Staying Up Late

[shewhostaples]

Title: Staying Up Late (I know, I know! I'm uninspired, OK?)
Creator: El Staplador
Universe: Dorothy L Sayers' Wimseyverse
Type of work: fic, a little under 500 words
Contains: memories, mostly. Reference to terminal illness. Oblique references to fox-hunting and poaching.
Notes: Agatha Dawson is the first victim in Unnatural Death. This contains no spoilers for the mystery, though does reference background information that we find out about half way through the book.

Clara was one to be up with the lark, out with the hounds at daybreak, and, though Agatha followed her, blinking and yawning, over hedge and gate, ford and field, she always preferred staying up late.

Comments

[thene]

Oh, I love this. Not least because I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who read these two as a queer couple. I think you've got the feel of Agatha right - rural by nature, and very self-possessed. Great work. I'd love to see more fic about Agatha, and Clara.

[shewhostaples]

Thank you! I honestly believe that Sayers made Agatha and Clara as explicitly a couple as she could - a kind of Ladies of Llangollen pair - and it does go a fair way towards balancing the fail that happens elsewhere in the book. I think the Coblings and the other Crofton residents make all the difference, in the way that they so obviously believe that the pair of them were the best thing since sliced bread.

Thinking about it, I rather suspect that Clara would have been the one to go in for poaching, if either of them did. But I wanted a good excuse for a headstrong child to be up past her bedtime ;-)