Tag: writing prompts

Ilmare

Her Admirable One, who stood at the side of the Smith of Invention as chief of his servants as she did for the Lofty Lady of Stars, existed no more. Her brother bled out before her eyes, body leaking blood, soul leaking out more endangering spirit and pain and loss of will to carry on, to fight, and to hold a shape. It was easier when They took bodies of the material essence of Arda to contend with one another in battle and work upon the world that the One had set for Them to shape and tend, their focus as sharp and narrow as staring through a pinprick. Once she described the feeling of crafting a body and inhabiting it for the little one that delighted in casting visions and learning from the Weeper as a sensation akin to the immense gravitational pressure condensing to create a star  – but also the ignition of light in what was once darkness to give another dimension to perceive. Her brother’s chosen body lay broken before her. That one that had been once admirable stood over her brother, responsible. She was Starlight, mightiest and paramount of the Star-kindler’s disciples, and her chosen body grew taller and heavier, lengthened the heavy beak and the talons of her feet, and sparks flew off the midnight blue of her feathers. Shrieking she entered the clearing, short wings outstretched in a gesture of warding and anger, tail fanned behind her as her own crown, motes of light drifting off her feathers like the tail of a comet. She was tall and beautiful and terrible as a meteor impact. Her beak, greater than her king’s eagles, slammed down on the immense feline that had ambushed and mauled her fallen brother, her enraged will behind the strike. Furiously she shrieked as the Cruel One dodged the blow, his red eyes laughing at her. She kicked out with her lengthened legs, the longest talon ripping through his flesh. She could feel this strike connect, could smell the iron of his blood. This delight of hurting him overpowered her, and the rage and revenge-thirst intoxicated her better senses, the layer of her mind that would be horrified at causing pain to another of her brethren. He had betrayed her. He had danced with her at the wedding of the Laughing Golden-hair and the Young Deer. He had pretended to be loyal, to love her and her brother and the Powers and creation. Yet here he was, no longer Admirable, no longer a creator, only a destroyer, only a cruel one inflicting pain. She wanted to hurt him, to shred him to pieces, expel his spirit from any material body. She had not hurt him enough; one shallow wound did not answer what he had done to her brother, the betrayal he had done to her.

The Cruel One danced away from her striking feet and sword-like beak, so Starlight pursued him. Into new slender forms he shifted to avoid her strikes, all the while mocking her with his eyes, daring her to attack. Crane-like she lengthened her neck and beak, twisting with him as two serpents intertwined, desperate to constrict the life from his material body, to force him into a shell-less spirit retreating to his dark master. Her focus compressed to answering his contempt with her vengeance.

He was laughing at her, mocking her attempts to rend him to pieces, still whispering how beautiful she was, how powerful, singing to her shrieks of rage as chords to remove dissonance. She wanted to silence the Cruel One, and he thought this a duet.

She did not notice how dark her feathers were, that the sparks of light which the one she once loved had compared to the sparks flying off metal when he worked in the forge had burned out and were no longer generating. She did not see how dark the clearing was. She gave no second thought to her injured brother. Only the smell of blood mattered, her brother’s and hers and of the red eyes before hers.

Then the earth heaved beneath her feet, rising up to trap her and throw a wall between her and the Cruel One, shards of stone and metal like the claws of a mighty badger reaching for the fallen servant in vain. The Cruel One shed his former body for that of a featherless, hairless creature of flight, sweeping up into the sky on naked black wings. She wanted to pursue him, though with every second that the tendril of the Smith’s power held her back less possible would it became to have any hope of catching him. She watched him escape, and screeched her thwarted rage.

“Come back,” called her brother, “Come back before you sink your song into his, become like him and like the Storm Terror, like the others that followed our King’s brother because his song drowned out the melody the One wished us to play.” Her falcon-eyed brother pulled her back, stopped her from lengthening her wings into something useful for flight. “This is not you, dear and gentle sister, you are more than bloodlust and violence. You are light and creation, not destruction. He was taunting you to become like him. Had you followed him, you may have hurt him, but you would have become a monster of the Rejecter, one who only delights in drinking blood.”

Starlight wept, her grief layered with fear of what she almost became and her brother who ignored his injures to preserve her soul and the heartache of a loved one’s betrayal. She diminished her form in her shame of what she had almost become, because a lamenting songbird, and her brother copied her. Together as two piping chicks they cried and huddled next to one another, until the King of Air found them in the form of a great eagle. Gently he shielded them under his pale wings, singing the soothing tones of shared grief. To the Healer and the Weeper he carried them, like two gentling burning embers in the soft cradle of his talons.

“Never do I wish to see him again,” whispered Starlight. 

Manwe

The kindly-faced man sits on a corner of the streets in Valmar, appearing to do nothing at all except bask in the warm golden light and listen to the clarion bells. Sometimes pigeons bob at his feet, or a wandering cat or dog curls their heads on his lap. His eyes are a brilliant blue, when they are not lidded in the peaceful countenance of a man who delights in a warm day and the pleasing tones of the city’s many bells. 

