#b2mem25

[balrogballs]

a very quick sketch of The Bird Lady [Elwing] done with the single colour-pencil I found in the bottom of my bag on an overnight train from hell, drawn for @spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship for ✨ Team Idril ✨ for the prompt “Connection” + some fun prose I couldn’t resist

[sweetteaanddragons]

Back to Middle Earth Month - Fun

@spring-into-arda

For a moment, the stars were obscured by puffs of smoke and the glorious rain of multicolored sparks that danced above them - starbursts of color waterfalling down in splendid chaos until one last explosion split the night and unleashed the image of a dragon over Tirion for what he suspected was the very first time.

“Fireworks, you say,” Feanor said thoughtfully.

“Indeed!”

Even after his unexpected release from the halls of the dead, Feanor was not much given to wishing to be in company with most of the Valar or Maiar. He probably would not have approached this one if he had not for a moment mistaken him for a Man; the long white beard fit far better within Vaire’s tapestries than in the usual guises of the Maiar, and he had hoped for the chance to speak with one.

Still. This “Gandalf” was interesting enough to talk to. Especially since -

“Are those more I spy behind you?”

Gandalf turned to look at his stock in what almost seemed like surprise. “And so it is! I confess, I had expected someone to run off with them by now. They certainly would have in the Shire.”

“They are extra, then? Not needed for tonight’s showing?”

Gandalf puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “Not needed, no . . . Did you have another purpose in mind for them?”

“The color is most remarkable; I wondered if you had experimented with other elements - the noise, for example, is impressive in volume, but hardly harmonious; what have you tried with that?”

An unexpected flare of delight flared in the maia’s eyes. “A worthy project! And one I would be deeply honored to embark upon with you. If all of us may turn our minds to such things, perhaps we can hold the world healed indeed!”

[aredhels]

And Melian put forth her power and fenced all that dominion round about with an unseen wall of shadow and bewilderment: the Girdle of Melian, that none thereafter could pass against her will or the will of King Thingol, unless one should come with a power greater than that of Melian the Maia.

@spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship Match 5: prompt “defence”

[oopsbirdficced]

Out of Bounds

Rating: Gen

Fandom: Tolkien’s Silmarillion

Characters: Maeglin, Mahtan

WARNINGS: depression, one character thinking the other is going to hit him

–

Maeglin trespasses into the forge of another smith, chasing the need to feel something after returning to life.

Written for Back to Middle Earth Month 2025 @spring-into-arda

[aprilertuileviresse]

Day 2 of B2MEM

@spring-into-arda : for the prompt of the day for the B2MEM, my top 3 comfort fics are :

-Another man's cage by DawnFelagund (https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832198/chapters/8548381)

This is the story of the family of Fëanor in Valinor, before everything went to hell. Before the darkening and everything. It's lovely, surprisingly peaceful at time and unsurprisingly chaotic at others. Family life.

-The World breaks everyone by Mangacrack (https://archiveofourown.org/works/3788740/chapters/8431423)

Maglor isn't very sane, but also is very strong, is family is unique, and everyone is in deep trouble. Misery likes company sort of fic.

-Red, Red Moon (Keep on Rising) by Tilion (https://archiveofourown.org/works/53281741/chapters/141506926#main)

The Halls of Mandos doesn't know how to keep the feanorians in and it's delightful. Celegorm escape with spotty memory, and sort of try to bring Elurin and Elured to their parents, and with Oromë. And Huan.

-Bonus story : The ways of Paradox, by Narya https://archiveofourown.org/works/14638137/chapters/33832815

Lovely, Maglor in modern time, that I reread almost as often as the first three. It's pretty peaceful, and Maglor is... Well... Maglor.

[balrogballs]

Best-boy Finarfin

today’s (well, yesterday’s) sketches and ficlet for @spring-into-arda B2MEM music prompt, featuring Finarfin and a bonus Baby Finfin. Prompt lyrics included “I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes”.

Sketches are very rough for this one, apologies, but I was on a train and even Michelangelo did not paint the Sistine Chapel sat inside a Great Western Railway stopping service.

