telperion_fic

LOTR Fic: A Bird in the Hand

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:12:25 GMT

Title: A Bird in the Hand
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Barahir (Fourth Age)
Prompt: BMEM09 Days 27, 29, & 30; fanfic100 prompt #3, ends
Word Count: 2,132
Rating: Teen for violence
Summary: In the Fourth Age, Gondor grapples with the legacy of Numenor that was.

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Note: Barahir is the grandson of Faramir and Éowyn, and the author of many of the sources collected in The Lord of the Rings appendices. Beyond that, anything we know about him is fanon. In my stories he is a child of one of Faramir’s younger daughters, though that point isn’t horribly important.
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The rain struck Barahir as somber. It was almost as if Gondor’s clouds were crying; as well they should, with the king dead and all. Barahir would be tempted to call the raindrops the tears of the Queen, were he a man more given to flowery turns of phrase. He was not such a man, though, so he would not say it; a historian dealt in cold facts. Still, it seemed there was something in the air today. Did Gondor’s very air mourn the old king’s death?

It struck Barahir as odd that he should be so palpably affected. He had not known the king overly well. Perhaps he had seen him more often than many did, even among the nobility, and in smaller gatherings, but Barahir was the younger son of a lesser line, and so to him the king had always been more of a patron than a family friend.

Perhaps that explained why he felt so driven to get away from the festivities. The new king had been crowned that morning, but somehow Barahir was in no mood to celebrate. No, the aviary fit his mood much better. It had always been where he went to be alone, even as a child; few people ever came up there except for the messengers, and they were unobtrusive enough. Barahir had more need of thought than revelry, even if he had been in the mood for it, and so he dragged his aging legs up the long flights of stairs, wine-skin and messenger’s case in hand.

At last he reached the aviary, and he looked over at the window. Should he look out? It was humbling, somehow, to see the City from this height and know that those tiny men below could just as easily be him. And there was the school, a private academy a step above the common schools all boys might attend; as a lad he had enjoyed looking down on them.

For Barahir, who had grown up cloistered away with his tutors, the possibilities of such a world were exhilarating. Their futures were not yet assured; they might do well and turn their success into opportunities, or fail and so be consigned to mediocrity. For Barahir, privilege had always been guaranteed by virtue of his birth, and so there was little risk in coming of age. He was surrounded by the legends since before he could remember: Éowyn Wraithbane, and the Hero of the Causeway Forts, and other men besides.

But as for himself, he was the child of his grandfather’s old age, the one fated to stay by the prince’s side and keep him company. Whatever quests he might find, they would have to be of a different sort than the ones enjoyed by those who had come before them. He had tramped through the tidy accounts of past quests, great deeds that he knew could not have been quite as bloodless, quite as neatly divided between good and evil as the minstrels made them seem. For Barahir, to find the truth in such quests had always been the only adventure he could find.

He wanted to lose himself gazing out the window, if only for a while, but there was a task at home. No, Barahir would not let himself be drawn into those school-boys’ world. Taking a deep sip from the skin of wine he had brought with him, Barahir lowered himself against the cool stone wall. A messenger-pigeon flew down from her perch high above and rested on Barahir’s shoulder. Her head cocked to the side, she looked almost like the cats back home did, when he had pestered them with questions no man wanted to hear.

That made Barahir smile. “Could you answer why he gave me this task, if I asked you?” Barahir cocked his head to copy the pigeon. He was far beyond the stage of life when he might expect an answer, but it was nice to ask the question and not be thought odd.

Outside,, the thunder rolled throughout the city. It always seemed so much more ominous here than it did in Ithilien, bouncing off buildings and echoing against the stone walls.

“Very well, then; I’ll tell you, shall I? The Elessar“ – the pigeon cooed, and Barahir guessed she recognized the name – “he left me something in his will. He said that I was more learned than any living man he knew, and said that perhaps I’d acquired some wisdom along the way.” Barahir waved the messenger’s case knowingly, a leather canister shut with wax and marked with the old king’s seal. “But such compliments always come with a price, don’t they? He willed me this, without so much as explaining what I should do with it.” Barahir took another sip of his wine. “I haven’t even worked up the nerve to open it.”

The pigeon clicked his bill disapprovingly, and Barahir felt his cheeks flush a little. To be so embarrassed by what a bird thought of him! As if the bird thought anything of him at all, and as if he – Barahir of the House of Húrin, distinguished scholar of the Order of Ereinion and all – should care what a bird thought. Yet Barahir thought that anyone would be flustered, in his place. The king had entrusted him with this artifact, and he’d done it through a will rather than speaking to him. And a braver man than Barahir might be unnerved by that. For all his talk of battling metaphorical dragons, truth and history and the like, he was no hero.

But hero or no, he was a loyal servant first and foremost. Before he could talk himself out of it, he broke the wax seal and twisted off the canister’s lid. He coughed on the musty air, and the pigeon hissed at him before flying off again.

A fleeting thought crossed his mind at that. He remembered a parable his grandfather had once told him. Truth, so the story went, was like so many birds in an aviary: sometimes near at the hand and known with certainty, and sometimes fluttering about the rafters so that you could hardly be sure of what you knew; but it was always there. He chuckled at that memory, for it called him back to simpler times; yet he also wondered how much truth there was in it. More than he often gave the story credit for, he supposed, if not as much as many men seemed to think. “Come back!” he called up at the pigeon good-naturedly, as if having a bird nearby would keep his thoughts where he could no them clearly; but no answer came.

Turning his attention back to the messenger’s case, he felt his face grow serious once more. He upended it so its papers fell out in his lap, and he began reading. There was of course the usual archivist’s insignia, declaring the contents authentic, but it was no sign that he could recognize. Rohan, then? But no; his Rohirric kin had made some progress in such literary matters since the war, but these pages were too old for that. Reading more carefully, he saw some names he had seen before. There was Thorontur of Imladris, a name he had seen in many of the manuscripts brought south by the old queen. And there was a Mithrandir, who had seemingly carried the text east across the sea –

The case fell from his hands, its metal studs clacking loudly as it rolled across the stone floor. Barahir looked down, surprised. He had not even realized he still held it, let alone that he had let it go. He was a bit taken aback by his own reaction, for he had never put much stock in the fairy-tales of a mythical land beyond this world. That was Elvish mischief, to make them seem like the last remnants of a glorious past rather than the insignificant beings they were. Surely? But Thorontur was a name Barahir had come to trust, and his grandfather had always spoken of Mithrandir as being honest. Could Thorontur be so deceived? Or had his grandfather have been misled by that Mithrandir? Was it not more likely…

Barahir read on. The pages were not written by that Mithrandir; it seemed he had only carried them back to Middle-earth. The true author’s name was marked out, erased by the author or perhaps just worn away by time, but “of the Vanyar” was still legible enough. For a moment Barahir wrinkled his nose at that – all of the Vanyar he had heard of were poets, and poets made poor historians – but then he caught himself. There was sometimes more truth in ballads and odes than in the histories sanctioned by kingdoms. And why should Barahir assume the Vanyar were all of one sort anyway? That was hardly true of Gondorians.

Whoever this author was, he knew some things that suggested the treatise was old, whatever might be said of its truth. He spoke of a great Armada of ships dyed with scarlet and gleaming with red and gold; that at least matched records unearthed in Annúminas since the war. And the numbers of ships matched what Gondorian lore remembered, more or less. Barahir could find little ground to doubt him on those grounds.

Would that the account had stopped there! Barahir could have stood the truth that there really was a West and that Númenor really had fallen; but there was more. The Vanya wrote of how the mighty ones, those the Elves called the Valar, had laid aside their power; and how that fabled Eru Ilúvatar had broke their world and sent waters out from the deeps to drown the isle that had been given to men as a gift. Of course he had heard of the Akallabêth – who among the Dúnedain had not? – but he had long comforted himself with the thought that the floods could have just happened, and not been sent. Blights might ruin Pelennor’s crops one year and not the next, and Rohan’s winter might last an extra two months without reason; why should Númenor’s floods be any different?

That thought was the only thing that kept the nightmares away. For years he had dreamed that he was trapped in this very tower, with the stairs flooding and the waters rising steadily. The pigeons had all flown away, and the owls and eagles as well; but Barahir could not fly. It was a wave dream of sorts, not unlike the one that had always troubled his family’s sleep. Somehow it made Barahir feel more safe, to think that such floods could happen but would not be directed toward him.

Outside, the bell tolled announcing the last hour of the day, and before long the faint song of boys’ voices began to loft up toward the aviary. Barahir knew that song; he had heard it often enough as a boy They taught it at the school below; it was a way to learn proportion and harmony, and a practice in long-dead languages as well, and the boys sang it every day at sunset. It occurred to Barahir, though, that it might once have been a prayer. The song asked to be carried away when the storm was near on a sea of calm; it was a call for help. But to whom could such a prayer be addressed? Not to the One, for His mind could never be changed. To the mighty ones, then? Perhaps the Faithful had not known then what Barahir knew; perhaps they could still pray.

In spite of himself, Barahir imagined Manwë sitting on his mountain. Had he seen the shepherds scrambling up the mountain in a vain attempt at escape? Had Varda turned his ears so that he could hear their cries? Could they have seized up their power, then, or were they beyond such choices?

They might not have heard; Barahir could never know. Such knowledge was beyond him: a bird fluttering about the aviary that he could never hope to grasp. For his own part, though, he knew what he had read, and he knew he could not forget. He would write the Vanya’s story, translate it into words that men of his own age could understand. And he would lay aside his rage so that none would mistake history’s fact for diatribe.

Barahir would tell their story.

LOTR Drabble: Tomorrows

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:57:12 GMT

Title: Tomorrows
Fandom: Lord of the rings
Characters: Faramir
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 31; fanfic100 prompt #65, Passing.
Word Count: 100
Rating: General
Summary: For years now, Faramir has longed for tomorrows.

Multimedia Note: A bit obvious, perhaps, but I had the Beatles song Yesterday in mind when writing this.

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For years – years beyond count, it seemed – Faramir had longed for tomorrows. He would see his banner under Elendil’s, live in peace, counsel his king; let other men see to great deeds. And he would finally taste Ithilien’s fruit. Those peaches were legendary, but to him they had always been only grandfathers’ tales. Faramir would know such tastes himself, someday. He could almost feel the juice trickling down his chin.

But then tomorrow came. They told him of dark deeds on silent streets, tales Faramir would forget if he could; and for once, just once, he would have yesterday back.

LOTR Ficlet: Wishing

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:53:37 GMT

Title: Wishing
Fandom: Lord of the rings
Characters: Aragorn
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 28; fanfic100 prompt #55, spirit
Word Count: 200
Rating: General
Summary: In Harad, Aragorn muses on hope.

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The deserts were full of houseless spirits, jinn in the Haradric tongue. Aragorn had been warned to flee from their sight, for they had little love for outlanders. It had seemed an amusing story, when first the servant-child had told him not to polish his dagger overmuch. Yet grown men – even lords – seemed to fear them. The Haradrim thought them long-dead lords who lingered in Middle-earth, great princes who could offer great gifts – but at a price.

Aragorn knew better than to believe such things. Men did not linger in that way, or if they did they were bound to the Nameless One and so no longer had gifts to offer; but it was still tantalizing, to think of such possibilities. He so longed to see his mother’s face again, to feel Arwen’s warm breath behind his ear as she came close. Even robes free of the sand’s grit, would be welcome indeed.

But no. He was estel, fated to be hope for the whole world beyond himself; and so he must be perfect, complete. If he lacked in himself, what could he offer?

He shielded his eyes from the bright mid-day sun, and began to climb the next dune.

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Note: Obviously the jinn of Harad are different from the jinn of Arabic mythology. They are my own mythology for this story and, while I have coopted the name, I don't mean to make any claim about the truth of that culture's folklore or on Tolkien's world.

TH Ficlet: Heroes

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:57:38 GMT

Title: Heroes
Fandom: The Hobbit
Characters: Bilbo
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 9
Word Count: 150
Rating: General
Summary: A tweenage Bilbo thinks back on the stories he learned as a child.

Bilbo remembers the tales he learned bouncing on his mother’s knees. She told him of Isengar who’d gone to sea once, and other daring hobbits besides; and even more, stories of men tall as trees, and graceful fae folk, and stalwart dwarves, off in wars to save the whole world from dragons and worse things.

He knows better, now, for he is a tween; still victim to hobbit-like mischief, but too far grown for a child’s fancies. This is the Shire, safe and sound if a little too dull, and there are no heroes to be found in his neighborhood. Little hope for that!

Still, sometimes he looks up at the stars and longs for one more glimpse of fireworks. He remembers a most noteworthy birthday when the sky seemed to shine with flowers, and he wonders: whatever became of that old codger, the one who’d taught him to dream?

Canon Afternote:

“I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary).” (Gandalf, in “An Unexpected Party,” the Hobbit).

Silm Fic: Tutelage

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:03:45 GMT

Title: Tutelage
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: Manwe, Varda
Prompt: BMEM09 Day (I think?) 26
Word Count: 573
Rating: General
Summary: Manwe Sulimo, on history's accidents and lessons learned.

