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lament the state he should envy by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
18 Dec 2025
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"To make the choice a father should make if he wishes to be named a father, if he wishes to retain the title, to say yes, if I had the choice, then I would choose to not be homosexual if it means my son Elros would be alive today, it would require that I declare Fingon never deserved his place in my heart. That I stand with my back to the sea and sink our very lives as nothing but a shipwrecked fantasy. It should be so easy. A father must forever put his children first, before all. You know this, Elrond. But we were five years old when we met, Finnu and I. How can I cast those children from my heart?”
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One night on the cliff-house porch, Comrade Maedhros tells Elrond where exactly fatherhood lay upon his list of regrets, and what exactly he meant when he told Professor Gil-galad that he "was not a gay, but a Communist".Series
- Part 2 of Prayers to Broken Stone
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for these who die as cattle by timelessutterances for queerofthedagger
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
08 Dec 2025
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"So perhaps I love you not as a brother should love a brother, or perhaps exactly as a brother could have, with all the complication and contradiction that entails. I love your brilliance and your cruelty, your certainty and your blindness. I love the way you and Lalwendë moved through the world as if it owed you glory as your birthright, any compromise a defeat. I loved you all, and I resented you."
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A series of letters to the departed and exiled Fëanor, in whose absence Finarfin's long-held fixation with his oldest brother comes to the surface, and mingles uneasily with his sorrow at the loss of his siblings and his children. -
Were I Not A King by timelessutterances for ArlenianChronicles
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
29 Nov 2025
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"If I could, I would reach past this land and towards the sea, searching for some old version of my Fingon, who exists outside the bloody tale of the Noldor in Beleriand, who can be mourned in isolation from all our other ghosts and all whom we helped make into ghosts. But my brother Fingon no longer exists in isolation. Dirges in war must be orchestral or silent: there is no in-between. Death was his reward, but not his alone."
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On a rooftop three days after the Nirnaeth, Turgon rehearses a tripartite address he's scheduled to deliver the following day: an eulogy for his brother, an account of their final meeting, and his own coronation speech, in one. -
On the Tapestry Woven and Burnt by timelessutterances for Elronds_Library
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
29 Nov 2025
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"But there is one detail none of them have noticed, or at least none have recorded: in the upper left corner, in the very first panel showing Fëanor as an infant, Míriel's small watching figure is not looking at her son. She is looking down at her own hands, at the invisible needle, at the act of weaving itself, horror and disgust gnashing teeth across the pale threads of her face. As though she already knew."
Miriel Þerinde sews a tapestry, puts on a show, and muddies the waters.
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Circumstantial Light by timelessutterances for Peasant_Player
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
29 Nov 2025
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"Those who remain move through quieter streets, and tend to houses which now stand empty. They tend ailing blossoms in daylight, in gardens beholden to the sun. And Finarfin tends to them in turn, this king of circumstance, this lord of loss."
_________Finarfin encounters a persistence of bees.
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she that was young and fair by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
01 Nov 2025
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"Would you do it again?" Elrond dares, his voice breaking on the question. "If you could go back, knowing everything—would you still jump?"
Elwing is quiet for a long moment.
Then she turns to him, face carefully composed, her voice near-inaudible: "What was the bride-price you named for your daughter, Elrond?"
_____________The story of a monumental choice that shaped the life of Elrond Peredhel, told in seven unanswered questions, and an eighth asking to be understood.
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The Cenotaph by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
20 Oct 2025
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“For no war ever ends. Children born tomorrow are shaped by arrows fired yesterday. Celeborn’s daughter was born over a thousand years after the sacking of her father’s birthplace. She will live to the breaking of the world having only ever known a father who once watched his homeland burn and spent the rest of his life counting Doriath’s dead. Like all war-children born to a world that had already ended for their parents, Celebrían had to learn there were rooms within her father she could never enter, whole wings of his fëa razed to the ground.”
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A study of Celeborn, the Second Kinslaying, and his lost Doriath, from the First Age to the Fourth. -
Apostle by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
23 Sep 2025
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“There’s some sort of great cathedral within me,” Fingon had wanted to tell Maglor. “This vast, echoing hollow, the site of my father’s devotion. These days, there is only a single inhabitant. The vicar is dead and the bishop is nowhere to be found. Russo lives there alone, the final acolyte driven into madness, hollering irreverently, sloganeering and saluting, his self-destructive pacing desecrating every inch of the nave. The walls are worn thin, the windows collateral damage, and the foundations will crumble sooner than they should. But how can I exile him from it? How can anyone ask that of me? Why must I do such a thing? Cast him out? No. No, I cannot. It is a cathedral. It is a sanctuary.”
