Stories of Gondolin. This series began as a response to the Fanfic100 challenge on Livejournal, but 100 stories remains quite an ambitious number! These are very short stories-- ficlets, if you will-- about Gondolin and its denizens. Content runs the gamut from All Ages-rated genfic to explicit slash. Content warnings will be provided for each story.

When Erestor was young, his father had shown him their family’s heirloom: a primitive map of Cuiviénen and the inland sea scratched out on deer hide in ink made from soot and oak galls, the work of his father’s father. To the east of the Orocarni was written in the ancient cirth, Here be Monsters; a warning that what lay beyond was unknown, and best left unexamined. Erestor knew, as his grandsire had known, that some things were best left unexplored. Yet like his grandsire, he pressed on in spite of this knowledge.

The Sentiment of Steel, or "Sentiment du Fer": a fencer’s ability to use his sword to feel and manipulate the opponent’s sword. A concept with which Glorfindel and Ecthelion are far too familiar.

“Everyone knows the heart of Ecthelion is as cold as ice. Only the quest for vengeance heats his blood.” Glorfindel’s words were delivered as a jest, but he knew as soon as he heard them ringing from his mouth that he had failed to disguise the bitterness that colored them.

When he returned victorious from Middle-earth with Sauron as his trophy, Ar-Pharazôn kept this hostage naked, in chains, and under guard in the most remote of his cells. She had been enjoined from looking upon him then because Ar-Pharazôn mistrusted him, feared him as an asp not yet defanged. Later, still guarded but no longer in bonds, Ar-Pharazôn moved Sauron from the dungeon to a suite of unembellished rooms where he might interrogate him more conveniently, and he barred her from looking upon him then because he believed her weak and easily guiled by Sauron’s lies. Now the prisoner had been exalted, called Mairon rather than Sauron, given a seat of honor in the king’s house, and she was the one kept under guard, forbidden to look upon him because she might offend him as one of the Elendili. Ar-Pharazôn had been right the first count: whether in shackles or in silks, Mairon was not to be trusted. He had been very wrong on the second: it was not she who had been easily guiled. On the third...well, she would soon know for herself.

When the Valar recall Maglor to Valinor to plead for clemency, it falls to a reluctant rival to find him.

A tale of Beleg's beginning: You are children of starlight, the water sang, the fairest and most favored of Ilúvatar's design. Great deeds will you bring forth upon the world. And he smiled and listened still, but in his heart, though born of starlight and culled from dream and song, he was a son of the wilderness who wist no sire but the wood, and he cared little for great deeds.

" ...And Beleg and Túrin were companions in every peril, and walked far and wide in the wild woods together." Six vignettes of Beleg and Túrin, on the marches of Doriath and beyond.

The tale of the Hidden City begins with a dream...

As he leads Tuor to Gondolin, Voronwe learns of love, of fate, of fear... and most importantly, of hope.

"I am the scion of kings..that bodes ill for me." One eyebrow arches in a remarkable impression of Elrond’s own. "We Noldor Kings do not, as a rule, end well.”