rix_scaedu

Three generations ago the self-sustaining and self-contained Kingdom of Tang-ji was invaded and opened up by foreign powers who variously wanted new markets for their goods, to loot the fabled kingdom’s treasures or to destroy what they could not and did not want to understand.  The Kingdom was forced to change its political structures at gun point, to become ‘modern’, and sign unfavourable trade agreements.  Life, however, went on.

Despite the great sorcerers of the realm having been overwhelmed by the enemy forces, the interim government decided in secret and private session that the problem was not that the nation had depended too heavily on sorcery but that there had been far too few sorcerers.  They decided that, rather than being confined solely to the particularly talented, the study of sorcery should be opened up to all of the populace who were capable of learning any snippet of it.

They quietly commissioned the surviving sorcerers to design a cut-down and pared-back system of power manipulation.  What they came up with was both that and a competitive system based on a long tradition of sorcerous duels.  Because one of the stated aims of the invasion was to ‘free the people of Tang-ji from the tyranny of superstition, including sorcery and subservience to allegedly reincarnated rulers’, another name needed to be used.  The sorcerers chose ‘gi’, an old word used to describe the simple first exercises of sorcerous training.

Like the introduction of railways, gi was one of the few popular changes that came out of the invasion.  Within ten years it was the national sport.  Little old village women did gi-based exercises for their arthritis.  Within fifty years almost every six year old in the country routinely embarked on at least a year or two of lessons.  It was taught in schools, there were national competitions and professional leagues.

Like their reincarnated leaders and scholars, the sorcery of Tang-ji has never really gone away.

I wrote this to aldersprig's fourth prompt.

She was back again, with her braid of hair on the cusp between blonde and brown hanging down her back, quartering the early morning pine forest with her eyes on the ground.  After he’d seen her the first time he’d taken greater pains to hide his traces but, despite her bow and trousers she did not seem to be a militiaman but simply a mushroom gatherer.  It was the time of year for it, autumn full of morning mists, and she carried a solid, square-based basket with cloth bags for the different varieties to carry her collection.

There were a number of things he could do about her but she hadn’t found his small camp yet and she didn’t seem to have noticed his presence so there was nothing he had to do, yet.  Besides, he liked the look of her.  She gave him thoughts he hadn’t thought he would have, carrying out his mission on this side of the mountains.

“Infiltration,” the voice inside his head reminded him.  “One of your goals is infiltration.  By the look of her, she’s old enough to marry and you like the look of her.  Depending on how this mission ends you can either carry her back to Ergo with you over your shoulder or you can be her clever husband who’s made his peace with the new rulers, if you still want her by then.”

The geas had a point.  Even as a suitor he’d have a reason to find out about the town she lived in.  He was black haired but he wasn’t obviously a Wussan, otherwise he’d never have been selected for this job.  As long as his accent was convincing, his cover story should hold.

“So speak to her, thick head!  Or are you scared of some little rim-realm wench?”  The geas’ job was to prod, he got that but it would help if it didn’t talk to him as if he were an idiot to do it.

He swarmed quickly down the tree and then stepped out from behind its trunk.  “Hello.”

She turned quickly on the spot, her hand going straight to one of the little knives she used to cut the mushrooms.  “Who are you?”

“My name’s Anensis.  I came up here from the south looking for work in a warmer climate over winter.  I can’t afford an inn until I get work, so I’m camping out.  You?”

“I’m Damson.”  She seemed to be judging the distance between them.  “I’m a forager.  This is mushroom season and this pine wood is one of my picking grounds.  I don’t suppose you’ve seen any violet-blue cups anywhere have you?  There are some in here but they don’t seem to have cropped yet this year.”

“I can’t say as I have,” Anensis admitted.  “Violet-blue doesn’t sound edible.”

“They’re not,” Damson agreed.  “They do have other uses and I have a buyer.”

“Come back to my camp and have a mug of something hot with me?”  It was worth asking.

She stepped back.  “Thank you but I don’t know you, so no thank you.”

He shrugged.  “Ah well, you can’t blame me for asking.  Perhaps I’ll see you in town sometime?”

“Perhaps, now if you’ll excuse me I have work to do.  Goodbye.”  She turned and didn’t quite flee to another part of the wood.

“Goodbye,” he called after her.

“As a beginning, that could have gone worse,” commented the geas in his head.  “Later today we go into town I think, don’t you?”

“Yes,” agreed Anensis quietly but aloud.  “I think I’ll give her knives as a love gift when we get that far, proper knives for dealing with two-legged predators like me.”

I wrote this to aldersprig's second prompt.  It follows on from Broken Hearts.

