Tag: yavieriel

yavieriel replied to your post:
Release from Bondage – Chapter 10

Ooooh, oh this bit was fun, loved all the backstory and worldbuilding you worked in here!

Aw, thanks! Getting closer to finishing the Bân and Aereth story proper, and the stuff with Aglar’s large extended family is the next to tackle.

I love the idea of fantasy elves fighting trench warfare, I cannot explain why. Some of the minor world-building details are things that I know I overthought. The folding screens, despite Amanayar manufacture, are part of my Menegroth layout head-canons where a lot of the awkwardly shaped or large caverns would be dressed and divided with adjustable wood panels and cloth. Or the ‘full plate armor was something rare and mostly a very late medieval to renaissance thing – knights in fiction and i’m including most tolkien figures would be wearing chain or scale-mail *grump, grump*. Or me going, okay we’re going to pretend there’s a good symbolic significance to “Dondwen”outfit – staring at my Tifa figurine.

yavieriel replied to your post:
It’s a good thing -okay not at all- that I don’t…

excuse you, flustered feelings about hair braiding are obviously critical to characterization

Gratuitous padding:

Bân unfolded the kerchief to reveal the item he bought. “A new hair ribbon.” A long length of bright pink silk, Aereth cooed and reached for it, holding it up to the light. Reassured by her smile, Bân continued, “I noticed your other one had frayed. Does the color please you?”

“It does,” Aereth said, then unbraided her hair not covered by the cap of pearls and fine wire to pull out the old ribbon. She turned around. “Here, help me tape the new one in.”

The heat of his embarrassment should have wilted the surrounding flowers, for Bân knew his face and ears were as red as roses, and the flush was spreading down to his chest, which was tight and uncomfortable. He stared at the cascade of brown hair, at the slim hand reaching back dangling the ribbon for him to take. Aereth hummed pointedly. Bân ran his fingers through the smoothness of her hair, then hesitantly lifted it from her neck, the back of his hand brushing against the back of her neck. That his face could grow hotter should have been an impossibility. Taking the ribbon from Aereth’s hand, he tied a knot, trying not to overthink the intimacy in this act. He began to weave the ribbon through her brown tresses, keeping the pink ribbon flat and even. Pieces of hair curled around his fingers, sinuous and fine. He thought of the coarser texture of his dark shoulder-length hair and tried not to think of Aereth’s fingers running through. He reached the end of the braid at the small of her back, tied a second knot, and stepped back with his skin feeling too tight and hot. Aereth’s hand pulled the plait over her shoulder to inspect his handiwork, her face still turned away from him, but the small hum of satisfaction signaled that she was not too displeased with his efforts.

Durin/Daeron :P (I was debating how mean to be, you almost got Imin/Ingwe)

Fire in the lower galleries, smoke in the tunnels. Poisonous gases and heat and explosions, collapsing homes and escape routes caving in. Cracking stone, screams, a metropolis darkening under the roars of a demon from the deep. The king does not need to see to know what is happening to Khazad-dûm. The miners and soldiers are blocking off the tunnels from the mithril mines into the populous heart of the great city, trying to seal the air locks to hold off the noxious fumes that are asphyxiating his people, trying to fight a monster made of flame and shadow. Durin’s people need time to flee to safety, and the universe has been overturned, for safety used to mean deep underground. His civilians, his few mothers and children, the most precious jewels of the Dwarves, need time to reach the uppermost levels and gather supplies to survive a possible exodus through hazardous lands. If the locks cannot hold, if the Balrog makes it from the deep mines into the wide thoroughfares, Khazad-dûm is doomed.

They need their king to lead them. Durin gives his son Náin a final set of instructions, the plans to divert the aqueducts and flood the lower levels in a deluge that shall hopefully defeat the demon of flame if all else fails. Minor versions of similar plans for smaller emergencies, gas leaks and caves-ins, orc invasions, have long been on file. For several hours Durin has conferred with his son over the strongest locations in the mountains to hold out for a final siege and concurred with Nain’s proposals on how to best adapt the emergency procedures. Nain’s face beneath the raised visor of his helm is pinched with worry, but Durin has faith in his son’s capabilities. Gruffly, he reassures his son a final time on the soundness of their plan, one Nain still clearly believes should be his father’s duty as king to lead. After initial arguments, when it became clear changing the courses of aqueducts would be easier than changing the will of his father, Nain has not disputed Durin’s intentions to join the soldiers in the lower galleries. His son knows an unbeatable fight when he faces it.

