Tag: ingwë

Ingwë: ■ ▼ ൠ ☼ ☾ ☮ ♦

☾ – sleep headcanon

The beds of Cuiviénen and the Journey were layers of woven straw mats cushioned by felt, then more felt and blankets of wool and fur, and small hard pillows, if not just a blanket folded as headrest. As Imin and Iminyë before, Ingwë sleeps on a wide sleeping mat made for two, and it is when halfway through the Journey when Ravennë joins him to sleep in the central mat that the tribe officially recognizes king and queen (they were getting worried). Ingwë sleeps on his side, eyes open like the Minyar do – a habit from the Unbegotten, who fear sleep as the return to the unknown state that they came from, as they do not know how or why they first awoke and if they might someday stop. (All of this is my Imin and Iminyë one-shot I’ll post in-full eventually). Ravennë kicks in her sleep; Ingwë’s successful marriage depends in-part on never bringing this up with her 😉 They don’t always share a bed, as Ingwë is often up in Ilmarin on meditative retreats while his wife stays in Valmar for ruling. She does murmur and not-quite-snore, but very audibly breathe when she sleeps, maybe because Ingwë is so still and silent as he does. But he finds it a very comforting and relaxing thing, the sounds of his wife sleeping next to him, and sometimes he pretends to sleep, waiting and just listening to her, the ache of loneliness soothed away. The cats sleep on the bed when Ravennë is away, so their purring drives away the quiet – though yes, Ingwë has awoken in a panic because one of the cats has fallen asleep on his face, and yes, the times they have forgotten to kick the cats out and lock the door before sex are pathetically higher than that number should be (someone keeps forgetting).

■ –  Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

In Cuiviénen there was a hut without finished walls, a slanting thatch roof and a couple woven floor mats, some pots from Finwë, and a large pile of furs and hide blankets, and a beautiful wooden box from Elwë in which Ingwë stored his family treasures and hunting tools. This was on the outer ring of the village, farthest from the great central bonfires. (Status counted how far your house was from the light)

Once Ingwë becomes chief, and when he builds his new home in Aman, his rooms are infused with bright light. He likes wooden furniture with simple lines but bright colors.

Everything is covered in cat hair. He tells the servants not to bother trying to remove all if it.

On the Great Journey they had a tent and sleeping mats. When in Valinor the Noldor help to design the tall tower Mindolin, but Ingwë leaves it soon after. He stays in a monastery for mediation penance for murder high in the mountains close to Ilmarin, which over time becomes as elaborate as the palace in Valmar. Still, the lines are clean and work around nature, the furnishings simple, sparse, and mostly of pale light woods (lot of balsa) – though again designwise so many throw rugs and cushions and pillows and furs. What Ingwë has the most of are books and scrolls – he writes and loves to read poetry. The servants are better at cleaning away the ink (though again, cats~) than the pet hair.

Stylistically more Art Deco than Art Nouveau – Ingwë is going to love imported dwarven designs.

☮ – friendship headcanon

His first friend was Asmalô, the Minyar born right before him. The two were ‘milk brothers’ – their mothers shared nursing duties. Growing up Ingwë wanted to be a hunter alongside his friend, do everything together, but after the accident, Asmalô and his mom treated Ingwë’s family as outcasts the same as the rest of the tribe, so Ingwë cut him off. Asmalô (named for the yellow hammer bird) kept an eye on his former friend out of guilt, so vaguely knew what Ingwë was up to, and was the one to cover for him (without prompting) when Ingwë sneaked away from the village to help Elwë hunt the Dark Hunters. When Ingwë comes back with Oromë, Asmalô is ecstatic and basically pimping his friend to be restored with all the great honors back into the tribe. He’s going to be Ingwë’s #2 among the warrior/young hunter cadres of the Minyar, and the one that watches Imin’s son for signs of rebellion/disobedience. Again a lot of this is coming out of Asmalô’s personal initiative trying to make up for guilt.

♦ – quirks/hobbies headcanon

So much poetry. So much explicit poetry about how great married life with his wife is. Philosophical musings. Finely crafted words to describe the sounds and colors of the mountains. He loves Rúmil for inventing writing so he can record his thoughts and words. Poetry about his cats, poetry written in the shape of cats. So much dirty poetry one doesn’t realize is really sexual unless one knows their metaphors. Ingwë’s kids try to explain it away by admitting that especially for the chieftains during the march, such things weren’t private but had an audience so it’s not that their parents are exhibitionists. But life is so less embarrassing and quiet when their parents are up in the monastery. And isn’t four kids enough? No?

Ironically he’s pretty private otherwise, at least to talk. But in his poetry all his opinions and thoughts come out. Lot of sappy stuff about colors and mountain sunrises. And how cute the noises his wife makes as she falls asleep.

Ingwë also breeds cats. Loud white with dark tip cats with mostly blue or green eyes.

