Tag Archive | verse: misc: urban

The Darkness in the Shadows

Don’t get me wrong, I like being a troll.

A goblin, a critter, a beastie of the night. I like being one of the gutter-people, the shadow-monsters, the whispers you don’t want to hear.

The light shines brightest down here. We have no light of our own, you see. So every spark of light that we receive is cherished, nourished, and polished until it shines, shines brighter than anything in your world.

And we collect it. Soft words and gentle whispers, sweet murmurs and the smile of a young lady. Diamonds and gold jewelry. A single pearl. A single happy tear.

That’s what we are. The thing you don’t want to know is behind you. The thing that you pass, not looking, the shadow you don’t squint into. We’re your collective shiny guilt, the puddle that mucks up your clean shoes, the gust of wind when you’ve just gotten your hair done.

We are everything, everything dirty and nasty and dark that you fear. And we love your bright bits, your earrings and your laughter, your brand new jacket and that hope you hold close to your chest. We collect them, shine them, and hang them in our gutter homes, our basement bowers, for light and warmth.

And while you drop your hopes into the gutter for us, the way you drop a couple pennies in a cup, we shine them up and hope they will keep the deepest dark away.

Because the light may shine brightest down here, but the shadows, oh. The shadows are like you’ve never seen.

Pray to your gods that you never have cause to find out just how dark.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/456956.html. You can comment here or there.

Faries in the Church

Jun9

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of

⛪
“There are fairies in your church.”

Bishop Macnamilla was of an older school of thought, practically antediluvian. Most of the time, Father Nehemiah avoided conflict by avoiding the Ninth Street house where the Bishop kept his residence. The Father’s church was new, and not entirely conventional, and not near Ninth Street, and the Bishop’s body as well as his mind were old, and did not move easily.

But someone had said something, the Father was certain. The jowls on the Bishop were shaking in the way the once-fat man only did when he had been being yelled at by a parishioner who Didn’t Like Something. Probably not one of Nehemiah’s regulars. But sometimes the gossips from the other churches liked to stop in and visit.

“There are fairies.” Sometimes he could get away with just agreeing with the Bishop until he went away. “Margaret and LaKeisha are in there now. They’ve been helping Mrs. Bao with the cleaning, as it’s almost Easter time.”

“You have fairies in your church services, Father Nehemiah.”

He wasn’t going to be able to dance around this. “Better than having them standing outside the gates, glaring.”

“Do you know what happens when you allow – INVITE the fair folk into consecrated ground?” He was bellowing, or trying to. He must have been an impressive man before the long waste of age started eating him away.

“I’ve heard the stories. Mrs. Bao told me some of them. The kirkevaren told me others – and the fairies told me another set.”

“Ruin and ruination is what you get. Sin and sinners. Filth and the filthy.” The Bishop shook his head. “It leads to nothing but badness.”

“And blood?” Nehemiah drew himself up. He was tall, taller than the Bishop’s shrunken form by nearly a foot. “I know why there were no fairies in the church before, sir.”

“There are no FAIRIES in the church,” the Bishop shouted the word as if it were an obscenity, “because to allow them into out sanctified ground taints not only the ground but the entire city.”

Father Nehemiah was boggled enough by this to lose the edge of his anger, although he did remain standing straight, staring down at the top of the Bishop’s head. “You are aware, sir, that you live in the densest population of fae in the country, correct? The city is teeming with fairies.”

“The city is rotten with them. The elders did not listen to me. They were squeamish.” The older man’s voice finally dropped. “No. It was me. I was squeamish. I knew what needed to be done, and I could not do it. I failed my superiors. I killed them, Nehemiah, I killed those fairies you have heard of. I spilled their blood in the name of the city and its sanctity. I scrubbed the floors with the blood. I blessed the altars with it. But, in the end, I could not do what needed to be done.”

He didn’t have to ask, although he wished that he did. He’d already heard enough to put the rest together.

“You killed them before you buried them, you mean.” It hadn’t been meant to be another lamb under the church at all. “You blessed their deaths, instead of leaving them to roam.”

“I could have saved us all. I could have protected us all from what’s in the wind. But they look human, Nehemiah. They look human. And that was my undoing.”

