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Brotherhood  by Bodkin 17 Review(s)
elliskaReviewed Chapter: 6 on 3/10/2007
Hearing stories like this had to happen. I love moments like this. I think such things would be one of the more fascinating differences between elves and men.

Author Reply: There would be moments, I think, when being with elves would just make you catch your breath. And then, to make it possible to live together, you would have to put it to one side and just look on them as people in the here and now.

meckinockReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/31/2006
Poor Gilraen - just when she starts to settle in and get really comfortable, she gets hit upside the head with the immortality bat. On the other hand, she gets to make all the stories end happily for once.

Author Reply: She's just begun to look on the twins as youngsters - like everybody else in Imladris - only to realise that 'young' is definitely relative!

Yes - all the stories can have happy endings, and all the husbands and fathers can come home. At least for now. Poor woman. I think she's still very lonely - she needs friends of her own gender.

DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/29/2006
Very nice, and a carry-over from what I was observing in the last chapter. Only now Gilraen is seeing it from a different perspective.

Do you think you could be persuaded to chronicle any of Smudge's adventures? I am rather fond of tales of talking animals myself...

Author Reply: Difficult to accept, I think, that the elves are part of your own history. Possibly easier to see them as being part of something so remote it doesn't seem real. Gilraen saw the twins as warriors - but, to everyone in Imladris, they are youngsters, and that (and playing with Estel) has influenced her attitude towards them. Now - the glass has shifted and she has been reminded that youth is relative.

I'm afraid Smudge hasn't dictated any of his adventures yet. But you never know!

NilmandraReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/26/2006
Gilraen suddenly found it difficult to breathe. She had come to think of these elves as young – much as everyone else in Imladris did – but they were, of course, nothing of the sort. ‘You knew Aragost?’ she squeaked.

I like the idea that the twins can be young, yet their long years comes out at other times as well. Gilraen is as a child to them too, yet when they play with her son, she becomes the adult and they the young ones.

How sad to think of how much would be forgotten when the elves sailed from Middle-earth forever.

Author Reply: I suppose, in a way, it would show that they were getting used to each other. The twins would probably have shielded her from seeing them as they were at first - knowing that she wasn't ready to cope with that. Yet they can be young with Estel and grown up when he is in bed. And they offer Gilraen the respect due to a mother - while of course, in other ways, looking on her as barely more than a child.

Yes - the end of the elves in Middle-earth would be a very sad time, for many many more reasons than the division of Arwen and Elrond.

perellethReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/26/2006
How amusing for the elves to see real life turned into tales! ;-) History decanted into folklore, like mad old Uncle Bilbo who disappeared with a bang and reappeared again! Although to Gilraen surely was shocking! ;-) Really clever take, Bodkin, I loved it!

Author Reply: It would be odd on both sides. The stories would change, I should think - become ... cleaner and less real. Happier. In fact, they might be quite hard, a lot of them, to relate to the real events. While, to Gilraen, to see those she saw every day suddenly become ageless and experienced beyond the capacity of any human to understand would make them suddenly quite alien ...

Thank you, perelleth. I'm glad you liked it!

Linda HoylandReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/25/2006
It must be very disconcerting to meet walking history !i think you capture Gilraen's feelings very well here.

Author Reply: It's the sort of thing she would know - intellectually - but still, when you actually come up against it, it must feel a bit like being splashed by a very cold wave.

French PonyReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/24/2006
One does tend to forget just how young Gilraen herself was, I think. She's not too far off from the age of being the appreciative audience for stories about Elves and talking animals. Nice that she has the Elves to bring a little wonder back into what would otherwise be a hard, sad life.

Author Reply: Gilraen was very young. Under thirty, I think - which for a long-lived pure-blooded descendant of Numenor is barely out of childhood. I should think the stories are fresh in her mind. I like to think of Elrond and his sons caring for her as carefully as they did Estel - but she would, I think, have been very lonely. Especially as Estel grew and didn't need her so much.

grumpyReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/24/2006
It must seem strange that young elves would know men from long long ago. I too think stories with talking animals would be a something that Estel would like.

Author Reply: Knowing previous generations of the Dunedain would seem oddly alarming, I think. Whereas having known legenday elves would probably seem fine.

Whereas talking animals are something anyone could relate to!

RedheredhReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/23/2006
I liked getting more about young Gilrean in this chapter. I can appreciate her initial shock and subsequent excitement of hearing eye-witness accounts of history where you really did not expect to find them. Especially, if they included friendly dragons!

I would love to talk to someone like Casca Longinus - after I got over the terror of meeting him face-to-face!


Author Reply: Rats - I just answered this and it got lost.

It must be really disconcerting to sit down and find you're talking to someone who knew your great grandparents and their great grandparents. Possibly more disconcerting than hearing them talk about Eonwe and the War of Wrath or Gil-galad.

Smudge the friendly dragon probably seemed totally innocuous in comparison. At least unless she discovered that they were true ...

LarnerReviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/23/2006
Indeed, family history is always interesting, particularly when told by those who lived through it. And Aragorn will have the chance to know more of his family's past than most of his family have known.

One day I must write the story I promised in which the twins discuss Isildur's skill with whistling with Aragorn.

Author Reply: That sounds a good story. I look forward to it!

Aragorn might well find hearing it rather less disconcerting than Gilraen would, though. He will have grown up knowing that the twins were more than they seemed. I'm not sure she wouldn't find it easier to hear Elrond talk about Gil-galad, though, than to have the twins tell her about her immediate ancestors. It's more personal.

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