Maeve was a little apprehensive.  She hadn’t dated for several years and had thought that she’d never have to again but her happily-ever-after relationship had crashed in flames around her and she’d left.  Now she needed to build a new emotional life for herself and Tosca, the only friend she had who didn’t know her exes, had introduced Maeve to her brother Orlando.  He’d invited her to dinner with his marriage and she wasn’t sure what to expect.

Orlando met her at the restaurant door; tall, fit and impeccably dressed in an expensive suit.  He hadn’t seemed so…perfected in the jogging gear he’d been wearing when Tosca had introduced them.  He guided her to where the others were waiting and introduced her around.  Braum, Rachel and Katinka were all tall, athletic and beautifully dressed as well.  They were also beautiful.  Maeve began to feel small and dowdy in comparison.

“Tiberius sends his apologies,” added Orlando.  “There was an emergency at work and he volunteered to fix it so the rest of us could be here on time.  He hopes to be here for dessert.”

They sat her at the table for six between Orlando and Katinka then plied her with food, conversation and a little wine.  By the end of the entrée she’d stopped feeling out of place and was enjoying herself; she’d almost forgotten what it was like to have the conversation ripple along and be on the inside instead of just an observer.  By the time they were through their mains she was receiving little hand touches of inclusion from both Katinka and Orlando, while Rachel and Braum had both proposed a seat swap so she could sit next to them during dessert.

Maeve didn’t realise that someone else had joined them until he was looming in the space between Katinka and herself.  The broad shouldered man, shorter than everyone at the table except Maeve, kissed Katinka on the cheek then turned and kissed Maeve as well.  “Tiberius, you can’t kiss her before you’ve been introduced to her,” was Rachel’s affectionately shocked protest.

“Then introduce us,” he smiled back at his dark haired wife.

“Maeve,” Rachel did the honours, “this is the third of our husbands, Tiberius.  Tiberius, this is Maeve, Orlando’s sister’s friend.”

Maeve offered Tiberius her hand to shake but he turned it over in a hand that was almost twice the size of hers, said, “It’s a pleasure,” then kissed its back while rubbing her palm with his forefinger.  Maeve blushed and he gently let her hand go then walked around behind her to go past Orlando and Rachel, both of whom he kissed in passing, to sit between Rachel and Braum, opposite Maeve.  He kissed Braum on the cheek as well then asked, “You are all planning on dessert, aren’t you?”

Maeve piled herself into a cab at the end of the evening happier than she had been in months.  Her tiny, single person apartment didn’t seem quite as confining as it normally did nor the single bed quite so lonely.  Things didn’t seem quite so rosy in the morning, of course, but then Braum called her that evening after work to ask her to a picnic at the weekend.  Maeve’s world view got rosy again and then it didn’t seem strange to run into Orlando and Rachel in their jogging clothes at the coffee shop on the last morning of the working week.

The picnic was lovely.  Good weather, fantastic spot, wonderful company and an opulently catered picnic basket.  Braum had laughingly admitted, “We can all cook well enough to eat but none of us can cook well enough to impress,” as he’d unpacked the professionally prepared food.  They had a walk after lunch and Rachel held hands with her for part of the way.  At the end of the day she’d hugged everyone goodbye and Tiberius kissed her on the lips.  She left to the sound of his deeper voice cutting under his wives’ admonishments, “What, but we like her!”

More dates followed.  They did things together, her and at least two of them at any time.  They saw movies, had dinner, went on picnics, terrified her by going abseiling and enchanted her with the opera.  She was wined, dined, danced and kissed.  She went home happily buzzing in her own head.

After six months she invited them to her place for dinner and they had barely all been able to fit in her small flat’s living/dining room.  With that milestone successfully negotiated, they invited her to their apartment for dinner.  A warehouse apartment that was at least twice the size she’d expected from the building’s exterior.  She’d known from their clothes that their business was going well but this seemed to indicate something more than that.  “You have a very nice home,” she said quietly.

Tiberius looked around.  “It’s somewhere to live.”  He shrugged.

“Actually, we’ve been looking at a place out in Sapbrasen,” put in Katinka.

“It’s big enough for a family and a yard,” elaborated Orlando.

“We thought we might start having children,” added Rachel.

Braum cleared his throat, “If you’re interested.”

Maeve looked around the table hopeful but fearful she’d misunderstood.

“What we’re trying to say,” jumped in Tiberius, putting his large hand over hers, “is will you marry us, please?”

I wrote this to lilfluff's first prompt.  Mayin first appeared in Back Again and Neoma joined her in Reintegration.

