Jul. 2nd, 2012
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fflox's prompt
Soon after Every Gift
The rebuild of their wedding-house was almost complete, which was good, since their wedding was less than a week away. All that was left were the final pieces of the roof.
The problem was, given the tight space of the street, even expanded, and the neighbors to three sides who had had enough of construction, thank you very much, a conventional crane was out of the question. Ropes and pulleys would work, and, indeed, were working, but even with a five-pulley system, the going was slow, hard, and painful. But they were doing it, Katyebah and Larzhal, with the help of a few of their closest friends.
And then Larzhal's uncle Bantas showed up with a... device, at the same time that Katybah's aunt Gelah showed up with some sort of contraption, one of them snorting steam and the other one farting smoke, glittering brass and solid iron, both making noises like a boiler that had seen better days.
( Read more... )
fflox's promptSoon after Every Gift
The rebuild of their wedding-house was almost complete, which was good, since their wedding was less than a week away. All that was left were the final pieces of the roof.
The problem was, given the tight space of the street, even expanded, and the neighbors to three sides who had had enough of construction, thank you very much, a conventional crane was out of the question. Ropes and pulleys would work, and, indeed, were working, but even with a five-pulley system, the going was slow, hard, and painful. But they were doing it, Katyebah and Larzhal, with the help of a few of their closest friends.
And then Larzhal's uncle Bantas showed up with a... device, at the same time that Katybah's aunt Gelah showed up with some sort of contraption, one of them snorting steam and the other one farting smoke, glittering brass and solid iron, both making noises like a boiler that had seen better days.
( Read more... )
For ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lilfluff's prompt. Reiassan has three seasons: wet, hot, and cold. A dohdehr is essentially a large domesticated weasel.
Lannamer in the short hot season was stinky, crowded, and loud. People lived atop each other in stacked apartments, hardly reaching the land or the síra, hardly spending time with the goats that had been their ancestral cornerstone, with the animals they'd lived beside and with.
Epyena was sick of it. She was tired of the constant politicking and the constant noise, the people everywhere and no place for the gods. She needed to get out of the business-and-Army hustle and bustle, before she became just another cog in the endless machine. She was moving to the mountains.
She got together three of her like-minded compatriots, two cousins and a child of industry from her days at University, spent half of her family-gifted stipend on land and goats, and headed East. They would raise goats and ride them, raise dohdehr and hunt them, raise the short-season crops their ancestors had raised and eat like true goat-riders, and not soft stone-riders.
( Read more... )
lilfluff's prompt. Reiassan has three seasons: wet, hot, and cold. A dohdehr is essentially a large domesticated weasel. Lannamer in the short hot season was stinky, crowded, and loud. People lived atop each other in stacked apartments, hardly reaching the land or the síra, hardly spending time with the goats that had been their ancestral cornerstone, with the animals they'd lived beside and with.
Epyena was sick of it. She was tired of the constant politicking and the constant noise, the people everywhere and no place for the gods. She needed to get out of the business-and-Army hustle and bustle, before she became just another cog in the endless machine. She was moving to the mountains.
She got together three of her like-minded compatriots, two cousins and a child of industry from her days at University, spent half of her family-gifted stipend on land and goats, and headed East. They would raise goats and ride them, raise dohdehr and hunt them, raise the short-season crops their ancestors had raised and eat like true goat-riders, and not soft stone-riders.
( Read more... )
In The Tower, Continued
Jul. 2nd, 2012 04:41 pmAfter In the Tower
Amanda liked her room. She didn’t know why, sometimes, her Aunt Tanta warned her against wanting to leave. She had everything she ever needed here, and it was warm, and safe, and comfortable - but most of all, safe.
She watched the television, and it told her about wars and rapes and murders. None of that happened here, in her tower. Nothing bad could happen to her at all, here in her castle. She was the protected princess. She was the safest maiden of them all. And she had everything she wanted.
Aunt Tanta told her she’d been found on the doorstep, a foundling. She told Amanda she was special, for she alone of the five children in the towers had been given Tanta’s personal care and personal visits. She alone had been bottle-fed by the ancient woman, she alone met with her for tea three times a week, rain, snow, or sunshine, summer and winter.
Amanda called herself, Amandianna, Princess of the Southermost Tower. She wrote long and involved stories about herself, about Amandianna, which involved a miniature horse and adventures in and around the tower, being wrested from it by force only to find a way to return, being pulled out into the world and fighting her way safe, back here, to her tower, to her safety, to the dragon who protected them.
--
Fred had been trying to send messages to the other towers.
Nothing else had worked so far, and he’d been trying for 584 hash-mark group-of-five days plus three.
He’d been growing out his hair for most of that eight years, thinking of the Rapunzel stories his sister had loved, back when he had a family. (He still didn’t have a beard to grow out. He wondered if that would grow faster). His hair dragged on the floor, now, when he didn’t braid it, but the tower was a lot taller than that.
