#aredhel

Galadriel: I wish I had the ability to make my crushes nervous.

Aredhel: Holding a really sharp knife to their neck usually does the trick.

Seeking Light

(reference from Pexels)

a gleam of white in the dim land.

austerlitzborodinoleipzig:

My gift to @isilloth for the @officialtolkiensecretsanta, who requested a fic about Aredhel and/or Caranthir/Haleth. Well you get Aredhel, and a side of Caranthir/Haleth, in a Modern AU.

Summary : If she can get her life together, and if her family doesn’t have anything to say Aredhel might just survive this Christmas. And then become the person she always wanted to be. Who knows?

You can find it here on Ao3

Hope you enjoy it, and happy holidays!

eikyuuyuki:

Following the success of Fëanorian Week and Gondolin Week with so many support and love from you guys, and for tons of messages we ( @windrelyn ) have received since yesterday asking if we are going to celebrate Nolofinwëan Week, we decided that…YES! We’re in!

Nolofinwëan Week 2019 will happen from August 4^th to August 10^th, 2019* for full seven days! Details for each day is as follow.

Day 1 – August 4^th: Fingolfin & Anairë

Day 2 – August 5^th: Fingon

Day 3 – August 6^th: Turgon & Elenwë

Day 4 – August 7^th: Aredhel

Day 5 – August 8^th: Argon

Day 6 – August 9^th: Idril

Day 7 – August 10^th: Maeglin

*We choose this particular period because it includes number “456”, which was the year our High King Fingolfin challenged the Dark Lord Morgoth.

ANY forms of fan works: edits, fanfics, meta, fan art, video, etc. is accepted and appreciated.

To participate, please add #nolofinweanweek to your posts.

As always, our box is open for any questions and suggestions!

lintamande:

(act i.)

act ii.

They ventured out, in that first month, only a few hundred yards onto the Ice. People were going to die – Findekáno knew it, Nolofinwë knew it, the host now dug in on the shores of Araman knew it very well. But no one has died yet, and in a way it paralyzed them, waiting for it. They inched along the sheer ice faces and rolled logs across to test where it can bear the weight and were painstakingly, excruciatingly, careful. 

Climbing the ice was not in fact particularly difficult – not as difficult as Findekáno had imagined it, certainly. They had broken down the wagons into thick ice picks. You lit a fire at the bottom of a cliff and left the ice picks in it, to absorb the heat, so later they would slide like butter into their positions on the cliff. You stood there and held them, heat eating its way through your mittens and hand, and waited for the ice to freeze again around your new addition. And then you climbed down, grabbed another, climbed up, did it again. They were testing the best pick shapes and the best distances; the cliffs on the lip of Araman were studded with climbing holds, and with climbers.

“At this rate -” Findekáno said to his father -

“It would take us ten Years,” his father said grimly. “We won’t proceed at this rate, we learn more every day.”

Keep reading

(act i.)

act ii.

They ventured out, in that first month, only a few hundred yards onto the Ice. People were going to die – Findekáno knew it, Nolofinwë knew it, the host now dug in on the shores of Araman knew it very well. But no one has died yet, and in a way it paralyzed them, waiting for it. They inched along the sheer ice faces and rolled logs across to test where it can bear the weight and were painstakingly, excruciatingly, careful. 

Climbing the ice was not in fact particularly difficult – not as difficult as Findekáno had imagined it, certainly. They had broken down the wagons into thick ice picks. You lit a fire at the bottom of a cliff and left the ice picks in it, to absorb the heat, so later they would slide like butter into their positions on the cliff. You stood there and held them, heat eating its way through your mittens and hand, and waited for the ice to freeze again around your new addition. And then you climbed down, grabbed another, climbed up, did it again. They were testing the best pick shapes and the best distances; the cliffs on the lip of Araman were studded with climbing holds, and with climbers.

“At this rate -” Findekáno said to his father -

“It would take us ten Years,” his father said grimly. “We won’t proceed at this rate, we learn more every day.”

They did, but every day they also were hungrier. Scouting for food had proved more difficult than scouting for safe paths through the northern wasteland. They had clawed the fungi off the rocks and tried eating it; it was not filling. There were animals in the north, of course, but most of them were dying themselves. Perhaps Melkor’s passage through this land poisoned it. Perhaps they depended, in some delicate way, on Aman’s light and the creatures it supported. 