The war was over.  Generations of fighting at an end.  Not because anyone had won but because a star had exploded.  The enemy’s home world was obliterated by a force of nature, billions dead.  What was left of the enemy surrendered piecemeal because they no longer had centralized communications.  Victory had never tasted so bitter or unearned.

The troops began to come home.  They trickled and flooded in as the transports arrived from the distant watch stations and battlefields.  Tales came with them too of the empty shells many of the enemy had become, men for whom there was no going home ever again.  Then there were the ships that wouldn’t come home yet, searching for the men they knew were hiding from them whose relief and supply ships would never come again, begging them to talk to them.

It wasn’t long before the tacked-together government of the surviving remnants of the enemy’s colonial and supply fringe sent a delegation to negotiate for aid.  Some of the negotiations would be so that they didn’t receive more aid than they wanted.  Some were to gain greater access to the rehabilitation hospitals for their wounded.  The newspapers were full of it.

Mayin noted that her old opponents were on the planet and dismissed it as irrelevant to her.  Neoma stayed over with her every three weeks or so now, a comfortable routine that was helping the girl gain independence and the woman relax around people in general.  Her family kept trying to introduce her to nice men but Mayin found their choices didn’t spark her interest, so she tended to see them once and not pursue the acquaintance.  To be fair, most of them weren’t interested in pursuing her acquaintance.

She opened the door at the knock expecting to find Neoma and her mother there.  Instead, it was a face from years ago and planets away.  He was neatly dressed in civilian clothes and if he’d come to kill her, she’d have already been dead.  The cybernetic right eye and hand were new since that intense afternoon four, almost five, years ago.  “How did you find me?”  Her voice came out cool and calm.

“It’s one of my base corps’ skills.”  His vowels were too precise for a native speaker, betraying his origins.  “You ruined my life.”  He put the prosthetic hand on the door jam.

“You were trying to kill me.”  So many fights and this was the one she remembered in all its detail.

“I was doing my job, as were you.  I’m here with the delegation and I thought I’d look you up.”  He stepped closer, too close because he was close enough to feel, and added an idiomatic sentence in his own language, “Nothing works anymore.”

“That’s not my fault!”  Then she added, “Besides, you can’t convince me of that at the moment.”

He glanced down and closed his eyes as if in pain.  “Of course, you would be the exception.  Are you a witch as well?”

“No, I’m not!”  Then switching to her own language, “This is not a discussion I want to have in the hallway outside my home.  Now I’m expecting some people-”

“Aunty Mayin, Aunty Mayin,” that was Neoma tearing down the hallway ahead of her mother.  The child stopped far closer than Mayin would have liked and asked, “Hello, are you a friend of my aunty’s?”

He looked down at the child and smiled, “We met briefly several years ago and I have come to visit her.”

Neoma’s mother, observing the lack of distance between the two of them, asked, “Mayin, aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”

“Friend?  He’s not a friend.”  She looked blankly from her sister-in-law to her old opponent as an odd realisation dawned, “And I don’t know your name, do I Vorwei?”

“Oberxiao, I was promoted.”  He looked back at Mayin, “Twice.  I will return at a more convenient time to discuss my problem.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” Mayin was tart, he was too close her and he was too close to her niece.

He was fast.  The prosthetic hand was behind her head before she’d realised that he’d moved and then he kissed her for just long enough.  “Give me back to myself, luck witch.”  Then he was walking away, back towards the elevator.

“What was that about?”  Her sister-in-law was puzzled and Neoma was looking from one adult to the other, confused.

“It’s complicated,” Mayin sighed.  “He sort of thinks he’s got a spell on him.”

“Then you’re supposed to kiss him to get rid of it,” declared Neoma.  “If he does the kissing it’s never going to work!  Hasn’t he ever read a fairy tale?”

Down the corridor the man paused and looked back over his shoulder.

I wrote this to aldersprig's first prompt.

“It’s my wedding and that’s what I want!”  Anna crossed her arms and stamped her foot.  It already had been such a long and difficult day that no-one pointed out to her how childish that was.  Anna didn’t want to relinquish any control of her wedding, even to a professional.

“Hibiscus and frangipani in winter,” the wedding planner Anna and Lissa’s mother had finally hired to take the burden of dealing with the bridezilla made a note.  “You do realise that if you pick something that’s in season then you’ll have more money for other things?”

“Daddy said he’ll pay for anything I want,” Anna pouted.

The wedding planner looked at Mrs Renfrew, mother of the bride-to-be, who simply nodded helplessly.

“So, frangipani and hibiscus then.”  The wedding planner made notes.  “Is that for the church, the tables and the bouquet?”

“Yes,” said Anna.

“Now you’ve already booked Kenstall Hall for the reception.  The ballroom I understand from your notes?”

