“She spoke no word; but being filled with love Elwë came to her and took her hand, and straightway a spell was laid on him, so that they stood thus while long years were measured by the wheeling stars above them; and the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark before they spoke any word.”
Silmarillion stuff
There u go friend. sorry is so late I came home later than I thought yesterday. Luckily, tomorrow I am staying home all day so, I can make more stuff.
As an apology for the last angst fic, here’s the written out proper version of this headcanon.
…
Still wiping away tears from his eyes, Námo calls to the other side of the enveloping darkness that formed the outermost ring of the Circles of the World, hoping to reach the ear of Ilúvatar or one of his brethren that did not journey into Arda. He knows there is a counterpart of his that must be the one to hold and handle the mortal souls that leave his Halls and enter Beyond (he hopes, in the way the Children have described and defined hope). Finally, someone answers. At first it is hard to separate the tones from the reverb of his call, and there is a terribly annoying static to the vibrations on the upper places of thought. Manwe never has these issues, he thinks, and never has to wait this long. It is a vaguely familiar voice, but one he has not heard in so long he has forgotten the name that their father assigned them. Something that started with a Ha or He sound, he thinks. Or was it Nef?
“Námo!” the voice calls. “You were not supposed to contact us unless it is of great need. What is this request you ask for?” There are undercurrents of peevishness and stress to the voice, a sense that they are distracted and cannot give him their full attention. It could be merely the distortion of communicating across barriers of existence. Námo tries not the feel any personal offense.
“A great boon,” the Judge says, pitching his tones to those of resolve and determination, and as succinctly as possible describes the situation with Melian’s daughter and her mortal lover. “They wish to remain together, and thus Lúthien is willing to join Beren to his mortal fate, to leave the confines of Arda.”
A great sigh echoes through the Outer Void. “Look, Námo, I know you have all your First Children to deal with and they can be a tad unruly, but we are swamped. Do you realize how exponentially greater the number of the Second Children are, and how swiftly it increases? And how fractious they are? I would trade you positions for some peace and quiet, even if it meant having to share a universe with Melkor. And you want to dump an extra soul on my overworked shoulders? Truly?”
The moratorium on the coldness of his heart has ceased; his sympathies can no longer be manipulated. Námo steels himself and replies, “My brethren and I wish to grant them some years together here on Arda, then allow them to leave together. I will give you time to prepare, and I am only asking you accept one soul. Not even our most intractable. But I swear by the name of our Father and Creator, I will not suffer a second permanent resident of my Halls declaring to never leave my couch and spend all of eternity bemoaning their lost mortal beloved. I have one already, and Vairë is exhausted already listening to him weep and pout and get accidentally tangled in her skeins as he searches for fresh handkerchiefs and frozen dairy sweets. Aegnor is bad enough. I won’t have twice the misery.”
The humming sound that signaled that the Ainur on the other end was only humoring Námo’s rant without giving it consideration screeched to a halt and the line of communication intensified with sudden loudness and clarity. “What was that name?”
“Melian’s daughter that wishes to have a fate of one of the Second Children?”
“No, no, the other. The one already moping in your personal wing of your Halls. The one that was in love with a mortal- it was mutual, wasn’t it? The name, please!”
“Aegnor,” Námo says slowly. “Ambaráto Aikanáro Arafinwion. And the woman he cries over was of the House of Bëor named-”
“AEGNOR!” the counterpart howls with the chords of extreme vexation that he thought only Melkor’s disharmony could inspire. “OH YES, HIM. We are sick of hearing that name. We know the woman of the Third Song, Andreth Saelind. There is not a soul here that does not, to our sorrow. For more than ten of your years, we have had to listen to her complaints, of her list of grievances of the inequalities and ill-planning of Eru’s Songs, critiques of your jobs and ours and philosophical bitching. Of which we always hear from the newly arrived, mistake me not – but this one! Brother, she has gone to Ilúvatar himself and has not shut up. Your Lúthien at least could sing with incomparable beauty and skill. We got her. If I never have to hear another word about her beautiful block-headed Aegnor, I would take all the First Children into my keeping.”
Námo is aghast at what to possibly respond with.
“Look, I’ll talk to Father but I can guarantee he’ll agree. We’ll swap you Lúthien for Andreth. And it’ll take a while for any of us to interrupt her diatribe to inform her of the deal, which should give your Lúthien and Beren a grace period for a second chance at life together. Oh, Most Joyous of Songs! Peace and Quiet at Last! We can be rid of Saelind! I was almost tempted to pull a Tulukhastaz to get away from her. I have never cried before. What are these things on my face?”
“Tears of joy,” Námo explains dryly.
