Amor Aderat

sometimes, ignorance is bliss

The Light That Was Not Dawn

He gets no credit, no tale to tell than a tall, pale man who speaks no known language but always leads those astray back on their paths.

He never finds you nor hunts you; you run into him. Some say he’s searching for a lost pair of twins, others say his search is find his lost treasure. No one knows the true reason behind his hunt.

To see him twice is considered an ill omen.

As the forest grows darker he leads you deeper into the woods, around twisted paths and fallen trees and then those trees standing tall. You always end up where you needed to be. He disappears as soon as you cross the threshold out of the woods.

The ghost carries only an old bow, arrows, and a hunting horn. If you get lost from his path, an even worse omen, follow the calls of his horn to safety. But do not try to stay for too long; He is not human.

There is a greed, or hunger as some say, in his eyes that tells you that if you lingered any longer, he would eat you. Legends say this cannibalism is because he is a wolf turned human, for his crimes of killing many men. Do you not see those sharp eyes? Do you not agree? Others say it was because of his vile greed in life that he has been cursed with a hunger that can only be satiated by eating his fellow kin. Do you not see the blood stains on his clothes? Do you not fear him?

Never once has he hurt one of the many people he has led, but do not think it’s because he can’t. His arrows are sharp and his aim impeccable. It’s continued punishment; to be a hunter who cannot hunt his own prey. But yet he still has fangs, so fear him still.

He has had many names throughout the years and many hypothesis for his origins. However, one thing every legend has in common is that this is not out of his own free will. It is punishment, punishment for a crime so great that it has lasted centuries. What has he done to suffer so greatly? To live his life forever hungry and without rest?

I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that at some point there were millions of elves on Middle-earth, and by the end of the third age, it's down to a few thousand, aka a very small portion. These are the elves that got told way back in the first age, "Hey, just so you guys know, you're totally welcome to come back and live in heaven now without any worries" and responded, "No thanks, we're good!" and then proceeded to not only hold to that but survived the next 7.000 years of bullshit including but not limited to:

Multiple continents sinking into the sea

orcs

dragons

balrogs

multiple wars with Sauron, a literal divine being

The rise and fall of several human empires

more orcs

wargs

a bunch of their territory being overtaken and burned to the ground

And all of their loved ones either dying or sailing, even though we know that grief can and will kill an elf

Like, you can't tell me that third age elves start showing up in the undying lands, where everyone has spent the last few thousand years basking in the magical equivilant of free therapy and probably have as many defence measures as a suburban coldesac, and aren't viewed as the most feral, twitchy, paranoid mother fuckers; held together by suspicion, stubornness, and at least 25 contingencies for every situation they've collectively encountered during their time in Middle-earth.

My favorite examples of feral, hyper-vigilant behavior include:

Elrond: Security clearance; sure, Turgon may have threatened to kill anyone who tried to leave his hidden city, but he also took an entire army out of and back to the city at once, and then also didn't realize that his own nephew snitched on where the city was. His security protocols sucked. Meanwhile, Elrond had hundreds of strangers coming in and out of Rivendell for over 3,000 years, at one point completely surrounded by enemies and full of nothing but a bunch of refugees, and Sauron still never found it. You can't tell me that he didn't have at least 25 security checkpoints on the way into his city(sorry, house-that means it's private property, right?), even if you didn't know they were there.

Galadriel: Paranoia; This woman was magically keeping track of everyone she knew and even did it often enought that she knew what to look for of those she couldn't directly track (gandalf) and looking into their minds and testing them. All while having Sauron constantly clawing at the walls of her mind, at least for a few years

Thranduil: Spite; it was basically only his sheer audacity holding his nuclear bunker- cough cough- sorry, I meant vast underground halls together, while his next-door neighbor was some cursed ruins, a dragon-infested dwarf kingdom, and evil, man-eating, car-sized spiders on his front lawn.

Haldir: he blindfolded the fellowship when they tried to enter his city (super secret hideout), need I say more?

Multiple examples of groups of elves jumping out of trees fully armed and ambushing anyone who wanders into their territory. And while the characters seem surprised to be ambushed, they don't seem surprised that elves ambush people in general, leading me to believe this is normal behavior.

Zelda Reacts Part 14

ugh another set of armour that I just LOVE and I'm so happy I thought of an idea for it. this is all I wanted in the canon ending!! *screams at sky* okay I am calm...

I have many feelings about that, but the funniest idea is that John just geniunely has no idea what was going on there. Like G- just one day brough a cop that was at least decade older than any of them to the movie night or whatever and refused to elabrorate.

Palamedes eats breakfast for Camilla every morning in Nona the Ninth.

This is going to be a really hard pill to swallow, but the truth is you might not be able to balance all your hobbies and all your projects the way you'd like. If you want to finish writing that book, you might have to reduce your daily drawing habit to a couple of times a week. If you want to do yoga every morning, you might have to accept not cooking from scratch as often. If you want to spend more time with your family, you might have to cut down on your yearly reading goal. I'm not saying give up on your hobbies; I'm be realistic with your time and your energy and be kind to yourself. Stop expecting yourself to do more and do better every single year. You don't have to constantly be growing upwards and reaching for the stars; you can be content with where you are, or even cut parts of yourself back to make space for other things in your life to bloom.

“oh my love don’t forsake me, take what the water gave me.”

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Harrow The Ninth -mock dust cover

With the river in blue and with blood variations. I wanted to have some crossover from my gtn cover, making things partially destroyed , like the side flaps. As well as having the sword in the same position, Gideons presence is still there! Even if she, herself, is not 🥲

Next up will be Nona's cover!

And more closeups under the cut