#angmeril

[tathrin]

This doesn’t feel nearly complete enough to be worth posting a whole entry on AO3 for, but I don’t know what else to do with it so...have another fic-snippet, tumblr folks.

This one is set in the Undying Lands shortly after Legolas and Gimli break down the doors of heaven with the power of their love arrive and is inspired by this weird idea I had once about elves and food. And also, unintentionally but unsurprisingly, by Tamora Pierce’s Realms of the Gods.

❧ Ever The Taste of Ashes In Our Mouths ☙

Legolas took a bite of the apple and was so startled he spit it back out.

"What—that—!?"

"Ah!" Angmeril looked torn between amusement and apology. "I had forgotten. Yes," she said, "things taste…different, here in Aman."

Legolas held the apple out before him and stared at it, as though it might be about to transform into some strange and treacherous shape. Gimli looked quickly back and forth between his stricken face and the fruit.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Legolas shook his head, apparently beyond words.

Gimli looked down at the plate of food in his hands and slowly, carefully, eased it back onto the long table.

"Do not be afraid!" Angmeril told him. "You can eat it. Just—perhaps eat less than you think you want, to start with? The taste can be…" Her smooth, beardless face did something complicated as though she were struggling against some terrible weight to find her words. "Overpowering," she said at last.

"Overpowering," Legolas repeated numbly. "Yes."

Gimli looked at the apple in his hand. The archer's fingers were gripped as tight upon the round red fruit as they had ever been upon his bow.

Galadriel drifted over. Gimli noticed her at once, of course; even here in the Blessed Realms, her presence was like a sunrise. He turned towards her like a flower moving to face the morning's light.

"The Queen of Greenwood speaks the truth, Lockbearer," she told him. Gimli did not see the grimace pass across Angmeril's face at Galadriel's use of her long-defunct title, but he knew it was there; it was always there, when anyone referred to Legolas's mother by anything but her own unadorned name. "Nothing here will harm you, but until you are used to the bounty of Aman it would be prudent for you to exercise moderation."

"I know not why I am surprised, my lady," Gimli said, bowing over a warm smile, "to find that the food here is different than it is in Middle-earth, when even the light itself shines so much more brightly than it ever did at home."

"Different, yes," Galadriel said. "This is almost—almost!—what fruit tasted like before the Fall of the Two Trees," she told them, and her smile held a sadness so ancient as to be almost unfathomable. "All food since then," she explained in answer to Gimli's startled look, "has tasted a little of ashes and loss to elven tongues. Even now, I can taste the trace of ashes in the fruit of Aman—but less, so much less, than that which is grown in the ravaged soil of Middle-earth. Ah, but you," Galadriel continued, cupping a gentle hand around Legolas's cheek, "you have never tasted food from before the Fall, have you child? So you would not know."

She drifted away, leaving Legolas staring after her with wide eyes.

"Well," Gimli said, "I'm going to find out."

He took the apple from Legolas's unprotesting hands and bit off a hearty chunk. He almost choked on the sudden explosion of taste upon his tongue. "This—but this—!" he cried, rather incoherently before managing to swallow. It was an apple, yes, but an apple such as he had never dreamed of before; or an apple, perhaps, that was the very essence of every dream of apples distilled to its strongest, purest essence. He had never tasted the like, and did not know if he would dare ever to again for fear of how it sent him reeling.

The sound of Hobbitish laughter helped to ground him again, and he turned to find old Bilbo walking up, his smile bright and his small eyes gleaming with mischief. "Ah, the first taste! You'll never quite forget that shock, lads," he told them. He looked up at Angmeril. "What did they start with?"

"Apples."

Bilbo's grin broadened. "Apples! That's a very good one. Apples, yes I like that. A splendid choice. Poor Sam, the first thing he put in his mouth when he got here was some of Frodo's potatoes. I thought he was never going to stop crying, thinking that Frodo had so outpaced him in the cooking department!" The old Hobbit chuckled. "It was quite a nasty trick to pull on him, although utterly unintentional of course. He can still barely eat potatoes without grumbling about it."

Gimli laughed and clapped Bilbo on the back. "Well, given that one bite of an apple was enough to nearly knock me off my feet, I'm not sure I'm quite up to Samwise's potatoes yet—but tell him that as soon as I can get myself settled, I'll be more than happy to taste his efforts and delight in them. It has been far too long since I've eaten Hobbit cooking!"

"I can see that just by looking at you, Master Gimli," Bilbo retorted. "But we'll soon get you sorted-out, never you fear. You and your longshanks there!"

Still chuckling, the Hobbit ushered the dwarf away to one of the other tables, no doubt eager to watch him sputter over some other overpowering delicacy of the Undying Lands.

Legolas turned to his mother. "I—I never realized—!"

"That the world you lived in was full of ashes?" Angmeril said gently. "Yes, my little leaf. Ashes and regrets—but joy, too. Was there not joy, too? Bright as Aman is, it has never held the sort of joy that Middle-earth did for me, ashes or no ashes." She clutched his shoulder, her worried eyes fixed on his face. "And you were happy there, weren't you? We tried so hard to see that you were happy."

"Of course I was happy, naneth," Legolas said, sounding almost indignant at the question even as he wrapped his arms around her. "How could anyone fail to be happy under our trees?"

Angmeril thought of all the stories she had heard of the Greenwood since she had been forced from Middle-earth's shores, all the grim whispers and dark tales brought over the Sea after her about Shadow creeping through the trees and driving her people ever farther from the rotten heart of Dol Guldur, the dark citadel that laired like a great and terrible spider in their woods; she thought of the steady trickle of wounded elves sailing to join her here, with their stories of constant battles against fell creatures and fouler things that her people had been forced to fight without her; the battles that her son had grown-up knowing as the only way of life there was. She thought of her Thranduil, desperately trying to hold the Shadow at bay and keep their people safe in the heart of that darkness; thought of her family left behind, beyond the reach of her love or her protection, ever fighting against the dark that had driven her from them. And she thought of her people telling her also of Legolas laughing in those dark trees, unafraid.

She smiled. "I truly do not know."

{ read more legolas and gimli fic on AO3 here }

p.s. please feel free to reblog if you liked the fic. I know a lot of folks are new to tumblr right now, but trust me: that’s not just an acceptable thing to do on this site, but a lovely one. Whenever you see a post you like, consider reblogging it to share it with more people.

#this was meant to be funny but then it got sad: tolkien elves in a nutshell tbh #legolas #gimli #undying lands #gigolas #lotr fanfiction #mirkwood #greenwood #galadriel #bilbo #samwise #angmeril #no beta we die like spiders in mirkwood #seriously this is 100% stream of consciousness enjoy the typos #my stuff #fanfiction #my writing #mirkwood in aman: story snippets #lotr headcanons

[tathrin]

Here’s another “too short to do anything real with” snippet that popped into my head, so I’m once again sharing it with tumblr (maybe I should start a story that’s just Short Snippets In Aman and post it on AO3 that way? hmmm).

❧ When Thranduil Sailed At Last ☙

When some four thousand years of the Fourth Age of the world had passed, and Elves had faded out of the memories of Men and into their legends and stories instead; when the Dwarves who remained had buried themselves so deeply within their mountain halls that only the echoes of their singing sometimes emerged to haunt the waking world; when the forest of Eryn Lasgalen, once called Mirkwood, once called Greenwood the Great, was finally empty of all elvensong save in memory and bewitchment, and those elves who had refused the Call of the Sea and the Grace of the Valar for all time were but faded and fey whispers of what once they had been, flitting through the shadows of their trees with bewitching laughter—then, and only then, did Thranduil, the last King of the Elves, at long last cross the Sea.