Durin dons his golden helm and face-mask and heads for the door. The guards open it to someone Durin expected to have long retreated with Nain’s wife and barely-adult son. Nain only nods briefly in respect to the new arrival. There is a flash of what might be guilt in his son’s eyes, for it is obvious Nain knows why this person is present in the Chamber of Mazarbul instead of safely guarded near the surface levels. A suspicious corner of Durin’s mind wonders if the search through the records of the city layouts has been orchestrated so this new arrival would have time to sneak back into the Seventh Level and confront Durin. Has Nain recruited the only person his son hopes could persuade Durin away from what they both know is a sacrificial last stand? He glares at his son instead of his guardsmen. The king is not surprised that his guards defer to this person, however much he might wish otherwise. No door in Khazad-dûm is barred to him. The arrival blocking the doorway is someone most precious to Durin and his people, someone who has been a heart-companion during the many repetitions of Durin’s life. The tallest person in the room, with the shortest beard, he kneels down before Durin arrayed in a coat of silver mithril. He is holding what Durin at first mistakes for a slender pole-arm. Durin frowns and commands, “You should be with the other lore-masters and master-craftsmen. You are too valuable to lose.”

Precious barely begins to describe the feelings the dwarves of Khazad-dûm feel for this one. The only non-dwarf in Khazad-dûm, the one to give the dwarves the first letters in which to preserve their history, he has rejected all names but those the dwarves have given him, and the name that Durin’s people call him is Preserver of History. The truly deathless one, the Preserver of History remembers Durin II, having lived with that king during the end of the First Age and into the Second. He is the one who would recognize when Durin returned to his people with each rebirth, proclaiming the news to eager mothers and lore-masters. Those sad grey eyes of his eternal faithful friend, the first Durin can remember meeting upon this earth, lock gazes with his king once more. Stubborn as any dwarf, his heart-friend.

“You should not be arrayed in armor,” Durin says more forcefully. “You are not a warrior.”

“You will not send me from your side,” Daeron answers. “I will not abandon my home or king to destruction.”

“You will!” Durin growls. “You will not survive against a Balrog, you fool elf!”

Some of the shocked gasps from others in the room might have been at the acknowledgement that Daeron, Durin’s Treasure and Preserver of History, was an elf. It was a tactfully ignored truth. They knew the lore-keeper had once held a similar exalted position among the elves. However Daeron has lived so long among the dwarves of Khazad-dûm, sharing in their familiar pains, delighting in their joys, attending loyally to their king, and hiding from his former people even during the time friendship with Eregion blossomed, that they forget it had not been Mahal’s hands that shaped him. Durin II had welcomed Daeron into his home, cloistered him deep within the heart of the mountain, and over time taught him the secrets of the dwarves. Each year Daeron’s wistfulness for long-gone forests and heartbreak for a long-dead unrequited desire had lessened under the admiration and affection from the people of Khazad-dûm and the closeness of their king. The dwarves understood such heartbreak and how to heal it. Daeron had been appreciated in his first underground home, highly respected by its rulers, but Durin knows the nostalgia Daeron feels nowadays lingers solely inside these halls, for these caverns above the Kheled-zâram. For centuries only Khuzdul has passed through the elf’s lips. His songs are lullabies to sing to dwarven children. The stars he praises are the reflections from the Mirrormere. The lore he gathers and shares comes from the wisdom found here in Mazarbul. Daeron’s skill as a craftsman of wood is equal to Narvi’s with stone, or any other of the great artists of Khazad-dûm. His patience and willingness to teach that skill is even more rare and valued. Nain’s son learned to carve wooden marvels, form his letters, and play the harp on the lap of his grandfather’s heart-friend. Durin does not wish Nain’s grandson to grow never knowing of Khazad-dûm’s most treasured secret.

The rest of the astonished cries come from how Daeron has not budged, staring like an unmoved cat in defiance to his king. Durin cannot push him aside, so he moves to divert around him as one does when tunneling and faced with stone too onerous to chip through. Daeron grasps his king’s hand and turns Durin to face him once more. Grey eyes impede him.

“I will go with you, to death this time, so be it! And here is my weapon, my king, to wield in service of you and our people. Song has defeated the enemy’s monsters before. If mine is still the greatest voice to ever grace this world, then its greatest use will be to sing enchantments to ensnare this demon in the depths, perhaps to lure it back to slumber for as long as my power holds. Enough time to buy our children a chance for safety.”

Durin weeps into his beard as Daeron reverently kisses the crown of the helm, then kneels even lower to pull Durin’s gauntleted hand to his lips and then to caress the side of his face. “We go together this time.” Daeron whispers.

(Edited to match AO3)

Also Finarfin/Earwen because there’s never enough of it

“How is it an insult when your brother calls me your pearl?”

Eärwen pauses her fingers in Finarfin’s hair, the discarded silver comb at her feet and her lover’s head in her lap. “Because pearls start off as irritants inside the shells, and they must be coated smooth. Eventually the oyster turns the evasive grain of sand into a beautiful part of itself.”

“So I am the annoying Noldo grain of sand who you have softened with prettier words and manners until I fit in Alqualondë?”

Eärwen giggles. “And you might dissolve if dunked in vinegar.”

Finarfin twists his neck so he can look up her. “Where would I be immersed in vinegar?”

