Tag Archive | prompter: rix

Visa

Originally posted on Patreon in May 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

“Excuse me, citizen.”

These border checks were getting ridiculous.

Karyk huffed and presented the gold-and-circuitry bracelet that everyone in Reldienne — or what had been Reldienne three weeks ago, at least — was required to have on their person at all times when crossing, or across, a border. “I’m going to the grocery store.” It wasn’t much of a protest, because protesting only upset the border guards, and when they got upset, they started asking for blood samples and stool samples and — it got rather unpleasant.

“You’re crossing over the border into South-west Reldienne.  That’s a new nation and, as such, requires a border check,” the guard explained. Continue reading

Visit the Lady’s Garden

Visit the Lady's Garden
This is just a fun Addergoole ficlet, and I swear it really is fun.

🌳

“So you get your own garden?” Gernot walked around Pihla’s room slowly.  “This is pretty nice.  But – no bed?”

“There was one, but I talked them into giving me more dirt instead,” Phila admitted.  “I sleep in this part, here.”  She toed the dirt as she watched the upperclassman and his assessing looks.

“You were raised down here, in the Village?”

“Sort of?  I was sprouted in the Meadow.  But when I was old enough to go walking,  my… parent took me and we explored the world until it was time to come here.”

“Sprouted.  Parent.”  Gernot took a step backwards towards the door.  Pihla found herself smiling, although she was a little sad, too.

“Yeah.  Unless you’re a tree, too-”

“You haven’t Changed yet, you can’t have!”

“I haven’t, that’s the very strange part.  I don’t know what my Change will be like.  But, ah.  One of my aunts managed to fertilize with a Tree Change.”

“How do you know all of this?”  He looked at the door and then glared at her.

Pihla sighed.  She flopped down on one of the few chairs in her room-slash-garden and gestured at another one.  “You have to know what not to say fast, when you spent your first ten years of life as a sapling.  So I know a lot more than a lot of people coming here.”

Gernot sat down slowly.  “Were you, were you leading me on?”  He sounded less angry and more confused.

“No.  No, not really.  I mean – Unless you’re a Tree Change, like I said, we probably aren’t cross-fertile?”

“I’m a siren.”  He watched her carefully.  “Not a tree, not even seaweed.  So-”

“So you have a very, very tempting voice.  I noticed that.”  She winked at him.  She was smiling, not angry.  “And I thought you were cute.  Handsome.  And I’ve waited a while to come here, to learn about this whole – this whole school thing.  Trees grow up slower,” she explained carefully.

“So you’re – you’re-”  Gernot huffed and tried to gather his thoughts.  “You were – you wanted – you -”

“I probably can’t give you your child.  And I don’t really have a bed here, or anything like that.”  Her smile was patient but, more than that, interested.  “But, if you want to, say, roll around in the dirt with me…”

Gernot’s eyes went to the place she’d said she slept. “I, ah. I-”

“Or, if you’d rather, I hear there’s a pool.”  Now, now she was grinning.  “Just maybe don’t sing while we’re at it, okay?”

He had no idea what was going on.  On the other hand, he thought maybe that might be all right.  And he had to admit – “Maybe.  Maybe, uh.  After you show me your garden?”

Pihla giggled.  “It’s a deal.  Come on, here, I’ll show you my favorite plant.”

🌲

Although not really referenced. Pihlas grandparent/parent and aunt are found here:

Year Nine Chapter 31
Year Nine Outtake: Kheper & Curry
Hiatus Fic 5: Sprouting

Want more?

Recording the Past

Originally posted on Patreon in March 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

This story is of Eva, the main protagonist of the Aunt Family, and her nieces and nephews who have some spark or interest in the power.

It references Karen and Billy from Fated and Certain Things Remain (to one), as well as older Aunts in Eva’s family tree. 

Niblings:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_3667000/3667379.stm ;  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nibling 

📠

 

“All right – this is the last of this set.  Our poor OCR is still having a hard time of them, but it’s doing better with Aunt Zenobia’s than it did with Beulah’s.”  Eva smiled at the pile of journals and the scanners taking up most of the dining room table.  “I wish I could hire someone to go through and keyword this all, but it’s going to have to be us —  don’t give me that look, Bellamy, you know I’m going to pay the five of you.  That’s not the problem.”

“The problem,” Beryl declared, with more than a bit of melodrama, “is that our Aunts talked a lot and wrote even more, and this branch has journals going back since before the family came to America.  And there’s only the six of us and Aunt Eva is making more of these as we speak.”

“Actually, I’m working on that,” Eva admitted.  “The ‘making more’ part, at least. Right now, I’m using a digital pen that records everything digitally as it records it on paper. But I don’t think- well, I believe there’s three functions to the journals, and only one of them can really be properly replicated digitally.  Improved on, mind you, at the same time, but that’s just one of the things it has to do.” Continue reading

Differential Diagnosis

A story of Faerie Apocalypse

🏫

“Generally-”

Vianne’s Mentor pinched his nose and frowned.  He had been doing that a lot in the last three weeks.  At this point, Vianne was more than willing to just throw in the towel and call it a loss, the whole fae thing, the whole mess.