He was but a shadow of himself then, for his people were all gone or faded into the greenwood, and his trees barely whispered to him now; but every league he traveled along the Straight Road restored him somewhat in face and form, as the fair light of Valinor stretched gentle fingers towards his proud and weary face.

Thranduil was not wholly pleased by this restoration, for he had spent his life standing against the Shadow of the Valar's broken promises and errant deeds without their aid—or at least, without any aid of theirs that he had taken willingly—and it would be another ten thousand years at least before he would be healed of the pains of his past enough to forgive them for all the blood they had brought to his Middle-earth. He was not wholly pleased, but he did not turn back; he had changed that much, at least, in those four thousand years of Elven Fading, and he could put aside his stubborn pride for his family's sake, if not his own. It was them he sailed to find again, and not the Valar nor their Grace. He had no wish of either, but for the sake of his kin, he would endure their blessed light.

He was the last Elf to leave the forest that had once been Greenwood the Great.

When he set foot upon the White Shores, he was greeted by one of the first.

"Mae govannen, meltha-nín."

Thranduil stood in the foam of the waves and stared at the elf-woman in front of him. She was short and slim as a sapling, with cheeks the soft brown of an oak and hair only a shade lighter. Her grey eyes were bright as sun-kissed iron and her smile was as small as a half-grown flowerbud. She was dressed in flowing robes of green in many colors, as though she walked clad in all the shades of a summertime forest. Her hair hung loose and unbound, so long that it kissed the sands under her bare brown feet. Fine silver clasped her wrists, un-bejeweled but clearly of skillful Dwarven make.

"Angmeril?" Thranduil gasped.

She laughed and spread her arms and he ran up the sands into them, crying out with joy and ancient grief as he caught her up and swung her three times through the air. Those who had known the elvenking in later days would have gaped to see him cavorting so carefree upon the shores, an untroubled laugh upon his lips and a smile altogether unconstrained across his face.

"I almost did not recognize you," he murmured, when he set her down at last.

"It has been that long?" Angmeril said archly.

"Your hair is so long," Thranduil breathed, lifting a soft brown lock with bewildered awe.

Angmeril's smile cracked wider, twisting crooked upon her face; it was the sort of smile that was kept often hidden and could only be teased-out by a rare and secret jest.

"Well," she said, "you did take a very long time to join us."

Thranduil frowned. "I am sorry—"

"I am not," she cut him off harshly. "I am not. I tried to swim back seven times, my love. Ulmo got very tired of me."

Thranduil laughed.

"Had you come even a minute before you truly wanted to leave; if I suspected even now that you had come for me rather than yourself," Angmeril cautioned him fiercely, "I would gut you even now upon these shores and you would have to wade your way back to us through the Halls of Mandos."

Thranduil beamed at her brightly enough to for a moment outshine the sun. He bent to press his lips upon her brow. "Oh my love," he breathed, "I have missed you so."

"Well, you are stuck here until the ending of the world now, like the rest of us," she retorted, "so we shall have plenty of time to make-up for our lost years now."

"True," said Thranduil, and they set off arm-in-arm across the grass. Thranduil kept sneaking glances at the elf-woman at his side, as though he could not believe the truth of his own eyes. She caught him looking and raised her eyebrows in a wry, silent question. "Ah, my iron-flower," he explained, "I still cannot help but marvel at your hair!"

"As I said," Angmeril replied coyly, "you took a long time to join us. I did not want to cut it again without you here."

"Ah," said Thranduil, and a crooked smile to match his wife's teased its way across his face.

"You enjoyed witnessing the reactions so much the last time, after all," Angmeril teased. "And that was a grim army in the midst of a terrible siege. How much more shocked and outraged will all these fine Lords and Ladies be, here in fair and peaceful Aman where they say no ills or hurts can ever find us?"

Thranduil's laugh rang out loud and long across the dunes. "Oh," he said again, "I have missed you so."

They smiled together, the onetime Queen and King of Mirkwood, and walked forward together into forever, whether the rest of the dwellers of Aman were ready for them there or no.

{ read more of my lotr fic on AO3 here }

p.s. please feel free to reblog if you liked the fic. I know a lot of folks are new to tumblr right now, but trust me: that’s not just an acceptable thing to do on this site, but a lovely one. Whenever you see a post you like, consider reblogging it to share it with more people.

#thranduil #angmeril #thranduil's wife #lotr fanfiction #my writing #my stuff #mirkwood in aman: story snippets #there we go now there's a tag to collect them all now at least #aman #mirkwood #greenwood #valinor

[tathrin]

Quick little designs for a few of the elves of Mirkwood from my fics.

Height not exactly to scale, because it was a very small doodle, but generally accurate. Rílaerloth should be buffer tbh, but I was running out of room on the paper I was doodling on when I got to her so she accidentally got a little skinny because I was trying too hard to squeeze her in, sorry. Also there isn’t any embroidery or patterning on anything not because they dress bland in Mirkwood but because again: very small doodle. We’re talking each elf up there was drawn smaller than one of my fingers, so. Not a lot of space there to fit in smaller details.

Third Age designs for everyone except for Gilthawen and Oropher, who didn’t live to see the end of the Second; they’re in their Last Alliance gear.

#mirkwood #eregmegil #thranduil #angmeril #merilgais #gilthawen #oropher #tiraran #tarlas #rilaerloth #legolas #also i really do need to figure out a name for oropher's husband sometime huh #not really relevant but: the thought struck me as i was contemplating some more of the folks who need designs #yep. putting that one on the to-do list for sure...some day #my stuff #my writing #my art #greenwood #elves

[tathrin]

Having some issues with the next chapter of the thing I meant to be working on this morning, so here, instead have a very small doodle of a very small Galadriel carrying away* a very small and very very angry Legolas’s Mom after she stabbed Aulë for the crime of making his dwarves mortal and thus upsetting her baby boy when his dwarf died (spoiler: don’t worry he gets better).

Referencing a line from a fic I haven’t finished yet either, but which will eventually be the sequel to this nonsense when-and-if I do.

*Not actually how that scene ended, but the visual was too good to pass up drawing.

#wood elf wrangling #they're small and feral and will not hesitate to cut a bitch (or a vala) and watch out: they bite #because that's what ''more dangerous less wise'' MEANS isn't it? #but galadriel knows that when they're consumed with rage for someone else they're too distracted to bite YOU #gimleaf #galadriel #legolas #gimli #aule #angmeril #more dangerous less wise #mirkwood #my stuff #thranduil's wife

[tathrin]

Second Whumptober entry completed! It's a short prequel to this story, an Orpheus-and-Eurydice take on Legolas and Gimli's love and how to bring your dwarf to Valinor when he dies before you can smuggle him across the Sea. Both are stand-alone pieces and you do not need to read one to understand the other; although after reading this one, you may want to go on and read the sequel for a happier ending because this may be the worst thing I've ever written, and I don't mean because I'm disappointed with the story. It's good, I think; but your happy ending is definitely in another castle.

You can read it under the cut below, or on AO3 here.

Legolas stood on the shore, his shadow stretching long and dark across the white sands behind him, and stared out across the empty waves to the east. He had stood there since moonrise, or perhaps moonrise the night before; it was hard to say, when all the world seemed sunk in some grey veil that leeched all light from it anyway. Even the stars were veiled to him now, the stars that had ever been his people's closest friends; but the stars could bring no comfort to him now.

Nothing could.

Strain his keen eyes though he might, Legolas could not see the distant shore. The waves that lapped the sands and soaked his ankles were cold; the cries of the gulls soaring overhead were shrill and bitter. Their shadows wheeled across the sand around him, like fell beasts circling an old kill.

