Delicacies by sallysavestheday

B1 (riverbank, bone, silver, breath)

The river swallows them: Eldar and Orc-kind, shimmering, wallowing. Drowned.

It makes no difference to the hungry waters if they are wrapped in steel or iron. Silver and black, they sink, tarnish, fold into the riverbank like any other seam of clay or stone. The sleek fish feast on them; the roots of the waterweeds weave through their bones.

They are such small things, curled into the long arms of the river, worn softly down into pebbles, into silt. What dreams they had, what songs they sang, are lost, like their breath in the roiling stream: bubbles rising, breaking, gone. 

*****

B2 (defeated, jagged, icicle, close)

They huddle close, with the smallest at the center of their circle. Those four bright sparks, curly-haired and wide-eyed and shivering in the frigid blasts that so batter and thrash them. Gandalf eyes the jagged edges of the hollow in the mountain wall where they have made their stand: the stones, like claws, are threatening. To make fire here risks everything – but Caradhras’ malicious eye is already upon them. They are exposed. Defeated, he brushes the icicles from the edges of his hat. Mutters to himself at the blueish tinge of Frodo’s lips. Stands tall, and, shining, calls the flames.

*****

B3 (tree, origin, atmosphere, threaten)

Trust Nóm to have managed it, Balan thinks. To have raised these trees below the ground, so far from their origin, and coaxed them to grow so graceful and so tall.

The cold winds whirl and whine at the cave mouth, foretelling storms, but the atmosphere is festive in these inner rooms, and warm. Tiny candles shimmer amid the fine, green needles of the trees. Someone has strung sweets on silver wire, weaving the garlands through the branches to add their scent to the tang of the pine.

Let the winter howl elsewhere. There is peace, in Nargothrond, and joy. 

*****

B4 (reaction, excess, fossil, linger)

They wash up on the beaches: the bones of those who lingered too long at Beleriand’s foundering, or were lost to its wars. The dune-reapers wear them as necklaces; they hallow their dwellings with fossils, with the dreams of the past now captured in stone.

In the deeps, they transform in slow, sweet reactions: the once-loved mineralize, changing their robes of flesh for crystal. The spirit has flown -- all its excesses of joy and pain and grief now rendered superfluous. But the shape remains.

See. Dream. Remember: the print of this hand; the brush of that faint, feathered wing. 

*****
B5 (sweep, curtain, shadow, corruption)

Maedhros will not permit them to close the curtains on his window. Let the gawkers peep in, if they must, to see the ruin that has been made of him. He knows his body tells a better tale than any song: its deliberate reshaping a visual record of the true reach of Morgoth’s corruption; the darkness in his eyes reflective of the brush of the shadow against his soul. Let them look, and learn to fear. Then learn to fight. Maedhros was not saved for nothing. He will use the twisted flame of himself to sweep those bitter dungeons clean.

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Hobbits, Fingon thinks, are the one great pleasure that Valinor had lacked. He is forever grateful to Olórin for remedying that error and unleashing on the unsuspecting Amanyar the chaos that is Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, and Samwise Gamgee – alone, or even more enjoyably, together. The golden air of the Blessed Lands now sparkles with the smoke of pipe-weed and with hobbit curiosity. It is refreshing. Entertaining. And a gastronomical delight.

At present, Fingon has his heels propped on the fender of Sam’s fine fire, and is nearly asleep with satisfaction. His belly is full of the finest mashed potatoes he has ever tasted, and his lazy hand grasps a nearly-empty flagon of impeccable ale. The warmth, the savoriness, the practical company all bring to mind bright, ancient evenings spent with Húrin, frying potatoes in the fat of whatever creature they had hunted and toasting victory and pleasure with Dor-lómin’s beer.

Fingon sighs and grins, caught in the tenderness of memory. The soporific qualities of butter and milk and ‘taters, as Sam still calls them, are about to overwhelm him. He tips his head to catch the last few frothy drops and yawns.

Sam rescues his tankard with a practiced hand and tuts at Fingon’s dreamy smile. Who would have thought the energetic hero of so many tales would show such enthusiasm for hobbit cooking – and be so easily overcome?

“There’s a king for you!” he mutters. “Asleep already! And I haven’t even offered him the scones!”

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Finarfin’s children are bright sparks, all, at their conception, dancing and shimmering in the depths of his heart. Yet each is shadowed, cradled in opacity that speaks of strange, uncertain futures. Child after child after child after child.

As they grow, he waits, loving them, for the trick of fate or fortune that will overturn the cup of his happiness. He knows too well from his own youth the weight of expectations, the shapes of pain and sorrow that dance beside joy.

