Outsiders of Gondolin Mutual Defence League by Himring

Inventing Gondolin

The dream city.

‘You’ve stopped talking to me, Salgant.’

‘You didn’t seem all that entertained...’

‘True, I wasn’t entertained, but I was trying to follow, trying to work out why things were meant to be funny.

I thought I knew Gondolin, Salgant. I’d imagined it all, from my mother’s stories. Uncle Turgon was just like my father, only without the not-so-good bits, and I’d convinced myself there was a place waiting for me here. Here, I’d fit right in! Then we arrived and I realized right away, even before…

I’d invented Gondolin, Salgant, out of whole cloth. The city was nothing like that.’

‘Your mother had left things out?’

It was still strange—wrenching—to think of their lady Ar-Feiniel in Nan Elmoth and worse, knowing the end of it.

‘My mother left things out in her stories, yes—fewer major things than you might think, but so many small ones that it did not even occur to her to mention. And I asked no questions, or the wrong ones, content to believe Gondolin would be Nan Elmoth, only with more room to breathe… ’

‘You’ll get used to us in time.’

‘Maybe. Keep talking, Salgant, as I try to work things out.’

Chapter End Notes

I think the canonical account is probably meant to hint at Maeglin's future plotting when his reaction to Aredhel's stories is described.
But I have a hard time believing that Maeglin would think of Turgon's not having a "heir" as one of the Edain might, because even in Beleriand, elven kings are not expected to die or their heirs to succeed to the throne as the natural course of things. Instead, I tend to read Maeglin's reaction as the kind of wish fulfilment or adoption fantasy that children do indulge in, in less happy moments: the idea that there is somewhere out there someone who fully appreciates them. This kind of dream often doesn't survive contact with reality, but in Maeglin's case the outcome is especially traumatic.

The Tolkien100 prompt here was "in time". This chapter is 2 x 100 words in Word.