#balrogballs writes

Eärendil the Mariner

Eärendil discovers, across even more years of orbiting his son, that parental intimacy has a half-life. In the early years, the child and the parent are truly adjacent if not outright conjoined: your daily rhythms intersect, your concerns overlap enough that a teat to the mouth requires no preamble. But children grow so fast. They move at a pace that creates distance even without separation. Elrond at two had been the back of his hand. Elrond at twenty five might be somewhat comprehensible. Elrond at five thousand will be utterly disorienting.

Like trying to know a city through its maps. The maps are accurate, often exhaustively so, but walking the streets reveals they had never contained what truly mattered about the place.

Arwen Undomiel

It ends when Arwen dies. When broken and unbreakable and no longer convinced of his own immortal capacity for grief, Elrond does not. She lived in the brightest of purples. She dies silver under the stars.

She could break his heart. Oh, Arwen. His comfort to the last. She is a spire amidst the storm. She could be struck with pure lightning, right through, and she’d say it's all right, I'm here, I'm here. She is why he stays, though he could love her anywhere. Imladris, Eregion, Valinor, and beyond.

She had blazed, and he had stepped back to admire it. That is his failure, as always. He makes himself too easy to love from afar. And so she dies in winter, in a forest they had first seen together in spring, three thousand years ago when it was wide and green and golden.

Elros and Elrond, aged 13: a moment of realisation — I will one day choose the kindred of men.

I did not wish to be the most exciting part of the greatest, most tragic of love songs in this land. Nor did I wish to be Dior and his sons, killed before I even knew there was a choice to be made. I did not wish for my choice to be a punishment for daring to throw myself from a window in despair. And most of all, Elrond—I feared the fate of Eärendil.

For I had always had a twin. Always, always beside me, I had my Elrond. Who was my playmate every day of my life, mine from womb to war, who joined in every game I ever played, argued against anything I ever said, squealed when I pinched him, with whom I halved every sweet I have ever received. Elrond, who would crawl into my bed at dawn because he swore his side of the room was too cold, Elrond, who would sit by my side as I looked out of the window and told him stories I made up just for him, Elrond, who had the audacity to be fast asleep as I did. That had been my life, all my life. And so, the story of Eärendil, the supposed reward for his deeds and the result of his choice of kindred, a choice he made for the person he loved most in the world, even the slightest possibility of such a fate struck only cold fear in my heart.

I could not bear to sail the skies alone, hingeing my hopes upon the breaking of the world. There is no eternity for me. Not without you. Not without my Elrond.

This was a lighting study of the adolescent twins from a couple of weeks back that characteristically got out of hand... Words from a longfic I’m currently cooking, featuring an extract from a letter written by a dying Elros to his brother, attempting to explain that he chose the kindred of Men not because he wished to be parted from his twin, but because he couldn’t bear the thought.

“Of course I love you as my father too. We can fuck our way through Dagor-Dagorath and I probably still will. It’s in my nature, yours, ours. We construct elaborate philosophies to justify our continued proximity to what should repel us. Because with migratory trajectories like ours, Atto, we know that exile from the place that houses and curates your pain may well mean exile from the only place that understands it,” Elrond shrugs, topping up Maedhros’ glass for him. “What begins as temporary coexistence turns into structure, and structure eventually gets mistaken for inevitability. Love grew, we say, as little might be thought. It is much the same now. We tell ourselves we've transcended, that our presence here, now, together and redeemed, represents evolution rather than just a lack of alternatives. Aman offers me no exit from Middle-Earth, only a deeper room in the same house. With only squatter’s rights to boot.”

With his face drained except for two spots of color and his mouth a sneering, brutal curve, Elrond seems feral and hawk-eyed for a moment, poised for a perfect pounce. Under the bureaucratic civility he traded in to survive, he vibrates with suppressed violence, barely-contained disgust and unashamed lust. It unsettles and excites Maedhros at once.

There you are, he thinks. There you are, my son of slaughter.

Trying out yet another illustration style (Disney heroes vs my Disney villains?) and new set of character designs for my very weird 4th Age Elrond-in-Aman WIP, polished skulls round which the roses twine, in which Elrond tries to fuck his way out of immortality, a task Maedhros is all too happy to help out with. Speedpaint below the cut because this cartoony style has given me so much grief that I must share the pain. Happy holidays!

1. Elrond's irl children have a running joke that he loves Aragorn more than the three of them combined but everyone knows it's just a joke and the truth was that he loved all his children equally: but his love for Arwen, Elrohir and Elladan could be split across thousands of years like a slow burning candle. But he would only have Aragorn for a century or two — simply a blink in the eye of time, so his love for him was fiery and blazing — a sandstorm in an hourglass.

