Stories of Arda Home Page
About Us News Resources Login Become a member Help Search

One Who Sticks Closer than a Brother  by Lindelea 4 Review(s)
BodkinReviewed Chapter: 25 on 7/26/2007
Oh no! Fight, Tolly, fight! Ferdi - even in his condition and with his brains shaken halfway to Yule - saw straight to a possible solution - and now the delay might make it all in vain.

Poor Tolly. It seems as if his experiences in the Troubles are as bad as Ferdi's - and that's saying something. Although I reckon that he has at least some positive experiences with Big People, because I doubt he'd have made it out of his early grave without some assistance.

Author Reply: You know, I think you have something there. We'll have to look into that idea, one of these chapters...

Good to hear from you. Thanks!

DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 25 on 7/18/2007
*bounce*bounce*bounce* We're getting to the really cool part that I've been waiting for!!

Oh, I mean, poor Tolly.

Author Reply: LOL! And now I wonder about the really cool part... y'know, this chapter was *awfully* hard to write, because I kept wanting to jump ahead, myself.

Thanks!

FantasyFanReviewed Chapter: 25 on 7/18/2007
I loved the names of the inns in this chapter, expecially "A Rock and a Hard Place". It goes so well with all the aphorisms in the chapter titles!

So Pippin's fifty here. So strange to think of Pippin as fifty. I mean, I know as the years go on he gets older, everyone does. And as he ages, he's matured and we've gotten to see a lot of it. And eventually he'll be much older than fifty, and in his prime in wisdom and grace. But Pippin also will be forever young at heart. I think of Bilbo at fifty, set in his ways and then shaken up by his adventure. Bilbo always was a fussy old man, even then. And Frodo at fifty was curious, determined, strong-willed, and ultimately wounded. Frodo at fifty was so self-assured. Pippin at fifty is still feeling his way as Thain, but he's got that wealth of experience the quest brought him. He's a study in contrasts: grown among the great, but not quite trusted. Childlike in his enthusiasm sometimes, impatient as always, still impulsive, and yet as determined in his own way as Frodo was, dragging all the hobbits in the Shire firmly into the fourth age, out of their parochialism and insularity. He's a force to be reckoned with, in much the same way as an ice storm may be: beautiful, sparkling, deceptive, dangerous, and gone as fast as it arrives.

Poor Tolly, so close and yet so far. (Oh, wait. That's the title of Chapter 8.) How to get him to Buckland faster? Or how to get Aragorn where he needs to be? Or how to keep Tolly holding on to complete the journey? I wonder what you've got up your sleeve next.

Author Reply: I remember when we visited England, looking at the painted pub signs, wonderful! I find myself wondering how you'd paint a rock and a hard place...

Pippin's been Thain for about six years now, if I'm remembering right. He was feeling rather confident about the matter until just before Yule, when he found himself guilty of a rush to judgment, and so he's been proceeding rather more cautiously since.

Oo, comparing him to an ice storm... fascinating parallel. (And ironic, since an ice storm shaped so much of what made him who he was.)

It is very nice to have a little slack time in the schedule for writing, and a tractable Muse, and a computer that's working, all at the same time. Nearly unbelievable. I do want to knock out this story fairly quickly because Nell and Ferdi's romance is demanding an airing. Somehow the Muse has become interested in Pippin's early years as Thain, once more. Am going with the flow.

Thanks!

LarnerReviewed Chapter: 25 on 7/18/2007
They'll make it--I have faith in the Thain.

Author Reply: Ah, yes, that Thain. When he sets his mind to something, he's hard to stop.

Return to Chapter List