Alder's Grove

http://www.lynthornealder.com/2020/05/03/this-post-is-a-test-2-2-2/

She had gotten a very good deal on an Air B&B under the theory that she was there, the house was there, and tourism had just shut down nearly completely for the lockdown.  Also, she’d agreed to do a series of fantasy portraits of the house and its owners while she was there, in addition […]



News & Announcements, andthenwhat, character: autumn

after Autumn and a Boy

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Autumn and Calvin shared a dinner of take-out pizza - the only delivery the small town had - in the cozy living room of the bed-and breakfast.

He told her about life in Lancaster and his job - tech support for the one university that town, a bit bigger than the pl

read on…

The story that began with this little series...

A Wink...
Nothing Could Possib-lie Go Wrong (Summer)
Places One Doesn't Go (Winter)
At Home (Spring)
Sight and Sense (Autumn)

...is completed here on Patreon.

The man glared at Summer through the tilted fence panel. He wasn’t a pleasant-looking man; he had stringy hair and a weedy beard, a greasy, pallid complexion and notable body odor. But he was an important man, at least at the moment. “This is a private party!”

Summer’s cheeks were flushed and she was just about ready to die. She’d gone through this fence before — with her mother, when she was very young, then later with Winter and Autumn, and later still, all five of them together. She’d stepped a little sideways, and… what had gone wrong this time?

She coughed. “Sir, I’m sorry... (read on...)

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After/concurrent with Nothing could possib-lie go wrong, Places One Doesn't Go, At Home, and A Wink.

The man with the eyeball tattoo was looking at Autumn when his eyebrows went up. His gaze slid off of her; Autumn glanced briefly, but he wasn't looking at anything obvious in the physical world.

She stepped inside her tent while his attention was elsewhere and shifted her own vision Strandward, looking for the disturbance that had clearly caught his attention. Just as she opened her vision, her own Strands yanked at her.

The tug was tangible and sudden, pulling her from three points like an off-balance marionette. She didn't need to look to know: the cool blue of Winter's
strand pulled from her right temple, where she'd painted his arrow under her hairline. The green-yellow of Summer's strand pulled from her breastbone, where she'd painted a mask. The orange-and-blue of Spring's strand yanked from down lower, where she'd painted the chaos sign just below her navel.

Her family was here, and they were doing... something. Autumn called to the woman in the next booth over to cover her till. Something strange was going on.

After Tangles and Knots, Snarls and Combs. Stranded World has a landing page here.

Autumn took a long, hot shower, paying for a motel room to do it in, taking the time and the soap and a brush from the dollar store. It was the end of Faire season. It was the end of her and Tatters, and she still hadn't quite processed that. It was... it was time to clean up all the old marks.

She washed every piece of ink off of her skin, scrubbed the skin raw where the ink had stained, washed herself until she felt, should she do more, she would have to start quoting MacBeth.

She dressed herself in clothes cleaned every bit as thoroughly although, because it had been at the laundromat, with slightly less soliloquy. She left her van with a friend she still trusted, rented the smallest car she could find, and started driving.

It did not occur to her until quite some time later that she was running away. But, skin bare of connections, clothing bare of scents and memories, she had detangled herself from both the heartache and the embarrassment and now she felt she just had to keep going until the strands shook loose from her.

When she reached the Pacific, she finally felt as if she could breathe again.

I asked for Non-Addergoole Prompts here; this is to rix_scaedu's prompt mashed up with ankewehner's

Stranded World has a landing page here.



It was the season for candles. Autumn settled in her van/RV, approximately eight thousand miles from anyone she knew, and lit a candle on her table.

Just one candle, and hers was red. This was how this thing was done. She sat down on her beanbag, and studied the flame.



It was the time for the flame. Winter excused himself from the quiet social obligations of the party to set a glass candleholder in the North-facing window.

He pulled up a chair in front of the window, and settled in before lighting the candle. Just one, and his was white. There was an order to this, as in all things.



It was just about that time. Spring kissed New Boy deeply, did something somewhat obscene to Slightly Less New Boy, and left the two of them to entertain each other or complain about video games.

She dug the candle - spring green - out of her underwear drawer and stuck it in a metal can in her East-facing window. There was a way to do things, but she was the tangler, so she added two birthday candles for contrast.

She lit all three and stared into the flame.



Everything happened when it had to, and in its own time. This just happened to be the right time to light a candle.

Summer was alone, tonight; she had arranged it that way. She lit the orange-yellow pillar candle and set it, carefully, on the plate from home. Things went the way they needed to, and this way needed one light, and no more.

Summer stared into the flame and thought of home.



Icons all by the wonderful djinni

To rix_scaedu's prompt to my Orig_fic Bingo card; this fills the "Favorite Place" square.


