No promises on length.

[taennyn]

But hey. It's been a while since I did a sparks post, hasn't it. :)


Wild Roses:
ripple effect - Gideon; appears to be related to unexpected and unrefusable cargo 1

(interpret as liberally as you like) - early Crown Navy era, Ulysse and Lida

Putting one foot in front of another - Trickwood Unification, Ruadhan (appears to be in the period between arrangements and arguments [where Dón knows Ruadhan's into the woods but has no idea whatsoever exactly where he is], and when Ruadhan actually shows up in Hernén's demesnes and starts being his irritatingly noisy self all over the woods.)
figures emerging from mist - Trickwood Unification, Evescha and Ioann
A thin layer of ice on everything - Trickwood Unification, Ioann and Evescha
second verse, same as the first - Trickwood Unification, Ruadhan
swans - Trickwood Unification, Geoffrey, references unexpected and unrefusable cargo 2
"actually, that's their version of a friendly hello" - Trickwood Unification, unknown
bees in a glass jar - Some Kind of Love Song, 'Jack Gibson'
"I already gave you my decision" - Trickwood Unification, Jared and Hernén

=DDDD - Jonathan Sabaey and his Sense of Impending Doom

that godsdamned ticking - Alternate Earths, Yasha

-------

Witches' Horses:
"Don't write THAT down" - Sibir, Stas
loss of vision/sight - Sibir, Nadya
passing the bottle around the campfire - Sibir, Nadya
working on 72 hours without sleep - Sibir, Nadya

Blue glass - Chevalier de Grammont, Grammont and Sinclair

Untapped amber - Falcons' Feathers, Irina
no really it will fit - Falcons' Feathers, Khenbish

The kind of soup one can only get at home - Swallow's Tale, Taarstad
"what's the fuzzball chewing on now?" - Swallow's Tale, Helena and Sascha

--------

Deaths:
sparkling like water - The Morrigan
Clock tower - Julian De'Ath
Booby trap(s) - The Morrigan
insufficient resources - Deaths, Julian and Eduard De'Ath

-------

The Mummy Series:
the gravitational pull of bed - Mummy postscript, Evie Carnahan
"what is my life what are my choices" - Rick O'Connell
pie - Evie Carnahan and Rick O'Connell
"Why am I juggling magicians?" - Evie Carnahan, Rick O'Connell, Jonathan Carnahan

-------

Other:
OH GODS FINALLY - Unknown
tumbleweeds - Unknown

Comments

[recessional]

- working on 72 hours without sleep

- "what is my life what are my choices"

- the gravitational pull of bed

- OH GODS FINALLY

- swans

- pie

the gravitational pull of _bed_ - Mummy series, Evie

[taennyn]

Considering the circumstances, she's been sleeping beautifully.

Acknowledging the circumstances, even with the assistance of the Medjai--who have really been very generous considering she rather woke the boogeyman of their entire history and has been indirectly responsible for rather a lot of deaths in the last two weeks--she's been sleeping in the lee of a camel with a waterskin for a pillow, someone else's robe for a blanket, with a near-stranger sleeping (disconcertingly lightly) between her and the desert for almost a week.

(He's still got the sword. There had been an unpleasant fifteen seconds before they recognised one another the first night, when her bladder had made protests about the amount of coffee Ardeth Bey's fierce female cousins had pressed on her before they departed, and he'd woken at the sound of her sitting up to go and . . attempt to find a discreet bush.)

She wants to sleep in a bed so much the words are almost literally unspeakable, the yearning gravitational in its power.

If any of the riverboats have survived the rain of fire--please God let them have, Egypt needs her boats--she may even give away a piece of the Golden Room for a cabin to share.

pie - Mummy series, Evie and Rick

[taennyn]

"Oh, that wasn't me," she corrected, "I'm afraid I can make tea and pull together a passable array of tea sandwiches and cold sausages if I'm allowed access to a well-stocked kitchen, but baking and coffee are beyond my skills."

O'Connell blinked at her. "I could have sworn that was you who kept making half-decent coffee out in--"

She smiled, or tried to. "No, that was Jonathan. He only cooks if no-one's watching and it's obvious no-one else is planning to. I don't think he can bake--I suppose he might." She considered the idea. "If he can it's likely something like shepherd's pie? I've never had occasion to test the hypothesis, but I think he learnt in the War, and he won't talk about the War."

