Dee Moyza

Title: One She Would Understand (8,570 words)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Blue Castle
Rating/Warnings: Teen and Up / Warning for canonical character deaths, including one of an infant.
Characters: Barney Snaith, Cissy Gay, Abel Gay, Valancy Stirling
Relationships: Barney Snaith & Cissy Gay
Summary: In all his thirty years before arriving at Mistawis, Barney had never known true friendship. But when he thought of Cissy's shy smile, her delicate way of dealing with both her father and her baby, and the air of loneliness that enveloped her when she discussed her exile from Deerwood society, he resolved to at least make an attempt. After all, she wasn't the only one who could use a friend.
Notes: Written for Yuletide 2023

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Title: Queen of the Wild Places (500 words)
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: The Blue Castle
Rating/Warnings: General Audiences / No Warnings Apply
Characters: Barney Snaith (pen name, John Foster)
Relationships: Barney Snaith/Valancy Stirling
Summary: John Foster's thoughts on solitude and love
Notes: Written for the summer round of seasonsofdrabbles


To the lone wanderer, the woods might seem like a place of solitude, a fortress of boughs and sky that does not suffer the sound of the human voice raised in conversation. But look—and listen—more closely, and you will find that the woods are anything but solitary. From the ever-present chorus of insects and birdsong—of chattering squirrels and whispering breezes and murmuring streams—to the reliance of the land upon water, the predator upon prey, the prey upon the land, each element of life in the woods exists in a state of constant communion with one another. Even the lone old pine at the edge of the clearing has its roots sunk deep into earth, drawing life from that which last saw the sun long ago, and carrying it upward, back into the light, telling its story anew.

To what folly, then, does man owe his insistence on solitude, even as the natural world eschews it?

Pride, perhaps, or fear, or any one of a hundred little reasons known only to him. But it is deadly—if not to the body, then, to the soul—a slow poison leaching the life from within him, imperceptibly but insistently.

So what joy it is, then, to find a friend, a true companion, with whom to revel in the splendor of the woods—a person through whose eyes are revealed details one has never noticed before, whose laughter taps an unfound spring of delight in one’s heart, whose touch—warm and soft and gentle—can soothe one’s soul and steady one’s feet when they are weary. A person in whose presence the woods transform from fortress to cathedral, each step, each sigh, each quiet word an act of reverence toward not only the spirit of the woods, but toward the nature of this newfound bond, as well.

For there is a sense of the miraculous to it, despite it being so simple. As with the budding of trees after a long winter, or the stirring of fish in a thawing pond, the miracles of nature feel no less miraculous once they are given names and explanations, for the miracle is in the sense of awe it brings, in the filling of one’s heart to the point of bursting with a mysterious warmth, with something that can really only be called love. And so, the same is true of companionship, especially after one has lived in the dark winter of solitude for far too long.

It is with no little wonder that I look upon my companion—a woman as lovely and radiant as moonlight incarnate, with her lips stained by the juice of summer berries, or her cheeks colored by winter’s chill, or her hair adorned with a wreath of spring flowers—and see her as the queen of the wild places, for today and evermore, the one who brought this woodsman into harmony with the woods, and with life itself. With her, I have found my roots, at last.

Title: Keep Reading (1,137 words)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Blue Castle
Rating/Warnings: Teen / No Warnings Apply
Characters: Valancy Stirling, Barney Snaith
Relationships: Valancy/Barney
Summary: For Valancy, there are few luxuries in life sweeter than being able to read a novel beside a great, crackling fire. Barney is determined to show her one of them.
Notes: Written as a treat for Chocolate Box 2022

For Valancy, there were few luxuries in life sweeter than being able to read a novel beside a great, crackling fire, and she availed herself of every opportunity to do so, stretched out on the bearskin before the fireplace, elbow propped on a cushion, an open book before her. In the Blue Castle, she had become the voracious reader she'd never had a chance to be at her mother's house, making frequent trips to the library and returning each time with an armful of books. Novels, poetry, history and nature books—there was so much she didn't know, so much to learn and discover and experience, and so little time for all of it. There were days when she stared at two or three books side-by-side, genuinely unable to decide which one to read first, wondering all the while what secrets and joys the other books held even as she read the one she ultimately chose.

Tonight, however, there was no uncertainty. She had become engrossed in the story of a tumultuous love affair between a young seamstress and a charming but shadowy duke, and looked forward to its continuing development. It was the kind of book Barney would laugh and roll his eyes at; it was also the kind of book her mother would not dream of letting her even touch, and that alone made it far more entertaining and satisfying than it had any right to be. The seamstress had just bidden the duke a tearful farewell over what Valancy thought was an incredibly petty argument and fled to her sister's home when Barney entered from the veranda, a rush of early-autumn chill sneaking in with him. She glanced at him and he smiled, then wandered over and sat down behind her, lightly rubbing her shoulder through the sleeve of her dress.

"You looked positively enraptured by that book when I walked in," he said, his voice dipping into that deliciously intimate tone he reserved only for her. "Just what has you so enchanted, Moonlight?"

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Title: Bracken and Fir (1,511 words)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Blue Castle - L.M. Montgomery
Rating/Warnings: Mature / Mild Sexual Content
Characters: Valancy Stirling, Barney Snaith
Relationships: Valancy Stirling/Barney Snaith
Summary: Overtaken by darkness during a walk through the woods, Barney and Valancy spend a night beneath the stars and the trees, in a makeshift bed of bracken and fir boughs.
Notes: Written for the Yuletide New Year's Resolutions collection

The light of the late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees, plunging the path before them into a golden twilight.  Even now, the ground was getting dark, the thick underbrush greedily drinking up the last warm rays of the day, and with each passing minute, Barney’s steps became more uncertain.  He was no stranger to nighttime tramps through the woods, but he’d never had anyone with him, then—no one whose safety depended on solid footing, no one who was just learning the shape and feel of the forest.  So, he reached beside him and took Valancy’s hand, and together they trekked a bit farther, slowly, carefully, until the light grew purple and soft and only the silver dust of moonbeams filtered through the boughs above.

“Well, looks like this is as far as we’re going for a while,” Barney said calmly.  “The woods get tricky at night—harder to navigate, harder to walk.  Don’t want to risk either of us getting injured.”

“That’s quite reasonable,” said Valancy, seemingly as unperturbed by the situation as he was.  “In that case, what do we do?”

“We make ourselves comfortable.”  He released her hand and crashed through the brush to the base of a fir tree, where he gathered armfuls of fallen branches.  He knelt and parted the bracken and arrayed the branches on the ground, then bent the bracken over them, pressing hard to keep them down, to make a soft, cozy spot on which he and Valancy could sleep.

He could feel her eyes on him as he worked, but she never asked what he was doing.  Her implicit trust in him warmed his heart, and he returned to her with a smile.

“It might not be luxurious,” he said, nodding to the makeshift bed, “but I promise you, it is comfortable.”

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