Ripped sheets had just ended up with him not having a bed for a week, after an unseen hand had plucked him back into the tower from halfway down. Messages in balloons vanished into the wind and never came back.
He’d tried to take the dumbwaiter apart for the rope, but they’d just left him all alone and foodless for two days while they replaced and repaired it. “They:” the invisible keepers. He assumed they weren’t machines, but he wasn’t certain. He’d asked for seeds and started growing linen, but his rope had vanished overnight. They hadn’t stopped him from practicing climbing up and down the stairwell walls, but a fall on a slippery patch of rock (Moss, damn it) had left him with a broken ankle (set by maybe-robots while he was unconscious) and second-guessing that plan.
So now he was sending letters in schoolbooks, written in the margins of the boring sections, slipped between the pages, anywhere he could. How long have you been here? Why do you think they want us? Have you ever seen a person, since you got here?
Sometimes he just wrote I’m lonely. What about you?
He wrote one every day, and then did his homework, assigned the same way food was delivered, by dumbwaiter, read a book, ran up and down the stairs, maybe played some games, drew the few out his window, and then wrote another letter. The TV showed him a world so far away, so long ago, it might as well be another planet. The letters, at least, seemed like they might contact someone.
And then, thirty-five hashmarks later, a poetry book arrived with a note in the margins.
I was here for twelve hundred days when I lost count. I’m lonely, too.
Next: In the Tower, Continued
Amanda liked her room. She didn’t know why, sometimes, her Aunt Tanta warned her against wanting to leave. She had everything she ever needed here, and it was warm, and safe, and comfortable - but most of all, safe.
She watched the television, and it told her about wars and rapes and murders. None of that happened here, in her tower. Nothing bad could happen to her at all, here in her castle. She was the protected princess. She was the safest maiden of them all. And she had everything she wanted.
Aunt Tanta told her she’d been found on the doorstep, a foundling. She told Amanda she was special, for she alone of the five children in the towers had been given Tanta’s personal care and personal visits. She alone had been bottle-fed by the ancient woman, she alone met with her for tea three times a week, rain, snow, or sunshine, summer and winter.
Amanda called herself, Amandianna, Princess of the Southermost Tower. She wrote long and involved stories about herself, about Amandianna, which involved a miniature horse and adventures in and around the tower, being wrested from it by force only to find a way to return, being pulled out into the world and fighting her way safe, back here, to her tower, to her safety, to the dragon who protected them.
--
Fred had been trying to send messages to the other towers.
Nothing else had worked so far, and he’d been trying for 584 hash-mark group-of-five days plus three.
He’d been growing out his hair for most of that eight years, thinking of the Rapunzel stories his sister had loved, back when he had a family. (He still didn’t have a beard to grow out. He wondered if that would grow faster). His hair dragged on the floor, now, when he didn’t braid it, but the tower was a lot taller than that.
Ripped sheets had just ended up with him not having a bed for a week, after an unseen hand had plucked him back into the tower from halfway down. Messages in balloons vanished into the wind and never came back.
He’d tried to take the dumbwaiter apart for the rope, but they’d just left him all alone and foodless for two days while they replaced and repaired it. “They:” the invisible keepers. He assumed they weren’t machines, but he wasn’t certain. He’d asked for seeds and started growing linen, but his rope had vanished overnight. They hadn’t stopped him from practicing climbing up and down the stairwell walls, but a fall on a slippery patch of rock (Moss, damn it) had left him with a broken ankle (set by maybe-robots while he was unconscious) and second-guessing that plan.
So now he was sending letters in schoolbooks, written in the margins of the boring sections, slipped between the pages, anywhere he could. How long have you been here? Why do you think they want us? Have you ever seen a person, since you got here?
Sometimes he just wrote I’m lonely. What about you?
He wrote one every day, and then did his homework, assigned the same way food was delivered, by dumbwaiter, read a book, ran up and down the stairs, maybe played some games, drew the few out his window, and then wrote another letter. The TV showed him a world so far away, so long ago, it might as well be another planet. The letters, at least, seemed like they might contact someone.
And then, thirty-five hashmarks later, a poetry book arrived with a note in the margins.
I was here for twelve hundred days when I lost count. I’m lonely, too.
Next: In the Tower, Continued
For clare_dragonfly's prompt.
Set approx 750 years before the Rin & Girey novella
Ektatkya studied the holy book. The Tabersi had, she'd discovered, a lot of gods. Lots and lots of them, herds of them, packs of them. No wonder they needed so many priests. No person with a field and herd to attend to could keep track of all of these.
( Read more... )
clare_dragonfly's prompt.Set approx 750 years before the Rin & Girey novella
Ektatkya studied the holy book. The Tabersi had, she'd discovered, a lot of gods. Lots and lots of them, herds of them, packs of them. No wonder they needed so many priests. No person with a field and herd to attend to could keep track of all of these.
( Read more... )