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Manwë had thought himself wise, in his youth. He was, after all the mightiest of all his brothers, and the closest to their Father’s thoughts since Melkor’s fall. He who had once arisen in might would have challenged Manwë once, but he was fallen; neither Ulmo nor Aulë nor any of the rest could claim such a lofty place in the order of things as Manwë claimed as his own. Now Melkor was no more, and Morgoth was not even fit to be counted, leaving Manwë the duty of ruling all under the One. It seemed right and fitting that the Wind-lord might best hear the whisper of the One. For was not voice and breath his dominion?

Perhaps, perhaps. But, after years beyond count of war, he at last began to grasp the truth he should have seen sooner: that there was more to wisdom than what he could voice, more than was even voiceable. He might remember that early music better than did any other being in all of Arda; but if there was any wisdom to be gotten from long years, ‘twas that history was more than narrative. Those golden-haired Eldar-children who camped round his mountain might delight in singing of great deeds, and with that music always in his ear it was perhaps excusable that he might forget those things they did not sing of.

Yet that was not all there was to tell. Manwë had seen the slow arc of history turn upon the fulcrum of the mundane. He might have overlooked them, once, but Varda’s sharp ears caught all, and she would turn his attention where it was most needed – when he heeded her. It was she who had whispered to him of a pledge between lovers, and a quest for a bride-gift. He would have hardly noticed, at the time, for all that it involved Melian’s child. And of course he had watched the attack on Sirion, seen the walls falling and the great heroes massacred; but he might have missed the fosterlings, if not for her soft breath on his ear, and missed those first steps toward redemption. Such were the trills that gave a song its fullness, the pen strokes that marked the progress of true history.

Varda could have perhaps taught him quicker, if he had listened. In a world where even Morgoth’s dark deeds turned things to the glory of the One, how could He have one counsel, so that the actions of any one might be His one desire? It was absurd. The One might know all possibilities in His infinite mind, but He could not know which would be chosen, which accident a child’s footsteps might bring into being. And without such knowledge, what counsel could He have, and what counsel could He make knowable to one bound within Eä?

Manwë had not known these things, in his youth. He had not realized. He had been the master of breath, of what was said, but he had not bothered to hear. That could still be changed – or so he hoped. It seemed worth the attempt, in any case.

LOTR Fic: Birthright

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:27:11 GMT

Title: Birthright
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Denethor
Prompt: BMEM09 Days 23-25; fanfic100 prompt #82, if
Word Count: 554
Rating: General
Summary: Denethor would have made a fine second-son; but that was not to be his fate.

Multimedia Note: For the interested, my "soundtrack" for this song was PFR's song Name. Not the lyrics so much, but parts of the song has the right "feel" for how I envision Denethor in this song.

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Denethor would have made a fine second son. He had heard that whisper traded between his sisters often enough, ever since he was old enough to sit still and unnoticed (and, being who he was, that had been young indeed). Denethor knew he was not the man his Gondor looked for in a steward's heir, much though that thought chilled him. It testified to the Shadow's strength: in a better world a king's heir would be well loved if he was as Denethor was.

Yet this was not a better world, and while Gondor might affirm that old saying, that she loved not the sharp sword for its brightness – even so, she certainly expected her leaders to be able to fight well. And Denethor was not unskilled with weapons, such training was his duty and he would not shirk it, but he still was not what his people imagined a general should be. Denethor would have argued that there was more than one type of shadow to be guarded against; and to write music and philosophy and above all mathematics off as an idle fancy was just the type of mistake that the Nameless One most delighted in. But he was never asked.

Ah, well, he was but seven when he first heard his sisters whispering about him. Perhaps they thought he could not hear them, or could not see the meaning of their words, or simply thought that a child would not care about those things: such were the mistakes of the old when it came to the very young. But Denethor had heard, and he had understood. He would have made a fine second son – meaning that he did not make a good first one. In his private heart Denethor wished he had been born into less honor and more privilege, or perhaps even born a girl. For his sisters, renown as a musician or even a scholar would have made them more sought after in marriage; but in a soldier doomed to be captain and more, such pursuits were but frivolity.

He had accepted his doom as best he could, for even the ancient Mathematicians had counseled against trying to change the impossible. He knew he could move the whole world, if he had but a steady place to stand, but that hardly mattered. He was not outside the world; he was very much a part of it, and there was no lever long enough to change all he would order differently.

So he gave up on the harmony of numbers and consigned himself to the tedious mathematics of kingdom-running. He designed bridges that could be pulled down by removing a single stone, calculated how fast a legion of Haradrim could reach Henneth Annûn and how much grain his rangers would need to last out a month's siege. It pained him, but what worth was one man's pleasure against a hundred men's lives, or even against a father's affections? He was not bitter; or at the least, he would not let himself be bitter, from here on out. It was his sacrifice and he would offer it willingly.

These were the words he thought to himself, when he saw lesser sons of lesser lords prance around the feasting hall at mettarë. He would not let himself wonder what might have been.

Silm Fic: Heresy

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:07:42 GMT

Title: Heresy
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: Maedhros
Prompt: BMEM Day 22
Word Count: 791
Rating: Teen (for character death)
Summary: "The cruel servants of Celegorm seized his young sons and left them to starve in the forest. Of this Maedhros indeed repented, and sought for them long in the woods of Doriath."
Author's Notes: Also written for mistry89, who long ago asked me for an Elured + Elurin story.

Multimedia Note: Sorta kinda inspired by PFR's song Wonder Why (lyrics). This doesn't exactly evoke the mood I'd want while reading this piece, but the lyrics definitely captures Maedhros's character as I see it - at least at this late date.

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To rule had always been his birthright. No one had ever thought to bound him to that promise by oath, for it was a promise both in possibility and obligation. Who would ever suppose that a child of Finwë (and Fëanor’s heir no less) should ever let rule pass to another, if it ever came to him in the first place?

But it had come to him, and through him.

Certainly his brothers had not understood his motives in giving up the crown. Maedhros had tried to explain to them how their own laws required this of him; it was the best explanation he could give, though it felt false even to him. He was right where the law was concerned – the crown did pass from brother to brother before it ever went to son – but they had rightly not accepted such excuses. Celegorm had missed the mark, though, when he had said pointedly that the one-handed must grasp what they have all the more tightly. His implication had been clear; he thought Maedhros had given the crown to Fingon's father as thanks for his rescue. Maedhros, though, knew he had abdicated for neither love nor gratitude but because he recognized governance for what it was: a duty to be borne at need and not a prize one should run after.

He looked down at the ground again. He knew Celegorm would be lying there, had seen him just a moment earlier, yet it all felt so absurd; he had to be sure. If not for the stain along his side, crimson-red and not quite dry, Celegorm might have been sleeping. He felt a giddy laugh build within him at the sight.

Celegorm’s dark hair fell in oily clumps across his face, casting shadows across his cheek, just as it often had when he’d dozed in their father's gardens in Aman. Maglor’s artist-friends had once called him the perfect model of chiaroscuro, and Maedhros saw it now, that play of light and dark. Yet he was not sleeping; his chest did not rise and sag with lazy breaths, nor did he turn restlessly as he always had.

Maedhros knelt beside him for a moment and brushed aside that hair. The sun should fall on his face, for once at least. But that sight struck him as somehow unnatural; the leaf-dappled sunlight on his brother’s face, Celegorm's expression frozen in shock that a Moriquendi blade had passed his armor, seemed to mock him somehow. Deciding to leave his brother as he had been, Maedhros pushed the hair back.

He rose to his feet, looked down once more at Celegorm’s still body, and at last tore his eyes away. The woods seemed to beckon him; Maedhros knew that, if he left now and hurried, he might still find Dior’s sons in time. To leave them so unprotected, that had been truly cruel, and Maedhros would not have that taint fall on his brother's head. Maedhros had killed youths not much older than those two, to be sure, but killed them swiftly and mercifully and in the heat of battle. In his mind, at least, that had lessened the deed – and Celegorm could claim no such mitigation. He may not have ordered his servants to act as they did, but he had chosen them as servants, and their guilt would be his.

But could Maedhros spare the time? He had never promised to rule, and so he could let the crown pass to another without breaking his word, but he was still bound by other oaths: an oath taken even by the name of Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Dark upon him if he kept it not. And the silmaril was within his grasp. He could feel its pull on his heart even though its light was somehow hidden from his eyes.

No. He closed his eyes as if in pain, which in truth he was: it felt as though a strong hand was squeezing round his heart. But no; he was an Elf before he was a son, and he had seen that same light undulled by crystal walls, when the Trees still shone.

He would seek the little ones, and if that was the deed that damned him, well, let the Darkness take Námo and the Rest as well.

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Canon After-Note:

There fell Celegorm by Dior’s hand, and there fell Curufin, and dark Caranthir; but Dior was slain also, and Nimloth his wife, and the cruel servants of Celegorm seized his young sons and left them to starve in the forest. Of this Maedhros indeed repented, and sought for them long in the woods of Doriath; but his search was unavailing. (“Of the Ruin of Doriath,” The Silmarillion)

Silm Ficlet: In the Beginning

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:06:38 GMT

Title: In the Beginning
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: J.R.R. Tolkien
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 21
Word Count: 300
Rating: General
Summary: A professor, a typewriter, a rainstorm... and a beginning.

Multimedia Note: Writing this, I had Schubert's Ständchen in mind as the First Song.

Outside, the thunder boomed ominously into the night. The cat jumped up from his resting-place behind the typewriter, his fur all standing on end. Looking sharply at his companion, he turned around so his tail brushed under the professor’s nose before lying down again. That was his revenge; the professor would swear the cat rubbed against him out of spite, just to make his eyes water.

Revenge for what, though? The professor was no master of cat-lore, but certainly even one as suspicious of him as this beast would not blame him for the storm.

Yet there was a niggling doubt: the rain did seem to match his moods, or his thoughts. It had fallen for an hour and more in steady tempo, peaceful, the water-drops playing a faint symphony against the glass of the window. The cat had hovered on the edge of sleep, then, his soft purr lulling the professor into a gentle tedium. But then the name Melkor had sprung up in the professor’s mind, and a lightning-bolt had torn the sky in two.

It was a bit eerie, really, when he thought of it: how his thought and the lightning had come together. And how persistent those made-up Powers were in his mind; almost as if they were friends, real friends and not just idle fancies. But that was foolishness, and he wouldn’t waste what time he’d found for his faerie-tales on such things. He knew he’d not find another quiet hour again for a while, not with all he had to manage this week.

So he turned back to his typewriter and set down the words that had been circling around his thoughts for too long already: “Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things be!”

The cat hissed, then, but the professor left him alone.

The Hobbit Fic: Lake of Fire

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:08:29 GMT

Title: Lake of Fire
Fandom: The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Characters: Balin, Thorin, Thror
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 20
Word Count: 1268
Rating: Teen for violence, dark themes
Summary: "So the rumour of the wealth of Erebor spread abroad and reached the ears of the dragons, and at last Smaug the Golden, greatest of the dragons of his day, arose and without warning came against King Thrór and descended on the Mountain in flames."

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Balin stood frozen to the spot. He had been looking over his shoulder at a raven and so he saw the dragon coming. It was brilliant in the mid-day sun, a fiercer red than any forge-fire he had ever seen, beautiful as it was horrible.

For it was horrible indeed, there was no doubt of that. It flew down from the North with a great gush of wind – how had Balin not heard that a mile off? – and his fiery breath descended in a majestic arc so that and devoured whatever it touched. Time seemed to stand still in one interminable moment, and then came the crash, and the crumble of rock breaking against rock, and Thorin’s guttural cry seemed to echo all around him. But how could it? There were no cave walls for it to bounce off of. Balin couldn’t explain it, but there it was: he would have sworn there were a thousand Thorins all around him.

There was just the one, though, and he was running off toward the Mountain with his axe in his hand. It was not a battle-axe for the two young dwarves had been out hiking without hoping for any real danger – just an old half-blunt tool that Thorin used more as a walking-stick than anything else. Yet it was all Thorin had, and Balin vaguely registered the blood-lust in his friend’s eyes. Some part of his mind clamoured that he should go after Thorin, for what if his friend actually caught the dragon, but his feet would not move. The whole world seemed to be spinning around him and Balin was sure he would have lost his feet if not for the rock. Even here among the trees there was good rock, something to anchor a dwarf and keep him standing.

The dragon flew overhead and Balin looked up without fully realizing what he did. The sun gleamed against the scales of the dragon’s neck, and Balin couldn’t help thinking how strangely beautiful it was: a grotesque curlicue mocking the architecture of the elf-king’s hall. The curve of the dragon’s neck gave rise to another arc of red and yellow, and all about him the trees were burning.

Still Balin could not move. He would have burned, burned til he was nothing more than ashes and bones, if not for Thorin. Thorin’s cries grew closer and closer, and almost before Balin realized it Thorin was pulling at his arm, dragging him far away from the flames.

***********************

Some time later, Balin sat on a fallen log by a fire. He held out his hands so the low flames warmed his knuckles. This was not one started by the dragon’s breath, which gave some comfort; Thorin had started it himself.

