Comments on Your Image in an Antique Book

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I told you how much I love this. Such beautiful language and I love Maedhros' memories of Fingon. You absolutely shredded my heart a few times in this story. As I mentioned earlier, my house is filled with company, so I will have to give you a proper write-up later. But I could not let this sit here without a comment until tomorrow!

Lovely! Gorgeous!



This was lovely, Mike. This sums up for me in one sentence what draws me to reading and writing stories about their lives:

> Two young scholars turned revolutionaries, turned reluctant warriors, turned commanders, turned Kings, turned. . . what? Nothing.

The drawing he finds juxtaposed beside the final drawing he makes is poignant. I do love that you end on a hopeful note! (Dark writer that I am I probably would have stayed all morose and such, and I was pleasantly surprised by the turn. I've also written Maedhros post-Nirnaeth as essentially mad with grief and like seeing him with more than a little kick left in him!)

I didn't miss the fact that he refers to Morgoth as "the Vala"; the removal of Morgoth from the ranks of the Valar by the narrators of the Silm (probably imitating the Valar themselves?) has always smacked to me more than a little of revisionism aimed at promoting the Valar as an unequivocal force for good. This reference itself feels more than a little revolutionary! :D

Once again, a lovely story that I very much enjoyed reading!



Thank you for this great review, Dawn. It means a lot to me. I'm glad you like what I did with the prompt, that's a great picture. I did struggle a bit with how to translate it though. I'm also glad you like the hopeful ending. I can't seem to write dark endings for these characters since the text takes care of that on its own. I did like the idea of Maedhros having the courage to go back into enemy territory to retrieve Fingon's papers, I can see him doing something like that. I like your comment about the Valar. I never thought of it that way so my reference was a happy accident. As usual, your take on these things always teaches me something. :-)