Tag Archive | tinies

Tiny City, Tiny Solutions

Originally posted on Patreon in October 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.
This is written in reference to Tiny People, Big Problems and regarding the city in Planning Board Woes, i.e., beginning to tie continuity together.  

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“Tinies don’t innovate! We don’t need to! The big folks innovate and we survive!”

Cafir had been arguing for three years, moving about the human city visiting one group and then another of Tinies, learning every reason not to do what he wanted to do.

This one was looking relatively positive — not the person Cafir’s age yelling at him, but the greybeard and the greybraids looking between each other and him.

“You’re discussing planning,” the greybraids spoke slowly.

“You’re discussing a very large gathering of Tinies,” the greybeard added.  “You understand the problems there?” Continue reading

MicroGreens

The Tinies of Dragons Next Door can be found here.  The Tinies are generally around 4-6″ at the tallest, usually shorter, and live in the walls of human (Big) and dweomer (humanoid fae, also Big) dwellings. 

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“They’re called ‘microgreens.’”

Oka looked between her parents, trying to be defiant, feeling defensive, and looking nervous.

“We are – micro.”

Her hands were full of the seeds, which she had gotten when the Big whose house they shared had spilled her groceries.

Wud cleared her throat. “We are, but these are – we don’t grow, Oka.” Continue reading

What The Rent?

Written to Eseme’s prompt to my new “WTF?” Prompt Call.  Dragons Next Door ‘Verse, definition(s) at bottom. 

You heard things about this city, moving in.

People from nearby cities would whisper about the dragons and the ogres and other, darker creatures.

They’d talk about the pixies dive-bombing cars, or something their mother’s cousin’s wife told them about living near harpies.

All cities had some magical-creature presence.  But in most places, it was completely distinct from the human presence.

Sure, this city had Smokey Knoll, but there was no wall.  There was no dividing line, even, keeping the races separate.  There was just a hill you went up and then there were dragons.

Violet  hadn’t been worried. She’d never had a problem with magical beings – her best friend in high school had been half-dweomer, after all. She’d done her thesis on the integration of the magical with the mundane.  And the job paid really well. Continue reading

Patreon: Some Tinies, some Gods, Some history.

The Tinies are creatures of the Dragons Next Door setting and are loosely based on my memories of the Borrowers books.
This was meant to be a short microfic – oops.

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The Tinies had lived alongside humans as long as the humans had been living in houses, and, although they were a scattered and fragmented society, they had traditions and unwritten rules that they carried from home to home and community to community, mostly carried by the old, those past their adventuring days.

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I’m a bit behind on the next chapter of the Expectant Wood, so have a piece of history I wrote a while ago in the meantime.
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The land was rising.

The people on the islands and the small nation of Aerax clung to whatever support they could find. The last magical explosions of the Roquelan Wars had been over for days. Nobody had expected another attack.

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I don’t even remember what I wrote this for, but it suits the theme of May.
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They liked their god, and so they’d kept him. Around them, the world had crumbled to pieces, the new gods, creatures like him, warring against the self-appointed protectors of humanity. In their little fort on the hill, though, they’d been drunk, happy and content to stay that way. And every season, they’d paid homage to their new god, for all he gave them.

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Bridges in Walls – a fic continuation of Dragons Next Door

After Sturdy Walls

The Tinies had appointed an ambassador to come speak to Anne. Said ambassador had a beard nearly to his feet, was wearing a very sharp bottle-cap hat with trimmings of what looked like gold wire and the ribbon she’d misplaced, and had a quiet voice that nevertheless was somehow very hard to ignore.

“I am Yeg-Tren-Opar, and I am the elder of this family.” He sat down politely in the small cushion Anne provided – the lining from a jewelry box that had come with some familial present last year. “You present to us an interesting conundrum, and as you seem sensible, we thought we would share that conundrum with you in turn.”