That in itself was noteworthy. Thorin Oakenshield was usually all for tramping through the woods until it came time to gather timber or haul water. But not today. Balin looked off in the direction he knew Thorin had gone searching for a stream and shook his head in disbelief. This hardly seemed the same dwarf he had set out with that morning.

No dwarf could properly be called soft, but Thorin was as close as any came. Today, though, Thorin had pulled through better than Balin had. Much better, if Balin was honest. It had been Thorin who dragged Balin to safety and filled Balin’s mug. In their lesser adventures, it had always been Balin who saw to such things, and for once he was glad to have Thorin take the lead. Still, it was unnerving.

In the distance Balin heard heavy footsteps coming through the woods. So Thorin was coming back? But it was not just Thorin. The sound of steel-toed boots against rocky paths reached his ears: cli-tack-uh, cli-tack-uh, too much noise for one pair of boots alone.

Two cloaked figures broke through the tree-line, and Balin recognized the silver hood of their king. Thror King Under Mountain leaned on his grandson’s arm for support and limped noticeably, but he was there. How, by Mahal’s fire, was he here? And there were more: a scarlet hood, and a forest-green one, and perhaps half a dozen others, most marked by the silver tassel of the king’s household.

Was this all? Balin looked hopefully at the one dwarf without a tassel, but when the blue hood came off it was only Bokûn, a dwarf Balin knew of but didn’t know well. He was known for his taste in mushrooms and would sometimes scour the woods on the leeward side of the mountain, where such treats could sometimes be found; Balin guessed he had escaped that way.

But what of the rest? What of his own father, and the rest of his house? Why should so many of the king’s line escape the fire, and so few of his, and none at all of so many others? A jealousy washed over Balin, and he felt his cheeks burn. For a while he did not dare look up but instead stared into the low-burning fire; but that was no good. He saw gates burning, and great handiworks consumed by flame. Where there had been stores of finished mail ready to sell, there was now only molten metal, and the stone pillars were all black –

A hand on his shoulder pulled him out of his dark thoughts. It was Thrain – so Thorin’s father survives as well, he thought, but stopped himself before he travelled too far down that path. He took one gulping breath to calm himself before looking up into the other’s eyes.

Neither dwarf said a word, but the truth was plain on Thror’s face: no more survivors would escape the Mountain. “The fire burns low,” Balin said gruffly; or thought he said, for the words seemed to tumble upon each other. He looked at the flames again, then across the low flames to the crowd of silver tassels. “I’ll go find some wood.”

Thrain nodded in understanding. “Do not wander far,” he said gruffly, and mercifully kept a firm hand on Thorin to keep him from following.

For a while Balin’s carried him without requiring thought from him. After some time he looked down and saw that he was carrying a few small limbs, though he couldn’t say when he’d picked them up. Something about that one detail, the weight of the wood, brought the rest of his world into sharp focus. The pine-needles brushing against his face felt needle-sharp, and the crunch of dead leaves underfoot raked against his ear. And that burning smell on the wind; how could he have ever missed that?

Climbing to the top of the hill, Balin looked out, and saw. Fire burned everywhere, all along the shores. Even the far-off lake seemed to be burning. At first that made little sense, and then it all became too clear. The towns of men were burning: Dale by the mountain, and Laketown on the water beyond. And the men of those towns, they were burning as well. How could Erebor fare better?

At that, Balin wept.

***********************

Canon After-Note:

“The first we heard of it was a noise like a hurricane coming from the North, and the pine-trees on the Mountain creaking and cracking in the wind. Some of the dwarves who happened to be outside (I was one luckily—a fine adventurous lad in those days, always wandering about, and it saved my life that day)—well, from a good way off we saw the dragon settle on our mountain in a spout of flame. Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire.” (Thorin, in “An Unexpected Party,” The Hobbit)

LOTR Fic: A Game Well-Played

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:21:48 GMT

Title: A Game Well-Played
Fandom: Lord of the rings
Characters: Denethor, Faramir, OCs (Boromir mentioned)
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 19; fanfic100 #27, "parents"
Word Count: 1,711 + Notes
Rating: General
Summary: On lessons learned across the chess-board.

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And the first principle of rule is this: much advantage is lost in the idle clatter of tongues. The wise ruler listens in silence, for he never knows which overheard word shall prove truly useful. (From Ereinion the Sage’s Philosophy of Kings)

************************

I. 2989 T.A.

Faramir stood by the table, craning his neck to look at the thin board of polished wood overhead. He seemed unsure of himself, somehow, so rare even in a young child. Usually Denethor would not indulge such timidity but just now he felt indulgent. It was not every day that one so small challenged the steward of Gondor to a game of strategy.

And there it was, the turning point; Faramir climbed up the stool until he sat atop it, his short legs dangling only half-way to the floor. Wherever his indecision had went, Denethor could find no trace of it on his son’s face. He picked up the captain, held it out so Faramir could see it, and began to explain how it moved; but Faramir stopped him.

"I have stood there" – Faramir nodded to the room’s corner – "while you and Boromir played often enough. I believe I know the rules. White always opens?"

Denethor nodded silently, with no trace of mirth on his face; he’d not have Faramir think it condescension. But in his heart, Denethor was proud indeed.

************************

The second rule is thus: The world is full of many dangers and challenges too large for even the greatest of men; and no man can truly thrive on his own. Alliances therefore being necessary, the wise prince will make them for his own reasons. And he will keep those reasons to himself, if they are not easily guessed, until he gets some advantage from revealing them. (From Ereinion the Sage’s Philosophy of Kings)

************************

II. 2998 T.A.

He sat hunched over the board, his long arms folded on his knees as he sat in quiet thought. Then without warning, he reached out decisively and moved his piece three spaces forward. "Cleric to E3."

He announced his move, as he always did, without the slightest hint of pride in his voice. This time it would have been warranted, for that put him within three moves of checkmate, and not by the obvious path. A lesser strategist than Denethor would have been caught unawares. He would congratulate his son, but he’d not make his son’s defeat worse – or spoil his son’s victory, if it came to that – through pity.

"Oh, I nearly forgot." Faramir fumbled inside his belt-wallet for a moment and at last retrieved a pair of silver scissors, such as some lords used to trim their beards. Denethor took them, turned them over in his hands, and wondered just what Faramir was getting at. But then he saw it, the engraved letters on the top blade: BDuG. Boromir Denethorion, uin Gondor. It was his older son’s mark.

"Let it be as an early mettarë gift," Faramir said in response to his father’s unvoiced question. Denethor, though, looked at him skeptically, and so a bit more of the truth came out: "You think, Father, that you are the only one who dislikes that damnable beard? It looks as though a wild animal died on his face. I’d have it off any way I can."

Denethor turned the scissors over a few times in his hands before handing them back to Faramir. "You have shown your game," he said at last. "Too much of it."

"Nay, you misjudge me, lord. I have not lost an advantage but gained an ally. For you are implicated; I know you will not lie to a son over such a matter, and if I am caught, well, so are you." Faramir smiled, then: not the impish grin of a boy, but that knowing smile that belonged more on a commander’s face. Denethor still was unused to seeing it on his son.

"Well done indeed," he said softly. Then, turning his attention back to the board: "But not – quite – well enough. Captain to E5." The black marble horse’s head slid across the board, blocking Faramir’s attack; and the game played on.

************************

And the third: A wise ruler must know that victory is never certain, and even in victory there is loss. The king must survive, else the footman’s freedom shall never last. Yet because one’s sacrifice saves the other, the wise ruler knows that this does not change the true equality of things… (From Ereinion the Sage’s Philosophy of Kings)

************************

III. 3015 T.A.

Through his cracked door, Denethor heard his son’s voice in the antechamber. No, he would not see his father just yet, not until he had washed away the road’s filth, yet there were some tasks that would not wait. Even here, Denethor smelled the proof of a hard-ridden journey. On any other occasion he would call Faramir on his lack of propriety, but this was an old tradition, and one Denethor loved as much as Faramir did. The clerk knew it well, too, and asked for protocol’s sake rather than out of true conviction that Faramir came to see the steward.

Faramir would walk past the clerk’s desk and bend before the cabinet in the corner. Denethor did not need to see this to imagine it, for this was how it always happened. Faramir would unlock the cabinet, pull out his tray, and stare at the board in fierce concentration.

The chest had been a gift from Boromir one mettarë years past, when in his clumsiness the boy had knocked over a table with five years’ worth of chess games. And a well-given one, for if Boromir had upset the boards a second time, the House of Húrin would be short an heir. Denethor enjoyed the game like he did little else, and he prided himself on playing it with half the lords of Beleriand – and many beyond – onto its joys. Now a shelf held those games safe, sturdy so it could not be knocked over so easily.

There was a shelf for each game: one for Boromir’s, and one for Imrahil’s, and one for Théoden’s, and even one for the strange captain from the North that Denethor never named and Faramir alone guessed. Other shelves stood empty, in anticipation of games with future friends – or future enemies, come to it; Denethor enjoyed his games with Thorongil as much as he did the ones with Théoden.

But Faramir’s game was unique. Of all the games, it alone was not carried out by mail. Letters would come from Dol Amroth, from Rohan, from other places further afield; and Denethor would unlock the chest with a rare smile, slide out a tray and move two pieces – one black and one white – before making a note in the registry atop the cabinet. But not with Faramir; Faramir alone had his own key, and would make his own moves. Denethor heard that key turn in tis lock once more, announcing that Faramir was done. That was quickly played!

Now that the move was made, Denethor got up from his desk. He would not look over another man’s shoulder as he chose his play, even one he had long wanted to see; but now he was free to grant his son. Walking around his desk, Denethor opened his study door and walked out into the antechamber. Faramir was leaner than he might have liked, but there were no new scars that he could see, and neither arm was bound in a sling; he seemed well enough. And his face, though weary, seemed peaceful too. There was a look of satisfaction in his eyes, but also of sorrow.

Crossing the room in three long strides, Denethor clapped Faramir on the forearm. "Rest you well, son," he said softly; "we will speak more come dinner." One less well versed in the steward’s ways might take that tone for ambivalence, but the clerk knew it was less cold than it might have been, as did Faramir. And in a most uncharacteristic move, Denethor pulled his son into an embrace, gladly breathing in the stink of Faramir’s sweat as proof that his son still lived. After a moment he released him; Faramir bowed and left the room without a word.

"He wrote something in the register," the clerk said. "More than the usual notation, I mean." He took a letter he had been writing from his desk and walked over to the chamber’s door. "By your leave, lord," he said, and he left the steward alone.

Denethor did not know whether the man had a real errand, or whether he just remembered his lord’s penchant for privacy, but Denethor would not waste the opportunity. Walking over to the chest, he opened the registry without delay. There was of course the expected record, "pawn 5 to D4," but on the line above Denethor saw something new. Where Faramir had recorded his last move, made some months before and captured by Denethor in a strategic sacrifice, there was now an added piece of feigned history: "Calarchíl; d. influenza, 16 Narquelië."

Denethor laid his hand on the chest’s ledge for balance; just then he felt heady, and he was glad that the clerk had left him alone. Seeing that record was like a whisper from his own past, and the similarity had caught him off-guard. He too had invented histories for those pieces he had lost, even the pawns. And to his knowledge, he was the only one who had ever done so, until now.

Where had Faramir gotten that idea? Was Malbeth a recent death, someone Faramir wished to commemorate? But Denethor could think of no Malbeth serving in Ithilien, and even if it were true, why should Faramir showcase genuine grief in such a way? A lesser man might, perhaps, but not Faramir, not in this game.

Denethor allowed himself a rare smile before returning to his work. They would have much to discuss, come dinner.

*******************

Notes:

Faramir was born in 2983 T.A. That would make him six, fifteen, and thirty-two in each of these pieces.

The second piece was inspired by Dwimordene’s drabble series Eight Weeks, specifically Week Three. I've invented several details not found in her original series, so I hope I haven't maimed her world too severely.

The Philosophy of Kings is obviously a made-up treatise. Its name literally means "the philosophy of kings," and I imagine it as something similar to Macchiavelli's The Prince (or perhaps, in Denethor's hands, more like Sun-Tzu's The Art of War.)

LOTR Fic: Turtles All the Way Down

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:24:40 GMT

Title: Turtles All the Way Down
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Aragorn, OFC Haradri
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 18; fanfic100 prompt #34, "not enough"
Word Count: 1673 + Notes
Rating: Teen for mature themes, discussion of M-e religion, briefest hint of sexuality
Summary: Often the greatest deeds, those which history most remembers, are not the most difficult. Aragorn finds his limits tested in Harad.

Author's Notes: A prequel to "Where the Stars Are Strange," though you do not need to read that drabble series to read this.

Multimedia: Continuing the tradition of offering a soundtrack to reading, I wrote this to the tune of Matsiyahu's song "King without a Crown." (YouTube /// Lyrics)

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russel) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

(from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time)

Walking through the garden, Aragorn bit down on his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He knew that, should he allow himself to start, he would never be able to stop. This was not laughter at a story well-told, or the first sight of a cousin after long absence; no, the laughter building in his chest was bitter, almost hysterical, at the hideous turn the world seemed set on taking.

