Sprinkles of Snow by Tamatoa
Fanwork Notes
Chapters are mostly drabbles, or double or half drabbles from the SGW discord Instadrabbling event.
Fanwork Information
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Summary: Instadrabbling from the discord event in January 2025. Major Characters: Major Relationships: Genre: General Challenges: Jubilee Rating: Creator Chooses Not to Rate Warnings: This fanwork belongs to the series |
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| Chapters: 14 | Word Count: 1, 687 |
| Posted on 20 January 2025 | Updated on 20 January 2025 |
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This fanwork is complete. | |
"Comfort Food"
From Grundy.
Read "Comfort Food"
“That’s not even a square!” Elros giggles over his brother’s shoulder.
Elrond, for his part, stands atop his stool and glares somewhat balefully at the unevenly cut dough rolled out on the counter. “There’s not enough left for a square, ‘Ros.”
Maglor chuckles at both of them, reaching into the bowl of mixed meat to roll up a ball and plop it down on the jigsaw-like bit of dough. “There’s enough for a blanket,” he tells them, “here’s your piglet.”
Elrond lifts the corner—or sort of corner—of the dough dubiously. Before Maglor can reach over and show him how to stretch the bottom layer, though, Elros has climbed halfway up the rungs for the stool to stick his head under his brother’s elbow and reach for the half-completed pig-in-the-blanket.
“You have to tuck it in,” he informs his brother, doing just that with perhaps more solemnity than necessary.
"A sky full of stars"
From Grundy.
Read "A sky full of stars"
It had been a distant sort of knowledge; that they’re there. Even with the Vanya in his blood, though, Arafinwë has never been particularly intrigued by Varda’s works.
Now, their bright spray across the blackness of what must be the Void beyond is an unending, unchanging, light. Arafinwë hates it.
Picture Prompt
From Grundy.
Alt text: A clump of bright pink flowers growing in a small hollow. They are the main color in the landscape, as the rest appears to be burnt from a forest fire. Numerous naked tree trunks are visible, and there is an equally naked hill in the mid-distance.
Read Picture Prompt
He cannot exist alone—his spirit, untethered, will flee more swiftly than the fleet winds of winder in these lands. He must find a host, something to cling to, something that sustains—
This land is dead, by his own doing. Naught grows here; he has made it so. He will find no purchase in the great black veil of his own desolation.
Sauron’s ëala is but threads in the keening wind, and he has not even the power to give his voice to it. He is weak, and alone, and he sinks…
The Void rebuffs him, a breath from within turning him away.
There, the smallest life.
"Even the rain"
From Grundy.
Read "Even the rain"
Maglor slips on the mud and the hand of the soldier beside him steadies him. He doesn’t recognize her, though that may just be the flickering fire-lit dark and blood-mud shadows painting all their faces in unchosen shades.
There are screams, distantly. The crackling roar of dragon fire and the rasping bellow of orcish commanders. Maglor’s ears twitch as raindrops plat pathetically against their furry shells.
Much good it’ll do now.
Maglor has but one, incongruous thought as he watches burning gold crawl closer across the battlefield: the rain will do terrible things to his war paint. What a waste.
"Woodsmoke"
From Elleth.
Read "Woodsmoke"
Finrod lies on his back atop his favorite small hill. Technically, it is a roof. Specifically, it is the roof of the rooms beside Finrod’s where Edrahil stays. If he rolls on his side and presses his ear where the ground is thinnest, he is certain he could hear his friend singing as he sews.
Now, however, he looks to the dark sky. Woodsmoke twines away, tangling with itself like a shroud caught in the wind.
The fire is blue, now, burning through the spark-powder Finrod had dumped on it. These colors are for sad nights, when the memories of those who gave him these colors are much too close.
Strength and Beauty
From Shadow.
Read Strength and Beauty
Frantic, Edradhil searches the ragged group of survivors. “My lord?” he calls. “Lord Finrod!”
But Finrod is nowhere to be found. Every other face is a broad, bearded Man, dirty with the muck of battle, dark haired and unlovely. No blond heads are to be found; Edrahil’s own ash-colored hair falls in his eyes and he nearly rips it from his scalp as he pulls it away.
Then over the hill, up from the marshy fen of the battleground, a last Man comes with a body slung over his shoulder. The hanging golden head jerks as Finrod coughs, and Edrahil is sure that he has never seen anything more beautiful.
"Rooftop"
From Elleth.
Read "Rooftop"
“Build first those structures needed for shelter,” Turgon had said.
Penlod snorts to himself as he inspects the progress that’s been made thus far on the tower of the king. They almost have a roof on the thing, now, though the bunkhouses of their builders have only just been completed. Well, technically there is a roof, but it’s more of an open upper floor with latticed rails and seven pillars around the circular edge to support a kind of trellis roof.
“Build what we need,” Turgon had said, but his lords are not blind to the incessantly tapping fingers and obviously crawling skin of their mad creature of a king, trapped down on the ground.
“Come, look,” Glorfindel says behind him, and Penlod turns. And there is the king himself, gazing upward with less awe than appreciation.
