[Maggie Helwig, Between Mountains] FIC: Cigarettes in Five Hands

[thuviaptarth]

So my awesome Yuletide stories, all about the undisguised metaphors for sex, were by Jenn Abiding (Brilliance of a Heart, Vampire Knight) and Olivia Circe (Allegory, Revengers Tragedy).

I only wrote my assigned story this year:

Title: Cigarettes in Five Hands
Fandom: Maggie Helwig's Between Mountains
Recipient: therealjae
Summary: Two years and all he can make out in Cyrillic is curses and Beware, sniper.

Notes:
Much thanks to loligo for research help and general encouragement. Any errors are, of course, my own. The conceit is stolen from Marguerite Yourcenar's A Coin in Nine Hands.

This story is set in Sarajevo, December 24-25, 1994. Sources included:

• a lot of newspaper articles
  
• Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo
  
• Tom Gjelten, Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege
  
• Tim Judah, Kosovo
  
• Antony Loyd, My War Gone By, I Miss It So: So completely NOT RECOMMENDED I had to write letters to loligo and springgreen about how much I hated it and wanted to stab its author with MANY KNIVES. DO NOT READ.
  

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I didn't come across this till now. The structure is so elegant.

[cofax7]

Hah! I should have known it was you, since you're one of the few I know of who've read the source.

Lovely job.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Up is down! Black is white! Mely wrote a Christmas story! If you ever feel like talking about how you came to make that unexpected choice, I'd be interested to hear it.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Anthony Loyd is utterly appalling. I really enjoyed his cameo appearance in your story though. It was kind of a perfect in-joke.

Thank you so much for doing this!