Even the words he used felt wrong. This was no garden, at least not as Aragorn had always used the term. Here in the heart of desert, an oasis might give water enough to sustain a community, yet it was still foolish to waste it on plants without use. Herbs they might grow in boxes on the window-sill, and vegetables for the stew-pot if the family was truly rich in water.

But a garden? Who was rich enough to waste water on such pleasantries? No, even the sayyid was not so well off that he could afford the great flower-bushes Gilraen had tended back in Rivendell. They carved rocks here instead, and set them about the courtyard, chosen for their color and grain and cunningly fashioned to please the eye. It was beautiful, Aragorn would grant that, yet it hardly felt like a true garden.

He leaned his head back, letting the faint evening breeze whisper against his skin. It slipped past the open collar of his linen tunic, cooling his throat and chest. For a moment he could almost hear the tinkle of Elven laughter and song, and the tinkle of waterfalls into cool pools. 'Twas but an afterimage, a memory, but it still felt true. How he wanted to flee this southern wasteland, leave the sand and the heat and the parching thirst and the ruin of Sauron over all, but for the moment his feet were rooted to this spot.

"You should be asleep by now," a voice said behind him. "Dawn comes early, and the Consummation waits for no man."

Aragorn turned on his heel so he faced the open window looking out on the courtyard. There she stood: Fatima, the sayyid's youngest daughter. He remembered when he had first sworn fealty to her father, how even then she had impressed him with her curiosity and spirit. Now, though, she was truly a thing to be reckoned with. The moonlight caught on the gossamer threads of her sleeping-gown so she glimmered as Aragorn imagined Tilion himself would. She leaned out her window and the wind caught up the strands of her unbound hair so they fluttered around her shoulders.

She would be a true vision of beauty, if not for the gold marriage-band that glimmered on her finger in the lamp-light.

"The house is near stuffed to the roof-beams, my lady, you know that as well as any," Aragorn replied. "Your father has bunked me with his seneschal, but the man was deep enough in his cups tonight, and he snores when he is drunk. I thought to take in the stars."

"The stars," she said softly, and the spark faded a little from her eyes. "They say I shall light the heavens ere week's end." Aragorn nodded, for the seneschal had explained tomorrow's ceremony to him, how the Haradrim believed the One honored his beloved wives each with a star in the heaven. Fatima shook her head as if to clear her eyes before smiling purposefully at Aragorn. "Will you come in?"

"You know I may not," he answered. "You are as a married lady to your people now, and it would be unseemly for you to entertain me, alone and so late."

Fatima smiled mischievously at that, and one less close to her might have been fooled by her good humor. Aragorn, though, had served as her bodyguard this last year (for there were those even in Harad who would deprive Sauron of a sacrifice, or who were simply jealous of the sayyid); he was all too familiar with her, and knew that her bluster would have been even more pronounced on any other day.

He longed to speak freely to her. He would tell her how Sauron was not so all-powerful as he might seem, how his longfather had stolen a fruit from the One's stronghold on an island now buried under the sea, and how that forefather had lived to tell the tale – indeed, had been so blessed by the true powers of the world that his line survived even to this day. Just then the burden of silence felt so heavy that he was sure his knees would buckle under it. It was a pillar of turtles upon his back, he thought, remembering the story her people told. Not a foundation for the world but an interminable burden, one turtle after another weighing on him until it passed even the sun: a never-ending series of half-truths and deceptions. Ai, but how he longed to speak freely!

But no; she might speak to her father in the morning, before the Consummation, and Aragorn could not dare to show himself so plainly. "I will sit and talk with you for a while," he said after a moment, "if my lady wills it." He took a seat on the bench below her window and loped his legs over the armrest in impertinent familiarity.

Fatima cocked an eyebrow at that; so it worked as Aragorn had wished, gave her a distraction. "The house is full, isn't it?" she asked. "I miss the sound of children, sometimes, with my brothers living so far away. Nazir has grown so fast, I hardly recognize him!"

At that Aragorn did smile genuinely, for the tot had insisted on reaching into every pocket he could reach, whether it belonged to a magistrate or a kitchen servant. "Will you miss it?" he asked before he fully realized what he was saying.

"His childhood, or having children of my own?" Fatima flicked one of Aragorn's toes playfully. "Neither and both, I suppose. I would say I will miss you all, for I am sorry I will not be a part of your lives past tomorrow, but the sages tell me that the court of the One is a world I can scarcely imagine. They say it will be so glorious that no one could remember her childhood, her family, or cry over what-might-have-beens." She looked down at her hand and twisted her wedding-band absentmindedly. "It is a great honor," she added.

On that last note, though, her voice betrayed her, and her doubt struck Aragorn like the desert's heat at mid-day. He wondered how much of what she said was to comfort him, how much for distraction – and how much was to convince herself. And he almost spoke his mind, then, for all that he had just convinced himself not to; the absurdity of the whole affair was enough to drive him past the brink.

She was not a bride, whatever her family might say, for all they gave her a feast and anointed her with fine perfumes. How could there be a wedding without a bridegroom there to join her? And the Consummation made a mockery of the just joys of a true marriage-bed; she would get none of that in the morning. No, her family would escort her in honor to the altar in the wilderness and leave her there, and she would lie on a bed of stone until the dogs came. Better for her if they did, for Aragorn himself had felt the long pain of days without water. He would not wish such a fate upon the cruelest orc, and so much less upon the girl he had come to see almost as a sister.

In the end, though, he bit his tongue, more for brotherly love than out of prudence or fear for his own safety. He was a poor bodyguard indeed, to leave her vulnerable to such dangers, but he would not make things worse by robbing her of what comforts she could find. Faith might at least lessen the sting of that first day, and if the Powers of the West had not wholly deserted Middle-earth, perhaps Fatima would never face a second.

He breathed deeply, focusing on Fatima's perfume to calm his mind. He could at least offer her company on this night. He knew he would not see this through come morning – he would not, could not, be party to such an affair – but for tonight, he was hers to command. "The stars are truly strange here," he said after a moment, "and I would know what stories your people tell of them." He pointed to a row of three bright stars to the north of the town. "Will you teach me? How do you name them?"

**************************************

By the next afternoon Aragorn's legs seemed heavy as iron; whether from lack of sleep or guilt or doubts, he dared not guess. He struggled over the dune, moving as quickly as he could, for he was not fool enough to think that the sayyid would not set men to track him. He had committed those capital crimes, theft of water and desertion of duty, either of which would earn him a sayyaf's sword through his neck.

He would have laughed at that, if he were less tired: that he should be executed for those crimes, and not for abandoning a young girl to the wilderness. But even a smile reminded him too much of Fatima.

Of a sudden, running struck him as foolish in the extreme. He should have seen it before, the inanity of accepting her fate as sealed. She might not come with him willingly, but by the time he reached her she might be too drained to resist him. If he could but evade the sayyim's guards, and if she could but hold on to life for a day more, perhaps he could reach her and find some way to save her.

He could at least try.

**************************************

LOTR Fic: Country Comforts

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:41:28 GMT

Title: Country Comforts
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Ioreth, OC Gondorian
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 17; fanfic100 #14 (green)
Word Count: 579
Rating: General
Summary: It's not always easy being different. A young Ioreth has a hard day.

Author's Notes: As an added challenge to the above, I'm trying to improve my dialect skills (i.e.: spell as it's pronounced without going totally Huck Finn on my reader. Would appreciate knowing if the dialect-writing is too much, not enough, inconsistent, etc.

Multimedia: For the interested, I listed to Entre Olas by Juan Serrano to get in the mood for writing Ioreth. You might find it good to listen to while reading. I don't know if it makes sense musicologically/historically, but I imagine songs like this as being the "Country-Western" of Gondor's music scene.

Ioreth sat down in a huff among the clover, her skirts billowing around her. She ought to know better, after two years' service in these Houses, for healers did not do their own laundry – not even apprentices. Her dark outer robe would stand the grass well enough, but her under-skirts would be ringed with green, and she was sure to catch an earful.

At the moment, though, she hardly cared. It was all she could do to keep from throwing her head down and crying into her skirts. For two years she'd endured the city-born apprentices, borne it all with a gentle smile. But she noticed, aye, she noticed every giggle, every knowing glance, and each jeer seemed to pierce her heart once more. That had been bad enough, but now there was now a new class of apprentices coming in, just come to the Houses' dormitories two days ago. All were from the city and all seemed more polished than she was. She groaned to herself even at the thought of it

She was just different, somehow, and not in a good way. Her masters might say what they would about the many herbs coming together to make better poultices, but Ioreth knew the truth. Her vowels were all flattened out, she was marked as a Lossarnach girl every time she opened her mouth, and even what Sindarin she'd learned since coming to the city was tainted by her accent. And her hands, her hands, she never knew how to hold them and her gloves were forever disappearing, and –

A twig snapped behind her, and Ioreth looked up. Rubbing the back of her sleeve across her eyes, she greeted him. “Ah, Sador.” She knew she should say more, but at the moment her mind refused to produce more words. At least with Sador that wouldn't earn her more ribbing. He was Lossarnach-born, had left their hometown for these Houses just a few years before her, and he understood a bit of her burdens.

He squatted down beside her and squeezed her forearm reassuringly. “Yeh're better than the lot of them,” he said after a moment. “At what counts, at herb-lore and the like. Theh're just biding time 'til they catch some captain's eye.” He grinned conspiratorially at her. “They won't catch a husband no other way. But yeh could make it, as a healer mistress I mean, if a man don't nab you first.”

Ioreth snorted; most unrefined, to be sure, but it was good to laugh. “Catch me at that, yeh fix me up a tea or something, a'right? I'll not have no flutt'ry-eyes-itis in my own self.”

“That reminds me!” Sador cried, clapping her arm excitedly. “Ah've just been told, the old herb-master's stepping down come spring, and his replacement will need a new personal 'prentice. And Meril put me forward, ah've just been told.”

Ioreth felt her face light with a smile. Its strength surprised even her a little, but not so much; in Lossarnach, when your neighbor gave birth safely, 'twas cause to tap your own beer-cask. “Are yeh done with your chores? If so” – she jangled the coin-pouch hanging from her girdle – “the first drink's on me. Such news deserves a nip or two.”

And that it did; for if Sador could make it, so could she, Lossarnach tongue or no. Ioreth pulled herself to her feet and led the way out of the garden.

LOTR Fic: Where the Stars Are Strange

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:36:45 GMT

Title: Where the Stars Are Strange
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Aragorn, OC Haradri
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 16 - Limits; fanfic100 prompt #71, "broken"
Word Count: 5 x 100
Rating: Teen for adult themes
Summary: "Beyond the towns and caravans there is no duty save one." An encounter in the deserts of Harad.

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MULTIMEDIA EXPERIENCE:

You might want to read this drabble series to the same song I listened to while writing it. It sets the mood nicely. Listen in Hebrew or in English. (I recommend Hebrew for a first listen.)

I.

She prays for a quick death. She prays for the beasts to come before nightfall, to rip at her throat so she will never feel the pangs of thirst.

This, of course, is blasphemy.

Were her faith strong enough, He would keep the beasts away until He could arrive. Such are His Gifts: pain, but also the strength to transcend the pain, to rise above the body’s weakness. If she survived, her blood might strengthen Him, so He would be stronger.

She prays nonetheless – she knows not to whom, for certainly the Gift-giver will not hear, but she still prays.

II.

The days pass, but no beasts come. She wakes twice with the morning sun bright in her eyes; twice she lies awake well past sunset, her sluggish mind languishing between awareness and sweet sleep. Her arms ache from the sun and the lack of drink ‘til she can hardly lift them.

At last the Beast arrives. Not a cheetah, nor the wild dogs; they might grant her death’s release. No, he is a dhimmi, a mercenary. He lifts her up, carries her off as he stumbles in the half-light.

She’d curse his name, if she still had the breath.

III.

He does not beat her, does not rape her, as her father warned those Northern kuffār often did. By day he treats her well, almost as kin. But at night he brings her water, tips the cup into her mouth as she drifts toward dreams: still aware enough to swallow, but too asleep to resist. He would twist her soul, steal her purpose.

So she reaches up as he hovers over her, grasps chin between thumb and forefinger; and once more she prays. Not to the One, but to him: that he would understand. He must let her die.

IV.

He no longer offers her water, and for that she is grateful. Could she still refuse? His trembling arms around her, the steady beat of his heart, even the stench of his sweat – these are the things that anchor her to time.

One night she wakes from restless sleep, forces her eyes half-open. Above, the Runner shines down at her. She remembers him; her brother taught her the star-patterns as a child. Was he running to or from? Whichever it is, now he stands still.

Does he wait for her? But how will she ever climb so high?

V.

Beyond the towns and the caravans there is no duty save one. Family fades, as do kingdoms, and protocol, and oaths; in the end only self remains. That is the desert’s blessing, and her curse. Yet there is a rot even here, and he wonders how far it spreads. Harad taints her sons with empty ritual, and Gondor with fealty to one man. And what of his own people?

Aragorn kicks hard at the sand, strikes the dead girl’s ribs. He would howl at the stars, for there is none to hear him; but, tonight, even the stars are deaf.

