Back to Middle-earth Month 2010 Stories by Dawn Felagund

Idle Pleasure

Fëanor in exile in Formenos, on diligence and futility. A double-drabble.

Challenge: They say music soothes the savage beast. Or does it? Write a story surrounding the idea of music and music-making as something that does not calm and soothe but, rather, energizes or antagonizes.

Read Idle Pleasure

In Tirion, music was never an idle pleasure for my son. He composed, he performed, he strove constantly to exceed his own exceptional abilities.

In Formenos, I fill the air with noise; I compose, I perform, I strive strive strive.

While my son languishes, and music becomes an idle pleasure.

No lock, no door, naught can bar it; it seeps like a somnolent fume into all corners of my life, no matter that I hammer and I temper and I master the most obstinate of metals, my son--the most gifted, the most like me--lies upon his back in the grass with the stars in his eyes and sustains a note upon a flute.

I fling the hammer through the window. The glass shouts as it is broken. I topple my work--the swords, the shields, the bold-formed statuary--and they scream against each other as they fall. The hammer is lost in the grass, no less to me lost than grasped in hand.

The note sustains, unspools like a roll of paper not worth marring with the banalities of this history.

I crouch beneath my worktable, blow upon frozen fingers, tremble like flightless, songless bird in a cage.

To Fingon

After drinking too much wine one night, Maedhros confesses his deepest desires in a letter to his cousin Fingon. Implied slash. 50 words.

Challenge: Write a story, poem, or create an artwork from the point of view of a character who is drunk or otherwise under the influence.

Read To Fingon

Fingon, I

Fingon, I desire you
r hand in winning me

peace between our people.

Love

between us,

as ever,

greater than the world,
than hatred,
horror,
life,
even hope.

Our shared passion that shall simmer the ink upon the page in lorebooks

Our shared passion.

For unity

between our people.

One Thousand Times*

Maedhros in Angband. A drabble. Warning for implication of torture and death.

Challenge: Show us a character having or coming to terms in the aftermath of a near-death experience.

Read One Thousand Times*

One thousand times I died.

One thousand times I was

starved
beaten
burned
bled
frozen and

forgotten

One thousand times torment nearly became death much as exhaustion will soften into sleep. I ceased feeling the rocks my wounds the hunger the terror of dying.

One thousand times Námo stood before me. Hand outstretched. Like a pillar. Face emptied of emotion. One thousand times I extended my arm to grasp his hand. One thousand times my fingers slipped from his lineless palm and banged against the rock.

One thousand times I awoke.

One thousand times I died again. One more time.

A King in Paradise

Finarfin imagines what his life would be like if he had taken his brother's road. A drabble.

Challenge: Choose a character. She or he wakes up to find she or he is in the body of another character. It can be someone of a total different race, sex, or even time period. Your character, however, retains her or his own thoughts and memories. How does your character deal with this sudden unexpected event?

Read A King in Paradise

I awoke not on satin but sheets uncouth, for who notices the slip of satin on skin after a long day of hunting, tillage, prospecting, negotiation? Of building my city up from the soil?

I looked out not on my inheritance but my devising; not on stone towers but the imperfect shapes of my dreams--but my dreams. Mine. My hands grasped nothing so irrelevant as a balcony rail but a windowframe, the sash uplifted and the cold wind buffeting me with the scent of new-turned earth.

I awoke to exile, adventure, damnation, and possibility.

Nolofinwë, I awoke as you.

Temperance

As tempers heat among the Finwions leading up to Fëanor's threat of Fingolfin, Finwë fails to appreciate the full weight of what is happening. A double drabble.

Challenge: Different cultures deal with their elders in very different ways. Write a story, poem or create an artwork where a society's view of old age is shown.

I was challenged to write this topic by Elleth as part of the Week Five collaborative challenge for B2MeM 2010.

Read Temperance

Sometimes I listen to them squabbling and I smile. They are so young.

These questions are still new and raw for them: how our people shall be ruled and share our power here with the Valar. For Fëanáro, whether we should be here at all. For Nolofinwë, how succession should be determined in a deathless race in an undying land. For Arafinwë, how to best relate with others of the Eldar.

They knew not a time when these questions--the very same!--carried not merely the weight of rhetorical victory but the price of life or death. They crouched not on the beaches of Cuiviénen, near-naked and uncertain of the origin of their next meal, to fight over Oromë's proposition. They knew not the anguish of a loved one taken by the Dark, and the injustice that naught could be done. They knew not the exhaustion of the Journey; the relief of Valinor, of Light. They sleep without fear of shadow; host plush debates in ornate halls.

This is all new to them. They are so young! I laugh to hear them.

The fire in their eyes is fierce with sincerity, but time will bring with it experience and temperance.

Ash to Ash

After Fëanor's death, Curufin experiences his own form of denial in grief. A drabble.

Challenge: Shoes: some people love them and others wear them because they have to. Choose a character: How does she or he feel about shoes? Does your character even wear them? Maybe she or he has a curiosity about these strange things worn upon feet and hoarded in wardrobes. Maybe your character has an interesting tale to tell about a certain pair of shoes.

Elleth challenged me to write for this prompt as part of Week Five's B2MeM challenge.

Read Ash to Ash

for so fiery was his spirit that as it sped his body fell to ash

Ash to Ash

There they are, by the door, where he left them.

