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Popping out of the Void again briefly to salute last year's readers/commenters/encouragers/enablers. Thanks for everything, People Who Help to Keep Me Sane. These are for you.
The Gentle Tide: drabbles, drabbles-and-a-half, and double drabbles to celebrate another year gone 'round.
@beatles4ever65 @thescrapwitch @queerofthedagger @shrikeseams @idleleaves @melestasflight @antares0606 @zealouswerewolfcollector @annarobots @admirablemonster @eilinelsghost @balrogballs @amorbidcorvid @lferion @wisteria53 @hhimring @nycterisg @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @idrilsscribe treats are up for you! And everyone else, as well.
such was Dirhaval. He came of the House of Hador, it is said, and the glory and sorrow of that House was nearest to his heart. Dwelling at the Havens of Sirion, he gathered there all the tidings and lore that he could; for in the last days of Beleriand chere came thither remnants out of all the countries... (The War of the Jewels, HoME 11)
three houses of the edain â house of hador â headcanon disclaimer
     Eltas was a man of Dor-lĂłmin who had been only a boy when the Fifth Battle was lost. He was a few years younger than Lord HĂșrinâs son TĂșrin, and greatly admired the older boy, though he knew not how to approach him in friendship. When Lady Morwen sent TĂșrin away to Doriath, the people of Dor-lĂłmin had no knowledge of his fate, and many, including Eltas, assumed he was dead.
     As a member of Hadorâs House, Eltas was persecuted by the conquering Easterlings, and his youth was one of fear and bitterness. When TĂșrin returned unexpectedly, now a man grown with a dreadful Doom upon him, hope rose within Eltas that their time of oppression was at an end. But instead of freeing his people of their tyrannical leaders, TĂșrin rampaged through Dor-lĂłmin, killing friend and foe alike, and his short-lived rebellion crumbled away as soon as he departed once more into the wilds.
     Eltas has been among those who rose up against Brodda and the others, but seeing the destruction TĂșrin wrought the band realized that they would become hunted men. Another rebel, Asgon, rebuked TĂșrin and assumed leadership of the small group, taking Eltas and the others to the caves of Androth where the Grey-elves and Tuor son of Huor had once dwelt. They struggled through a difficult existence for some years, eventually parting ways, and while Asgon himself remained in Mithrim, Eltas traveled south to the Havens of Sirion.
     There he met DĂrhaval, son of a woman who had fled Dor-lĂłmin in the wake of the Fifth Battle and settled in the Havens with her children. From the elves of the Falas, DĂrhaval learned the Sindarin tongue and became greatly skilled in verse and song. When news of TĂșrinâs fate trickled south, DĂrhaval became fascinated by the tragic story of a man who in another life could have been his liege-lord, and sought out those who had encountered him in an attempt to piece together the whole story.
     One of his sources was Eltas, who had developed a similar obsession with how the solemn boy he had known in his youth had become the angst-ridden anti-hero he met as an adult. Eltas and DĂrhaval worked together to uncover the truth of TĂșrinâs life, interrogating anyone who had come into contact with him. This included the elf-maiden Nellas who had known him in Doriath, AndvĂr of the Gaurwaith, Celebrimbor who had reforged his sword Anglachel into Gurthang, GlĂrhuin of the Haladin, and of course Eltas himself, who had known folk such as Morwen and Sador in Dor-lĂłmin.
     DĂrhaval then set himself the task of composing an epic poem to honor the strange and tragic life of TĂșrin Turambar. This was his greatest work, known as the Narn i ChĂźn HĂșrin, or the Lay of the Children of HĂșrin. He set his poem to song, allowing the story to spread across all of Arvernien and Balar, where it would survive through the Ages as one of the Great Tales of Beleriand. Yet DĂrhaval himself would not be so lucky, for when the Sons of FĂ«anor descended upon the Havens in the Third Kinslaying, Men were not spared from their wrath. He perished in the battle, Eltas at his side even in death, leaving his composition of the Narn i Leithian incomplete forever.
DVD: that one scene from your fic about Dirhaval, with the elf lady and the two of them being really intent with each other over the fire. "Do you love me" et cetera. I hope that makes sense I'm on mobile.
omg IT DOES although since that fic barely has scene divisions Iâm going to take this excuse to do⊠a lot of it.
âI have remembered something,â she added, inconsequentially. âMy auntâs husband was Guilinâs steward. Everyone in my family hated him because he always making up to us with stories about the great princes. He said that Gwindor and Finduilas fought much over the Adanedhelâs love for her.â
I⊠I love this OC. Sheâs not even a box of rocks, sheâs like, a box with one rock in it. Selectively dense; elsewhere, airheaded.
