Me: Overjoyed that I trained my brain enough to write 1500 new words for a novel proposal the only 2 hours I had available this week.
#iamwriting
I decided to really plow through the Fairytale today and finished Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and almost Chapter 7 too. (: But now I am getting hungry again, so it is time to leave this to a bit of a cliffhanger. :P
Tails of Lady Miller's Catgirl Trust
Flashback 4 - The Seventeen Catgirls
She opened her eyes. The room was filled with wisps of smoke and smelt slightly of lightning and sulphur.
Turning her head, she could see other figures lying in a circle, also starting to move. She struggled up and sat. She looked down at herself. Patches of black, white and orange fur covered her body, and her knees bent strangely. She reached up, and felt furry ears on the top of her head.
Looking across, she could now see that all the other figures were like her. Fur, strange legs, fuzzy ears, long stiff whiskers, furless faces, and slightly protruding mouths.
Then she noticed the shoes in the middle of the circle of awakening figures. A pair of Doc Martin platforms. One was upright, and the other fallen on its side. That was where the smoke was coming from. There were scorch marks all around them.
For some reason the shoes made her feel sad.
She struggled to her feet. swayed a little, and then her tail balanced her.
In a voice that had a distinct buzz to it she asked "Where are we?"
From the far side came a similarly rough reply from a blue furred girl "Never mind that - who are we?"
That stopped her. Who was she? There was a fleeting sense of something, but it was lost even as she thought of it. "I don't know. But I must be someone. And there was someone else here too. The shoes."
The other girl now looked at the shoes, and sniffled. "Why am I sad about a pair of shoes?" she asked.
The other fourteen figures now spoke, the words jumbling over and under each other. None of them knew who they were, or why the shoes should cause such a profound sense of loss.
She looked around the room again, and saw a hole in the wall behind her. She looked through and saw another figure there. Also covered in fur. It groaned.
She dove through the hole, and dragged the seventeenth girl out. She was covered in ash and soot, except for her feet. She hugged her as everyone cheered.
Then the door opened, and two other figures with pointed furry ears stepped in.
"Looks like some sort of summoning circle, Twilly."
"It does. It must have been quite something to echo so hard in our own world, Ai" was the cultured reply followed by, "Excuse me, can anyone tell me what happened here?"
There was a rush of confused voices. Twilly held up a hand "Alright, thank-you. Come along, all of you. Let's get you somewhere a bit more comfortable," and walked out again.
She helped the soot-covered one along, and the one called Ai guided them through a glowing doorway on the stairs. They emerged into a beautiful ballroom. Two others waited for them.
"How many Miss?" one called.
"Six, no seventeen Uma. One injured."
"Memories?"
"No."
The one named Uma made a note on a clipboard.
There was a flash and a boom that cut off as the glowing door vanished behind Ai. Her arms were smoking.
#tootfic #SF #SFF #SciFi #Catgirls #microfiction #microfic #IAmWriting
Again, for @ami_angelwings
Chapter 5 is halfway done, and now axes are being wielded in very scary and magical way. (:
Would you chop thousands of years old trees just to lug a giant cage to a center of a grove that is probably older than your species just to fullfill a request?
My characters are fucking around and finding out while I need to go do dishes and cook sumthing.
#IAmWriting #Writing #Fantasy #GrimDarkFantasy #Fairytale #Magic #AllegoryForHumansBad? #WIP
Fairytale chapter 4 finished and a very strange Knight has entered the chat. :D
In school I was always the weird one. The one just on the outside. Even my best friends thought I was a little 'off'. Especially after I turned twelve.
Not for the sorts of reasons you are thinking.
No, in my case it was for knowing stuff I should not have known. Talking to the air. And, occasionally, having a D&M with a bird.
I know I got it from my Mum, although it skipped her generation. Gran filled me in on what I needed to know. Never mind that she'd died when I was three. Yeah, I could see and speak with spirits. Not just dead folks - in fact it was rarely dead folks. More often it was the local spirits - the genus loci - who talked to me. Gran moved on when I was sixteen. Said that I'd learned enough, and that it was time. She had a laugh when I told her I was going full goth if she did. Told me to go for it, and shock my parents, scare my kid brother, and generally own it.
So I did. I went full goth mode for five solid years. I had a ball.
Then I met Les. Leslie was so god-awfully straight-arrow. Pressed shirts, ties, the whole bit. But he could dance like nobody's business and argue the pros and cons of Depeche Mode vs Modern English until 3am.
We married a year later. I had a daughter. And the spirits stopped.
I knew what it meant. That Erika would be seeing them next.
So, when she was about ten, I started explaining about them.
Then a year ago, when she was sixteen, she called me from school crying and said that I had to be strong.
She hung up before I could ask anything, and then the doorbell rang.
It was the police. Leslie was dead, killed in a car crash with a meth addict. The other driver was unharmed. Of course.
What happened next shocked me. Nothing Gran had said prepared me for seeing Les walk up to me. And for me to see all the other spirits around our house following him. My ability was back. All it took was the death of my husband. He did not stay long, just enough to say goodbye to me. As he had done with Erika at the school.
One of the local bird spirits landed next to me a few months later, changing to take the form of a dark haired lady. She said that she missed Les as well. He'd always taken time to talk to the ravens.
Then she touched my arm.