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When he and Maedhros are obligated to attend a stranger’s wedding in Thrissur, Fingon finds himself navigating the differences between shame and embarrassment. A bittersweet vignette set in the Prayers to Broken Stone AU, but can be read standalone.Series
- Part 4 of Prayers to Broken Stone
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Prayers to Broken Stone by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
16 Sep 2025
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“The Maedhros who stands before his son is not one thing but many. He is a struck-down statue. He is a fading demon. He is a sword in a nuclear war. He is historical debris. He is the sum of a nation’s ruin. He is the first sunset of the Empire’s apocalypse. He is Elrond’s beloved Baba, who would find him under every starless sky. Archives will dissect him. Historians will redeem him. Writers will swallow him whole.”
In 1937, notorious Indian revolutionary Maedhros Fëanorian and his brother Maglor, take in a British colonial officer's twin sons and raise them to adulthood. Decades later, Elrond Peredhel, trying to leave a family tragedy behind in England, returns to India during a time of political turbulence and finds that everything, from the national landscape to his firebrand father, the ineffable Comrade Maedhros, has changed. Chapter 19: Epilogue, Afterword and 'Alternate' Ending.
Series
- Part 1 of Prayers to Broken Stone
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The Cradlesinger by timelessutterances for zuo_zuo
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
06 Sep 2025
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"Lullabies do not make kinslayers. This he knows. And yet, it never stops the worry from curdling in his chest, the only constant of all the cradles he has sung beside. For the tune endures after all, and nothing empty can truly endure: every vacant hroä holds a fragment of the fëa that once forsook it. Can a song be washed of meaning? Is tenderness immune to ideology? Groping about blindly in the dark of their dreams, Elrond had always worried that he was not watering the crops for his children to harvest, but salting the earth before the seeds could be planted."
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At a parade celebrating the the founding of Imladris, Elrond spots an unforgettable face in the crowd, a face he’s not seen for millennia. To his delight and apprehension, it is indeed Maglor Fëanorian, who brings with him two things. First, a suspiciously tame monkey he insists isn’t a metaphor. Second, the groundshaking admission that Elwing and Eärendil’s sons were not named Elrond and Elros.Or, a love letter to Maglor, Elwing, and Elrond.
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Holiday Lessons by timelessutterances for ArcticNorthMilady
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
06 Sep 2025
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"You're cataloguing my deficiencies again," Maedhros said without turning. His voice carried that new quality it had acquired on the mountain, that carefully modulated roughness it had never carried before. He had far too long to think, of course, and vet his own thoughts. And when there were people around to listen again, he felt as if each word had to be vetted by a committee before release. “You’re not meant to be cataloguing my deficiencies when we’re on holiday. There are probably laws against such things in more civilised parts.”
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Six months after the rescue on Thangodorim, Maedhros and Fingon take a little vacation to relearn each other. -
The Admiral's Folly by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
29 Jun 2025
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"Look at this, I wanted to tell the world. Look at this heron, this bird who carries the entire universe in its eye and still chooses to look at me. Chooses to count Fingon, the vicar's son, within the expanse of its gaze. What a tragedy it is that we human beings are born with so much love to give, then forced to live lives too small and sparsely furnished to ever accommodate more than a fraction of it. How devastating that we spend our earliest years learning how to fence away and leave fallow the most promising fields of our hearts."
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British India, 1930s: early days of the ancient friendship turned lifelong love affair between notorious political gangster Comrade Maedhros Fëanorian and dance-master Fingon, the local vicar’s son.
Series
- Part 3 of Prayers to Broken Stone
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The Dreamships by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
25 May 2025
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"He will outlive them all, Maglor will. He will raise sons, watch one be buried, he will live to sing and at some points, even laugh. And every day of his life will be measured against this day. Not the day he spills blood into the water but the day before, the one he spends watching the Teleri harbour. Against the sounds of people living and dreaming, unaware as to the ways in which people covet the dreams of others and name it need. A snatch of poetry comes to him, a series of minor chords, and he files them away automatically, for later. And that is when Maglor realises he is no different from the others waiting upon the dock. That he too, has begun to dream Teleri-dreams."
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One day before the First Kinslaying at Alqualondë, Fëanor and his sons sit on the docks and watch the Teleri build their swan-ships. -
A Flower to the Sun by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
30 Apr 2025
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"He looks so alive, telling me the story of those living twins. Yes, I know. Sam-dad has always said, to be immortal is to outlive memory. But what is it, to watch one’s lineage dissolve before your eyes? Once, Lord Celeborn could summon name after name from history, like Lady Arwen could name stars in the sky. And now I watch them flicker away from him into scattered fragments of light, displaced from their constellations."