Legolas shivered, as elves ought not to shiver, and drew the too-short grey cloak tighter about his shoulders.

The cloak had been Gimli's, once; given to him many years ago by the Lady of Lórien on the other side of the Sundering Sea. The broach that had once clasped the soft grey mantle had been buried with its owner, of course, for Gimli had been buried in splendor, as befit the great Lord of Aglarond; and what more precious pin to bury with Gimli Lock-bearer than that which had been given him by his Lady? But the cloak had gone with Legolas, his own longer one wrapped around Gimli's cold body like a long grey shroud.

The cloak had gone with Legolas, and he wore it still, for all that the warmth it offered could never chase away the chill emptiness where Gimli's star-bright presence should have been.

"Gimli," he whispered, staring out across the empty waves, and only the gulls answered.

The weight of his empty heart, of the missing half of his soul, dragged at him, drawing his head low. Legolas dropped his gaze at last and let fresh tears run down his tear-streaked face, as cold and salty as the Sea. They dripped off his chin, landing in the waves that swirled around his ankles, and were gone; even the ripples of their fall consumed by the tide just as Gimli had been consumed by time, torn away from Legolas despite all his desperate efforts to hold on.

He closed his eyes, and wept, and it did not matter; without Gimli to rest his eyes upon, there was nothing there to see.

Soft footsteps crossed the sands behind him, but Legolas did not look up; merely folded his hands over his face and so blotted the light of the red sun out behind the darkness of his fingers.

Other fingers closed upon his shoulder, soft and merciless. "Please, my little leaf," his mother murmured. "Please, will you not come back to the forest?" Angmeril looked out across the water, and then back at Legolas again. "Please, will you not come away?"

Legolas dropped his hands and stared dully out across the empty waves. "I do not wish to," he rasped. His voice was low and rough as elvish voices never were; a ragged whisper left behind by the ravages of many desperate cries wailed unheeded. His hair hung lank and lustreless down his back, loose save for the ragged dwarven braids that were the only locks he could still muster the energy to plait, and even those were half-unraveled with neglect. His brown skin was sallow, his grey eyes flat and dull as heavy stormclouds. No stars shone in their bleak depths. "I do not wish to go anywhere," he said.

"Please," his mother said again. "You do yourself no good with this empty vigil, Legolas. Trust me: I have spent a long time staring at those waves, and there is nothing there to see."

"I know," said Legolas. He felt hollow, as though everything that had once served to fill his skin with light and laughter had been scraped away; he felt like the ashes that had been left after Mirkwood burned at the hands of Sauron's forces during the last war. He felt used up and empty and very, very alone. "I know," he said again, and that was the root of everything that was wrong, of course: there was nothing to see but the empty waves that Gimli would never sail across.

Gimli was gone, and nothing would ever mean anything again.

For a while, Angmeril said nothing. Legolas watched the waves, and she watched her son. He shivered in the cold sea breeze and drew Gimli's cloak tight about his neck, but there was no warmth left for him in that soft weave. No warmth left for him.anywhere, even in his mother's arms.

Angmeril tucked loose, dull hair behind Legolas's and stroked her hand gently down the gaunt curve of his cheek. "You do yourself no good with this, my little leaf," she said again, her voice heavy with sorrow. "Please, Legolas, you must come away; you must turn your eyes from the east. You are still Fading, little one; you must let your grief go before it consumes you."

Legolas said nothing. He kept his eyes fixed on the empty sea.

"Legolas…Legolas, your father did not send you to these shores so you could die here."

"Father should have left me to die in Middle-earth," Legolas spat back bitterly. "Then at least I might lie even now beside Gimli, rather than be sundered here from him forever."

"Gimli would not have wanted that."

"You did not know him," Legolas snarled, a fresh crack splintering across his shattered heart. "You do not know what he might want. You never met him."

"I know." The pain on Angmeril's face should have stopped him, but even that seemed to exist on the other side of some heavy veil and his mother's pain could not reach through that shroud to pierce his heart. "And I am sorry that I never did," she said softly, "but my dear little leaf…no one who loved you would have ever wanted you to die for them."

"No," Legolas agreed after a moment, his tone dark, "no you are right, amil, he would not; and that knowledge is why I ignored the urge to simply slit my throat beside Gimli's bower and let his dwarves bury me within his tomb. Would that I had not!" he cried. "Would that even now we lay together beneath those great glittering slabs of stone, twined together in dwarven dreams unto the breaking of the world!"

"You do not know that Aulë would have welcomed you into the dreams of his dwarves even if you lay dead beside one," Angmeril pointed-out sharply.

"No," Legolas agreed again, his voice even more bleak and bitter than before. "I do not; but I do know that the Valar would never have permitted a dwarf to join me on these shores. Mahal was ever the only one of his kind to care for the dwarves he made; I would sooner have taken my chances with his mercy than have come here, where there is chance of none."

"But you are here," Angmeril said, "and you are alive; it is too late, now, to make another choice, Legolas. You are here; you cannot go back to die. You must live."

"I did not choose that," Legolas rasped.

"I did not come to these shores by my choice either," Angmeril reminded her son. "I came for love of you, and your sister, and your father; I came because my only other choice was to die of the poison of that Morgul Blade, and risk my own spirit being caught by the Nazgûl and their master; risk being bound forever to my forest not as a part of it, but as a foul Unhoused shade haunting it, enslaved by the very creature that had cast it in such Shadow." Her voice was gentle, her words reasonable; but they fell on Legolas's ears like ragged blades, burrowing under his skin like stinging fire. "I came because staying would have meant not just dying, but being sundered from you all forever," Angmeril continued, and Legolas's skin clawed more with every word. "I did not come here and leave Middle-earth willingly, Legolas; I came because I had no other choice."

Legolas rounded on her, his dull eyes wild and weeping. "My choice was taken from me!" he screamed. "I wished to die in Middle-earth, where my spirit might someday find and reunite with his; and I was not allowed!"

"I will not regret that Thranduil saw your distress and chose to save your life by force," Angmeril snarled back. "I will not regret that he dragged you to that ship rather than leave you alone to die!"

"But I cannot live here, amil," Legolas pleaded. "I cannot live without him."

"Oh my little leaf," said Angmeril, her own voice breaking around her tears as she wrapped her son tight within his arms. Legolas allowed her to embrace him, but he did not hold her back; he could not seem to lift his arms against the weight of Gimli's death dragging at his spirit.

"You will have to find a way," Angmeril whispered, rising on her toes to reach his ear. "Somehow, you will have to find a way."

"Without Gimli, I do not know how."

Angmeril stepped back, holding Legolas's limp hands tight within her own. Her eyes searched his face, looking for something unspoken; whatever she sought, she did not seem to find it. "You lived without Gimli once," she said. "You lived without him for so many more years than the two hundred you had with him; surely you remember how to live without him still."

Legolas closed his eyes. "I did live without Gimli once, yes," he said, "but only because I did not know him yet; did not know how bright the world could be with Gimli in it. Now that I know…now that I have known that love, that light…now without him, all is shadow. All is dark and cold and empty now that he is gone. Amil, please…please, I do not know how."

Angmeril squeezed his hands. "I am sorry, Legolas," she whispered. "I can tell you only that it can be done; I cannot tell you how."

Legolas tore away from her. "It is not the same," he snapped. "You know that you will see ada again someday; know that one day, one way or another, you will meet again. But Gimli…Gimli is lost to me, forever. It is not the same, and I cannot do as you have done; I cannot wait, because I have no hope to wait for. All I had is gone, and it will not return; he will not return. And I cannot live without him."

