New and Updated Fiction

Tuor meets the messengers of Círdan and passes through the mountains to the sea. At Vinyamar he comes face to face with Ulmo.

Finarfin in a thoughtful moment on the way to the War of Wrath.

Indis, removing herself to a smaller household and resolving to raise her daughter Faniel alone, is suddenly besieged by someone she never expected: Míriel Þerindë, her husband's wife.

Melkor turns over a new leaf, and finds a spider.

Elros is famous for one thing above all.

Two years ago, in the Summer, Maglor and his brother took in twin elflings on what was the worst day of the children’s lives. Seventy-six years before that, the solstice had heralded their own living nightmare. As the days grow longer and warmer the four of them find ways to help each other reckon with the ghosts of the past.

Written for the Gates of Summer Challenge prompts: “… cast up exhausted on the shoals of August”, Nirnaeth Arnoediad and Loendë (midsummer).

A Dwarf on vacation with their lover must contend with an unusual encounter in the middle of the night.

In which Salgant expresses his love with food.

Two Numenoreans talking about bread. That's all it is.

Elros recalls the journey from Sirion to Ossiriand and the early days with Maedhros and Maglor. He and Elrond struggle to cope, yet there are new discoveries and small joys still to be found.

Written for the SWG's Great Beleriand Bakeoff Challenge: Olive Bread (19th Dec) Prompt.

Celebrían will not stand among the crowd when Elrond arrives in Valinor, for their private griefs are theirs alone to share.

In which Celebrían encounters a satsuma plum, the piercing insight of Finrod Felagund, and the two decide to paint each other’s skin. Or, Celebrían and Finrod do trauma recovery in their own unique way.

Old age creeps upon Tuor, insistent and unsettling, and as sea-longing grows in his heart, Annael guides him on his way.

Curufin lets Finrod say goodbye.

How high a price, not only for words but for blood on holy shores? For smoke on the horizon? For trust and love unyielding, tossed aside in the hours of one dark night? And what, then, the price for unearned forgiveness? For offering the other cheek, for offering to slay kin all over, again, again, again in his name?

“Would you have come with me, if I had asked?” The truth is, Fingon is not sure of the answer. The truth is, he had asked himself, nights on end, what the answer to that question would be. Had asked himself where they had gone so wrong, that he no longer knew.

“Would you have asked, if you were sure of the answer?”

Fingon rescues Maedhros. He and Finrod grapple with the aftermath.

Maedhros watches him for long moments, his eyes cold in the dim light of morning. “If I wanted to talk to you, I would ask, not use my brother to trick you.”

The implication lands like a blow, precise and devastating. Finrod takes another step closer, then stops himself, fists clenching at his sides. Maedhros has ever been like this, to him—every single word eliciting a reaction; making him fly, bringing him low, tearing him open. What a terrible thing to still find it true, so many years and betrayals later.

Once, Fingon and Maedhros had been Finrod's lovers, the past participle of it carrying the sentence. As it turns out, not everything agrees to be relegated so neatly.

“Can I not what?” he asks, at last. “What do you want me to say, Nolvo—oh no, brother, please do not wed, so that we may continue our ill-advised perversion behind closed doors? Do you want me to fuck you slow and gentle, tell you that it has always been you? That I will ruin your wedding and leave my wife, so we may run away to live life—“

Nolofinwë reverses their positions with such force that Fëanáro is slammed into the wood panelling, all air punched out of his lungs. This is more like it; this is how they began, what they know; what is, in the end, all they ever ought to be to each other—Nolofinwë’s features contorted in fury and hurt, Fëanáro baring his teeth like he is just waiting to cause more of the same.

They stay there for a moment, both breathing harshly, a precipice that is only waiting for them to fall.

Fëanor, Fingolfin, and their last night before Fingolfin is to be wed.

His brother has returned for the first time in four hundred years, and Fingon does not want to start a fight. He is glad; he is. It has been so long since there was anyone he called family to lean on. It has been so long since he heard Turgon’s booming laughter, his haughty commentary from beneath his breath that he would deny uttering to anyone but his siblings. Since Fingon thought of his younger brother and felt anything that was simple and fond, rather than complicated, threaded through with resentment, and guilt, and anger that tastes a little too much like regret.

“Findekáno,” Turgon says, and this is the lesson his father never finished teaching—how to swallow the words, and how to keep them off his face, too.

Fingon and Turgon, and their long-awaited reunion at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

From one panting breath to the next, the forest goes silent and empty, its absence like a blow. The shadows lengthen, thicken, turning into a tangible, weighty thing that shivers across Celegorm’s skin. It is silent, and he is alone. The hair on his body stands with dread and shivering anticipation.

He turns still. Against the back of his neck, he can feel hot breath; can feel the presence, wrapping itself around him, both home and threat.

“Do you think you can outrun me?”
 

---

Celegorm refuses to return. Oromë gets inventive about it.

In the war camps of Beleriand, Finarfin assembles the missing pieces of his family’s history; assembles the bits and pieces that make not-regret calcify into something jagged and uncomfortable, where it makes a home beneath his breastbone.

He meets men whose ancestors used to march beneath his son’s banner. Most of their house, too, is decimated now, a strange, hollow kinship that Finarfin wants to flinch from, and that they weather as they bend their knees to him, seeing someone other than Finarfin. He meets victims of his nephews’ terror; meets those who are left of Fingolfin’s people, of Fingon’s, of Turgon’s. Learns how they passed, each of them falling to blazing heroics and bristling despair, and wonders how any of them are ever meant to return from this. How these serrated, brittle remains of a devastated land are meant to be spit out into Aman’s idle serenity, and not break the world all over.

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Finarfin, the War of Wrath, and the price it demands.

Luthien helps unlock Galadriel's Sight

A little fluffy snowy ficlet.

Maedhros stands at the battlements of Himring and faces Thangorodrim.

As a very young elfling, Mablung's heart chooses its companion, and Mablung stays true to this love until the end of his life in Middle-Earth.

Ingwë, Finwë, Elwë and Olwë each make decisions that change their lives -and Elvish history- forever.
 

(Written for the Teitho-challenge ‘crossroads’ an eternity ago)