Rodrigo writes a letter — to fulfill his responsibilities to the King, to protect the Queen, to protect his Carlos — which he has Thibault send to the King.

This is the letter which he did not send.

iberiandoctor

Philip sees many things. Philip sees the Marquis of Posa, and wants him.

sprocket

zdenka

There is no good way, after all, to ask one's beloved if he is also the paramour of one's father.

Rodrigo makes one last bid to fulfill his responsibilities to the King, to protect the Queen, and to protect his Carlos, even after his death.

This time, he is successful.

Giorgio Germont goes to Mass every morning and kneels in the pew. He says a prayer for Violetta Valéry's soul.

It is not told in the Deed of Seren how Tenar of the Ring became the White Lady of Iffish. This is that story.

I was thrilled to get the chance to write something nice for rachelmanija. She had such great prompts — "Does Vetch ever leave his island again?" "I'd love to see Vetch meeting Tenar," "The prompts for Vetch could also be used for Yarrow," "How did Yarrow get the harekki?" and (okaay, this was not exactly a prompt, more a side comment, but still) "I wonder if there's a clutch of harrekki eggs somewhere, and maybe Tenar gets one…" and, uh, in one sense I basically wrote three stories with all those prompts, smooshed them together, and gave them all to rachel, figuring that at least one of them would appeal to her :)

But it's also one story (and was always meant to be one story as well as three). When I read Tehanu this year for canon review, my main takeaway was that post-Atuan!Tenar really needed All The Hugs, and what was Ged even thinking to take her to Ogion.(I love Ogion. I love him a lot. In many ways he was probably great for Tenar. But she's a 16-year-old girl who has been through a lot, not exactly his specialized skill set, whereas brash overconfident teenage boy… might be.) So this is the story of how Tenar figures herself out after the events of Atuan, and how in a gentler world she might have had a bit more relevant help and friendship on that journey.

As usual, I was really, really trying to write something recip would like, and as usual, a bunch of my psyche got dumped into it wholesale along the way without my realizing it. Fairly far into the editing process I realized this could totally be coded as the story of how Tenar decides she isn't going to go into academia. Ha.

I also had a lot of fun writing both Vetch and Yarrow shipping Ged/Tenar :)

sprocket honestly deserves a medal for this one. She put so much into this, from calming me down through several rounds of Yuletide nerves ("What if my story is crap? What if recip hates it? Is it crap?? What about now??") to (as always) pointing out kindly and ruthlessly how it could be several orders of magnitude better, to holding my hand through several iterations, to talking me through worldbuilding… it is her doing that Iffish became a place where women's magic, while possibly not considered equal (yet!) to a Roke-trained wizard, is more respected and welcomed than on Gont; late one night we jointly came up with a different saying for the East Reach: strange as women's magic, subtle as women's magic. She is super awesome and just gets more awesome whatever I throw at her. Thank you!!

A Cord of Three Strands (4047 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Keltiad - Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aeron Aoibhell/Gwydion ap Arawn/Roderick Douglas
Characters: Aeron Aoibhell, Gwydion ap Arawn, Roderick Douglas
Additional Tags: OT3, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, OT3 fixes all the things, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Aeron, Gwydion, and Roderick find together that a cord of three strands is not easily broken.

And then THIS canon! I got most of the way through writing this while waiting for assignments to go out (I swear, this is the story of almost all the treats I write) because Keltia is the awesomesauce crack canon of my formative years. Kennealy literally wrote three very thick books as poem!fic to explain (a poor translation of) the Welsh poem Preiddeu Annwn. If you wanted to win my heart (especially when I was a teenager) with crack I don't know that you could come up with a better way. Plus which they're about a society of Magical Irish People (sorry, "Kelts") who are all tall beautiful magical royalty. (Well, maybe not all Kelts are royalty, but everyone in the books is, pretty much, except for the occasional commoner for spice.) Aeron, the heroine, is red-haired and green-eyed (OF COURSE) and not only the Crown-Princess-then-High-Queen but also the BEST at magic and the BEST at swordplay and the BEST at singing (hilariously, this is a throwaway line in the first book) and the MOST BEAUTIFUL and the MOST EVERYTHING, okay?? And also with a SOULBOND. OF COURSE. Although Keltia is very cool and laidback about sex and marriage because OF COURSE!

Also I was charmed by rosefox asking for queer and OT3, because you have probably figured out from my above description that these books are WOW WISH FULFILLMENT kinds of books. Clearly if Kennealy had been queer and/or poly, it WOULD have been in the books because these books are very clearly all about wish fulfillment. So I mucked around with it, queering up the history and the institutions and the characters, and using it to fix everything. Because apparently I am also into writing OT3's fixing everything! Also there was a small Judaism-ish reference, for which I spent a while one evening looking up how to form the genitive in Gaelic, which I probably did incorrectly.

Kennealy also has this very distinctive mannered style that never lets up — the problem with a lot of not-so-great writers is that they can't maintain style appropriately, but Kennealy never, ever drops the style. It's pretty great. Hopefully I made a good stab at it. It was certainly a lot of fun to write (and a lot quicker than trying to write Le Guin pastiche, which wow, verges on poetry).

sprocket also did a great job on beta for this one, going above and beyond by doing a (looooong) book's worth of canon review, although because it was a treat and not for someone I know, she did not have to do nearly the stress job of calming me down for this one :) (Any remaining typos are my responsibility. Because of Holiday Stuff I did not have time to do the second round of beta on this.)

In other news, I found out zdenka was my writer, which I had not managed to guess AT ALL. Which now I feel like I should have been able to guess, because I loved my Yuletide fic so much! :) Thank you again, and again, you should all go read it! Anyway, Yuletide was basically completely fabulous for me this year! <3

The Loksmer Sisters save a world, then let it drown.

Selden

Every year, a young woman goes up the mountain to challenge the Year-King for the bone crown. Every year, one of them dies and the other comes down the mountain as King. It is unusual for a Year-King to survive more than one such battle.

Lussa has survived and won three times. But her fourth battle, her third defending the crown, brings her a choice that she never thought she would face.

lignota

seekingferret

Sunny had errands to run before she came home.

morbane

Arianrhod, in her own words.

Arianrhod knew one thing. She did not want Goewin's fate. To sit in the rushes where the dogs shat with an old man's feet in her lap.

She wanted to spend her hours as she wished, weaving ribbons for the night sky.

Martha had always played by the rules, until she met a beautiful woman with some very concerning things to say about the government.

I asked for a story where memory wipes really could take that away from you, and this story delivers, with dystopia and love and catastrophe!

---------------------------------------

I got matched on Seanan McGuire's song "How Much Salt," and I found the liner notes very intriguing: The Little Mermaid and her mother, and a story that never ends. I thought that was really neat, and this story resulted: a slant look at "The Little Mermaid," informed by the song, from the point of view of the princess whom the prince marries.

Many thanks to sprocket for beta, and to rymenhild for Reasons. :)

And the Salt Sea Over All (2932 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen, How Much Salt - Seanan McGuire (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Prinsessen | Princess (Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid), Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid
Additional Tags: Marine life
Summary:

The mermaid had, in her own way, been truthful with me from the very beginning.