New Challenge: Epic 80s
This month's challenge features hundreds of fresh prompts from the bodacious decade of the 1980s.
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Cultus Dispatches: Communities Do Comment
Comment data from the SWG underscores community as an essential component to a robust commenting culture.
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Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Challenge: Scavenger Hunt
In this Matryoshka-with-a-twist, you will solve clues that point you to the challenge prompts.
New & Updated Fanworks
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Rescued from a brutal Angband hunt, an ex-thrall with a strange and powerful artifact embedded in his spine is brought to Himring, for it is one of the only places in Beleriand which welcomes such folk. Though he has no memories of his life before, Anniavas slowly becomes accustomed to his new…
[Writing] A Song Amidst His Torment by Elrond's Library
Of course it was a trap.
Maitimo has to survive. He must. But what price is too high to pay for survival?
[Writing] From That Rubble by StarSpray
Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
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“It’s not as though I…
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This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
[Writing] A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray
When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.
[Writing] Women's Work by Deborah Judge
When Finwë's wife Miriel died, leaving behind their young daughter Fëanor, Finwë petitioned the Valar for permission to remarry. Although he loved his daughter dearly, he said, he needed a son who could be his heir.
Or: Genderswapped Noldor politics, from Fëanor daughter of Finwë to Gil-…
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Erestor lay up against a tree, brown washed to black in the wet of the snow. The black disc of the new moon sailed across the dark sky. Erestor wished it were gone. He had no need to look into dark eyes any longer.
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(AKA Erestor unwittingly travels back in time to the…
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Epic 80s
Create a fanwork using on of our righteous prompts based on popular culture from the 1980s. Read more ...
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Create a fanwork in which a character's resemblance or connection to an ancestor plays a central role. Read more ...
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A Song Amidst His Torment by Elrond's Library
| | |
9
Maitimo accepts the consequences of his choice.
Warrior Rising, Year 10
Brothers,
I am alive, healthy. My outward situation has improved, despite [REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON]. I am no longer in the forges, though I doubt I will be able to say where I have been removed to. Such [REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON].
Despair is a potent thing. Such emotions were rare, or unheard of, in the days of our youth. Is it [REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON] or was it [REDACTED]? Do you feel it too, the change in the [REDACTED]?
The ten that survived, I gave you their names long ago. None survive. Please let their families know.
Forgive me, I’ve been given to maudlin musings in the days approaching [REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON]. I wish … perhaps if I had more faith in the ability for things to change, but this [REDACTED] seems like [REDACTED]. Fifty years is an eternity, and even that has no guarantee of being the end. Time and circumstance have never been more against me.
[REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON]
[REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON]
[REDACTED BY ORDER OF LORD MAIRON]
With all my love,
Your Nelyafinwë
Maitimo was conscious throughout the surgical altering of his hröa. His own choice, though one half-regretted as cold hands pushed and pulled at the contents of his abdominal cavity. No pain, just pressure, and the running commentary of Angband’s foremost master of fleshcraft. Strange, the disembodied feeling of, well, the lack of feeling over the lower two-thirds of himself.
He could have chosen to sleep. He could have chosen not to witness this. But he had been conscious for every other way his hröa had been mutilated, from whip to brand to being unmanned some four years previous. He would not let Mairon change him so drastically without his oversight.
And he had chosen this. He had consented. Mairon had proposed this months ago. Given him time to think, time to consider, to weigh his options, to back out. He had said yes. He had said yes, bound his fëa to Mairon’s project with yet another Oath in the name of the One, Eru Ilúvatar, witnessed in the Valarin name of Mairon himself.
Too secret was this project of Mairon’s, Maitimo had learned, that even Melkor could not know, could not stand as witness as Manwë and Varda had for the first, a marriage hidden from all and sundry, and the second, which had set him on the path to return to the land of his grandfather to recover what had been lost.
Maitimo just kept losing.
He stared up at the ceiling, listening with half an ear as Mairon sang, sang Songs to his blood. Of staying, of clotting, of flowing along paths old and new.
Línemírë’s body lay cooling next to him. He had held her hand as the chemicals and Song had worked their way through his spine, numbing and paralyzing everything below his neck, enough that he could keep breathing, but not much else. Línemírë had stayed smiling until the drugs had forced her into a sleep she would not wake from.
She had consented to that too. She had wanted that.
“What do you know about what happens to a fëa in this place, after a hröa is unable to sustain itself?” she had whispered in the dark, huddled sleepless before a dying fire. Mairon had left them to their own devices long ago. “What happens to your fëa if you die here?”