Angmeril did not point-out that Thranduil might well end up lost to them both, in the end; did not remind Legolas that there was no guarantee that he would be able to bring himself to leave Middle-earth, not even to find them again. She did not remind him that if Thranduil died on the other side of the Sea, he might well refuse the Call of Mandos and choose instead to stay among his trees and Fade there until he was nothing but a scrap of memory singing on the wind.

Perhaps, with her son half-Faded before her, she could not bear to voice the well-worn thought.

Instead she said, "I am sorry, Legolas. I am sorry that this is the world that was Sung for us; I am sorry that we did not have a choice in its making. I am sorry that there is nothing I can do to make it better."

Angmeril leaned up and pressed a kiss to his forehead, and Legolas could feel the heat of her fury for him burning in his mother's lips; could, for a moment, feel something other than the hollow cold that had sunk into his bones the day that Gimli's bones were sealed beneath his tomb and had been all that he had ever felt since—but then Angmeril drew away, dashing angry tears from her eyes, and stalked back up the shoreline on heavy, dragging feet.

Legolas stayed where he was. The cold waves lapped at his ankles, and his shadow stretched out long and dark and lonely on the white sands before him. Eventually he turned back around to face the sun again, and the empty waves that danced beneath its bitter golden rays.

The pitiless Sea was empty; the glitter of the sunlight on its peaks as false as the lights that had once lured travellers off the paths of Mirkwood and into death and shadow there. No ships came from the east; no balm came to soothe Legolas's weeping, sundered heart.

How was he supposed to learn to live like this? No, he coud not do it; he would not. Without Gimli, there was no life for him in the Undying Lands. Without Gimli, there was only death; the death that had already claimed Legolas when the other half of his heart died and left him weeping outside that dwarven tomb alone. He could not learn to live like this.

He would not.

Legolas fell to his knees in the cold surf and sank down low, his golden braids swirling like tarnished flotsam in the waves.

"Gimli!" he screamed, and only the white gulls answered.

[read the (happier) sequel here]

#whumptober2023 #no.2 #lyric #lotr #fanfiction #lotr fanfiction #suicidal ideation tw #this may be the bleakest thing i've ever written #but the sequel has a happy ending i promise #gimleaf #legolas #angmeril #my writing

[tathrin]

Hi! You know I love your Mirkwood OCs. Can you say a little more about Eregmegil? Backstory? Any secrets? Why does he appear to have become a Gimli fan, after the life you've hinted at?

Oh OH! Eregmegil, yes, I would love to talk about him. I'm entirely normal about the elves of Mirkwood shhh. So, I'm guessing that this is largely in reference to the bit here where he carries Gimli through the trees so that he can get back quickly and find out whether or not Legolas is going to be okay after the orc-kidnapping, because there's no indication given in that story of why exactly it is Eregmegil should go out of his way like that for Gimli, yes?

So, yes: Eregmegil has very strong feelings about people being forcibly separated from somebody they care about, because his whole family was murdered in Doriath in the Second Kinslaying, and he has spent the rest of his life in Green/Mirkwood watching the folks around him lose people they love first in the Last Alliance and then in the long, slow defeat against the creeping Shadow of Dol Guldur. Including Angmeril, Thranduil's wife, who was one of the first elves they lost after the Last Alliance and whose departure was extremely traumatic for the whole forest for a host of reasons.

And it was Thranduil who carried little Eregmegil out of Doriath, having been the only one to hear him crying under his sister's corpse amidst the chaos, and having taken the time and risked his own life and that of his father to pull Eregmegil out and carry him out with them. Little Eregmegil latched-on real hard to Thranduil after that and has basically decided to devote his whole life to Keeping Thranduil Safe now.

But also he has a LOT of feeling about Protective Older Siblings, especially sisters, because his own died trying to protect him from the Fëanorians. So that's why he decides to pry himself away from Thranduil to go look after Rílaerloth for a little, because that's about the only impetus that could make him leave Thranduil when he's not 100% sure that Thranduil is going to be okay.

Hopefully all of those background details will get to come out in Coming Home Under The Trees, which is where I'm doing the bulk of my Mirkwood OC Building, but if you want an advance read of the Gimli-and-Eregmegil-bonding chapter that's going to eventually be included in that story...read on.

*also Eregmegil 100% has one of those oversized anime swords but he's so big no one can quite prove it.

NOTE that this is all rough first draft writing at this point.

Gimli stepped back, his palms raised in surrender. He shook his head at the hands that stretched back towards him. "Nay!" he gasped, his chest heaving in exertion. "Peace, you fiends! I must rest 'ere I fall off my feet."

The elves laughed and returned to their dancing, Legolas pausing just long enough to catch Gimli's eye and raise his brows in a silent question. Gimli nodded—he was fine, perfectly fine! He just needed a moment to breathe, for Mahal's sake!—and Legolas grinned and let himself be pulled back into the merry tumult under the trees.

Gimli brushed sweat-damp curls out of his face and looked around the clearing for a suitable seat. He did not want to go too far from the fire: the night pressed-in dark around the vibrant circle of elvish revelry and while Eryn Lasgalen was a more peaceful place than it had once been, his father's stories about Mirkwood lingered in his mind. Gimli was not keen to go wandering these woods with neither path nor elf to guide him back out of the shadows, not even now that those shadows at last were lightening to match the new name of their lands.

He spotted a likely log lying comfortably within the fire's glow, and Gimli made his way across the grass towards his pending seat with only two interruptions of elves trying to pull him back into the dance. He demurred politely and they shrugged and flitted off to their merriment without him.

The dwarf had to admit that Legolas had not been boasting when he had told Gimli that no one in all of Middle-earth hosted a revel quite as enthusiastically as the elves of Mirkwood. He had scoffed at first, expecting celebrations more in line with the gentle merrymaking he had experienced in Lórien, or the cozy nights of song in Rivendell. What he had found instead was carousing more akin to that which he'd experienced briefly in Rohan, yet somehow more raucous and unflagging. Mirkwood's elves cavorted as though they were going to war with sleep and sorrow both, and each twirl of their dance was a salvo in the battle against solemnity.

Gimli had kept up well, at first; dwarves are experienced revel-makers and they take their celebrations as seriously as they do their crafts or mining. But there comes a point in the night where dwarven celebrations turn from rowdy to melancholic, and in Mirkwood no such slower periods were allowed to dilute the tireless tumult of their festivities. The wine kept flowing, the songs kept rising, and the dancers kept spiraling around the fire as swift as arrows in the wind.

The problem, Gimli had finally determined, was that elves did not know how to appreciate sleep. It was because they did not partake of it properly, he thought, wandering as they did through half-waking dreams rather than sinking fully into slumber like reasonable folk. They did not know how to truly rest, so they simply kept going about their revels long past when all sensible peoples would have taken to their beds—aye, and then woke again without taking nearly enough time for slumber in between!

He was only a few feet away from the log where he intended to rest his feet when he realized that one end of it was already occupied; so still was the elf sitting upon it that, in the shadows at the edge of the clearing his green and brown garb blended almost completely with the foliage around him. Gimli was not sure if his presence would be welcomed or not—anyone sitting solitary at a bacchanal like this was doubtless seeking solitude rather than interruption by a near-stranger—but it would have been impolite to immediately turn aside, so he resolved himself to make a few minutes of polite conversation at least before taking himself off to some other seat and leaving the other to his chosen seclusion.

