Dwarves, my kin
Jun. 26th, 2006 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thrihyrneI'm writing up the newest Gimlific, and I had to look up the spelling of two terms I'd made up for former Dwarvish-centric stories, from two years ago. I'm now newly convinced that some of my best writing is in the Ardaverse. I remember the walk I took in the frigid cold that brought this scene to my mind's eye, from "Speak, Friend, and Enter":
Is there a term for melancholy2?
Hopefully I'm still maturing in my writing… I'm afraid that I've just gotten so dialogue-centric, and I don't write nearly the descriptive prose I used to. Or perhaps it's just that my Muse is now working overtime in both fandoms; I now have three Gimlifics simmering, and three HP, one with the fragrance of rain and gorgeous grey skies and Remus in a kilt. And the triosmut, set in the woods. And then it's back to Gimli, and I'll just have to quote The Professor, because I swear, Gimli is one of the most eloquent speakers in LotR. Dwarves get such a bad rap.
"No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap — a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day — so we would work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return."
Ach. I'm such a Dwarf. I only look Elvish.
- As they passed down the uncharacteristically quiet street in silence, Narvi absorbed the organic shapes of the buildings, the artisan within herself trying to commit every curve, every terrace, every serpentine turret to memory. While they walked toward the town center, the structural craftswoman within herself rioted, drawing her vision far beneath the exteriors of the houses and public buildings. Within her mind's eye she saw the living skeleton of the city as a whole, the unexposed rock thrumming with joyous life as blood in the vein. The carvings and curvature, so Elvish, were unfamiliar to her, but she could read the beauty of the underlying bases, so inherently Dwarvish in the way that the rock had been treated; not as something dead, but a substance which could whisper hidden mysteries in the night.
Narvi found herself on the verge of tears. Embarrassed at such a show of emotion, she rationalized to herself that it was the knife-sharp wind which caused her eyes to water.
Is there a term for melancholy2?
Hopefully I'm still maturing in my writing… I'm afraid that I've just gotten so dialogue-centric, and I don't write nearly the descriptive prose I used to. Or perhaps it's just that my Muse is now working overtime in both fandoms; I now have three Gimlifics simmering, and three HP, one with the fragrance of rain and gorgeous grey skies and Remus in a kilt. And the triosmut, set in the woods. And then it's back to Gimli, and I'll just have to quote The Professor, because I swear, Gimli is one of the most eloquent speakers in LotR. Dwarves get such a bad rap.
"No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap — a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day — so we would work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return."
Ach. I'm such a Dwarf. I only look Elvish.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 01:42 am (UTC)*grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 02:17 am (UTC)SFaE is still my favorite of your Arda stories, though Of Pipes and Black Diamond rank in the top five.
That excerpt is gorgeous. It makes me want to scour HASA and the original text for every mention of the word dark or cave or diamond.
Ach. I'm such a Dwarf. I only look Elvish.
^ Someone ought to write YOU into an AU fic. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 12:04 pm (UTC)Yay for Dwarvish thought!! I was looking through LotR last night (as indicated, lol) and just discovered yet another really cool thing, which is that Dwarves are the ones who made the caves that then the Mirkwood Elves took over. How 'bout them apples?!
Someone ought to write YOU into an AU fic. ;)
Oh yes. I'll sit around and braid Gimli's hair, ROFL.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-27 12:05 pm (UTC)Just call me Nerdanel. ;)