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thrihyrneSqueezed in some writing despite
a) having stepkids
b) going to organ recital last night
c) having Australian parents in town
Problems are:
a) cannot seem to copy and paste from iMac at home to Henneth-Annun
b) cannot take nap with cats because they want to sit in sunlight
I am now temporarily at the office, to upload a quick R/S teaser (no, really, I was only going to write one, but in doing some men's cologne research yesterday realized that I have one more story in me) and the update to "Speak, Friend, and Enter." I just love writing about Elves and Dwarves. What a cultural juxtaposition, rife with possible misunderstandings. Loooooooooove it.
It can’t be this easy.
Remus sniffed the air in front of him again, looked down at the bottle, closed his eyes. He breathed in through his mouth. After a moment or two, he leaned back in, nose toward the smoky glass, and let the scent of pine/sandalwood/patchouli/something unknown drift vaporously up to him.
But it is.
Remus found that he was humming one of the songs that had been piped into the department store, clutching his Christmas gift under his arm, completely unable to temper the smile on his face.
Three days later, Sirius Black stared at the box from Harrod's.
"Moony?" he asked, hesitant.
"Oh, bloody hell. Open it, Sirius. It’s not a ring or anything stupid."
Remus leaned back in his threadbare lounge, a tumbler of blended Scotch in his left hand, his face lit by the fire in the grate.
Sirius shook his head, shook the box by his ear one more time for good measure before Remus growled, then worked off the ribbon and wrapping paper.
He cradled the small box, looking somewhat disbelievingly at it.
"Cologne?"
Remus closed his eyes, taking a sip of his drink. "Just smell it, by Merlin!"
Sirius lifted the glass from the fuzzy cardboard and took the stopper off, dropping his head down to sniff at the bottle, then smiled.
"Essence of Padfoot." His pale eyes raked over Remus'. "How did you?… Oh." He shook his dark hair. "That's impossible."
"Happy Christmas," Remus replied, grinning, his teeth shining in the dim light.
Sirius stared at it, turning the scent over and again in his hands. The one word was embossed, simple, monosyllabic.
Noir.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled Tolkien-based fanfiction, with humor and Dwarvish injury:
Part Three - Confidants
The Soul selects her own Society--
Then-- shuts the Door--
Narvi intently watched the dark-haired Elves as they picked at the hearty fare before them, seeing them glance surreptitiously upward several times as though they wished to be back above ground as soon as possible. The Dwarves seated around them, mostly lapidaries and swordsmiths, ignored their company. In contrast, Celebrimbor seemed to be completely at ease, enjoying several tankards of ale and engaging in animated conversations with the King and stonemasons at his end of the table. As the evening went on, instruments appeared almost like magic and there was music and song. The fire blazed in its huge hearth, and the flames from dozens of torches lining the walls chased away the flickering shadows.
Narvi was comfortably full, sitting off to the side with her feet on a small stool, smoking her pipe with her eyes mostly shut when a voice above her head startled her out of drowsiness.
“May I join you?” Celebrimbor’s voice was husky, and Narvi wondered if he had been adversely affected by the smoke drifting through the air. Now that she thought about it, she was struck that she had never seen a pipe carried by any of the Elves that passed through the Dwarf city.
“Of course,” Narvi replied, straightening up and moving over on the bench.
After sinking next to her and resting one boot-clad foot on his knee, Celebrimbor turned to look gravely at Narvi. “One of the questions that has been burning in my mind since your visit has now been answered.” The Elf stopped for dramatic pause, putting a strand of his burnished hair behind his ear. “Durin’s folk sing quite well indeed, it appears.”
Narvi closed her lips around her pipe for a moment, eyeing Celebrimbor for signs of a smile, which soon blossomed across his expressive face. After releasing a smoke ring, she grinned, her fingers playing with one of the leather thongs in her plaited beard. “Indeed,” she said, then surprised herself by affectionately patting the Elven lord twice on his thigh, which she discovered was well-muscled. “We Dwarves are not the most forthcoming about our talents to others.”
Celebrimbor laughed. Narvi was surprised that such a hearty, amused noise came from such a seemingly refined being.
“Yet you have honed the art of the understatement, master mason!” He, in turn, patted Narvi on the thigh. “We shall get along like moon and star, my good Narvi. I am sure of that.”
Narvi nodded her head. “Yes, Lord Silver-fist,” she agreed. “We shall.”
***
The days that followed were a flurry of activity. Busy days turned into weeks, and then months: the quarry was selected; the stones cut to precise specifications and carefully brought to their future standing-place; the Elves embarked on a rather secretive and complicated process to modify the qualities of mithril. It was only at this point that tempers flared and Narvi found herself almost coming to blows with the Lord of Eregion. It was October, and the seasons were changing. Several of the Dwarvish silversmiths had come down with similar illnesses, and within the engineer’s camp, rumors raged that they had been poisoned by one of the Elves to keep them from learning how to make the ithildin to be used on the doors.