There they are, by the door, where ever he has left them.

In Tirion, then Formenos, and now Mithrim. There are his boots by the door.

Aligned. Side by side, as ever.

Aligned as he stands, 12.4 knuckle-widths between the heels parallel to each other.

Daily, I come to his forge. I work. Soot and ash fill the air, but I do not open the windows.

Daily, I leave, tap each bootheel against the floor. Observe the ash gathering within, imagine him rebuilt in opposing manner to which he departed.

---

Chapter End Notes

The opening quote, of course, comes from The Silmarillion, "Of the Return of the Noldor."

Battle Strategy

Finwë teaches chess to his young sons. A double drabble.

Challenge: Name a sport or game that you think might have been played in Tolkien's world--it can be a real game or one of your invention. Show a character playing that sport or game.

I was challenged by Elleth to write this prompt for the B2MeM Week Five challenge. 2011 MEFA nominee--thank you, Rhapsody! :)

Read Battle Strategy

It was a purposeless game that Tulkas invented to teach me and the other kings the workings of battle strategy. One side marched on the other's castle while simultaneously defending his own. Important pieces were captured, killed, &c., &c. It was useless but fun.

I taught it to my sons not because I expected it to be of any service but because I desperately wanted to anneal the bond between them that would have come naturally had they shared full blood. Fëanáro I taught it first and let him show Nolofinwë. I knew that he would take pride in that, and I knew that Nolofinwë would enjoy the attentions of his older brother. I left them to it because the Noldor are not a people that can be ruled while devoting afternoons the play of children.

At Telperion's waxing, I heard Fëanáro's feet on the stairs, and I returned to the room where I'd left them. Nolofinwë was on his knees, dutifully returning the carven pieces to their correct compartments. They had been scattered on the floor, the board upended. One black piece had fallen in with the white. Quavering fingers extracted it, dropped it in with its own kind.

The Pendant in the Stream

Did Nerdanel ever regret her marriage to Fëanor? Fandom is full of Nerdanels without regrets, but I wanted to consider how she would feel if she'd glimpsed her life as it would have been, had she never met Fëanor. A triple drabble.

Challenge: Your character has a chance to change a single event in his or her past, but doing such will forever alter the future. What will your character choose? What would they change, if anything? And how do you think his or her future would change?

Read The Pendant in the Stream

If I could swipe my hand across the past and erase a single deed as chalk from a slate, then slap the dust from my hands and let it be borne into inconsequence upon the wind--would I?

He was drinking at a stream when I found him. He'd escaped the miner's camp over some small rebellion and was summoning his courage for punishment (or, more likely, further rebellion) when I found him kneeling at the water. Like a startled deer, he fled at the sight of me, and a branch snatched at him, drew a bead of blood from his throat and left his mithril pendant shimmering in the stream. I might have pocketed the pendant, melted it into some bauble for myself that would charm the eyes of a boy away from my unremarkable face and make him my lover. I might have resisted going to the camp and looking for the boy with the wounded throat who would ruin me.

But for that choice, I would be in a high-ceilinged hall with my children loud about me. I would be rising to be honored by the Valar for my work. My husband's eyes would be shining with pride as he rose to adulate me.

These two fates course ever in my mind, parallel to one another as rivers diverged by a misplaced rock (or dropped pendant). I consider my choice, and if I might have done differently, had I known.

Because of that choice, I sit upon a stone balcony, silent. I stare westward. My husband and sons are there, in Mandos, a nerve center from which somnolent vigilance ever jets to fill my being, weighting my hands fruitless to my lap, waiting and watching for a head to crown over the horizon like a dark sun.

Delvers*

Maedhros recalls a superstition of the captives in Angband. 350 words. Warning for dark themes.

Challenge: Are you superstitious? Do you hold beliefs based on magic rather than reason? Write a story, poem or create an artwork where characters' behavior is dictated by some kind of superstition.

Read Delvers*

It would come to pass that one of the ancient mines beneath Angband would need to be reopened, and one would be selected from among the prisoners to vouch for its safety. Delvers, we called them: The chosen one was sent crawling into a passage crumbled so that a grown Elf could barely fit and with a loop of chain around his ankle. When the chain stopped paying out, he was dragged back--usually dead or close to it, his mind enfeebled by lack of air, usually beaten to death soon thereafter for not working--and the depth measured to which the mine was safe for the others to work.

We would be herded together in a room and the foreman would select from among us. I was never in danger of being selected, for my worth in ransom far exceeded even the richest vein of ore that might be found just beyond the reach of one of the ancient mines. But the others--the others knew that their lives depended on some indefinable providence, for there was no logic to how delvers were selected. The old and the young, the sick and the strong--all were at times selected.

As the foreman made his circuit, around me the Elves would fall to their knees until only I was standing among them. In the rough dialect of Angband, they would chant a prayer of painful simplicity: Varda, spare me. Varda, spare me. Hands pressed toward the heavens, though there was only rock above us. That was all there was to it, spoken again and again until the room roared with prayer and one from among them was snatched with a cry and taken away.

Most of the captives had been born in Angband. Most had never seen the stars.

I asked once, "Why do you pray? Even those who pray are taken." They pray softer, said the one I asked in guttural Quenya. Softer than we do. We must pray like we are certain not to be taken. Those taken--they've deserved it. We do not pity, do not mourn.