Tag: more odds than ends (Page 2 of 20)

“It’s in here somewhere,” June muttered. “I can feel it.”

Halima dangled her keys from one slender finger and gave them a jingly bounce. “I use a filing system, personally, but s’pose magical instinct is also an option.”

Peter ran a hand through his hair, knocking his computer glasses askew from where he’d forgotten them on his head. “I thought you didn’t have this room sorted yet?”

“Details,” Halima answered airily, and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. “And you’re not supposed to be in the restricted section at all.”

June bit her lip. “Well, he does work at Paladin University now. A contract counts, right?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the archivist said with a wink. “I have to run to a meeting. Good luck. Don’t set anything on fire again while I’m gone.”

“That was you,” June protested, but Halima was already gone.

Peter wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Aye,” he agreed. “But at least she can joke about it now.”

“Fair point.”

He let her go and walked toward several aisles stuffed full of boxes, books, and scattered parchment. “And she had one about magical intuition.”

June propped a hand on her hip and leaned against a precariously balanced metal shelf that rested on a torn physics textbook cover. “You think you can find it in this mess?”

Peter scanned back and forth, then headed down one of the aisles without answering.

She started to follow, then scrambled backward.

He gave her a sheepish smile. “We used to do magical finding charms at the embassy library. I grew up going to work with Dad on occasion. Got pretty good at it as a kid.”

She grinned and stuffed her hands in her blazer pockets. “You’re out of practice.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He turned on his heel and entered the next aisle, pulling a leather-covered book with embossed designs from it. “This is what you’re seeking, a chroí.”

She ran her fingers over the proffered text’s cover. “Wow. So how accurate is this charm?”

Peter plucked the book from her loose grasp and headed for the reading table. He balanced the book on its spine and let it fall open. “Sleep paralysis with terrifying dreams?”

“Yeah.” She peered over his shoulder and studied the woodcut image. “The bakhtak. A type of night hag. Description sounds right, though I’m not sure how it’s contagious. You think the image there is accurate?”

He nodded, his scruff brushing her cheek. “Though we’ll still have to figure out how nightmares are becoming contagious.”

***

A slight variant on Padre’s prompt this week: He found the book he was looking for, the one about…

My prompt went to Leigh: The song was lost to her now, but it had been wild and free and fey, with a hint of growing madness.

Check out more over at MOTE!

“That antelope is acting a little weird,” Aria said, resting her arm on the open window frame. The car was covered with pink dust from the Badlands, but she’d wiped it off two days ago when the buffalo herd had galloped past. “Antsy. You think a storm’s coming?”

Jad barely moved his head from where he was answering a work text. “Sun’s out.”

“Not over there.” She studied the shades of yellow and brown grasses with roots touched with a hint of green, deep black Ponderosa pines scattered in clumps across the landscape.

A prairie dog unblinkingly studied her with shining eyes while steadily devouring a flower, shoving the plant inside its mouth before cheeping a warning and darting inside his burrow.

“Smells like honey wheat bread,” she murmured. “And those are definitely storm clouds.”

This time Jad put the phone on his lap and poked his head out his own window. “Bright blue sky, occasional puffy clouds.”

“And on this side,” Aria said, “a wall of dark, ominous, deepening grey almost touching the ground, quickly shading to black.”

“What?” Jad tossed his phone into the car’s console. “A prairie storm? For real?”

“And rapidly approaching.” Aria rolled up her window, wincing at the taste of recycled air. She hit the gas, looking for a place to pull off the road rather than their casual stop in the middle of the path. “No shelter.”

Rain started in hard, fat drops, bigger than she’d ever seen before, taking the summer heat with it. Jad hit the button for his own window as the auto-wipers kicked on.

Aria pulled off the main road just as thunder and lightning split the sky. Rain pounded down, quickly turning to hail with a steady tink. She turned the wipers off.

“Wow,” Jad said in a hushed tone. “Impressive. That lightning…”

“Gorgeous,” she agreed, then screamed as hail pounded the vehicle. It shuddered from the impact, sounding like thunder that didn’t stop. She cut herself off and gave her husband a shaky grin. “Really coming down.”

“What?” He was shouting, and she could barely hear him. Slushy hail slammed against the windshield, rattling the car like a snare drum, a dot of dark impact bursting into formless water rivulets before melting into an opaque grey slush. “This’ll leave a few dents.”

