Tag: andreth

Tears

squirrelwrangler:

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.

The Dog Problem, from beginning to ‘andreth sighed’ for the dvd meme!

thank u I will ATTEMPT…..link for ref

under the cut:

“My lord?”

“Andreth! It has been too long. How is your family? What news have you? Do you have any matters of import to discuss?”

I really really loved Finrod and Andreth’s posture-y friendly coming-sideways-at-each-other gauntlet-throwing in the Athrabeth and get the feeling it’s a process of debate-starting that they have gone through a whole number of times, but the convo in this fic is a much less personal and much less weighty discussion than the Athrabeth one, for them.

“Is that a wolf pup?”

The wolf pup in question wriggled its plump furry body in excitement and chewed on Finrod’s ear with gusto.

hey…..it’s cute…it has fangs

He absently put a hand over its muzzle and rolled onto his stomach in a tangle of blond hair. 

Weird Big Foreigner Elf Finrod. This fic is from Andreth’s pov and is super affectionate/tickled.

“A dog. Which is not a wolf. Yet  that  is.”

“Too true, and to that I shall say: that’s like a dog, though…”
He trailed off significantly, as if expecting, or insisting, that his
sentence would be, or ought to be, finished by another, and looked at
Andreth from the corner of his eyes.

Andreth pursed her lips, walked to the well, took a drink from the dipper, and then sat heavily down on its edge.

They’re just ritualizing, it’s like boxers tightening and testing and superstitiously kissing their gloves before a round.

I had thought that you might have a concern or a theory of the states of
the creatures of Arda that you wished to propose to me, but it seems I
am mistaken. 

One thing I’m now dissatisfied with this fic about is that some time after I posted it, I realized it would fit much better as taking place before the Athrabeth, whereas when I wrote it I assumed it was taking place after, hence Andreth’s 3rd doggy-observation at the end of the fic, referring to Finrod’s mini-book-of-revelation-moment in the Athrabeth, and this bit of dryness from Andreth. It seemed like too big a thing to change though.

Finrod broke into a brilliant toothy grin before schooling his features
and kneeling up with a look of great intrigue and earnestness.

I love him ❤

“On the Great Journey, my grandfathers and grandmothers were beset by
creatures of Morgoth, including wolves, many times, but slew them. Many
orphaned pups followed them toward the sea, and at the end some were
taken to Aman by the kindest and most stubborn of elves, for the pups
were small and helpless, and did not greatly resemble their cruel sires.
And lo! When they grew to adulthood, they were gentle and beautiful,
and their children still more so, and lived long and were our friends.”

The main problem with dvd’ing this fic is that I haven’t the faintest
idea what I had in mind when I wrote it, I wrote so fast. I think I had
just recently read some longform article about the history of dog
domestication or something before I wrote it and also the whole
slow-decline/loss model of linear time in arda vis-a-vis stuff like
evolution, breeding, progress, etc.

“The Enemy has now marred much that was once fair, yet these dogs were
born of marred creatures and were made fair in your Valinor. 

I just REALLY REALLY REALLY love trying to get inside the heads of people whose conception of the world is so wildly different from my own modern one, partly (largely) akin to the beliefs of premodern civilizations, but also, on the faerie side, a world where even skepticism/atheism/agnosticism/etc deals with an edge of belief that is way at the core of faith, it isn’t at the “do Valar/Morgoth/Morgoth’s marring of the world exist” line, which is simple fact – thereby the reconciliation of creating good out of evil is much trickier, because it’s not all a matter of subjectivity, like the anglo-saxons’ wyrd etc.

“Yet we have dogs here in these lands as well, even in the east. So it
is not Valinor that is needed to raise creatures that are whole from
ones that are marred.”

Anyway, I also really love wolves and i find the whole wolves are evil thing simultaneously grump-inducuing and very satisfyingly apropos, it mistargets wolves very unfairly and from a very narrow, one-sided, beorians-trying-to-survive-in-the-unknown-wilds viewpoint. wolves hurt me ergo wolves are evil, just like real life humans, but the people in-universe have vastly more tangible evidence of a something going on. Andreth doesn’t actually elude this mindset, but she reasons through its fallacy later in the fic without realizing (when explaining what dogs ‘mean’ to her people).

Finrod sat cross-legged and drew the wolf pup into his lap.

I get the distinct feeling Finrod takes great satisfaction and contentment in contradictions and absurdist juxtapositions, idk it seems like the sort of thing someone with foresight might well develop.

I love the opening part of ‘to cinders’, so from the very beginning until Andreth causes him to fall into the water <3

omg thank you ❤ link!

-the main reason that opening is like that is because i mistakenly was under the assumption that gogol (who sent me the prompt) didn’t like aegnor/andreth, and i was lowkey placating her with stuff i knew she DID like, esp the river of eyes. I then realized it was a good idea anyway and went with it but w/e

-uh, i think i also remixed some of it from various celtic fair folk shit. anyway, always a fan of the return-to-one’s-roots trope, elves ARE perfectly well equipped to live with no light but starlight.

-“for he knew some of the Edain woke early to see the elves as they passed away into the firs and mist“ lol. some of them. anyway aegnor showing off bc he knows his girlfriend thinks violence is sexy is a good time.

-‘as they passed away into firs and mist’ a thing I feel v strongly about is that like…elves ARE the strangeness. i talked a lot about that later in the fic, elves-as-defined-by-edain-perspective, and that even from their own POV it’s not so much that they see themselves the way humans see themselves and that they have their own layer of what counts as strange and fae to them, it’s that their fae-ness is what is familiar to them — it’s not like humans in RL defining exoticism from a [society]-centric viewpoint

-i love aeluin! I love….tolkien’s thing where [location x] serves as a proxy for an implication that wouldn’t work in the narration – the location carries something from one storyline to another. Like that thing about the fen of serech. aeluin blessed by melian, the site of a/a’s doomed romance, the post-bragollach haven of barahir & co.

-aegnor, unlike most elves, amanyar or not, faces east to the sun that rose with humankind

-‘a hand seized the tendon at his heel’ LMAO I swear I swear I CAN write subtle symbolism in some fics, it’s just that this was not that fic >_o

hikingofthenoldor:

Chibi Elves: Things we got from Cait + bonus Andreth & Aegnor

capbrolet’s live stream yesterday was – as always – pretty Inspiring so I just had do draw some cute little elves. 

Andreth + nicknames

LOL I googled for ideas and it turns out that while in Sindarin, “Andreth” translates as “patience, long-suffering”, in Quenya, its closest equivalent, “Coloitië”, translates as “endurance, staunchness, fortitude” – the same thing, but a very different connotation. I like to think Aegnor liked to translate her name in an affectionate way, but Finrod never did, but was also the only one who took note of the connotation difference.

I think “Saelind” was originally just a snarky nickname Beril called her when she bossed him around, but in the grand tradition of Beverly Cleary’s Beezus (and uh, myself lol), the younger sibling-bestowed nickname took off among some of the adult crowd. Elves do canonically act like grown-up children right.