New Challenge: Title Track
Tolkien's titles range from epic to lyrical to metaphorical. This month's challenge selected 125 of them as prompts for fanworks.

“They can’t just assume we’ll let them leave us behind.”
“But they are, and they will. Our fathers are the Heads of their Houses. Fëanáro is king. Defiance would be treason, beloved.”
“I am his firstborn.”
“You are his only daughter.”
“I have done everything to be the son he wished me to be.”
“And yet, you are not.”
Findekánë and Maitindë do not go to Beleriand with their fathers. This changes very little, and yet so much.
For Scribbles and Drabbles 2025 SFW Slide 213 Two Queens

“You’re not going to break me,” Russo huffed, finally cracking open his eyes, which were bright with amusement. “They could not, what makes you think you could?”
For Scribbles and Drabbles 2025 SFW Slide 33

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 life and finds he has a queer connection with Maedhros, Himring's lord. As their intimacy grows, however, so do the dangers surrounding them, both without and within. What secrets are hidden inside the depths of Anniavas's lost memories--and how will those with whom he is forging and deepening bonds react, when those secrets are at last revealed?

Gelmir (the brother of Gwindor) arrives in Mandos, hurting and bewildered and still blind. But there is help and comfort to be found - and to give.

How high a price, not only for words but for blood on holy shores? For smoke on the horizon? For trust and love unyielding, tossed aside in the hours of one dark night? And what, then, the price for unearned forgiveness? For offering the other cheek, for offering to slay kin all over, again, again, again in his name?
“Would you have come with me, if I had asked?” The truth is, Fingon is not sure of the answer. The truth is, he had asked himself, nights on end, what the answer to that question would be. Had asked himself where they had gone so wrong, that he no longer knew.
“Would you have asked, if you were sure of the answer?”
Fingon rescues Maedhros. He and Finrod grapple with the aftermath.

Maedhros watches him for long moments, his eyes cold in the dim light of morning. “If I wanted to talk to you, I would ask, not use my brother to trick you.”
The implication lands like a blow, precise and devastating. Finrod takes another step closer, then stops himself, fists clenching at his sides. Maedhros has ever been like this, to him—every single word eliciting a reaction; making him fly, bringing him low, tearing him open. What a terrible thing to still find it true, so many years and betrayals later.
Once, Fingon and Maedhros had been Finrod's lovers, the past participle of it carrying the sentence. As it turns out, not everything agrees to be relegated so neatly.

His brother has returned for the first time in four hundred years, and Fingon does not want to start a fight. He is glad; he is. It has been so long since there was anyone he called family to lean on. It has been so long since he heard Turgon’s booming laughter, his haughty commentary from beneath his breath that he would deny uttering to anyone but his siblings. Since Fingon thought of his younger brother and felt anything that was simple and fond, rather than complicated, threaded through with resentment, and guilt, and anger that tastes a little too much like regret.
“Findekáno,” Turgon says, and this is the lesson his father never finished teaching—how to swallow the words, and how to keep them off his face, too.
Fingon and Turgon, and their long-awaited reunion at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

Fingon dances in the new year. Maedhros watches, and yearns.

Drabbles written for the Great Beleriand Bake-Off Plus! Instadrabbling.

When Maedhros returns from Mandos, re-connecting does not prove easy. Nerdanel is determined to care for her son and finds that she must confront grief along the way.
In my dreams my sons wander at length, lost in pathless woods, ancient, sunless and foreboding. In the waking world, Maedhros breathes and moves before me, but is rarely truly there. I see the dream-wraith Maedhros superimposed over my living son, and am sure he never found a path out of that desolate place. The whispers in my dreams insist he never will.
Written for Scribbles and Drabbles 2025 Prompt #53: Night Watch by Zhie, to whom credit belongs for the artwork below (which can also found here).
Many thanks to Elronds_Library and timelessutterances for beta reading, and Double_Sharp for the conversations on equatorial climate.

Amid the devastation of Nírnaeth Arnoediad Fingon reaches out to Maedhros with one last command: 'you must not follow me', and Maedhros remembers the last sweet hours they spent together before the battle.
"Promise me something, beloved.”
This, the only time he allows fear to break through before the battle, catches my attention. I extend my neck to see creases of care in the corners of his mouth. “Mm? What is it?”
“Promise me you will find your place in the world to come, beyond tomorrow,” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “whether I am by your side or not.”
Written for Scribbles & Drabbles 2025 Art Prompt #51: And his banners they trod into the mire of his blood by Fiamma Galathon. You can find the artwork here.

