New Challenge: Bollywood
This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.
SWG News
Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data provides insight into how comments benefit authors and which authors are most impacted by a lack of comments, with a digression on authors' perspectives one-click feedback like kudos.
A Sense of History: Passing Ships
As Tolkien's characters in various texts gaze out to the sea, what do they see? What is brought by the ships coming out of the West?
Beta-Reader List Now Available
The beta-reader list and profiles have been moved into our new system and are available again.
New & Updated Fanworks
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! Read more ...
New in References
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that authors view comments as driving their motivation to create fanfiction. However, perception of comments by authors is part of a larger shift in fandom around how and how often fans interact with each other.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that while most authors self-identify as taking their craft seriously, a growing subset of authors may be pushing that norm.
Beyond the Silmarillion
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]He and Diamond were visiting, though Pippin had been disappearing every afternoon, and taking Frodo and Elanor and most other lads and lasses in the neighborhood with him—though why they couldn’t use Pippin’s own pony, Sam couldn’t imagine.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]So gathered they were to Bree, what lieutenants who could be spared, from their scattered watches west and east, for their chieftain had returned from his long sojourn in lands godless and mountains strange.
Aragorn returns from the South to tells his tales. Halbarad listens.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Around the World and Web
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
July challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: original character or unnamed canon character; the formal challenge: fixed length of multiple of 50 words. New participants welcome.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
Teitho June/July Challenge: Mentor
The June/July prompt for the Teitho challenge is "mentor" and invites fanworks about this relationship in Tolkien's works.
Across the Sea by Alena
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Chapter 1
Chapter 1
She had my brother's eyes.
She had been found wandering along the beach, lost and alone, by a couple of young people-children, in fact-who had been sailing up in the Bay of Nénufal. So they brought her back to Alqualondë, up the street winding from the quayside, and to my gate. The oldest boy walked by her side, guiding her lightly; behind her and a little to the side came another lad, and a girl with two long braids of black hair, leading a small boy by the hand. These children flanked her, as if wishing to protect their newfound charge from the curiosity of the crowd, already starting to gather around them as they passed. They came before me and halted. And I found myself looking straight into my brother's eyes.
They were the exact same shade of blue-grey as my brother's eyes, and the exact same shape. There was also the same light in them, though it was only a faint glimmer, and I barely discerned it. For these eyes were also different, terribly so: she was gazing at me with such an expression in them. No, she was not even gazing at me, but at another place, in some space all her own. I could see a desperate grief in these eyes, and a vast fear that went deep, deep down. And beyond the grief and the fear were a host of things that I could not read.
She stood there facing me, as still as a statue, with all that grief and fear and other things staring out at me and past me. I heard whispers all around, among the gathering crowd, but they kept back a little, as if an unseen voice commanded them to give her room. She wore a torn white dress, which fluttered in the breeze. Her dark hair, long and loose, fluttered also in the breeze. She was astonishingly and heartbreakingly beautiful.
I found my voice.
"I bid you welcome to Alqualondë, lady. Tell us, what is your name? Where is your home?"
At first, I did not know if she had heard my words at all. But slowly, very slowly, her eyes-so alike to my brother's and so different-focused on mine.
"Have no fear, for you are among friends now," I added, hoping to encourage.
Another long pause, while her gaze searched my face. Then she replied in a voice that was low and sad, yet surprisingly clear:
"I come from Middle-earth, across the sea."
Whispers like the crackle of flames, running through the crowd. Only a small part of my mind heard them.
How could so few words be so shattering? How could I have been so unprepared for them, when she was looking at me with eyes like those? Middle-earth, across the sea. Where I had left my brother, all those ages ago. Where so many of our kin remained. Middle-earth of starlight and dark shadows in the forests...
And of the Noldor, who had also been our kin.
The young woman fell silent, retreating once more into whatever lonely space she inhabited. Yet her words kept on reverberating, seemingly at once soft and as loud as thunder.
I come from Middle-earth, across the sea.
Middle-earth, where I, too, had walked in wonder beneath the stars.
"She is exhausted."
Sílaniel's clear voice cut through the echoes. Giving the crowd a reproachful look, my wife stepped forward to the stranger and with gentle hands began to guide her away, murmuring soft words of comfort. Meekly, the young woman allowed herself to be led towards the gates of the house. I sent Sílaniel a quick mental whisper of gratitude.
Bidding the children who had found her to remain, I questioned them on their discovery. They had sailed out of Alqualondë, going up the coast. And as they came into the Bay of Nénufal, they had heard a mysterious voice in the distance, singing sorrowfully upon the shore. She had spoken very little, but from the few fragments that she had offered, it seemed that she had fled from some horrible destruction in Middle-earth, to seek her husband upon the sea. And she had spoken her own name to them: it was Elwing.
"We heard her song, lord. It sounded so sad - sad and strange -" the oldest boy told me, his voice quiet, as if speaking of a dream. "But we recognized the tune of the song, for my father sings it sometimes. He told me of it once, that it was an old tune, from the times when our people still lived in the lands of Middle-earth..."
Middle-earth, across the wide sundering sea.
I come from Middle-earth, across the sea. I have sought long for my brother, who first told us of Aman's light, but I found him not. I have sought for him beneath the stars, everywhere; I have sought in all the forests and fields, and all the mountain-passes and valleys, and by the rivers, and by the lakes, but I found him not. And the sea was calling; my people wished to follow the call of the sea, to seek the land of light. My brother is lost, I do not know if he is living or dead and I abandoned him...
"Lord Olwë?"
I returned to the present. The girl with the black braids was looking up at me, wide-eyed, as was the small boy, also dark-headed, standing beside her.
"Lord, we were wondering, may we-" she faltered, bit her lips, then plunged on, "may we come see her sometimes? It's not that we are curious - we are, I mean, but she also told us that she had children... I thought we could try to cheer her up, perhaps? Just a little?"
Her face was hopeful and full of pleading.
"What is your name, my child?"
"Eärlinde, my lord. And this is my younger brother Annairo." She gave the boy next to her a little tug.
I smiled, though my heart felt no lighter.
"I will let her know, Eärlinde. And if she wishes it, you may visit Elwing. But only if she wishes it."
The girl nodded eagerly. "Thank you, my lord," she breathed, and ran off, her little brother in tow. Watching her lithe young form disappear down the street, I suddenly found all the memories come rushing back to me, crashing and roaring about me, tossing me in their great waves. How little it took, for the countless years to disappear like a mist in the sun, and turn to nothing. How little it took for all the old wounds to open anew, bleed anew.
Chapter End Notes
Disclaimer: The Professor created the great Belegaer, and both its shores.
Note: Thanks to everyone for the feedback! Regarding some of the questions in the reviews, I assumed that Olwë survived the Kinslaying from this line in The Silmarillion: "And Olwë called upon Ossë, but he came not, for it was not permitted by the Valar that the flight of the Noldor should be hindered by force." This seemed to take place after the battle. As for whether Olwë knew his brother was dead, I suspect that depends somewhat on what you define as "knowing"...