At first I thought it meant that I had died. Then she explained that my loss allowed me to touch the spirit world. She kissed my forehead, and told me that I was not the only one.
The gate to the garden opened, and I watched Erika walk in, hand-in-hand with a girl with black, white, and yellow hair in a most striking pattern.
We looked at each other. Then I said "You too?"
So my daughter is dating a honeyeater spirit. And I'm in the kitchen baking with Raven.
I'll always miss Les, but I've still got a family. As weird as it is.
#UrbanFantasy #SF #SFF #microfiction #tootfic #microfic #IAmWriting
The director leaned over the near-naked actress seated on the stage and growled at her "Why are you not swaying, the script says you are to sway! Now! Sway!"
Phillipa looked up with her eyes, unwilling to move her head. The headdress of crystal feathers felt like it was going to topple off with the slightest movement.
"But, but if I move this whole headdress is going to fall off me! You said it was irreplaceable!"
"The scene calls for you to be swaying, not sitting like a statue!"
Phillipa opened her mouth again. And closed it. In that moment, a sense of clarity - possibly even enlightenment - came over her.
"Rachel?" she called out to the camera operator "Are we rolling?"
"You bet, darling! For the last ten minutes" came the reply.
"Matt? Is sound good?" Phillipa asked.
"All OK."
"Alright then. Please step back, sir."
The director stepped out of frame.
Phillipa started to gently sway. She felt the headdress start to slip, but allowed herself to get lost in her own movement.
The headdress slid off her head, and smashed upon the floor in a cloud of crystal fragments, utterly destroyed in a second.
"CUT!" the director yelled "You idiot girl! That headdress was one of a kind! It was worth a thousand of you! I'll make sure you never work in Hollywood ever again."
Phillipa smiled beatifically "Rachel, darling, have you got all that? Matt, do you?"
"Yes, dear." "Sure do!"
"Please forward the rush of that scene to the producer, will you. Uncut, please."
"Done!"
"I think, director, that you will be the one not working. Rachel, darling, come and pick me up will, you? I don't want to cut myself."
The director stared, realising that he was doomed "I will finish you!" He started forward, hands curling claw like towards Phillipa's neck.
"Ooops!" grinned Rachel maliciously as she picked up Phillipa out of the pool of smashed crystal, "The camera is still running! Sorry!"
Outside the sound stage, a couple of workmen heard a scream of utter hopeless rage. The taller one looked over at his workmate "Really getting into it in there. Going to be a smash, I bet!"
#WritersCoffeeClub June 14: Talk about something you’re willing to endure in order to write.
Maybe I'm alone in this and that might just be because of my lifestyle, but I don't feel that I'm "enduring" anything (other than maybe the weird quirks of Libre Writer after 35 years of Microsoft Word).
I enjoy #writing, but that might be because I don't always write for publication. I enjoy getting my thoughts down on paper — or pixels, in the case of my blog. No hardship to endure.
2/2
It has been three years since other-me crashed on the Nullabor Plain next to my wrecked car. While they have retained all of their own memories, assuming my form also means they have a substrate of my memories. And feelings, likes, dislikes, and all the rest. They still want to be able to go home, but they also still want to be me now that they are me.
OK, look it is complicated, and let's leave it at that. Except to say that I, or rather we, have been through eight girlfriends since other-me arrived.
Jaana, our current girlfriend, is different.
Her reaction to seeing two of me was memorable. Her first reaction was to check our little fingers, and then the backs of our necks. I don't know how, but she figured out that we were not twins in seconds, and jumped immediately to duplicates. Once she knew which of us was the copy, she asked if they were fixing their ship.
Then she took off her top and turned around. Her back is hollow. Jaana says she's a metsähiisi - what the Norwegians call a huldra. She's also an electronic engineer. Just what other-me needed.
Between her and other-me, they have managed to achieve more in three months than the two of me managed in over two and half years.
Now they are both looking at me.
Jaana is easily the most talkative of the three of us. Ironic given she's Finnish. "We've fixed it. They can go home", she states.
"You're going too, aren't you?" I ask, knowing what the answer will be.
"We've updated the life support to handle humanish people. So yes."
"So you're both saying goodbye?"
"Only if that is what you want."
Other-me speaks "I know me. And you-me. Come. Please. All of us."
"But your people? And Jaana - your family?"
Jaana shakes her head "We are a solitary people amongst our own. I moved to Australia so I would not have to see my sisters or mother."
Other-me shrugs "Others of us have become single-forms it is not unheard of. You would be welcome."
"But I'm just a human. You will both outlive me."
"I became you. Why do you think I could not help you be like me?"
I look from one to the other. Jaana quietly says "Please."
I look around the apartment other-me and I share and bite my lip.
They hold out their hands.
I'm not going to second guess myself again. I take their hands, and they lead me out to the large shed other-me's ship is in.
When we step inside that I see there are three large backpacks sitting next to it.
Other-me grins nervously - an expression I've seen in the mirror a million times - "I hoped/knew you'd say yes. I've packed everything you'd want to come with us."
Inside, the ship is roomier that it had been, now that all the equipment hatches are closed.
"How long to get to your home?"
"A few days. But we might make some stops first."
Jaana hugs us both, "Road trip!" she yells.
#SF #SFF #SciFi #microfic #Microfiction #tootfic #IAmWriting