Maitimo had frowned. Had shaken his head. “Námo takes–”
“No,” Línemírë had cut him off, gesturing sharply, single blue eye flashing. “Moringotto traps and rapes fëar, keeps them here, uses them to power the wargs, the beasts, the war-machines. Manwë Súlimo doesn't know. Nienna Núri does not know. Námo Doomsayer has no idea what happens here because no fëa has ever left here intact once they arrive.”
Maitimo had shuffled closer, gathered her in his arms as she had trembled. “Why are you telling me this?” Maitimo had whispered.
“I want out. All the way,” she had whispered back, voice barely audible, hope a quavering thing. “He said he’d let my fëa go to the Halls of Mandos, if we say yes.”
Maitimo had held her close, squeezing gently the way he had always done with any of his younger brothers or cousins when they came to him upset. “But only if we both agree.”
Maitimo knew he would never have the strength, the courage, the bravery, the hope, to meet death with a smiling visage as she did. If he were to die, it would be an angry, desperate fight to live, to find a way to survive. It must, it had to be. He could accept nothing less from himself. And yet … he had consented, because survival came before all else.
He stared at the ceiling because he did not want to see her face, relaxed in death, turned to face him. He did not want to see the mess Mairon had made of her hröa, harvesting what of her that would become his, that would give his body the ability he had been born without. He did not want to look down, look and witness and accept what changes Mairon was inflicting on his hröa.
He had said yes. They had said yes, together.
This was only the first step, the first of three significant violations he had agreed to endure. The rest could come in the years, decades to follow.
There would be no hope of it ending. Makalaurë would never capitulate, not even to get him back. Oath-bound desperation would force him to abandon Maitimo. He had had the thought before, in his lowest moments, but it had come to the forefront of his mind as he had considered what his future in Angband would look like, in those months of rest and recuperation.
He floated, listening, waiting for it all to be over. Mairon had no assistants, did not trust the discretion of others for this. He filled the small room the pair occupied with his own singing and the occasional comment.
“And this vessel connects here, and the rest is excess.” Mairon muttered, clinically detached as something, some part of Maitimo that was now not a part of Maitimo slapped wetly in a bowl by his feet. “After all, this artery doesn’t need to travel as far now.”
Maitimo grimaced. Mairon Sang again, of holding, bonding, staying, of blood flowing where it should, to keep this part of her that was now his alive. Maitimo tried to ignore it, the Singing, the process. He lay there, forcibly still, watching the torches flicker.
“Would you like me to clean up the mess they made of you a few years ago?” Mairon suddenly asked, his voice curious and somehow softer, gentle. Like he cared, or something akin to caring. “Take away the excess tissue, reshape it? I should have thought to ask before we started, but we have time before the spinal block wears off.”
Maitimo blinked, surprised that his input was wanted, now, of all times. Memory flashed, of the satisfied leer the Orc had made, holding a bloody knife in one hand, his testicles still in their sac in the other. The way he had thrashed, being held down by the familiar hands of his work-crew, forced to partake in the brutality of his castration even as they had instigated it. Maitimo could still taste the memory of blood that had filled his mouth as he bit his tongue to keep himself from passing out right there on that dirty, hateful floor. He would have shuddered, had he been able to shake off the memory physically, but he could not, and so the reaction was contained only in the shaking of his ears.
“You’re already down there,” Maitimo sighed, resigned. “You may as well.” A sudden, sardonic thought struck him, and he gave a half-laugh, despairing. “You’ll be seeing it often enough, it might as well be pretty.”
He heard Mairon chuckle. “I suppose so!”
It was over before the torches could gutter out. Mairon stood, stretching, his face bearing the mien of a satisfied cat, apron and removable sleeves as red with blood as any Fëanárian banner. The smell of burning flesh slowly filled the room as Mairon incinerated the contents of the bowl, bloody bandages, and other sundry implements that were, Maitimo supposed, of no more use. No evidence of the makeshift surgery would remain, could remain. Maitimo watched as Mairon … puttered.
He dared ask, with Mairon in the far corner as he stored his collection of cleaned scalpels and other metal tools. “What will you do with Línemírë’s body?”
Mairon paused, looked over his shoulder to the pair – the corpse and the living. He shrugged, careless. “The same I would do with any other dead thing here.”
Maitimo felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes for the first time that day. Despite everything, all the pain of the day and the pain and suffering that would follow, that was what brought on tears. Oh, he knew, and Línemírë deserved better, deserved more, than to be butchered and fed to the thralls or the wargs or the wolves. “And her fëa?” he asked thickly.
“Gone, as I swore. Do you doubt me, Nelyafinwë?” Mairon approached, untying his apron and loosening the ties that kept his sleeves attached to his arms. He dropped them all carelessly on the floor, and they burst into flames with barely a flick of the Maia’s fingers.
