The View from within the Mountains by Dawn Felagund

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Fanwork Notes

Posted as part of the Silmarillion40 event.

This drabble fits in with the much longer story Stars of the Lesser and character study Illuminations, both of which mention an encounter between Pengolodh and Celebrimbor while Turgon's people still reside at Nevrast.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Pengolodh ponders how best to craft the story of the early First Age. (Drabble)

Major Characters: Pengolodh

Major Relationships:

Genre: Fixed-Length Ficlet

Challenges:

Rating: General

Warnings:

This fanwork belongs to the series

Subcreation: A Collection
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 99
Posted on 14 September 2017 Updated on 4 September 2023

This fanwork is complete.

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Pengolodh's pen hovered over the vellum.

The story filled his mind, but how best to tell it? For once told, it would fill the world.

A bead of black ink quivered upon the nib, threatened to fall and splatter and mar the page.

But even that threat couldn't hasten him. He knew the deep ache that lingered in Gondolin--the kinslaying, the burning, the Helcaraxë and Elenwë and--

--but he'd once met Celebrimbor by the sea and knew more of the story than just that too.

The ink trembled like lips buttoned upon a song. Unthinking, darkly, he wrote.

Comments

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I had to go back and re-read the Stars of the Lesser. It informed me a great deal relating to the context but I am still reaching to grasp the last line.

Unthinking, darkly, he wrote.

I'd ask a question, but I'm not sure how to formulate it. Seems like he is doing a lot of thinking in this piece. Well, any drabble that causes me to do so much stewing and thinking is definitely a piece of substance.

Are you trying to say that he is deliberately deciding to slant his telling of this story?

He is making a choice to abandon pursuit of a line of thought that is both troubling and going to cause him trouble. I don't think he is making a conscious decision to lie or even bend the truth but rather to not examine his assumptions, as we are all guilty of doing from time to time. Is there a person who hasn't given up on a thought that could lead to unacceptable realizations or conclusions? And for much less cause than he had: His people had ample reason to bear the resentment they did toward the Feanorians.

Of course, the end result is a subcreation of a much more complex story. My old song and dance, in other words. :)

Thank you for spending so much thought on a mere 100 words!

I don't think he is making a conscious decision to lie or even bend the truth but rather to not examine his assumptions, as we are all guilty of doing from time to time.

OK. I got you. I understand now completely. I was wrestling with variations of that. I did get to read Stars of the Lesser again, which is a meaty story and has some terrifically memorable lines. It's all good.

Further, there is wobbling and ambiguity in the texts which was why The Silmarillion originally hooked me so deeply and keeps me coming back. Perhaps it would have been a shame if Tolkien lived another 20 years and had ironed out all the wrinkles. Or, alternately, he was just that brilliant--to write those contradictory elements into his history to make it more convincing.

I read a bunch of these stories last night--not even all yet--and there are a number challenging ones and some terrific writing! Impressive bit of organization that you have the skill and the authority to pull that together virtually overnight on practically no notice at all. Thanks! I feel honored and humble to be included in that collection. OMG! I wrote mine in less than an hour! So embarrassed.

I wrote mine in under ten minutes! It was a necessity and even kind of the point. Subcreation on the fly. ;)

That ambiguity is precisely why I write Silmfic and no other fandom. The story seems to invite--even require--those other hands in mind. You have this "vast backcloth" and then only a quick glimpse of it from a rather problematic (heh) PoV. To someone like me, who is always wanting to challenge the "authoritative" view on everything, that's like kicking in your open door! :D

It is probably heretical to say but I am glad Tolkien didn't do much more with the Silm than what he did. Not only because MT shows he was contemplating some big changes that I'm not sure would improve the story but because my sense--never quantified! someday!--is that, as he aged, he moved away from the morally complex and almost openly pagan mythology he initially created to something that fit a lot better with his own Catholic sentiments. Which makes sense: the difference between a young man writing to entertain himself and an author who has become, like it or not, part of pop culture currency and whose message carries weight. Hence his despair over how some people were using LotR ... I can see why his Silm myth would become also problematic (heheh) to him in places.

> Impressive bit of organization that you have the skill and the authority to pull that together virtually overnight on practically no notice at all.

Thank you! It took a lot of time I didn't have and a lot of angst, truth be told! I didn't expect the response I got, which was rather stupid ... one would think I would have figured out by now that I'm going to get more rather than less. It then became a feat of organization (and HTML on the fly!) more than anything. And I've only caught one mistake I made so far, which is fixable. Not bad.

I didn't finish till 11 PM, mostly because I an after-school meeting at the district office, then a meeting for a friend's organization ... I didn't even get home to start working on Silm40 till after 8 o'clock!

But last night it took all of six minutes to do the day's posting. That will be the norm.

I thought this drabble was darkly wonderful. It may be short but as Pengolodh was thinking, "for once told it would fill the world".  I love your descriptions as usual: "the deep ache that lingered in Gondolin" and the "bead of black ink...threatened to fall...and mar the page".

You said so much in so few words, and now I must read "Stars of the Lesser" so I can fill in the blanks.

Thank you, Jenni! It probably helps that I've thought more than any healthy person should about Pengolodh and his worldview. :D I rarely write drabbles anymore but found the minimalist form fun for this project--trying to put as much meaning into those 100 words as I could.

If you get to "Stars of the Lesser," I hope you enjoy it! I wrote it for Pandemonium now some years ago, but it is definitely a fave among my own stories.

Thanks again for reading and commenting! <3

Thank you! I do like to think that Pengolodh was aware of the responsibility behind what he was doing ... and would be vaguely mortified to know that "his First Age" has become "the First Age." But I'm sympathetic to the guy despite disagreeing with him on nearly everything! :D