DĂrhaval considered the fish with great interest. He had been told triumph lent him a fierce expression. He had no wish to scare his friend off now.
I canât remember if @crocordileâ and I had a conversation before or after I wrote this about Dirhavel being like, not necessarily a big but an energetic guy whoâs frequently seen around the camps doing SUPER WEIRD athletic shit to see if some of the feats he attributes to Turin were physically possibleâanyway, whatever the timing, that concept was what I was psychically tuned into when I wrote this description. He has a beard and it bristles despite his best efforts to keep it trimmed.
âRaised voicesâhe overheardâGwindor said, âWhy does he seek you out, and sit long with you, and come ever more glad away?â And that was true, I remember; they sat together in all kinds of places, on the terraces, in the treasury, and even by the earthworks for the bridge. No doubt he told her much you would be glad to know. But as for me, I think Gwindor a fool; few men would have loved her for listening. It reminds them what they hold dear in themselves.â
It was really hard for me to strike what seemed like a reasonable balance between hearsay and direct observation, but I leaned on the idea that Nargothrond, though huge, was not like, âmodern city spaceâ huge, more âsprawling overdeveloped apartment complex and you need a permit to go above groundââso in five years and with perfect memory, everyone has a decent chance of stumbling on everyone elseâs attempts at fresh air.
âThatâs true,â he said. The first time he had interviewed her, she had spoken for an hour about the cavern of assembly, like an egg on its sideâbut so vast!âand with stalactites Finrod himself had sung down into pillars, or was it that he had worn holes in the walls parting small caves, she couldnât decide; and the window on the river, whence a grey light came, like a shadow thrown on the gliding light of a thousand lamps and torches.
I think this description of the great hall is kind of cute but I have to acknowledge it was influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by the great hall in the Rats of Nimh.
And now when she spoke it was matter-of-fact and with hardly a jibe at her uncle. She was TĂșrin to him in that moment with her straight-sloping neck, the flushed skin of her neck and jaw with her face as fair as fair could stay at sunset, the cupful of shadow under her chin. He had burned the roof of his mouth. The fish was tender, almost flavorless, flaking between his teeth like a cake of river-flesh; a little muddy, even, as all water here was. He ate the crisped-black skin for a whiff of charcoal, which coated his mouth. âDonât you love me, your loyal hearer?â
She gave him a startled wink; and smiled, and smiled.
Okay, so yes. I do love this moment, I hope it does a lot of things at once; basically I want 1) Dirhavel to be ironic in a nice way about his elf friend attempting to invent the term âemotional labor,â which reflects both a male impatience with this attempt to generalize everything to men talking womenâs ears off, but also some vague species-based edginess about him trying to construct this human story out of testimony from elves, and like, navigating elvesâ possessiveness of Turin but also the way they patronize him in the same breath, Adanedhel. And at the same time having to confront the fact that people are people and the elf-human boundary has gotten increasingly blurry with the end times, however much he might want to retain a sense of lofty apartness, whether as a human among elves, a writer among subjects, a man among women, whateverâthat tension between observer distance and involuntary empathy is another big theme of this fic. And 2) I want the cook to catch it but not quite get itâlike, she knows heâs making fun of her but she doesnât necessarily interpret it in the same way he does, what she gets is that heâs talking about the limits of different kinds of love, that you can love someone and it can still go just so far: thatâs why it triggers her next thought about Finduilas â> Turin.
âI do not think Finduilas loved the Mormegil either. Or, that is, I believe they loved one another as sister and brother.â
I said this in my commentary on an otherwise VERY different LOGH fic but I love when characters are wrong. Every time. Also, I love childish oversimplifications that have good reason for existingâthat is, I like when you can really see why a character would with all their heart want to believe x, because the alternative is both messy and depressing.
Trying to lick his fingers clean just spread around the soot. Among the things she had told DĂrhaval was that she was an only child. But he was inclined to believe her, almost. To Finduilas TĂșrin should have been a child. She must have wanted to love him like a brotherâit would have been best, by far clearer and finer, to love him as a brother, even when her death walked near. The death he handed her down to; but if they were kin, it would have been her right to love him, blaming him.
âDo you not agree?â
Dirhavel takes this basically as like, confirmation for his thesis that all real love is irrational and unconditional (see also Gwindor wanting Finduilas and TĂșrin to be happy at his own expense, a few lines down) but only familial love has the âexcuseâ to be so. So the distinction is not, âwould I love him whatever he did to me,â but rather, âdo I feel fucked up and guilty about that fact or not.â In a vague way, this is supposed to set up the extremely bleak lines he gives Nienor after she gets her memory back: twice beloved.
