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Aulë (Mahal), The Smith
I read a thing in a Bagginshield fic that alluded to Aüle and Yavanna. And now my brain has spiraled. 😆
This is based on, I will admit, a basic knowledge of the Valar and other such Powers. I have read the Silmarillion, but that was a long time ago. If anything is inaccurate, we'll just call it part of the AU.
(I am pretty sure that Yavanna being connected to hobbits is fanon. But it's fanon I like, so I'm going with it.)
Story idea:
Thorin is Favored by Mahal, and Bilbo is Favored by Yavanna. Dunno if this would mean special abilities or just getting, you know, nudged in the right direction for things to work out. Also unclear exactly how this would manifest in their everyday life, or how aware of this they are. (I imagine the two Vala would not exactly work in the same style, so they way they intervene would likely be different between the two of them.)
I'm thinking of it as something that shows up in small but relevant ways, and that they, very rarely, can hear/speak with their respective Vala. Also, since this is an out there thing to have happen, that few, if anyone, besides themselves know about this.
It could go in a lot if different directions, but regardless, Thorin and Bilbo are Chosen by Mahal and Yavanna respectively.
Not sure if Mahal and Yavanna are conspiring about this, to bring their respective Chosen ones together. But it would be funnier if they absolutely did not let the other know at all. 😆
Either way, Thorin and Bilbo meet, maybe as in canon exactly, maybe diverging, maybe some way different entirely.
And they fall in love, fated as Mahal and Yavanna were.
Not sure what would be better: An all at once, sudden thing, like would be fitting to those Favored. Or a more mortal, gradual falling in love, as happens more with their kind. Either could work.
Could even have it that their respective Vala are playing matchmaker, either separately or conspiring together.
Yavanna: Look, Favored One, I have found you Love!
Bilbo: You just picked a mortal as alike to your husband as you could find, didn't you?
Yavanna: 🥰 You're welcome.
Thorin: Why a halfling?
Mahal: My wife likes them. 😁
Dunno where to go from there with this. But it just Happened in my brain and I wanted to share.
Moss covered rocks becoming a religious symbol for Yavanna and Aulë's love. A perfect blending of their domains that show that life can thrive even in hard, unyeilding environments
Dwarrow making big stone monuments in caves with slow dripping water, to cultivate big sheets of green moss as tributes to their maker and his lady
Do you see the vision?
Aulë & Yavanna
Manwë & Varda
I headcanon both Aulë and Yavanna as some of the more reclusive Valar. Aulë at least interacts with the Noldor and his students, but that is about that, which I tried to make visible in my designs of them.
Who is the hottest old horror hottie?
Yone (Nobuko Otowa)
Kamini (Madhubala)
Propaganda
Yone (Kuroneko aka The Black Cat)—She's a demon cat lady who doesn't let ANYONE stop her from killing samurai, even her own son. I have no choice but to stan!
Kamini (Mahal)—Girl if I were to ever buy a house that turned out to be haunted by Kamini (actor = Madhubala, singing voice = Lata Mangeshkar) I'd literally just want to accompany her on the swings and listen to her talk about literally anything all day, as the sprinklers spray water all over the garden in the background (she can do that btw… with her ghost powers). The film has a reincarnation plot that obviously has been done to death, especially in South Asia, but WHY has it been done to death? Because of Kamini. Because she was hot and her voice was just SO hauntingly beautiful. Madhubala was even supposed to be in a sort of spiritual successor to Mahal called Madhumati.
This is round 4 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support for your favorite horror hottie. The poll will last three days.
Questions about the bracket? Send me an ask here.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
The next story I am Definitely Not Writing: a fic where Legolas and Gimli make it all the way to the Undying Lands before they realize that in addition to loving each other more than anything else in all of Arda, they are also in love with one another (this is less a realization on their part and more an assumption that just about everyone else in Aman makes on sight, and eventually they hear about it and go oh...dang...maybe...? and Legolas's mom facepalms forever) and hey what if they got married, then...?
Only the thing is, while an elvish marriage is very simple and requires literally nothing but the folks involved deciding to do it (and no, Thranduil is not allowed to demand that Gimli fetch some priceless jewel from the Fëanorian section of Tirion in order to prove himself worthy of Legolas's hand, although he tried very very hard to convince everyone that it was a great idea) a dwarven marriage is an elaborate ceremony, requiring the participation of both a dwarven officiant and several members of one's kin to perform the various elements of the ceremony.
...all of which are in short supply in this land of elves and valar.
Except. well. there aren't any other dwarves in Aman...but what there is, is the guy who made the dwarves. And he is VERY fond of Gimli. So when he learns that Gimli is kind of moping about the fact that he can't marry Legolas in dwarven-fashion, Aulë ENTHUSIASTICALLY volunteers to be the officiant and to set everything up and arrange just the BEST DWARVEN WEDDING EVER...
Because, you know. he's never actually been to one?
Gimli is stricken with horrified shock to realize just how much his own Maker has missed out on interactions with his beloved dwarves over the years, and immediately agrees to this plan (even though he knows it won't be a real dwarven wedding without his family there; but he'll swim back to Middle-earth before he says one word about that anywhere that Mahal can hear! he is going to do everything in his power to make this the best wedding ever for the sake of his Maker, dammit!).
