Firerose Fiction

Parish's Progress
Leaf by Niggle by JRR Tolkien
Summary: To Parish it was like biting into a fruit still dewy from the garden when all you have ever tasted is syrupy chunks from a tin. Written for yuletide 2015

There was once a young man called Parish, who had returned from a long journey. He had not wanted to go, indeed he had spent most of his time away wishing very hard to be home; and now he was. But home seemed to have changed while he had been away, and not for the better. Perhaps it was his gammy leg. It had not seemed so bad while he was away, when others had far worse, and still others (though Parish did not think about them very often) had not come back at all; but now that he was back he had to live with the wretched thing. Though he scarcely felt it, he was really very lucky. He had come back to a sweetheart, and she was not the sort of girl to be put off by a gammy leg. Soon they were married, and he and Mrs. Parish lived with her widowed mother in a house with a bit of garden, miles out in the country.

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.

Written for Miss Morland's prompt 'Tenar/Flint, pre-Tehanu: How much does Flint know about his wife's former life as a priestess? Do they ever talk about it?' in the Earthsea Fiction LJ Ficathon 2009

( Flint can no more comprehend his wife of a week than talk to a dragon. Four loosely linked vignettes )