âI canât say.â Up again to pace. She followed him, basket on her arm, and settled onto her haunches when she saw he had no journey in mind. He stood when he performed, which was not hard, but it made him more restless when alone.
See above remarks about Dirhavelâs acrobatics, and also maaybe his ADHD
âI thinkâby the timeâno, TĂșrin did not love her, and as for Finduilas, well, surely she cared for Gwindor? If they argued. Letâs see. And TĂșrin pursued her at last and fell in a swoon on her grave, we know that. And he loved Gwindor; how not, when Gwindor was with him at Ivrin? But GwindorâI supposeâGwindor must have hated him. No. He must have hoped TĂșrin loved Finduilas, and that was why he couldnât be persuaded of the truth. For he would have wanted her to be happy, in the end.â
âOh, no!â
His mood tipped down at once. âOh no,â he agreed, and took his sandals off and stepped into the stream.
Again, I just think this interaction is fun. I mean I like the placement of his realization about Gwindor, but I LOVE the cook being like âoh no!! thatâs so sad!â I hope other people enjoy âstories about the process of idiotic sadstuck brainstormingâ as much as I do.
His mother had said once that both he and his father were happier than other men, but that they had no ballast, to keep steady the craft. If he took on an ounce of grief heâd sink, and yet he felt the flood almost as freedom. It made him more the master than had his dry, feckless race, his high-riding. As long as he struggled he had yet to succumb; that was the rule for a wasted night. He ought to go beg a bowl of sour milk from Linnor, or go and sing a service for the king. He could see as far as a night of stars.
I wanted to communicate a particular kind of mood downturn here where you can still clearly remember being happy, and the rising tide of discontent isnât overwhelming on its own, itâs just depressing because you know where it leadsâbut for the same reason itâs also a relief, in that you know where it leads. Whereas joy is weird and easy to get lost in and you never know when the plug will be pulled. But Iâm not sure the boat metaphor really works.
But it was day, it was red evening. It was his companionâs grief, filling his mind from above. She crouched and watched the far bank huge-eyed, not a tear in evidence, eyes opened but sealed, as it seemed, against sadness that strove for entry, not escape; she sat with wide mouth cracked, nostrils flared, sucking in great absent sniffs of sea-wind. She was besieged as an afterthought, safe and calm except besieged.
I also wanted to include some telepathy! As always! Dirhaval I imagine to be something of a natural, who probably has had some experience with elf mind-speech at this pointâenough to recognize it but not really to manage it. I like this description of the cook in pain, I think it works well with her established personality and also evokes Nargothrond itself, which is of course the thing sheâs actually grieving for. I mean, and she identifies it with Gwindor, reasonably enough, and takes unhappy pride in him as a lord of Nargothrond, and in this moment is kind of shot through herself not just with the fact of his defeat but the like, honorable necessity of his defeat, knowing that on some level he accepted it. Â
(Gwindor surely wished Finduilas joy. Finduilas, dying, remembered TĂșrin, and told him where his quest should end. The feathered tops of the reeds glowed on dark stems, like a fire in a field of reedsâthere before nightfall he planted for ever the standards of the Noldor and their unsheathed swords, kindling in the dawn.)
Iâm so proud of this stupid line lol, itâs just the reverse of TolkienâsââThe light of the drawing of the swords of the Noldor was like a fire in a field of reedsââbut I LOVE THAT LINE, itâs so perfect for Dirhaval as an author and Sirion as a place of memory/last battlefront/first battlefront for this long war. And its conclusion, still to come.
He washed his hands and greasy beard in the river. âYour fish will be cold,â he advised. He had abandoned hope of dinner until she brought it, but that was no reason to encourage bad habits in her.
Dumb friends. Dumb friends are great because they are attuned to the hazards of stupidity, and can help each other.
Then he had to pick some scales out of his teeth, and couldnât elaborate, but he heard her uncover the basket, anyway.
He had met her before with a handful of salt, pressing a few grains to her mouth to check their purity. âDĂrhaval,â she said wisely, mouth full. âDĂrhaval, I have forgotten how to cook.â Meaning she had no spices, witched ovens, and trained assistantsâmaybe, with her, it really was as though she had forgotten; at least it was something else she had lost.
Yeah⊠the focus on memory in this is another unexpected link to the LOGH fic uh, an inevitable byproduct of writing about a historian, and itâs also supposed to reflect that loss of separation between elves and men, since so much of what distinguishes elves is⊠their wealth of resources, psychological and material. And the material resources are essential to and interwoven with the psychological resilience, as noted here, so I really wanted to capture that sense that *not having* all the wonderful things she used to have baffles her as much as a hole in her memory. Because the default is that you keep everything forever, right? Another feeling which is not unique to elves. God I loveâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠâŠ âpeople.â Â
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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