Silmfic: Walking Down Narrow Streets

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:58:51 GMT

Title: Walking Down Narrow Streets
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: J.R.R. Tolkien
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 15
Word Count: 2,248 + Notes
Rating: Teen for implied sexuality
Summary: What if Tolkien's writings really were translations rather than original creations? Late one night, a certain professor wanders around Oxford, searching for answers.
Author's Notes: Not A.U., not really, but not exactly a comfortable read either. Touches on themes of Christian belief and homosexuality (appropriate to the time).

************************************
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate.
************************************

Tolkien walked down the narrow back-streets of Oxford. He hardly could see where he was going, the light from the grubby lamps was so dim, and the worn tread of his shoes skidded on the uneven pavement. He imagined himself slipping fully, knocking his head against the trash-bins and lying there ‘til morning. It would be relief of sorts, such an oblivion – the closest he’d come to true rest tonight. God knows he wouldn’t get it any other way.

He had tried. Blimey, but he’d tried. He had twisted half the night away until he woke Edith, but he couldn’t tell even her the truth. How could she ever believe him? And what would she think of him if she did? So he’d told her that he’d caught Richard, that student of his she’d taken a liking to, at some mischief, and that he couldn’t make up his mind whether to take it to his program chair. She’d nodded at that, accepted it easily enough; Richard was no stranger to trouble, for all he was likeable enough. She’d believed him, and it had done no harm, but still he’d lied to her. The first lie of any real consequence he’d ever given her, and it pained him.

But what choice had there been? She liked his faery-stories when they were younger, but only as a diversion. They were childish play, something a father of four – and with other responsibilities besides – ought to have set aside a long time ago. If she knew how his fantasies bridged into his profession, she would be rightly nervous. And if she knew how close his mad hobby brought him to going against the church, gambling his soul against a whim as she’d see it – well, she’d laugh at him, or be terribly cross, and Tolkien just wasn’t sure he could bear either possibility.

So he walked the narrow back-streets of Oxford, stepping into the shadows when one of the constables peered down the way on their late-night patrols. He was doing nothing wrong, but he had no great desire to explain himself. Not on tonight of all nights. They’d be like Edith, if they heard him out at all; they’d laugh at him for worrying so over made-up characters, or be angry at him for wasting their time, or perhaps even cart him off to an asylum.

The trouble was, Tolkien wasn’t so sure they were characters. Not sure at all.

************************************
Time for you and time for me,
And time for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions
************************************

It had all begun back at Leeds. No, if he was being truly honest – and he could see little reason not to be, for no one would believe him in either case – it had all begun with a dream. At least he’d thought it a dream, but now it seemed almost a vision. And why shouldn’t it be? Hadn’t Fr. Francis told him often enough about the folks in the Bible having such dreams? And yet... ai, but it was absurd! To dream of a mariner who sailed the skies with a star bound to his brow, that was laughable enough as a mere dream. But to think that it might be true? Better to blame it on that dish Wiseman had cooked up the night before, curry he’d called it. Too spicy of food, and too much drink, that was his answer.

He’d have written Earendel off as the fruit of a bold fancy, if not for Reykjavik codices. So he supposed it had all begun at Leeds, this torturous striving after faery-tales. Some curator of an ancient castle had stumbled across a chest full of ancient books, the Midgaard Codices they called them; copied from scrolls at some lord’s requests almost from before history. They’d sent the whole treasure-trove south to Leeds, and Tolkien had been asked to sort through them; which he had.

At first it had seemed like so many other fragments from Britain’s history ere Christendom took hold. A nice addition to some library, to be sure, and notable for its size if nothing else; but hardly holding many revelations. It did seem genuine, for the spelling and word use was what you’d expect for the period, Tolkien would give it that. Yet the stories themselves were standard fare – a murdered king, a son on a quest for vengeance, an epic war, and on and on.

He’d nearly set it aside for other projects, but then a name jumped out at him: Gondolin. And there he was, his Earendel and the story of how he came to wear a star upon his brow, and Tolkien could hardly believe it! When he read of the sailor’s ship, Vingilótë, he’d nearly dropped the codex on the floor. It seemed incredible, for in his vision petals had floated on the foam of Vingilótë’s wake, and here the ship was named foam-flower. What could all this mean? How could he have had a dream a decade and more ago, about a poem he could not have known about?

Unless it had not just been a poem? He studied the epics as literature, but was there not the possibility of some truth behind the verses?

Which would make his discovery all the more troubling, for it was not all heroics of the sort a good Catholic might find thrilling. If it was but literature, Tolkien could have looked over certain elements, written them off as the imprint of an ancient culture not yet perfected by Christendom. He remembered what Gilson had said, once, about that man Hume: that we could find art beautiful without always loving what it portrayed. Tolkien had once thought that Hume a madman, for how could you think something beautiful if you hated it; but now he remembered how his son had loved Guernica but cried at the bombing of Canterbury. If the codices were but fiction, then perhaps...

Yet, if the story of these silmarils was history, if it was true, and what’s more if God had saw fit to call his mind to it in modern times – that was a matter of a wholly different sort. If that was so, Tolkien hardly knew what to think.

************************************
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
************************************

Tolkien knew this back-street, even in the half-obscured lamplight. And he knew that the constables who had earlier passed the alley had not been keeping an eye out just for pickpockets. Sodomy was, after all, still a crime. He had not chosen this street on purpose – he had not chosen any street but had merely let his feet carry him where they would – but it struck him as oddly appropriate that he should end up here. It was buggery, after all, that explained why he was so buggered, or would be come morning if he couldn’t find some sleep.

Looking at the clothes-lines strung between windows, struck by the utter lack of women’s wear, Tolkien’s mind was drawn back to Richard. Why had he named him to Edith, rather than someone else? He told himself it was because they’d met just the morning prior, that it had nothing to do with how Richard lived on a street much like this. Tolkien had always prided himself on dealing with his students based on how they lived within the college walls, and not beyond it. What did it matter to him, if the man was an aesthete? He’d certainly never grade Richard harshly, nor any of the others, whatever Tolkien might think of their personal lives.

Yet Tolkien did know of the aesthetes. He knew how they lived, and why there were no dresses on the clothesline, and so he could imagine what might have played out in these houses just a few hours earlier. He could almost hear deep groans escaping out windows thrown open against the summer’s heat. And there would have been other men, leaning out their windows in shirtsleeves and little else, laughing knowingly at those sounds. For they knew those sounds well, knew them in their own voices.

As did Tolkien – oh, but not like that. He’d heard similar groans come from his own mouth, in his own marriage-bed, brought out by his own wife. And there was the rub: he’d been told his whole life that such love between men was unnatural, unholy even. He might be civilized toward men he knew to be aesthetes, but he could not truly approve. So what should he make of his visions, if they were marked by such a love?

For there was no denying it. Eager to find more stories about the ship that sailed the stars, Tolkien had read more of the codices from Reykjavik, translating them as quickly as his duties allowed. And there it was, plain for any to see. There was an unfinished saga, and a line about a dwarf-made helm passed among the elves. It should have been a small enough incident, one he glanced over on his ways to more pertinent fare, were it not for the words.

Fingon had given Azaghâl’s helmet to Maedhros, his cousin, and he’d given it as mitgift. That word was seldom used in the Midgaard Codices; Tolkien could only remember seeing it perhaps twice before. Yes: that Gondorian lord Faramir had mitgifted a star-embroidered mantle to his lady-wife in the Thegnsboc, and then a legal treatise had used the word for gifts traded between spouses. Had he seen it elsewhere? Tolkien scoured his memory, but for naught; he simply could not remember. And he was a linguist; words were his stock and trade, he could not simply discard such clues that they offered.

It was a strange choice indeed – unless the cousins’ bond was something more than he’d first thought.

************************************
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
************************************

At last Tolkien made his way back home: out of the dark back-street and onto more clearly lit roads. Somewhere, a churchbell struck the fifth hour of the night; he had been out too long already, and Edith would worry if he was not home for breakfast. A constable walking across the street looked at him queerly but, after only a minute’s hesitation, tipped his hat to the venerable professor. Tolkien laughed inwardly at that; here in Oxford, at least, a professor’s patched jacket and ink-stained fingers still carried some measure of respect.

And no small degree of responsibility, he added to himself.

He had thought once of publishing a translation someday. It was his duty. What had at first struck him as standard forms – the faery-king, the warring sons, the Quest for vengeance and to recover stolen treasures, the battle and the remaking of the war – now seemed like something more. The old ingredients were all there, and yet, there was something more than all of that. They were entertaining, perhaps even edifying – for the most part. And for their sheer size, they would be a welcome linguistic size. He owed it to his peers to share what he’d found, to translate them for that purpose alone. So much could be gained through their study.

And yet... and yet there were those few parts, only a handful of sentences but present nonetheless, that could ruin him. To publish them he would have to introduce them. Frame them as fiction or history; and if as fiction to show how Christian Britain should read them. Were they proof of a barbaric past best left behind? Or was there something more to them? He could not call them fiction, not truthfully, but what would they say of him if he called it history? That Maedhros might be pushed aside as aberrant, a trained character, but what of Fingon? He was as heroic as they came.

If Tolkien was truthful, if he translated the words as he knew they were meant and if he tacked his name to it, it would mark him an aesthete. He might have risked that, but who would publish such a translation? And who would read such lines as anything but fiction, penned in as propaganda, or see it as proof that Fingon and the rest were barbarians? And there was his wife to think of, and his children, and Father Francis beside...

Deep down, Tolkien felt ashamed. He longed for the courage of an elf-lord, to do what must be done; yet he was just a professor of linguistics, a small enough man in the grand scheme of things. Still, Tolkien knew that there was truth in those pages; he knew it at his very core. Whatever way he found to share them, or if he never did, he must hold on to that at least.

************************************
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
************************************

LOTR Fic: Spring's First Thaw

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:45:58 GMT

Title: Spring's First Thaw
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Éowyn (Faramir/Éowyn implied)
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 14; fanfic100 #62
Word Count: 808
Rating: Teen (for adult concepts)
Summary: In the Houses of Healing, Faramir gave Éowyn a fine mantle that had once belonged to his mother. Just what did Éowyn think of this gift?

Author's Notes: As much as I love Ngila Dickson's costumes, the dresses she designed for Éowyn always seemed too "frilly" for her character to me. It is my personal fanon that she wore much plainer clothes, especially when not welcoming lordly visitors to Meduseld. Since this fact enters into the following story, I thought I'd mention it up front so you weren't caught off-guard.

They were clad in warm raiment and heavy cloaks, and over all the Lady Éowyn wore a great blue mantle of the colour of deep summer-night, and it was set with silver stars above hem and throat. Faramir had sent for this robe and had wrapped it about her; and he thought that she looked fair and queenly indeed as she stood there at his side. (“The Steward and the King,” The Lord of the Rings)

Éowyn often wondered why the lord steward had given her such a mantle as this. He knew her, knew how she came to be in Gondor at this hour. Had she done aught to encourage him, to give him hope that she might provide that sort of wife? For it was made but from thin cloth; cunningly made to be sure, it would have felt fair soft against skin much more pampered than hers, but laughably thin all the same. Her mantle– even those words, her mantle, felt false to her – her mantle was too fine for likes of her. ‘Twas a raiment fit for a queen.

Did the lord steward expect that of her? To look fair and queenly at his side, and to be just as useless at worthwhile tasks as was this mantle? For there was that as well: it unnerved Éowyn that so fine a garment should be so thorougly without purpose. What was she to make of a mantle such as this? A shepherd’s trousers were to keep out the cold and the heat, and to protect his legs from scratches; his wife made her dress looser, so she’d not tear it as she ran after his children. A rider’s cloak, for its part, was woven tight, to cover gleaming mail and turn aside arrows.

‘Twas the last that Éowyn had taken as her model, when sewing her clothes. Aye, she was unlikely to face an orc’s bow in Meduseld, but there were other dangers. Without ever willing it, she had attracted hungry eyes since she first entered womanhood, and she’d gone to lengths to avoid those unwelcome looks, patterning her dresses after those worn by widows: high collars, full skirts, yokes across the chest. Her cloak was an extra shield, pulled tight around her so she looked almost a man. But, nay, this mantle could serve no such purpose. To wear it would be brazen, as dangerous as standing tall and unarmored on a field of battle.

And she had never needed a shield more than at this hour. She realized that now. The Witch-king would have claimed her very soul, but these healers would transform it. They brought her new gowns, formed so the cloth gathered round the breasts, cinched at her waist, and billowed past her hips. And they would have her stay abed, talk with a companion provided to her or work quietly at needlework, and march through the gardens twice a day for the air – and that was all. They would make a lady out of her if they had their way, and what’s more, a high-born lady after the Gondorian fashion.

Yet she was Éowyn Shieldmaiden, Éowyn Wraithsbane. She would not yield.