Andreth steps outside the door of her nephew’s house, the grand building that had once been home of her brother and her father and their father before them, so lovingly crafted and worn smooth by time and care. Her fingers wish to linger on the door-latch for a moment, but she does not hesitate to walk further into the light. She does not hear the door close behind her, or any sounds from inside the house. It is dawn, and the reddish orange of the sky looks so warm and comforting. She does not understand how it can, because the fiery glow engulfs the entire skyline and casts its hue over everything she sees, and she should be frightened, should be thinking of the flames that destroyed her world only a few days ago, but she doesn’t. She has forgotten the northern fires.
Andreth walks out from the shadow of the eaves, hugging her green cloak around her shoulders, staring out at the field stretched out before the house. From this angle she cannot see the other houses of the village nor the smithy, mill, or any of the barns, not even the fence-lines. Only a field of green grain, waist-high with summer promise, and a figure standing in the field with his back to her. The dawn silhouettes him, and Andreth knows the lines of his shoulders. He is leaning over to run a hand over the barley, and as a breeze lifts at her unbound hair, Andreth begins to smile in recognition and joy. He is not wearing armor, only a soft woven tunic of the very sort of plaid woolen cloth that has come from her looms, and there is no sword or quiver belted at his waist. He is free of tension, at peace, and that alone would make Andreth weep. Sunlight turns the curls of his hair into pure gold. It is still silent. Andreth walks out into the field, the dew soaking through the thin leather of her shoes and collecting on the hem of her green cloak. The man in the field straightens and turns to face her over his shoulder, smiling.
Aegnor speaks to her, and at first Andreth doesn’t understand. Something about a ring, and she looks down at her hand, where a silver band wraps around her finger. An elven proposal of marriage custom, she remembers it being explained to her, silver for intention to wed, but does not recall if it was Finrod or Aegnor himself who had told her, and it does not make sense. He had never proposed to her, no matter how she had dreamed he had. But he is looking at her with such certainty and love, framed by the orange dawn. Andreth stares at the cold circle of silver, and suddenly the light has cooled and she feels cold. She remembers the texture of ash and dirt in her hands, digging through the aftermath of a battlefield. She remembers burials, and wakes.
Andreth is in her ancestral home, but her bed is cold. The fire in the hearth is gone, and as she stretches out her hand, she can feel the piece of metal from her dream. It is a piece of chain-mail from a shattered and burnt suit of elven mail, one of the larger rings that she had dug out from the pile of charred bones. She runs a finger over the metal and wishes she was back in her dream.
i am nothing if not predictable and this is the JL trailer Clois scene because OTPs are meant to be combined.
Bonus points if you include a topic. ( IE. shipping, roleplaying, ect. )
shortly after william the conquerer came to power he initiated something known as ‘the doomsday book’- he sent envoys to survey his new lands to record the properties he now controlled so they could pay accurate taxes. every acre of field, every mill, livestock, buildings and their relative size- all would be recorded to determine the wealth of each settlement so a percentage could be expected as rent. for an example of what this book meant; the previous king was aware of and collected taxes from about 20 grain mills in england, william’s audit shot that number above 200. you dont know the meaning of ‘pedantic’ untill you start reading about medieval grain mills, theres a church that paved its floor with confiscated ‘illegal’ millstones to ensure that the town had to get its flour from the church’s official mill and one war simply about stealing the same millstone back and fourth for quite a few decades
of course word of these envoys traveled faster then they did, virtually every town they came to had time to claim they had far less taxable wealth then they actually did have by the time the audit arrived. in one of the more over the top cases an entire village pretended to have caught insanity- when the taxmen arrived they saw screaming laughing idiots with underwear on their heads so they left as fast as they could considering at the time insanity was thought to be literally contagious. it would be over five years before anyone tried to audit that town again. its safe to assume a large number of other villages also had sudden cases of strange diseases, mysteriously disappearing cows, or very large shrubberies and haybales shaped like buildings and you dont need to look over that hill either. thats not even touching how many small communities just plain didnt technically exist because they were too small, somewhere weird, or in legal limbo of who owned it
of course when the feudal part of feudalism started moving its gears you found that the local lord of that village was unlikely to divulge the exact amount of rents they could collect to THEIR lord either, knowing that the more they admitted to receiving the more they were expected to hand over. this was not exclusive to england either, the more you learn about feudalism the more you have to ask how all these minor lords out in the boonies kept having the money and soldiers to do all the political intrigue bullshit, the answer is also tax evasion. each village kept claiming it had fewer people living in shittier houses with less land and fewer livestock then they actually had, and each local lord kept claiming they were receiving less rents then they actually took so were also adverse to an accurate audit.
their knowledge of tax loopholes also extended to finding out that clergymen were either exempt from tax or received a far lower rate of tax, so proving you qualified as a clergyman was an endeavor that paid dividends. specifically to prove you were clergy you proved that you could read and write enough Latin to satisfy an official, so you could spend some money to hire someone to tutor you enough Latin to fake it. its estimated that due to this fully ten percent of medieval english households wrote ‘clergy’ on their tax forms.
