proper land; others worried that the land itself would be improper, no matter what rites were done over it.

But they had moved to a new land before, and if this one was a bit further away (light years further, a whole different star system further) than the last one had been, those who kept the memories and those who kept the faith still remembered how to do things, and they knew that the gods would follow. The gods were of the people, their children, after all, and they had been more thorough this time than last in bringing all of the gods’ children with them.

The land might be strange, the ground and the sky devoid of the gods’ touch, but they knew what to do to consecrate the ground and call their deities home. The seasons might look strange underneath the violet-shaded moon, but they still turned, and they had landed as spring was about to pry its way out of the depths of an icy winter.

“Come to the hill with me,” the priestess said to a young noble, his eyes still glazed with cryo-sleep.

“Come to that valley with me,” the Lady said to her body-slave, to the slave she loved despite all rules to the contrary.

“Come to the grove with me,” the Priest said to the Heir, the woman who, here, would be queen, “and we will make love, and we will make children, and we will call the gods home.

“Lay here in the grass,” they called to their lovers, “and we will hallow this ground for our gods.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/33442.html. You can comment here or there.

A work in progress…

Apr5

This is the beginning of a piece from way back on the B prompts. There’s a few I’ve got hanging out there unfinished, and I thought I’d start to share snippits

Lara woke slowly, fighting off a muzzy feeling, like a hangover without the pain. Her bed was warm and soft and comfortable, three things she didn’t remember her apartment being, the last time she’d been there. She felt like she was engulfed in feathers, which felt very nice, but seemed a little strange, nothing like her cheap polyfill comforter. And she was, under the blankets, completely nude.

She struggled into wakefulness. Where was she? She’d fallen asleep any number of places, some of them nude, but none of them had been this comfortable on waking. Or this fuzzy. She opened her eyes, hesitantly, bracing against the light.

And then blinked hard, again and again, and tugged the comforter up to her chin. She was in a library? It looked that way, at least. Books everywhere, dark wood shelves and spines of old leather like a literary rainbow, floors looking like marble, the whole thing reeking of age and expense and literary cachet. The place had to be huge. And here she was, naked in a pile of duvets. Naked and alone, in a very comfortable pile of duvets, with no clothes anywhere in sight. There wasn’t even anything she could use as clothes, except the blankets themselves; there were books, and a long gold chain trailing off across the floor, leading off in one direction between two bookcases, and in the other seeming to head into the duvets. Suddenly suspicious, Lara wiggled down to the foot of the makeshift bed, and grabbed the chain with both hands.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/30517.html. You can comment here or there.

3WW: Turning, Tables, and Other Things – could be rather triggery all over the place

Apr3

Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.

This week’s three words were Loud, Persuasive, Riches.

The naming conventions of the Tuathans in Tir na Cali, where this story is set, are … weird. Suffice it to say, it’s okay that he’s both ap Gwydion and ó Gwydion.

The ap Gwydion boy was loud. Not surprising in a line who had bought their title and position with riches; most ap Gwydions were loud. This one was young, barely an adult (but he was an adult, old enough to be tried; that was important), spoiled rotten, and had no idea how much trouble he was in.

“You have no idea how much trouble you’re in,” he shouted at Sulleigh-who-he-believed-was-Susan. “I don’t know what you were thinking, spilling that tea all over my favorite shirt, but you’re going to pay!”

“I’m sor…”

“Shut up! No-one said you could speak.”

Sulleigh/Susan hid her smile by touching her forehead to the ground. She’d made him lose face in front of a woman he was hoping to marry and a man he was hoping to sleep with. She wasn’t surprised he was angry. If she had truly been what she was pretending to be, if she had even been embedded long-term in the position, she would have been nervous, close to terrified. Tyrion ap Talbot ó Gwydion was known, not just in the household but amongst his peers and the press, as a hothead with a violent temper. He’d already hit Sulleigh more than once, and she’d only been in his mother’s household for a week. For this embarrassment… yes. She dared peek, to see him going for the strap.