There was still no light. When he had a spare moment between testing hazardous climbs and authorizing new scouting trips and dragging back inadequate food to the encampment, he wondered at that. The Valar may have taken a few years, but they’d stirred at last from Taniquetil to send a herald to scold the Ñoldor for leaving, and they’d stirred themselves in proper force after Alqualondë. He’d have thought that, once they reached the end of their paralyzed grief, they’d put the light first. Most of the animals would die. Most of the Elves would eventually starve. Was Yavanna currently engaged in personally supporting the growth of every plant on the continent? Was she capable of that? Could Varda throw some new stars up into the sky?

He got an answer – well, a partial answer – toward the end of the first month, after a crack in the ice had swallowed a log and a supply pack. Miraculously no one had been injured. Their luck had to break, soon, and that knowledge itself was weighing on them. 

“Even if we had the supplies we couldn’t make it across with no losses,” Irissë greeted him, unsmiling, when he reached the tent.

The tent had been improved. They were Ñoldor; they’d done that first. They’d dug their quarters into the rocky soil of Araman, slow and painstaking work, four feet down for every tent. The earth itself now insulated them against the winds. From a distance the little city looked like a row of rabbit warrens. It had been lovely for morale. It would be impossible once they started moving. 

“No,” he said to Irissë, climbing down into the tent, which now had a horrifically muddied outer room and a lavish inner room where they all slept. Before the betrayal Turvo and Elenwë and Itarillë had slept in their own tent, Findekáno with Irissë and Arakáno, and Nolofinwë alone once their mother had turned back. Now it seemed a little silly, all the effort to maintain the old customs. If the tent was too small for them all, it was a good thing; it meant it was always warm.

“And in practice, what’ll kill us is the hunger,” she continued.

“Can hunger kill us?” It wasn’t a question he’d ever had cause to consider before.

“Makes it easier to freeze to death, makes it harder to hold on to a difficult climb – the things we’re doing out there on the cliffs right now? we won’t be strong enough by the far side of this thing-”

He hadn’t really thought about that. They were going to such lengths to make the sheer parts climbable even for a moderately-sized child, or even with a large bundle on your back; today they’d tried carrying each other up it. It had worked, until the ice in that one place had snapped.

“So – have a team go ahead, map the whole Ice before we’re too hungry to do the work that will make it safe?” 

“No,” she said. “They wouldn’t come back.”

It was a caution he’d never seen in Irissë. In truth he’d expected that they’d both favor such a strategy, that they’d argue it to Turukáno with his inbuilt caution and to their father with his deeply-seated sense of duty and to Lalwen who had seemingly decided to be the advocate for Nolofinwë’s happiness and peace of mind, Nolofinwë himself being far too busy to let himself consider that. If there was anything reckless enough to divide even him and Irissë, it was usually her on the side favoring it.

“I think we could make it,” Findekáno said, “in three months, with a team of ten. The faster you go the less you have to carry. And we would scarcely rest; we stay warm while we’re moving. You and I could go three months without stopping.”

“There’s something you need to see,” she said. “But after you rest, you’re frozen through and by all account that was a close one, that accident today.”

“I don’t need to rest. I’m not really very cold.” 

“And the accident?” she said mildly, but she’d already begun pulling on her coat and gloves and hat and muffler.

“It was close. We were lucky, but I don’t feel lucky. That’s hardly a reason to rest, though.” 

“This is about an hours’ walk,” she said, “there are guide stones but I still don’t think it’s wise to take it at a run. You’ll see why.”

“You could just tell me.” 

“We found the path Melkor took, leaving.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, I do want to see that.”

It was scorched. Not with fire - Findekáno leaned down to touch it and drew up a hand stinging with something that was certainly not ash. But scorched all the same; the ice had been melted through and the rock crushed and crumbled, a wide and ugly trail bludgeoning its way through the land. He stepped, cautiously, into it; in a moment he was knee-deep in some ugly kind of dust and mire, and it dragged at his ankles as he walked. “Melkor and the thing that accompanied him through Valinor,” he said, because you didn’t need Irissë’s talent for tracking to notice the other set of tracks, deep and razor-like and dangerous. 

“Yes,” she said. “You should get out of there; presumably at some point their paths crossed, and if you step into one of her footprints you will slice yourself into ribbons.” 

“A shame,” Findekáno said, “it would have saved us much time if we could have taken this path and been sure of our footing. What does this have to do with sending a small group out in front?”

“We scouted five hours’ out,” she said, “along this, considering the possibility of  doing exactly that. It ends. In a fight, or I’m no hunter at all.”

“Melkor and his monster fought?”

