Pardon me while I have a total meltdown over how much I love the writings of You_Light_The_Sky. You may have heard of her longer fic, Darkling, I Listen, but don’t miss the others hiding under its wings.
Her style is full of gravity and absolute beauty, urgent yet reverent. She’s generous with the parentheses and I love every one for the tone it invokes. Stop what you’re doing and read her.
She writes in several fandoms and under several pseuds. Start here on Ao3.
A few of my favorites:
In Words, Like Weeds – John writes the life of Sherlock Holmes. (magical realism)
When Ella asks him how he’s coping from his traumatic visit in Afghanistan (writing a war novel in between fighting one, getting shot and then wishing desperately to live if only to write one good thing, just one, God, please, I need to write like I need air and I don’t know why but I know that I need this—)
He wakes up with a tremor in his other hand and legs that will never walk again but he has his mind and he has his words and there is the impulse, the urge to write or else he’ll bleed—
“I’m fine,” says John and he almost believes it. “I’m writing my novel, finally.”
“Oh,” Ella perks up, for this is a new development, “What is it about?”
“Sherlock,” he replies before he can help it, because that name is one that needs to be said.
Ella looks confused, “I’m sorry, but who or what is Sherlock?”
He doesn’t answer right away, strangely possessive of what he hasn’t finished writing yet.
“You’ll see,” he tells her.
Not The Hands That Kill – wingfic
Having wings does not make Sherlock Holmes a guardian angel, not in the way that John Watson is his. But he thinks, that if could choose one last thing to do before he dies, that he would choose to protect his John every single time.
(I’d be lost without my blogger.)
There is pain in his back, he is burning, but he will not let the fire touch his heart.
–
In his dreams, he flies again and John is flying next to him. The fire rages down below them, all of London, lighting up the grey city in eerie hues of orange and red.
Together, they swoop in and stop it all.
It’s not just Science. You_light_the_sky doesn’t write; she weaves magic. Her stories aren’t just stories, they feel like fairy tales, loaded to overflowing with possibility: a garden you can’t see anywhere but outside that window, the glimpse of a path just beyond that half-open door, the infinity of the possibilities that might be waiting around the next corner. They feel like, if you sit still enough and don’t make direct eye contact, just maybe you’ll see them move and creep softly closer to you. (And with some of them, that’s maybe a more dangerous idea than with others.)
Every one of her stories haunts me. I haven’t even read them all yet. I can’t go too fast; they need to be savored and cherished and absorbed slowly into the bloodstream. Time-release fiction. I haven’t encountered sorcery of this order in years—and I am talking of the magnitude at which the practitioner’s name and the names of their art and stories are etched into me for the rest of my life. Right now I could name every single person on that list, and you_light_the_sky has made it on there.