When he was knee-high, Finarfin had been Baby Finfin. Best-boy Finfin, eats-his-vegetables Finfin, easy-bedtime Finfin. He was content with unsolvable equations, and if bedtime was bedtime, then fine. In a way, he has not stopped being Baby Finfin.

Baby Finfin never really had anyone to play with because he was a baby and everyone was much, much older than him, and sometimes he would sit sulkily at the window all day long, stubbornly counting out the seconds. Sometimes he would tire of that, and so he would stomp back inside and build himself a house of wooden blocks and tell himself that it was just as good as racing horses in the fields outside like the big boys did.

It is much the same today.

Finarfin the Penitent lives half-awake as always, uneasy and inbetween, the lonely god of an empty world. Ponds and shallow hills and bedroom-shrines, dusk and dogged determination. He commissions statues to be carved from the steadiest stones and tells himself they are likenesses. In the face of loss he tells himself there will be a gain, that he will see everyone again. He puts mirrors at the end of most hallways in the palace, and is confident in their ability to reflect reality whilst providing the illusion that he is not alone. Finarfin sweeps up ashes and tells himself it is incense. He airs out empty rooms.

Dreams, however, persist. In Finarfin’s dreams there are miraculous returns, done things undoing themselves and it is fuelled by one of these dreams that he makes an effort to befriend his wan-faced granddaughter. Celebrían is as lonely as he is here, and their odd little friendship is dictated not by their blood tie but by their twin desires to tow lost ships back to their lonely shore.

“Arwen is a little like you,” she says. “Always sitting by the window waiting for people to return. Just like that, big-eyes and pout, my very-good girl.”

They look at each other and shudder. The fear of the left-behind steams up the mirrors, and they clasp their hands and tell themselves it is not foresight masquerading as hindsight but in fact the other way around. All their lost things would rise drenched from the sea, Finarfin tells himself, and there will be such glad cries all around. All will return. That other shore is only meant to contain them, not keep them. It is a repository, not an archive, this Middle-Earth.

Most of the time he thinks about the past. What happened then happens now in his mind, slippery and pervasive, piling up yeni after yeni. He turns old sequences over and over in his head, kneading the edges smoother and smoother until it is only rides-on-shoulders and stuck-in-apple-trees. He waits and watches, and knows that one day his future will come sailing sluggishly oversea, heads cast down, and on that day he, Finarfin the Penitent, will be magnanimous and benevolent and forgiving.

Until then, he is six-years-old with starfish hands, baby Finfin, best-boy Finfin pressed nose-to-window. He sits quietly, counting down the seconds till familiar faces crest snowcapped hills, and break through the bated blur of his breath.

[balrogballs]

The Last Journey of Arwen Undómiel

True drabble (100 words) and traditional art in (water)coloured-pencils, gold leaf and, painted lace leaves — for @spring-into-arda B2MEM Basketball Championship. Team Idril and the prompt was “CHAOS” and I chose to focus on Arwen’s final moments in Lothlorien.

See below for a WIP pic midway through losing my mind trying to put glue on these horrible little leaves without accidentally gluing my fingers to my ass.

[aredhels]

She was younger in the years of the Eldar than her brothers; and when she was grown to full stature and beauty she was tall and strong, and loved much to ride and hunt in the forests.

@spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship Match 1: prompt "shoot" ↳ archer Aredhel

[sweetteaanddragons]

Back to Middle Earth Month - First Times

@spring-into-arda

(Specifically: the first time Maglor tries to use an instrument after his rescue in my Memento Pugna verse!)

He had been forced to stay away from Maglor for longer than he would like; he trusted Lauriel to have ensured that Maglor received the care he needed in Elrond’s absence, of course, but there was also the lurking fear that this time when he returned, he would find that yet another piece of his family had slipped out of his reach.

The look on the apprentice healer’s face when he walked into the room to relieve her did not encourage him.

She fled without offering explanations, but he thought he could piece part of it together already; Maglor had turned in the bed so that his face was to the wall and did not appear to have moved for some time.

There was a hand harp on the floor beside the bed. A decided dent had been knocked into it from the force of the fall.

“Atar,” he said gently. “Atar, will you not look at me?”

There was a noticeable pause, the first time Maglor had refused him since Elrond had found him in that cell. That was progress, of a sort; he noted it in the small corner of his mind not consumed by worry.

