Thank you for the tags @balrogballs, @starshadeemilyart and @thescrapwitch. Here is a little something I am working on for Tolkien Disability Pride Month coming up in July, featuring chronically ill Erestor. Tagging @irnina, @bad-writer, @justdrowthings and @gaydhros (but also anyone else who sees this and would like to jump in and share)
Deep within a green, shadowed vale, beneath the western slopes of the Misty mountains where the summits above stand tall as silent guardians and the waters cry loudly the song of the making of the world, there is a sanctuary and refuge: the Last Homely House East of the Sea. Deep within this refuge, that clings, steadfast, to the hills and spills merrily into the hollow, there is a chamber: a place of rest perfectly curated for its inhabitant. That chamber is Erestor’s, and Erestor lies quietly within.
The sanctuary is known commonly as Imladris, or Rivendell, named simply for the cleft into which it’s first inhabitants stumbled, footsore (newly-made refugees, all), but Erestor has always preferred Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva, a house of lost mirth, for so it seems to him. The weak grow strong here, the despairing, hopeful, and light and song refuse stubbornly to be subsumed by a world grown dark, hostile and mean. Something of Ost-in-Edhil’s aspiration and splendour are captured in its spirit, though in a softer form. His people, fading slowly from the tale of this world, are not diminished in the valley’s embrace, but fulgent and bright: undimmed. So it usually seems.
On this particular day, to Erestor, such a vision feels thin and delicate: a glass orb dropped from the hand, careening towards marble floors, waiting to shatter. Mirth is far from reach. His own sanctuary within a sanctuary, arranged just so, feels stuffy and close. He aches to be free of it. On a day such as this, however, though such a course is possible, it would not be wise.
“You were missed at council,” Elrond remarks as he crosses the threshold. “Fare you ill?”
Within these rooms Elrond has been a brother, a healer, a confidant, even a brokenhearted mess, but rarely is the Lord of Imladris seen within: he leaves his silver circlet at the door, metaphorically speaking. Today he comes as a friend. Erestor does not conceal from Elrond what he hides, at least in part, from most. Elrond has seen him at his worst and needs no shielding. “I have had better days.”
vaporwave
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