"Huh," O'Connell remarked. He rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "I guess that explains why the warden kept swearing about his coffee beans going missing."

She couldn't help the impish smile that spread across her face. "I'm sure the opportunity to stick it to that awful little man didn't hurt, no."

OH GODS FINALLY - ... unknown

[taennyn]

"HAH!"

Her startle was not guilty--even if she had just lost a complicated bet and been caught at it by the other half of the bet--just surprised by the noise from an unexpected direction.

She took a defiant swig. Her mouth sang the OH GODS FINALLY chorus.

Going an entire month without the use of either chilies or ginger had gotten slightly more difficult when the ingredients list of her favourite drinks was exposed.

The burning on her tongue tasted like winning, even if she was going to have to bake forever now.

swans - Trickwood Unification, Geoffrey

[taennyn]

(references unexpected and unrefusable cargo 2)

There were suddenly swans everywhere. Not just the real ones that had been brought in as livestock--and unabashed aggressive livestock guardians for the smaller waterfowl they shepherded around his holding ponds like cygnets--but carvings and paintings on the battered boats and boxes that had survived the run down river from the Baron Dunai. Wings, paddle-shaped feet, long curling necks, the shapes were everywhere, in many colours but mostly smoky greys and yellow ochres.

He was getting used to getting hissed at whenever he went out to check the holding ponds. It was no worse than the grumbling growls from Donel's wolves when he insisted on moving out of hearing range.

The embroidery was a lot more disconcerting than he'd expected.

Mostly, to be fair, because he'd expected the embroidery to stay confined to the clothing of the Matos and the Reis, the people who'd brought the swans and who owned the boats, and it hadn't.

The nameless pack who'd brought the Matos and the Reis to Hernén were growing wingéd, paddle-footed at their collarbones and feathered at their wrists, and the sight made him look twice every single time.

working on 72 hours without sleep - Sibir, Nadya

[taennyn]

Dr Olenko had ambushed Dr Shiusky ten minutes ago with an extremely adulterated tea for working on seventy-two hours without sleep. Nadya had provided the last dregs of her pot of strawberry jam to improve the bait.

SHe herself was well within reasonable limits and had the reflexes to prove it. Nightmares were nobody's friend and backlit looming shapes tended to get soldiers swinging before they thought.

They were always very apologetic afterwards, but better to dodge.

(They had an order in with the zastava's engineering department to do something about the lights, but God only knew when they'd get results.)

"what is my life what are my choices" - Mummy postscript, Rick

[taennyn]

He'd be asking himself how this was his life, but he was busy staring down the Director of the Cairo Museum over a sword that he'd stolen off the reanimated corpse of an ancient Egyptian priest. While fighting a whole gang of them. Just before he'd had the opportunity to fight the Director's ancestors--literally--with nothing but the sword in his hand and some luck.

This was his life, these were his choices. Seriously, he'd won that sword by right of combat, the Hell it was going on display in a glass case in a dusty museum.

[illian]

Booby trap(s)

"Don't write THAT down."

Blue glass

Untapped amber

"Why am I juggling magicians?"

"Don't write THAT down." - Sibir, Stas

[taennyn]

"No, no, don't write that down," Stas heard as he helped carry one of the new kids into the medsestras' station, and couldn't help craning his neck to see.

An off-duty nickel was trying to fish the tablet right out of the hands of the girl doing intake notes, and was going to get his knuckles flicked with the stylus if Stas was any judge.

"That is not the way that happened," the nickel continued, scowling at a fellow nickel, then yelped as he got his knuckles rapped. Twice. Once with the stylus, then with the edge of the tablet when he didn't get out of the medsestra's personal space fast enough.

"Please continue," she commanded the nickel's buddy, who was wearing riders' bars.

The buddy shot a cautious look over towards Stas, who grinned.

"I am definitely not here." Hoisting his new kid onto a chair so he could prop his foot up on a bench and make faces at the remains of his boot, Stas continued "Definitely not dropping off someone who got bit by a horse, and definitely unavailable for court martial witness duty. See?"

He walked backwards towards the door, saluting the medsestra, who'd obviously flipped to a new intake sheet and made a note before flipping back to her current problem, and turned around but couldn't help hearing her say "I really don't care what you've been drinking when, I just need to know what happened and if I can't give you specific medications until it wears off!" as he got out of earshot.