(MoarPls) Learning the Bones of the City, a continuation

May22

After Rediscovering the City, from the January Giraffe Call.

It was the job of a lifetime. My lifetime. My apprentices’ lifetimes. And the handsome scientist from SUNY Geneseo with the blue, blue eyes – his lifetime, too.

The City out of Nowhere was becoming the state project. More than that, it was a state revitalization. The Parks Service had, after a good deal of arm-wrestling with every other department and bureau in the state (as well as a bunch of three-letter-acronyms), claimed the city, set up a perimeter, and started regulating who could go in and out.

Lucky me, as a stonemason, I got to keep going in. The place was in pretty good shape, for its age, but it needed work, a lot of work, and my team had already surveyed most of it. So we stayed.

We stayed while the tourists came, while the photographers and the paper-writers and the linguists came. Us, and then the pipefitters, and the landscapers, and the bricklayers. And the brains. And the scientist from SUNY Geneseo with those stupid blue eyes.

All the brains wanted to talk about how best to restore the buildings, whether we should at all, whether this was an artifact that should be left pristine and un-touched. They wanted to talk about how we should best honor the former inhabitants, but whoever that had been, they left nothing.

(Almost nothing. When repairing what we were calling a church, we found their ash-urn storage, and the biologists went to town on tiny, tiny bone fragments.)

So we went from living outside the walls in a kind of tent city, to living in the walls, in what could sort have been an apartment building closest to the biggest gate, and we went from just-fix-the-really-broken-stuff to actually renovating the place, and then they started talking about tourist housing. Because damn were we getting tourists coming out of the stonework.

We can make her live again, I’d said, when I’d first touched the city’s ancient bones. And we were. I just hadn’t realized quite how literally that would turn out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/344931.html. You can comment here or there.

Rose Petals, a story for the Giraffe Call (@Lordbatsy)

Feb23

For moon_fox‘s prompt.

She kept a bottle half-filled with dried rose petals by the side of her bed.

At first, he thought it was because she liked roses, but when he brought her a dozen on their third date, she was so un-thrilled as to be unhappy, and the level of petals in the bottle grew.

And, he noted, his wasn’t the only bouquet. The level grew by the fourth date – he brought her orchids, which at least got a smile – and by the fifth, she was onto a new bottle.

He brought her daisies on that date, and it was a nice one, smiles received and a long time snuggling afterwards, until she suggested she had to get up in the morning and he, like a good boy, took his cue.

“When can I see you again?” he asked, as he always did, and, like she always did, she contemplated for a moment. He braced, always afraid he’d hear the “I’ll call you” that he’d been told meant his time with this angel was over.

“Next Friday,” she said instead, and he felt his heart start again.

He thought about flowers all week. About the roses in the wine bottles. About the flowers she always had in a vase, drying in the hallway, petals in the bottle. He’d thought it was because she liked them, but that was clearly not the case. And the orchids and daisies… they hadn’t done much better.

He did some more thinking, and some reading, and when he came to pick her up for their sixth date, he brought a dozen origami flowers he’d folded himself.

And when he asked when he could see her again, as the dawn colored the sky pink, she told him… “today.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/281979.html. You can comment here or there.

The “A” Shelves

Feb16

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

📻
The tension in the store was thick and uncomfortable. Jordan was unhappy, and Mrs. Gent was getting back-straight and glowering, like our neighbor down the street that liked to count heads as we left and frown at the number of people who lived in our three-bedroom house.

I didn’t know what to do about it, either. Jordan was in charge of smoothing situations over. I was pretty good at putting my foot in it, but that was about it. Making it better generally involved lots of apologies. I didn’t think I had anything to apologize for, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it?

“I’m sor-”

The floor shook, the items on the shelves rattling. “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Gent frowned. “This is not a very good time.” She turned towards me and Jordan with a careful smile. “If you two could take your lemonade and go into the aisle labelled ‘A,’ please? I think that would be the safest place.”

“Safest?” Jordan snapped, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue anymore. I picked up my tea.

“A is which way?” I asked, talking over whatever Jordan was going to say next.

“That way, thank you,” Mrs. Gent gestured. “Past the radios and behind the coffee makers.”

