#atandil

[eilinelsghost]

Absolutely speechless at this commission from @mandhos of the berry fight from These Echoes We Have Left! I’m in awe at the details here and how perfectly they captured the scene. 😍😍😍 Thank you so much for this!!

From this excerpt:

They rolled back into the trillium and Balan scrambled atop him at last, pinning his arms to the ground and grinning down at him in triumph. “Bested,” he gasped, laughing still as he caught his breath and tightened his grip about the other’s wrists, eyes glinting. “Loose thine hand, I’ll have my vengeance.

But the other lay frozen, a sea of gold splayed about his head, and his eyes were fixed on Balan’s, unblinking. And again, as amid the dancing at Tol Sirion, Balan knew he might have him if he wished. The king lay at his mercy here within the trillium and violets, marked with the grass’ long shadows falling sharp against the golden light. He would yield. Balan could bend down now and press his lips to the other’s, stained bright with the berries’ dye, and no resistance would meet him. He could slip a hand behind his neck and draw him in, taste the tart fruit upon the other’s mouth and feel him fall away beneath his touch. And he had been dizzy with the knowledge of his own power.

“Open your hand,” he had said again, in his own tongue now, and obediently Nóm’s fingers parted. The airna’akran glistened in the sunlight, bright as blood against his skin. They had been crushed in the struggle, but held at least somewhat intact, and Balan shifted up slowly to gather them in his mouth. “There is a saying amongst my people—the nectar of justice is as honey upon the tongue.” His lips brushed the other’s palm and amusement rumbled through his voice. “But these you’ve left me are tart as gooseberries.” A trickle of juice had run down along the wrist and he set his lips to this in turn, little bothering to disguise the kiss as he lingered, the other’s pulse pounding against his mouth. It pounded too against his palms where they held Nóm’s arms pinned in the grass beside his head, and Balan hesitated for a moment, then let his lips brush along the other’s forearm as he drew back to meet the grey eyes once more. “A creature of flesh after all, ghomenno?”

“Never anything other.” Nóm’s voice had been scarcely a breath, shivering as it drifted up to meet him.

Read the full fic on AO3

[rock-n-roll-fantasy]

Finrod with his donkey friends for the super talented @eilinelsghost 🥰 If you haven't read her "Atandil" series yet, I can't recommend it enough, it's so wonderful!

[arafinweanappreciation]

Having a lot of feelings about elf names lately. Mostly about Finrod’s siblings calling him by his mother-name, Ingoldo (according to Tolkien gateway, this was mentioned in the Shibboleth of Fëanor somewhere, iirc). Like, it means the Noldo. One eminent among the kindred. Just. His siblings looked up to him and adored him so much— 

[eilinelsghost]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Rating: T Relationships: Finrod/Bëor, Finrod & Original Character(s) Word Count: 12k

"Thou hast set a fracture within me already, canst thou see it not? Broken along the line of my own self. It is the soul’s bond that would be our unmaking, thou sayest—yet thou it was who named us lovers in soul, who holds me still in that bond while denying its effect. I shall rend already at the parting. Wilt thou not?"

After returning to Nargothrond, a welcoming feast for the returned thrall triggers a progression of crises.

[eilinelsghost]

Absolutely in love with this commission from @nimphelos of my favorite guys! The richness of Finrod’s robe, his smile, the movement of the whole piece, the Valacirca 🥹, BALAN’S TUNIC !!!😍😍😍 I adore everything about this!!! Thank you so much!

(The scene is from the hopefully-not-too-distant next installment of Atandil)

[eilinelsghost]

Sometimes worldbuilding is great for writing.

And other times you think huh, this character would look kind of hot with a tattoo, wouldn't he? and then you wake up four days later to find you have a 31 page google slides presentation detailing the tattooing culture of the Bëorian people and diagrams of various characters' bodies with tattoo placement and the symbolism of each limb and location and also not a single additional word written on the WIP in question.

[eilinelsghost]

ThWIP Thwursday

Thanks so much to @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras for the tag! Here is the intro section from the next Atandil, which is all I have going at the moment:

The rain quickened as Aegnor swung down from the saddle and led his horse through the gate. It had begun halfway through his return and he welcomed it then, loosing the stallion into a gallop and relishing the water’s lash against his face. Its sting steadied him, drew his senses out from his heart and into his skin, held him firmly in the moment. But as he approached the stables, he found it oppressive; it grappled at his neck with cloying fingers and thickened the heaviness about his soul. Contrary to his usual custom, he left his horse to the groom’s care and trudged across the courtyard by the shortest path. Pain was a circle. The wound, the easing, the acceptance, the quiet throb. The gash reopened and widened by his own choosing, the cycle begun anew. Eternal. He passed inside the tower and shut the doors against the downpour. How long till all of this was rubble? He peeled the sodden cloak from his shoulders and cast it in a bundle beside the nearest bench, then reached out to run his palms across the timbers, the iron bars, the walls. It was transient, all of it; each stone echoing already with the sound of its ruin, every beam shuddering along veins that would split. Yet this was what he had chosen, again and again he cleaved to it in the face of any desire, till it had become his presiding compulsion, an iron will bending not even to his own. The rain’s laugh whispered through arrow loops high in the stair behind him and his fingers dug harder against the stone. How senseless it was to hold such a devotion to one’s own prison. He pushed away from the wall, a stream of oaths hissed under his breath, and crossed the passage to ascend the stair. Where else, he thought bitterly, should he seek solace but with the knife that knew the wound?

Tagging @thelordofgifs, @that-angry-noldo, @starspray, @melestasflight, and @thescrapwitch if you have anything you'd like to share!

[eilinelsghost]

Rating: G Relationships: Aegnor & Finrod, Referenced Bëor/Finrod, Referenced Aegnor/Andreth Characters: Finrod, Aegnor Word Count: 4.1k

“I should have let it bide in memory as was thy counsel, static and finished. I might toy with a future I did not have, imagining it this way or that, but within it she remained the same, ever as she was and thus ever a clear fable.” He winced as he swallowed the mouthful of hrögemetheilit. “Now I have seen her face, and I can never be free of the truth of it: breathtaking as in her youth, changed in all those ways I should have known at her side. Never has the path I scorned seemed more tangible than in that sight.”

In the days following Finrod’s confession, Aegnor comes to his own decision and the brothers discuss their differing paths.