True Bread by Himring  

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Fanwork Notes

This is mainly for the Bake-off prompt Bauernbrot, although alluding to others.

The content of the ficlet itself needs no warnings, but one statement implies a darker background which is not spelled out.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

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

Major Characters: Númenóreans

Major Relationships:

Genre: Ficlet

Challenges: Great Beleriand Bake-Off

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 133
Posted on Updated on

This fanwork is complete.

True Bread

Read True Bread

Two Numenoreans sat together in Pelargir in a bakery that also had a couple of tables for customers who wished to break their fast. One of them was eating a sweet bun and the other was eating a plain slice of bread.

The first one, who was a merchant from Andunie, said: ‘I have travelled far and tasted many kinds of cakes and pastries and I appreciated them all. But as for bread, the only true bread for me is the bread baked at home by the farmers of Andunie. Other bread just does not taste quite right to me.’

The other, who had been born in Armenelos, answered: ‘For me the true bread is the first bread I was offered with generosity and kindness. And I ate it here, in this city.’

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Aww! Simply lovely!

(Also sad, but glad that he's found kind and generous people to live with.)

Thank you very much, Anerea!  <3

I'm not suggesting that everybody in Armenelos, even in the later Second Age, was unkind! But our second Numenorean was not one of the luckier ones. Fortunately, they are much happier in Pelargir! (The second Numenorean could well be "he", but I did not use any pronouns in the ficlet, I think.)

Indeed, there are many reasons for unkindness and I actually read their experience as coming from a complex source; I got the impression this was not very late in the Second Age, but still tensions may have been such in Armenelos at that stage as to affect the general nature of their families and companions, with the first growing up in an atmosphere of freedom of expression, and the second with insidious underlying fear in the capitol influencing the attitude of the second's family and associates, regardless of political affiliation. (Not sure why, but as I read an image of two middle aged men enjoying their morning appeared in my mind and I didn't even notice that no pronouns were used. My apologiesfor the assumption.)

As so often is the case with your drabbles, this is much bigger in the inside than it appears!

Ostensibly this is about bread, but it is about so much more than that too. How you've managed to include a little dissertation on home and belonging and how some will find that in the place of their birth, and others will find it in distant lands... that was well done. The man from Armenolos, finding generosity and kindness on a foreign shore is so beautifully bittersweet. ❤️