“Thanks,” I said, laying it on maybe a little thick. “Come on, Jordan, you heard the lady.” Past the radios, that was easy, and we turned left, following her gesture, to find another row of shelves at a right angle to the first set. Candelabras, squiggle-circle-dot-squiggle (looked like fancier, smaller candelabras), 15849(23-09) (looked like long pieces of steel in various shapes and sizes)… there were coffee makers, although they were labelled in French. Close enough!

We headed “behind” that shelf, which meant around, and there indeed was another aisle labelled “A,” appearing to be at right angles to le cafe makier shelf.

“A” seemed to start with a stack of abaci, from bright children’s beaded toys – we should get one of those, I thought, for the beansprout at home – to ancient-looking counting racks with characters painted on the beads. Then were adzes, many of them looking practically stone-age, hung on a rack with their sharp edges dangling free.

The building shook again there, and, as all those cutting edges swayed near us, I wondered a bit at Mrs. Gent’s definition of “safe.” We had, after all, gotten her sort of annoyed.

Jordan seemed barely fazed, staring at a single acorn, packaged as if it were something really expensive, nestled in azure silk in a maple-bole box and placed between stacks of katana. “What is this place?”

“It’s Mr. Ting’s,” I answered helpfully. It wasn’t the altimeters that were getting me, it was the collection of vases labelled “ἀγγείον.” “And they figure the alphabet differently here.”

“They figure lots of alphabets, I’d guess,” she murmured, picking a narrow box off the shelf. It was rusted on the corners, but a pin-up painting of something with more tentacles than body was still clear and bright on its cover. “And… lots of different clients, too.”

📻

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/270460.html. You can comment here or there.

Mrs. Gent’s Lemonade

Feb6

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

🍋

“Lemonade sounds nice, thanks,” Jordan said, and stepped out of my way, finally letting me see the shop. Shop? This place was a space-time warp. This place was unbelievable. This place was…

Okay. Imagine the estate sale of the most obsessive hoarder you can picture. Then imagine this being curated by the most OCD guy you know. There was everything on those shelves, shelves filling up all but the center of the store, and every single thing was labeled. Everything.

There were labels in English, labels in foreign languages, labels in foreign ALPHABETS, labels in bar-code and a few in what I think was binary. There were labels over totally ordinary things – crock pot, circa 1970. Boom Boox, Magnivox, 1980. There were labels over things that belonged in a museum, and over things I’d never heard of or seen before. And, in the center of this archive of… junk. Stuff, we’ll say, because most of it looked useful. In the center of this stuff, there was a table with a ruffled tablecloth, four chairs, and an icy pitcher of lemonade.

“Lemonade sounds great,” I agreed, with feeling. It looked like the best stuff in the world right about then, even with the strange dress-up dance.

“Then come in, sit down, and enjoy some while you wait,” she encouraged us. “I’m Mrs. Gent, by the way, pleased to meet you.”

“I’m Jordan, and this is J.J.,” Jordan took charge again. “Pleased to meet you as well, Mrs. Gent.” I trailed along behind them, reading the labels, looking at the things on the shelf, trying not to be rude but wow, this place was a treasure trove.

Canned SPAM, 1937-1997, about a cubic foot of the stuff, in at least seven languages that I could see, and, yes, one of them looked like the original can (don’t ask me how I know, okay? I have some weird hobbies).

Radios, small was right next to Radios, tiny but three shelves above Radios, large (no mediums). The small ones looked mostly like antiques, although I’m not sure a 1991 Sony Walkman should count. (I had one of those, damnit. Nothing I owned as a kid should count as an antique yet!) On the other hand, the “tiny” category, I might have needed a magnifying glass to really see properly.

“Here, you sit here, and you, dear, sit here.” That set us with our backs to the door, Jordan facing – I checked – Teapots, unusual, which included one shaped like a rooster and another one I would have pegged as a bong, and me facing документы, which appeared to be stacks and stacks of ledger books. Mrs. Gent, in turn, sat facing the front door and poured us lemonade as if it was a high Japanese tea.

“This seems like a very interesting store,” I tried, yes, after saying thank you, I’m not a total jerk.

“Oh, Mr. Ting handles all of the business,” she pooh-poohed. “I just watch the store while he’s out. And make the lemonade.”

