crack_van | Naming the Land by Antosha (R)

This is my last Earthsea recommendation: I hope you've enjoyed sailing the seas of the Archipelago with me! If you're left hungering for more, many of the authors I've recommended have written other Earthsea stories, and a few recommendations sites are listed in the fandom overview. Additionally, all the stories at the Yuletide & Skyehawke archives are worth trying. If you dare to dip into ff.net, a couple of authors to start with whom I haven't mentioned here might be Eldrice & WhiteLadyoftheRing. There's also some excellent, mainly short, fiction in the memories of earthsea_fic (which is currently running a ficathon). And finally, if you've enjoyed what you've read, please do comment/review -- it's even more important to encourage authors in such a small fandom!

Fandom: EARTHSEA
Pairing: Ged/Tenar
Length: ~2000 words
Author on LJ:

antoshevu
Author Website: On KIA Repository
Why this must be read:

I try to avoid recommending the same author twice at

crack_van, but I did promise middle-aged sex earlier, and well-written adult-rated Earthsea fiction is rather thin on the ground. Le Guin doesn't go into the details of Ged & Tenar's 25-year-delayed consummation in Tehanu, saying just that 'Tenar taught Ged the mystery that the wisest man could not teach him.' In 'Naming the Land', Antosha bravely interposes a scene between the lines of the original Tehanu chapter, and succeeds in writing an explicit sex scene which retains a strong sense of the characters and their history, both shared & separate. As the title promises, the theme of language runs through the piece. There's also a lovely surprise at the end which really made the story for me.

When he was naked beneath her, they both gazed silently at the part of him that he had ignored to the benefit of his magery. It would be ignored no more.

She reached out and named it—pen, it is called in Hardic, and awato in Kargish. "This is the first pizzle that I ever saw," Tenar murmured, her fingers finding its breadth, testing its length. When he looked her quizzically, curiosity overcoming even sensation, she laughed again; Ged was always Ged. "When we sailed those weeks together, do you think I never snuck a peek? I, who had spent my life among girls and women?"

Now he smiled and gave in to the sensation for a moment. His eyes still closed he said, "I peeked too, you know. I looked at the beautiful young women beside me as she slept or washed or passed water, at the breast or quim that revealed itself." Here he used the Hardic terms that she had just taught him. "I asked myself how it was that I could see your beauty and yet not desire you. I had been taught that it was in the nature of mages not to crave the pleasures of the flesh, and yet at the time, I wondered whether that was a virtue or a failing."

Gently she squeezed his dancers, his testicles. "And what do you think now?"

"I think," he groaned, "that wise men can be great fools."

Naming the Land by Antosha