"Mae govanen," Gimli said with a respectful bow. "Forgive the intrusion," he continued when the elf—Gimli thought he recognized him as one of the guards he had met on his first arrival to the forest, although his head was muzzy enough that he knew it would take him several seconds to place the proper name—gave him a nod in response. He was still dressed in the light molded-leaf jerkin that served Eryn Lasgalen's warriors for armor and sported elegant bracers on his arms, but his sleeves beneath the armor were short enough to expose pale arms that were muscled almost thickly enough to belong to a Man although not, of course, to a Dwarf. His dark hair and white face were striking in the firelight—few of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen were quite so pale, and fewer of them sported such sharp contrast in their coloring—but it was the breadth of his shoulders and the stoutness of his arms that Gimli noticed the most. He was still uncomfortably slim to dwarven eyes, but less so than any other elf that Gimli had met. Had someone chopped his limbs down to a more reasonable length, he could almost have passed for a normal, if unhealthily skinny, person—at least if someone had loaned him a beard!

Realizing he was staring impolitely in his attempt to put a name to the face in front of him, Gimli offered a friendly smile and continued teasingly, "I do not wish to bring merriment with me to where it is unwanted, but if you will allot me a few moments in which to rest my tired feet from the revels you have chosen to eschew, I promise to keep my merry-making to a minimum in the interim and thus refrain from interrupting your repose."

He meant it as a jest, likely to segue into a bit of banter about dwarven endurance or perhaps commiseration about the other's likewise weary toes, but perhaps the elf could not see the grin on Gimli's face beneath his beard for he responded to his words as though they had been spoken in grim seriousness: "It is true, Lord Gimli, I am not much for merriment, but you are welcome to take your rest for as long as you like regardless of however much mirth you might feel or express; your presence brings no distress."

Gimli was taken aback but he hid it well; with another short bow he settled himself upon the lower curve of the fallen branch and stretched his legs out in front of him with a contented sigh.

"My thanks, Master Elf," he said, and finally the name came back to him: Eregmegil, the tallest of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen that Gimli had yet met, although that was not evident while he was seated thus. "You are a most generous host." Gimli glanced sidelong at the elf, but if Eregmegil's pale face evinced any particular feeling it was not distinct enough for Gimli to discern it in the dim shadows at the fire's edge.

As for Gimli, he smiled vaguely as a familiar laugh rose from Legolas's lips above above the nearby tumult, but he made no effort to spot the whirl of his golden hair twirling amid the rest of the cavorting elves. It was enough to know that his friend was happy; enough to sit here in peace and be happy himself.

The dwarf had abandoned his light jest at Eregmegil's words, being much more intrigued by this stoic elf than by his planned banter. "I hope you will not think it over-rude of a curious stranger if I ask why you have come to this revel, then, if you have no care for such things?" He flapped a hand in the general direction of the fire and the frolicking figures circling it. "Surely you would enjoy your evening more elsewhere, if you take no pleasure in such nonsensical cavorting?"

"My king is here, so I am here," Eregmegil said flatly.

Gimli was startled enough that he knew it showed on his face; only the fact that Eregmegil was not looking at him, but rather at the swirl of dancers at the fire, spared him the embarrassment of being seen to give such an impolite reaction. He could not help himself; it was a genuinely startling statement. The elves of Eryn Lasgallen were probably the least conscious of their king's rank as any people in all of Middle-earth, at least any that Gimli had yet met.

Dwarves were not given to standing on unnecessary ceremony themselves, but even at their most casual they were always conscious of their king's status as the king. These elves, by contrast, seemed to treat Thranduil more like a communal father-figure than as a ruler. Legolas and his sister did not even seem to qualify as royalty in the eyes of their people (no wonder, then, that Legolas had been more prone to introduce himself by his land than his lineage!) and while Rílaerloth was at least beneficiary of the respect afforded her as a commander of their warriors, Legolas—despite all of his heroic deeds—seemed to be viewed still as little more than a hapless child by many of his fellows, as though he were the whole forest's little brother rather than Rílaerloth's alone.

This behavior was strange to Gimli, and even after many days spent in company with Eryn Lasgalen's people he was still not used to their casual disregard for rank or ceremony—or so he had thought, until he was confronted by an example of someone acting more according to his expectations. Gimli was intrigued. Thranduil's people regularly showed affection for him, yes, but this was the first time he had seen any of them express the sort of dutiful devotion that beloved kings oft engendered in other lands.

He studied Eregmegil where he sat on the log beside him, but the pale elf's profile was as smooth and emotionless as if he had been carved from white granite.

"Think you that Thranduil requires a guard, then?" Gimli asked. "I thought the threats had been driven from your trees." He could not quite resist the urge to squint into the darkness past Eregemegil's shoulders—broad for an elf, Gimli noted, but still scrawny as a sapling by dwarven standards—although he was certain that the flickers of ominous motion he saw between the black silhouettes of the trees were only the result of his eyes and the flickering firelight playing tricks on him.

He was almost certain, anyway.

"Many of them have been," Eregmegil acknowledged. "The largest are all destroyed, and the rest have been hounded far from our halls, at any rate." His voice was no more coarse than any elf's but there was something to the tone of his words that made them seem more brusque than what Gimli was accustomed to hearing from his friend's people; a flatness that stood in stark contrast to the musical lilt that Gimli had begun to think was an innate part of elvish tongues.

"And yet you stay to guard him?" Gimli observed curiously. "That is admirable devotion."

For a long time Eregmegil stared at him in silence, so that Gimli began to think that he had offended the tall elf. He cast his mind about for a suitable apology, but before he could make one, Eregmegil broke their gaze to look back into the fire instead and said:

"He carried me out of Doriath."

"Doriath?" Gimli repeated, the half-formed phrasing of his repentance dashed instantly from his mind. He knew the name of Doraith, and recognition made his heart sink. "Ahh…"

"It was the Fëanoreans who brought tragedy to Doriath, in my case," Eregmegil said. The glance he slotted sideways at Gimli seemed to shine with a glimmer of momentary amusement at odds with his otherwise impassive mien before he faced forward again, stoic as ever.

Gimli nodded and tried to resist the urge to breathe a telltale sigh of relief.

"I was a child when they came, too small to fight," Eregmegil continued. His bland voice carried a bitter undercurrent. "My sister grabbed me and ran, but they pursued. She tried to fight, but she was no warrior. They dashed her knife from her hand and stabbed her with it. We fell, she curling low to protect me still. They stabbed her again with their long swords—stabbed us both as we lay there, but her body shielded mine and I was cut only along the arm." He gestured to the offending limb and Gimli was startled to see what seemed to be a long, thin scar along the pallid flesh. "She was cut deeper. I lay there, pinned beneath her like a caged bird, and watched as her fae left her eyes. I felt her grow cold in my mind and against my skin as we lingered there in the dark. She died, and I lay there trapped by her dead weight and my own sorrow."

Gimli's breath caught in his chest and strangled whatever insufficient words of sympathy he might have offered. Eregmegil did not seem to notice; he spoke matter-of-factly, although his eyes flashed with dark shadows in the firelight.

"It was Thranduil who pulled me from the ruin of her body," the tall elf continued calmly. "He heard my tears, somehow, even over the clash of battle that echoed through Menegroth's halls. Bleeding, his surviving father dangling half-dead at his side, his hands filled with the bloody swords of his living and dead father both, the Fëanoreans close on his heels, Thranduil still stopped and pulled me from my sister's arms. He set me on his shoulders and carried me, carried both Lord Oropher and myself, out from the ruin of Doriath; somehow still fighting to defend us all despite his burdens and his wounds and his own losses; carried me away from the darkness of our dying home and back into the light of the world beyond."

