I Will Not Say the Day Is Done

[bunn]

Which I suppose in some ways is a rather appropriate title since I have not been posting much on LJ since Brythen died.   It is a big thing to adapt to, that. It needs some time.

But mostly the title is this thing I wrote.  It's easier to write fiction.

It is another Return to Aman post-LOTR thing.  I wrote it mostly because Return to Aman had 12 stories, and obviously it would be Very Wrong to finish a Tolkien series on the 13th story, so I decided to send Finrod on holiday with the hobbits.  I don't know where the other bits came from, the characters seem to be mostly making their own decisions by this time.  I feel faintly guilty that I wrote this as a series and it's ended up almost like chapters of one story. I didn't know it was going to do that!  Also people commented to say it was philosophical, which was not my intent and confirms my suspicion that the whole thing has got out of hand.

I Will Not Say the Day Is Done
In which Maglor stays up all night, has breakfast with Elrohir and tests the truth of the Doom of the Noldor, Elrohir gives his opinion of the Shibboleth of Fëanor, Finrod Felagund goes on a walking holiday with hobbits in Eldamar and discusses Moria and his dissatisfaction with the Valar, Sam sees Elf-magic, and Elrond visits Nerdanel to discuss Silmarils.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I am very proud of Elrohir's accent! (I think I'm right in saying that when the Noldor decided to say 's' the Sindar didn't? Well in this version that's what happened at least in some dialects.)

I'm hoping there will be a part 14: that seems a very appropriate number to finish on.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

The Noldorin language-masters in Valinor changed Quenya to use 's', partly to spite Feanor (even though, according to Tolkien-as-narrator, he was actually right on this point). Sindarin was a different language anyway (I suppose you could call it a dialect of Telerin,or vice versa, from the in-world point of view), and certainly always retained the "th" sound. So Elrohir's accent in Quenya is very proper! And will be very helpful to Elrond when making the point about how giving up millennial grudges is not a bad thing to do.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think they are all related languages, aren't they? I was imagining it a bit like me trying to speak German and getting some of the sounds amusingly wrong because the words LOOK like English words when you see them written down.

Only in this case, producing something accidentally (and to Maglor hilariously recognisably) familiar as an earlier form of the language.

Presumably Elrohir would not have a lot of call to speak Quenya day to day, as it had become a book-language.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Yes, all descended one way or another from "Primitive Quendian" (I've just been reading "The Lost Road", which contains the Etymologies, so it's quite fresh in my mind). But when the Noldor and Vanyar went off to Aman, their dialect, Quenya, became significantly different from the language of both the Teleri in Aman, since they lived a fair distance away, and from the Teleri who stayed in Beleriand and became the Sindar. THough of course the Teleri in Aman thought that what they were speaking was their own, separate language, and the Noldor and Vanyar thought the Teleri were just speaking a cute, regional dialect of Quenya...

I don't think even the exiled Noldor in Middle-earth spoke Quenya day to day, certainly not by the Third Age. My own version of Caranthir speaks it with his household in Thargelion, and has taught it to his Laiquendi allies, just to spite Thingol ("and if he wants to make a fuss about it, he can come and defend this border instead of us").