“I know we talked about moving here, but I don’t know if I can get used to this,” she shouted back. “Is this normal?”

The storm passed after about ten minutes, leaving her ears ringing from the silence and a rapidly melting dusting of snow and ice underneath the trees.

He let out a shaky laugh. “That was intense.”

“Just weather,” said a prairie dog from the backseat, dancing futilely on the window buttons without effect. “That was a wild one, eh? The burrow’s under renovation. Appreciate you letting me stick it out with you two.”

Jad’s eyes were wider than the Montana sky. “Did…did I get a concussion?”

The prairie dog stuffed a flower in his mouth. “Thanks for the lift, but if you wouldn’t mind getting the door, please? You’re both kinda twitchy about the weather. Maybe you shouldn’t move here after all.”

***

Thanks to Padre and a storm at Wind Cave National Park for the inspiration for this one! My prompt went to Becky, who’ll explore a cursed vintage…check it and more out over at MOTE!

“The spinach emailed,” Kate said as soon as she heard footsteps. She didn’t look up from her microscope. “They want watering.”

“Do they now.” The voice was amused.

She froze, reassessing the footsteps as she played back the memory. Those weren’t sneakers…there was only one meeting today, and never mind what time she thought it was, he was either early or she’d lost track of time again. “You’re not the intern.”

“I am not,” the voice agreed.

Kate rolled her stool backward and stood, extending a hand to the man she’d been avoiding. Other than his holoimage, of course, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “Sir. Welcome to the greenhouse. My apologies for the initial greeting.”

Jonathan Tailles was even taller than he’d looked at the colony planning meetings, or on the vid she found an excuse to pause while it was on his face. He wore the suit —and its accompanying dress shoes—easily, with strong hands with enough calluses to show he’d done his field time to get where he was today.

“Actually, I’d like the tour, if you have a few moments, and to hear more about the chatty spinach. Can we still eat it, or will we have ethical issues?”

“The plants tell us what they need based upon the strength of their signals, but it’s all electrical. They’re not sentient.”

She gave her station a sad glance, wishing she’d been prepared to emulate the cool, confident scientist like she’d practiced in the safety of her office. They headed toward the back, where greenery overflowed. Messily, she privately thought; she preferred her samples pressed between panes of glass and cellular. But she couldn’t tell him that.

“Messy, isn’t it?” he commented. “All this greenery – and we’ll need a way to trim plants back as bits die off. Can’t eat everything, no matter how long the trip is.”

She spared half a second to wonder if he’d had the neurochip upgrade to parse her brainwaves, then decided it didn’t matter. “Well, we made some upgrades there, too. Even the stems and vines of most plants in here are edible.”

“Hmm.” He poked a deep purple tomato. “How’s the taste? Tomato stalks are rather astringent, aren’t they?”

She tilted a shoulder down and winced. “Er…we’re still working on the aversion factor. It’s improved. But the rabbits still won’t eat them.”

“I’m sure we don’t want to make it overly attractive, even with containment.” He spun his hand over the spinach, batting the leaves gently.

Her phone pinged. “Excuse me. That’d be them again.” Kate cleared the alert, checked the desired hydration, and lifted her head to find him staring. “Um…hi.”

She broke the gaze, ducked her head, and reached for a water bottle with a spray attachment without looking, only to find her wrist caught. Her heart beat faster in response to his warm grip.

“They can alert?”

She nodded. “We turn it off before harvest. It’s not a pain signal, just information, but, well, this is unscientific, but it’s weird psychologically. No one likes it. Too much anthropomorphism, probably, after all the communication.”

“But they can alert.” He swooped closer, this time grabbing her around the waist, and swung her wildly around the greenhouse. An orchid chittered angrily from the rush of air as her foot swung too close, and her lab coat slipped off a shoulder.

She might have squeaked, but otherwise stared at him breathlessly. For a moment, his lips seemed close enough she questioned his intentions as well as her sanity.

“Dr. Irait — Kate — you just saved this colony.” Deep brown eyes tugged at her own.

She found her voice from where it had landed underneath her nice, safe microscope. “I don’t understand.”