“Hold still,” he snarled, “or it will go badly.” That it was going to go badly even if she held still went without saying. She held still. She had to time this properly, and that meant she had to take a little abuse.

He pulled her pants down around her ankles with a rough tug. She listened for the sound she was waiting for, but no, not yet. They’d wait until…

… the strap landed on the back of her thighs with a loud thwap, bringing with it stinging pain. Sulleigh swallowed a whimper; under the noise of the next stroke, she heard the bodyguards walking away.

She let another two strokes land, whimpering under each one. She didn’t have to fake it; the ap Gwydion had a strong arm and practice in dealing out pain efficiently.

“Stop,” she gasped, and he stopped. She could tell by the grunt he made that he was surprised, and by the second grunt that he was offended when she stood and pulled her pants back on.

“Silence,” she commanded, before he could draw a breath to shout. “Did you know,” she added conversationally, “that your bodyguards leave when they hear you start beating the house slaves?”

His eyes grew wide, but the boy couldn’t say anything. Sulleigh continued. “They can’t stand to hear it. I can’t say I blame them. Now, you and I, Tyrion, are going to have a little conversation. But not here.” She opened the drawer he kept his toys in, and dropped a few choice items into a bag. “Don’t attack me,” she added, without turning to face him, and was rewarded with the sound of him stopping abruptly.

“We,” she continued, turning now to look at her erstwhile master, “are going to take a drive. You’re going to drag me out to the car like you did with Judy last week, and we’ll take a little trip.” He was scared now; his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing like a fish. He shouldn’t have been all that surprised by the word-of-command trick; his mother had a variant of the same power. Perhaps no slave had dared use such things on him before. Of course, Sulleigh wasn’t really a slave.

If he was a little extra-rough in manhandling her out to his car, she couldn’t really blame him; if she kicked him in this shin while fighting him, well, could he blame her for that? Once he’d stuffed her in the back seat and started driving the direction she wanted, she let him talk again.

He was, of course, rather predictable. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded.

“You’ve been up to some pretty questionable stuff lately, Tyrion ap Gwydion, and my employers want to know exactly how questionable, and with exactly whom.”

She could tell, just from the set of his shoulders, that she’d hit the mark. “I’m not going to tell you anything, you bitch,” he quavered, torn between fear and anger.

“I assure you,” she smiled, “I can be very persuasive.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/29214.html. You can comment here or there.

Three Word Wednesday: In her Song

Mar9

This comes after Curriculum, which came after Learning Curves,, which came after Flattery, but it can stand on its own.

It’s in my fae apoc setting, in the same locale as Walled Flowers and Slipping the Trellis

Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.

The three words are dainty, haunting, tantalize.

In Her Song

Flowers and herbs are, by nature, mute, pretty, to be savored, adored, enjoyed; and thus was it with most of the Flowers in Lady Alouetta’s Garden: they might converse, but only as an echo of the patrons’ conversation. For the most part, pleasure was taken of them without engaging them except as a decoration, a receptacle, a delicacy.

One Flower was different from all the other pretty things in the Garden: rarely touched, and never without her consent, rarely spoken to, her presence in high demand but, unlike the other Flowers, almost never privately, almost never for the bedroom or the grotto.

Her name was Zinnia; her name was always Zinnia, and that alone set her apart, when her fellow Flowers changed name with the day, with their handlers’ moods, with their patrons’ desires. It was, of course, not her birth name, but no-one but the Lady herself, and Zinnia, knew who she’d been before she’d come to the Garden.

She was slender, dainty even in comparison to the others there, who tended towards a slim fragility favored by many patrons, with tiny hands and feet and an ethereal speaking voice that she rarely used. Clothed in lavender and cornflower, she brought to mind more a lily of the valley or a forget-me-not than a hearty, bright Zinnia, but Zinnia she was, last in the alphabet, last in line, last in the bunkhouse. Newcomers puzzled over her, chin high, smile faint but perpetual, until the first Saturday night.

