Something Old/New/Borrowed/Blue!
Thank you for the tag @balrogballs!!!
Rules: share something old – a snippet of a favorite fic you wrote that you are proud of; share something new – give us a sneak peek of something new you are working on; share something borrowed – a snippet from a fic you read recently that you loved; and share something blue – a snippet you wrote or read that made you cry!
Tagging @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras, @hobbitwrangler, @lady-of-ithilien, @yewfae, @perlen-gold, @icarusofathousanddays, @outofangband, @gaydhros, @queerofthedagger, @neeeeeklaus, @shirebarbie, @lady-of-imladris, @justdrowthings
Something New: I am very slow going on this and I know I've been talking about it for ages without much to show for it, but I'm still working on my Finduilas Lives AU so I'll share something from that!
She didn’t even have a good reason for getting lost. Nothing she could have gone back and explained away without having to- Well, to actually explain. There had been a boy in the market. Stood knee-high next to his mother, eagerly tugging at her skirts to show her one of the painted kites a vendor was selling. He was too young, his hair had been the wrong shade, and the mother had been too slender and pale for her to make a mistake. It hadn’t mattered in the moment. Not one bit. So she had trailed off after them. Carefully of course, with the sort of delicately cultivated air of coincidence one has when trying to get close to a street cat. Which is to say she was stalking them. Watching them stop at stalls every so often, or listening to them mutter about what they would have for dinner back home. No, they can’t get the little fried fish covered in the sticky golden sauce, they already have food at home, and, Oh alright, maybe just one of the honey almond clusters then, but we’ll have to save it for dessert! The sort of perfectly every day things that sting of peace and happiness and maybe even ignorance if she was feeling particularly cruel. Not as cruel as not knowing what your baby brother’s hair had turned out to look like, nor as cruel as the fact that she could not imagine Gil Galad as anything other than an infant, or that she knew she would not be able to recognize him if they ever crossed paths again. Certainly not as cruel as the realization that she could no longer remember what her mother’s voice had sounded like
Something Old: I'm going with something from Heartspur because I feel like I don't talk about that fic nearly enough and it's still so so special to me (I loved writing it so much and I think it's one of the best pieces I've done)
He doesn’t get much sleep before the full moon. He wonders if being exhausted is making the pain better or worse. Worse, it has to be worse. He feels himself tear and rearrange into something strange, skin pulled taught over muscle and sinew, just to be ripped opened over bones cracked wide to reveal their marrow. The chains chafe, blisters healing almost as soon as they form, and if he wasn’t out of his mind with pain he might wonder if blood makes metal rust the same as water does. If him bleeding will make him have to change the chains out fast. Sometime past midnight the moon dives into his mind and spills all over it, runny and sticky like syrup, filling every crevice it can find. He aches enough to name the loss of himself mercy. He’s not thinking when he stumbles into his room the next morning and face-plants onto the bed. He is sore and his mouth still tastes like iron from where he bit down on his own tongue hard enough to make it bleed. He’s tired, and he just wants to sleep so he’s not thinking when he hears Callie scratching on his door, and it’s only when he goes to pick her up that he realizes. She’s tense and wary, staring at him with her yellow-green eyes, pupils needle thin. His voice breaks over her name and it’s almost like the sound breaks the standstill. She’s hesitant, careful in a way she’s never been around him before. When she slowly gets closer, sniffing his hand and letting out a questioning chirp like he’s a stranger, it’s like his body is being torn apart all over again. But she rubs her head against his hand in the end, eyes still carefully watching. It’s not right or anywhere near perfect. Something still feels shattered inside of him in a way he doesn’t know if he can fix. His grumpy sweet cat lets him pick her up and dig his face into her fur. She purrs and headbutts him when a sob breaks through. His cat doesn’t hate him. It doesn’t help with the pain or the rage or the guilt. But it lights something warm and bright in his chest, almost like hope.
Something Borrowed: I have been rereading Shadows of the Dead by @hobbitwrangler for probably the hundredth time by now and I highly recommend it!! Seriously go read it, it's absolutely perfect
Do you remember her then, Denethor? Do you remember how she smiled and laughed that day? But her brother-in-law would not answer even if she asked. He stared, empty with grief at Finduilas. But that isn’t Finduilas. That’s an empty shell that you sucked dry yourself. How do you like your handiwork, my lord steward? And yet Ivriniel did want to mourn. She had yearned to see her sister, even if it was only the empty shell of her, for every second of the long, dreadful road from Dol Amroth. And yet now that she had arrived … He is here. How can we two grieve together? We cannot, for the woman we grieve is not the same. The woman Finduilas had been would not be buried like this, so thin and drained of colour that she seemed a cruel parody of the person Ivriniel had grown up with. Ivriniel had seen it happen, slowly at first, in the first years of her marriage. The rings around her eyes, the reduced energy which would eventually deteriorate into complete listlessness, the smiles where once there had been laughter. “She is growing up,” her mother had said, when Ivriniel expressed her concerns. “Do not overreact because she is doing what you are incapable of.” You mean she is becoming like you, Ivriniel should have shot back. She is becoming accustomed to the bars of her cage. Ivriniel had watched, as the light faded from her sister’s eyes, as the world before her became of less and less interest. And there were always excuses. She is getting used to her new home. She has become a mother. She has greater responsibilities now.
Something Blue: I could not decide if to rec something that's made me teary eyed or if I should share something I've written that made me have to stop and take a breather because crying and writing is not a good combination.
So first the recommendation!! This is from And the world was gone by @justdrowthings which actually kicked me in the chest with this opening:
Elrond watches the two tiny boys sleep clinging to each other as they must have done in the womb, as if to deny that something as simple as birth could pry them apart. It is impossible not to see two other peredhel boys equally inseparable by birth, by kinslaying, by war against a god. Until one of them died. “I messed that one up,” Elros would admit now, leaning over the crib to watch the boys sleep. “You would do it again,” Elrond points out softly to avoid waking his wife who slumbers as contently as the twins do. “I would, and I would beg you to follow me and you would still choose as you did,” Elros would flash him one of those obnoxiously easy smiles that drew everyone to him. “They will never know you,” Elrond says sadly to the ghost of one he knew as well as himself until he did not. “You’ll tell them stories, but just the good ones,” Elros would trace those little dark curls beginning to frame those impossibly sweet faces. “They will know my people.” Excellent, the ghosts of Númenor would already dog the feet of his sons. They could not yet walk and already had ghosts at their heels. “Oh stop it,” Elros would chide. “Look at them, so adorable and yet you’re already growing them, dooming them and burying them.”
And then this something I wrote in the latest chapter of I dreamed you called for no reason (I do not handle grief well at all which would explain a lot, also this is from near the end of the chapter so if you're following the story but haven't caught up yet you're forewarned):
And then I poured you some of that stupid liquor you always said was better than the rest. I’ve been sitting in on some anthropology lectures, and apparently they used to bring food and drinks for the dead. Still do in some places. Some of the stories say it can bring ghosts back for- There’s a pastry store that opened near my work and I almost brought you one. I would’ve if it wouldn’t have gotten squashed on the way over. They’re this sort of soft fried pancake dough stuffed with custard or lemon curd, they sell both. He would’ve brought a dead girl a stupid pastry if he had thought it would survive the drive just in case it might get her to haunt him. She couldn’t even get a text for her to angrily delete before throwing the phone at the wall. I got you sunflowers instead. And then I realized I don’t even know your favorite flower and your mom had already left so I could ask and I hope you like sunflowers.