“The latest sat photos show signs of heavy predator life. Get your intern up to speed, I’ll toss more bodies your way, and then I want you focusing on defensive plants. Venus fly traps, pitcher plants, ivy, bamboo. Hell, kudzu.”

“You want a separate, non-edible lab?”

“Exactly. Anything that will grow fast enough to defend a wide area and let us know when something’s trying to get in. But I don’t want my food fighting back.”

“Of course.” Or trapping the colony inside. Her mind started racing, staring at the broken ceiling tile without conscious thought.

” We won’t have enough people to defend everything.” Jonathan’s words interrupted her train of thought. “Biotech is the only solution we haven’t tried yet.”

“That’s why you’re here.” Something broke liquidly inside to know it was just business, though her starched lab coat professional side beamed with glee. That’d show those hoity-toity engineers!

He nodded. “That, and to see the one colony member I’d somehow yet to meet.” Jonathan gave a crooked smile and held out his hand. “I thought we might get along.”

She slipped her fingers into his, hesitant.

“Now, tell me about these electric butterflies.” He gestured to the tiny blue fluttering creatures, no bigger than one of those old pennies that still turned up on occasion.

“Pretty to study,” Kate answered, and nearly swallowed her tongue as he caressed her palm. “We thought maybe they’d work well as gifts, but probably won’t want them flying about on the ship. They’re terrible pollinators, as it turns out. We’re still working on it.”

“Perhaps a refocus. Maybe to have them swarm, say, a wiring fault, before sparks start flying.”

The rest of the time passed in a blur of banter and science. For once, the fieldwork came alive for Kate. Laughter, the way she’d felt about roots and shoots when she was a naïve undergrad, before science had become shadowed, filled with databases and hiding behind lenses.

After he left, trailing a hand against her cheek and promising to visit her new defensive lab as soon as she’d gotten established, she couldn’t help a shiver. The microscope couldn’t determine whether she’d been manipulated.

But maybe the spinach could.

***

This week, Kat and I shared electric butterflies, while I sent prairie dogs over to Becky. Check them all out over at MOTE!

He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so tired, but Pablo stared at the ceiling without seeing its white swirls or even that annoying dark spot he kept forgetting to repaint.

The morning light didn’t tempt him where it peeked around the blackout curtains that weren’t, nor did the chipper turquoise birds that reminded him he was being lazy.

It wasn’t the war, he decided, twisting the sheet in his fingers. It wasn’t even the loss of friend after family member after close friend. Nor was it his job, or the plague exposure, or even the wildfire smoke that tickled his throat with a constant albeit faint rasp.

No, he decided. It was all of that, combined. An endless barrage of Some Resiliency Required was wearing him thin, that was all.

And perhaps it would be enough to get some rest. There wasn’t anything he needed to do today, after all – it was only the usual, and though it compounded, he could catch up tomorrow.

“All right, guys, it’s time to go!”

The cheerful words shook him out of his stupor. Pablo found himself standing barefoot and trembling on the wooden floor, still clutching the sheet and wondering what miracle had brought his mother’s words back to life.

A turquoise bird poked at the gap between the curtains and trilled enthusiastically at him while tears poured from his eyes.

No, it didn’t matter what magic had been wrought, or if it had only been but a half-dream, a fugue of sleepless memory. Pablo bade his mother a wistful goodbye, and turned to face the sunlight once more.

In memory of Mary Ann.

***

This week, Padre unknowingly provided the perfect prompt: He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so tired, but…

Mine went to AC Young: “I said put out the freebies, not free bees!”

Check them all out over at MOTE.

“Two weeks,” William repeated with disbelief. “I lost two weeks.”

Erin kept trudging through the morass of dead fake-leaves, kicking half-rotted clumps as she went. “Yeah, well, like I said.”

“And all you’ve done is make up for losses this past week.”

“Yes,” she snapped icily. “Because I was handling the colony by myself. Which you know. Because you went into the woods, alone, and got slimed.”

“Are you blaming me for getting frozen into a statute for two solid weeks?” The disbelief was evident in his voice, which rose in both pitch and volume until it echoed through the forest.

One of the younger guards turned around to glare before an older man with similar features but a better beard – his brother, most likely – cuffed him on the shoulder.