When she stepped up onto the small stage and the room quieted around her, granting her the courtesy of attention they granted no other Flower, even the densest newcomer began to understand something was afoot. When she opened her mouth, it all became clear.

She had a haunting voice, unearthly, fae; she drew people out with a note, with a measure of a melody. She pulled at their hearts, at their bodies, at their wallets; she could tantalize an aesthetic into dance and bring stoic businessmen to tears. When Zinnia sang, everyone listened.

The boy who was sometimes known as Jason was serving tables today, a jonquil tucked behind his ear in lieu of a name tag; it was the first day Lady Alouetta had seen fit to allow him in public, and the first time he had heard Zinnia perform. He watched the patrons around him struggle with their emotions; he watched them lose the battle, one after another, like dominos falling, and he worried. If he cried like that, would the Lady understand? The other Flowers were smiling, moving among the tables as they were called for, seeming oblivious to the song’s tug.

He chewed on his lip, knowing he wasn’t supposed to do that, either, but too concerned not to. The song was pulling at him; she was singing of home, which was just cheating, a home he could barely remember. Weren’t the others bothered by it? Hadn’t they been torn from their lives, too?

Jason-Jonquil glanced up at the stage, at the singer, just as she looked at him. She threw in a trill that sounded like a flamenco dancer twirling, and winked, very deliberately, at him. Her melody changed, a tug and a tear, ripping the song from home to prison, ripping the listeners with her. The Flowers, who already lived in prison, who had already been torn from home, swayed with the music and were unhurt; the patrons reeled.

He stifled a chuckle and moved on to the next table, to the next patron scrubbing surreptitiously at tears, understanding, for a moment, why the other Flowers smiled at Zinnia’s songs.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/21035.html. You can comment here or there.

15 minute ficlet: Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong, Who’s Left

Feb28

From Ty’s prompt here, written in 12 minutes.

“These sort of things just polarize the group more, that’s all I’m saying, Anna. And it doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“But having a debate is a calm, rational way to work out differences over an issue.” Anna sat on the kitchen counter and kicked her feet despondently, half-heatedly peeling carrots while Cassie seared one of their last slabs of meat. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is that you’re expecting humans to act calm and rational. That only works now and then in the best of circumstances, and, really, hon, you can’t say this is the best of circumstances. Are you done with the carrots yet?”

“No, Mom.” She peeled the carrots with more alacrity, stashing all of the peels in their compost bin before moving on to slicing the potatoes. “I don’t get it, though. Back in school, they were really big on ‘man is a rational, thinking being.’ So why can’t we act like it? Why do you and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Todd seem to think that we’re all going to turn into ravening monsters is we sit down and discuss an issue?”

“Well, because ‘thinking being’ is all well and fine, but are you telling me you’ve never seen an argument boil over?” She pinched some hoarded spices into the pot.

“I guess, yeah, but, like, kids. Or, I guess, Uncle Jack and Dad after they’d been drinking. Or you and…”

“So yes,” Cassie cut her off. “People argue. Tempers flare. And when it’s an issue like this… well, everyone’s invested, aren’t they? This isn’t like your high school debates, Anna, where the subject really didn’t mean all that much to anyone. This is life or death for every person here.”

“Which is why I think we ought to actually discuss it! Not leave it up to the mayor. Not just do some secret ballot. But actually sit down and talk about it and figure out, between all of us, what the best option is.”

“Honey, it’s not going to happen like that. I’m sorry, but this isn’t the sort of situation where people are going to calmly go over their options; everyone already has an opinion.The bunker is already divided pretty clearly; staying quiet about it is all that lets people live this close to one another. If you bring it out in the open, if you polarize it, then everyone has to live with the fact, actually face up to it, that they disagree fundamentally with someone living three feet away from them.”

“But it’s all so complicated! Open the door or don’t. Send one person through the lock, don’t send anyone, we all go. How do we know what the right answer is if we don’t talk about it?”

“Honey,” Cassie sighed, “debate doesn’t tell you who’s right. It just tells you who’s loudest.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/16931.html. You can comment here or there.