She runs a hand over his brow, pushing aside the almost iridescent golden hair. “Tirion is full of sour, quarrelsome people who make you unhappy to be around. It is better for you in Alqualondë. You should stay here. You are beautiful here.”

“Because I am with you, and you are more beautiful than any pearl.”

“You coat me with flattery, marilla.”

yavieriel replied to your post:
I wish you would write a fic where…Emeldir…

apparently you need to write more at ungodly hours of night because it’s all ADORABLE (ps alcohol would probably have similar results)

RecentMidnight!Me likes adorables, I guess. (And yeah no, I bitch when there’s discernible levels of alcohol in my sauces -really really really cheap beer glaze for brats being the only acceptable cooking with spirits and cooking being the only acceptable use of booze. I am your token teetotaler)

yavieriel replied to your post:
It is four degrees from freezing outside right…

[laughs at you] my cat is angry because the sliding glass door I normally let her out is frozen shut from condensation on the glass running down and forming ice in the track. On the /inside/ of the door.

It’s 43° outside and really cold, m’kay. I had to wear my H&M jacket (okay I was happy I had an excuse to because it’s really pretty) and even wore gloves! And this morning it was way too cold to chase down my goober hound to keep her from nasty barking wars with the dogs on the other side of the fence (someone has gravely insulted someone else’s mother, I can only assume, from the bass vitriol of these recent string of audio spats). That or because my parents drove up to Dallas very early this morning, so I’m babysitting the brand-new puppy on-top of everything else. She’s cute as hell, but annoying and energetic. Goober doesn’t want to play with her, but does want to protect her from other dogs. As if the hound was territorial enough…

WIP guessing game: Finrod, blue, sword

AHA! I have a long, unwieldy WIP passage that has all three words. So you get the entire mess that needs editing. Without further adieu, Bân of Nargothrond (aka Zack Fair the elf):

The young man had joined the mass exodus of Noldor eager to avenge their king’s death and the destruction of the Trees without informing his parents. The guilt over that decision to forgo goodbyes struck later, somewhere in-between the gusts of wind on the Helecaraxë, when his lips were as blue as his eyes and the repeating memory of the Doomsman’s dire proclamation was drowning under the shrill creaks of splintering ice. He had no experience with snow or cold, this boy from a village between the Pastures of Yavanna and Lord Oromë’s forests far to the south, a place warm and lush and safe. He survived the ice desert. He survived the early battles and would survive the later one when the man who trained him did not. He stood in the first sunrise and vowed to become a hero so eventually his parents would forgive him for leaving without farewells. He studied fighting under an older elf, one who had noticed how Bân shivered while crossing the Helecaraxë and yet still dared the people around him into snowshoe races up the sides of the glaciers and tried to coax the small white foxes to share his portion of dried seal jerky. According to his mentor, Bân showed tenacity and generosity of spirit, plus the competitive courage that would make a good fighter. Or he had decided Bân was hyperactive and simple-minded and thus would not complain when forced into unending sword drills and muscle-building exercises.

Bân’s mentor had been trusted by the Noldor princes and their commanders, and that trust passed down to Bân. That Bân had learned enough of the new language of the Sindar in those first few months to be judged as proficient, though he had no easy knack for the subtlety of dialects and accents like Captain Heledir or Prince Finrod, earned him a place in the prince’s company as they visited the great city of the Sindar. 

Bân had heard rumors of this city of a thousand caves, Menegroth with its goddess queen and the tall proud king of Beleriand, Elu of the three who had first seen the Two Trees, leader of the third tribe, equal and friend of King Finwë and High King Ingwë.

Prince Finrod and his brothers had visited King Elu and Queen Melian several times by now, and Prince Finrod’s sister, Lady Galadriel, was already living in Menegroth. Bân thought it odd that while everyone else was shortening their names to adapt to the Sindarin tongue, the new name for Princess Artanis was longer. Stories of Doriath, its ancient forests fenced by a Girdle that Morgoth could not penetrate, the city of a thousand caves decorated and festooned with carved images and tapestries of unimaginable beauty, of its music and lore, people and half-divine royalty, excited and intrigued the Noldor long before Prince Angrod returned with testimonials of its truth. Bân had not been immune to this draw, been overjoyed when nominated for a place in the upcoming visit. 

Yet Bân was a country boy from southern Aman who had never seen either King Finwë or High King Ingwë from afar, and as much as the prospect of close proximity to such high royalty excited Bân, it unnerved him. The majority of his time spent preparing for the visit focused on pestering his mentor for protocol and advice on how to bow to nobility and what topics of discussion were appropriate. Bân’s mentor made it clear that Bân was to stay silent. His place in the entourage was least in status, an extra bodyguard for the ride to the Fenced Kingdom, someone to hold horses and porter gifts, to be a visible reminder standing behind the ambassadors of what the arriving Noldor were promising the king and queen in Doriath. Bân was the promise of fresh sharp swords to protect the people of Beleriand from the monsters of Morgoth. Bân could be that. He wanted to be that.