Mel's art blog:)

Annatar, allowing himself to be captured by Ar-Pharazôn: [in a Lucy Darling voice] Oh noooo, I've been overpowered by the big, strong men of Númenor, please don't drag me off in chains to your impenetrable kingdom across the sea and allow me to sway you with the honey-sweet flattery of my tongue to influence your politics and shape the future of Middle Earth for centuries to come 🫦🥺

But the horror... The horror was for love. The things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out. It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all.

Single-session sketch, ink and watercolour

And Melkor knew of all that was done, for even then he had secret friends and spies among the Maiar whom he had converted to his cause; and far off in the darkness he was filled with hatred, being jealous of the work of his peers, whom he desired to make subject to himself. Therefore he gathered to himself spirits out of the halls of Eä that he had perverted to his service, and he deemed himself strong.

I just like imagining all the unlimited terrible forms that the spirits Melkor twisted and perverted to his service could take. The way he might have snatched up bits and pieces of creations from the songs of of Yavanna and created new, warped bodies for those spirits so that they could invade the newly created world.

Now Melkor began the delving and building of a vast fortress, deep under Earth, beneath dark mountains where the beams of Illuin were cold and dim. That stronghold was named Utumno.

And though the Valar knew naught of it as yet, nonetheless the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence, and the Spring of Arda was marred.

Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies;

Would you share your grapes with him? He is so small, so hungry, only baby, give grape to tiny guy, pls to feed little friend, so friendly, would love grape. So so hungry.

Sam breathed in and out shakily and lifted Frodo's hand, pressing the palm of it against his own cheek. Elrond watched him, the desperation in his face, the determination, and something that had never quite healed tugged empty and hollow at his soul.

He had stood just so. He had held her hand and kissed her cold fingers. He had whispered of light and hope to her fading spirit, but she had sailed in the end. For a moment he was dizzy, disoriented by the tangling of the past and future; he was holding Celebrían as she faded, a wounded halfling as he slipped into shadow; he was standing at Círdan’s side at Mithlond while half of his heart tore away–

I cannot save him, thought Elrond; they will yet be sundered.

Stand firm between the world out there and these little souls, because the world out there has teeth, and it is hungry, and it is stupid, and it eats and eats mindlessly. It doesn't care that they're innocent.

Mrs Dudley, The Haunting of Hill House