For my dear friend, @sadtimo

"Aranya was almost always embroidering. She told Maitimo her hands were always restless, even when she was trying to relax or talk to someone.

"And yet, as much as Maitimo loved the artistic work of her hands, he found his eyes drawn to her face. To her intently focused eyes framed in dark lashes, and her soft lips and rosy cheeks."

(Moodboard by my dear friend @tinwe-the-local-assassin !)

I recently got a request which really made my day, from @insidethehalloftheflame-eyedking, to talk more about my OC Aranya and explain who she is. This is something I am only too happy to do!

If I were to sum up Aranya in a picture, it'd be this:

I hope to digitize this at some point, but for now, the notebook sketch will have to suffice.

Basically, Aranya's thought life can be summed up as follows: Kitties, Flowers, Abs and Murder. What more does a girl need, right?

Aranya is a whirlwind of apparent contradictions. On one hand, she's demure and feminine, preferring to dress in dainty twirly dresses, adorned with lace and embroidery of her own crafting. She's a skilled gardener of herbs and flowers. She loves making flower crowns and braiding hair. (Especially Maitimo's hair...) She comes across to most people as sweet and shy.

However, there is a very dark and unhinged side to Aranya. You don't date a Fëanorian if you're not at least a little unhinged! Her dream as a child was to be a huntress, but her parents were disturbed by this and forced her to become a healer instead. This made it so that she would never be able to hunt, since healers were forbidden from killing animals (this comes directly from Tolkien in the History of Middle-Earth somewhere). Though healing eventually became Aranya's true passion, she has a great deal of repressed anger and rage, mostly towards injustices. Later on in her life as she follows Maitimo to Himring and beyond, she only wishes she could hurt and kill all those who have hurt him. Make them suffer as they made him suffer.

Even though Aranya is tiny and petite, and Maitimo is all tall and buff and alarmingly good at killing people, Aranya feels intensely protective over him. She felt that way even in Valinor, where his sensitive and giving nature caused him to bow to the often unreasonable demands of his family. Obviously, those feelings intensified exponentially after his torment in Angband. She became the healer who best understood how to manage the chronic problems he developed, and as the years went on, she barely trusted any other healer to work with him.

Aranya slowly emerged in my mind as I started to write roleplays and fanfictions about Maitimo. Before she fully existed in my mind, I just got this sense that Maitimo would develop a strong connection with a healer who helped him. That healer eventually took on a name and personality of her own, and is now the adorable ball of rage we call Aranya.

If you're interested in reading her and Maitimo's story, please check out Ill Chances and Strange Fates! The story is in progress, and likely will be for a long time, but there's already a lot of content published and plenty more ready to release. (Over 30,000 words have been published and nearly 80,000 have been written-- and the story is just beginning! The Silmarils haven't even been stolen yet!)