Maglor turned at last. His eyes were terrifyingly blank.

“Elrond,” he said after yet another pause.

Elrond sat on the side of the bed. “Will you not tell me what happened?” he said gently.

“Nothing. Nothing that matters.”

Maglor’s hands were one of the few pieces of him that were not wrapped in bandages or recently released from them. The damage on them had been too old to require them.

Elrond reached for those hands carefully now. The palm of one was twisted by old, thick scar tissue; the fingers on both were near unrecognizable.

He could imagine what had happened when Maglor had attempted the harp.

“It is for the best,” Maglor said, still in that horrible, echoingly empty tone. “If I cannot wield a weapon . . . it is for the best.”

His voice was beautiful, even still, but it too had not healed; it rasped and caught unexpectedly.

“It is not for the best for you to be deprived of your music,” Elrond said firmly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Maglor repeated. “Only one thing matters, and this will only help with that; people will be less afraid, and if they are less afraid - “

“It matters,” Elrond said, just as firmly as before. He turned Maglor’s hands over, considering them carefully. He had to be sure before he said this, but -

Yes. He was sure. He had been considering the problem since he had gotten Maglor through those first terrifying weeks; once he had been sure the other would live, the problem had consumed every moment he could spare for it.

“I can heal this,” he said.

Maglor’s head snapped up.

“It is a risk,” Maglor said at last. He could not look at Elrond as he said it. “I would understand if - ”

“I can heal this,” Elrond repeated, “and so I will heal this, once you are strong enough to bear it. Only work on growing stronger so that day may come soon.”

Maglor closed his eyes. Took a shaking breath.

“I do not think I shall ever be done thanking you,” he whispered.

Gently - ever so gently - Elrond squeezed his hands. “Stay with me,” he said quietly. “That is thanks enough.”

[aredhels]

@spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship Match 3 ↳ Finrod and Maglor in Valinor

[aredhels]

@spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship Game 1: prompt “rivalry” ↳ Daeron and Maglor

[aredhels]

"Pay heed to sailors’ ancient lore - Set foot on no uncharted shore!"

@spring-into-arda Back to Middle Earth Month Basketball Championship Match 10 ↳ Siren Maglor

[sweetteaanddragons]

B2MEM - Victory (More Hunger Games AU)

@spring-into-arda (252 words)

The official oddsmakers had finished their calculations. They were running in a constant ticker tape across the bottom of the screen.

Maglor could have turned the screen off. It wasn’t mandatory viewing.

But he was trying to convince himself that the horrific odds they had given for Elrond’s victory were fueling him with enough spite to keep him going.

“Really, darling,” the current potential sponsor was saying from the other end of the phone, “you know I’m your biggest fan. But surely you can’t think either of yours have a real chance this year. Two twelve year olds . . . the odds were not in your favor this time around.”

Two twelve year olds.

He pressed that information very firmly to the back of his mind.

He had learned all too well the limits of the victories he could hope to secure. He could only hope for one, here. One vitally necessary victory.

He could hate himself for the rest after.

“And they both look like such gentle souls,” the voice on the other end of the phone sighed mournfully.

“Elrond does, doesn’t he?” 

He was very careful to make sure he sounded amused as he said this.

I know something you don’t know.

What he knew, of course, was that Elrond was, if anything, even more gentle a soul than he looked.

“Oh?” she said, instantly hooked by the hint. 

But he would happily imply otherwise for as long as he could if it meant a single bit more toward bringing him home.

[sweetteaanddragons]

B2MEM - (More) Chaos

@spring-into-arda (281 words)

A sequel to this.

There was a door that led up to the roof. Feanaro had used his belt to latch it closed as best he could, but it was far from his best work.

The door was shaking as someone hurled themselves against it now.

There was a garden on the roof - that was why there was such easy access to it - and Feanaro had tucked his sleeping children behind some of the bushes, and taken up the stoutest branch he could find to stand ready.

(He had sung them to sleep - he wasn’t sure how long ago, now.)

(Because they had been frightened by the riots below, of course. Not - not for any other reason.)

The door shook in its frame.

Once.

Twice.

It burst open.

