For the "Many Journeys" drabble series on SWG. This is the start of my daily drabbles, but I'm actually rather far back. The stories posted here are all inspired by the July Words of the Day by www.dictionary.com, with the WoD acting as the title. I decided to do five drabbles per entry, that way I hope I won't clutter your flist too much.
The disclaimer on the userinfo page applies to all stories posted in this journal.
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Caranthir is going to be a big brother. Nerdanel comforts.
(Fluff-warning.)
Ratiocination
"Carnistir, look at me."
The bedcovers quivered. Curled up and barely visible among the pillows and blankets my youngest continued to ignore me. This stubbornness, Míriel's trait, had rendered others wordless and witless before. I sat down on the side of the bed. A hand snaked from underneath the covers, at once clutching a fistful of my dress and attempting to push me away.
Words came, then, for I knew what ailed him.
"You will not be loved less. Never and never."
A mop of unruly black hair appeared, a flushed face smeared with tears. "The truth?"
"The truth."
"But Tyelko said..." He did not continue.
"Tyelko feared that you would steal the love we gave to him, and before that, Makalaurë feared the same. Before him, Maitimo was no different. Many at first fear what they do not know, but given time they grow to love it."
Like a small animal that leaves its burrow once danger has passed, he crawled from the bed and into my lap, his head against my shoulder. His frown turned into a smile.
"Then if he - " his hands strayed to my belly - "is afraid of us too, I'll make it right."
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Good Days and bad days in the House of Fëanor.
Fractious
One, two, three, four...
She could tell it was a good day from the way his hammer fell: Rhythmic, sure, fast and strong.
On bad days: Dissonance, long pauses (one... one two... two... one...) and the strength of his strokes seemed, aimlessly, to waver and sway.
On the worst days there was silence like the airs before a storm, silence that heralded brooding and anger she could no longer restrain. On those days she set the dinner table with cold meats and took refuge in her studio, emerging the next Mingling, to listen (breathless) to the sound of the hammer.
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Nerdanel and Fëanor. Estrangement.
Carom
The door slammed shut.
Silence fell, settling, like dust, into the corridors and rooms and hallways. The house would be choked with it before long, and every sound that arose would be smothered before it reached the ears of a living being.
She went to the door, startled by the weakness in her knees. The handle was warm when she touched it, resisted when she tried to open the door, was wrenched from her hands when he re-entered, penitent, and took her face into his hands to kiss her.
She turned away.
"Forgive me."
"Not this time, Fëanáro." Her stomach churned. It hurt. She spoke on before he could ask the questions she knew would come. "Ask not only what, ask how often. To rebound another time without breaking is impossible."
"Then break and let me have your pieces!" she heard him exclaim in a sudden, but not unexpected, upsurge of anger. "I will fashion you again!"
"You do not understand." The calm to his storm. "It is not I who will break, it is us. How will you work when you, too, are broken? Tell me."
The door slammed shut.
Silence fell. She hoped it would smother her weeping.
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Nerdanel, the Darkening, a candle.
Phantasmagoria
In their first night she dreamt she held a candle.
She remembered that dream many years after when there was indeed a candle clutched in both her hands, the flame feeble against the unlight, flickering wildly in the winds Manwë sent, and soon snuffed out. Darkness descended. Her fingers dug into the wax of their own accord.
Back in the house, in the light, she saw her work. A near-perfect likeness of him that surely would move in rhythm with its flame before it guttered out once more.
Though she tried, it could – would - not be lit again.
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Mahtan's apprentices gossip about certain young lovers.<
Heterodox
"Have you heard? The Lord Aulë, he himself will visit with Master Mahtan!"
The apprentices had only been waiting for something to stir their tongues into action, and the forges and workshops of the Aulenduri were soon abuzz with rumors.
"The Lady Yavanna, too. I wonder what she seeks with Istarnië. That girl is more interested in metal and stone than growing things."
"Oh, but she made something grow. Istarnië has... dealings with the High Prince."
Startled laughter sounded.
"They are but children!"
"Still, it is high time for her to learn the making of coimas. Not yet fifty, and wedded without ceremony; for shame!"
A/N - Coimas: Coimas (Quenya) is the life-bread of the Eldar, more commonly known with its Sindarin name, lembas. Tolkien wrote in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoMe Vol. 12) that "[s]ince it [coimas] came from Yavanna, the queen, or the highest among the elven-women of any people, great or small, had the keeping and the gift of lembas [...]" and "[...] the art of the making of the lembas, which [the maidens of Yavanna, or Yavannildi] learned of the Valar, was a secret among them and so ever has remained."
I do admit that Nerdanel learning the making of lembas is purely fanon, but with her marriage to Fëanor she would certainly be considered one of the higher-ranking women of the Noldor and thus be entitled to learn that secret.
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Many Journeys
In her youth she [Nerdanel] loved to travel far from the dwellings of the Noldor, either beside the Sea or in the hills; and thus she and Fëanor had met and were companions in many journeys.
(J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring)
December 2015
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Daily Drabbles I
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