21 - 38 of 38 Works by timelessutterances
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The Stranding of a Sea Serpent 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
23 Jan 2025
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“I stood there for a long time after Celebrían’s ship sailed, smiling slightly at the vast sway of the sea before me, rocking me to sleep as it swallowed my world whole. I thought, inexplicably, of my father Maedhros — his sea-serpent eyes, his shipwreck eyes. Pitch-black and lonely, as wide and fathomless as the sea. It felt almost serene, standing there, like despairing was just another word for living and that I could get used to it, like my father had done before me.”
_____Elrond, Maedhros, Estel: a strange, cyclical story of fathers and sons, from an old sea-serpent washing up on the shores of Sirion, to a quiet moment by a duckpond in Imladris.
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Finding Celebrían by Zara Ashkenazi-Khan (timelessutterances)
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
19 Jan 2025
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“These days, I am of the opinion that to be healed isn’t to be cured, but rather to develop the ability to live alongside the most intolerable parts of one’s mind. Recovery is a survival tactic, though less fire-without-flint and more lizard-dropping-tail. Primed for violence, the traumatised mind does this, gives you these frantic, immovable highs and lows. And so my Celebrían is at her baddest on the days darkness spreads thickest. She is at her maddest on the days I walk barefoot across beaches and at her saddest when I sink into myself. She reintroduces me to my own mind.”
An extended edition of my essay for Tolkien Meta Week: on autofiction, archives, healing, and why I moved across the country after finding out Elrond had a wife.
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Service with a Smile by balrogballs (timelessutterances)
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
28 Dec 2024
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“Good morning, my lord,” Lindir called out cheerfully, nudging the door open with his shoulder, carefully balancing the tray on his forearms. “It’s time for your breakfast blowjob!”
Elrond, who had been just stirring from sleep, shot up in bed, eyes wide: “time for my… what ?”
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Lindir misspeaks, and Elrond reaps the rewards. An egg timer is involved. -
Counterparts by timelessutterances for hereforever
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
27 Dec 2024
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"Putting aside Maedhros' inability to ever phrase anything in a sane let alone soothing manner, I see what he means," Elrond had mused, later that evening. "That the accident of our birth, two Half-Elves entering the world together, cemented our destiny as codependencies. Or comorbidities."
"Codependent comorbidities, eh? Cheery thought," countered Elros, smiling. "But nothing is certain, my brother. Perhaps you and I are simply counterparts."
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As the smoke clears from Dagor-lad at the close of the Second Age, Elros Tar-Minyatur finds his brother on the slopes of Orodruin. -
The Land of Lost Content 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
23 Dec 2024
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"It started because of how Celebrían ate her boiled egg. It’s curious how little things — like the way a boiled egg peels — can stir memories without warning. No grand gesture, no significant event, just a well peeled egg swallowed whole and suddenly it is like Fingon is there again, laughing before Maedhros' eyes. Fingon had known a trick to make the whole shell of a boiled egg come off in one, the inner layer peeling off like a second skin clinging tightly to the life it held. He’s never seen Fingon swallow an egg whole and somehow the knowledge makes Maedhros feel rather bereft. Like there's a lifetime of egg-swallowing now lost to them."
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When Elladan, Elrohir, Maglor and a grieving Elrond sail to Valinor at the end of the Ring War, they (and Bilbo Baggins) are met by Celebrían and Maedhros, who immediately whisk them off on a journey across the surreal, ever-changing landscapes of Valinor on foot. The destination? The Halls of Mandos, where Fingon's re-embodiment has been inexplicably and indefinitely delayed. -
Second Son 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
15 Dec 2024
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"Perhaps that one summer in the sand when I gave him his songs and stories, had bound us in a way blood alone could not, weaved something intractable between my second son’s soul and mine. Perhaps the summer Maglor began to sing changed the course of his life for good."
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When Maglor is eight years old, Nerdanel takes him to the seaside for a summer. Over the next seven thousand years, more than one life is saved. -
The Groundswallow 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
14 Dec 2024
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Bilbo Baggins would, upon his first visit to Elrond's valley, mention Celebrían in passing. How when he was three or four years old, he had fallen right near The Old Forest and had been crying, and the Groundswallow turned up, pressed a finger to the earth beside him and brought him out a little present right out of the soil.
"It wasn't a good present, mind you," Bilbo had said, wrinkling his nose at the memory. "It was an egg."
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This is the story of a world in which a wounded Celebrían refuses to sail after her capture, and confined to The Old Forest, learns to make the earth move and flowers grow beneath her fingers. It is also a love story. -
A Thousand Words in Eight 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
08 Dec 2024
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"He can almost see them from above, covered in each other, heartbeats blurring into one another's as if they shared a heart between them. In the firelight, Cel's scars gleam golden. She wears them like bracelets, necklaces, a crown."
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The night before she sails, wanting intimacy but needing to maintain a sense of control, Celebrìan asks to tie Elrond to the bed. He, of course, is more than obliging. -
The Sword Tree 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 Nov 2024
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"You are Elrond's wife, are you not?"
"The cultural practices of the Noldor are stranger than I thought," Celebrían muses vaguely, as if talking to herself. "You wouldn't think anyone would name a child 'Elrondswife', but I suppose it takes all kinds of naming traditions to make a world."