Erin felt a wash of relief that William hadn’t seen the breach in discipline and promptly started questioning her judgment in awakening him at all.

“I’m saying the rhodira, the damn colony leader, the person in charge, should know better than to wander off alone without leaving so much as a note,” she hissed. “We finally had a break in the weather long enough to get you, and the camp’s undermanned, because the harvest isn’t in yet.”

He puffed up his chest. “I was awake after being slimed, you know. Stunned, then frozen in place, but alive! I could feel everything.”

She stopped kicking the debris and turned around slowly, sensing the guards’ fanning out to surround the pair. The young newbie edged behind William, carefully two paces from the surrounding men.

“You. You did this on purpose. Knowing you’d get slimed. Timed for good weather, so you wouldn’t suffer.”

“Well,” he blustered. “A leader has to know how to show empathy. What better way than to experience getting eaten by a giant slug and turned into a statue for myself?”

“The balls,” she spat. “The sheer nerve to waste effort and resources on propping up your ego.”

The guard behind William coughed gently, leaning forward on his spear. “What is your will, rhodira?“

“To go home, obviously.”

“I’m afraid I was speaking to the rhodira, Goodman William.”

She accepted the teen’s audacity this time, grinning without mirth. And with teeth.

***

This week’s prompt was possible with the generosity of Leigh Kimmel: All we did this week was make up for the past two week’s losses.

My prompt went to Padre, with raining dragonlets. Check it out over at MOTE!

“No, no, no,” Ali said to her daughter, and deposited the enormous box of sausages from the bulk store into her husband’s waiting arms. She tugged a box of ice cream sandwiches out of the hatchback’s stuffed trunk. “You get one. Only one.”

“Okay,” said Bethie eagerly, and reached up for the box. “Can I eat it on the way to the freezer?”

“Only if you tell me why you don’t tell someone when you’re going to end the siege when you show up.”

“Because they’ll just wait you out. It’s like you’re giving them hope.”

Bethie recited the words dutifully, but Ali wasn’t convinced.

“We’ll role play that one tonight,” she decided. “If there’s a situation where a six day siege would succeed, we’ll find it. We can start while we’re restocking the basement storage.” They’d also run through all the scenarios where it wouldn’t work. “Do you see Wulfy’s food?”

“Can I feed him?” Bethie’s brown eyes gleamed with excitement.

“No ice cream for the porcupine,” Ali reminded her.

“I know, Mom. Seeds, lettuce, an’, um, berries.”

Ali high-fived her daughter. “How about you wait on your treat? I’ll carry the lettuce for you and Dad can get the rest while we make sure Wulfy’s not hungry.”

“I don’t want him to get hangry,” Bethie said with great solemnity, and tugged at a carton of blackberries bigger than her head.

“Good.” As they walked down a tunnel of Osage orange trees with arms full of porcupine snacks, Ali eyed the yard’s living defenses. Berms of packed earth were hidden by hedgerows, while thorny rosebushes boosted the defenses at the edges of the yard.

Tubs of blooming belladonna interspersed the yard with purple bursts of flowers spilling their bells over wood and grass alike. She gave a quick smile to note the honeybee buzzing along. It was worth the loss of useable honey on this acreage to obtain an innocuous poison.

The moat was the real defense, but the driveway partially negated it, despite the gate and bridge. Plus, the edges were prone to crumbling without constant restoration. Hence their overlarge hedgehog.

“You think Wulfy will be in his usual corner?”

“Yes,” said Bethie, with the confidence of a seven-year-old with a pet porcupine. “His den is awesome. I decorated it last week —”

“Not glitter!” burst Ali. She nearly dropped the birdseed.

“Nooooo.” A giggle emerged from behind the blackberries. “I made him a a blanket.”

“Bethie, honey…” She took a good look at the den. “It’s a lovely blanket, but I think it might be stuck on Wulfy’s quills.”

***

Thanks to Becky for the rosebushes prompt! And don’t forget to see what AC hath wrought with a festival gone awry over at MOTE.

Izz panted into her spacesuit, hoping the humidity wouldn’t fog her viewport. “Greaves? We good?”

“Breathable air,” her sentient ship confirmed from where the AI and its host hovered, only noticeable as a steadily moving speck across the daylight sky. “I’ve accessed the colony records. Idiots.”

