flash housesitting report

Okay! My parents' plants have been watered; their mail has been collected, sorted, and in a few cases reposted to Minnesota for them to deal with; all my laundry is clean and folded; Susan and I hung out last night (pizza and the third Hobbit movie); I've eaten lunch; and my NFE works have all been edited one last time. I think it is time to head home to Ithaca.

So. Brush teeth, close windows, wash dishes, pull shades, set the lights in a different pattern from what I found when I arrived, pack my car, and hit the road.

*dusts hands, sets to work*

[Rec] NFE gifts for me, omg!!!

The 2015 Narnia Fic Exchange and the NFE Madness 2015 archives are both open! Thirty-nine quality Chronicles of Narnia fics await your eyes! Go! Read! Leave feedback so the authors want to participate again next year!

But first, go read my gifts.

(I got three, what even, is this Christmas and someone forgot to tell me???)

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Deep Roots: This is King Lune's story of what he knew and didn't know of Narnia and how as king, he and the people of Archenland lived with the closed pass. (1,731 words)

This is a lovely story about Archenland during the Long Winter, and what Narnia means to Lune and his people both during its isolation and in its sudden reemergence into the wider world. I adore both the sense of Archenland somehow unmoored on both a political and spiritual level without Narnia's tangible presence, and Lune's wonderfully down-to-earth relationship with his wife, Queen Irene of Archenland.

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The Blood of Chiefs: Why Caspian the First never looked back. (1,669 words)

This is a marvelous exercise in both nuanced world-building and nuanced character development. Caspian I comes across as a very three-dimensional man, with realistic virtues and flaws, and you can see both why his people followed him into Narnia and why his conquest of that land was a nearly genocidal catastrophe. The theme of intra-family conflict also neatly foreshadows the bad blood between Miraz and Caspian IX generations later and the glimpses of Telmarine religion leave me wanting to know more about the gods Caspian renounces in his flight.

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At An In-Between Place: Polly has an iron poker, a pocketknife, and a police whistle. She's ready for anything. (2,014 words)

In which Polly Plummer deftly negotiates the tangles of maintaining a platonic friendship with Digory under the noses of his schoolfellows and both their families, keeps a watchful eye on the apple tree and the Rings it guards, and discovers the real magician in the Ketterly family. My kingdom for a continuation of this someday... but perhaps it's best to let every reader imagine her own adventures rather than pin Polly down to a single narrative thread. *wry*

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Tangentially, I wrote three NFE fics this year -- at least one in each of the archives. If you guess my work, I will write you one prompt ficlet of your choice for each correct answer. :D