“You are one of the Maiar,” says a pedestrian with tightly coiled golden hair, standing just so their shadow does not block the light upon the bald man with stunningly clear blue eyes. “I can feel the difference in the souls, between Eldar and Ainur. I apologize that I do not recognize you, though I believe you must be one of the minor servants, for you do not blaze in my senses like many I have met. Is there something you need? You appear tired.”

The man sitting on the corner of the street smiles. “A little weary, perhaps. The war has been long, my task longer. But the sound of the bells helps to soothe, and the warm air rising up from the stones, and the kind offers from strangers.” He laughs, the creases around his brilliant blue eyes folding up to cover their brightness, the sound of his laugh as pure and light as the smallest chimes. “Air has a great weight. You don’t feel it, as it is always pressing in from every direction. You don’t see how much it weighs.”

Elenwë :)

Elenwë recognizes the other student when he enters the library and makes a beeline to the books for engineering, pulling out several on applying geometry to the construction of buildings. It is hard not to, when he is someone she has known all her life. The boy, for all he is taller than any man Elenwë is familiar with, struggles to lift a tome of mathematics for use in masonry from a shelf without bringing the entire row down with him, too tightly packed are the books. It is a new author than the book from yesterday, Elenwë observes. For the last few days she has watched him come to this corner of the library, hunting answers to his latest project.

Elenwë studies the use of numbers, the new calculations and new symbols created by Rúmil and the monks outside Valmar who have devoted themselves to Vairë. She enjoys mathematics free of examples involving the measure and weight of loads or accounting, the beauty of how seamlessly they fit without a stonemason in sight. There is a purity in numbers that is closer to the Songs of the Valar than any elven voice. Her family approves of her interest in mathematics once she expressed it as her exploration of art and truth, and has pooled money to support her ability to study under the best lore-masters in Tirion. Next season, her father promises, she can go to the monastery of the recording of history and learn beauty and knowledge from the source. Her family disapproves of spending all their time in Tirion, least they forget what it is to be of the Vanyar. The Noldor value that which they can physically sense, to claim knowledge and beauty by using it to create something which they can show off as fruit of their labor and genius. Elenwë tires of this.

Though she does admit, as the boy brings over his book and a pad of parchment scribbled dark with calculations for the best angles for a new buttress, there is a benefit to practical needs of numbers.

The boy is the second son of Prince Nolofinwë, who is married to the daughter of her father’s employer. Elenwë is only a year older than Prince Turukáno, and they grew up together and thus are comfortable around each other. The prince is very amicable, delighting in meeting new friends and skilled in giving them ease. When Elenwë waited in the scriptorium as her parents worked on the page illuminations and bond the books for the numerous Noldor nobles of Tirion, Turukáno was the one to gleefully approach the golden-haired scribes and question them about their craft and their accents. He brought Elenwë sweets as they watched her cousins stretch the vellum on framework and mix ink for letters. Elenwë’s family has been in partnership with the family of the princess, Anairë, since before the Teleri arrived, and so are often teased that they are more Noldor than Vanyar, if not for their hair. Turukáno liked to learn from the Vanyar scribes, more so than Elenwë who found the work tedious and the smells irritating, so this interest in masonry takes her by surprise. He was the only one of his siblings to visit the workshop, to question the Vanyar about their work and desire to understand why certain words and concepts were held as beautiful, why an illustration was added to a certain page, and why they only stayed a few decades before they transferred back home claiming to miss the mountains. Elenwë knows that confused the boy most, for Tirion was in a valley of the Pelóri, surrounded by mountains. The air was wrong, they told him, so Turukáno declared they should move the workshops to the top of a tower.

“You like the air here?” he says to her, and Elenwë, eyes lingering over a funicular polygon, belatedly realizes this is a question. When she looks up to meet his eyes, she realizes what his true and pure question is.

…

This started off as head-canons about anairë and elenwë here and turgon here (and kazaera’s delightful mathematician Elenwë – sorry I can’t give you any actual numbers as I never got beyond introductory trig and mostly focused on physics) and became a Turgon proposes indirectly to Elenwë fic.

So basically you got the long-form of this.

I’m sorry, I’ll write something with her and no Turgon or Idril eventually.

Curufin’s wife!

Oh damn, the one wife of the Finwion princes I have zero head-canons for (and whose husband is stuck to the bottom of the barrel of appealing Silm characters).

…

Faelineth’s father tells her to be careful around the lords, to bow and show respect and never touch their possessions, be it their hunting gear or weapons or their fine jewelry and tools. As Faelineth’s family runs the irrigation systems for the farms in Himlad, they rarely interact with the two lords, who consider her family well beneath them. Faelineth’s father used to be a lord of the Sindar, back when her family lived on the coast, though her maternal grandmother was formerly an Avari, so Faelineth does not mind the condescending attitudes of Lord Celegorm or Curufin. She is in fact grateful they seem to not see her as they ride by, intent on hunting wild deer or fox.