▼ – childhood headcanon

Ingwë is the equivalent of about eleven when his parents are badly injured on the hunt and can no longer successfully or easily provide. From that point onward Ingwë is the one to support his family. He was solemn as a child; after this he becomes frightfully stoic. It is only after some time with Elwë and Finwë the other boys make him laugh for the first in a long time. The first few times he tries to hunt for food he fails until he learns about staying downwind from prey.

☼ – appearance headcanon

Ingwë is not as tall as Elwë (nobody is) or Turgon, but he’s definitely tall for an elf, Maedhros or taller. Indis is also very tall- that’s where Nolofinwë, Turgon, and Argon get their height. (Of Arafinwë’s kids, I see Aegnor as ironically the tallest, though where that’s the royal Sindar coming through or not, I’m not sure. Finwë btw is the short fat one of his friends.)  Very muscular, smooth not-quite-longish face with high but not sharp cheekbones, full lips. Golden skin, lighter gold hair with a dense curl texture. Very blue eyes. Wears his hair short, even when the style is to have it long. Every once and a while is convinced to grow it out, but doesn’t stay. Feathered crown, white clothes, likes hose/fine-cut tights instead of the long robe look.

ൠ – random headcanon

One of Ingwë’s favorite things is to give advice, but he never does unless someone prompts him to. He’s really independent and doesn’t go to others to work through options or advice; it’s not his natural first inclination, part and parcel of growing up as as the isolated independent breadwinner. So his family and advisers learn they have to actively go to Ingwë and ask him what his opinion is/ for advice, which then it’s like a switch flipping and Ingwë pours out with ideas and suggestions (and also lays out his plans and what he’d pick).

Teaser bit for new Ingwë chapter

Too much back and forth dialogue, not enough of that distanced academic narrator. And the inconsistency problem I created for myself with primitive and normalized versions of Quenya names gets worse.

But it’s harder to get more Tolkien than name etymologies.

…

Now it was accounted in various manners and places of the Vala Oromë and his first meeting among the elves. Knowledge he shared and lasting friendship, the names of creation and the one whom had created, new skills with which to enrich the lives of the elves, and most precious to the three that had discovered him, the perpetrator and motives behind the Dark Hunters that had so plagued their villages. The Vala could easily answer his own question of who the three elves were, that they were the long foretold and eagerly awaited Children of Ilúvatar, the second melody of the design for creation that had been Sung into being. Who Oromë was, and what, could be answered by the titles of ‘Hunter’ and ‘Lord of the Forest’, though to explain in words everything that those simple titles encompassed was harder. That there was a One responsible for the planning of the universe and its creation, from every grain of sand to the bright stars to the passage of time to the world itself was not a difficult concept to grasp, for the vastness of such a thought matched the vastness of Ilúvatar itself. Eä was fitting, the three elves thought, for the very first of the Kwendî to awake had been Imin, and he awoke with the cry of Ele! It was a cry to behold the world in either case. What Finwë found incredulous was that Ilúvatar, and beings such as Oromë before him, had created the world and everything vast or minute in it through singing.

“You mean if you wanted a clay jar you could just sing a tune and -elâ!- a pot appears in your hand?” Finwë questioned, a skeptical look on his face as his calloused potter’s hands mimicked a fire sparking to life or a solid object needing several hours worth of labor poofing into existence like smoke.

“Not I,” said Oromë. “I am no craftsman, creator of tools from the earth and stone. For that song you would want the one more powerful than me who is skilled with his hands, a most creative mind, whose delight and domain is the rock behind our feet.” The eldest of the three elves felt the faint pressure against his mind while Oromë paused, brushing against their thoughts like a cool breeze for more words the elves could understand. “Mbartanô perhaps would be the name you would call him, the World-Artificer. His are the plates of stone upon which everything rests, and his hammer makes the mountains and valleys.”

“Must be a large hammer,” Finwë jested.

“He has many hammers,” the Vala corrected, “and some are hammers and some are ideas one uses like a hammer. His works can be small objects as well, not only the mountains. The stone axes you knap into useful shapes, that is him.”

“Aulë,” said Ingwë.

“Yes,” replied the Vala gravely, “the Inventor. And in our own language, if we did not desire to sing the full extent of his name, the shortened form would sound aloud similar to that.”

“Your own language?” Finwë questioned. Elwë shoved him with a half-exasperated grin.

The Vala opened his mouth to speak, and strange syllables, harsh as breaking rocks and logs popping in bonfires layered over the cries and roars of animals and the crashing waterfall, poured out. The creature behind them that looked like a tall horse with a coat as silver as Elwë’s long hair flicked its ears and snapped its tail against its flanks. Elwë and Finwë winced, and the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron wondered why he could not discern the meaning of any word. He felt that if he but listened long enough he could have.

