"I wonder now, was it ever you I loved, or this vain and lovely world ... ?"

And for Yuletide, a yulemouse brought me the astonishing Kokinshu fic Postcards from Kyoto. It's a brilliant weaving of imagery from the original poems into the year of a transient (foreign?) resident in Kyoto who writes postcards. Despite the structure, the imagery is from throughout the collection, with a long distance relationship supplying the occasion for the love poems -- so that books 11-15 are folded into the structure of 1-6, plus there's bits from the travel poems, eulogies, and elegies. Even the format of headnote + text is preserved, only with prose letters instead of verse. For some phrases, I can identify a specific poem as source.

It is nothing at all like I envisioned from my suggested prompts, and this is good, as the result is so much better. Go read -- it's beautiful and gorgeous, and can be read as a story in itself even if you don't know the source.


And while I go reread it, here's some other stories encountered in my quasi-random walk through the archive that I've liked, and have stuck with me:

A captive servant of Achilles tells Odysseus what's happening while Himself is mourning over Patroclus -- one of those stories about life between the cracks: Ten Years' Wages. Now I’ve to start cleaning out these bowls, my Lord, so if you’ll allow me. And then there’s the salves to make, and I’ll have to see about getting Himself to let one of the girls to wash his hair out, and I’ll have to see about that poor lad and think how to keep him from rotting till we come to burn him

I think it's a rule that fics based on classic picture books are surreal and disturbing and generally awesome in a Ray Bradbury sort of way: Goodnight Room. The Old Lady is a hologram stuck on endless loop since the program froze. That is why she can only say, "Hush, hush." The clack of her knitting needles always plays the same short rhythm. At night, sometimes, the bunny imagines it is the sound of a train. It is always night. There is never a train.

A retelling of an obscure story from the Prose Edda about the abduction of Baby Baldur, with bits of other eddas stewed into the telling: A Game of Shapes. One of the better pure adventure stories I've seen this year, and that's with it being mostly riddles and lies. By my word, Thor, I have stolen many things in my time, but I’ve never robbed a cradle. Though, if you asked me to steal Baldr back from whoever has taken him, I think that would be a grand idea.

The touching yet violent love story of Theseus, Pirithous, and Persephone: Love-lies-bleeding. You are a fool. One cannot steal what is already stolen.

A "missing" section of The Pillow Book that captures Sei Shônagon's voice pretty darn well: Bangai (Apocrypha). ... this Murasaki--everyone calls her that after the heroine of her story; I am glad that I am the heroine of mine ...

A Princess Tutu fic that asks the very good question "Why does it always have to be fairy tales?" -- and then demonstrates: Etude: Composition. However, an even better Tutu fic, although it is not a story, is Inscribed on Glass Plaques.

Freya, in exile from Vanaheimr as a hostage among the Aesir, searches for her missing husband Od: Waiting on Ragnarok.

Attention dancinghorse and gillpolack: a chanson de geste about Baldwin IV: La Chanson de Mont Gisard.

I want to mention The Tale of You[n]g Iron Fist from Kun Lun, a original wuxia short story set in T'ang Dynasty China, with bonus RPF poets, but as a story it's kinda middling (for one thing, it needs to be less rushed). But I still like the idea.


Anyone have others to rec?

---L.