“What if,” said Manwë, regarding Maedhros with star-bright eyes, blue as sapphires and piercing as blades, “you were sent from these Halls for a purpose, son of Fëanáro?”
“I suppose, my lord,” Maedhros said slowly, “that would depend upon the purpose.”
Maedhros is sent back to Middle-earth, in the company of the Maia Olórin.

Those who survive do so by cutting parts of themselves off; their innocence, sacrificed to the altar of devouring hunger. Their faith, drowned alongside their children. Their fingers, toes, limbs, coin the Ice demands in exchange for passage.
Those who survive do so in despite; they do not know yet that this will be true for centuries to come.
The House of Nolofinwë, and their time on the Ice. A deed of great renown and endurance, told in an assortment of loosely connected drabbles.

After a breakup, Maglor pays a visit to Himring. It would be more relaxing if his brother's boyfriend wasn't visiting too.
A Fingon/Maglor romcom.

Once, on one of Findekáno’s visits to Nargothrond during which Celebrimbor had had more wine than advisable, he had leaned into Findekáno’s side. Had ignored his father’s sharp eyes, and asked if he believed that there was yet any hope left for them.

He wants—oh, Fingon wants so many things. To flee the bathhouse, first and foremost. To meet Maedhros halfway, forget about the ruin they have made of each other—slowly, meticulously, over centuries—and kiss him until their lips are bruised and their lungs empty of breath. Wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and perhaps wrap his hands around Maedhros’ throat, ask if he still prefer that Fingon kill him, bloody his own hands once more in ways that can never come off, if only it will bring Maedhros his much-sought salvation.
Fingon wants; ever has it been his greatest vice, that hunger that gnaws through him, makes him reckless, selfish, rapacious.
Fingon merely needed a bath. Maedhros, as ever, complicates things.

Once, in gold-cast days of careless bliss, the three of you used to be—something. A triangular shape, always revolving around each other. Warm hands, late nights, a tangle of limbs in opulent beds. A reprieve, a stolen treasure, and you all thought, then, that it could always be like that; that one day, the world would bend to your folly, and all would be well.
What fools you had been.
Fingon, Finrod, the Ice, and the gaping space between them.

“Are they fighting again?” Idril asks, wandering over to the fireplace the moment Fingolfin lets her down.
“It is what you do with siblings,” Fingolfin says, and succeeds at not laughing at the irony.
Oh, how much would be different if it were not so true. She treats him to a look full of sceptical disbelief and sets to restacking the fire.
An exploration of the Nolofinwëans in early Beleriand, and the effect that Maedhros' rescue and abdication would have had on the relationships between them, in the wake of the Ice and all its horrors.

Argon falls.

Fingolfin wants Fëanor absolutely shattered in his bed, his name the only thing in Fëanor's mouth, in his thoughts. He wants to break Fëanor down to his most basic essence, a flame hiding in the body of an elf, and then slowly build him back up again as if feeding a fire on a windy night. Wants to make himself an integral part of the rebuilding so that he can never be erased, never be shoved out. He wants to be fully given what he was always denied—
—Fëanor’s trust.

A long time later in Valinor, Maedhros is gathering confidence in his new life with Fingon. He remembers one particular morning during their past lives in Middle-earth.

After his release from the Halls of Mandos, Melkor seduces many of the Noldor with honeyed words and accusations against the Valar. The Two Trees are ruined and the Sun and Moon arise. One of these elves, Ardana the Astrologer, leads her people to return the skies to their original form, nothing but stars. But she must destroy the Sun and Moon to accomplish that from her holds in the south of Middle Earth.
This is a non-canon story that is inspired by an MERP RPG series that was a gift from my aunt. Most of the characters and settings were from the series and some quotes and songs are taken from Tolkien's writing. It also ties in with the Wars in Beleriand and two my other two stories, The Dark Mage of Rhudaur and The Thieves of Tharbad. The story is designed to span three ages.


Hope is a weapon. Hope is a skill.
or, the art of not giving up in the face of the impossible, as seen through the eyes of fifteen people living in First Age Beleriand.
16 perfect 100 words drabbles, exploring this concept.

Fingolfin is confused by the rumors that spread through the elven settlements of Beleriand like a wildfire. So is his daughter found and alive, or not? And what is this utter poppycock about Celegorm getting pregnant?

It happens - as always - with no semblance of warning. The ice groans, then shifts, and a channel of dark, swiftly-churning water cleaves open beneath their feet.