2. Toddler Aragorn was 100% spoilt, and it was entirely Elrond's fault. Most of the Dunedain fosters would normally come to Imladris as adolescents, as per general medieval fostering custom, and leave by adulthood. Aragorn, however, came in as a baby due to his circumstances, and Elrond — whose last baby was a baby 2800 years ago — went FERAL

3. Baby Aragorn was the bane of Glorfindel's life. He would make it a point to personally torment him. Four year old Aragorn once braided Glorfindel's hair to his chair so remarkably it took Erestor an hour to free him. When Elrond found out, he gave Aragorn extra dessert for being clever enough to do such good braids.

4. The best day of Elladan's life was the day Aragorn got his first haircut at the age of three, because Elrond cried for some inexplicably paternal reason and Elladan prayed Mandos would strike him down in that moment so he could die laughing hysterically.

5. Have I mentioned that baby Aragorn was very spoilt? However, nobody in the House of Elrond said anything of it, because that baby being a little spoilt was small payment for bringing joy to a family shrouded in grief for centuries.

6. Aragorn was 10 when Thorin and his company passed through Imladris, and he was OBSESSED with the dwarven lord. He would follow him around, beg him to play chess with him, ask if Thorin wanted to hold his pet lizard. Thorin would never admit it, but he too grew to adore the boy across those few days.

7. The entire household of Imladris spent decades placing bets as to when Elrond would accidentally call Aragorn 'Elros'. Elrond, for his sins, made sure that he never once mentioned Elros to him — so that Aragorn would grow up knowing he was loved for being him, not a facsimile of a long dead twin... until the day they parted, and Aragorn put a small heirloom from his family in Elrond's hand. A tiny gold ring traditionally given to elflings on their first begetting day — that had once belonged to his own ancestor, Tar-Minyatur.

8. Elrond used to scare Elladan and Elrohir with the idea of Ungoliant when they were younger, but when they tried the scare tactic on toddler Aragorn, he was very excited and wanted to hear more about the enormous spider. So they had to resort to drastic measures and tell him about an even more fearsome creature that ate little boys who didn't go to bed: Arwen Undomiel, the giant werewolf prowling the forests of Lothlorien.

It is easier to believe Elwing was welcomed by a distant sea than admit she was thrice exiled from her very own land. For the past makes no pledges of comprehension, and for people like Celebrían and Morwen and Finduilas and Elwing and oh so many more, trying to locate oneself in its narratives feels like grasping at reflections in disturbed water. I cannot tell you whether the Eldar truly believe such tales of transformation, whether turning into a bird as you hurtle off a cliff is something they can easily comprehend. But I can tell you this: across centuries, in countless rooms, people have vanished into explanations more bearable than the truth.

- she that was young and fair -

A technically still unfinished concept portrait of Elwing in Aman for Willa from my November batch of commissions (final version being commissioner-exclusive)… truly it isn’t every day you get an art order based on your own writing 🥺🫶🏽 my idea here was to just needle around with the ‘gilded cage’ idea of Valinor, which is often discussed with regards to the Noldor, yes, but I actually find Elwing’s experience of the place most interesting in that sense… but I will refrain from yapping here!

Turgon of Gondolin

a belated and messy little Turgon (he has a little mole on his lip and nobody can take it from me) for @nolofinweanweek — and a short excerpt from my upcoming Nirnaeth fic featuring Turgon on a rooftop alone, practicing in his head my favourite brand of speech, ie a eulogy + coronation address + intrusive thoughts. Keep an eye out for the fic soon to see what he ends up actually saying 😇

I never expected the dead to be so punctual in their visitations. But my brother Fingon returns to me every night, in the plural now, accompanied by a multitude whose names I cannot pronounce. They speak in old languages and strange dialects and dead tongues in turn, refusing in their way to be legible to those of us fated to live on. Fingon’s voice is now somewhere in that polyphony. It is no longer distinguishable, no longer mine to separate from this collective he has been joined to in death.

If I had even the slightest hope, I would reach past this land and towards the sea, searching for some old version of my Fingon, who exists outside the tragic tale of the Noldor in exile, who can be mourned in isolation from all our other ghosts and all whom we helped make into ghosts. But my brother no longer exists in isolation. Death may have been his reward for a life well lived, but not his alone. Dirges must be orchestral or silent in war: there is no in-between. Perhaps we should indeed be silent. The other ghosts alongside him in the collective will remember not what we claimed we were doing or wanted to do but what we actually did after all, for dirges for the dead are the domain of the living.

But Fingon, how can I face my daughter now?