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Samwise Gamgee comes across Celeborn of Lothlorien on a lonely Lindon beach, the two discuss their daughters, and a decision to sail together is made... but not before they stay a while with Sam's heavily pregnant daughter Elanor Gardner, to whom Celeborn tells all the stories he has left.A short and bittersweet story about fatherhood, memory, and a slightly different take on elven fading.
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The River Meep by timelessutterances for frodosrings
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
31 Mar 2025
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"Lady Galadriel's husband?" Faramir asks in turn, and then flushes — no man would appreciate being addressed as his wife's husband. Well, he wouldn't mind, personally. But he's not like most other men. Nor, it seems, is this silver-haired elf, who is outright laughing at Faramir's flustered apology.
"Lady Galadriel's husband indeed, pleased to make the acquaintance of Lady Éowyn's betrothed," he smiles, bows low, and winks. "My name is Celeborn. And you have spent some time dead, I hear?"
"I have," Faramir nods. "Six minutes, they say."
________________It is a day of statewide mourning in Gondor for the losses of the War of the Ring, a ritual involving mass funerary pyres. Celeborn and Faramir skive off and spend the day beside an oddly named river very few have heard of, and find they have more in common than a fear of fire.
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The Island Dwellers by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
18 Mar 2025
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"Maedhros has nothing to say, less to give. He looks Elwing in the eye, stares right into the face of a catastrophe of his own making. There’s no forgiving or forgetting, but it is only the two of them on that island. Both their lives, collapsed into this yawning whole. Their very existence is now an exercise in the capacity for empathy and identification. On the island, there is only one thing that binds them: she threw herself into the sea, and he threw himself into the earth. The two of them had spat in the face of divinely-gifted eternity, and would have to learn their lesson before Valar and Eldar, flopping fish on a hot-dry-pan."
_______Maedhros Fëanorian is re-embodied onto a desert island in Aman, inhabited solely by Elwing of Doriath, and separated from the mainland by a body of uncrossable water. This, it turns out, is the Valar's judgement - though neither Elwing nor Maedhros take very kindly to being judged.
Series
- Part 1 of The Archipelago
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Mouthing Off by balrogballs (timelessutterances)
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
26 Feb 2025
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"Maglor blinks at him, and then starts cackling, a fist pressed against his mouth, no longer the beautiful, stern regent but his little brother, and Maedhros finds himself joining in with the laughter, tears in his eyes. He's missed the intimacy of things like this, casual dalliances, fucking-and-then-laughing, stitching up wounds without asking too much about what truly caused them. Letting each time take its memory away with it, and leave them only with sound and feeling. The world stirs, and Maedhros wakes with it. The long silence that had been his life for so many years has finally broken."
_________________________Maglor finds Maedhros too hard for a discussion of his upcoming abdication, and takes matters into his very-capable hands.
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Altitude Sickness by timelessutterances for Thinwhitedutchess
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
14 Feb 2025
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"Everyone who knows Fëanor’s firstborn knows it is inevitable that at some point, the coin would drop and he would transition from pitiably traumatised to certifiably insane. One morning Maedhros finds himself groping around his mind to find Thangorodrim in the way of someone sleepily seeking their lover’s hand at the moment of waking. The coin drops."
Fingon rescues Maedhros off Thangorodrim. Maedhros climbs back up it every morning.
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Bumping Exoskeletons by timelessutterances for elladansgirl
Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
12 Feb 2025
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"Maglor had looked Glorfindel right in the eye and said “did I ask you for your opinion, Mandos-nibbled timefucker?” with the deliriously vivid candor brought about by pain. Glorfindel had heard every resurrection joke in the realm but that one, which had sent Elrond out of the room in fits of high, hysterical laughter, had been so remarkable he almost fell in love on the spot."
A cosy little vignette into the relationship between Maglor and Glorfindel.
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A Mausoleum for a Mouse by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
28 Jan 2025
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Perhaps all brothers are the same, thought Éowyn, looking at Elrond. I suppose I’ve always known he had a twin, but only just now did I realise it. Not because he looks like a brother, but because in this moment he looks like mine.
Perhaps that was what small, pointless memories, like the image of little Éomer and his three-legged wooden horses, did: twitch every now and then, to remind one of old lives and connect them to new ones. She would never have thought of the Lord Elrond and her brother Éomer in the same breath, had the lord not been sitting just so, his weary chin in a nail-bitten hand.
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Elrond tries to indulge in a spot of misery before his daughter's wedding. Éowyn lets him do no such thing. An unlikely friendship is forged in a damp stable at the crack of dawn.Series