Longer than the Road by wind rider
Fanwork Notes
Title: Longer than the Road
Author: Eärillë
Number: O65
Challenge: Smells: Soap
Summary:
They left her side, she waited. They killed, shaming her, she forgave them. They might never come back to her, but she would take all that she had. She would wait until beyond the world’s breaking, because a mother’s love is longer than the road.
Rating: G
Warnings: first draft, gloominess
Characters: Nerdanel
Genres: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Family
Place: unspecified
Timeline: after the launching of Sun and Moon
Word Count (in MS Word): 366
Reference:
An Indonesian proverb says, “Kasih anak sepanjang buluh, kasih orangtua sepanjang jalan.” The author translated it as “A child’s love is as long as the rod, a parent’s love is as long as the road” in English. (Apologies for the clumsy attempt.)
Notes: Dedicated to mothers everywhere who are dedicated to their children – including the author’s own mother, sometimes to her chagrin. Here the author would also beg the readers to help with the name of the flower featured in the story.
- Fanwork Information
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Summary:
They left her side, she waited. They killed, shaming her, she forgave them. They might never come back to her, but she would take all that she had. She would wait until beyond the world’s breaking, because a mother’s love is longer than the road.
Major Characters: Nerdanel
Major Relationships:
Artwork Type: No artwork type listed
Genre:
Challenges: B2MeM 2012
Rating: General
Warnings:
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 382 Posted on 12 March 2012 Updated on 12 March 2012 This fanwork is complete.
Longer than the Road
- Read Longer than the Road
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Longer than the Road
I reach out a hand and touch the petals carefully with the tip of my forefinger. So soft, so delicate; and like every time before, the star-shaped milky-white flower upon my touch – the touch of a mother. (Blessed by the Earthqueen herself for mothers and small children, it would suffer the touch of no other.) My vision is blurred again, and I can feel tears leaking out and down the edges of my eyes. I am still a mother in Mother Earth’s eyes. But the reassurance – the latest of so many – does not soothe me. The same question still repeats in my mind, echoing answerless: Why did they leave me? Why did he take them away from me? Are they not mine, not only his? The fruits of my womb, of my labourous delivery and years of nurturing?
Countless times have I visited familiar gardens bearing this flower since they left, doing just the same. The Baby-flower, we named it, specially created and blessed by Yavanna to honour and celebrate the softness and purity of mothers and their newborn and toddlers, after the birth of the first Firstborn babe in Aman. My mother told me this when I was small, when she was bathing me using soap scented with oil from this flower, and I told my children that similarly. I wish I had a daughter, so she could feel what I feel — and perhaps, just perhaps, she would not leave me like her brothers did…?
I choke, but the deep ache I used to feel on the thought of never having any daughter is not there anymore. I have my sons, seven of them; absent, but still mine, and nobody – nothing – can refute that, separate them from my spirit. Wherever they are and whatever they do, they are still mine – and still alive. I may be ashamed of their actions, but not the beings that are my children.
A mother never stops loving her flesh-and-blood. When Arda is made anew, I shall be there to greet my babies again, and the fragrance of the Baby-flower will grace their bodies again for the second time.
A mother always hopes for her children, hopes for the best.
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