Four souls, born of his own yearning.

He loves them, spoils them, shields them. He loses them all.

Straw

Finrod loves haying: the sweet scent of the drying grasses, the rhythmic song of the haymakers, the slow trundle of the carts along the windrows as the forage is raked and piled high. He dances atop the ricks, trampling the straw and whistling as the oxen trudge their patient way to the barns.

Until he slips, and falls into the dusty pile, suddenly submerged. It is only a moment until he draws breath again, shivering, but he will swear ever after that it was there that he first heard cries of battle: struggling in the hay, that was the Fens.

Brick

Angrod’s palms are pink with dust; the hollows of his eyes stand out from his dirty face as he tugs his father’s hand, hurrying him down to the brickworks where he has been playing.

“Papa, come see!” He is serious, urgent; his usually hasty speech strangely weighted with the knowledge of a task well-done.

The tower he has built has the clean lines and stability so prized by the Noldor: it will outlast a weathering, stand firm against a storm.

Finarfin’s words of praise are strangely stiff within his mouth. The late light bathes Angrod’s thatch of hair in flame. 

Wool

The hunt is to be a pleasure trip, a milestone in maturity: riding out with elder cousins into what passes for the wilds of peaceful Aman. Aegnor watches the stag fall – its great head tossing in agony, its hooves tearing the grass – and asks when they may expect it to Return. Ever after, he refuses meat, unwilling to send another life beyond the circles of the world.

In Dorthonion, in love and already mourning Andreth, he raises sheep – for wool, alone. They are sweet, and wise, and shearing is as close to another life for them as he can come.

Leather

Little Artanis cannot abide a leather garment. It is like having another skin, Atar, she explains, to his bewilderment, and I already have too many of my own. Watching her grow, Finarfin remembers that aversion as she shape-shifts and adapts: to politics, to sport, to craft. With each mastery some new form of her emerges, striding forth from the split skin of the old.

They meet again in foundering Beleriand, he in a steel carapace, she in silk and linen and the finest, softest wool. Still, no leather. How many selves she has shed by then, he does not know.  

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Finrod’s tongue is caught between his teeth as he carefully, carefully levers the sharp edge of the stolen spade. The handle is too long for him and the angle is wrong. The blade drags where it should slice smoothly; it judders in his hands. But he has watched the builders in the palace grounds: he knows he must remove the turf before he digs. So he works away at the roots, carefully piling the grasses to the side.

Until the passing gardener shrieks.

Sent to bathe and regret his trespasses, Finrod rather daydreams, building his imagined palaces beneath the sod.

*****

The taste of metal is maddeningly delicious. Curufin wants to lick it, to stuff it in his mouth until his cheeks puff like some mechanical squirrel, to swallow it dangerously down. His caretakers must keep watch for loose screws and bolts and the random scraps from the forge that are tracked across the property on everyone’s boots and hems. His favorite place in the world is Fëanor’s lap, where he can chew on his father's tunic buttons, tongue the bright gold of his necklaces, and suck the scorch and tang from the fingers of his lean, strong, clever, delicate hands.

*****

Papercrafting comes easily to Maitimo. He grasps quickly the relationships between fibers and liquids, the adjustments to proportions and materials for producing this grain, that weight, this shade. He blends and refines in the corner of Nerdanel’s workshop, turning out plain, sturdy papers for her sketches; finer weaves for Fëanor’s treatises; and crisp, clean pages on which Maglor’s music gleams. But he best loves the making of paper lanterns: fine rice paper soaked to translucence, framed to hold a single candle. He lights them for his brothers in the silvery twilight, to rise and travel eastward, carried on the flames.

*****

Turgon is first among his generation to discover the other properties of hemp. He apprentices in the ropeyards, learning the elegant twists and loops required for the making of hithlain, working the ropewalk amid the singing laborers, his body graceful in the twining dance. Around the supper-fire, there is more music and mulled wine, and the air fills with a pungent tang that dizzies him. Foreman’s special blend, they call it – grown in a hollow at the end of the hemp rows: a cousin with a stronger kick. Knowing something of kicking cousins, Turgon grins. And pockets buds to share.

*****

Given the keys to the storeroom for his thirtieth birthday, Caranthir responds as if handed the crown. Flushed with excitement, he hurries to unlock the great doors, basking in the glory of the barrels and bins and shelves and racks stuffed full with supplies, in the fine dust that shifts in the redolent air and the ledgers for drawing order out of chaos.

His fingers twitch, canvassing and counting, proud of the plenitude. Determined to keep it so.

He makes his rounds daily, serious and careful as he inventories. He knows his calculating mind is worth his weight in gold.

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