Baked Goods by Himring  

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Fanwork Notes

For the prompts "Challah" and "Brezel" of the Great Beleriand Bake-off Challenge.

It is a rather fanciful idea, I guess, but it struck me how you could see the two as a contrasting pair.

I am not using those prompt words explicitly (also, culinary inaccuracies may have occurred).

Warning for mention of canonical character deaths.

 

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Two brief scenes featuring Galadriel, one in Valinor in the time of the Trees, one early in the Second Age.

Major Characters: Galadriel

Major Relationships:

Genre: Family

Challenges: Great Beleriand Bake-Off

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 297
Posted on Updated on

This fanwork is complete.

Baked Goods

Read Baked Goods

It was a time of festival. There would be a spectacular dinner, later, in the household of Fingolfin. Anaire, her right hand, Marille, and their kitchen staff had spent days preparing. A clever stratagem to anticipate and deflect a premature assault of the young people on the delicacies that were intended for later had been devised. Marille had baked a large braided sweet loaf, four strands of dough woven together. When the foreseeable happened, and the young ones trooped in, ravenous with appetite after hours of vigorous activity—all eight of them, three of Anaire’s brood and five children of Earwen, who were treated as members of the same household, whenever they were in Tirion, and who also regarded themselves as such—Marille handed over the loaf to the eldest and shooed them out of the kitchen.

Out on the terrace, they fell on the loaf hungrily, pulling it apart. Fingon was trying to ensure a fair distribution. Finrod, with a quick glance at Galadriel, allotted an end bit to himself, because he knew that she hated it when, as the youngest, she got stuck with one of those. She got a middle bit and took a bite, filled with pleasurable anticipation. As she expected, it felt wonderful in her mouth, smooth and light and only a little sweet.

*

They are all dead, now, all her siblings and the cousins she once was as close to as siblings. She has a husband and a daughter now, but her brothers did not live to see her daughter born. In the kitchen at Nenuial, Galadriel twists a single strand of dough together in a circle. The shape that the crossed ends in the middle make looks almost like a heart. Then she dips the whole thing in salt.

Chapter End Notes

This is also intended for Tolkien Sibling Week.

The Silmarillion says: 

The sons of Finarfin were Finrod the faithful (who was afterwards named Felagund, Lord of Caves), Orodreth, Angrod, and Aegnor; these four were as close in friendship with the sons of Fingolfin as though they were all brothers. 

I have extended this to the sisters here, as well, at least for a time in the Years of the Trees.

Marille is an OFC who was mentioned previously in my fic The Bird in A Cage.

 

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Finrod choosing a "lesser" end piece of the bread so that Galadriel the youngest doesn't get stuck with it, is so much the big brother who will live in your memory. No matter what happens later in your lives. 

Sweet and savoury, all at once. I loved the drop from the delicious lightness of the bread, into the salt of sadness, like being dunked into the ice cold deep end of a pool <3