Interests: Silmarillion, fanfiction

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The Birth of Silm Fanfiction

“Now Huan devised a plan for the aid of Luthien, and coming at night, he brought her a cloak…”

“Da.” Sam tried to ignore the tugging on his sleeve. “Yes, Daisy?”

“Where did Huan get the cloak?”

“Hmmm, they don’t ever explain that, do they?”

“Hush up, Daisy! We want to hear the story!”

“Where did he get it, Da?”

“Where do you think he got it, sweetling?”

“I think he sniffed at every door, and when he found one that was open, he…”

Sam reached over Robin’s sleepy head to pass her paper and quill. “Write it down, love.”

Interests: jewelry, porcelain, embroidery
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Loving Hands

What Faramir remembers most about his mother are her hands: soft and cool, with exquisite jewelry. He recalls a peculiar translucence, like porcelain, and her veins like delicate embroidery under the skin.

Eowyn’s fingers are short and calloused, with broken nails. Rough from riding and grafting fruit trees and helping to coax reluctant foals and lambs from their mother’s wombs.

At night, Eowyn rubs her hands with a salve of beeswax and lavender and honey, laughing that she had to fight the bees for every bit. Faramir kisses each finger, each palm, breathing deeply the scent of honey and flowers.

Interest: haiku, poetry, writing
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Haiku Writing

She is accustomed to seeing him write for hours, smiling with satisfaction; so it is unusual to see him so frustrated, writing and scratching and writing; then crumpling the paper and tossing it aside. What is it that disturbs him so?

“It’s a form of poetry, quite different from anything we write. Seventeen syllables, in a specific pattern: five, seven, five. I can’t get mine to quite work …bother! How do they do it?”

She smooths the wadded paper with her hand, and reads:

The sea breeze carries

Whispers of spring, to gladden

My lady’s grey eyes

“Count again, love.”

Interests: cats, spearmint tea

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Friendship

It was a tiny garden; a sunlit corner surrounded by a low stone wall. A small apricot tree, lavender and lambs-ears; rosemary, and dill. She would sit out and drink her spearmint tea, listening to the sounds of her city as it awakened.

Sometimes a solemn, owlish boy would stop to say good morning. He’d scratch the grey tabby behind the ears, and ask about the uses of various herbs, what the city was like in the old days, did she think rabbits would be good pets?

She saved him her first ripe apricots; he gifted her his favorite stones.

Interests: history, philosophy, poetry
~~~

Choose Your Friends Carefully

“History, philosophy, poetry. You’ve read all these books?”

“Well, perhaps not all of all of them, but at least some of most of them.”

“Was that all you did, then? Read? Did you never ride, swim, play?”

“I did. My brother was a great playmate and companion, but not a reader. When he left home, though, there were fewer distractions.”

She took the dusty volume from his hands and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Do you plan to spend a lot of time reading, again?”

He sighed. “No, I think I have taken up with yet another distracting companion.”

Interests: hot elves, hot men, swords
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Essay Question: Compare the effects of weather on elves and men.

When the weather is hot, elves appear unaffected. Neither cold nor snow disturb them, in fact, elves almost always manage to appear unruffled. What does rouse them?

When the weather is hot, men seek to cool themselves in whatever way they can. If they are near water, they strip off their sweaty mail and leather and race to the cool river, laughing, shouting.

Elves, encountering this joyous melee, may choose to join in. When all emerge from the waters, cooled, sated, they rest on the riverbank, stealing furtive glances. Faces flush, pulses quicken. Soon, they begin comparing the lengths of their swords.

In cold weather, body heat can be retained by lying close together.

Interests: Cross country, running
~~~

Born to Wander

Hobbits are not built for running, Ruby thought, as she ran. She had heard stories of the Mearas, the beautiful horses of Rohan, and thought there could be nothing better l than to run cross country, all over the green grass of Middle-earth. Or to fly like a bird, one of the great eagles who had rescued her Da and Mr. Frodo and carried them gently to their friends. She longed with all her heart to see such things, to touch them and smell them and know that they were really real.

When she realized she could not run like the Mearas or fly like the eagles, Ruby decided she would walk. Hadn’t her Da, and Mr. Frodo, walked all the way to the Black Lands? Borrowing her Da’s old pack, she would stuff it with food and her sketchbook and her water bottle, and would walk for hours, stopping now and again to draw a interestingly shaped tree, or a cat with her kittens.

“She’s got the wanderlust,” her Da said. “One day she’ll kiss us goodbye, and walk out that door, and not stop walking ‘til she’s walked all over Middle Earth,” And that’s exactly what Ruby did.

Interests: travel, writing, whitewater rafting, coffee, tigers, mountains, sea
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A Taste for Adventure

Times of peace, such had been never known before, opened up amazing opportunities for adventurous young hobbits. Travel and journal-writingbecame popular pastimes, not only for lads, but audacious lasses as well.

Foremost among these daring maids was Miss Ruby, youngest daughter of Samwise the Stouthearted. Miss Ruby was the first hobbit ever to raft the whitewaters of the Bruinen. She learned to brew coffee over a charcoal fire from the dwarves of the Misty Mountains, and once spent a rainy afternoon on a hilltop overlooking the great Sea of Rhûn sketching a family of tigers she found frolicking there.

Interests: Duran Duran, Firefly, Farscape, Mark Wahlberg
~~~

Boromir mourns the loss of his horse

Ah, Duran, Duran, how can I hope to travel across this far scape to Imladris without you?

By the light of these fireflies, I am writing to Faramir to tell him of my plight. Alas, I am not so sharp as he, my wondrously ambidextrous, multitalented, versatile young sib.

If I could but stagger to Wahlberg, I mean, Hornburg, I would throw myself upon the mercy of the Lord of the Mark, and beg the loan of yet another horse.

Oh Faramir, Faramir, why did I not just say, “Fine, ok, whatever,” when first you shared your dream of doom?

Cats, candles, painting, music, poetry, stars, and Robert Heinlein.

~~~
Stranger in a Strange Land

Bathed, fed, rested, Boromir wandered aimlessly; his only companion a friendly black cat who rubbed against his ankles, purring – the most cordial greeting he had received at Imladris.

He explored quiet, candlelit spaces, chambers where one would expect to find exotic visitors from distant lands discussing painting, music, poetry. Faramir would love being here, Boromir thought, stabbed by loneliness as piercing and painful as any blade.

Stepping outside, Boromir gazed up into the starry night, and breathed a silent prayer: Look up, brother; think of me in this moment, and know that you are in my thoughts, my dearest friend.