Gimli did not know if it was some trick of the firelight reflecting off of Eregmegil's grim grey eyes, or a result of the many droughts of heady elvish wine he had quaffed this night, but for a moment he could almost see it: the great halls of lost Menegroth, once a glorious testament to the marvels that could be crafted when elf and dwarf worked hand-in-hand, now incarnadined with blood and darkened with betrayal; its proud torches sputtering or gone out altogether, cut-down by enemy hands; too many fair elvish bodies strewn about the fastness of the Thousand Caves, cut down cruelly by blades of elvish make wielded by elvish hands; and one small child, sobbing into his sister's silent sleeve. Then from the shadows staggered Thranduil, his golden locks stained ruddy with blood, bare blades gleaming in both hands, one arm wrapped tight around his father's waist with Oropher's arm dangling limp across his shoulders, both elves bleeding heavily from many wounds; the elder nearly insensate and the younger wild-eyed and desperate, yet still in enough possession of his senses and his compassion to stop to help a fearful child…

(If the younger Thranduil in Gimli's imagination looked more like his son than like himself, well, what of it?)

He blinked, and the vision vanished, and there was once more only dark trees looming before his eyes. He cleared his throat, and managed to murmur something that expressed his sorrow for Eregmegil's losses without revealing the depths of his horror at such suffering at the hands of those who should have been kith or even kin rather than bloody-handed enemies; dwarves had fought amongst themselves in ages past too, of course, but somehow the level tone of Eregmegil's recitation made Gimli's skin crawl more than any tales of those regrettable conflicts had ever done.

(Maybe it was just that he kept picturing Legolas stumbling down those bloodstained halls rather than his father.)

Eregmegil accepted Gimli's admittedly less-than-eloquent sympathies with an impassive nod. Wishing to draw both his and the elf's thoughts to lighter places, Gimli cleared his throat again and asked, "So, ah, what was next? I confess I do not know the history of this forest as well as I should, but I believe that Thranduil and his father settled somewhere nearby before venturing forth to Greenwood, is that not so?"

"Yes," Eregmegil said. "We fled to Lindon. I was reunited with my surviving relations there. They made a home among the Green-elves and the other refugees who settled in Ossiriand." He was looking at the fire again rather than the dwarf, or perhaps at the dancers; his blank expression was as unreadable as his voice. "But Thranduil and Oropher were not content to live there among so many Noldor, not after the fall of Menegroth. Not after the Kinslaying. And nor was I. They soon left to go east, to find the Silvan elves who still lived there—here," he amended, tilting one palm up to gesture at the forest around them.

There should have been more bitterness in Eregmegil's voice, Gimli thought; bitterness or scorn or something. This cool, too-calm recital made him shiver despite the warmth of the fire.

"Oropher hoped to find somewhere to live in better ways, more elvish ways; the ways in which our people lived before the Valar meddled and the Enemy made war upon us," the elf continued in his passionless way. "My relatives would not leave the new home they sought to craft in Ossiriand, but I already knew then that my place would henceforth be ever at Thranduil's side. I joined with the handful of other Sindar who chose to leave Lindon and seek-out the elves who had never joined the pilgrimage of the Valar; who had never been coaxed to abandon their native lands or customs."

"Were you not still a child?" Gimli asked, surprised. He was no expert on elvish history, of course, but he had been curious enough about Legolas's homeland to question his friend about its founding, and he had thought that he had a better sense of the timeline than this. Had not Oropher left Ossiriand within only a few years? Perhaps Eregmegil had simply been older than Gimli had pictured him in the story of Doriath's destruction; he might have been only a little shy of his majority, like Gimli himself had been when his father had joined Thorin's expedition to Mirkwood all those years ago: Old enough to feel that he was being left behind, but still seen as a child in his people's eyes.

Eregmegil nodded, however. "A child, yes, but not a fool," he said in a dry voice. "I did not ask for permission, and so my relations could not deny me. I left with my lord and came to Greenwood." He looked around at the tall, dark trees that rose into the black night sky far overhead, beyond the heavy leaves, and his grey eyes were as flat as the dullest stone that Gimli had ever carved. He did not smile at the trees. Had Gimli seen any elf in this forest fail to smile at their trees, even the most shadowed and twisted of them? And these trees were bright and merry in comparison to many of their fellows, as though they too shared in the delight of the elves for their firelit revelry.

"And have you been here ever since?" the dwarf asked carefully. "Or are you newly-returned, now that the Shadow has lifted?"

"I left these woods only once, to follow my lord to war in Mordor," Eregmegil replied. "It would take more than Shadow in the trees to tear me from his side.  Wherever Thranduil goes I will follow him, even unto the breaking of the world and yet beyond."

Gimli could not help but shiver at the weight of those words. There may have been no oath sworn—or then again there may have been, in days long ago before Gimli's father's father was born to hear it—but there was a surety to Eregmegil's voice that was as unshakable as any vow. He meant what he spoke with every fiber of his elvish fae, and he would damn himself to the Void before he forsook that intent.

"And yes," Eregmegil continued, and once again there seemed to be the faintest flicker of amusement across his grim lips, gone so fast that Gimli could not be sure he had not imagined it, "also to these merry revels that you seem to find so trying."

"I do not find them trying in the least," Gimli protested. "I quite enjoy them, in fact—I am simply tired!" He shifted on the log and scowled petulant. "Well and after all, I am much shorter than the other dancers," the dwarf added, feeling unaccountably as though he needed to justify himself. "I must work twice as hard as them to keep-up with the pace of their cavorting. No wonder I tire before the rest!" he blustered, despite knowing very well that the heart of the problem was not the speed of the dance nor the unseemly length of elvish legs, but rather the fact that elves simply had no proper appreciation for the merits of slumber, strange creatures that they were. Gimli was a stout and hearty dwarf, and justly proud of his strength and endurance; he was simply mortal, that was all, and as such he needed to sometimes refresh himself in ways that these flibbertigibbet elves would never comprehend.

"I stand corrected," Eregmegil murmured, and Gimli was certain this time that he detected a flicker of genuine amusement ghosting briefly across the elf's thin lips.

He harrumphed a grudging acknowledgement of Eregmegil's words and propped his chin in his hands, the better to watch the dancing. His eyes slowly drifted out of focus and he sank into something that was halfway to a doze, content to let his thoughts float as aimlessly and amiably as the blurry figures of the cavorting elves in front of him. As tiring as elvish dancing could be for a mortal participant, there was something restful about watching them too. 

"Do not mistake me, Master Dwarf," Eregmegil said after a while, shaking Gimli from his reverie.  "I do not dislike the revels of my people." Eregmegil nodded at the fire, and the whirling shapes of the other elves cavorting wildly around it, their lithe forms coming slowly back into focus as Gimli blinked. "I simply prefer to enjoy them from the edges here, where I can find pleasure in their delight without feeling compelled to manifest any of my own."

Eregmegil's gaze slanted back to Gimli, and now the dwarf could see a hollow darkness behind the mirror-like grey eyes that fixed so coolly upon his own. Had it been there all along, unnoticed, or had speaking of the past brought the vacuous shadows to the forefront? Gimli could not say, but no more could he unsee them now. "Whatever joy I once found in dance or in song went out of this world when my sister's spirit fled to the Halls of Mandos," Eregmegil continued flatly. "But it pleases me to see my people's joy, and in this bitter world that is comfort enough for me."

In the months since Legolas first heard the gulls at Pelargir, Gimli had developed a habit of skirting all mention of the Sea. It was thus not difficult for him to restrain the urge to ask why Eregmegil had not sought the healing of the Undying Lands that so many of his people sailed away to find when their spirits fell to the burden of such unendurable grief. He did not need to ask; he already knew the answer. Eregmegil surely knew as well as any elf—and far better than any dwarf, even one named elvellon—that the wounds of his soul could be staunched in fair and distant Valinor. But leaving would mean leaving his king's side, which would be the most grievous wound of all. And so he stayed, and carried the shadow of his losses with him, and endured.

