Into the Woods, Into the House

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Crazy Like a Fox

The return of “Mdom not asshole”.  I cannot find that I posted this first part, but if I have, I apologize. 

🌳🌳🌳

The gate was still terrifying. Mélanie felt far too relieved by Jesper’s hand on her leg and the warmth of him pressed against her side. She needed it; she was fighting against panic with every step the horses took.

The horses didn’t seem to mind at all. She found that reassuring. They walked through the creepy, terrifying gate, waited placidly while Jasper closed the gate behind them and locked it, and headed cheerfully towards what seemed to all appearances to be a half-collapsed stone stable and carriage house.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.

Into the Woods, Into the House

First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Crazy Like a Fox

The return of “Mdom not asshole”.  I cannot find that I posted this first part, but if I have, I apologize. 

🌳🌳🌳

The gate was still terrifying. Mélanie felt far too relieved by Jesper’s hand on her leg and the warmth of him pressed against her side. She needed it; she was fighting against panic with every step the horses took.

The horses didn’t seem to mind at all. She found that reassuring. They walked through the creepy, terrifying gate, waited placidly while Jasper closed the gate behind them and locked it, and headed cheerfully towards what seemed to all appearances to be a half-collapsed stone stable and carriage house.

read on…

Small Town, USA – a blog post on Stranded

Originally posted on Patreon.

Autumn spends a lot of time in really small towns.  I mean, some of that is just that’s what she seems to like, but you’d think she’d spend more time in big cities that have big craft festivals, wouldn’t you?  I mean, she’s trying to make enough of a living to pay for the occasional inn or motel or Bed N’ Breakfast room, and those aren’t cheap.I like small towns.

I grew up between three small towns, out in the middle of farmland (literally: My parents built their house on land my grandfather and his father before him had farmed, on a road my grandfather literally built as a high school summer job).  I grew up with a small-town library where the librarian knew me and I knew her, in the sort of place where a party really is a bonfire in someone’s backyard because, really, where else are you going to  go?  My parents grew up in small towns.  Pretty sure at least two of my grandparents did, too.  We’re small town people, rural people.

I have to admit, some stereotypes of small-town living (Everyone knows everyone, for instance) I never really understood.  I mean, I knew my neighbors, but in farmland, that isn’t all that many people.  And small towns these days often have housing tracts tacked onto the sides of them, apartment complexes, trailer parks.  So they’re not that image of small-town living that seems to permeate the media (And, to look at another setting for a moment, Regine’s vision of a small town with The Village outside of Addergoole)  The houses go back layer after layer from Main Street.  You go over the canal (in many cases) or the railroad tracks and you’re almost in another neighborhood.  But you’ll still run into people you know at the grocery store, at the Fireman’s Carnival (I haven’t written a story about anyone at a carnival yet, have I?), at the Canal Days Craft Festival (Where Autumn really ought to have a booth…)

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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.

Conlang (Extra Lexember?) - Society

Post 1: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/12/25/lexember/

Post 2: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2018/01/05/conlang-extra-lexember-syllabary/ 

Post 3: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2018/01/08/conlang3/

Today's topic is... Society

Right now, I’m building vocabulary based on a very pre-industrial society. It’s sort of an experiment (which might end up being an in-world experiment, too; I have Ideas); I’m picturing them at a beginning-to-farm level as well as having pictured them at a hunter-gatherer level and going outwards from that.

So what we have are people living mostly in tiltek, sturdy rock homes built on high outcroppings, generally up against each other and in horseshoe shapes to stand against the cold winds that come in from the coast. 

read on…