The fairy sipped her tea and smiled in appreciation. “I must say that you do know to provide a genteel refreshment. I do like that in a person.” Her purple lips, lipstick surely, were making a perfectly friendly shape. “Now it was curses you wanted to know about, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The hostess was a skinny girl with a multitude of large ( Read more... )

What royalty is, what it does and how that state is passed on varies from country to country and changes with time. It can also vanish. The last King of Jaille is better known today by the sobriquet, “The Father of the Republic” than by his reign name of PhillippeVI.

The Terrencian Emperor is the inheritor of a martial, patrilineal tradition that ( Read more... )

In response to the January prompt call, I wrote to twentyone prompts which now means that I owe you, the audience, two background pieces.  Who or what would you like to hear about?

What I wrote in response to your prompts was:

Landing pages;

So What Does That Mean?;

Paradigm Changer;

Unexpected Conversations;

Fairy Tale Aftermath;

Finding ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's 13th prompt "Rune/Solstice. How are her parents doing?"

“Constantine, do you think,” Dagmar rolled over in bed to speak to her consort, “that Rune and Franz will let the children stay with us sometimes?”

“Overnight? I can’t see why not. Why the question about our probably-not-yet-conceived grandchildren?” He rose up, ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's 12th prompt "The darkness we didn't expect."

We expected the monsters, we’d sent them here, after all. We expected the monsters to be pissed off that we’d followed them, or to be pleased that we’d come so they’d have victims again. We didn’t expect a warning buoy in orbit above the planet with a list of precautions. We didn’t ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's 11th prompt "When Fashions have to change to suit (ha) the world."  (I think the connection may be a little tenuous.)

“Why are we doing this?” Stella stared at the calendar planner in frustration.

“Because this is how we do getting married and to show all the people who do business with your father that he can afford to do these ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's tenth prompt "Waking up someone else."

She remembered feeling sick, running a fever, and stumbling out of bed to answer the door. She had a vague impression of opening the door to a posse of locals and then, nothing…

Well, she was in her own bed, that was a start. The curtains were open though, and she always slept with them ( Read more... )

I wrote this in response to aldersprig's ninth prompt "Nai again: why do they have such a big family?"

“No-one joins the public service to get rich,” Scholar Sung poured tea for his younger brother, “although they may do so for the pension. However, in this day and age it is not possible to obtain a suitable appointment solely on the basis of one’s ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's eighth prompt "The moon and what's wrong with it."

Sometime in the far future, when the seasons are stable and human civilisation has become capable of things Tarrascotti, Capalini and the others of their time could never imagine…

The space capsule was tiny on the inside. Weight was at a premium and that meant extra crew space ( Read more... )

I wrote this to aldersprig's seventh prompt "Nai's brother, and how her siblings are dealing with her vanishing."

Hu, with great deliberation, was considering his options. He should have been a better brother to Nai, he knew how to be a better brother, but somehow the opportunities had slipped passed unnoticed. It was one of the problems of working with a ( Read more... )