Not for the first time, Gimli thought that the unmeasured lives of the elves was far from the enviable gift that so many mortals seemed to think them. If they had lived solely in joy, then their years unending might be something to covet—but the more time Gimli spent with elves, the more tragedy and sorrow he saw surrounding them. He had never brooded on the inevitability of Mahal's Peace the way so many Men repeatedly shied-away from their own inevitable end, had never feared the inevitability of his own ending; but sitting here at the edge of the firelight with Eregmegil, Gimli thought that rather than simply inevitable, there might be a certain comfort in the knowledge that one day an end would come to him. There would never be a day when he sat, two Ages of the world removed from the deaths of his kin, separated from the joy of his people by the weight of his own grief.

A flash of gold in the firelight caught Gimli's eye and he smiled instinctively at the sight of Legolas whirling like a wild thing in his friends' arms. The dwarf's tired feet ached just from looking at the roister of the dance, but like Eregmegil he was pleased enough simply to watch the unflagging joy of those who spun.

Legolas had described Mirkwood revels as though they were weapons against the darkness that hung over their forests, and Gimli had thought he had understood what his friend meant before, but he realized that it was only now, sitting beside grim and grieving Eregmegil, that he truly grasped the meaning of this defiant cheer.

The elves of Mirkwood—or Greenwood, or Eryn Lasgalen, or whatever else one chose to call this forest; the shadows that had defined it for so long hung over it still, even as they finally began to lessen, whatever name it bore—they were not less cognizant of elvish sorrows than their grander kin; in some ways perhaps they knew those sorrows better, for there was nothing to insulate the simple elves of Mirkwood from their weight, nothing but their own deliberate scorn for the sadness that strove to claim them.

The world wished for them to sigh in sadness? Then they would sing, sing until their voices gave out and dance until their shoes were worn clean through and the very trees around them reverberated with the echoes of their weaponized joy.

#i have a normal amount of feelings about mirkwood elves #eregmegil #mirkwood #greenwood #elves #my stuff #my writing #thranduil #gimli #rilaerloth #angmeril #lotr #legolas

[tathrin]

No I’m not having too much fun designing Greenwood/Mirkwood’s elves for my stories why do you ask.

1. Oropher  - first king of Greenwood. would punch god. no chill. 2. Thranduil - second king of Greenwood. prince of sass. 3. Legolas - oh sweet summer child. 4. Rílaerloth - too much big sister energy in one container. 5. Angmeril - punched gil-galad once. not sorry. 6. Merilgais - SHE HAS A KNIFE 7. Tiraran - keeper of Greenwood’s one brain-cell. very gay. 8.  Tarlas - married to the braincell keeper. shares custody sometimes. 9. Eregmegil - tall. broad. very chill. might actually be a tree. 10. Gilthawen - did not ask for any of this. and yet here we are.

[picrew source]

#shit i didn't realize i switched leaves halfway through well too late now #thranduil #oropher #legolas #greenwood #mirkwood #ocs #picrew #my stuff #fanfiction #lotr #elves #angmeril #merilgais #tarlas #tiraran #eregmegil #gilthawen #rilaerloth

[tathrin]

What's the wildest out of context sentence in your latest wip? (Bonus points if it's wild in context too.)

//when you answer this send it to at least one other writer you follow on tumblr!

Oh that's a lovely game! Thank you anon.

Legolas shifted in his arms before reluctantly admitting, "My mother stabbed Aulë."

#fanfiction #my writing #ask meme #legolas #aule #angmeril

[tathrin]

The file titled Oropher’s Return?

A response to this WIP Weekend game.

Thank you for asking! I haven't written anything on that one in quite a while, and it was good to get it going again because it really is a fun one. I'm not sure if we're supposed to post what we write for this or not, so in case we are here it is:

"Imagine my surprise," Nellglind drawled, "when I returned to life only to be confronted with an entire forest of Wood-elves I had never met before who wished to adopt me, while the Noldor and the Vanyar kept trying to convince all of us that I ought to be calling myself their king." "But that is not true at all," Angmeril laughed. "You returned to life almost two thousand years before I was forced to Sail here, and there was no Greenwood in Aman before that. You seemed to be quite happy living among the other Sindar of Doriath before you came to our woods." "If you wish to be strictly accurate about the order of events, then yes," Nellglind allowed, "that is how it went. But you must admit that it was a shocking thing to learn that my own husband had become a king of a people I had never met, regardless of how long I had to digest the story before there were any of you here on these shores so that I might see the results myself." "Well, I am glad that you came to see them, regardless of when it happened," Oropher said. "And that you have learned to love them, too." "Of course," Nellglind scoffed. "How could I not come meet my own daughter-in-law the moment I heard she was on these shores? And of course I fell in love with her immediately, for how could one do otherwise with such a charming elleth?" "That is also untrue," Angmeril said, laughing harder than before. "You found me to be absolutely irksome when first we met, and we both know it. There is no call to pretend otherwise now." "True," Nellglind shrugged, "but I found Oropher irksome, too. Being irked is how I fall in love." Oropher laughed very loudly, and pulled Nellglind in close to kiss his ear, and said, "That is true indeed, fortunately for me!" Gimli had not been able to keep from snickering at that. Legolas shooting him a scowl that said he knew exactly why Gimli was laughing had not helped, and he had to press his mouth into his beard to try and stifle his amusement. "You can be irksome too, you know," Legolas muttered. "True," Gimli said, still chortling. "But this is one contest in which I fear you shall always best me, my dear Legolas!" Legolas muttered something very vulgar in Sindarin in response, and Angmeril laughed so hard that her mother frowned in concern and told her to be careful she did not fall from the log on which she sat and roll into the fire. That, of course, had only made them all laugh harder. Then Oropher had asked his husband, "Have people really been pressing you to declare yourself king of the Greenwood?" Nellglind responded with a grimace that was almost as eloquent as Legolas's cursing and said, "Yes. It is the most nonsensical, irritating—" "They do the same to me," Angmeril said, scowling. "At least you have actually been to the forest whose echo they now want us to rule," Nellglind griped. "I have never even seen the original Greenwood!" "These Noldor do love their crowns," Oropher snorted. "Perhaps if they had ever learned to love their kith and kin as highly, they would not have been so quick to spill elvish blood in the pursuit of jewels and power." "We are not going to get into all of that," Nellglind declared firmly. "You have only just returned from the Halls of Mandos, and this is a night for joy. Not for dwelling on our losses and our sorrows." "My sorrows are all abated now that you are at my side once more," Oropher declared, his sharp eyes softening with warm affection. Then he frowned and glanced at Gilthawen and asked, "Is not your husband here as well?" "No," Gilthawen said, her voice very quiet. "He was not here when I disembarked," Angmeril told them all. "Whatever happened to my father after he left the Greenwood, he did not make it to Aman." Oropher reached over and took Gilthawen's hand. "I am sorry," he said. Gilthawen mustered a smile. "I am sorry, too. But we parted long ago, and by his choosing. I will not waste my days mourning him now." "Quite right!" Oropher declared, and stood to pour them all more wine.

#oropher #nellglind #gilthawen #angmeril #legolas #gimli #my writing #wips #gimleaf #ask meme #wip weekend

[tathrin]

Angmeril 7, 13 & 40.

Question J?

Ahh, Angmeril! I would love to talk about her, thank you anon. (Questions from this list.)