“The ground is flattened for a mile around,” she said, “and all like this, only the mire rises higher and her footprints, if you like to call them that, are everywhere. It’s a foul, foul, dangerous place – you can feel it. Dark like the darkness, not like out here, and the air makes you sick to breathe, and everywhere those razor-sharp crevices, the marks she leaves in the ground - ”

Findekáno whistled. “No injuries?”

“I’m good at my job,” Irissë said tightly.

“Me too,” he said. “Sooner or later it’s not going to be enough.” 

“There were other tracks,” she said.

 “Animals? If there’s anything that can survive up here, I want to learn from it and then eat it.”

“Not animals.” 

He stepped out of the mire; it was starting to make him nervous, the way it tugged like a rushing stream at his ankles even while it was easy to see that it wasn’t moving at all.

 “Endórë used to be crawling with Moringotto’s monsters,” he said cautiously. 

“I think it still is.”

They walked back. Irissë seemed to be wavering over whether or not to say something. He wondered at that for a while – she wasn’t known for reticence – until he guessed what it must be. “Oromë told Tyelcormo something, and he told you?”

She started. “Yes. How – ” 

He didn’t answer that.

“Right,” she said after a while. “We can trade revenge fantasies once it’s all underway, at the moment I’ve been too busy to develop them beyond the obvious –”

“That being?”

“I will slap him, and he will laugh, and then I will choke the air from his lungs until he stops laughing, and then I will let go and walk away and tell him I hope he dies a very painful death because otherwise I’ll rejoice at the news of his loss and I don’t really want to.”

“Oh,” Findekáno said. 

“You?”

They were walking more briskly. The question at once made him want to go frozen in his tracks like a startled deer, or else to break into a run. Like a smarter startled deer. “Maitimo’ll apologize,” he said after a minute, “that’s the difference.”

“No,” she said, “that’s not a difference at all, you can’t imagine you’ll –”

“Of course I won’t forgive him.” He paused. “I’ll thank him, for making it so easy to do what I should have done so long ago. And I’ll ask when he decided – not that there’s any possible answer -  there’s a saying, you know: when someone shows you who they really are, believe them. We’ll say our bit and then I’ll never speak to him again, though I think I’ll weep no matter how he dies. But he will ask for forgiveness, and there’s nothing satisfying about beating someone bloody when they let you because they’re desperately hoping it’ll cancel out everything else they’ve done to you –”

“Yes, there is,” she said, “Tyelco certainly won’t apologize but he’ll let me, too, how did you think I was planning to overpower him?” 

He hadn’t actually given that much thought. Irissë struck him as a much stronger person than Tyelcormo in every possible respect, enough so that it was hard to remember he’d probably win an arm-wrestling match with her and could certainly prevent her from strangling him. 

“You were saying,” he said, “something Oromë said –”

“Some of the Maiar sided with Melkor,” she said, “in the first war, not just lesser ones, ones who had once been great, and the greatest of those became terrible demons of Melkor’s who lit their very essence afire and lashed out with the sharpness that exists at the edges of two worlds, and they were called the Valaraukar, and in the fall of Utumno they vanished.”

 “Vanished? As in –”

She shrugged.

“But you think they’re out there?”

“Oromë always hunted for them, never found one. Of –” she kicked a rock, and cursed, - “of all the things to hate him for, you know, I keep thinking that if he’d asked Oromë for aid in departing he’d have been given it, and then we’d all be there with no one dead and a Vala on our side –”

“I never thought of that,” Findekáno said. And then, loath to give his cousins any credit but equally loath to think there had been a way out, and they’d all collectively missed it - “Manwë would probably have refused to permit it. He said the Valar would offer us no aid in departing. They can’t just defy him on that, it’s not in their nature.”

She shrugged again. They could see the rise behind which the tents were buried, now. 

“How do you kill a Valarauca?” Findekáno murmured.

“You think I’m an expert?” 

“I think you’re not, yet.”

She smiled at him, then, a real and startled smile. He realized that his family felt closer than it had before the betrayal. They appreciated each other more. They complemented each other marvellously. They worked and rested and debated and planned like they’d been born to this. “I don’t think anyone is born to rule,” Finwë’d told Findekáno, once, when he’d been young and captivated by political philosophy mostly because Maitimo had been. “But I do believe some are born to lead.” A family of kings, they’d turned out to be, when the repeated twists of tragedy had tossed the crown to their house. Wasn’t that something? If the Feanorians had cut the line a little faster, if they’d been this unified in purpose and this constructive in their grief sooner, perhaps his mother wouldn’t have turned back –

- but no, that had mostly been because of what Findekáno himself had done, and even knowing that the damned ships were lost now forever and the damned cousins had casually left them all to die, Findekáno could not quite imagine standing at the docks of Alqualondë with an army and waiting to see how many hits it took for Maitimo to die. 