She coughed, and left her hands hovering over the disconnecting spiral, ready to twist her helmet into oblivion. After six months of harboring an illegal AI and the headaches her ship brought, Izz thought she understood why the ban existed. “Tell me more?”

“No predators,” Greaves said with derision. “They just didn’t bring enough supplies. Fled for another planet before the last five died of starvation, but they died en route and never showed. Probably because they’d killed off all their pilots.”

“Um.” The AI’s ruthlessness sometimes scared her. “You mean they starved, right?”

“That ship’s still out there, if we want to search for it. 500-plus years adrift. Bet I can find it.”

“What, they didn’t auto-pilot?” The response was muffled as she struggled out of the protective suit. Izz popped the earbug back into place. “Say again?”

“The colony comprised an anti-technology sect,” Greaves said primly. “Only used the spaceship to get here and back. No pesticides, no genetically modified seeds, just living off the land without a backup plan. The comms with the other colony made it sound uninhabitable, so no one came to pick up what was left behind. Then the other colony failed, and everyone forgot.”

“Wow.” Izz shook her head. “Should be lots to find, then.” She could have sworn the AI was humming with satisfaction. “Don’t gloat.”

“I told you I could increase your profits by analyzing the archives.”

Izz grimaced. “We’ll see.” She slung her helmet to the strap crossing her chest but left the heavy suit alone. “Might’ve been too long. You never know.”

Ten minutes later, she was trying to figure out how to manage a space tow for the forty ships slowly aging in port. “You’re sure the hull integrity is intact?”

“Yes,” Greaves snapped. “As I said, the hangar was hermetically sealed. They wanted to make sure no one could leave.”

“We can tow all of them,” Greaves wheedled.

She snorted. “Until we get into port. Besides, I don’t have enough fuel for that many trips through atmo.”

The ship sulked. “Solid-state fuel should still be fine. I can hack in and pilot. It’s a big score! Why are you being so recalcitrant?”

“Because I want to look successful, not like a flying target for pirates while I tow a convoy,” Izz said drily. “I get it. The chances of someone else following our trail increase with every trip. But your fancy flying doesn’t work with more than a single tow, and we’re not set for weapons until we cash out.”

“Mew.”

“Er. Say again, G?”

A creature with enormous ears nosed at her boots with a quiet nudge. “Mew?”

“What are you, cutie?” The wildlife hadn’t spooked at the sight of Izz, with only a single fluffy pink poofball objecting to her shuttle. She’d initially thought it was a spore, but now suspected a type of bird.

This creature, though, was multicolored with short fur, enormous whiskers, and plaintive eyes that matched its repeated cry. She didn’t reach down, even though she still wore her puncture-resistant gloves.

“That’s a kut,” Greaves said confidently. “Oh. I mean, a cat. The pronunciation isn’t what I thought. Funny, that. Cats didn’t make it into space. The fur sheds, apparently.” A pause. “Except for those two colonies.”

Izz studied the creature reach for her bootlace with a clawed paw, throwing its whole body into pouncing before rolling into a ball. “Maybe this was an anti-tech group’s idea of pest control.”

“Respect,” Greaves said, sounding anything but. “That’s exactly why.”

“Wasn’t the Cogtop port having a pest control issue? Enough that they’d look past a bit of fur in the filter?” Izz felt her fingers twitch.

“They’re also traditionally companions,” the AI intoned. “When not feral, which these certainly are. The pest control aspect is an excellent and profitable idea, however.”

“These? Plural?” Izz jerked her head up and studied the door to the docks. “Oh. Oh, my.”

At least two dozen sets of yellow-green eyes were watching her.

“Greaves,” she whispered. “I think they understand, somehow.”

The AI was silent for a few moments. “Think you can get them in the shuttle while you load up one of these ships with the artifacts?”

She paled. “They just headed for my shuttle. All of them. Together.”

The rest of the day passed in a blur, and Izz had no idea what measure of antique electronics and collectibles she’d packed away in the hold. “This had better work.”

Greaves didn’t answer.

Nothing could have made Izz move faster.

By the time she finished securing the ancient ship to her own hitch and inched her way over to the airlock, it was nearly an hour later. She was sweaty, exhausted, and grateful the creatures filling her hold as extra trade goods hadn’t managed to take off with her salvager.