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

I don't think it's something that has a lot of weight or meaning for her before she leaves the Greenwood, but once she (reluctantly) sails to the Undying Lands I think that she ends up pretty consumed by nostalgia, because she didn't want to come and doesn't want to be here and desperately misses her home and her people and she feels so very, very alone without them and her trees.

At that point anything can trigger the feeling/memories, and often does. The wind whispering through the branches of trees that sounds a little bit like it did at home? The wind not sounding like it did at home? A flash of the right shade of green on someone's clothes, a shadow that hits her face just right, the moon framed by the fingers of tree-branches overhead? etc etc.

Once more of her people cross the Sundering Sea and they decide to start making their own space in Aman, start the effort of bonding with and settling in a new forest, it gets better (because she has a distraction, because she has a place that might someday be home) but also worse, because there's so much more to remind her now; because this simple plain young forest doesn't have any of Greenwood's strength, its weight. Because for a moment she can maybe fool herself, glancing out at the trees...but they're not the same, and she can't fool herself for long, and then it hurts more.

So to the question of whether she enjoys the feeling...? Well, yes and no. Because it's painful, so painful, to feel forever sundered from your home and all you know and love. But her memories are also all she has left of the Greenwood now, so as much as the reminder of her losses hurts her, she cherishes them too.

13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

Oooh this is an interesting one. Definitely some shade of green and that would likely suit her, with pale spring greens looking striking against her rich brown skin and darker, deeper greens making the sort of faded-bark-brown of her hair pop in contrast. For preference, I feel like she'd mostly dress more for blending with her trees than standing out against them, so it's convenient that that coloring suits her. She'd probably look equally good in blues, but greys and some shades of browns might make her look washed-out, I'm thinking. Reddish-browns would either look really rich and vibrant on her, or very wan; it would depend very much on the individual tones.

I think in general she dresses very plainly and practically, and especially during and following the Last Alliance she pretty much eschews any concerns for aesthetics. (See: the hair chopping incident.) Her only ornamentation in those years would be flowers that somebody (Thranduil, Merilgais, the kids, whomever) wants to braid into her hair or loop around her neck. Even in Aman, where there's endless time and no danger to fight, I think she'd stick with a lack of ornamentation and "superficial" interest in her own appearance both from habit and out of stubbornness—very plain clothes, braids whose complexity is solely a result of wanting to keep the hair held back securely rather than out of joy in the patterns themselves, etc—until Gimli comes along and starts gifting everybody with jewelry that's made with too much love and care to refuse. (Then it turns out some of the haughtier Noldor are irritated by seeing the "simple" Greenwood elves prancing around with brand new dwarf-made accessories, so she makes sure never to go out without at least one bracelet or hair-comb after that!)

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

In some ways probably too much. Angmeril inherits her mother's sense of (over)responsibility, and takes on a lot of guilt for not doing enough—about anything: not being able to keep more of her people alive during the Last Alliance, not being able to fill-in for their missing parents for Merilgais better, not being able to free her forest of all threats, not being able to stay and continue to defend her trees and see her son grow up...etc. She's focused on the practicalities almost to the point of being cheerless sometimes when things are dark; even when there isn't an imminent threat she's still always running what-ifs? in her brain, constantly aware that there could be a threat and consequently very unforgiving of herself when she doesn't reach her own expectations.

In others, however, she'll definitely gloss-over both her own flaws and those of her fellow Greenwood elves, out of mingled pride and defensiveness. How dare those uppity High Elves say that Oropher was to blame for the "recklessness" of the charge that saw so many of her people killed? If Gil-galad wasn't such a pompous, arrogant, condescending ass that he refused to "set his ego aside" and order the rest of the army to follow what was obviously the right call, Greenwood wouldn't have been slaughtered and the siege would never had happened because they'd have defeated Sauron right then and there! And Gil-galad definitely had it coming when she decked him for expressing his sympathies for their losses too. She's protective of those she loves, sometimes at the expense of a rational assessment of reality.

Angmeril is not as (sometimes willfully) oblivious as some elves of the Greenwood (cough*Merilgais*cough) so she knows that sometimes they aren't in the right, or have to at least take a share of the blame, etc etc — but she's very good at mentally skipping-over that possibility whenever there's a chance to blame a Calaquendi, especially a Noldor and especially someone related to Gil-galad instead (Elrond is very lucky that she wasn't still in Middle-earth when he sent Legolas off with the Fellowship into danger y'all). She's also got a fair portion of that "the best way out is through" attitude that defines so much of Mirkwood's elves, so sometimes self-awareness falls to the wayside in favor of just yeeting herself directly at the problem until one or the other (or both) of them are eliminated. Problem solved, yes?

Thank you so much for giving me an excuse to think and ramble about Angmeril, anon, she's one of my favorite bits of Greenwood and I don't get to write her much due to timeline. Thanks!

#angmeril #my writing #uncommon oc questions #mirkwood #greenwood #lotr #thranduil's wife

[tathrin]

how would we give you a dwarf oc to borrow if we wanted to? asking for a friend

Ooh! Well, you can message me here, reblog or reply to the original post, leave it as a comment on the fic, write a post and tag or send it to me, whatever. I'm not picky about the format!

Unless you're asking more "how do I wrap-up a character and give them to someone else to use" than just logistically? If that's the case, just the basic foundational info about them would be great. I'll use some of the notes I keep on my Mirkwood elves to illustrate.

Merilgais — Silvan. oak-brown hair, grey eyes, elm-brown cheeks. Youngest daughter of Gilthawen, younger sister of Angmeril and Rhosslas. Short, wiry, fiercely cheerful. Sharp-featured, knife-blade smiles. Moves like a hummingbird; has trouble sitting still. Joy is spite against the Enemy so she is determined to be happy no matter what. Irreverent both by nature and in order to keep up other people's spirits; considers that her primary role in the forest. Prefers to fight with long-handled weapons. Favors a glaive but always carries a long knife too (sometime the trees are too thick for anything longer). Quick to anger and quick to laugh and quickest to throw herself into a fight. Crass and blunt, for an elf. (Learned a lot of swear words from Men during the Last Alliance.) Spent the three thousand years after the war refusing promotion to gon of a Greenwood company; finally reluctantly accepted a command shortly before the War of the Ring. Does not act respectful towards anyone "in authority" (including herself) but isn't as loose-canon as she seems: she respects experience and skill, just doesn't respect acting respectful. Treats Thranduil like a cross between a too-serious big brother whom it's her duty to bedevil into laughing and a climbing gym. Likes to be up high. Never met a tree (or tall person) she didn't want to scale.

Not that it has to be that detailed; there's just a lot to say about Merilgais (most in a tone of exasperation, I'm sure). Something more like this would work wonderfully too:

Ladinion — Silvan. beech-pale skin, cloud-pale brown hair. Gangly. Approx. sixty years older than Legolas. Earnest, anxious. Good archer, lacks confidence. Close to Gladhanar, but can get bowled-over by his friend's confidence and boisterousness. Particularly fair singing voice, although he is shy and sings only quietly and in groups unless pressed by his friends. Prone to blushing.

Tulinwen — Silvan. russet-brown skin, stormcloud-silver hair. Delicate-featured even for an elf, almost dainty. A little shorter than average. Has one wooden leg, cut-off a few inches below the knee. A singer and an archer, particularly renowned for her knack for shooting spiders dead right through the eyes. Shrewd, analytical, doesn't speak until she's thought things through.

Just a sort of quick cliff-notes "here's so-and-so." Does that help? (I hope so! Crossing my fingers for imminent dwarves!)

#gimli dark lord of erebor au #lotr fanfiction #merilgais #ladinion #tulinwen #mirkwood #elf oc #my writing #my stuff #lotr #more dangerous less wise