If her father must treat with one of the lords up at the great pile of stones they call a hunting lodge, he typically deals with the wife of the younger lord. The lady is a tall woman with black hair pined high with diamond studs and silver combs, who paints her pale skin with dashes of red powder to match the red embroidery of her gown. The lady is very proud of her many fine diamonds, her bright gowns, and her necklaces and bracelets of many-colored gems. She crafted the jewelry herself, reports those that have spoken with her, even manufactured the gemstones instead of finding them in the earth and polishing them from stone. She loves to brag of her skills and wealth, which they admit is well-earned. Faelineth’s father says that during the last visit when he handed over the estimates for this year’s grain yield, the lady of the stone manor commanded that he sit and appraise the contents of her latest endeavors, to know if he could discern any difference in the emeralds she brought out. Only one was an emerald pulled from the earth, the other two being her creations, though the second was crafted here in Himlad. She wished to know if the drop in quality from having to work in this Marred land, without the benefit of the light of the Trees or her proper tools and workshop, was readily apparent. Faelineth’s father said he could see no difference, but the lady huffed and complained of her husband.

Faelineth asks her father if he thinks it possible that she could one day ask the lady to craft her a necklace or other small token, just a seashell to wear in memory of the shore. Faelineth would not ask for anything grand, no ropes of diamonds like the lady wears. But Faelineth’s father says it is better not to ask, for the lady is too high and proud for them, and the works of her hand are for her own delight and to catch the eye of her husband. Faelineth thinks the lady of Himlad must be very lonely and unhappy, with her husband always riding at his brother’s side, her son away in Nargothrond learning craftsmanship and the dwarven tongue from King Finrod Felagund, and no workshops with her precious tools and Treelight. The lady might grant Faelineth her request, as long as she words it politely and does not ask for much, or so the Sinda maiden thinks, for the lady would delight in an audience to fawn over her skills.

Mandos and – or Lorien

Irmo knows that his brother is not as fond of the Second Children as he, though only because Námo does not know what to do with them. They do not come to his Halls after they die, so their spirits are not his responsibility, which in their own way does endear the mortals to the Doomsman, for they would be a crushing burden otherwise. For his brother that knows all that was foretold, even if he is disinclined to tell it, the mystery of where the souls of mortals go is disconcerting. Also that the mortals are not tied to fate, though they can be predictable in their own manner does Irmo’s brother declare, is a source of both frustration and  elation. They are a source of mystery, of surprises, of uncertainty, and that is why the Lord of Lórien loves them best of all his Father’s creations. The mortals do not have their fates set in inevitability before them, nor do they feel wholly satisfied or familiar with the world, always restless for more, always dreaming.

okay part of me wanted to just redo this dialogue in fic format. Aie, it’s hard for me to write Valar, as they are concepts and philosophy as much as characters

Earwen! (for the prompt thing)

Eärwen has a distaste for spinning flax, as the thread breaks in her fingers and even when she successfully spins it, she can see and feel all the slubs of her inferior work. Her mother laughs and promises that it is nearly impossible to spin a purely smooth thread, and will make no difference in the weave. The cloth will be for sails, so all that matters is the strength of the thread and the tightness of the weave. 

Her mother sings as she spins for sailcloth, and Eärwen learns the new tunes and words. The songs are about Lady Uinen gathering clams and seashells, or brushing minnows gently out of her hair, or seducing her wild husband Ossë to forgo a storm to come into her arms and enjoy the feel of her fingers on his beard. Her mother has to explain what a beard is, and uses the goats as an example. The maids titter and laugh over that song, so Eärwen decides there must be something especially humorous about beards when they are not on goats. Her aunt, Ilsë, and her wife teach Eärwen other songs, the ones from the Powers, so that the cloth will not rot in the wet and it will catch the wind. Eärwen’s mother praises her niece’s wife as the most skilled of all the weavers in Alqualondë, whose enchanted sails never fail to find even the slightest breeze. The maids chime in with how there is no better in all of Alqalondë, and while the weavers in other cities embroider tapestries to fool the senses or craft smoother and finer cloth, none are as perfect for ships and the demands of wind and wave. Aunt Ilsë laughs at how this praise reddens her wife’s cheeks, tucking a blue flax-flower in her hair and brushing a soft kiss across her cheekbones. “Some are best at spinning the thread, or weaving it. Others are best at using it,” says Ilsë with a knowing wink to her young niece. “Do not be discouraged if your work is not the finest. A ship needs much canvas, and no single weaver can provide it all.”

“And you have greatly improved,” says Eärwen’s mother, holding up a piece of Eärwen’s thread between her fingers to the gentle silver glow of Telperion.

Eärwen smiles, and her mother hums the next song. It is one that the girl learned the other day, about ducklings following their mother through the streets of Alqualondë. It is a humorous song of everyone politely moving out of the way or helping the ducklings over the city steps so they won’t be separated from their mother as the ducks travel down to the docks. Her favorite verse is when the ducklings and their mother cross the path of her father, and King Olwë bows to the waddling waterfowl and politely wishes them a good day and a gentle swim. She easily believes such an event happened, for it is exactly in her father’s nature.

When Eärwen sings together with her mother, aunts, and their maids, the task of making sailcloth is no longer onerous.