Feanaro let out a cry and swung the branch -

Arafinwe ducked away, twisting his shoulders to protect the infant in his arms.

He halted with the branch an inch from Arafinwe’s shoulders.

The enraged hordes below had not ducked. 

They certainly had not done so to protect their children.

“Arafinwe.” The word came out more hoarsely than he liked. There was a pool up here, but he had been talking for too long even with the water to help. If his voice gave out -

But Arafinwe was turning. Was speaking. “Feanaro?” Sweat was cutting paths through the ash smeared over his face, but his eyes were clear.

Tiny Artanis, born only the week before, was sleeping in his arms.

He didn’t ask where the others were.

“You’re yourself,” he said dumbly, scarcely believing it. But then - “If anyone could politely abstain from an enchantment of rage, it would be you. Come onto the roof proper so we can get the door latched up.”

[sweetteaanddragons]

B2MEM - "Chaos"

@spring-into-arda (408 words)

Feanaro had spent most of his life simmering with rage. The seething boil of it had always worsened when he had compared its searing heat with the contentme-complacency that always seemed to surround him.

Standing on the roof of the palace and staring down at the writhing hordes in the streets below, he had to admit that this was worse.

They’d had to fight their way up here. Fight past the mindlessly enraged hordes that were tearing at the city they’d so proudly constructed, bare hands tearing at stone until their fingers dripped blood and bared bone. Fight past the sheer crush and weight of bodies as eager to rend flesh as to rend stone.

(Fight past the screaming need to turn back, to just go back, surely if he tried again he could still - )

Fight through it all with one arm still clutching little Telvo to his chest, with Makalaure’s hand still tied to his belt, because he had learned his lesson, he had learned, and despite all he could do he only had two hands -

But it had worked. It had worked, and Makalaure was here, and Makalaure had carried Pityo, and - and it was fine, surely that the twins would not stop crying; of course they would cry. Of course it did not mean that Melkor’s songs of discord had slipped its way into their minds to twist them to rage as best as their tiny bodies could. Of course the smoke and the screams would make them cry; of course the tension in his shaking arms would not help. Of course.

Of course he could stop talking at any time; stop letting all his power seep into his words; stop commanding Makaluare to be calm for the little ones’ sake with all the force of his will. Of course Makalaure did not need him to do this; of course Melkor’s song had not ensnared his son for even a moment and would not again if he let his own will sway for a second.

Of course the others were - fine. Would be fine.

The fountain in the courtyard below was running red. The eastern district of the city was flickering with an ominously growing glow. The shouting in the streets had a strange sound, like a tangled melody that never quite found a steady rhythm. 

He pulled Makalaure’s face into his shoulder and spoke quicker.

Of course he could still fix this.

Of course.

[sweetteaanddragons]

Back to Middle Earth Month - "Shoot"

@spring-into-arda

Amrod and Amras had been the acknowledged experts with the longbow among his brothers. They had offered to teach Maglor more than once, but his interest had been minimal. He had learned enough to be proficient in hunting, but he had never been a lauded marksman. War had not changed that; he had always preferred other weapons.

Proficiency did not seem enough now.

“Come on,” the orc captain jeered. “Let’s have our game! No backin’ out now.”

One bow, warped from ill keeping. 

One arrow.

Not enough to fight his way out of the horde circling around him, baying for blood.

One target, farther than he liked from where he stood, foot chained to a stake thrust in the ground.

One target.

One small form chained to it, a withered fruit ever so slightly trembling on his head.

Help was -

Not here. Not coming in the next few seconds.

He did not deserve for it to come. It would be pure justice to leave him to this. But Elrond -

The blood calls were growing impatient.

He raised the bow.

He had been warned, very clearly, the cost for not playing this game.

They had muzzled him like a rabid dog. He wished they hadn’t; wished he could call to Elrond some last desperate word, wished he could sing the arrow straight, wished he could sing his way clear -

Elrond stood as still as he could. Almost perfectly steady.

It had to hit the rotting fruit. To miss entirely would bring down the orcs’ torment; to hit him -

The night was dark; the Enemy’s smoke was thick on the air.

Only the light of a single star broke through. 

He drew back the string.

And let the arrow fly.