“I have very little evidence to suggest the ëala of a Maia may be bound through Oath in the same way the fëa of an Incarnate may be,” Maitimo answered, a note of challenge in his tone. “Even in evoking the name of the One.”
“Oh, little Oathbound Ñoldóran,” Mairon smirked, running a possessive hand over Maitimo’s hair. “There is much you do not know about the nature of the Music and the Themes that make us, but you’ll just have to trust that, while the breaking of such an Oath is possible, it is so incredibly unpleasant as to be a strong deterrent. She’s gone to Mandos as she asked. I wish him the best of luck in piecing her back together.”
Línemírë’s whispering resounded in his head, a prophecy unknowingly made. No fëa has ever left here intact. Grief and protectiveness threatened to overwhelm him. Reflexively he reached for her, and only belatedly realized he had squeezed her hand with conscious thought. The combination of Song and chemical that had kept him immobilized was wearing off.
“Oh good,” Mairon praised, his plush lips curved into a faint smile. “That would be our cue, to get you settled in. You’ll be sore, to be sure, but you should be able to start walking again in a cycle or two. Four at most.”
Maitimo forced himself to push away the grief. The regrets of the past must fall away in the face of the necessities of the present. Harsh lessons learned in the days after the Trees had fallen. He nodded in understanding, then grimaced as Mairon picked him up with strength that did not seem to fit the Maia’s smaller frame. How undignified, to be cradled against his captor’s chest, face hidden in the crook of his neck, like an over-sized infant, or the way married men carried their wives into a new home. Never mind his lack of clothes, a state of undress he would not be able to rectify himself, and was doomed to happen in the Maia’s presence, again and again and again until … well. Best not to get his hopes up.
By now Mairon’s apartments were as familiar to him as his own townhouse in Tirion had been. Three doors, then the hallway narrowed. Mairon had to shuffle sideways to attempt to avoid banging Maitimo’s feet, but Maitimo had the sneaking suspicion they’d still grazed the wall. He still couldn’t feel his toes. The hall opened suddenly into the main room, with its great south-facing window and gaudy yellow couches. Maitimo counted Mairon’s steps across the room for lack of any visual cues. Seven more than his own, which made sense. Mairon was shorter than him. Everyone was.
Down the other hall, wider, with higher ceilings, and to the last door of this hall to the room he had been given. His own space, privacy. A stuffed mattress, soft sheets, feather pillows, thick woolen bed hangings, all to keep him warm and comfortable. All this he had bought in his weakness and despair, and would keep, so long as he let Mairon continue doing what he wanted with Maitimo’s hröa.
He caught sight of the rest of his body as Mairon eased him into the bed, his bed. He had expected … more, somehow. Only a faint redness, a slight swelling of the incision remained, a clean sweep from hipbone to opposite hipbone, Sung closed to join a multitude of other scars that littered his hröa. He had not been bandaged; he didn’t need it. It was as healed as Mairon could Sing it.
Mairon built up the pillows behind him, arranged Maitimo’s hröa to his satisfaction, humming a song with no power behind it. Mairon was full of music, full of motion, reminding him of … well. Maitimo sighed, quietly and suddenly wishing for the raven-black hair and kind smile of his Makalaurë instead of the golden corona and predatory eyes of Mairon. But he could not have his brother, nor any other member of the House of Finwë, to comfort him here. Not here. Absolutely not here.
Mairon proffered a cup of water, clear and cold, condensation beading on the surface of the red and black glazed pottery. Maitimo tried to raise his arms, to take the cup and drink, to do it himself, but his hands only twitched. Dead weight, the last shuddering gasp of a deer laid low by the hunter’s arrow, the flopping of the fish slowly suffocating when raised out of the sea.
Maitimo did not bother to hold back his groan of frustration. “Fine,” he snarled, instead of cursing Mairon.
Mairon, in stark contrast, wordlessly leaned in, pressing the cup to Maitimo’s lips with gentle hands, his eyes soft with care, or perhaps pity. The water was a relief, relieving a need Maitimo had barely registered. When had his mouth gotten so dry? And then, the thought: when had it become normal not to be thirsty?
“There,” the Maia said, pulling back. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Maitimo stared. “Which part, the indignity of being helped to drink?”
“Everything we did today.” The Maia’s voice was quiet, contemplative.
Maitimo did not dignify that with an answer. He turned his head, staring vacantly into the middle distance. The silence stretched. Mairon huffed a little laugh. “Come now, Nelyafinwë,” he crooned. “Don’t tell me you’re rescinding your part of this bargain already? ”
Maitimo jerked his head, a reflexive rejection of the thought. He had to do this, he had to keep saying yes, he had to survive. He had to.
Maitimo saw, rather than felt, Mairon pat his knee, then rose and left without another word. He was alone, alone with his thoughts. A worse punishment could not be devised.
