All Manner of Beasts and Birds by sallysavestheday

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Fanwork Notes

Written for the Bestiary of Arda Challenge, using the visual prompts of a bear, sea creatures, a flying eagle, a seated dog, a wolf, and a horse.

The sequence here is roughly chronological. Characters are oysters, Thorondor, Rochallor, Huan, Carcharoth, and the dancing bears of Numenor. Each is a perfect drabble of 100 words.

"Pearls there were before the Eldar thought or dreamed of any gem" is Tolkien (BoLT). All the rest is my own text.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Creatures of the Silmarillion: 6 perfect drabbles.

Major Characters:

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre:

Challenges: Bestiary of Arda

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 617
Posted on 29 May 2023 Updated on 29 May 2023

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

All Manner of Beasts and Birds

Comments

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Really wonderful vignettes to read. You've captured the essence of all of these beings with so few words. ❤️

Saw this on AO3 and popped over to leave a comment here as well.

Ooohhh man these were all fantastic! (Eagle just ... oof, straight to the heart!  And Oyster, such a gorgeous description!  Horse omg 😭  Bear was gorgeous!!  Wolf captured the moment so perfectly!)

But Dog really got me thinking!!  Huan was only gifted the ability of "human" (or rather, Elvish more like) speech three times.  But Celegorm could speak dog!  He spoke the language of all animals and birds!  Now I am absolutely imagining that they had wild discourse on all manner of topics.  I bet Huan made dog-jokes that Celegorm didn't understand 😂

 

Thank you! Eagle is my personal favorite. I like a Thorondor who takes matters into his own talons (my anti-Valar tendencies are showing...). But yeah, you caught me on Huan. I could have written them having those conversations, but it's so much angstier this way. So assume for the purposes of this fic that "knowing the language of beasts" just means excellent veterinarian-level sensitivity to animal moods and behavior, not actual speech 😉. 

I love how each stands beautifully compact and complete to itself, and together the progression builds a kind of impressionistic view of the Silmarillion as a whole, with the Bears as a lovely epilogue.