☼: how i came up with the idea

Oh, definitely I want to say Andreth singing this bitter folk love songs (Leithian Script inspiration) as this counterpoint to Aegnor’s own suicidal nature. “My man left me over another woman, and she was death, etc...” Along the way that combined with the other element of the Wise Women holding the history of the Edain, so the sort of folk history and reenactments for holidays. Most of all from Florence and the Machine’s ‘Dog Days are Over’ and ‘Howl’, which I used as the soundtrack/mental background songs for said scene. This idea of Bëor’s tribe running away from Hildoren, so each year a remembrance holiday recreating it with younger lads wearing masks to pretend to be Sauron’s wolves hunting them as part of a dance between the wolves and youths dressed as the fleeing tribe, with the singer Wise Woman standing in for Morgoth commanding the wolves- and one youth is picked out and dragged forth to the ‘throne’ – and one year when it’s Andreth singing it’s Beren who’s picked (after last year when he got to play a wolf) and he smirks at his aunt and declares he doesn’t fear ‘Morgoth’ and yeah foreshadowing for both him and Húrin —I need to write this fic.

But yeah, just reading the Athrabeth and Adanel’s Story and because it was heavily about the Gift of Men means mortality is a gift, but also the beginnings of humans. And then the other thing was I had a bunch of short fantasy stories I read all the time growing up, and one of them was how a knight slays a dragon, but it’s a sour and bittersweet story, because what the knight does is give the maiden who’s the last in a long line of those to be fed to the dragon some poison or opium, so that after the dragon eats her, it is weakened and that’s when the knight comes and kills it. I remember the squire being dissatisfied that it had to work that way, that they couldn’t save the maiden but only lessen her pain and then use her death.

But that plot stuck with me.

So they combined in my head, the People of Bëor fleeing Morgoth’s control and the Wise Women both standing in for those as well as preserving their story and Sauron as a dragon to be poisoned, and then poison as mistletoe because Norse mythology (and add in Viking funeral and sacrifice of the slave girl and the influence is easy to see) which led to the flower crowns with grew to have everything in them.

☄: what the writing process was like

I’d been asked by becca I think a few months ago for general Bëoring fashion, where I mentioned the mistletoe. As I’ve said, this story or at least the concept was as old as Rage-Bunny and Irongrip, mulling around for years in my brain. So for edain summer I figured now or never. it was very quick to write- the hardest/longest part was going on wikipedia and looking down the list of poisonous plants, so each link I added a bit (the vetch flowers was such an addition). I wanted it fairy-tale like, so I knew I needed the rule of three. I know I went back and edited some typos and added a line or two at places, but it was very easy and flowed how I knew it would. And was a lot longer.

I know the opening comes from the original conception of the story, of Finrod (and Aegnor) hearing the recording off Vairë’s loom of Andreth’s song, and Finrod’s belated realization that Andreth’s folk song is that of the sacrificial maiden facing Morgoth’s dragon. So this idea of how much does or doesn’t Finrod know of this history tying back to death.

☾: how i thought people would respond to the fic

Ummm, I thought you’d sort of like it and maybe kate and becca, and I think I was worried it was pre-history of the Edain so it wasn’t Bëor enough for the week’s theme. But I thought my writing was pretty strong, and it’s that area of telling a sort-of myth that I feel comfortable in.

☽: how people *actually* responded

Wow! it’s like popular, for a given value of popular for my stuff?! And on AO3 it has the second-most kuddos of everything and the most bookmarks. And people really thought it was creepy and dark, which I didn’t sit down and think just how morbid it was idk I know that’s the whole premise but maybe I have some dissociation to just how much? And that I didn’t put as much emphasis on the Andreth versus Finrod as I feel readers felt? Trying to think what else… The fanart was very cool!

★: something i’m proud to have accomplished

This fic was popular enough to be re-blogged by more than one or two people? that’s awesome! and inspired art?! Still not over the shock and elation.

Also, lookie Andreth fic with her as a bitter old lady looking into a fire, and not one Aegnor flashback*. In fact her stillbirth romance with him is all off-page and in the subtext (it’s still there, in the bitterness and the fuck you for screwing our chances Morgoth and I wish I could have been reborn as an elf). But it’s almost something fresh.

*okay, one