Haha, I'm glad it seems like a quick return to you! I've been frustrated with the slow pace of my writing recently (well, always, but especially recently!); I had been hoping to get a lot more done during the summer than I actually did. Eventually I decided to just go for it and start posting, though figuring out what to do for an intro was really hard. The river crossing scene and the action that follows it is actually the central incident around which I'm building the first part of the story; it's one of my "originals," the scenes I wrote years ago, long before I ever thought about sharing my writing with anyone, let alone posting it publicly, so my work in the last few months has been to figure out how they got there, and what happens afterward. So in the end, I guess that structure reflects my actual writing process - huh, I hadn't thought about that ;)
The presentiment about Halbarad's death is based on a head-canon scene that occurs decades before this, during their initial relationship before Aragorn leaves for Gondor. It shows up as a flashback in Aragorn's memory in an WIP that takes place a few years after this, so no, you haven't actually missed anything ;) Canonically, of course, we don't know anything about Halbarad until he shows up in Rohan and then fairly promptly predicts his own death...but in my version of their relationship, this vague presentiment has always been hanging over them. Okay, thinking about it, the actual line is important ;) In a conversation about the dangers of getting emotionally involved with each other given the inherently risky nature of their profession, Halbarad says, "I will die for you, Arya. I do not know where, or when, but it will be so. And I will do it gladly." Aragorn doesn't really know how to handle it at the time, and even now, this knowledge colors their relationship, rarely stated but always there in the background.
Political jockeying isn't something I enjoy writing (maybe because it feels too much like real life!), but it's a thread I slipped in there early in Not All Those Who Wander, so I decided to pick it back up again, at least in a minor way. Maybe it will eventually go somewhere, maybe not. If you're interested in more, Saelind does Dunedain internal politics REALLY well; you should check out her stories, if you haven't yet :)
Comment on The Dark of the Morning
LauraGray on Chapter 1 Sun 08 Dec 2024 01:39PM UTC
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