Narvi had been suffering from a foul temper and a three-day’s fever when she stormed into Celebrimbor’s dwelling. “What is the meaning of this drawing?” she exclaimed, shoving a parchment on his already untidy table as the Elf stared at her in stunned quiet. “Surely King Durin has not seen this. He would never approve of such on doors which mark the entrance to the greatest city of the Dwarves.” She took another breath and steadied herself before continuing to yell. “Elvish symbols! Elvish trees! Elvish script! Not a rune to be seen! This belongs outside your city, not Khazad-dûm!”
Celebrimbor started to stand and had opened his mouth when Narvi growled, “And do not point out Durin’s crown. Even it is under an Elvish arch. I was foolish to believe that you had begun to see us as your equals.”
Narvi turned on her heel and stalked away. Soon she had returned to the doorway and stood atop a ladder, chiseling the upper corner where the junction of stone to its niche required intense attention. Her head throbbed, and she found she frequently had to wipe her forehead and under her eyes where she was sweating due to the fever. “Arrogant. Presumptuous,” she muttered in Khudzul. “And they say Dwarves are secretive! Pah!” Suddenly dizzy, she leaned her head onto the cool stone, then everything went black.
***
As Narvi regained consciousness, her body registered a throbbing pain above her left ear. Cautiously she raised her hand to her head as she opened her eyes.
“Narvi! You awaken.”
Celebrimbor was looking worriedly down at her, his aquamarine eyes focused on her face.
Narvi experienced a shock of pure terror as she grasped for her tunic, adrenaline rushing through her until she patted herself and discovered she was still fully clothed. Bliss of Mahal’s beard! she sighed, only slightly relieved.
Celebrimbor smiled. “I have been given quite the hasty lesson in Dwarvish medicine, which seems to be to keep Elves as far away as possible from the one who is injured. Your fellows brought you to your room and established you had not broken anything in your fall, and cleaned up what is a rather deep gash on your head.”
Narvi closed her eyes. “That would explain the pain, then,” she muttered.
“Thank goodness for the hard heads of the Dwarves!”
Narvi winced as she scowled at the Elf’s comment. “We are a sturdy race,” she said, gritting her teeth as she sat up, slowly. “Do not forget that we are the true First-born.”
Celebrimbor ignored the slur. “You are sturdy and hard-headed in more ways than one. You should have told me you have been ill; your skin felt as though you were on fire. I cannot allow my most trustworthy and articulate rockwright to continue falling from ladders because he is stubborn.”
Narvi’s fingers traced the bandages around her head. “The fever will pass.”
She began to feel uncomfortably exposed as Celebrimbor gazed kindly at her.
“I wish to explain the door markings.”
Narvi growled, and Celebrimbor raised his hands in a gesture of peace.
“We have both been guilty of focusing more on the mechanics of this project, instead of the meaning. That is how it should be, for without such attentions, the great West Doors would not now exist.”
Narvi crossed her arms across her chest, wishing that the Elf would leave her to investigate her aching head wound in peace.
“I will not trouble you much longer, only state that while the doors are indeed an entrance to Khazad-dûm, and a symbol of friendship between our kinds, they also represent the edge of our lands. Dwarves will usually approach the doors from the inside, while Elves will approach from the outside. My great hope, and that of Galadriel, our far-sighted sovereign, is that those doors will remain ever open.”
He paused for a moment, and Narvi was surprised to see a wistful look briefly cross his face.
“That is why I wish for you to design the figures and messages to be carved on the inside of the doors. It will be those which face the lands to the west; those which will catch the light of sun and starlight to grace the sight of all Elves before they begin the underground journey through Dwarrowdelf. Will you accept this request?”
Narvi sat, blinking in surprise and shock.
“Does King Durin also wish this?” she asked tentatively.
“’With every hair in my beard,’ is I believe how he phrased it,” Celebrimbor replied, resting his hand briefly on Narvi’s shoulder. “You should rest.”
Then Celebrimbor left the room, his unbound hair flowing over his shoulders like liquid jasper.
Overwhelmed to the point of nausea with pride and pulsing waves of pain, Narvi drank some water which had been placed by her bed. After a few moments her stomach ceased roiling, and she fell into a dream-filled sleep.
a) having stepkids
b) going to organ recital last night
c) having Australian parents in town
Problems are:
a) cannot seem to copy and paste from iMac at home to Henneth-Annun
b) cannot take nap with cats because they want to sit in sunlight
I am now temporarily at the office, to upload a quick R/S teaser (no, really, I was only going to write one, but in doing some men's cologne research yesterday realized that I have one more story in me) and the update to "Speak, Friend, and Enter." I just love writing about Elves and Dwarves. What a cultural juxtaposition, rife with possible misunderstandings. Loooooooooove it.
