Works-in-progress folder filename meme.

[snarp]

I've noticed kind of a pattern in my naming conventions.

Box

Folder named after the Lady of Boxes, a morally-ambiguous authority figure whom the viewpoint characters fear and distrust. Previously referred to here as "gay steampunk Meiji-era civil servants." Last updated January 2nd.

It was entirely possible to forget home for days, weeks, months at a time. Hideo drank coffee in the mornings and looked out dense glass windows to see the sun slide over the vast black heat-wheels and sat on hard wooden chairs in rooms with thick wooden doors, and on brooding metal machines heavier than children typed words from another world. He never saw a single person who looked like him. It became hard to remember his house's doors, hard to remember words about himself.

Lying in his high, narrow bed in the dormitory one winter morning, unsure what day it was and with a sunbeam heavy on his chest like a cat, he thought of the Prince.

Celery

Named after the Celery Queen, a morally-ambiguous authority figure whom the viewpoint characters fear and distrust. Previously posted here as All For the Heart of the Celery Queen. Last updated June 21st, 2010. (See, this is what happens when I post WiPs.)

In a low, clear place in the Silent Wood, there was a well where you could go to make a wish, one only for yourself. There would be a price. A voice at the bottom of the well would tell you what that price was, and you could choose to pay it, or to walk away. And most people walked away.

And most people only went there once, because something told them it was better not to bother the well twice. But a few went back again, many years later, because something was telling them they could have another chance.

This is a story about one of those people.

Heligea

See previous morally-ambiguous authority figures. Previously referred to here as "the Ouran High School Host Club characters are all werecreature bounty hunters now." Except I've changed everything so much it's kind of ceased to be fic; I finally just gave everyone new names. Last updated today.

In the last days of the old kind of men, there had been a city, and a rainy autumn day full of wet brown leaves like children's hands clapped onto windows and lights. On that day, old Lord Sang had dressed himself carefully in pants and a shirt and even shoes, and walked out in the rain to pay a call.

But no matter how hard old Sang worked to act human, no matter how careful he thought he was, there was always something he did wrong, something he forgot. That day, he had forgotten his umbrella.

Soaked to his bones and disgusted by the wasted effort, he had given up and stripped naked in the middle of the sidewalk. A man passing him in the street had turned his face away and hidden a smile in a wet glove.

Lord Sang had turned into a tiger and bitten his hand off.

Emperor

See previous morally-ambiguous authority figures. Previously referred to here as "dystopian cyberpunk future soulbonded dragons." Last updated December 5th.

Dragons were the root of everything. They were the framework dreams were built on; they were under your eyes whenever you were looking at something; they inhabited in the reptilian part of the human brain that understood smell. They made wind, waves, and trees; they were travel. They had something to do with the moon.

Dragons had built Menaps, and they couldn't even remember doing it.

That was why they kept humans around. They liked to be appreciated.

Wicked Queen

Named after an authority figure, the status of whose morality is unambiguous, whom the viewpoint characters fear and distrust. Previously referred to here as "the paranormal romance where the heroine is the ancient evil." Last updated January 11th.

Her existence has obtruded upon the history of Men and beasts for some two millennia. She has been a seer, a warrior, an artist, a slave, and a Queen - primarily, a Queen. She has ruled Men, in some proportion and in some way, for most of a thousand years all told.

She has changed little in that time. The Queen is always far-sighted, slow to anger, and quick to act. She surrounds herself, always, with clever advisers and powerful wizards and warriors, whom she calls her Dark Children. Her true children turn on her. She has never had a King. She has the power to make Men immortal.

It has been argued that the Queen's ascendance must be lived with, like the certainty of winter, and that the proper goal of statecraft is to minimize her damage. It has been argued that no living thing is invulnerable, and that the proper goal of statecraft is her death. And it has been argued, too, that we are not Men, and she is not our concern.

Grisholda

Named after the heroine, who is basically pretty nice. Previously referred to here as "the one with the Jewish wizards with golems." Last updated January 23rd.

Kicking stones along the road alone one gray winter day, Grisholda Anmere met Toles, the King of All Dogs.

He sat at the crossroads, all black and dusty, scratching himself. Out of half of one eye, he gave her a haughty look; he could see from her carefully patched jeans and moth-holed green coat that she was not a Queen of anything at all. Setting her heavy shopping bag on the cracked stone road, Grisholda stared at him in amazement. It wasn't because she knew who he was. It was just that, in all her twelve years, he was the first dog she'd ever seen.

There were no dogs in the country of Glirowe. They had chased them out many years ago, her uncle Gale said, in the lost age when every wind had been heavy with the greasy yellow smoke and shining dust of the Angels' Wars, and tiny red dragonflies with bodies hard as steel had come in the summer to drink all the windowglass away, so you had to close the shutters against the light or let the rain fall in with it, and outsiders like elves and Taoists had just come and gone however they pleased.

Nuri

See "Grisholda." Previously referred to here as "the Shounen Jump style exercise." Last updated February 10th.

The Dark Lord Syriel, King of the Countries of Rain, was cast back up into the world on an airlessly hot morning in August, his first harsh breath drowned out by the drone of cicadas and the unsteady beep of somebody playing a video game badly.

The King returned quietly, alone. No one was there to greet him. His subjects were long dead. His empty, dreaming kingdom had forgotten him. Only two people paid him any mind at all.

One, a very minor and dirty demon who had been sleeping in a child's tree house a few miles away, awoke suddenly and completely without knowing why.

curse

So named because it involves a curse. Previously referred to here as "the chosen one has been cloned." Last updated January 11th.

Six hundred years ago someone carved some words into one of the granite paving stones of the little chapel here. They are in a corner, so that they don't get stepped on too often, and worn away. They are in a dead language from a country far north across the sea, so they don't get read very often, and worn away that way, either.

No one who lives in this place can understand the words. The priests have wondered about them for a long time.

The present one has got his hands around my throat. Politely, I begin to read to him.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

My intrigue. It is great.

[snarp]

I'm unfortunately not very good about finishing these things!