New Challenge: Crossroads of the Fallen King
Cross "The Silmarillion" with a second text or fandom in this month's crossover challenge.
SWG News
A Sense of History: Thálatta! Thálatta!
While he never climbs the stairs of this Elf-tower, in Lothlórien Frodo Baggins descends a flight of steps to look into Galadriel’s Mirror, wherein he first sees the sea. This post examines the view.
Choose a Name for Our New Column!
Our temporarily titled "location bio" will focus on the landscapes and locations of Middle-earth. We need your help naming it!
New Challenge: Tengwar
Each day for thirty-six days, we feature a randomly chosen letter from the Tengwar as a prompt.
New & Updated Fanworks
[Writing] Tengwar: To The Letter by cuarthol
For the Tengwar prompt challenge. To be updated as new prompts are completed.
Current up through '…
[Writing] A blip on the radar by daughterofshadows
Humanity took to the skies. Eärendil and Ilmarë adjust.
[Writing] History abandons us by AdmirableMonster
During his incarceration in Roderick Burgess' basement, Dream receives a strange, ancient visitor.
[Writing] Tengwar Acrostics by Himring
Responses to the Tengwar Challenge in which first letters spell out the name of a tengwa.
1) Early Encounter (Nerdanel, Indis)
2) Numenorean Lullaby (Almarian, Aldarion)
[Writing] Tengwar Drabbles by cílil
A collection of Silmarillion-centric drabbles written for the Tengwar Challenge. Short and sweet!
[Writing] If i get home before daylight by BloodwingBlackbird
a traveler meets a stranger at a crossroads.
Current Challenge
Crossroads of the Fallen King
Create a fanwork that crosses with a second text or fandom. Read more ...
Tengwar
A daily prompt of a Tengwar letter per day. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Songs of Arda
Create a fanwork about music. Read more ...
New in References
Thálatta! Thálatta! by Simon J. Cook
[]While he never climbs the stairs of this Elf-tower, in Lothlórien Frodo Baggins descends a flight of steps to look into Galadriel’s Mirror, wherein he first sees the sea. This post examines the view.
[]
With Gildor Inglorion we finally climb the stairs of Elostirion and look on the view, and what we see appears to reveal a hidden thread in the story of Frodo Baggins. This post reads two annotated translations of two Elvish songs to step through a crossroads in the narrative to arrive at the tower on the margin of the story, wherein is a stone that is a window onto Valinor.
Grief, Grieving, and Permission to Mourn in the "Quenta Silmarillion" by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]In a book as full of death as the Quenta Silmarillion, grief and mourning are surprisingly absent. The characters who receive grief and mourning—and those who don't—appear to do so due to narrative bias. Grief and mourning (or a lack of them) serve to draw attention toward and away from objectionable actions committed by characters.
Beyond the Silmarillion
[Writing] Waybread (The Waybredlik) by Himring
[]Lembas speaks out.
[Series] Apr 1st Stories by Uvatha the Horseman
[]Once a year on April 1st, a canon character from LOTR or the Silmarillion gets pranked.
[Writing] Crossing Forest River by Dawn Felagund
[]Bilbo recounts, in verse, the attempt of Gandalf, Beorn, and him to cross the Forest River after the Battle of Five Armies. Written for the Hungarian Tolkien Society's 2024 Mailing Competition.
Around the World and Web
Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands
Mythcon 53 will be held 2-5 August 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the theme "Fantasies of the Middle Lands."
Teitho May/June Challenge: Joker
For the May/June Teitho challenge, you can pick ANY of our past challenges that stir your imagination and write a story or create art for it.
Monstrous May 2024
Monstrous May is a Tumblr event where, for each day of the month of May, there is a prompt involving and invoking the monstrous.
Fellowship of the Fics: Modern AU May
During May, Fellowship of the Fics offers modern AU prompt lists for setting, character occupation, and dialogue on Tumblr.
May challenge at tolkienshortfanworks
The May challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. Thematic challenge: name; formal challenge: acrostic. As usual, these can be filled independently and freely combined with other prompts such as the SWG challenges. New participants welcome!
Namesake by Gwanath Dagnir
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Chapter 1
circa F.A. 538
“Enough of your spying. Keep that shut.” Maedhros did not interrupt his writing to give the order.
The leather flap bent wider than the times before, letting in a flurry of snowflakes riding brisk air before sealing the tent shut as it fell with a dull thud. Maedhros kept his hand curled around the candle flame until the air settled. In his peripheral vision, a tiny figure now cast its gangly shadow against the hide.
“Who is supposed to be minding you?”
The figure shifted foot to foot, an insecure little dance. “I don’t know.”
Maedhros reminded himself that one so young might not – or might lie, heedless of consequence. He refreshed the tip of his quill with ink. “Be warned, child. Maglor has my consent to set you in chains, if you evade your watchers and wander this encampment unpermitted.”