Untapped amber - Falcons' Feathers, Irina

[taennyn]

It was the biggest piece of amber Irina had ever seen, crazed through with cracks and seams from long ago tumbles, and it was very clear that nobody had ever so much as tapped it with a padded stylus. It would have shattered immediately.

She was going to throw it at his head when she saw him next. She didn't know where it had come from, or what he intended by stashing it where her repair tools normally hid in her horse's neck--actually, they were still there, tucked further back, but the case was visible in distorted warped reflections through the fossilised sap--but she absolutely could not let anyone else find it in her horse. Moreso than her tools, moreso than her repaired boots, because she could pretend the stablehands had been indulging her with those, but a piece of untapped amber the size of her two fists put together would need explaining.

And she had no lie for that.

Booby trap(s) - The Morrigan

[taennyn]

The idea was, of course, to maximise confusion and chaos, specifically for the opposition as opposed to them, or any unsuspecting bystanders.

With one of the Weylands keeping watch for her, the Morrigan had spent most of the previous night and some of the early half-lighted dawn laying a complicated set of tripwires, deadfalls, pitfalls and booby traps.

She was particularly proud of the one that looked like a discarded shawl and two broken bricks. As soon as the thread snapped, the other barrow-load of broken bricks would descend from above, probably sounding like a collapsing chimney as it did. The oil slicks and mostly-covered potholes would be surprising, if not entirely out of expectation for ill-maintained city streets.

The dovecote (still full of doves) was probably the best, though. Julian and her up-high view through an overlooking broken window would see to that.

blue glass - Chevalier de Grammont, Grammont and Sinclair

[taennyn]

"That crate tastes funny," she informed her human as he hauled it past her belly towards her secondary holding.

He stopped moving, took a long step back from the sledge. "Funny how."

"Funny like it's not like the others?"

He grimaced at her nearest eye. "Is it going to explode if I open the top to take a look at it?"

"I don't think so," she replied. "It doesn't smell like those awful things you think I don't know you keep by my feet."

"I don't think you don't know about what I keep by your feet, mare," he corrected her, "My aim in keeping them there is that it's harder for you to eat them."

She flashed a grimace at him over the nearest mirror, did it again when she realised he hadn't been looking.

Waited while he took a prybar to the crate, then they both peered into the padded depths.

"Reused glass?" he pronounced after a moment, fishing a blue bottle out to examine more closely. She took the opportunity to run a more detailed scan.

"Yes," she agreed, when her chemistry was done. "The element trace is the funny taste I noticed."

"I'm going to pretend you don't taste everything that comes near you," he told her, replacing the bottle and starting the process of faking the seals back over the lid. "It's going to make lying to our clients about the privacy of their goods easier."

She snorted at him. Would have rippled her gravity, but he hadn't secured half the crates yet.

"Why am I juggling magicians?" - Mummy series, Evie, Rick and Jonathan

[taennyn]

She caught the movement from the corner of her eye, shouted "Ah, Jonathan, don't toss those--"

She cringed, anticipating the shatter, but instead heard . . hands? on ceramic, not stone-tiled floor.

"So . . . Why am I juggling magicians?" a familiar voice remarked in a familiar tone, then added "At least, I think they're magicians. Could be wrong."

"I believe you're correct," she called, coming down the ladder that had prevented her from bodily tackling her wastrel brother to keep him from casually discarding a saddlebag's contents over a wall.

Jonathan did at least have the grace to look sheepish. "My fault," he said, raising a hand as Rick turned the corner with his hands full of ancient figurines. "Too light for gold, thought it was empty."

"Lucky I was here." Rick handed over his burden without prompting into Evie's keeping.

"I'll say," Jonathan agreed. "I think Evie might have killed me."

"The Director might," she pointed out, placing the figurines carefully onto a workbench. "But do stop helping, Jonathan, you're as bad as Abdul's cats."

[lemon_badgeress]

loss of vision/sight

second verse, same as the first

no really it will fit

tumbleweeds

bees in a glass jar

(interpret as liberally as you like)

Loss of vision/sight - Sibir, Nadya

[taennyn]

They were in the middle of an emergency extraction, doctors and medsestras crowded in shoulder to shoulder to hip and ankle with engineers, and she saw it coming. Just barely, but she had time to get her eyes closed.