“They owed me their lives,” he said out loud, thoughtfully.

Irissë was walking faster now. “I wouldn’t have thought that a favor you ever wanted to call in,” she said, “even before.”

“No. But I also don’t know if I want to take it back.”

She snorted. “I’d have shot Fëanáro from the walls of Tirion the day he arrived with his host, if I’d known –”

“No,” he said, “you wouldn’t have, you’re not –”

 “Artanis would have,” she said tightly, “and I’m a better shot and would actually have understood what it meant, what I was doing, what I’d become, so it would have been better for it to be me. And I’m not what, exactly?” 

There wasn’t even a word for it. For an Elf who would raise arms against other Elves – who needed a word for that? Even the Ñoldor, who gloried in inventing words to encompass every possible shade of meaning, had never dreamed up that one. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“For damning us all, for saving their lives, for killing innocent people, for – we’re never going to see Mother again, you know –”

“Findekáno,” she said, “get us across the Ice.”

Turukáno was back in the tent, Itarillë sleeping in his lap, trying carefully to ease her off onto the mat so he could stand and join them. “Findaráto thinks there is a storm coming,” he said.

Findekáno had not even known the two of them were on speaking terms again. For the walk up the coast they certainly hadn’t been. “Great,” he said, “exactly what we need.”

“Yes,” Elenwë said, “it is, and hopefully this is an unusually bad one. Better to experience it now, see what the worst is that this place can throw at us –”

“Yeah,” Findekáno sighed, “you’re right, fair enough. Irissë, want to tell them what you found?” 

She peeled off her clothes as she explained. The assembled faces went graver and graver. Itarillë was, Findekáno realized, obviously not sleeping at all, just pretending; she’d been doing a convincing imitation, but now her hands were clutching at her father’s robes more tightly than they ever did in sleep.

Elenwë said, “The Valar say that the lesser Maiar who sided with Melkor would have found – did find – that cutting themselves away from Eru’s world and its gifts cut them away, also, from their own capacity for beauty and for creation. In the end they’d be stuck in one form. Injuring and killing them would then be straightforward, if not simple.”

 Turukáno said, “we can’t take armor.”

“No,” Nolofinwë said, “we can’t; the weight would be as much as everything else we might carry combined, and Finno’s people were trying, today, to ensure that one healthy Elf could carry another up even the worst cliff faces –”

“That worked,” Findekáno said –

“But with armor it’d be impossible,” his father said. “I don’t think it’s such a terrible loss; the force of a blow from a Maia would kill you no matter how much steel interceded. Don’t get hit.”

 “Ata,” Turukáno muttered rather pointedly, looking down at Itarillë. 

“Itarillë,” said their father with a laugh, “is obviously sleeping. I can tell she is sleeping because her eyes are very still – not flickering while she tries to stop herself from laughing, no, not at all –”

At this her eyes did flicker, of course.

“I can tell,” Nolofinwë continued, “because her breathing is very still and even, and she is certainly not holding her breath, trying not to giggle –” 

Itarillë went bright red.

“Should we let you sleep, dear?” he asked.

 “You should look at your King while he’s talking to you,” said Elenwë gently, and her eyes popped guiltily open.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a storm,” the King said gravely to his granddaughter, “and we will all be trapped in here becoming sick of each other. In the meantime would you like to come outside and look at the stars while the clouds of the storm steal in to hide them from us?”

She scrambled to her feet and was the first of them fully dressed. Outside their people were occupied in securing everything and tying it down for the winds.  Already rather few of the stars were visible. Nolofinwë picked Itarillë up and set her on his shoulders. “Valinor was newly created,” he told her, “and the Valar still rejoicing in its joys, when the time came for the Eldar to awaken in Endórë. And Varda imagined the world they’d look out on, and realized that it would be strange and alien to them, and in her wisdom she did something great and wonderful. She did not come to meet us on the shores; she did not try to raise the great pillars of the world once again. She put the light of creation itself in the sky, beyond where Melkor could reach it, beyond all fear and hope and invention, and when the Eldar awoke it was the first thing we saw, and we rejoiced in it.

We are the people of the stars, and when we falter they will hold their course, and when we are lost we can find our way by the lights of the Valacirca. Endórë is not dark. It is lit by a gift so far beyond Melkor’s power that he can only dig his way into the earth and resent it. And we are not forsaken; the first and greatest gift of Eru to our people was the land, and we go now to reclaim it. And the first and greatest gift of the Valar was the stars, and they will always guide us. Ai, Varda Elentári!”

