I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by Erdariel  

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Fanwork Notes

For the Everyman challenge prompt "Only three of [Isildur's] people came ever back over the mountains after long wandering …" (Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age)

In all honesty I had been thinking that I wanted to write a story of Ohtar's journey from Gladden Fields to Rivendell for a long while. For several reasons, the two main of which are that I find Ohtar fascinating despite (or maybe because) how little is known of him, and that I wanted to find a satisfying way to settle the questions created by the details of timing given in the Unfinished Tales compared with the timeline printed in the Lord of the Rings. I had even started writing a fic on these events, but it got nowhere and was never posted because I couldn't get the style I'd started with to work and I felt I would have to scrap it, do more planning, and start entirely from scratch with a new fic.

So seeing the prompt in the challenge's list gave me a good reason to finally stop procrastinating and start writing this fic. And then it got completely out of control because Ohtar kept talking about things I had not meant for him to go on at such length about, so now this is a multichapter (I am expecting three chapters, but I've yet to finish writing the fic as I post this, so there's a possibility that the number will be something else).

As I'm still writing the story, the tags and warnings may change and new ones may be added with later chapters.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.

Major Characters: Ohtar, Unnamed Male Canon Character(s)

Major Relationships: Ohtar + Unnamed Canon Character

Genre: General, Hurt/Comfort, In-Universe Artifact

Challenges: Everyman

Rating: Teens

Warnings: In-Universe Racism/Ethnocentrism, Violence (Moderate)
Chapters: 3 Word Count: 14, 939
Posted on Updated on

This fanwork is a work in progress.

Show all chapters on a single page

Table of Contents

Of the flight from the Gladden Fields
Of Gileinas and the Great War

Okay, yes, I know this is over twice the length of the first chapter and a complete digression from the event and topics of the last chapter, but it makes sense in my head, okay? Also honestly I'm lazy and I don't have the patience to go over it and try to edit it to a length shorter than what it is while still retaining everything I think is important in the chapter, and I didn't feel like there was any good place to cut it into two chapters either

I promise I'll get back to the point in the next chapter...

Of the journey toward the mountains

...so you all know how I said this was going to be three chapters? Yeah it's four now. Somehow as I write I keep discovering that some thing or another I had wanted to include in the story takes way more words to get through than I had thought

Also sorry for the rather lengthy chapter, I just didn't have a place where I liked putting a chapter break any earlier than this!

Comments on I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before

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I was on the edge of my seat!  You really had me right there crouched in the boat with the two of them.  And what interesting characters, both of them.  Really enjoying this & will definitely be interested if/when the next chapters emerge <333

Oh, this is so gripping! And already feels like canon to me. I'm really enjoying the detail and am very happy the fic has run amok on you! I'll look forward to learning more about these two.

Very interesting takes on Ohtar and his companion! I think it really is worth taking your time (and word count) to unfold the narrative more fully.

I felt for the two and their hazardous escape and was glad they made it across the river.

Thank you! And I certainly hope it's worth it, because Ohtar is by now 3300 words into telling me how he and Gileinas became friends and still hasn't finished the story, so the second chapter will be a rather lengthy digression from the original topic unless I do some heavy editing, and I think I'm too lazy to try to whittle that down into anything shorter once I've actually finished writing it ':D

I very much enjoyed learning how these two met and became friends, and getting a glimpse of life during the siege.  And also appreciated Ruinamacil's thoughts on the wisdom of the Valar "editing" the Gift of Men for only some of them, and the emotional suffering that results. 

I'm glad to hear you liked this! I didn't originally set out to write so much about life during the Siege of Barad-dûr, but it just kind of seemed to fit in. Like, just when you think about it, that was Ruinamacil's life for what, seven, eight years or so. There would've been a rhythm and a routine to it, there would've been ebb and flow in the intensity of action, there would've been a whole tangled web of social hierarchies, and it just felt natural for him to talk about it. (All this may also have led me down the path of thinking about military slang and the linguistic effects of the War of the Last Alliance, but uhhhhh that's not something I plan to go to in this fic. or any fic, probably, it goes a bit beyond my skill)

And yeah, I feel like in a lot of ways Ruinamacil's generation, broadly speaking, would probably have been forced to grapple with the reality of their long lives compared to other men, both in general and in terms of its potential contribution to what the Númenoreans became, and also with the overall isolation of Númenor from Middle-Earth and its ultimate consequences, in a way that even the Faithful of the previous generations who were born in Númenor didn't really have to, and then within a few generations after him, people would've gotten more used to life in Middle-Earth and just taken the way things were for granted. He's kind of in that gap where he's never known anything but life in Middle-Earth but a lot of his elders still remember Númenor well and have those traumas and have had to figure out how to adjust. I think it just gives a different kind of viewpoint to him where it's easy to go down that path and start realizing how the long lives and the solitude of Númenor worked to screw the dúnedain over in a way

I thought this threw a lot of additional light not just on Gileinas and Ohtar's relation to him, but also on Ohtar as a person and where he is coming from, including his relation to Isildur!

Gileinas's escape from slavery is a very moving story. 

It is sad that Ohtar is missing him so much as he writes. 

(Clearly, the Numenoreans did not entirely get to grips with that issue he detects, as it is partly what leads to the Kinstrife later.)

I'm glad you think it worked! (Honestly, I'm kind of tempted to write a fic about that thing with Ohtar's father betraying Isildur that Ohtar keeps referring to. I'd just have to figure out what actually happened and how to make it work as a story first, lol. But maybe someday...)

I don't know why exactly I landed on the backstory I did for Gileinas, it just came from somewhere while I was planning the fic, but I feel like it's worked out nicely. But yeah it did mean that a little ways into writing I went "oh wait he's gonna be significantly less long-lived than Ohtar and I already said Ohtar is writing this text in-universe as an old man, I should acknowledge that at some point..."

Oh, maybe! I've also toyed with the possibility of him being involved with Sauron's assault on Minas Ithil, or being in league with the Black Númenorean lords Herumor and Fuinur that the Silm mentions being in power in Harad somewhere around that time period... So that can be one more for the list of possibilities to pick from once I've got the time and energy to properly start figuring out a story

Oh my gosh, what an utter nightmare of a journey (and it's only just begun!) Poor Ruinamacil! He's brave and resilient, and incredibly fortunate to have equally brave and resilient Gileinas. What a beautiful bond of caring friendship these two have. 

And just btw, I for one am very happy with the increasing length of the chapters, I'm thoroughly enjoying this. I particularly appreciate your detailed descriptions which build such rich pictures in my mind.