A New Day in Valinor by Lferion

Out and About in Aman

Fëanor appears on an 'Interview the Artist' show in modern-day Valinor.

Written for the Silmarillion Writer's Guild January 2021 Resolutions challenge:
-- Day 6: Today's bonus prompt is an addendum to our Crackuary bingo card from February: a bonus 3x3 mini-card! Square B1: Characters on a Talk Show
-- Day 27: Today's bonus prompt is from the Soundtrack Challenge: "Traveling Music" by the Silk Road Ensemble
Spotify
YouTube

A double-drabble.

Many thanks to Runa and Morgynleri for encouragement and sanity-checking.

On AO3

Read Out and About in Aman

Host Omalalo: Today, on Out and About in Aman, we are privileged to get a glimpse inside another workshop here at historic Eight-Point-Star ahtonómë . Last time Maker Nerdanel was gracious enough to show us her stone-shaping studio, and today we will be speaking with her spouse, craftmaster-returned Curufinwe Finweion, who has kindly agreed to show us his current project in the woodworking shop.

The camera follows Omalalo through the the open, finely made doors into the high-roofed workspace. Feanor is working with a series of carefully shaped blocks, tapping them gently, occasionally singing a note or two.

Omalalo: As you can see, one never knows what project might be in the making here. Please, tell the viewers what these are going to be?

Feanor: One of my sons gave me an idea for an instrument, a marimba-windchime, that can be played deliberately or by the wind...

When the episode appears in the listing for the Personal Palantir Network, Nerdanel chivvies Feanor to watch it with her. He's kind of self-conscious, not quite but nearly embarrassed. She is proud of him. In the background, the marimba-thing is being played by an arrangement of hammers activated by the wind, delicate and variable.

Roommates

Orientation for the newly Returned is an opportunity Tauriel takes in stride. A double drabble.

Written for the Silmarillion Writer's Guild January 2021 Resolutions challenge:
-- Day 6: Today's bonus prompt is an addendum to our Crackuary bingo card from February: a bonus 3x3 mini-card! - A2: OMG They were Roommates.
-- Day 10: Bonus prompts are images for instadrabbling from the Naturalist's Guide to Middle-earth challenge, Sept 2020 - Image 5, Lattice Fungus & Orange Elf-cup.

On AO3

Many thanks to Morgynleri and Runa for encouragement and sanity checking, and the denizens of the SWG discord for enthusiasm.

Read Roommates

Tauriel looked across the small room at her roommate. Carnwen had hair as red as hers, though a slightly lighter shade and elaborately braided, and a name as plain and uninformative. Otherwise, she was hard-put to find commonality between them. How were they to manage working together? A First-Age Feanorian, an Aulendur, who had died in the disaster of Sirion, and a Third-Age Silvan who looked to Elbereth if anyone, and had died defending Erebor against Sauron's forces. Perhaps the contrast was the point, another part of this program of adjustment to re-embodiment, introduction to Valinor as it was now.

Carnwen was re-plaiting her hair in a kind of openwork, doing her fine finger motion exercises, even as Tauriel was making a shallow woven reed basket as her practice. Suddenly she was reminded of a patch of mushrooms she had seen once, an array of little cups, interrupted here and there with taller latticework bulbs, both brilliant, fiery orange. She laughed at the memory and Carnwen looked up, eyebrows raised. "I was just thinking that we are like some mushrooms I saw once, and wondering if they grew here. Would you like to come and see what we can find?"

Cocktail Party

Written for the SWG August challenge Roaring Twenties, Bingo card Jazz Age, O4: Prohibition -- image of a Mary Pickford cocktail. A single drabble.

Posted on AO3 here.

Many thanks to Zhie for the numbers, and Runa for cocktail enthusiasm.

Oxymel, also called sekanjabin is a refreshing vinegar-honey (or sugar) drink of ancient origin.

Read Cocktail Party

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It was a very Noldor conceit -- a party with mixed drinks, each drink coming in pairs, one alcoholic, the other not, with presentation an important element. Exquisite examples of the glass-blower's art -- glasses, decanters, fanciful dispensers -- vied with the art of the stone-cutters: crystal, gemstone, figured stone shaped and carved to set off the drinks. The vintners, brewers, distillers and alchemists, herbalists and apothecaries were out in force with their crafted spirits, mixers, liqueurs and garnishes. The unstated competition was fierce, the drinks all very well-made. Fingon found himself nibbling candied fruit, wishing for simple oxymel or watered Hithlum mead.

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Ever On

Written for the Fan Flashworks challenge The Last Word, and the SWG challenge Turgon's Rock Opera, with the prompt of Patti Smith's Because the Night.

Posted here on Fan Flashworks as a fixed length ficlet of 250 words. Revised to a triple drabble, expanding on the SWG prompt, and posted here on SWG, and here on AO3.

Many thanks to Runa for encouragement and sanity-checking.

Read Ever On

Maedhros shut the book, contemplating the last words: The End in a flourish of red ink. Simple, clear, unambiguous. There were no more words on the page to read. The story was finished.

But stories were never finished, except in books, and occasionally bed-times. One's own part might end, in death or because things moved on without one, but the story went on — other people doing things and the consequences of those actions, people reacting and thinking, planning and doing and failing to do, over and over and on. And on and on and on, sometimes. How else was he sitting here, a book in his hands, more books on the shelf, with Fingon beside him, writing something, and his father across the room, being interrogated in the most persistently polite manner Maedhros ever had the pleasure to witness, by Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit once of the Shire, now of Aman for as long as he cared to stay, Ringbearer, poet, historian, whose own deeds were a matter of song and story. Whose own story was certainly not done.

The sun was setting, painting a golden road on the lake below the house, glinting on the nib of Fingon's pen, the simple hammered band on his finger, match to the one on his own hand. Soon Gil-Estel would rise, the moon after, and someone would light the lamps, call them in to supper, and evening would become night, (and oh, nights were something to look forward to now, that story turned from peril and nightmare to comfort and delight; loneliness and cold to warmth and love and arms around him,) and then morning again, watching the sun rise. A new page.

Stones and stars, rings and roads, going on, looping back, notes in the song, a river of words without end.