So he gets to work crafting all the necessary accoutrements (with enthusiastic help from Celebrimbor and all his other elf-smith friends that Gimli has acquired since coming to these shores which is, let's be honest, quite a few) and carefully teaching Legolas all the necessary Khuzdul phrases and ceremonial steps that they can do to mimic as much of a proper wedding as they can without anyone else to help...
And when the big day comes, Aulë is vibrating so hard he's on the verge of setting off seventeen different earthquakes across the island, and not even Yavanna can get him to relax. Gimli and Legolas arrive to the appointed place, and find that they aren't alone: Aulë has invited Celebrimbor, too, seeing as he's the only elf in Aman who has actually participated in a dwarven wedding before with makes him the local expert as well as the closest thing to "kin" that Gimli is going to find on these shores...except.
Well, Mandos might be in charge of elvish souls, but dwarves? They belong to their Maker. And if Mahal decides he wants to...well, who is going to stop him from waking some of them up early, before the breaking of the world? Especially if he doesn't ask permission first. So when Gimli and Legolas hesitantly walk into this foreboding stone chamber, eerily close to the Halls of Mandos, wondering wtf is going on and have they offended the valar somehow and are they in trouble and if so how bad is it...?
Well, turns out Gimli will have kin at his wedding after all.
Mahal can't bring any of them back to life, not without the intervention and permission of Eru and probably Mandos too; but as long as they're in his halls, he can wake anybody he wants. So soon there is a great crowd of bewildered but enthusiastic dwarves gathered around Gimli, as he tries to explain what the heck is going on to a whole passel of relatives and friends, some of whom died even before the Lonely Mountain was reclaimed and don't even know how the Battle of Five Armies ended, let alone the whole thing with the Ring and the Fellowship...
And Legolas and Celebrimbor are standing near the entrance watching fondly, Legolas weeping around a great big smile and Celebrimbor torn between joy for Gimli and his own ever-bitter sorrows and then...
"Khelebrrimbor?" calls a deep dwarven voice, in a thick Khuzdul accent, and Celebrimbor stiffens like he's just been shot.
Suddenly there's a ruckus as a very burly dwarf is shouldering through the crowd, and Celebrimbor stumbles forward and throws himself at Narvi with a wail, and it's at least ten minutes before anyone can get a coherent word out of either of them (although it takes considerably less time to catch the gist of Narvi's lecture about how dare you and lucky he's already dead, or I'd have a gift for him he wouldn't forget in a hurry and what were you thinking???).
Legolas gives Aulë a very pointed raise of his eyebrows, and Aulë shrugs around an unabashed grin. "Who in all the ages of the world is more of an expert on marriages between elves and dwarves than the two of them? I am a craftsman, Greenleaf; of course I would want to make use of their skills and experience in this endeavor. Nothing more to it than that."
Legolas hums noncommittally, but his eyes are dancing.
Mahal ignores him and steps forward to start the wedding. It takes even him three tries before he can shout loud enough to be heard over the tumult and get everyone's attention, but eventually he gets them all to quiet down enough for the ceremony to begin. Not everyone in attendance is entirely thrilled by the prospect of Gimli marrying an elf (that elf) but no one is so cross that they walk back into their dreams of stone to avoid it, which Gimli chalks up as a victory.
(Legolas's terrible Khuzdul pronunciation doesn't help, but the very enthusiastic way he praises Gimli when the ceremony reaches that point makes up for a lot. By the time he finally runs out of words, a few of the more recalcitrant attendees have changed their tune about him. The fact that he's so good at weaving the required braids doesn't hurt, either.)
There aren't nearly enough refreshments for a crowd that size afterwards, of course, since Gimli and Legolas weren't expecting anyone but themselves and Aulë to be there; but that doesn't much matter, because 90% of those in attendance don't have the sort of corporealness that would allow them to eat the dwarven delicacies that Gimli spent all morning fussing over anyway. (That doesn't stop some of his more elderly relatives from scolding him for not following their recipes better.) They're solid enough that you can hug them or kiss them, in the case of a certain former smithlord of Eregion or get half-knocked off your feet by their congratulatory backslaps, but they aren't alive. They're still the dreaming dead...it's just that for the moment, they're dreaming in a bit more wakefulness than usual.
In the end it's not what one would call an orthodox dwarven wedding, no; but it's a lot closer than Gimli thought he would get, and since he's hardly an orthodox dwarf, the small tweaks and oddities of their strange situation don't bother him in the slightest.
As for Aulë, he's never been happier.
And if it takes a long, long time for Celebrimbor to finally leave (and if he tries to devise a way to prop the door open on his way out)...well, Aulë is enjoying himself far too much to do anything but pretend not to notice. Even when Námo clears his throat at him very pointedly.
Twice.
And then again. And again.
"Aulë...!"
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing dear, I just love being able to see your face up so close."
Genuinely don't know what possessed me to draw this but i really did miss digital art lmao. I wanted to test out my design for Aule with fire hair, sort of a symbolism of a forge since he's the valar of craftsmanship. I just started reading the Silmarilion so all of the mistakes to the canon are mine!
I will also post the timelapse to this piece!
