221b_recs | Fic rec - The Sleeping Beauty series (Reply)

Title: The Sleeping Beauty series
Author:

fengirl88
Pairing: Ella/Anthea
Length: 6.500 words
Rating: mature on AO3, possibly PG-13?
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: In which John's therapist meets Mycroft's assistant.
Reccer's comments: This series has been mentioned before, in relation to another Ella/Anthea fic, but I've always thought that it deserved a rec of its own.

A series of meetings, short and long, between Ella and Anthea. Fengirl88's prose is in turn thoughtful, humorous, wistful, hopeful as the two women's acquaintance develop into an adult romance during which they learn to know each other and negotiate the potential pitfalls in their moments together (ah, that BlackBerry!). I began to read this series because I've always been attracted to Fengirl's delicate prose and and deep insights, and I've continued to read it when the romance engaged my attention and the girls warmed my reader's heart.

(Also, there's a night at the opera.)

The Suffolk hedgerows are full of ripe blackberries left to rot unpicked; it’s the first weekend in November, Anthea realizes.

She remembers a winter afternoon in France years ago, with the writer who’d been her lover then, walking in a landscape bounded by mountains on every side. She’d wondered aloud why there were still so many blackberries at the wood’s edge. “Don’t people like them here?”

He’d looked mischievous and pleased with himself, the way he always did when he found his clever girl out in some new piece of ignorance. “It’s past Toussaint,” he said. “The Devil pisses on the berries at Hallowe’en. Nobody round here would pick brambles in November.”

Nobody round here either, apparently. She turns to point the berries out to Ella, but Ella’s concentrating on the driving. At least, that’s the reason Anthea gives herself for not speaking: a reason that’s already lasted about an hour and a half.