another and even more extreme example was the peasants revolt of 1381, london was swarmed by the unwashed masses from all sides instigated by an official trying to collect (a lot of) unpaid poll taxes, an angry mob driving a teenaged king Richard II to retreat to a boat in the river, and culminating with 1500 peasants being executed by an emergency militia. this doesn’t sound like a huge success untill you dig into some of the details- peasants from a large number of villages all arrived at london at the same time, leaving dedicated forces specifically to stop ships from acessing london to break the siege, the peasants executed a select number of court officials and started burning paperwork- but systematically only burning the ones detailing who owned plots of land, debt records, and a few criminal records. the peasants who besieged london and scared the king into the river had successfully purged a whole lot of debts and reclaimed a lot of land in one very ballsy and highly coordinated move that relied on them being seen as illiterate dirt farmers with no ulterior motives besides pitchfork mob riot and trying to kiss the queen mother while they touch everything in the tower of london with their grimy hands
found it. this is… this is amazing. I did a BA in Medieval British History and we never, ever, once considered this. Not once. At a major Canadian university.
jfc this changes my entire brain
Haleth is Haldad’s daughter, and though circumstances force her to fulfill the role of chieftain that her brother was expected to fill, she does so as herself and not as her brother. Her people are not averse to the idea of a woman leading them in all things, even in battle – the daughters that guard their chieftain with their great axes and thick boar-skin armor are proof of that. But Haleth dresses as a woman of her people, needs not wear a man’s grab to be taken seriously, and enjoys fine jewelry and clothes. Not too fine- her people are woodsmen and practical. But they are not poor cousins- Haleth with her force of will, she will ensure that they are never destitute and not seen as such on the political stage of Beleriand. Gold twists around her neck, and electrum, and far more precious and prestigious beads of coral traded from the Grey Elves. She has a fine gown made of fabric gifted to her from the hands of Queen Melian herself, a hounds-tooth silk weave of black and white. Many of Haleth’s gowns and cloaks are simple checkered patterns, the trademark of her people. She knows thus this fabric was crafted especially to please their new allies in Brethil- and also to suit the Haladrim tastes, the Elven Queen sent fabric and not a full gown. Haleth, busy with the duties of leading her people, did not sew the gown. Other articles of clothing she did, and the task of re-hemming her nephew’s clothing as the teenage boy grew she allotted to herself as the proper duty of an aunt, but those were garments for work and winter when the snow fell and only family. Queenly fabric needed the most skilled needles.
The cut of Haleth’s tunics and gowns are not like those of the other tribes. For example, sleeves are very wide at the armholes and taper tight to the wrist. Over-gowns, if worn, are left open at the sides and only pinned at the shoulders. Such pairs of shoulder broaches Haleth has a’plenty, and she will be buried in the Lady-barrow with her best set, which look like a cluster of acorns and oak leaves. She cinches the gown with a wide belt embroidered in bright colors and patterns. Their embroidery is another element that sets them apart from their cousins. The simple two-tone or black-work patterns of the Bëorians look juvenile next to those of the Haladim, though it is far more common to find bands of embroidery on Bëorian and Haradim blouses, vests, and aprons. Traders travel to the forest of Brethil to buy the masterworks to sell back to other Edain. Fabric sits in gentle folds high on her chest, nearly hiding the strings of amber beads. More amber twists in the cords that hold the simple diadem of her formal chieftain’s grab. She only bothers to wear it when facing guests, perched on a tree stump outside her house, her plain and thick leather shoes not hidden by the hem of her bold patterned gown, a rustic counterpoint to the finery around her weather-worn face. It is not a beautiful face, but with strong features and an even stronger intelligence and will that animate that face, no one who meets Haleth comes away with the impression of coarseness or ugliness. With a huff, Chief Haleth extends a hand in greeting, and around her wrist a bracelet of amateurishly carved boar-teeth beads rattles. Haldar made them for her, decades ago. She will trade no finery for them- not even a Silmaril.
Send me a character and a number for a headcanon.
- Holiday headcanon
- Cooking headcanon
- Sleeping headcanon
- Driving headcanon
- Bathing/showering headcanon
- Hugging headcanon
- Kissing headcanon
- Sex headcanon
- General physical contact headcanon
- Physical appearance headcanon
- Wardrobe headcanon
- Jewelry headcanon
- Nickname headcanon
- Dancing headcanon
- Singing headcanon
- Anger headcanon
- Soft spot headcanon
- Favorite possession headcanon
- Favorite photograph headcanon
- Relationship with/thoughts on _____ headcanon
heget's WordPress 