Three Adventures Belladonna Took Never Went On (ao3)
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Summary: ‘Not a tavern!’ the wizard muttered. ‘Iron arm, iron head more like. To think that I should have lived to be not-a-taverned by Gerontius Took’s son! I’ll not-a-tavern him!’ Seven decades of meetings between Gandalf and the Old Took's children. Written for fic_corner 2015

‘This is Great Smials,’ announced the young hobbit, ‘not a tavern. I ask you, are you any sort of a Took? No? Then take yourself off, my good man! We don’t want any Gandalfs here, thank you! Go and find yourself a place that caters to Big Folk!’

Now Gandalf was a wizard, and a very important wizard at that, and he was not used to such treatment from anything short of a king, and there had been none of those in that neck of the woods for the best part of a thousand years. It goes without saying that Gandalf was a good wizard, which was a good thing because he’d had a very bad day and if he’d been a bad wizard, he might have been inclined to turn the young hobbit into a very small toad and then step on him.

The Emerald Band (ao3)
'A Study in Emerald' by Neil Gaiman, 'The Speckled Band' by Arthur Conan Doyle & various works by HP Lovecraft

Summary How can I describe the sight that so unmanned my imperturbable friend? That caused the giant of a baronet to faint dead away? I could say Drago’s green-soaked body would no longer haunt my dreams—or if it did, it would be but a pleasant respite from the horror of that thing.

Rache & his faithful doctor investigate the murder of Julia Stoner in the 'Study in Emerald' universe, but the deeper they delve into the Roylott family history, the darker things become. Written for Yuletide 2014
~*~
We had done the right thing. We had struck a blow for freedom of our enslaved race. Once I believed that. Then the reprisals began. Her Victorious Majesty was terrible in her wrath. Week after week, The Star came out with thick black borders, and every issue carried lists of ‘traitors’ deemed to have Restorationist sympathies on no greater evidence than their failing to turn seawards before their evening chop.

We moved, my friend and I, from lodging to lodging, seldom staying above hours, never above a single night, Moriarty’s hounds ever running on our scent. But I had lived out of my pack before, in Afghanistan, in far less comfortable surroundings; had been hunted by a force far more awful than Her Majesty’s police. When one has walked through a valley choked with the writhing bodies of men turned witless as worms; when one has felt the Shadow pressing pressing—but I shall not think on that. Dwelling on the past is a weakness we can ill afford, as my friend daily reminds me. His nerves are steel, but even he cries out in his sleep some nights when the moon drips blood in the sky, red blood, not like—

I realise I never announced my 2012 Yuletide story here...

A Necklace of Acorns (ao3)
The Dispossessed & 'The Day Before the Revolution' by Ursula Le Guin
Summary 'Only cast pearls before swine if a necklace of acorns becomes you' (Sayings of Odo). Glimpses into the life of a revolutionary. Written for Yuletide 2012

Now the gods were jealous of Anarra, Moon Mother, for the Moon she had birthed from the pearls of her milk was more lustrous than anything they could craft with their seed. So they schemed together and Ra the trickster and Ur his brother accused her of outshining the All-father’s temple, the Sun. And so she was cast out from the Moon she loved. But her tears flooded the land of the two brothers, and made of it two lands. And so she was revenged.

—Traditional

The boy was Moon mad. He’d worked out how to scam the City Library entry code and read everything they had about rockets: not just the kids’ section, the adult books too. He cut pictures out of newspapers he picked up on the subway and stuck them up on the screen he’d made for his sleeping corner. So when rumour had it that His Oiliness Himself was coming to Rodarred to announce some lunar project or other, Briki rattled on about it non-stop till Tula got Katya to swap shifts with her so she could take him and his sister. He wanted to be a rocket engineer, or maybe a technician on the Lunar Base he swore A-Io would build before he graduated. Tula never had the heart to tell him no-one from Thuvietown was ever going to go to Technical College. No-one with a surname like Anokh was ever going to make it as more than a cleaner or a shelf-stacker or a tram conductor, maybe, if he could pass for Iotic.

The Unlikely Spies (ao3)
The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Summary: 'The work that Paulinus had died for went on.' But learning to do it without him took time. Written for sutcliff_swap 2012.

A pale fat man haggling for wine on the waterfront, that was where the whole affair started. Near three weeks had passed since Paulinus had walked out into the glare of the torches, calm as a man taking a stroll to the baths. The house by the old theatre was not the only one in Portus Adurni that Allectus’s Mercenaries had burned, and when the Emperor went back to Londinium and his Mercenaries went with him, the trickle of men seeking passage to Gaul swelled like a dry mountain burn after a summer thunderstorm. The Berenice could not take them all, even had not her master Phaedrus been fearful of betrayal. So it was that Justin tramped the shores of Regnum Harbour, asking after work but never taking any, everywhere talking of the fierce August sun and the fiercer new taxes, and everywhere seeking another tradeship whose master had no love for the one who set those taxes.

[Now with added historical notes.]

Four Castles Howl Built (& One He Had No Hand In)
Summary: Building castles is hard work, but not as hard as building a relationship when you've only got one heart between you. Written for Yuletide 2011

Howl’s first castle didn’t move.

It was not that it wasn’t meant to, but its wheels dug deep into the dark ooze of the old dockyard, and all of his spells and Calcifer’s power couldn’t shift it. After what felt like a year but was really only a minute or two, what should have been his magic castle cracked open under the strain and turned back into junk, with a shower of bolts. (ao3)

Summary: Havnor City, the largest city in the world... It's nearly 200 years since Lebannen came to the throne and his kingdom's on the brink of disaster. The king's mad, his heir's missing and when newly reinstated Officer Bittern investigates, he soon starts tripping over corpses

Author's note: This novel-in-progress owes almost as much of a debt to Raymond Chandler as it does to Ursula Le Guin. I thank Jay Tryfanstone, Miss Morland & Northland for advice & editing. All infelicities are my own.

Chapter 2: The Ice Maiden
My new boss handed me a miniature of an olive-skinned kid with a long narrow nose and the solemn expression of a goat cornered in a flowerbed. ‘This is the best picture of the prince we’ve been able to find,’ he said. I’d never clapped eyes on the prince but his ugly mug had frowned up at me from countless plates of corn chips at the Crown & Anchor down the docks. (ao3)

Drabble & a half, loosely for my prompt 'Everyone is the hero of their own story. Even Kossil' in the Earthsea Fiction LJ Ficathon 2009

( Kossil learns )