Someone else yelped--likely her neighbour getting tagged in the thigh by a chunk of the coolant pipe--as she tried not to scream. Grit her teeth hard as searing-hot-wet-freezing hit her across the face.

She allowed herself a gasp, then said "Get me out right now, eye wash bottle in the secondary kit, now now now--"

Someone hooked an arm around her hips from behind, yanked unceremoniously, and she thanked several saints that she'd been packed in too closely with other bodies to have to worry about getting her head bounced off a piece of the half-shattered horse.

Hoped the casualties from right next to her were going to be low, but she wouldn't be doing any triage until she got whatever horror was currently on her face off her face dear God in Heaven it felt like it was trying to eat through her eyebrows. "Eye wash" she repeated herself, still getting dragged past other people's limbs.

She could still hear the trapped soldiers swearing. That was good.

Hanging half-upsidedown from--someone--'s grip on her was less good, especially when someone who definitely wasn't a doctor said something she was definitely not supposed to understand, then started yelling for a solvent.

"Eye wash bottle, green bag, should be by the strut that was holding when we got in, right now" she said, then snapped her mouth closed and held her breath when the not-a-doctor said "Solvent first, sorry dyevushka, this is going to feel terrible" and splashed a powdery liquid from her hairline to her collarbones.

It felt like she was abruptly covered in extremely angry live bees. She very seriously considered swearing. Kept holding her breath instead, because--yes. There was the second hit, thank you, Engineer whoever-you-are, she would definitely be remembering this moment.

This time there was a cloth involved, dabbing and blotting, and then she heard the seal ripping off the eyewash container.

Knowledgeable hands guided her into position, and she swished. Blinked into the opaque container, trying to feel if there was any actual damage beyond the bees crawling all over her face still, swished again, signaled for the second canister.

As the old fluid got vacuum-pumped away, she smelled blood, tried to lift her head, got stopped. "I'll be fine," Heléne Alexeivna said, "you focus on you, Nadyezhda Valentinevna, you're the one who got hit in the face, I just need some glue once we get everyone out of that twice-blessed horse."

second verse, same as the first - Trickwood Unification, Ruadhan

[taennyn]

He could hear Dón's voice in his head as he looked at the map. The words were clear as Arianhrod's when she was in a mood, without the sense of leaning presence that meant he was actually holding an icon and waiting for Ruadhan to notice. Dry as dust, not quite to the point of rolling his eyes but close: Second verse, same as the first.

Not quite, Ruadhan thought, looking over the design of the hillfort and noticing the individual details some thoughtful mapmaker had added indicating steep approaches and the overhangs that would let someone roll nice big rocks onto the heads of approaching traffic if they felt like it.

"Remind me: what have this lot done?" he asked, because he was sure he'd been told but the details had gone.

no really it will fit - Falcons' Feathers, Khenbish and Irina

[taennyn]

They were playing catch-me through the stableyards of a grandmother who'd gone to sleep months ago and hadn't woken when they'd come in to say hello. It was good practice, or should have been, a chance to stretch his legs and his horse's paces before they went raiding again.

'Should have been' was a phrase he was starting to associate with this girl a lot.

"No, no--don't you dare, no!" he yelled at his mirrors, watching her horse roll thoughtfully sideways before putting on more speed. "That gap is not big enough for you!"

If she heard him, she didn't reply.

He was going to watch a Russian girl break her horse's neck on a frozen-open stable strut. If she was lucky she wouldn't break hers, but her horse was definitely not getting through this--

She'd somehow spiraled herself through it. Infinitesimal incremental adjustments at a full running pace, and she not only wasn't dead her horse didn't so much as flash a whisper of an emergency beacon up on his refit-from-Russians mirror.

tumbleweeds - unknown

[taennyn]

They used to joke that her hair was like tumbleweeds. Unruly, wind-tossed, inclined to go where it liked and ignore the rules that said it wasn't allowed.

She would have protested, but she liked the desert imagery. Bought jackrabbit and roadrunner pins, wore sagebrush scarves and sunglasses.

Did up her hair with styling wax and strategic wires one year for Halloween and went to a party as an anthropomorphic tumbleweed, raspy branches and all, did somersaults for the camera on a backyard trampoline and won a prize for most creative costume.

bees in a glass jar - Some Kind of Love Song, Takashi

[taennyn]

I'd been asked if I wanted to tag along for a trip to move a hive that had taken up residence in a tree that didn't want it.