Autumn and Summer (and Bishop and Melinda) are characters in my Stranded World setting; this story is later in their lives than most of the stories.

"Let me show you this place."

Summer watched her sister. She had been watching her sister much of her life, it seemed; the way she moved, the way she smiled, the way she seemed to dance through life without a care. She watched the way Autumn smiled with her mouth without smiling with her body; she watched the way she flirted shamelessly and almost never carried through, and the way, when she carried through, it was a dance of the body, without the heart.
( Read more... )

To inventrix's commissioned continuation of Ax Fight, and following directly on after it.

"Duck!"

Autumn's duck turned into a slide across the mud. The Grey One's crouch turned into a tumble. The ax flew. The audience cheered.

They slid across the mud until they were nearly touching, their wooden weapons locked against each other.

"Show, go on, yadda, yadda." The Grey One whispered it under the cheers.

"Yep." Autumn hopped to her feet, her ax held in a guard position. "Avast! What scallywag intrudes on our fair duel?"
( Read more... )

For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here (feel free to leave pairings now if you want; I'm having fun.


Jin waited patiently for Jimmy to come back to earth with Juniper. Of all the monsters in the world, Jimmy was probably the only one he could trust, completely, with his kid sister. Jimmy was probably the only one he thought of as a sibling.

The Smiths moving in next to them had been one of the best moments in Jin's life. For the first time since he started thinking of his parents as separate people from himself, he had someone he trusted to watch his back, and, maybe more importantly, someone who trusted him to do the same

( Read more... )

For wyld_dandelyon's prompt.

Stranded World has a landing page .

http://www.songlyrics.com/the-band-perry/all-your-life-lyrics/

Autumn lay back in the warm July sun, staring at the clouds. "I don't need wine and roses," she said, mostly to herself. "I've never been the sort of girl that asks for that, or the sort of girl that men give that to."

She swallowed a small lump of bitterness at the feeling. "And I don't need love songs; the boys that sing them are generally silly, anyway."

There had been the one, a beautiful bard with a voice like a dream. He had written music for her, sung to her after lovemaking, brought her roses, brought her wine. He had been something else... but he was the sort that didn't travel well, and she was the sort that never stayed in one place.

"I heard a song the other day," she continued, to the silence near her. "Something like 'I don't need the whole world... I just want to be the only one you love.'" She laughed shortly. "Hypocritical, wouldn't it be? But sometimes," she turned to look at him, her heart in her throat. "Sometimes that's what I want, Tatters." Or at least a name to call you by.

"Lady Fall." His eyes were serious, though his tone was light. "What you want of me, you have but to ask."

"You and I both know that's a lie," she countered angrily. "Don't I deserve better from you than lies, at the very least?"

He flinched. "It was not my intent to lie to you, but simply to..." He gestured, and his tone changed. "I wanted to give you the roses and the wine that you want, though you say you don't. The poetry. But I have never been a grapes and thorns sort of man, I'm afraid." His tone changed again, as if he was dialing himself down. "I'd give you romance if it was in me, Autumn."

He paused, as if looking for the words. "I can give you mead and leather, if that's enough."

She studied him for a moment, her heart twisting. "If that is what you have," she answered, wondering if she was lying, "than that, my love, is enough and more than."


The song she is misquoting is The Band Perry's "All Your Life."

For eseme's prompt

Stranded World has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Autumn didn't like the city.

She thought, all in all, it was a fair dislike. The city was noisy, crowded, smelly, loud, and foreign; the traffic impatient, the people worse.

She had grown up near people like those she chose to live with now - people who were sideways-of-normal enough that they didn't judge, or, at least, when they did, there was someone else to call them on it. Walking into the city was walking back into the normal world, as her mother would say, "Mundania." It was remembering how to put on a face that felt stiff and uncomfortable, like a suit, like a mask.
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Guys, halp!

Autumn's positive traits/skills?
Negative traits/flaws?
Goals?

For wyld_dandelyon's prompt.

Stranded World and Autumn, though I don't know just when. Stranded has a landing page - here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

"No, I don't mean walking through a ghost will give you a chill, or take ten years off your life, or any of that sort of nonsense. I mean it's rude." Autumn pursed her lips at the difficult man who was, of all things, arguing with her about the paranormal while trying to haggle her down on a particularly complex original piece of art. A charmed piece, at that, which suggested to her that he knew more than he was saying about both the art and the paranormal.

"Rude?" He raised an eyebrow in what had to be a studied expression of disdain. "You're talking about being rude to the dead?"

And now she had him. She smirked at him, and set aside the artwork, which would find its proper home in due time. "Well, sir, that's a common thread throughout many cultures, isn't it? It's certainly considered rude to 'speak ill of the dead,' for one; it's considered proper to honor a dying person's wishes, and we pay homage to the dead in their cemeteries, do we not?"
( Read more... )