It can’t be this easy.
Remus sniffed the air in front of him again, looked down at the bottle, closed his eyes. He breathed in through his mouth. After a moment or two, he leaned back in, nose toward the smoky glass, and let the scent of pine/sandalwood/patchouli/something unknown drift vaporously up to him.
But it is.
Remus found that he was humming one of the songs that had been piped into the department store, clutching his Christmas gift under his arm, completely unable to temper the smile on his face.
Three days later, Sirius Black stared at the box from Harrod's.
"Moony?" he asked, hesitant.
"Oh, bloody hell. Open it, Sirius. It’s not a ring or anything stupid."
Remus leaned back in his threadbare lounge, a tumbler of blended Scotch in his left hand, his face lit by the fire in the grate.
Sirius shook his head, shook the box by his ear one more time for good measure before Remus growled, then worked off the ribbon and wrapping paper.
He cradled the small box, looking somewhat disbelievingly at it.
"Cologne?"
Remus closed his eyes, taking a sip of his drink. "Just smell it, by Merlin!"
Sirius lifted the glass from the fuzzy cardboard and took the stopper off, dropping his head down to sniff at the bottle, then smiled.
"Essence of Padfoot." His pale eyes raked over Remus'. "How did you?… Oh." He shook his dark hair. "That's impossible."
"Happy Christmas," Remus replied, grinning, his teeth shining in the dim light.
Sirius stared at it, turning the scent over and again in his hands. The one word was embossed, simple, monosyllabic.
Noir.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled Tolkien-based fanfiction, with humor and Dwarvish injury:
The Soul selects her own Society--
Then-- shuts the Door--
Khazad-dûm, Second Age
Within a month of Narvi’s return, Celebrimbor and a few Elves from Ost-in-Edhil had made a small camp not far from the entrance to Khazad-dûm. A few days after their arrival, King Durin escorted the tall Noldo and his companions to the Great Hall where feasts were held, and led them to a banquet held to commemorate the beginning of the West Doors project. Aside from Durin and Celebrimbor, however, there was little mingling between the Elves and Dwarves during the feast.Narvi intently watched the dark-haired Elves as they picked at the hearty fare before them, seeing them glance surreptitiously upward several times as though they wished to be back above ground as soon as possible. The Dwarves seated around them, mostly lapidaries and swordsmiths, ignored their company. In contrast, Celebrimbor seemed to be completely at ease, enjoying several tankards of ale and engaging in animated conversations with the King and stonemasons at his end of the table. As the evening went on, instruments appeared almost like magic and there was music and song. The fire blazed in its huge hearth, and the flames from dozens of torches lining the walls chased away the flickering shadows.
Narvi was comfortably full, sitting off to the side with her feet on a small stool, smoking her pipe with her eyes mostly shut when a voice above her head startled her out of drowsiness.
“May I join you?” Celebrimbor’s voice was husky, and Narvi wondered if he had been adversely affected by the smoke drifting through the air. Now that she thought about it, she was struck that she had never seen a pipe carried by any of the Elves that passed through the Dwarf city.
“Of course,” Narvi replied, straightening up and moving over on the bench.
After sinking next to her and resting one boot-clad foot on his knee, Celebrimbor turned to look gravely at Narvi. “One of the questions that has been burning in my mind since your visit has now been answered.” The Elf stopped for dramatic pause, putting a strand of his burnished hair behind his ear. “Durin’s folk sing quite well indeed, it appears.”
Narvi closed her lips around her pipe for a moment, eyeing Celebrimbor for signs of a smile, which soon blossomed across his expressive face. After releasing a smoke ring, she grinned, her fingers playing with one of the leather thongs in her plaited beard. “Indeed,” she said, then surprised herself by affectionately patting the Elven lord twice on his thigh, which she discovered was well-muscled. “We Dwarves are not the most forthcoming about our talents to others.”
Celebrimbor laughed. Narvi was surprised that such a hearty, amused noise came from such a seemingly refined being.
“Yet you have honed the art of the understatement, master mason!” He, in turn, patted Narvi on the thigh. “We shall get along like moon and star, my good Narvi. I am sure of that.”
Narvi nodded her head. “Yes, Lord Silver-fist,” she agreed. “We shall.”
***
The days that followed were a flurry of activity. Busy days turned into weeks, and then months: the quarry was selected; the stones cut to precise specifications and carefully brought to their future standing-place; the Elves embarked on a rather secretive and complicated process to modify the qualities of mithril. It was only at this point that tempers flared and Narvi found herself almost coming to blows with the Lord of Eregion. It was October, and the seasons were changing. Several of the Dwarvish silversmiths had come down with similar illnesses, and within the engineer’s camp, rumors raged that they had been poisoned by one of the Elves to keep them from learning how to make the ithildin to be used on the doors.