That was a hint even I could pick up. “It’s very good lemonade, thanks. It’s just what we needed.”

🍋

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/260906.html. You can comment here or there.

In Mr. Ting’s

Feb1

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of Burning Summer Quest (LJ); Part 1 of ?

“Mr. Ting knows what you need.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Okay, no, I know what I was expecting – Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, or Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China, or Lu-Tze from Thief of Time. In short, I expected a sterotype.

I know better. But it was really, really hot, and my brain was frying like an egg.

So into Mr. Ting’s we went, feeling a little jittery, a lot sweaty, and a tiny bit hopeful. If he didn’t have what we needed (despite the sign), well, we were down to leaving the fridge open or buying ice in giant bags. Or dousing everyone in water every four minutes. I didn’t think the cats would like that.

The store windows had been covered over with paper, so walking in, we were going in blind, accompanied by the sound of loudly jangling windchimes hitting the back of the door. Jordan headed in first; I took up the rear, nervously-if-ridiculously checking to see if we were observed. We weren’t; nobody else was dumb enough to be out in weather like this.

So at first, all I could see of the store was Jordan’s paused, tense shoulderblades sticking to the thinnest T-shirt possible. I wondered if we were going to have to make a hasty escape, and grabbed the door handle in preparation. I wondered if someone was going to shoot at us. Like I said, my brain was fried and I was feeling rather silly.

Then I noticed that the store was comfortable. Not freezing, like a lot of stores, but a nice pleasant temperature, just cool enough that we weren’t dying. And Jordan still wasn’t moving. We were getting to the shoving stage.

“Come in, come in, kiddos, let me pour you some lemonade. Take a load off your feet.” That was, I presumed, not Mr. Ting. For one, the accent was local. For another, the voice was female, or, at the very least, in a traditionally female register.

“What…” Jordan finally managed, and stumbled forward one step. Not enough for me to do much except look at the floor, which was blue-and-white tiled and prettier than anything else in the neighborhood except, possibly, one of our roommates. But Taylor was a special case. “What…” again. Broken record time; I gave a little shove.

“It’s all right, kids, I know, it’s hotter than hell outside and you’re got to be dehydrated. Here, have a skirt, dear, and here’s a vest for your friend, and there you go.” She bustled around Jordan, and then me, playing dress-up like we were dolls, and I finally got a look at her.

She was maybe late-fifties or a very nicely preserved late-sixties, her hair dyed improbably red, her eyes almost black. She had a lean figure not in keeping with that mother-of-the-world voice, and a lipstick smile the same unbelievable color as her hair. She caught me looking, and winked.

“Mr. Ting is out for a moment, so you two just have a seat, have some lemonade, and wait,” she insisted.

Continued: Mrs. Gent’s Lemonade (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/252926.html. You can comment here or there.

The Dark of the City, a story of the Cracks for the Giraffe Call

Jan30

For kay_brooke‘s prompt

The city always looked its best at night, or in the fresh near-dawn just after a rain. The lights dimmed all the rough edges, and made what looked grubby in daylight look romantic, noir, cheerful. In the daytime, the city looked run-down, grubby, like its denizens, past its prime. But like the hookers and hustlers, the nighttime added a shine to everything.

Lane walked down the South Street at midnight, nevermind which of those categories might fit the tight leather pants and tighter tank top, breathing in the smoke-tainted air, feeling the city lights against bare shoulders. The world was beautiful, for a certain definition. The world was certainly better than during the daylight. Times like this, you could believe in a little magic. Times like this, the world covered up its gritty parts for you, made itself into a story.

“Hey, you. I’ve got thirty dollars if you’ve got five minutes.”

The voice was greasy and slick, coming from a dark alley. Not the sort of place Lane liked to go. “Not here. Not there, for sure. Down by Lauren Park. In the light.”

“Heh, kid, not everyone likes the light. Come on, my money’s as good as anyone’s.”

“I don’t do creeps, spooks, cops, or monsters,” Lane answered shortly. “And if you’re hiding in a shadow, I can’t tell which of those you might be.”

“Only way to get the money.”

“I’m not a junkie.” Anymore. “I’m not that hard up for cash.”