“The stars are going,” said Itarillë, warily. 

“The stars remain; the clouds are coming,” said her grandfather, “and they will leave, and the stars will still be there. The Valar have said that they will not hear or heed our prayers, but I would have us say them anyway; we speak so the remembrance of these things remains in our own hearts.”

“And maybe someday –” said Itarillë – 

“And maybe someday they’ll listen, too,” he said with a laugh. 

The storm did not take long to move in fully, but Itarillë fell asleep before then.

“She’s going to hear and see worse things,” Ñolofinwë said to Turukáno once she had. “I would rather arm her to face them than hide her from them.”

“She’s twenty,” he snapped.

“I would understand if you decided to stay –”

“No,” Elenwë said. “Our forefathers were born beside Cuivienen and it did not leave them shattered; we are a flexible people.”

 “I’m not sure we could, either,” Turukáno said. “That’s the other thing Findaráto had to say. The Pelóri are getting taller. ”

“That can’t be,” Findekáno said. 

“He is very confident.”

“How could he even tell, in the dark?”

“The stars,” said Ñolofinwë seriously. “That’s what I was trying to see, tonight, but the storm confounded it - ” 

“They said they would fence Valinor against us,” Lalwen muttered.

“So even if they do find the means to restore light to Valinor,” Findekáno said, “and even if we’re still here, we may not know of it. I’d been looking, hoping they came up with something – for all those who remain behind –”

“They will,” said Ñolofinwë firmly. 

“You, ah, never used to be so much their champion,” Arakáno muttered wryly.

“I would not have any of your proceed forward because you feel that you have no choice.”

“Oh, would you stopthat?” Irissë said. “It is understood that we can go back. Mother went back. You offer every day. It is growing unbearable. We chose. We chose to follow you, Finwë Ñolofinwë.”

“We will follow you to the very gates of the Enemy’s stronghold,” said Turukáno, “And if you turn back we will follow you there, too.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Findekáno. “I’m crossing.”

Their father was observing them with an odd expression.

“I told Findaráto that it brought me joy to know the Valar concerned at least for the safety of their subjects,” Turukáno said, “and that despite their words I still hope our valor in Endorë can redeem the griefs that leave us outside their mountains and their protection. And that even if that is not possible there are people there who need us.” 

“I’m very pleased that you two are speaking again,” said his father. 

“I denounced you rather forcefully,” Turukáno said, raising an eyebrow at Findekáno. 

“That’s good,” Findekáno said, “someone ought to, and even now that it was all for nothing I’ve struggled to summon the fervor, myself.”

The winds howled above them.

“You children should sleep,” said his father, though they were not tired, and not children, and though he made no particular effort to shut them out as he traded thoughts with Lalwen over a ragged map of the Ice.

No particular effort until one question, tossed onto the board of considerations they were toying with. And by then Findekáno was attuned to them both, and paying full attention.

You were watching the two of them earlier, looking troubled, Lalwen prodded.

I always told myself, Ñolofinwë said, that were my sons ever truly at odds, if real griefs ever lay between them, if I ever doubted whether one of them would follow me at uttermost need, then I would understand my father’s decisions, just as I never understood his love for us until I was a father myself. 

Ah.

And this is a terrible horror that will sit on Findekáno’s shoulders for the rest of time.

And?

I do not understand the decisions that my father made.

A long pause. Findekáno realized he was playing Itarillë’s game, pretending to rest, and tried for a second to really rest. It was impossible. 

He would not have wanted me to take up this crown, you know, not even now.

 Then fuck him, Lalwen’s thoughts lashed across the room rather vehemently, tempered only slightly by the grief that was so clearly at their heart. He was no Vala. Sometimes he was just plain wrong.

Sometimestheyare, said Ñolofinwë’s thoughts, not in words but with memories of the Máhanaxar and of darkened Tirion and of heralds and of doom.

Good thing you have a good head on your shoulders, she said, and can do the sensible thing anyway. Certainly no one else ever would. 

You?

I think I know how reckless you would have to be, she said, before I turned away from following you anywhere. 

Oh?

A thought-laugh, a blur of tangled childhood memories, a blur of more recent ones, dark and fraught and painful, a bitter serenity. You would probably have to light a fleet of ships on fire.

It was a strange emotion that thrummed in the room at that. Findekáno recognized it only because he had been perhaps dwelling on Maitimo too much, this last month. They are mourning a brother, Findekáno thought, and hated Fëanáro all the more intensely, after that.