She would not yield, but neither would she forfeit the fight. These lady-companions who so insisted on reforming her, they must think her people near savage; else why would they remake her in their image? But Éowyn could play their game. She’d played it for years, for stakes much higher than her own pride. So she smiled at the simpering healers, allowed them to dress her as they would, even donned that hateful mantle. She could hardly refuse such a noble gift from a lord of Gondor, nor could she fail to show gratitude by wearing it. And when March melted into April, and the frost first gave way to her leather-soled slippers when she took her morning walk rather than cracking under her feet, and her companions replaced her warmer clothes with summer’s fare, Éowyn said not one word.

Éowyn could not say when she first noticed the smell of flowers in the air, and felt the sun’s warmth on her back through her thin garments. A part of her wondered whether flowers also bloomed on the mound ringed with spears near Isen, and whether the simbelmynë would be uprooted when at least she saw her uncle brought home; but another part of her relished the simple pleasure of the moment as it was then, without worrying one bit after tomorrow.

She said not one word on that, either, for she would never let her companions have the victory. Yet when Faramir asked her to walk with him in the gardens, she went – not wholly from duty, or to curry favor with one who might guard her, but for her own joy as well.

LOTR Fic: House-Hunting

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:17:52 GMT

Title: House Hunting
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Fatty Bolger
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 13
Word Count: 515
Rating: General
Summary: In which Fatty confronts his greatest fear, and comes to a decision. (Post-Quest.)
Author's Notes: Thanks to the lovely ladies over at LOTR_Community_GFIC (especially dreamflower02) for their help on Fatty canon. *blows kisses*

******************************

Freddy wondered, sometimes, just why Merry and Pippin had been so quick to move into Crickhollow, after the Troubles. They were heroes, and heirs to the Took and the Master, besides; surely their places were in their family smials. He wondered if there was any truth to the stories whispered around tavern tables, about a fearful night in the Barrow-downs. It would certainly explain why neither hobbit slept well with earth above his head. Or had they just needed a new place to rest their heads, a place not so full of old memories?

Freddy could certainly understand that, in either case, for there was truth in that stale joke that he was fatty no more. Oh, he’d avoided the Barrows well enough (and other far more dreadful adventures in far more foreign lands, he was sure), but those four had only spent a night in that awful place. Freddy had lasted months in the Lock-holes; and it might not have been the Barrows, but it was something to grow hair on your toes, no mistake.

Every night, he’d paced off the dank cell they jokingly called a room: three hobbit-strides from the door to the rag-pile that served him as bed, then five more along the wall to the chamberpot, and then back again. It was something to do, some way to keep time; they’d taken his pocket-watch first thing, and he had no window so he couldn’t mark the days that way. They couldn’t keep him from pacing, for they couldn’t watch him all the time, and it proved to him that time still moved forward. ‘Til Help came.

But there was a trade-off, aye, there always was. As he’d walked his cell he’d seen the walls coming closer and closer. Even in his sleep, he saw them: dist and plaster closing in on him, blocking out the lamp-light ‘til the darkness near smothered him. And the walls of a smial weren’t so different, not truly…

He envied his friends, wished he had their courage – but he also wondered whether it wasn’t easier for them, somehow. Merry and Pippin were heroes of a sort, to be sure, but a different sort than Fatty had been. Than Freddy was. They were not the brave hero of the Battle of the Scary Hills, the one the old hands had sung over pints at the Golden Perch. It wasn’t them who had gone to the Lock-holes rather than name any of those who’d escaped – and even now, had to live with that reputation.

Still, if those foolhardy Brandybucks and Tooks could manage it, could stand up to their families – if they could claim a house where they’d be able to sleep at night – well, Fatty would see that the Bolgers weren’t outdone. And his uncle Fil had a fine family, he’d put the smial to good use. He hardly needed all that space anyway; what he needed was air, and a view of the surrounding country.

With that thought, Fredegar Bolger grabbed his hat and his walking stick. It was time to find himself a house.

LOTR Fic: Stranger in a Strange Land

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:09:38 GMT

Title: Stranger in a Strange Land
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: OC Gondorian
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 12; fanfic100 prompt #22
Word Count: 741
Rating: Teen for adult themes
Summary: And in the fifteenth year of his reign, the king Telcontar did declare a curfew on all men of Haradric descent, whether in whole or any sizeable part. For in that year many such men were beaten at night, and no few died, and the king was loath to allow such things … (from The Annals of Telcontar)
Author's Notes: The OC in this piece is from my story "Diplomacy." But I intend this piece as self-sufficient without knowledge of that one.

*********************************

Harnistir stood before the mirror with his eyes closed. A part of him wanted to see his face. The high cheekbones, the angled nose. He wanted to remind himself that he looked like the rest of them. But that would mean opening his eyes, and he could not quite bring himself to do that.

Here, in Gondor, it was the eyes that set him apart. He had his father’s skin, that worked in his favor with folks who did not know him. Even his hair was dark enough to pass at a distance; it was usually too curly to conform to Gondorian fashion, but at least at a distance that fit in well enough. It was the eyes that always gave him away. They were inky black, not the steely-grey he had been surrounded by since birth. There had been a time when he had longed for grey eyes. He’d even have settled for the blue or brown of his less high-born compatriots, even, but that had not been his fate.

There was an irony in that. On any other day he would have laughed at the thought. In Gondor, where every banner was black velvet, every head covered in black hair, every guards’ tunic so black that at night they looked like so many disembodied heads and hands – he should have the one black thing that marked a foreigner!

It was not every other day, though, and Harnistir had seldom felt more sore on the subject. You are a man of Gondor, his father had promised him as a child, when he’d sat bouncing on the man’s knees. And why shouldn’t Harnistir have believed it? He was born in Gondor, to a Gondorian father, and born from a legal union no less. One of the first after the war between a Gondorian and a Southron, and witnessed by the king no less. He had never been asked to swear fealty, as the Harad-born merchants were. He had studied beside Gondor’s sons since he was a child; learned history and literature, and protocol besides, readying himself to take his place in the court when he was deemed of age.

It had not been enough, seemingly.

He had nearly stumbled from dizziness, when he’d found the headpiece hanging over his cloak that afternoon. He’d just come in from sword drills with the other boys his age, and there it was: stark white against his black cloak, so that everyone could see it. His face had burned at the sight of it, and he’d bundled it up in his dirty tunic before the sword-master came in. He did not know who had left it there, nor if he’d done anything particularly to drive them to it; but the sword-master was a harsh man, and a veteran of the war, and somehow Harnistir did not want to face his questions.

It was the sort of scarf worn in Harad and by the newer immigrants, a shield against the desert sand his mother had once explained. Harnistir didn’t care for them, certainly had never worn them, but there it was: a white linen cowl, cut to shreds with a dagger, put where he couldn’t miss it. He’d changed quickly and ran straight home, and thrown it behind his bed. A part of it longed to burn it, but something in him remained unsure. He should not burn it, a voice argued from deep within himself. He should show it to someone, anyone. This was bigger than a schoolboy’s quarrel, that much was plain.

Before he could think, before he could stop himself, Harnistir forced his eyes open. Staring back at him were those black eyes, a birthright of sorts. Yet a man was more than the sum of his forefathers. He was a man of Gondor. A Haradric man of Gondor, but a man of Gondor all the same.

Which made this decision courage, not cowardice. He knew his people’s history, knew that Gondor had ever relied on their northern neighbors in times of need. This seemed little different.

He ran off in search of his father.

LOTR Fic: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:29:23 GMT

Title: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Imrahil + Family; Denethor; OC Gondorian
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 11; fanfic100 prompt "Years"
Word Count: 1,007 + Notes
Rating: General
Summary: An old family tradition returns to haunt Imrahil.
Author's Notes: Kind of a sequel to my ficlet "Giving Gifts," but should be fully understandable without you having read that piece.

Imrahil climbed the steps to the dais carefully, clasping his granddaughter Míriel’s hand firmly for support. I am too old for this, he thought to himself – yet his oldest grandson did not turn ten every day, and he did still love a vigorous dance. The musicians struck up a lively saltarello, and Míriel looked at him imploringly.

“Off with you, child,” he grumbled in his best impression of a stodgy old man. Míriel, he could tell, was not fooled for a minute, but she ran off to join the dance gladly.

“It is a good party,” Amrothos mused.

Imrahil quirked an eyebrow at that. “You should have seen the galas your mother managed. Back at the millennium’s turn, she threw a Yule ball that they will talk of long after a king sits in Minas Tirith. Actors who played Corsairs, and mimes and minstrels, and a veritable menagerie in the garden. And that was before the war. Why –“

Imrahil cut off midsentence, his eyes immediately fixing on the man edging along the wall toward the dais. “Father, do you know him?” Elphir asked quietly, also staring plainly at the stranger. “Look how he holds his hands behind his back; he is hiding something, plainly.’”

Erchirion loosened his dagger – ceremonial but still quite sharp – in its sheath, but Amrothos looked unconcerned. “Do you truly expect mischief tonight?” he asked. “An assassin in party garb?”

The youngest prince’s eyes twinkled a little, and Imrahil found the good mood contagious. Put like that, it did seem rather unlikely. Yet Amrothos’s easy manner was a bit unsettling, a little too casual. “You should be ever vigilant, in any case,” Imrahil said after a moment.

Amrothos just shrugged. “I am a child of the Fourth Age; ‘tis my prerogative.” He looked at the man again. “In any case, I recognize him from somewhere. I cannot place him, but I know his face.” That satisfied Imrahil, and he nodded to the guards standing at the edge of the dais, indicating that they should let the man approach.

“Ah, but I do know him!” Amrothos said as the man approached. “That is Breglas. He was Uncle Denethor’s manservant, before the war. I would steal sweets from the kitchens sometimes, and often enough I met Breglas nursing a mug of tea.”

Amrothos beamed brightly at the approaching man, and Breglas’s somber expression eased a little. Breglas crossed the remaining distance in a few long steps and bowed promptly to Imrahil. “May the next year be blessed, lord,” he said; the traditional greeting for such occasions, delivered with that perfect mix of civil disinterest and earnestness.

That only made Imrahil more suspicious than he was before. To have Denethor’s old manservant appear in Dol Amroth was noteworthy enough. That this was the first time Breglas had been presented to him hinted of mischief, and for him to appear on his grandson’s birthday was positively ominous. He had not forgotten the many “gifts” he and Denethor had traded to mark their sons’ birthdays. Drums and flutes given to tone-deaf children. A glass habitat for frogs and lizards, all of which somehow ended up under Lothíriel’s pillow. Books of limericks and small catapults suitable for flinging bread across the able. ‘Twas a tradition Imhiriel had been glad to leave behind when Amrothos had grown too old. Yet Denethor had died nigh a decade ago. Surely not…

Breglas ceremoniously removed his hands from behind his back, revealing a squarish object covered in cloth. “My prior lord left me but one last request in his will,” Breglas said solemnly. There was not a touch of humor in his face, but Imrahil knew better than to trust that; the man had, after all, served under Denethor’s close scrutiny for decades. “He asked me to deliver a certain parcel to your fair principality when a son of your line next achieved his first decade.”

He nodded to Imrahil, to show his respect, but then stepped aside and handed the parcel to Elphir. Elphir quickly untied the covering and held up – “A journal?” he asked, glancing in confusion between Imrahil and Breglas.

Imrahil did not answer, but he had recognized it immediately. He remembered his childhood nanny writing in just such a book, recording his exploits and making sketches of him. ‘Twas a treasure trove of embarrassments, and his sons would make good use of it, Imrahil had no doubt. He wondered for a moment how Denethor had ever found it, but remembered almost at once how close Finduilas had been to the woman before she left for Minas Tirith. It was no great leap of imagination that the nanny would have shared it with her – and that Finduilas in turn would have showed it to her husband. Ah, but well-played, sir!

For a moment Breglas’s eyes sparkled with the faintest hint of amusement. Only for a moment – it was gone so quickly that Imrahil could hardly be sure his eyes had not tricked him – but from a servant of Denethor’s, such a glimpse was a mighty hint indeed. “My duty being discharged, I feel free to remind you: my current lord has a son, not much younger than your fine grandson. And the Prince Faramir has never been one to let old traditions die.” He bowed once more and, without another word, left the dais as he had come.

Imrahil watched the man leave and rubbed his thumb along his thin, deep in thought. Perhaps he had had too much wine that evening, perhaps he would see things differently come morning – and yet…

“Father, you didn’t!” Elphir cried beside him. He held the open journal against his chest, his face a cross between shock and amusement; Erchirion’s whole body shook with silent laughter.

The House of Húrin must pay, Imrahil decided. That gift may have been Denethor’s design, but it was Faramir who had given Breglas leave to come to Dol Amroth – and just now, the challenge of finding the perfect gift to best torment his nephew was alluring indeed.

********************
Notes: For those of you who are not familiar with Imrahil’s family, Elena Tiriel and the other HASA researchers have put together a nice biography of Imrahil, complete with birthdates for most of the people mentioned here.

The one character not mentioned in that bio (or here, explicitly) is the birthday boy: Alphoros, Elphir’s son. He was born in 3017 T.A. according to HoMe XII. Faramir and Éowyn were married three years later, so it’s not impossible that they’d have a child only a few years younger than Alphoros.

Míriel is my own invention, as is Breglas.