Narvi had been suffering from a foul temper and a three-day’s fever when she stormed into Celebrimbor’s dwelling. “What is the meaning of this drawing?” she exclaimed, shoving a parchment on his already untidy table as the Elf stared at her in stunned quiet. “Surely King Durin has not seen this. He would never approve of such on doors which mark the entrance to the greatest city of the Dwarves.” She took another breath and steadied herself before continuing to yell. “Elvish symbols! Elvish trees! Elvish script! Not a rune to be seen! This belongs outside your city, not Khazad-dûm!”
Celebrimbor started to stand and had opened his mouth when Narvi growled, “And do not point out Durin’s crown. Even it is under an Elvish arch. I was foolish to believe that you had begun to see us as your equals.”
Narvi turned on her heel and stalked away. Soon she had returned to the doorway and stood atop a ladder, chiseling the upper corner where the junction of stone to its niche required intense attention. Her head throbbed, and she found she frequently had to wipe her forehead and under her eyes where she was sweating due to the fever. “Arrogant. Presumptuous,” she muttered in Khudzul. “And they say Dwarves are secretive! Pah!” Suddenly dizzy, she leaned her head onto the cool stone, then everything went black.
***
As Narvi regained consciousness, her body registered a throbbing pain above her left ear. Cautiously she raised her hand to her head as she opened her eyes.
“Narvi! You awaken.”
Celebrimbor was looking worriedly down at her, his aquamarine eyes focused on her face.
Narvi experienced a shock of pure terror as she grasped for her tunic, adrenaline rushing through her until she patted herself and discovered she was still fully clothed. Bliss of Mahal’s beard! she sighed, only slightly relieved.
Celebrimbor smiled. “I have been given quite the hasty lesson in Dwarvish medicine, which seems to be to keep Elves as far away as possible from the one who is injured. Your fellows brought you to your room and established you had not broken anything in your fall, and cleaned up what is a rather deep gash on your head.”
Narvi closed her eyes. “That would explain the pain, then,” she muttered.
“Thank goodness for the hard heads of the Dwarves!”
Narvi winced as she scowled at the Elf’s comment. “We are a sturdy race,” she said, gritting her teeth as she sat up, slowly. “Do not forget that we are the true First-born.”
Celebrimbor ignored the slur. “You are sturdy and hard-headed in more ways than one. You should have told me you have been ill; your skin felt as though you were on fire. I cannot allow my most trustworthy and articulate rockwright to continue falling from ladders because he is stubborn.”
Narvi’s fingers traced the bandages around her head. “The fever will pass.”
She began to feel uncomfortably exposed as Celebrimbor gazed kindly at her.
“I wish to explain the door markings.”
Narvi growled, and Celebrimbor raised his hands in a gesture of peace.
“We have both been guilty of focusing more on the mechanics of this project, instead of the meaning. That is how it should be, for without such attentions, the great West Doors would not now exist.”
Narvi crossed her arms across her chest, wishing that the Elf would leave her to investigate her aching head wound in peace.
“I will not trouble you much longer, only state that while the doors are indeed an entrance to Khazad-dûm, and a symbol of friendship between our kinds, they also represent the edge of our lands. Dwarves will usually approach the doors from the inside, while Elves will approach from the outside. My great hope, and that of Galadriel, our far-sighted sovereign, is that those doors will remain ever open.”
He paused for a moment, and Narvi was surprised to see a wistful look briefly cross his face.
“That is why I wish for you to design the figures and messages to be carved on the inside of the doors. It will be those which face the lands to the west; those which will catch the light of sun and starlight to grace the sight of all Elves before they begin the underground journey through Dwarrowdelf. Will you accept this request?”
Narvi sat, blinking in surprise and shock.
“Does King Durin also wish this?” she asked tentatively.
“’With every hair in my beard,’ is I believe how he phrased it,” Celebrimbor replied, resting his hand briefly on Narvi’s shoulder. “You should rest.”
Then Celebrimbor left the room, his unbound hair flowing over his shoulders like liquid jasper.
Overwhelmed to the point of nausea with pride and pulsing waves of pain, Narvi drank some water which had been placed by her bed. After a few moments her stomach ceased roiling, and she fell into a dream-filled sleep.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-29 09:40 pm (UTC):-D
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-01 04:44 pm (UTC)You are so wonderful to look at my snippets. I think I'm going to have to have a personal day tomorrow to get caught up on things, look at everybody else's writings, etc. I'm mentally exhausted. :P