I'd said of course, because why not: honey's delicious and I'd never seen a hive up close.

Should have paid attention to the part about the 'tree didn't want it', because let me tell you, a tree heaving itself open right over your head like it's going to eat you and use your bones for fertilizer is a pretty memorable experience.

I'm still not sure how exactly I wound up holding a glass jar the size of my torso. Filled with bees. Who'd clumped up protectively around their queen, who'd had to be winkled free of the recesses of the tree with a grass stalk and a whole lot of muttering.

Most of the muttering wasn't mammalian, for the record.

Today's been a weird day, even by my standards.

(interpret as liberally as you like) - early Crown Navy era, Ulysse and Lida

[taennyn]

"-- and you can interpret that as liberally as you desire."

Gideon was delicately cracking his knuckles one at a time as the connection closed.

"Please tell me that wasn't who I think it was," Lida called from the other office.

Ulysse leaned back in his chair. "If they didn't want to deal with consequences they shouldn't have told me I have no authority to dictate their use of customs and quarantine facilities. I am merely allocating my resources as I deem appropriate to the circumstances."

[goshawk]

"I already gave you my decision."

ripple effect

passing the bottle around the campfire

insufficient resources

sparkling like water

ripple effect - early(ish) Wild Roses, Gideon

[taennyn]

(Note: somewhere near Unexpected and unrefusable cargo 1, honestly not sure if before or after though)

The ripples started small. Very small, almost invisible in the bright light reflecting off the water.

Gideon leaned on the deck railing, waited.

The Mariana's shadow grew slightly smaller, then rippled once.

Twice.

Bent, shook, slithered, curled, then withered as the water belled, grabbed at her hull, heeled her over like she'd been struck by a terrible wind and kept her there.

Three of her rigging runners fell out of her.

"Told you not to steal my cargo," he muttered, then whistled up at his own rigging to loose the sails.

sparkling like water - The Morrigan

[taennyn]

There's no reason to come back. None whatsoever, and yet she's back in the city, back at the tailor's shop, buying silk that sparkled like water in the light, commissioning a sweep-necked blouse and thinking about how the fabric will feel against her skin.

Satin-silk's not her usual game: it snags and wilts and blood almost never comes out of it completely, not enough to pass muster in bright light.

But there's something about this piece that draws her. Makes her think of rustling feathers and rushing waters at shallow fords.

She'll work it out eventually.

[konsectatrix]

=DDDD

The kind of soup one can only get at home

figures emerging from mist

that godsdamned ticking

"what's the fuzzball chewing on now?"

"actually, that's their version of a friendly hello"

figures emerging from mist - Trickwood Unification, Evescha and Ioann

[taennyn]

"Oh, they're back already." She sat up, stretched, debated standing up onto two feet and then did it, because Ioann was giving her that 'I can't believe you' look again.

"The wind's coming from the other direction," he said as she did, and she laughed at him.

"Can't you see them?" she jerked her chin towards the stirrings in the mist. "Not everything is about the nose, you know!"

He paused, arms at a weird angle, peering, then dropped his hands to his sides. "All right, yes, I suppose I can see them. But that doesn't mean I don't have a point."

She laced her fingers together, stretched her arms up overhead, circled her shoulders, her hips--she always forgot how nice it was to move her arms instead of her forelegs, when she'd been on four feet for a while--then scruffled her fingers through her hair, which badly needed rebraiding. (He'd do it as soon as they settled somewhere, especially if she stayed two-legged.) "Is your point that you need to spend more time in your nose instead of your head?"

He ran out his tongue at her, pink and jeering, never as long as it was when he was four legged, and she absently licked her canines to check she'd remembered to blunt them enough as he added "No, my point is that you say things your nose shouldn't be able to tell you and you're always right and it's really annoying."

"Useful, though," she agreed, and sat down cross-legged to watch the figures emerging from the mist.

"That'd be the really annoying part, yes," he grumbled, dropping down next to her and propping his forearms over his knees.

[zero_pixel_count]

Oh, I missed this post! *checks date* ahh I think it was the day I just slept through after getting back. If you still want more

-A thin layer of ice on everything
-Putting one foot in front of the other
-Clock tower

[taennyn]

Welcome home. =)

Sure, I'll add yours to the working list. Posted reply delayed: I'm going eventing this weekend and have left my computer at home for obvious reasons.