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Near the close of the Third Age, Celebrían and Maedhros establish a re-wilding sanctuary in Valinor, to help elves fleeing strife in Middle-Earth recover and rebuild their lives. -
Cast in Stone 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
13 Nov 2024
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"What Elrond did was simple. He partitioned the layers of his soul and allowed nothing to permeate across them, never let the Lord of Imladris and bearer of Vilya cross into the bossy little elfling Maglor and Maedhros had loved."
A re-embodied Maedhros and Maglor arrive in Imladris with only fragmented memories of their final years — and find that Elrond had built an enormous statue glorifying their redemption, yet omitted their final fates from the histories he wrote as a loremaster.
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A Return to Imladris fic with elements of magic realism, postcoloniality and the politics of memory, also featuring the youthful sleuths, Legolas and a teenaged Aragorn. -
The Forest House 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
01 Nov 2024
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"One does not get to choose nature, trees and toes are both part of creation," he says absently, filling up the glass. "And we've already had this argument. My feet stay bare for as long as you eat in bed."
"We've already had every argument, Elrond. We've been married for almost two and a half thousand years."
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In TA 2510, Celebrìan asks Elrond if they could spend a weekend in the insect infested literal cabin in the woods that they had - 2500 years ago - fallen in love in, as she has something to tell him. He, of course, can never deny her anything. -
Rat Within The Grain 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
26 Oct 2024
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"As much as Middle Earth made him feel like something pickled in a jar, there were times Elrond felt almost too Mannish for Valinor. Like he was an invasive species, or a green and wicked little gremlin, an anxious immigrant, the resident poltergeist of their slice of paradise. But at other times, like when the moon emerged and illuminated Celebrìan in a clichè silver glaze as she stuffed cotton into her ears to block out his snoring — it was like a part of him had always lived on these shores."
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Elrond feels out-of-sorts and displaced after his arrival in Valinor. Celebrìan, and the rest of his ridiculously confusing family, attempt to help.Series
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The Great Impossible 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
13 Oct 2024
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"It is three hundred years before Arwen tells Elrond, offhand in a conversation about something else, that on one rainy night two months after Celebrìan sailed, Maglor saved her life without knowing it. She says it in passing, like it's something obvious, something she expects him to already know."
On Maglor as a grandfather, and the aftereffects of an impossible choice made on the darkest day in Imladris.
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living arrows sent forth by timelessutterances
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
03 Oct 2024
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"Thranduil wants to give Elrond a sharp retort. Something-something scheduling sundering in his diary, micromanaging misery, a little quip about levying taxation on tragedy. But he cannot bring himself to do it. The bite has gone out of the two of them with age, with children and wars and losing far too many things. Their debts to each other are old and complicated, and he hesitates to press too far beyond the fragile surface."
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At Arwen and Aragorn's wedding reception, as Elrond and Thranduil watch their adult children enjoy themselves, they share a quiet moment discussing fatherhood and failures.Series
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false spring 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
24 Aug 2024
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"What does it feel like, seeing an evil you have fought for so long finally vanquished?"
"Like a hole in the head," Elrond laughs, and then the words come all at once. "Can you believe it, Bilbo? I feel a loss. Loss, and lost. I do not know where to go, or perhaps I have nowhere left to go. I am turning on the spot, rootless and restless from memory to memory like a dog chasing its tail. I feel as though Arda has swallowed me whole. Perhaps I may be going mad —"
"Or perhaps you are being called home."
_________Two weeks before Arwen and Aragorn's wedding, the father of the bride (and groom, technically) wakes with a bone-deep fatigue he cannot seem to shake no matter how much he tries. Or: a study of sea-longing feat. Elrond Peredhel, who has never cared much for the promise of Valinor.
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valley of golden horses 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
20 Aug 2024
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"As long as he dwells here," smiled the Lord of Imladris, stroking the child's curly dark hair. "He shall be called Estel."
"Not to be a contrarian," Elladan whispered, nudging Glorfindel with his foot. "But that's a ridiculous name, even for Ada. One of the worst yet, don't you think?"
"Remember, my dear Elladan, it could always be worse. You know full well that if Elrond had his way, the boy would be called Elros Tar-Minyatur the 385th."
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The elves of Imladris start a gambling ring, attempt to raise terrible toddlers and get bitten by them, meet, part and make the valley a home warmer than the heart of the world.
(all works in the Feral Children series can and probably should be read standalone)
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fields where glory does not stay 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
10 Aug 2024
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"Sometimes, Atya — sometimes I fear I was born at the precipice of some disaster, and lived my life as an appendix to all the great tragedies of Arda," Elrond's smile twists bitterly. "That I am destined to only love the dying things of this world. I suppose this boy too is yet another of that tremendous procession of things that will one day come to pass."
"You were not destined to only love dying things," Maglor shakes his head calmly, as if delivering a lesson. "You were destined to be someone whom dying things cannot help but love. There is a difference."
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Maglor makes his yearly visit to Imladris as Elrond is cleaning up after young Estel's memorably messy handwriting lesson, and the two have a conversation about fatherhood, oaths, and the inheritance of kindness.(all works in the Feral Children series can and probably should be read standalone)
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silver spoon 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
24 Jul 2024
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"Yes Arwen," Glorfindel told her drily. "It is of course inconceivable that Lord Elrond of Imladris — an elf so insufferably overcommitted to bureaucracy he once tried to implement and risk assess a regional policy for the baking of Lembas until Galadriel told him where he could shove his bread — might ever decide to stick around and micromanage the upbringing of his grandson."
Moments from a world in which Elrond stays to watch Eldarion grow up.
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