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Sweetly and Steadily (Gawain/Green Knight | R | 11,228 words) is a rather radical retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And, oh, I like it. I'll admit that my enjoyment of the story is due in part to the fact that I am a slasher at heart. But the story works and evokes a similar sense of being lost in this world as the poem did when I originally read it. Plus there's a bit of gently poking fun at the classic medieval stereotypes.
Excerpt:
Time passed very quickly. As he moved through the changing seasons, Gawain felt a surge of panic. There was not enough time. He would never be able to cleanse himself, to meet the Green Knight with a pure heart. *Or at least with a clean mind*, he thought. And he wanted very much to be at peace with himself before he died.
To that end, he quit Camelot with two months to spare before his arranged meeting. He travelled slowly northwards, trying to think things through, and only becoming more confused, in between killing ogres and dragons and rescuing the occasional damsel from the occasional inaccessible tower. Travelling became the norm; the rhythm and logic of it gave him a wholly unreasonable sense of security, as if the journey would never end. There would always be a stony path, cold armor, the smell of Gringolet's damp mane, and another Wild Man waiting in ambush behind another rock.
The cold bit into his shoulders, hips and legs, and he began to feel that he would never be warm again. He had a vision of himself arriving at the meeting place with icicles in his hair and his joints frozen stiff, unable to move as the Green Knight drew nearer. It became a dream that recurred every night; every night the Green Knight came a little closer to him as he stood there-- *like a monument to foolishness*, he told himself when awake.
Excerpt:
Time passed very quickly. As he moved through the changing seasons, Gawain felt a surge of panic. There was not enough time. He would never be able to cleanse himself, to meet the Green Knight with a pure heart. *Or at least with a clean mind*, he thought. And he wanted very much to be at peace with himself before he died.
To that end, he quit Camelot with two months to spare before his arranged meeting. He travelled slowly northwards, trying to think things through, and only becoming more confused, in between killing ogres and dragons and rescuing the occasional damsel from the occasional inaccessible tower. Travelling became the norm; the rhythm and logic of it gave him a wholly unreasonable sense of security, as if the journey would never end. There would always be a stony path, cold armor, the smell of Gringolet's damp mane, and another Wild Man waiting in ambush behind another rock.
The cold bit into his shoulders, hips and legs, and he began to feel that he would never be warm again. He had a vision of himself arriving at the meeting place with icicles in his hair and his joints frozen stiff, unable to move as the Green Knight drew nearer. It became a dream that recurred every night; every night the Green Knight came a little closer to him as he stood there-- *like a monument to foolishness*, he told himself when awake.