The airlock opened to reveal a pile of electronic giggles and swirling fur. “Look, Izz! They like the treats!”

A piece of hard cheese popped out of an air vent and launched into the pile of wrangling cats, sparking another series of mews and scrabbling paws. “I bet I can train them by the time we get to port!”

***
I meandered with this, and it didn’t quite go where I thought, but that’s okay. Thanks to Cedar for the prompt, and for all of y’all bearing with my absence over a family thing, and I can’t wait to see what Padre does with a stolen turtle! Check out more over at MOTE, and don’t forget there’ll be new prompts posted tomorrow. Cheers!

Professor Hapburn leaned over the moat and gave a shrill whistle. Ignoring Mikhail’s wince, he kept his eyes on the water for several minutes.

“What are we waiting for?” Mikhail finally asked. He shuffled his worn sneakers in the grass. “Maybe they aren’t interested.”

The magical zoology professor snorted. “As if we’d go the effort of refilling the moat and put in some careless critters to watch over it. They’re merely observing before coming in.”

“Observing what?” Professor Hapburn wasn’t necessarily the most coherent of his instructors. Sometimes he left information out, vital information that would help, say, avoid being set on fire by a suncat in heat, or stabbed by an angry unicorn that didn’t appreciate her football time being interrupted.

Mikhail tried to think of those incidents as learning experiences rather than life-threatening.

“You, of course. He knows me already.”

“Wait, why—”

“There,” said Hapburn, pointing. “You see those ripples?”

The ripples were increasing in height and speed, racing toward the pair. A blue-green scaled monstrosity with tentacles coming out of its face splashed stagnant water everywhere, soaking both of them.

Mikhail gagged, backing away from the moat creature’s seeking muzzle. He tripped and sprawled backward onto the grass.

Coughing, Professor Hapburn wheezed. “Well, now you know why dragons haven’t become more popular as pets, eh, boy? Stagnant swamp water.”

Dragon? Mikhail raised his head and met faceted eyes of deep sapphire, then realized what he’d thought were tentacles were rubbery whiskers. “You’re a real dragon?”

“Of course,” answered the gleaming creature in a Cornish accent. “I’m Kerensa. I’ve been watching you.”

“Er…hi.” He swallowed several times rapidly, wondering whether he’d passed muster — and why Professor Hapburn hadn’t mentioned the dragon could talk. “Water dragon, of course. I hope you find the moat pleasing after having moved in?”

***

This week, a snippet excised from something I’m working on, inspired by AC Young. My prompt went to Leigh Kimmel. It was dragon-themed over at MOTE – a free dragon scale to the first ten people who go check out the fun!*

*Delivery delayed until I find and befriend a dragon well enough to ask for ten of its scales without being eaten. Delivery will not occur if the author is gnawed upon, incinerated, or otherwise incapacitated during all reasonable dragon befriendment and scale-gathering attempts.

“The humans won’t know what hit them,” said the man in the white t-shirt. His laughter wheezed in the barren room with metal chairs and table. “Did you see the doozies they came up with last time? And that was barely a test run!”

“Brilliant,” said his companion, wiping his tears with a red bandana before tucking it carefully into his back pocket. “Sheer brilliance. And here I was wondering why you were waiting to take out their food supply.”

The man in white gave another wheezing chuckle. “It’s been in the works for years.”

“I admit, I had no idea you could be so subtle.” He raised an eyebrow until it nearly merged with his bald scalp.

“Learned from the best,” said the pale man laconically. “And that wasn’t you.”

“It was a most excellent partnership,” said the man in black, so softly the others leaned in to catch his whispers despite the room’s echoes. “I expect it will be quite productive, given enough time.”

Bandana man let out a snort. “Well, they’ll be fighting over resources soon enough. I don’t need to be subtle to get results.”

The man in pale grey waved a palm, and glasses filled with a deep amber liquid appeared on the dented metal table. He raised his pint, then stared at the others until they did the same. “To a bloody war, and a sickly season!”

***
Well, I had an idea for Padre’s prompt that was slightly less morbid, but that was last week, and it escaped before I snatched it out of the air. Then again, my prompt to nother Mike about hiring assassins at the farmer’s market was also a little dark. Check it out (and more) over at MOTE!