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Language:
English
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Published:
2015-09-29
Completed:
2021-06-06
Words:
310
Chapters:
3/3
Comments:
11
Kudos:
56
Bookmarks:
6
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535

Three Sentence Ficlets (Tolkien)

Summary:

Tiny ficlets written in response to various prompts.

1) Arwen's view of her uncle's choice changed over time. 2) No tree is ever really tame. 3) Varda and the darkness.

Notes:

Yes, I know the first one is not actually a three-sentence ficlet. It's still a prompt fic and is tiny enough that I feel comfortable smushing it into a collection. Good? Good.

Chapter 1: My Sorrow's Share

Summary:

Written 9/29/15 for mmarycontrary in response to the prompt: Arwen and the pro/con of choosing humanity. (I'm on a Silmarillion kick.)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Arwen was younger, she watched her father mourn his brother and could not understand her uncle's choice. She would never cause such pain to her family.

Now that she is older, she knows that grief and loss are inevitable. Even the promise of reunion in Valinor comes at the price of leaving all that is good and fair here in Middle-Earth. And to stay forever young, to persist unchanging until she has outlived descendants as far removed from her as Estel is from Elros? Would that bring anyone joy?

It would not, Arwen thinks, as she takes her husband's hand and joins her fate to his. Sorrow is inevitable, but she can choose its form, and she will not cause such pain to herself.

Notes:

This is very short mostly because I am working only from slightly hazy memory. (Apparently I am too lazy to go look up details even though my copy of the Silmarillion is sitting literally six feet away from me as I type this. *sigh*) Title is a line from 'On Another’s Sorrow' by William Blake, because I couldn't condense the Four Noble Truths into something both pithy and appropriate.

Chapter 2: Deep Roots Are Not Reached by the Frost

Chapter Text

And why, after all, should cherry and apple, citron and pear, plum and pawpaw, avocado and peach, almond and cashew, olive and fig, and all other nourishing trees not be thought part of the forest? Do they not draw from deep roots, gird their trunks with bark, stretch branches toward the sun, and rejoice with bursts of green leaves?

Any tree, however humble and amenable to pruning, transplanting, grafting, pollarding, can break bare rock to richest soil; those who consider the daughters of Kementári tame do so at their peril.

Chapter 3: Creator of the Stars of Night

Summary:

Written 3/31/21 for anonymous, in response to the prompt: Any, any, a goddess made of starlight and shadows.

Chapter Text

It is easy to forget, when faced with her glory, that Varda is not only a goddess of light. She who wrought the stars and set them on high as a comfort and a warning, she whose sight is keen, whose mind is clear, whose purpose adamant, she whose touch destroys evil, is too vast for light alone to encompass the truth of her being, no more than the brilliance of her stars can encompass the whole of the sky.

You must always remember that for the stars to shine, there must first be dark.