Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

One of the "small fandoms" nominated for the Yuletide exchange this year was Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."

There are four fanfic pieces written for this "fandom." I am doling them out for myself, reading one at a time, to maximize my enjoyment.

The first I read was a delight: "Murano's salamander"

I just spent a couple of hours browsing through the latest batch of Yuletide fanfiction, and found a few I like:

In Which Cimorene Settles In as King's Chief Cook and Librarian, and Deals with Politics The author's summary is "exactly what it says on the tin," and I'll go with that. (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia Wrede)

Tell Me What You Eat pre-canon for the Nero Wolfe mysteries, describing the last (part of Archie Goodwin's job interview with Nero Wolfe, the part where Wolfe is getting Fritz Brenner's opinion of the candidate. This is pleasantly domestic, no mystery/detective content at all.

Wintersong a Moomintroll story in which Moomintroll decides to spend the winter awake; it's an atmospheric piece about the first day after almost everyone else settles in to hibernate; things happen, in the low-key way that things often happen in the books. The author here gets Tove Jansson's voice and the mood of the series (I'm in the middle of rereading Finn Family Moomintroll).

Three Tellings About Dead Things in the Earth is Always Coming Home fanfic. Echoing the book, the author gives us three unrelated short pieces with no obvious connection beyond that they all have to do with the Kesh: a bit of life story/dream that Stone Telling left in the Madrone Lodge after going to Wakwaha to tell them about her time with the Condor, a play, and another somewhat metafictional encounter with Pandora, much later than those in Always Coming Home.