“Pity,” the voice glorped. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

Lane had started running at “Pity.” By then, it was too late. Something was already grabbing, pulling, tugging.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Tripped, elbows scraping across the pavement, scrabbling for any sort of purchase, Lane gave in to the small bomb of magic living deep inside. “I don’t do fucking goblins, either!”

The world exploded in a blast of light, a tiny sun, followed by a long splash of water, flooding the streets, washing away all the … filth… Lane stood up, looking around in the sparkling air. The city was always its best just before the dawn, just after a rainfall. Times like that, you could believe in a little magic.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250134.html. You can comment here or there.

City Holiday, a story of the Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call @EllenMillion

Jan28

For ellenmillion‘s prompt

I think this is in the same setting as Loaves (LJ), which, then, I think is in the same setting as Strange Neighbors (LJ) and the Fairy Road (here on LJ) and thus The Beggars (LJ).

This, ah, wasn’t *supposed* to be creepy… eep. Sorry?

In June, every June, for a week (the same week every year, whatever Sunday-through-Saturday had the 21st in it), the City went on vacation. The whole city. Everything shut down. The busses didn’t run. Trash wasn’t picked up. The radio stations played “best of.” The libraries and parks were on skeleton staff, getting time-and-a-half. Even the police and firemen were down to minimum numbers, but that was okay. Crime didn’t happen during The Holiday. If it did, the goblins dealt with it.

It was hard to get used to, for new people. People who had lived there a couple years knew to plan for it, knew to leave their garbage in and not expect the bus to pick them up, took the extra week of paid vacation and ran with it. But every year, there’d be some new guy in the neighborhood, some poor lost family that didn’t understand.

Judy and Mark got in the habit of wandering the neighborhoods, especially once their kids were grown, looking for the lost people with their cans on the curb, waiting for the pick-up, not understanding. They were third-generation themselves, born and raised in the City and, to hear Mark tell it, with a bit of goblin blood on his side, and some fairy wandering around in her bloodstream. They’d knock on the doors, carrying a casserole dish, a nice retiree couple, and when the family let them in, they’d explain the way things were.

The city shut down for a week every June. Everything shut down. Even crime. If you didn’t respect that, the goblins and the fairies got you.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/247755.html. You can comment here or there.

The Beggars… a story of the Fairy Road for the Giraffe Call

Jan28

For skjam‘s prompt

I think this is in the same setting as Loaves (LJ), which, then, I think is in the same setting as Strange Neighbors (LJ) and the Fairy Road (here on LJ)

“I’ve just realized…I haven’t seen any homeless people or beggars on the street for at least a month. Where did they all go?”

The words where hardly out of Andrew’s mouth when he regretted them. His partner, Cary, was eying him strangely.

“What do you mean, Andy?” he asked, cautiously, Andrew thought. Like there was a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. There were a lot of those in the City Police Force. Too many.

“Well, there used to be the blonde lady down on Castor Street, the one that you could see the spark in? Like ‘man, this woman must have been hot in her heyday?’ I haven’t seen her in… since the day I got the promotion,” he realized, and then, more to his chagrin, realized he was still talking. Verbal diarrhea. It had cost him comfortable promotions and raises before, before he and June moves to the City. Was it going to lose him another one?

Cary was certainly still looking at him oddly. “I know her,” he answered slowly. “And the old black man down on West Indes Street…”

“..the one who would sing with the sweetest voice, every time you dropped a dollar in his cup?” Andy nodded eagerly, half hoping that this was going somewhere positive and half not caring, because these things needed to be said. “I remember him! The day after I got the promotion, I bought him a sandwich, and he sang for me for twenty minutes.”

Cary’s look was changing. “This city has a lot of beggars.”

“Had, it looks like. Man, is something happening?” He was always the last to know. “Bussing, or a serial killer no-one wants to tell me about, or something?”

“Something’s happening all right,” Cary answered slowly. “Get your coat. We’re taking a walk.”

Wishing that didn’t sound so much like “wandering into a back alley,” Andy slipped his coat on. “You knew something was going on?”

“You’re new, you see. No-one knew if they could trust you, so they gave you to me. But if you’ve heard Old Tyler sing, that means you passed.”

“I passed?”

“You passed. And now, Andy… well, there’s more to our City than meets the naked eye. Come on, and I’ll show you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/247353.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder