Giraffe Call is Open! Come and Prompt me - the theme is "In the City"

I opened the Giraffe Call for this month a little early, last night -
The Call is Open! (and on LJ)

The Theme is "In the City."

The Linkback Incentive Story (and on LJ) is going strong; remember to leave me a comment if you've linked back.


I have written 2 stories already, both one-offs:
First Steps (LJ) The city remembers
The Dark Places, the Numbered Streets (LJ) - Ance seeks a real adventure. And finds it.

Come leave a prompt! (and on LJ)

Rediscovering the City, a story for the Giraffe Call (@kissofjudas)

To starlitdestiny's prompt

Safe to say, nobody was expecting a city to pop up between Rochester and Syracuse.

And I don't mean, "pop up" like one of the small towns there along 5-and-20 got delusions of grandeur, called themselves a city, and got businesses to move in. I mean, right there, just north of the Thruway, bam, in the middle of the morning commute, there was a city.

This caused three accidents and a good deal of confusion, mass drug testing in several factories, and then a state-wide (or at least the important parts of the state, up by the lake) holiday as we all tried to figure out what was going on.

It wasn't a small city, not by any means, but unlike the ones that had grown up naturally around here, this one was contained. It had a shell, if you will, a tall wall, nearly as high as the buildings, and arching in as it went up, so that it really seemed like most of an egg, with just a couple towers poking out of the jagged top. One gate sat slightly ajar, off if giant hinges. No more inviting than a broken window in an abandoned house, but that will call to some people, I suppose.
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Routes 5-and-20 parallel the NYS Thruway a short distance south of said hiway, both running parallel to Lake Ontario's coastline across the widest part of the state. The area between cities on these routs is primarily rural/agricultural.

See also this map

Unicorn Chase, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

For ysabetwordsmith's Prompt.

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

There weren't supposed to be unicorns in the Town.

There weren't supposed to be unicorns at all, of course - they were a myth, a superstition. But inside the Town? Such things should not even be thought of. Not in the Town, with its rationality, its science, its straight streets and straight walls and rational protections against the myth and credulity of the common Village folk. Not in the Town, with its upright people who worked hard for a day's living in the Factory, who struggled to live in the faint miasma of Progress. There was no space nor time for unicorns in the Town. They did not belong.

And certainly not in the Factory, the heart of all those things the Town stood for, with its soot-blackened stone and its towering stacks, with its tired but proud workers, with its managers and thinkers and planners who understood how the world was supposed to work. A unicorn, if such things existed, could not survive in the Town, much less in the factory.
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Next: Unicorn-Chased (LJ)

The Tuesday Map, a story for the Giraffe Call (@Rix_Scaedu)

For rix_scaedu's prompt

Influences included Dark City and the folding apartments for which I can't currently find links. Also, IKEA, and my fascination with planned communities.

The city moved.

The cluck struck seven p.m., the alarm chimed, and, all over the city, people stopped what they were doing and grabbed on to their hand-holds. Smoothly, on well-oiled tracks and risers, the Bell-Apple Experimental Living Zone, the BAELZ, shifted into its Tuesday position.

Announcements sounded. The following changes to the Zone's Tuesday arrangement have taken place. The Seventh Ave Diner is now on the corner of Sixth Avenue and J Street. The Hairtisserie is now on the north-west corner of the Zone, above the Butcherie. The City Hall has moved one block north and one block upwards.
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The Origins of Smokey Knoll, a story of Dragons Next Door for the Giraffe Call (@meeks_P)

For meeks's prompt

Dragons Next Door has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

"So tell me," Miss Call-me-Samantha Milligan asked Audrey, over tea on what was becoming their regular Tuesday tea date, "do you know how Smokey Knoll came to be? The neighborhood around it, the Retibya Heights, is a, ah..."

"It's an affluent upper-class human neighborhood, yes," Audrey answered easily. "Many of your richest students come from that neighborhood. From all of the Heights, Miss Milligan, which does actually answer your question quite tidily."

"I'm sorry...?" she blinked uncertainly.
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