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
Season's Greetings
Create a fanwork in which one (or several) of the holidays of Middle-earth plays a role. 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.
After Gladden Fields by Kaylee Arafinwiel
| | |
After Gladden Fields
“Elendur.”
The Crown Prince of Arnor stirred. He felt as though he had been sleeping a long time, though he didn’t remember falling asleep. Curiously, he was warm and comfortable, as he hadn’t been for some time, and yet…
“Elendur. Open your eyes.” It was the same voice, one he did not know, and yet knew would not be gainsaid. Slowly, he obeyed, eyes adjusting to the greying light around him, light that seemed to radiate from the Being that had called to him.
It was a man, or someone who appeared to be a man, dressed in a midnight blue velvet tunic with moonstones and black opals sewn along the hem and neck. He wore a shirt of grey watered silk underneath, his woolen breeches the same shade of grey. His blue-black hair was long, longer than Men usually wore it, and it was carefully braided like an elf’s and bound with a circlet of silver. Four black opals surrounding a moonstone graced the center of the circlet. His eyes were slate-grey, but full of warmth and... love.
“Do you know me, Elendur?” he asked in Adûnaic, and Elendur frowned, trying to place him. “You appear to be one of the Nimîr, lord,” he replied in the same tongue, “and yet you speak the language of Yôzâyan to me.”
“Indeed,” came the reply, and with that simple word, it all came rushing back to Elendur. His father…his brothers…the ambush…
“B-but…I...” Elendur stuttered. “We fled her shores before she fell. We carved out kingdoms for ourselves. Arnor and Gondor…Adar said Arnor would be ours for all time.” He had switched to Sindarin unthinkingly, and the Being obliged him by doing the same, speaking sternly.
“Arnor onen aran, ardh uireb sa ú-onen,” he replied. Elendur was brought up short.
“Ada…the ambush…he died,” Elendur breathed, terror coursing through him. “The Ring…he died. And I…”
“You all died, my son, there on the banks of the Ninglor,” was the not ungentle reply. “You came to me.”
“H-hir Bannoth,” Elendur whispered.
“The same,” he agreed. “But all is not lost for your family, my son. Do not fear. One yet lives.”
“Valandil is just a child,” Elendur said quietly. “What will happen to him?”
“As to that, he is no longer your concern,” the Lord of Mandos replied. “You must have faith that all will be well with him until it is his time to come to me, whenever that might be.”
Elendur nodded meekly, feeling an overwhelming sense of loss at his brother’s heavy burden. “And what of Aratan and Ciryon, lord?”
“They have come to me as well, and I will take you to them. Come, my son.”
With that, Lord Námo led his newest charge from the sleeping chamber to a larger one where Elendil, Isildur, Anárion, Aratan and Ciryon awaited.
Despite the circumstances, Námo smiled. It was good to see a family reunited, even if they could not all be together. “I think it is best you reflect on what happened, best beloveds,” he said gently. “Mortal ye be, and may not linger for all time in my Hall, but I will allow a time of reconciliation with what Was and what must Be before ye depart to meet the Source of your existence.”
He passed through the door without opening it, as though it were not there, and Elendur fell into his father and grandfather’s arms, weeping. All he could think of was Valandil. How could a mere child cope with so heavy a destiny? Only time would tell – and they would not be there to see him learn and grow into his new position. Oh, muindor-laes, forgive me…
It would be a long time before the first King of the Númenóreans in Exile and his family were ready to move on.
The End
Chapter End Notes
“Arnor onen aran, ardh uireb sa ú-onen” – Arnor was given a king, an eternal reign it was not given. This phrase is adapted from Fiondil’s “Anno ammen sir…” which spoke of Doriath.
