Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
If there is such a thing as Moon-runes, it makes sense that there would also have been Tree-runes; and entire libraries rendered invisible, unreadable, untranslated by Sun or Moon. Rows of empty books upon books whose ink can be seen only beneath Telperion or Laurelin’s light, kept out of some foolish hope for their return, at first– and then out of an unwillingness to do away with what many still remember. If Earendil was ever allowed enough time out of the sky he might have been able to read what was lost by the light of the silmaril bound to his brow, though it often blinds him. But he has a voyage to complete until the end of the world; dragons to fight, lost children to dream of. And so the library stands empty, undecaying.
On the corner of a shelf; invisible maps of vanished continents.
A slim volume of love poetry one could only read at the time of the Trees’ mingling; the people it was inspired by almost unrecognisable to one another beneath the new harsh light.
Remember how Tolkien wrote that the Ainur don’t have gender but just chose to appear with the one they felt comfy with like with a jacket to be not so scary for the firstborn?
So what if at least in Valinor nb/ trans people are seen as closer to the Ainu and because of that it’s tradition, that in theater the Valar are mostly portrayed by trans people especially non-binary elves
pipistrellus: tolkien elves are basically vampires minus literal bloodsucking and i love that he NEVER REALIZED THIS. theyre not like elves at all really they are just. they're vampires. they are vampires. just fancy singing vampires
I was dancing outside the woods. It was starry and moonlit so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A wild man stared at me and touched my arm. I put up my middle finger at him and ran away.
“Hey Tinuviel!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was… Beren!
“What’s up Beren?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said shyly, and passed out for like year.
I’m having an out of body experience reading this. Ship what have you done.
“Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.”
The Silmarillion is a book full of deep pain and indescribable loss. It is a story about cataclysmic conflict, about war and death and destruction. It is a story about destructive relationships and severed bonds. It is a story about what fear and desperation can lead people to do. But, it remains a Tolkien story, and so it is also a story about hope. It is a story about looking for the light when everything goes dark. It is a story about determination and love that knows no bounds. A story about not giving up in the face dangerous quests and seemingly unconquerable odds. It is a story of finding allies in the most unlikely places. It is a Tolkien story, and that means that hope is never truly lost, because sometimes if you feel like you’ve lost yourself, it’s really just taking a detour to finding the truest version of you. Aurë entuluva, the day will come again, you just have to keep moving long enough to see the sunrise.
My first song in Quenya! Or a version of Quenya, anyway: this song comes from Tolkien’s unfinished novel The Lost Road, and the Quenya he writes in it isn’t exactly the same as the Quenya we see in LotR.
The character Fíriel in The Lost Road is a maiden of Númenor who serves Elendil: he hears her singing this song - about the creation of the world, its beauty and its eventual end - at sunset. The name means “mortal woman”, and Tolkien used it for a number of characters associated with death and endings. (Although, ironically, Míriel Serindë wasn’t renamed Fíriel, “She that died”, until after she’d come back to life…)
I’ve had to mess with the syllable-count to make this song work, which means I’ve messed with the lineation in places and I’ve elided some syllables between words. I’m very thankful to Helge Fauskanger for his word-by-word analysis of the poem! Emended lyrics and a translation are under the cut.
