Reflections by Angelica

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Fanwork Notes

First Times

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Eldar and Avari meet for the first time in the forest and discover similarities among their differences.

Major Characters: Elves

Major Relationships:

Genre: General

Challenges: Fifth Birthday Celebration

Rating: General

Warnings: Violence (Mild)
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 422
Posted on 4 September 2010 Updated on 4 September 2010

This fanwork is complete.

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

We do not often see them as they hide in the dark, watching, always watching. In envy. In fear. In hatred? They are wild, they are hostile, they resemble orcs in their coarseness – at first we confused them with the Dark Enemy’s creatures. Then the realization came to us and we understood who they are: the Refusers, the Elves of the Dark, the ones who wouldn't heed Oromë's call, the Avari. They do not know - do not care – about beauty and creation and light. Maybe some of them even convene with the Enemy.

These haughty foreigners have strange eyes. They trample through the forests, killing animals, felling trees. They cannot travel without their horses as if they have lost the capacity to walk living pampered lives beyond the Sea. They build in stone, afraid of the earth and the wind and the rain. They have forgotten who they really are, how Elves are one with nature. That is what they have gained for deserting their roots and abandoning Middle-earth. Now they have come back and behave as if the land was theirs. They call themselves the Wise. But what wisdom do they have, with their petty quarrels and their arrogance?

One day, riding across the forest, we were ambushed by a pack of Orcs hiding in the dark. We were badly outnumbered and could not withdraw. So we fought, with all our might but the end was inevitable. As we were being slowly cornered and slaughtered, we glimpsed movement beyond the trees and we thought – hoped, dreamt – we could perceive eyes in the forest. Elvish eyes.

Help us. Please. Please. Help.

With our voices and with our minds.

Please.

The noise and a vague feeling of unrest drew our band to a clearing where we found a party of foreigners fighting and being beaten by the creatures of the Enemy. Our enemy. We jumped into the fray and fought side by side until the last Orc was killed. Their swords, our arrows and daggers. Together.

Out of breath and covered in blood we stood. Face to face. For the first time. We had never seen them so close before. Their eyes were not like ours. We had never really spoken. Their language was not like ours.

“We are Quendi,” they said.

“So are we”, we replied

“Sisters”

“Brothers” 

One love  
One blood  
One life  
You got to do what you should  
One life  
With each other  
Sisters  
Brothers  
One life  
But we’re not the same

U-2 “One”

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This is terrific. First encounters make up one of my favorite tropes in almost any genre of literature. But the topic is particularly moving here. I am imagining that the line between the Avari as more of a hunter-gatherer society and The Noldor as the most technologically developed and politically complex of the Eldar might have seemed uncrossable. Yet how fascinating it is to consider that they are both of the Quendi--those who speak, not only with words, but also share the skill of osanwe-kenta. Love their characterizations each of the other. 

Thank you, Oshun! I've always found this meeting as a moment of great anthropological (quendilogical?) interest: how these two so different societies -hunter-gatherers versus complex and technologically advanced- met and recognized (or failed to recognize) their common origins and shared history. So glad you found this picture convincing!

This is a wonderfully evocative piece of fiction to go with your theoretical piece on Name-Calling. I'm glad that, although it makes some of the same points very forcefully, this piece has something like a happy-end, as I found the conclusions of the theoretical piece quite sobering and even saddening...

"Quendi and Eldar" caught my attention the first time I read it long before stumbling into fanfiction and that the Eldar confused the Avari with orcs when they first met was always an idea waiting to be explored. And, yes, you're right, this has a happier ending than Name Calling but I think that they must all have felt that though they might be one, they're definitely not the same. Thanks a lot for reviewing!

Copy of my MEFA review:

This is a wonderfully evocative piece of fiction to go with Angelica's theoretical piece on "Name-Calling". That piece demonstrates how Tolkien's essay "Quendi and Eldar", while primarily linguistic in intention, shows the elves as preoccupied with differences among themselves rather than unity, to an extent that it would be quite possible to speak of real xenophobia or even racism. I found the conclusions of the theoretical piece quite sobering and even saddening... So I'm glad that this piece, although it makes some of the same points very forcefully, has something like a happy-end: the Avari and the Noldor discover their unity once they actually meet, despite the differences that struck them so forcefully to begin with. Still, it takes a common enemy and danger of death on one side to bring them together, and even in the final scene they remain conscious of the difference in speech--despite their ability to communicate by osanwe. The story is powerfully written. The change of point-of-view is extremely effective. It is striking how strongly these elves each identify as groups rather than as individuals--the pronoun used throughout is "we" and "they" rather than "I" and "she" or "he". But what I also like about this story is its evenhandedness: both sides state their views and neither is too obviously favoured.