“I told you too—” he starts.
“Go ahead, you bird-brain, it’s stable enough,” Penlod says.
It takes Turgon all of four seconds to doff his boots and begin scrambling up the side of the tower. The stones are uneven on purpose, of course. Penlod has known the king’s father for more years than the sun has counted. A rooftop, first, for comfort.
"The long sleep"
From Me!
Read "The long sleep"
They come upon Doriath in the depths of winter. The cold hinders them not; the fire of the Oath in their hearts burns too bright to be muted by the chill.
The great wood seems empty, wreathed in the season’s grey light, snow muffling their steps. Doors are locked, but when they break one down, the sleepers in the fur-piled bed within do not wake.
“Do no harm to them,” Maedhros decrees. “The fault of their king is not theirs.”
It is unexpected; this is why Celegorm falls. Waiting in tension for the elves of Doriath to come awake, he saw not the part-elf of Doriath standing as a statue upon the throne-seat, his father’s great bow in his hands.
There were guards who tried to remain by their king, but the long sleep called to each and every, and the Fëanorians step over their slumbering forms.
“Do no more death than we must,” Maglor says.
This is why Curufin falls; mistaking his brother for a guard until he stood over him.
And this is why Dior falls, too. Sluggish and slow as his heart beats the patterns it knows. Caranthir’s heart slows, too, inches away from Dior’s blade.
"Salt water"
From Anna (IdleLeaves)
Read "Salt water"
“You know it’s a lie,” Thranduil says. His voice is cold, but Legolas knows by now that his father only holds it that way to avoid the quake that would otherwise belie his derision. “It won’t help you, being on the other side.”
Legolas watches his father’s back. The way he sets his long-stemmed wine glass on the side table, turns it so the patterns match the light falling through the window.
“All the same,” he says, “it calls to me.”
“Pity home never inspires the same sense of adventure.”
“It’s not an adventure,” says Legolas, “I only… seek rest.”
"Moments of wonder and joy"
From Elleth.
Read "Moments of wonder and joy"
There is a bird making a nest of Russandol’s hair. It is a clear-voiced creature, though he knows not its color nor can identify its call. Tyelko would know, perhaps.
It has tucked itself with grass stems and twigs into the juncture of his shoulder and neck; his arm no longer has sensation to bother him, though his chin tickles at a brush of feathers every now and then.
The tiny creature brings home a mate, after a time. Russandol whistles his approval as best he can with cracked lips and ruined throat.
He listens, soon enough, for tiny cracks.
"Torch song"
From Anna(IdleLeaves).
Read "Torch song"
It’s in their blood then, and they wax bright with Laurelin. Flushed and laughing, she leans over him.
“Come now, Fëanáro, show me your fire.”
Enough fire they share then—would that that joyful flame had been the whole of it. But fire burns, as is its wont, and eventually it consumes all things.
She should have known, Fëanáro thinks as he sinks to his knees on the sand, staring sightless at the pyre he has made, unknowing. She should have known not to touch him. Fire can only burn.
"No victory, no return!"
From cloudyhynms.
Read "No victory, no return!"
“Don’t come back empty-handed,” Maglor warns. He sets the torch in its sconce by the door and nudges Elrond and Elros further down the steps into the cellar, then shuts the door behind them.
They’ll be fine, probably. If they don’t like it—well, it’s a punishment; that’s what they’re for. They should have just done as they were told and stayed away from the sweet cakes the cook was making.
Maglor rolls his eyes to himself as he nips one of the remaining cakes off the high pastry shelf in the kitchen. Catching rats can’t be that difficult anyway.
"terrors"
From starspray.
Read "terrors"
Scratchy things skitter and shriek in the dark like a high-pitched mimicry of the Enemy’s war cries. Elros tugs his brother close behind him, lifting the candle he holds to illuminate the shadowy corners of the dungeon room.
There are holes in the walls behind the beleaguered old shelves; dark water seeps from cracks in the floor. At least, Elros hopes it’s water. Pressed close against his back, Elrond whimpers in terror.
At an ominous creak from behind them, Elros whips around, holding the torch out threateningly as Elrond clutches his arm.
“I forgot,” says Maglor, leaning through the doorway, “there’s old cheese to lure them in that drawer there.”
"Rock, paper, scissors"
From Shadow.
Read "Rock, paper, scissors"
“You are young yet, Elrond, you’ve much to learn of battle and of war—"
“Fight me for it.”
“That’s not how this works, Elrond.”
“Come on, you’re just chicken.”
“First of all, you cannot call your King a coward, as his herald. And second—”
“Rock, paper, scissors, right now.”
“We are not giving military command based on a children’s game.”
“Rock—”
“I’m serious.”
“Paper—”
“Elrond.”
“Scissors—”
“I will demerit you.”
“Shoots! Aeglos, I win, I’ll let Celeborn know I’m taking the left flank, your majesty!”
“I—what—where did you get—Elrond! Get back here!”
Rooftop
That is such a Turgon thing to do, I love it!