LOTR Fic: Catharsis

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:43:13 GMT

Title: Catharsis
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Boromir
Prompt: BMEM Day 10; fanfic100 prompt #51
Word Count: 857
Rating: General
Warning: Deals with (canonical) character death, and with spiritual themes.
Summary: In "Windows on the West", Faramir tells us that Boromir's funeral boat traveled down Anduin and at last reached the sea. But who's to say it stopped there?

************************

Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not… (“The Akallabêth,” The Silmarillion)

************************

A grey boat passed out of Anduin’s mouth, seemingly unmanned and unguided; the fine curve of its keel dipped low in the water. A wave pushed against the side, nearly toppling what it carried into the Sea. But only nearly; the Sea rose against the other side, its white foam like the steadying fingers of a splayed hand.

No elf saw this narrow escape, nor dwarf nor any other speaking folk, and no man save one. That man’s eyes were forever sealed by death; no breath lingered in his chest to voice any words. His people would name him Boromir son of Denethor, Boromir of Gondor, but that was not his full tale, and the Sea sees all. The waters sensed his mother’s blood in him, recognized him as the latest son of a long line of mariners, and so steadied his small craft against Ossë’s mischief. Whether he felt the guiding presence, no tale has ever told. He may have, for his soul could not yet abandon his body. Boromir still wandered, for all that he no longer chose his own path, and so his soul would not abandon him.

So it slipped further and further from Gondor’s shores, that small grey boat. It passed the great fleets of warships blanketed in a thick fog, and none of the watchmen caught sight of it. Rainwater fell upon the once-great warrior, washing the grime and blood from his hair and skin. And sometimes a wave would crest too high, fall over the edge of the boat. Gently the waves rocked it so that the water washed over the shields, vambraces, and other stuff of war that lay all around Boromir. Slowly the water wore away the Eye and the Hand; flecks of red and white paint floated over the waters, were borne away beyond sight.

The Tree alone remained.

A month passed, or two or three – for what use have the dead for time? – until at last the waves stilled. If Boromir still had eyes to see, he might have looked down and seen the phantom of a mountain’s peak through the murky water. The first kings of Gondor had sent out sailors to find this place, longing for a glimpse of the farthest West, a peak beyond death, much as the men of Númenor had enjoyed in the days of their glory; but they had failed. Even those few who had stumbled upon Meneltarma had found only murky water over cold stone, and so the quests ended. Yet Gondor’s wise men knew there was a land out of sight, a land beyond reach and seemingly beyond time, that men might be gifted with a glimpse of – should the West will it.

Had Boromir still owned eyes to see, he might have recognized it as Meneltarma; or perhaps not.

By then the sea was working on Gondor’s livery. The silver threads that had once embroidered Boromir’s fine tunic had been worked loose, snagged on floating debris and eaten away by the salt water. The great arc of seven stars along the edge of his shield was no more, the waterlogged wood having broken off and floated away. Even the silver ring that marked him as his mother’s kin was gone, swallowed by some fish or adorning the ocean floor.

Had he still lived, Boromir would have struggled against that. He would have taken off his tunic and wrapped it in his cloak, to protect it from the water a while longer. He might even have held the ring tight in his fist, or gathered up the shield-wood so it couldn’t float away. But he was not alive, he could not hold on to such trinkets. ‘Twas only with the greatest of efforts that his soul still clung to his body. It did not have the strength to safeguard anything else, even who he was. For Boromir was no longer Steward’s Heir or Prince of Dol Amroth, or even Boromir of Gondor; he was now Boromir alone.

He had never dreamed of waves or felt overly drawn to ancient history. Was Númenor his homeland, any more than Gondolin or Elvenhome was? Yet somehow, he felt a kinship to those who had once looked to that mountain. There was suffering here, anguish dulled by time but present nonetheless. Such tragedy leaves its mark on the land – not a blemish, but a testimony to a simple fact: that those who suffer do not suffer alone.

And so Boromir smiled. He smiled as he had never smiled in life, or even in death.

LOTR Fic: Behind Blue Eyes

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:22:10 GMT

Title: Behind Blue Eyes
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Bilbo
Prompt: BMEM Day 8 - Beauty
Word Count: 712
Rating: General
Summary: Late one night after the Ring has been destroyed, Bilbo cannot sleep...

Pleasure and pain, therefore, are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence. […] [T]he rules of architecture require, that the top of a pillar shou'd be more slender than its base, and that because such a figure conveys to us the idea of security, which is pleasant; whereas the contrary form gives us the apprehension of danger, which is uneasy." (from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature)

**************************

Bilbo blinked in the inky darkness of the late night. "Aldarion was a mariner…" someone sang loudly, just outside his window. He tilted his head toward the sound, to catch it with his good ear. Two someones, he decided. If not for that he'd have tried to go back to sleep or at least let the elves have their fun – for indeed, they all had much to celebrate – but twin voices singing decidedly off-key most likely meant more than normal high spirits.

He wouldn't let on that they'd woke them, wouldn't give them the pleasure, but he knew he couldn't sleep now. He was fully awake, and all that racket was enough to keep even a half-deaf hobbit from slipping back into dreams. So Bilbo fetched his dressing-robe from the hook behind the washbasin and made his way to the kitchens. A cup of warm milk might be just the thing to help him get back toward bed.

He could hardly explain why he was so careful to be quiet. His young cousins were likely already asleep, but they wouldn't be woken by one hobbit's bare feet if they'd slept through all that song. And he doubted the Twins were the only elves enjoying the night air; Bilbo was sure half the House was singing somewhere on the grounds. As for Gandalf, he would be deep in his cups with Elrond by now, or –

Bilbo stopped cold in his tracks. He'd glanced into the Hall of Fire almost without thinking about it, and had been quite startled by a pair of blue eyes staring back at him out of the darkness. Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss. It likes riddles, praps it does, does it…" But that had been a voice out of another time, long ago under dank mountains. And Gollum was dead besides, that had been explained to him well enough though it hardly seemed real.

Eärendil peaked out from behind some cloud, his pure white light falling through a window far above so it fell on a hand. Nimble fingers twisted anxiously around a stump of a finger as if it was twisting a ring. The Ring, Bilbo corrected himself, and it surprised him that he needed correcting. "Frodo?" he called out into the darkness.

Those blue eyes grew wider in shock. What iss he, my preciouss? What has it got in its hands? Bilbo knew there was no one else in the room, that the one who might speak with such suspicion and fear was gone for good – yet those blue eyes gleaming in the dark seemed so familiar. It was as if he felt the gritty mud between his toes, heard the webbed hands sliding through the underground pond as Gollum had crept nearer.

Bilbo had to bite down on his lip so the pain would anchor him to the present. Those blue eyes had once shone with wonder at stories about Elves, he had to remind himself. Those fingers that had grasped at lost talismans had once held charcoal sticks, shading the shadows in sketches of life in Bag End from his overstuffed chair by the fire. Bilbo had to remember that.

"I'll be right back," Bilbo said, ducking into the hall for a torch. He'd set it in the sconce along the wall so its light flooded through the room. And there was his Frodo. His cheeks were a little too bony still, and his hair was a bit matted with sweat, but it was still his boy. Those eyes, fitted in their proper face, held a promise of beauty once more. Eerie, that, how they might look so like the eyes of another; but that had only been a trick of the dark, surely…

He walked over to Frodo and kissed him on his brow through the sweat-slicked hair, and gave his shoulders a light squeeze. "Come on, lad, come with me." Frodo did not fight him, rising to his feet and following Bilbo silently across the room. "A snack will set you aright, and then we'll go off to bed, and morning will come before you know it."

Yet Bilbo felt a bit unnerved. He wondered whose eyes he'd see in the mirror, when next he looked.

**************************

Note: The remembered bits of dialogue are from "Riddles in the Dark," The Hobbit.

The title is taken from the Who's song "Behind Blue Eyes. (Listen). While this vignette is bookverse, it is inspired by the movieverse similarity between Frodo's and Gollum's eyes.

Silm Ficlet: Leaf and Twig

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:18:19 GMT

Title: Leaf and Twig
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: young Celeborn
Prompt: BMEM09, Day Seven
Word Count: 300 + Notes
Rating: General
Summary: Because even the greatest of elf-lords were children, once upon a time... A wee moment of adventure, from the journey from Cuivienen.

Celeborn steadied his small foot in the crook of a branch. It would hardly do to fall now; quite apart from breaking a bone or two, he'd give away the game. His uncles would be coming after him soon, and he did not intend to be caught. He knew what they'd say, that he'd strayed further than was safe and that they'd keep him from playing hide-and-seek next time if he couldn't behave. Sometimes Celeborn wondered whether they'd ever been young; he knew all growing things once were small, but he could hardly believe it in this case. And it wasn't as if he was truly unsafe, he was well within the circle guarded by the sentries...

A speck of silver glinted in the distance. That would be them, the day was too warm for cloaks and their hair gave them away a mile off. And they were coming this way. Celeborn tucked his arms inside his tunic and tucked his own head under a branch so he wouldn't be seen so easily. They would soon reach the hill.

a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda… the tree seemed to rumble. Celeborn felt it through the bark, his feet fairly trembled with the vibrations.

Somehow it felt like more than simple chance; he could have sworn that there had been a meaning in that rumbling. He couldn't explore it now, that was Galadher with his crooked nose even now peering over the crest of the hill –

And there it was again: lalla-rumba, as soon as he'd said that word "hill." This deserved exploring, straight-away when he got the chance. He rubbed his fingers reassuringly along the underside of the tree's branch, hoping he (she?) realized that Celeborn understood.

He'd say more now and risk getting caught – but how did you greet a tree, in any case?

******************
Notes: In the "Treebeard" chapter of The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard says that "Neither [Fangorn], nor anything else outside the Golden Wood, is what it was when Celeborn was young." Which I took as encouragement that Treebeard knew Celeborn when he was young. Not canonical, but plausible (I hope).

a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda is in fact the beginning of the Entish word for "hill," as related by Treebeard in the same chapter.

Galadher is my own invention. His name is patterned after Galadhon (Celeborn's father and Thingol's nephew), and I imagine him to be Galadhon's brother. But the exact relationship isn't that important.

Silm Fic: As Little Might Be Thought

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:46:25 GMT

Title: As Little Might Be Thought
Fandom: Silmarillion
Characters: Maglor, Elrond, Elros
Prompt: BMEM09, Day 6 - Music
Word Count: 861
Rating: Teen for adult themes
Summary: "For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought; but Maglor's heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath."

Maglor strummed his hand idly across the lyre-strings, the notes clanging with each other in lazy discord. He played not for beauty but to forget, to fill the silence of a late afternoon. It had been long years since music dwelt in his fingers. "Ada can teach you a song," a voice had seemed to squeak, and Maglor had looked around. Was Elrond there? But he found no one; that was a memory, not a present sound. "He can help you keep your rhythm better," the remembered voice continued, "if you like."

He had not been eavesdropping, at least not for curiosity's sake. Nay, 'twas for his safety. When last he'd entered his fosterling's rooms uninvited, Elros had thanked him by stomping so hard on his foot that the elf still limped days later. But Maglor had found a scroll he thought the boys might like, and he'd wanted to share it. He'd waited outside their door, to see whether he would be welcome.

A thwack had sounded, wood against stone wall, and then: "He is not our ada." That voice had been deeper: the older twin, even then striving after the Doom of Men and growing faster than any elf-born child ought to. "And I have nothing to learn from him." A broom-handle swung in a wide arc, Maglor could see that much through the doorway, and he guessed that Elros must be going through his sword exercises his true father had taught him.

This had all been hours ago, but still the words hung in Maglor's ears. Their father had sailed away and left his sons to death, or worse; Maglor had fed and clothed them, and not laid a harsh hand to them in the many weeks since the attack. A kinslayer did not cry, yet Maglor still felt his throat tighten against the building tears.

He should not be mad at the boys, he knew that. They had not chosen their birth and were still children. And Elros was older in temperament than an elf of similar years would be, Maglor must allow that he understood something of war. Perhaps he even understood what this war had been about. Did he guess that Maglor and his brothers had driven Elwing to dive off the cliff? Perhaps. Or did he just fear Maglor's kin for their strange names, that hated emblem on their cloaks, the history he had undoubtedly heard in the story-halls? Any one of those reasons was enough to hate these foreign invaders, those Sons of Fëanor who burned his home and slaughtered his world.

Still, Maglor's fëa had burned hot when he'd heard Elros's words. His fists had clenched so that he'd crumpled the scroll he'd brought. He had remembered, then, another pair of twins, red hair matted with red blood. And he had wondered whether Elros had neighbors, or friends, or even kin who had slipped sharp blades past the Brothers' armor. How many of Sirion's lords had sworn an oath to their lord, to stand against the Brothers and hold back the Jewel? Did that make them kinslayers? Was it an accident of birth, that made Fëanor's sons the worst sort of rogue, dead or damned, and their opponents noble heroes all? Or was there some sin that Maglor had forgotten, some justification from the curse that robbed him of all those he loved?