“I’m willing to hear your conundrum,” she offered as formally as possible. She was talking to tiny people. Some part of her brain was squealing with that. Tiny. People. Who lived, it appeared, in the wall behind her kitchen.

“You are, as far as we can tell, a human.”

“That’s my understanding.” She spoke with humans every day who took themselves at least as seriously as this small man. She could keep her face straight even when she thought she was saying or hearing ridiculous things.

The thing was, she wasn’t entirely sure this was ridiculous.

“This house is in Smokey Knoll, but the positioning of such has meant that, from time to time, it passes into human hands. This can cause some problems, as humans and Tiny Folk do not always get along.”

“The previous residents of this house…”

The elder lifted his tiny, bushy eyebrows. “Moved out.”

There was a world of meaning in those two words. Anne sat back and considered them.

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Sturdy Walls – a fic beginning of Dragons Next Door

This one peters out more than some of them today. I wasn’t sure where it wanted to go.

Anne Herrington had heard things about Smokey Knoll, of course, but the house was so cheap and it was such a nice house.

She didn’t ask too many questions of the old owners – a very nice couple with three kids, the youngest still in diapers – because it was clear that the two-bedroom house was too small for their growing needs. The tiny strip of city-style front lawn was a little overgrown, sure, and the back they’d let go wild to raspberry bushes and wild roses, four woody apple trees and a vigorous smattering of grapes, but Anne had quite the green thumb and was looking forward to the challenge. The house itself was solid, passed all inspections with flying colors, and came in ten grand under her budget.

And, yes, it was actually in Smokey Knoll, not adjacent as the realtor had tried to sell it, but so what? Smokey Knoll was supposed to be a beautiful place. Sure, the people were a little… strange, but Anne had grown up around strange people. She might be normal, but that said nothing for her parents’ friends, or her friends in school, or that brief phase of college experimentation…

Anyway, she sold insurance now, and it was a very nice, very staid, very normal job, and she had a two-bedroom home with very sound walls in Smokey Knoll.

Then she came home early one day, because the idea of selling insurance to one more person was giving her a splitting headache and she hadn’t had a day off in half a year.

And there were four people standing on her kitchen counter. Four tiny, tiny people.

She stared at them.

They stared at her.

She inched closer, peering. She hadn’t had hallucinations with her migraines in years.

They millimetered backwards away from her.

“You’re Tinies!“ She made her voice as quiet as she could. They still backed up another teeny step. “Oh my god, I thought I’d imagined you! I thought you were something from that – uh. I thought I’d made you up.”

The tallest of the tiny people, who was carrying what looked like the leftovers from her Oreo binge, stared back at her. “You imagined us?”

“No – well. Maybe. There were a lot of drugs involved.” She pulled up a stool to the counter and sat down. “Let’s just say… I’m glad to know you’re real.”

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Leftovers – a story of the Tinies of Dragons Next Door for Patreon Patrons

There were new Big People in the old Adaams House. They were loud, they were fun, and they were not all that good at the housekeeping in the corners. Oh, the main spaces were, Pol was sure, bright and shining, swept and polished. But the corners, the places behind the furniture, the vast caverns under the sofa and the end tables and so on, those were left to collect dust and crumbs, fur and spills — leftovers. …

(read on…)

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The Tinies of Ogre-House, a Patreon story, is available for Patrons

The Tinies of Ogre-House

This story runs concurrent to the very beginning of the Dragons Next Door Saga.

When the ogres moved out, ‘Opi’s parents and the rest of the older-people were relieved and worried all at once.

‘Opi wasn’t sure what to feel. The ogres had been loud and stinky, but their walls were very thick, and they had been very sloppy housekeepers, which meant they they left all sorts of interesting stuff lying around. The Tiny community living in the thick stone walls of Ogre-House was the envy of many a nearby clan – and, what was more, ogres were almost as good as humans for obliviousness, and they never, ever hired exterminators.

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