Tales for the Sugar Cat

By Lyn Thorne-Alder

This collection of short, flash, and micro stories span genres and universes, from scifi to fantasy to romance. Most of the stories here were written in response to prompts from an online audience during an eight-hour writing marathon.

The author, Lyn, entered into this live-writing marathon to raise funds to help defray the costs of her cat Drake's recent diabetes diagnosis, hence the title Tales for the Sugar Cat.

In this book, you can explore new planets and find hidden corners of earth, meet strange creatures and stranger humans; the twenty-five stories here consist of a sampler pack of Lyn's fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lyn Thorne-Alder
• Release date: Apr 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458188700

Lyn Thorne-Alder

It all started with the winged cat-people. As a child with an (over)active imagination, Lyn Alder created worlds to play in, the most lasting of which involved (remember, she was five) a space-faring monarchy of winged cat-people. She started her serial-writing career in high school, passing around handwritten stories on notebook paper to her friends. This (among other things) got her a reputation as being a little bit strange, a reputation which haunts her to this day. After a college education in English, Lyn worked a series of desk jobs for a decade, while writing in the nooks and crannies of spare time that life provided her; mostly poetry, microfiction, and short stories. During this time, she amassed a staggering stack of work, most of it unfinished, but found herself craving an outlet for her creativity, and an audience beyond her friends. Addergoole was born in the warm privacy of a livejournal community, several months before its bastard younger brother Wild Ones’ Blood. A friend bought Lyn a domain name for Yule, and Addergoole took its first steps out into the world. Lyn lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York State with her husband and their flesh-eating cat. When she’s not writing, or working her day job, she enjoys hiking gorges and old cemeteries, knitting, sewing, drinking wine, and watching the geekiest television she can find.

Book preview

Tales for the Sugar Cat

Lyn Thorne-Alder

Copyright 2011 Lyn Thorne-Alder

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introductions

Chapter 2: Faerie Apocalypse Stories

Chapter 3: Stranded World Stories

Chapter 4: Vas’ World Stories

Chapter 5: Reiassan Stories

Chapter 6: Tir na Cali Stories

Chapter 7: Other Settings

Chapter 8: Thanks

Chapter 1: Introduction

Tales for the Sugar Cat began life as a live-writing event to raise money to defray expenses related to the author’s cat Drake’s recently-diagnosed diabetes.

The stories serve an introduction to several of Lyn’s worlds, fantasy, sci-fi, and other, and include pieces written to a very specific prompts (more right after that story you wrote) and to very open prompts (Heroics) from the participants in the event.

You can read more short fiction of Lyn’s at her blog: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com.

Chapter 2: Faerie Apocalypse Stories

The Setting

Although an apocalypse and a half feature strongly in the timeline of the fae-apoc setting, most of the stories are set either well before or well after the event.

A dark urban fantasy series, Faerie Apocalypse is set in the modern world. The Ellehemaei fae, halfbreed bastards of beings from another plane who left more than two millennia ago, live hidden among the humans; many have faded into humanity, exhibiting nothing more than a rare psychic quirk, while their more powerful cousins hide their inhumanity behind glamours called Masks. A dark underworld of faerie and human trafficking underlies much of the setting.

The apocalypse, brought on by a return of the prodigal gods, leaves the world’s population, governments, infrastructure, and technology devastated, its humans struggling to survive, its fae in hiding from the unforgiving remnants of humanity.

Addergoole is a school in the faerie apocalypse universe, as well as a subsetting and the name of the web-serial set there. Teenagers sent away to boarding school learn that, not only is the school not what they expected, but neither they nor their parents are either. Fifty years later, they struggle to continue existing in the post-apoc world that wants nothing to do with their ilk.

Love and Bindings

Ivette was with a client when Joff got home: there was a car in the driveway and the little red light over her office door was on. He started preparing dinner while he waited, listening with one metaphysical ear to the emotions that leaked from her playroom, even if sound didn’t. She knew better than to get too rough, but sometimes she forgot. And sometimes her clients asked for it.

Things seemed to be going well, though; they were working up to a nice climax by the time he was resting the meat and finishing by the time he completed the sauce. He made himself unnoticeable, part of the scenery, as ‘Vette walked the man - boy, really, they were all such boys, and this one with a shock of red hair like a bush fire - to the front door.

It was wonderful, thank you, Mistress Ivette, the client gushed, as he made out his check. You have such a nice, even hand.

My pleasure, Kevin, she purred. Joff could hear the kiss she planted on his cheek from the next room. I’ll see you next week, then, same time?

Wouldn’t miss it, mistress. He was far too perky for such words, mistress rolling off his tongue like honey, no respect in it at all. Ivette would teach him. She was, Joff had learned, a very good teacher.

She saw the boy out and came into the kitchen, wrapping her arms around Joff’s neck from the back, dangling a thick leather collar. Smells delicious, pet, she purred. Sorry I’m late.

He set his hand on hers as she tried to buckle the collar around his neck. Not tonight, Ivette. Rafe and Renata are coming over for dinner.

All the more fun, she purred, setting the leather against his Adam’s apple. Raffie and Ren are fun to play with.

...with the kids. It was hard, still, after all these years, to say no when there was leather to his throat. Ivette knew that, of course, and pushed those limits to their breaking point, to his breaking point.

Oh, kids, poo. Disgust came off her in waves, and more than a bit of anger, but none of it showed in her voice. Just till they show up, then? she cajoled. Her robe had fallen open, the golden dragons on the red silk brocade framing her perfect body. But Joff was, at least to some extent, immunized to her exquisite tits.

‘Vette, I said no, he grumbled, forcing the words out around the collar. And they’ll be here any minute now. Put the collar away.

She pouted, and flounced away, leaving him to sigh as he watched her tail bouncing under the too-short hem of