When the three asked the Vala his name, Oromë sighed like the wind through dense leaves. “If I were to describe my name…the sound of horns,” he said and hefted a white object from his belt that none remembered being there. In his hands was the horn of a large auroch capped with rims of gold and he brought the object to his lips and blew softly through the narrow end.

“The sound we heard,” Elwë said with soft wonder. “Arâmê.”

Elwë’s word closely matched the sound the horn had made, which was richer than the reed flutes of the Nelyar. The Vala smiled and nodded. “Arâmê you may call me. And what may I address the three of you as?” he asked in polite formality.

“Elwê, for the stars,” answered the tall and silver-haired Elwë.

“Phinwê,” said his friend. “And it is the same ending as Elwê; don’t listen to them if they tease otherwise. Phin is like the sound we use for a tress of hair, but I do not know if my parents named me for anything, hair or otherwise. It is not remarkable, the color very common in both my tribe and in the third tribe from which Elwê comes from, not like his silver color or Mahtân, who has hair like a fox pelt.”

“Might it be you were born with a lot of hair on your head already?” teased Elwë. “My brother was born with very little, but his good friend entered the world with a full thatch of hair atop his head.”

The Vala turned to face the last of the companions.

“My friends address me as Kwendê,” he said.

The Vala laughed. “How appropriate, for you were first I heard to speak.”

Again there was that feeling of another mind, no more invasive than the sensation meeting another person’s eyes squarely. Your name is Ingwë, the voice that was not spoken words said.

Yes, Ingwë thought.

But if it the other name you wish to be spoken aloud, I shall, if I am accounted a friend.

Ingwë could not help the smile that spread across his face. Aloud he spoke, “We know you are not one of the Dark Hunters, for all that you are a Power and no elf and that you perch atop a horse as it runs.”

“Riding,” Oromë corrected. “When Næchærra grants me, for his speed is greater than my own, and together we can outrun and catch the monsters we hunt.” His hand motioned to the silver horse behind him. “But it is the name of the Dark Hunters you want, the ones who have taken forms in mockery of me as to hurt the Children of Ilúvatar and undoubtedly blame me for it.”

“Yes,” Elwë hissed.

Oromë’s face grew dark, as if thunderstorms covered what should have been the bright lightning of his eyes. “Mailikô,” he said in a voice with no less venom than Elwë’s, “the Greedy One. He was one of us, in some ways the greatest and most powerful. The brother of my leader. But he rebelled against the One, jealous and hateful of the world Ilúvatar bade us create and protect, and he has sought ever since his first rebellion to destroy or maim to his own purpose all that we hold dear.

▼ Ingwe

(everything outlined here)

The child of Alakô and Maktâmê was the eighth born to the small tribe of the Minyar, an auspicious number. That the new generation of the tribe were not evenly split yet among genders, that the Kwendî had not a readily apparent sign of which was another’s life-mate because they did not awake in pairs beside one another, was a source of much anxiety for that first generation of parents (and it wouldn’t be until the Eldar meet the Valar and with the example of unmarried Ulmo and Nienna that this societal hetero-normative pressure to pair and beget children, coupled with the assurance that the elves are immortal and in the safety of Aman there’s no danger of the tribe’s extinction, eases off). Ingwë’s mother shared nursing duties with another hunter who gave birth a few months before her, freeing both women to join the hunting parties. This ‘milk brother’ of Ingwë was a friend and companion until his parents’ maiming, after which he shunned them like everyone in the tribe. He grew to be a typical hunter of the Minyar, gregarious smile but swift to snark at those that annoyed him. In time the relationship would be repaired, and the hunter was one of new king Ingwë’s strongest supporters (and the one to guard and keep a watchful eye on Ravennë’s older brother least the former prince try to cause trouble.)

No one remembers of speaks of Ingwë’s first name, the one before ‘Ukwendô’, not even Mahtamë, but then the Vanyar collectively haze their memories that Ingwë was known as anything but Ingwë.

Even before the accident, Ingwë was a solemn and serious little boy, wishing to make things with a gravitas that brought Alakô to tears of laughter. Ingwë thought his father too silly, too often smiling even when there didn’t seem a reason to be. The lonely boy taunted by his tribe as Ukwendô regretted any negative thoughts he once had about his father’s smiles.

Before, Ingwë wanted to be a hunter in the parties with his friend, eventually marry another Minyar hunter, as that was what one was supposed to do. His favorite part of the hunts was the painting of hunters before they left, the ceremony complete with speeches from Imin Ingweron. Young Ingwë liked to pretend to be the chieftain, sticking stray feathers in his hair and making proclamations to his follow toddlers. They would all giggle, and their mothers picked them and tickle them, Maktâmê kissing her son’s cheek and pulling out the feathers with her teeth. Imin and Iminyë would watch with bemused patronizing fondness, and Maktâmê recalled with pride how her chieftain praised her son’s powerful voice. “You are made for greatness, my son,” she told Ingwë, and she never stopped telling him this, even in the blackest despair of their lives.