#moth fic

Chapter One Hundred Posted! ♥️

Turning Gwaedal south east, she nudged him into a canter once more. This pace wasn’t sustainable for long, but that wasn’t the point. Rising slightly in the stirrups, she urged him, faster, and faster still. Until the pair were galloping across the rolling landscape of Cardolan so fast she felt like she was flying.

As though hearing her thoughts, a piercing keen cut through the air.

Head whipping up, Rhosynel’s practised eyes immediately picked out a familiar shape dropping through the air towards them.

“Ilmara!”

The excitable call earned another keen, and without instruction the Limroval whipped about them, starting to fly just head of her and Gwaedal, elegant storm and pearl wings shifting and flitting on the wind, leading them across the landscape in a familiar sight.

“To Boromir! Ilmara! To home!”

That's it. It's done. It's finished.

Considering I've never actually finished writing a story in all my years, I'm SO so proud of completing this fic. I started in Dec 2023, and now, finally, in Mar 2026, its all done and dusted. I am, a little emotional 😭

There's a lot of people I would love to tag and call out for this support and motivation, but that would be a long list and tumblr would think I'm a bot, so I'll limit it to two people specifically for influencing On Swift Wings.

@scyllas-revenge thank you for inspiring me to start writing fanfic! I stumbled across Burn Like Cold Iron almost by accident and utterly devoured it! Your fic made me see Boromir in a whole new light AND made me realise just what you could do with fanfic, OSW wouldn't exist without you ♥️

@erathene thank you for motivating me to start posting OSW. Without your encouragement I'd never have started sharing this fic, which means I'd never have finished it either, you've been a wonderful friend through all of this ♥️

Posting here bc I don’t think I’ll write anything big for this and the writing isn’t anything to be proud of but I still love the idea

___

On Tommy’s hand there is a mark from when Wilbur pulled him up from the ground. It used to be a bright yellow, is now a muddy brown like a bruise, edged with rotting black. When Ghostbur was here, and the mark was black with grief, the little ghost would smile in a way that made his eyes crinkle and smear Tommy’s hands with blue dye. He would not try to wash it off, only thank the ghost and keep his hands close while they dried.

On Tommy’s cheek there is a mark of deep green from when he hugged Tubbo close in victory after a successful prank, the both of them laughing so hard they could cry. He is not sure how to talk to his best friend anymore. It is faded around the edges now, strong green lighter and faint, but at least he can take solace in the fact it is still there.

On his leg there is a brush of red, so faded it’s more pale pink than anything now, one of the first gifts from Technoblade he would grow to hate and a bitter memory of his own instability after exile, latching onto the first person to treat him with kindness. Purple marks his fingers and knuckles lightly in the tiniest of streaks from when he exchanged a flower with Ranboo. It is the same as the day he got it, an indication of their relationship going nowhere, not bad not good just there.

(On his shoulder there is a green handprint, in the same place Dream always liked to hold him still as he forced Tommy to watch the tnt light up. It is not as faded as he would like it to be.)

Based on the hit fanfic by @sweet-ladyy

The main character and her family don't have Westron as their first language, but a regional dialect of Quenya (since I'm not Tolkien I ain't making a full language for this fic lmao) but at the same time I really don't want to be cobbling sentences together in Quenya, which readers would then have to scroll up/down to find the translation to what is said, as I find that breaks the flow/immersion of the story.

The primary issue is that I need to figure out how to convey that this family is speaking Quenya even when away from Westron characters.

Now my initial thought was to italic their language but only when in public/around Westron speakers, but this wouldn't convey that they were speaking Quenya when in private. My second thought was to italic their language both in public and in private, but that poses its own issues.

Now both these options would mean that there'd be a HUGE amount of italics going on, and that poses an issue to me as a practitioner of italics for emphasis and since internal thoughts also use italics, it could cause confusion. The amount of times I've been reading professionally published stories and gotten confused between what's internal thoughts, external emphasis, and telepathic communication, is frankly ridiculous.

But! I've had a third thought today, and that's whether I could follow in the footsteps of my beloved K.A. Applegate, who used <these thingies> to indicate the difference between <telepathic> vs "verbal" communication. I already do something similar for one of my own headworlds where there's a degree of telepathic chatter, so I'm wondering about bringing it in for this fic to indicate Quenya vs Westron?