“Maglor would not dare put chains on me.” As if he had not seen the depths of depravity to which a corrupted heart could sink, the little figure bounced one-footed to reach the far edge of the desk and stood on tip-toes, until his eyes peered above the board like a peeking turtle. “What are you doing?”
“Writing a letter, plain to see. Which one are you?”
“Guess!”
“No. I am not your playmate, and I am busy. Why come you to this place?”
His shining eyes sunk beneath the wooden horizon. He took a step away, looking whence he came. Too-small he seemed, and frailer than an Elf of the same age. His childness left him to say darkly, “It’s cold outside.”
“So it is.” Not for the first time, Maedhros mused if somewhere collecting dust in the abandoned archives of Menegroth were instructions on the care and feeding of Luthian’s thrice-mixed offspring. “Well. If you do not interrupt my task, you may sit here beside me closest to the fire.”
Immediately young again, he skipped to the space Maedhros made on the bench for him. Climbing up, he sat there for a moment quietly, then shifted to his knees for a better view of the parchment. Captivated at first, he watched the feathered tool carving coal-dark calligraphy, a torchlight procession in reverse. Soon he sank back and folded his arms around himself, as though the fire had gone cold.
“Have you yet learned the runes?” said Maedhros, expecting the wellspring of youthful curiosity to return at once.
Somehow, he shrank into a smaller shape. “Mother had begun to teach us. I was reminded just now.”
Maedhros lifted the blackened tip belatedly, an ugly blemish of ink left by his distraction. He slid a blank sheet on the table before the boy and tilted his quill to offer. “Can you write your name?”
In response he clenched his arms tighter, holding himself how his mother never again would.
“I am not playing your guessing game, so you might as well show me.”
“I don’t care about that. Games are for children.” It would be comical coming out of a child’s mouth, if not for the gravity of his words – a pinched boyish voice intoning a funeral rite for his own innocence that lay slain upon the sandy bosom of his birthplace.
Maedhros sheathed the quill, absently wiping his palm of the hot blood that haunted his senses. “Two of my brothers were twins, you know. So alike in appearance and manner were they that many mistook one for the other, even into their adulthood.”
“Even you could not tell them apart,” he groused, letting anger overtake his gloom.
“Of course I could. Since the day they were born.”
He burrowed his tone lower, a kitten preparing to pounce. “I don’t believe you.”
Maedhros shrugged. “Believe it or not.”
The attack launched, “Then you lie! Either way, you lie! If you can tell twin babies apart, you must know who I am.” He scurried to his feet, the bench elevating him eye to eye with Maedhros as he sat. “Say my name!”
“Why, have you forgotten it?”
“No, and- and neither shall you! Say it!”
Maedhros let the moment breathe, knowing that without fuel the spark of irrationality burns itself out. As the eldest of Fëanor’s seven sons -and by majority opinion, the most judicious- he had perfected a dozen techniques to deescalate the ire of perturbed youth under duress. Yet this strange creature was not his brother, and a wasteland of vile deeds separated Fëanor’s firstborn from any high repute of old. “I changed my mind. Let’s play.”
Over his tightened lips, the boy huffed through flared nostrils the way a newborn bull shaking to hold up its own weight would intimidate no one.
Having his attention, Maedhros adopted a fairy-telling lilt, “One of Eärendil’s sons would sooner plunge a dagger into his own heart than risk that another should come to injury by its blade. One of Eärendil’s sons buries his pain so deeply that an Age shall pass before its rot emerges to spoil the fruit. Now the game is for you to guess, which is which.”
He fell suddenly and eerily still, staring into Maedhros’ eyes with the same consuming intensity that full-blooded Elves gaze upon the stars. Then calmly, he reached for the quill, steadying one hand with the other to dip it carefully in ink before huddling over the parchment Maedhros set out for him. His body blocked the view of his writing, though the feather plume bobbed behind his ear. “I too changed my mind,” he said, stilted by concentration. “I shall be proud to keep my name for myself, and you may never take it from me.”
Maedhros watched as he flung the quill upon the desk, a silent challenge to correct his manners, then leapt from the bench and strode defiantly to the exit.
“Aught that has been given to you in this world can be taken away, Half-elven.”
He raised his chin, come to a prepubescent point under a cherubic face. With the cool dignity of a king and the blithe callousness of a babe, he said, “Then you best set me in chains after all.”
As the flap enveloped his departure and the tent filled once more with chill air, chiller than before, Maedhros replaced the quill to its sheath. In the shadow of the candle blown out read only one word: Kinslayer.
~fin~
Chapter End Notes
The Silmarillion states that love grew between Maglor and his adopted/kidnapped wards/hostages. Still, I imagine the relationship between Earendil's sons and the Feanorians to be.... other than idyllic. Particularly in the early days.
