Robynettely

The challenge was here . My sister had read the “dollheads” challenge and asked what happened next, so when I was thinking about robots (and I hate robots) I wanted to find a way to make one in Bucklepunk world. A familiar would have warned her before the man was in sight of the house. He'd come up the streambed, hopping one stone to the next, balancing in an imaginary duel. She didn't recognize him, but his fancy dress said he was official. Abigail and her daughter Susannah had hidden in the burnt-out shell of their house, made not a sound as he wandered through the yard, poked at the garden, the foundation, the pottery shed, the wires she'd run to the mill to siphon power from the waterwheel. After a tense hour he left, back the way he'd come, towards the mill. "We need a familiar," said Abigail. "It would give us away," said Susannah. "Not if no one recognizes what it is," said Abigail. Always the familiar gave witches away. It followed ...

The challenge was here . I had the world BucklePunk in my head (someone had tweeted it in an offhand manner) and in my interpretation, it’s Steampunk populated by Puritans, who didn’t have steam power... so not steampunk at all. “You should check the run down to the waterwheel,” said Cotton Brown. Technically, that was Cotton's job. They had portrayed the situation as a win for everyone -- the mill got an assistant, and Cotton was out of the village, so everyone's daughter was safe. In reality, it was just a win for the town, with a spy at the mill. Nathaniel Proctor had never asked for an assistant, anyway. He sighed and went outside. The morning air smelled like honey, and hummed with the sound of bees. Of course, bees led to screaming, followed by accusations of being afflicted by a witch. Everything was a potential plague in Massachusetts Bay Colony. The run above the sawmill was pulled over so it wouldn't turn the waterwheel; he'd disengaged it before the storms ha...