“Yes,” beamed Anna.  “I’ve settled the menu with them but I don’t have a DJ yet.”

“What is the menu?”  The wedding planner had her pen poised over her notes.

“Asian-style prawn cocktail, followed by gluten-free chicken cacciatore and a pavlova with cream and fruit for dessert.”  Anna added as an afterthought, “I thought that the table settings could have those large cloth napkins people tuck into their necklines to protect their clothes from the sauce.”

“That’s a good idea,” murmured the planner making a note.

Mrs Renfrew cut across her, protesting, “But you need to have a vegetarian option for your Aunty Neala and her family!  I keep telling you-”

“Mummy, gluten free looks after everyone we’re asking who has a food related medical condition.”  Anna pouted again.  “Aunty Neala has spent years serving up inedible concoctions and telling me to eat up because that’s all there was.  Now she can have a dose of her own medicine.  At least we know the mushrooms in the cacciatore won’t be toadstools – she almost killed Lissa that one time.”  Anna flashed a genuine smile at her sister sitting quietly out of the line of fire.  She turned back to the wedding planner, “Oh, and my cousin Maide will probably want her children to sit with her so she can make sure they stick to the eating plan she has them on – we’ll put her at the children’s table.”

Mrs Renfrew realised something, “Frangipani, no vegetarian option, Maide.  Anna, are you doing this to get back of people?”

Anna was astonished.  “Of course I am, Mummy.  I imagine the frangipani will make Aunt Estelle sneeze for hours.  I’m the bride and they can do what I want for once.  Which reminds me,” she turned to her sister, “I’m sorry to do this to you, Lissa, but as Gloria insists on being a bridesmaid I’m going to put you all in puce.”

“Puce?”  Lissa looked bemused.  “She’ll be furious!”

Anna smiled.  “Good.”

The Prompt Request is now closed.  The Prompt Request is open from now (Saturday, 1 September, my time) until sometime Sunday, 9 September, my time.  I was going to put this up last night so it could be an August Prompt call but I fell asleep instead, ah well.

Anyway, if you give me more than one prompt you need to know that I will work through the list in order starting at the top.

The rules and parameters:

1.      Each prompt will be:

a.       a short sentence or phrase;

b.      a story of mine posted to LJ you want to see more of – it does not need to come from a Prompt Request; or

c.       characters of mine from stories posted on LJ – they do not need to come from a Prompt Request.

2.      For each prompt I write to I will write 300±50 words.  If you want to see something I’ve done along these lines before, please see the results of my April and June Prompt Requests.  I have found that stories sometimes carry me away and you may get more than 350 words due to no fault of yours.

3.      I will write one prompt per person, unless you signal boost this Prompt Request or a story from it , in which case I will write an additional prompt per site/platform you boost on i.e. one prompt each on LJ, Twitter, Dreamwidth, etc, for each day of the prompt request you signal boost.  I am setting an arbitrary limit of 14 extra prompts per prompter from boosting.  You will need to tell me about your boosts because I am not across every site and platform.

4.      For each prompter I get, I will write 50 words in a prompting reward serial story;

5.      No fanfic, I just don’t know enough about enough current series and settings to do your favourites justice – give me a name or names and I promise what you get will not be the people you know and love; and

6.      Please, nothing that has to be porn – I have to be in the mood to write that sort of thing and I would like to be able to post these stories without warnings.  (Yes, I know, 1b & 1c could produce prompts that are almost like that.)

7.      For every ten prompt-based pieces I write I will I write a background piece on a world or character, subject to be chosen by audience poll.

Why am I doing this?  Practice!  Plus I’ve found that I enjoy the interaction with all of you.

And yes, there is a tip jar.  This is for extensions.  I will write extensions at 500 words per $5.00.

       1.      If I receive any money for extensions I can no longer be flabbergasted because that’s   already  happened but I will be very surprised. J

2.      For every $15 I receive for paid extensions I will write to one more prompt, chosen by those who have paid for extensions, from any ‘unsupported’ prompts received in the Prompt Request.  This will occur after I have written the paid extensions.  An ‘unsupported’ prompt is one which does not have a signal boost to support it.

If you are kind enough to give me more signal boosts than you want to prompt, I will use each of your ‘left over’ signal boosts to power another 50 words in the prompt reward story.

Please tell me where you’ve signal boosted as a reply to your comment giving me prompts.

Thank you for participating.

Prompt Extensions

100 words $1.00 AUD200 words $2.00 AUD300 words $3.00 AUD400 words $4.00 AUD500 words $5.00 AUD600 words $6.00 AUD700 words $7.00 AUD800 words $8.00 AUD900 words $9.00 AUD1000 words $10.00 AUD