“Generally?” she prompted, out of some stupid urge.

“One’s Change gives one some clue about the gift that comes with it.  Or if not a clue, then a demonstration.  A lightning storm, for instance.   Sudden darkness. Fire.  Moving things from one side of the room to the other.”

“I didn’t have any of that,” she offered helpfully.

“Yes, Vianne, I know.  That – that is the problem.  One can assume that you have an innate gift.  Every fae does.  One can assume that is not the innate gift of any of the three ‘pure-blood’ groups, because you do not have the Change of those three.”

“No wings, no horns.”  She had long swooping elf ears and a wiggly tail, spots and skin that sometimes changed colors.

“Sometimes, one can look to the student’s parents.”

“Foundling.”  She could almost sound cheerful about that, even.  It had been long enough.

“-or one’s childhood environs.”

“Passed around like a hot potato.  I don’t appear to get hot to the touch,” she offered.  None of this was making her Mentor pinch his nose any less.

“All right.  So we are going to have to do this the difficult way.  I have a list of categories of powers.  We are going to attempt to test you for each of those.  And then, if we can find a category we cannot eliminate, we’re going to find sub-categories within that category.  Do you understand?”

Vianne sat down.  “You’re not going to just get rid of me?”

“Not going to – no.  No, of course not.  You are my student, Vianne.  And my student you will remain until you are ready to be an Adult.  Now, let’s start with fire powers.” Her mentor leaned back and smiled at her.  With a Working, he lit three candles. “So, first, I’d like you to try putting these candles out with your mind.  And then I want you to try lighting the other three.  And then-”

Vianna had a feeling it was going to be a long day, but at least her Mentor wasn’t pinching his nose anymore.

In The End…

Originally posted on Patreon in February 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

A story of Addergoole, Hell Night, and friendship.

~~

It came down to the two of them, back to back, the darkness and the monsters all around them.

They hadn’t even really talked before this.  They had three classes together, but Pramod had been trying to make friends with the closest to jocks that this school had, and Swanhild was trying to find the artsy sorts – easier to find than jocks, at least.  Pramod had been on the top of the heap before coming to this place, and Swan had been used to being ignored by guys like him.

Now she had her back against him literally, and the shadows were snarling at her, at them, and somewhere outside their pod someone was sing-songing “come out, come out, wherever you are,” which wasn’t creepy at all.  But Swan had seen plenty of horror movies, and had come to school with four things that didn’t really look like weapons until she needed to swing them at someone – or to have Pramod swing them, since he was bigger.  Swan had thought she was tall until she met Pramod, who was a full 8 inches taller than her and made it look surprisingly good.

So he had the baseball bat and she had the antenna from her dad’s old car – an in-joke that had already left two people swearing – and they had each other, back to back.

“I don’t even know you,” he whispered, in a moment between attacks.

“That’s all right.  I don’t know you, either, and I already know I like you better than any of these assholes.”

He laughed at that, as he was meant to, and then they were under attack again.

When the lights came back on, both of them were panting, sweating – laughing.  Both of them were aching, bruised, bleeding – smiling.  Both of them were free.

“Friends?” Swan offered, holding out her hand for Pramod.

He grinned down at her. “Friends.  Hey, that jerk with the whip.  Wanna gather up a couple others and go after him?  I bet we could take him down with enough of us.”

“How about we go get lunch, instead,” she countered.  Jocks, she thought, but it was affectionate in a way she’d never felt before. “Then maybe we can smear his name so that he never gets laid again, how’s that?”

“Nerd.”  He smiled down at her, and she felt warm at the label the way nobody had ever managed.

“That’s me.”

Want more?

Outta the Woods Yet?

The big cat had been chasing Pren for heart-rending minutes when she managed to skid into a cave she’d never seen before.  She shimmied through a hole that was barely big enough for her and scooted up into a little ledge area. The cat might wait for hours for her, so she made herself comfortably before she pulled out the flint and steel and lit her torch.

The walls of the cave glittered and shone the way that sometimes a small piece of rock would.  The whole area was smooth, rounded, like she had scooted up from the cave into something even less natural than her tree-house.

On the far side of the room was a lever.  Pren looked at the lever. At least, it was a stick poking out of the wall at an angle.  Her mother had shown her how to use things like that to set traps for animals, when she had been small.  When her mother had been around. It might dump her into a net or drop something on her, although both the floor and ceiling looked sturdy enough in the torchlight.  It might drop something on the cat.

The cat was trying to get up the hole she had slipped through.  One clawed paw batted upwards, bigger than Pren’s foot.

She scooted backwards and pulled the lever.  Even a trap was better than being eaten by a cat.

She fell backwards as the wall opened up, into a brightly and smooth room full of strangers and shining lights.

Continue reading