He understood Elros' hate, aye, for he felt something similar himself. He knew he should not hate these boys, they had at most been born to the wrong house. He must try to love them, as penance if nothing else. Yet he could hardly help it. They had an enemy to rage against, to fight against, to accept or push off, and whatever they did, 'twould be their choice. Maglor envied their choice, longed for it at his very core. He sat alone in the parlor watching the sun sink over the cliffs into the sea, and wondered when he had last known that freedom. If he ever had.

The lamps from the corridor behind him were lit, and Maglor wondered how long he'd sat there lost in thought. Looking down at his lap, he saw his fingers still playing with the strings, but now they picked out something more than chaos. He heard a strain of a song out of Valinor, a lilting tune his mother had sung to the swing of her hammers. Maglor remembered tramping around Formenos to it, chasing after his brothers even then. A song welled in his throat, his tongue curled around around the first sounds, and so he opened his mouth.

We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, the starlight of the western seas.

Those were not the words she'd sung, of course. They'd sprung in his head full-formed, and he wondered where he'd learned them. If he learned them. Dreams could be born West by the wind, the Sindar claimed; why not poetry? Whatever the case, something in them felt true, and Maglor found himself daring once more to hope: if not for clemency, then for hope's birth once more.

'Twas a start, at least.

*********************************
Notes:
The line Maglor remembers is from "O Elbereth Gilthoniel." To my knowledge we don't know precisely who wrote the song, and it seems reasonable to me that Maglor's foster-son might carry it to Rivendell.

LOTR Fic: Reading Between the Lines

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:48:10 GMT

Title: Reading Between the Lines
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Sam, Elanor Gamgee
Prompt: BMEM09, Day 5
Word Count: 1,077
Rating: General
Summary: All through her childhood, Elanor’s had a question about the Red Book. Why can’t she find answers?

Elanor had never thought her da a liar, but there it was. Things simply couldn't have happened as he wrote them, or as he let Mister Frodo write them and didn't correct them – she never could get a straight answer on that point. Or, if she was being truly generous, she might allow that they could have happened that way but her da and Mister Frodo certainly couldn't have known it. Which worked out to the same thing, really.

That story of Sméagol surfacing one last time on the stairs to Cirith Ungol, looking down over his sleeping companions, it made for a good story. And his near turnaround was the stuff of ancient legends, Elanor would give them that. She'd expect no less from ones who'd grown up on elf-stories heard on old Mister Bilbo's knees. But how did they, her da and Frodo, know it? They'd been asleep, so they said. Did Gollum tell them about it later? When – before he disappeared on that climb up to Shelob, with his heart full of malice and his pride stung by her da's harsh words; or as he was struggling with Mister Frodo in that awful Cracks of Doom place? Not likely, and she couldn't think of any other way for them to know the story.

She had called her da on the point when she'd first realized what he'd done. He was in her and Little Rosie's room reading the Book to them as they lay in bed when the question jumped into her mind, as large and brazen as an oliphaunt in the room. So she'd asked it: "But how did you know this to write it in the book, if you both slept 'til later?" He had glanced knowingly at Little Rosie and winked conspiratorially with Elanor; the younger girl's eyes were fluttering shut and Elanor knew she'd get better answers if she waited until later. So she let the matter rest, for a time.

Later, though, was slow in coming. She'd found him pottering around in the garden that next afternoon, alone this time, and so had asked him. But she'd received that bane of all eight-year-olds' existences: "You'll understand when you're older, Ellie-bell."

And she did try not to, truly, but "older" seemed lifetimes away. That next time her da's friends came to visit she'd asked them straightaway if they knew how her da and Frodo could have known such a thing. They smiled down at her and her da had steered her out of the room with a stern look and suggested she and Little Rosie go choose flowers for the dinner-table. She even went so far as to ask for help in a letter, but it got returned as badly addressed. The messenger-service didn't go beyond the borders, they said, an how could they take it just to "The Elves" in Rivendell anyhow?

Time marched on, and her attention turned to other things: adventures hiking with friends down to the Water; beer snuck from the Green Dragon, and the attention of hobbit-lads. Her mum said that she could walk down as far as the Party Field with a lad, unchaperoned, if Elanor didn't dawdle and was back by sunset. And her da didn’t tell her nay, for all he looked ill at the thought. Then there were the kerchiefs, embroidered by her own hand and offered as loving tokens to a long string of lads, and wildflowers pressed between journal pages; Elanor hardly had time to think of childhood mysteries.

Still, when her wedding day came ‘round she whispered to her father softly: “Am I ‘older’ yet, Da?” It was a question she’d asked often enough when she was younger, a ritual on her birthday every year and often in between, and she hardly hoped she’d ever get an answer to it. She asked out of memory more than curiosity. This time, though, her da had smiled gently down at her. “I don’t know, Ellie-bell. Are you?”

So at last she began to understood. This was one of those questions that he would never answer for her, that maybe nobody could answer, save her own sweet self. But there was an answer to be found. There must be, for she knew her da to be an honest hobbit. She began to turn the question over in her mind when she could spare the time, as she kneaded dough or folded freshly laundered shirts. But the daily bread gave even less answers than her da had, and she wondered why she still thought on it.

That was, ‘til a chance slip of the finger gave her a clue. Her first child was due come spring, and her uncle Jolly had sent her a crate of baby-things from his own children. Her thumb slipped under the collar of a sleeping-gown, pulling out the lining so she saw PC embroidered on the cloth. Petunia Cotton. Her aunt had been handy enough with a switch, and there’d been little love lost between her and the Gamgee clan on that account.

But Elanor remembered other things as well. When Petunia had died in childbirth, she remembered how her mum had been so sad she could hardly get out of bed for weeks. Petunia had been the closest thing her mum had ever had to a sister, but she’d not been blind to Petunia’s faults, she’d heard Elanor and the others complain about them often enough. Rose had even once confided to Elanor that she thought Petunia a bit too strict – but she supposed death softened such thoughts.

As she thought that, her eyes fell on the handsome volumes in their red case on the mantle. Why should death soften only her mother’s thoughts. Gollum was a nasty piece of work, much worse than her aunt Petunia, but his death had meant something much more than Petunia’s, too. Her aunt had saved the life of the babe through her death; but with Gollum, it was the whole world. Had her da, or Mister Frodo perhaps, seen something in Gollum they had to work in the tale. Had it really been such a lie after all?

She’d have to ask him, when she saw him next. Such clues deserved following up.

*******************
Note: Little Rosie is my way of referring to Sam's and Rose's second daughter, also named Rose. Bless Tolkien for his habit of naming Gamgee kids after other characters. (Not...) Little Rosie was born in 1425 so is three or four years younger than Elanor.

LOTR Fic: A Man Alone

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:59:35 GMT

Title: A Man Alone
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Denethor
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 4; fanfic100 #88, "School"
Word Count: 756
Rating: Teen for general despair
Summary: Denethor muses on how he became the man he is.

It was mad to worry about the traveling-times of kings at a time like this. Denethor knew that full well. And yet... and yet the mind could be an unruly servant, even a well-ordered mind, when the world seemed to cave in upon itself. The Pelennor was spotted with the tents of refugees, those last courageous souls who had at last fled Ithilien when Orodruin erupted into fire. The steward had long guessed (and so Denethor had long heard) that Sauron was not as thoroughly defeated as some might think, so Gondor was not wholly unprepared – but there was still much work to be done. Those families needed food, and lasting homes, and good work. They were the brave ones; they could not forever remain beggars.

But the question still pounded through his head, importune and obstinate but there nonetheless. Should Cirion travel north from Pelargir by royal barge and coach, and Eorl south from Helm's Deep on a mearh-horse, both taking the most direct route, will they meet within Gondor's present borders?

And out came the maps, the string and rulers, the stylus and the compass. He'd plot routes and measure distances, and scowl at his tutor when the man looked away. Denethor seldom scowled, least of all at Brethil. Indeed, he hero-worshiped the man, secretly longed to be like him. He even went so far, the year he was six, to take his mid-morning tea on his feet. That was how Brethil drank his, and so to Denethor's young mind it had seemed the best way in the whole world.

But the years had slipped by and Denethor grew less and less patient with the man. Why should I care whether they meet in Gondor or Rohan? he'd asked his mother exasperatedly once, as he paced across her sitting room. He'd been nine or ten at the time and rain had kept him from his sword-practice, yet Denethor had hardly thought that explained his irritation. The puzzle was trivial, yet Brethil seemed to have a thousand variations on it. What if Cirion rides from Minas Tirith, rather than taking a coach? What if Eorl brings his sons on less swift steeds? Or if the Rohirrim only travel by sure daylight, so as not chance their horses' health? 'Twas enough to make a better student than Denethor chuck his maps out the nearest window.

His mother's words had felt true, so much so that he had stopped pacing. A leader – be he king or steward – must cobble wisdom from learning. Not so for Brethil. As he thought back to that rain-soaked afternoon, Denethor marveled that he had not seen that truth sooner. Brethil had always known the orthodox answer to any question Denethor had put to him. Sometimes he gave it more enthusiastically, sometimes less, and for the first time Denethor had wondered whether he was always convinced. It did not matter, though, for Brethil was a tutor. He was tutor to the steward's heir, an honored position in its own way, but he was still only a tutor. It was his job to present the facts of every matter, to help Denethor learn – and it was Denethor's task to use that knowledge.

There was excellence of a sort in that, but it was not the sort that Denethor could simply copy. There was no one, no man in all Gondor, who could accurately serve as model. So Denethor became a great student of human nature, studying tutors and scholars intently. He watched them with keen eyes, judging them not by his inclinations as to what was good but by what truly was excellent in them, what let them fill their role well. And likewise with captains and lords, sons and lovers. He could not copy any one of them, for he was not them, must be different from all of them. Yet he could see the kernel of truth in their souls and forge his own model.

He stood on the city's keel, looking down at the distant tents on Pelennor. From here they were as small as ants, yet he knew they were real people. He could almost hear the women crying into their kerchiefs, see the worn-down look in the men's eyes. They had lost all they had, and Denethor knew they would not be the last.

Suddenly, he was glad he'd never found himself a man to model himself after. How could he be sure his self would last through the night, if he hadn't crafted it himself?

*******************
Notes: If you know much philosophy you may recognize the way Denethor gets his concept of the ideal tutor, captain, etc. from Hume's aesthetics. "Borrowed" rather liberally from him, because I've just finished a paper on it and it's on my mind.

Title borrowed from a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode.

LOTR Fic: When Winter Comes

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:18:04 GMT

Title: When Winter Comes
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Faramir/Éowyn
Prompt: BMEM09 Day 3; Prompt #4, "Insides", for fanfic100.
Word Count: 549
Rating: Teen (PG-ish)
Summary: In which Faramir warms himself by the fire, and Éowyn remembers.

For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of the harvest. (The Talmud)

Faramir bent over and tried to unlace his bootstrings, his fingers clearly made clumsy by the chilly winter air. His task at last accomplished, he kicked his shoes against the wall with a passion. "You'd think I would be used to this cold by now. This is hardly my first trip to Rohan."

Éowyn, lounging on the bed under a thick bear pelt, propped herself up on her elbow. "Nay," she said. "I am sure you are from hardy enough stock, but no land south of Tharbad holds a candle to the Riddermark's winters. To endure our winters well, it is a trait bred more than acquired."

She pulled herself up to sit against the headboard so she might see her husband better. His hair, once raven but now speckled with the first silver signs of old age, framed his still-beautiful face in tangled locks; clumps of snow caught in his beard glittered in the firelight. His riding tunic was nearly soaked through, even his socks clung to the arch of his foot where they had been half pulled off when he removed his boots. It was all Éowyn could do to stifle her laugh, he looked so disheveled.

Faramir sat down on the low bench before the fire and peeled off his socks, placing them on the drying-rack. His tunic soon followed, and for a moment Éowyn felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. She was no simpering maid, so impressed by a fair-formed body that she overlooked other faults. Wulf had been handsome enough, so the stories said; she had never been moved by a fair-faced coward or fool.

Her lord was brave and noble, a good man and a better husband and father; she could scarcely have loved him as well and for as long as she did, if that had not been so. Yet there was more to him than that. That sight of him -- hair soaked and tangled, bare chest glistening in the firelight -- called to mind a similar scene from another stay in the Golden Hall. He'd been soaked by river's water then, not half-melted snow. There had been a tale, something about berries and stones and birds that she could hardly remember. But the sight of her husband, half-stripped then as he was now, had stayed with her.

"How do you do it? You should be as spoiled by southern winters as I am." Éowyn looked up, pulled from her memories. Faramir still faced the fire, his long legs stretched across the hearth, and she was surprised to see he still wore his damp britches. This time she did laugh.

"'Tis no great secret. We just have the sense to get out of our wet clothes entirely." Deciding to brave the world beyond her covers, she left the bed and fetched a robe warming on a hook opposite the fire from Faramir. Handing it to him, she said, "Get you dry, and then get you to bed – it's quite as toasty as any hearthside."

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* Wulf: A seriously bad dude from Rohan's history. See Appendix A, "The House of Eorl," for the full story.
* The incident mentioned is from Tanaqui's story Knight's Service. Like many of my Faramir/Éowyn stories, I've been very impressed and influenced by her universe.