Alder's Grove

http://www.lynthornealder.com/2020/10/07/pumpkin-patch/

"So why is it a pumpkin patch and not like a wheat field or a rice paddy?"

"To make it sound cute? Like you know, it's the part of the garden, it's a wee home-town pumpkin patch?"
🎃
The first story in my Squash Prompt Call is up! Check it out and give it a read~

More or less to eseme's prompt and a companion to Character Study: Melinda

Summer was always the last to go to sleep.

She liked the quiet moments at the end of the day, the way she could cuddle with a sleepy Bishop and Mellie until, one and then the other, they headed off to their giant cobbled-together bed. She liked stroking their hair and their backs while they watched TV or studied together - sometimes, despite all advice, both at once. She liked sleepy late-night kisses.

And then she strolled the house alone, listening to the noises the old place made, picking up this and that. Sometimes she would whisper charms for her family, charms for her lovers. Sometimes she'd just stay up studying.

Tonight, she wandered out to the back yard and stared up at the stars. It felt like they were watching, reminding her to be good.

Summer stuck her tongue out at them and went back inside, where the lights were warmer and less distant.

So way back here, I said I wanted to get into the heads of two non-Addergoole side characters.

I asked Cal to pick a setting, and Cal picked Stranded. Which doesn't have a LOT of background characters.

So we have Melinda, who is dating Summer and Bishop.

Melinda woke up early.

She usually did - Summer liked to sleep as if she'd been running marathons one after another, and Bishop didn't like to go to bed until practically sunrise. That meant Summer got the middle and Bishop got the outside, and Mellie slipped out of bed while the sun was still just thinking about getting up itself.

She snuck out of the bedroom on bare feet, grabbing a robe as she went. Their roommates wouldn't be up for another hour or two either, which meant that she had the place to herself, just for a bit.

She settled on the back porch with her History of the Americas textbook, a big mug of tea, and her favorite highlighters. Truth be told, this was half of what she liked about waking up early: this was her time, to be shared with nobody.

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... )

For eseme's free 500-word continuation of Summer on the Half-Shell


“And that’s the last touches. For real this time.”

He stepped away from the painting and caught Summer as she stumbled. “Hey, you’ve been a champ. You should do this for the art classes; they pay pretty well.”

She leaned in his arms, not minding the warm or the support, or even the silly-swooning-girl feeling of him catching her. “Petie, nobody but you could get me to hold still for that long. Nobody but you could get me to hold still for more than two minutes.”

He kissed her neck, just under her ear. “Normally, having you holding still while nearly-naked is the last thing on my mind.” His arms slid up her torso, but, on automatic pilot, she deflected them.
( Read more... )

Continuing flash series! I'm going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today's icon:

Summer, from Stranded World.

Icon & Art by djinni

"So what are you going to do about it?" Summer had stolen away from her boyfriend and girlfriend for a few minutes; she liked having them, liked them a lot, but she missed Basil. And, as it turned out, Basil had missed her, too.

"I don't know." He threw his shoe into his laundry hamper, the second one following soon afterward, and huffed out air. "I didn't think this was going to be the hard part of dating."

"Yeah. It always is."
( Read more... )

For rix_scaedu's prompt, combined with ankewehner's prompt

This is in the Stranded World Setting, which has a landing page here (and on LJ).

Mellie's roommate was fighting with her mother again. They could hear it from the other side of the room, easily, so the three of them had headed into the hallway.

"I'd say it gets worse around the holidays," Mellie murmured, "but it's hard to tell. I'd need a decibel meter to get an accurate read."

"That's.... pretty awful," Bishop frowned. "How long has it been going on?"

"As far as I can tell, since the first week of school. I'm not sure what's going on, exactly, but it seems like her mom has a new complaint every week."
( Read more... )