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English
Series:
Part 1 of 2025 Tolkien Drabbles
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Published:
2025-01-01
Updated:
2025-07-14
Words:
2,181
Chapters:
10/?
Comments:
117
Kudos:
95
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3
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763

Fragments Culled From Time

Summary:

Micro-fics in the Tolkien fandoms (2025 edition). Ratings vary from G to M.

Chapter 1: Contents

Chapter Text

Turning (Celegorm and Orome): rated G

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Fingon and Sam): rated G

What Has Been Earned (Finrod/Curufin): rated T

Inheritance (House of Ingwe and House of Finarfin): rated G

Loomworks (Mandos and Vaire): rated G

Insularity (Finrod): rated G

Revenant (Maedhros and Maglor): rated T

Contusions (Fingon/Maedhros): rated M

A Missed Connection (Daeron/Luthien): rated G

Chapter 2: Turning

Chapter Text

Celegorm stumbles away from the dancing, a little drunk and breathless with it. His still-new flesh feels every touch too keenly, and for a moment he simply wants to be alone. The quiet of the pines draws him, and the silvery shadows on the frozen surface below.

Birds have been at the hollies; there are berries scattered at the feet of the trees. The drops of scarlet against the white are beautiful -- bright baubles for a wild bracelet, but as he bends to gather them up he is whelmed in a rush of memories: other nights, other reds, other snows.

Mandos smoothed his broken edges, but the rage and shame and horror of Doriath lingers: his internal labor of absolution is not yet done. Celegorm shudders and blinks, layering the harsh hands in his mind over with his new ones, reaching past the remembered drops of blood for the holly-beads. His skin prickles like that of a beast at bay, twitching, readying to run.

The deep bell of his Lord’s voice rings in his head, in his chest, in a pulse of command. Celegorm turns, still shivering.

The great fire burns. The horned head lifts in welcome. Oromë’s eyes are tender as the stooping falcon’s, as the homing hawk’s. From across the clearing, the Vala reaches for him, calling. For once, His lips are soft, gently covering His sharp, white teeth.

His voice is like bronze, like the welling of a deep gong, echoing in Celegorm’s heart.

Come back, He says. Come back to the hearth, to the arms that will hold you.

Come back and be warm.

Chapter 3: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Summary:

Fingon spends an evening with Sam Gamgee that prompts some nostalgia.

Notes:

Second-row bingo from the 2024 SWG Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Potluck Bingo card.

Chapter Text

Hobbits, Fingon thinks, are the one great pleasure that Valinor had lacked. He is forever grateful to Olórin for remedying that error and unleashing on the unsuspecting Amanyar the chaos that is Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, and Samwise Gamgee – alone, or even more enjoyably, together. The golden air of the Blessed Lands now sparkles with the smoke of pipe-weed and with hobbit curiosity. It is refreshing. Entertaining. And a gastronomical delight.

At present, Fingon has his heels propped on the fender of Sam’s small fire, and is nearly asleep with satisfaction. His belly is full of the finest mashed potatoes he has ever tasted, and his lazy hand grasps a nearly-empty flagon of impeccable ale. The warmth, the savoriness, the practical company all bring to mind bright, ancient evenings spent with Húrin, frying potatoes in the fat of whatever creature they had hunted and toasting victory and pleasure with Dor-lómin’s beer.

Fingon sighs and grins, caught in the tenderness of memory. The soporific qualities of butter and milk and ‘taters, as Sam still calls them, are about to overwhelm him. He tips his head to catch the last few frothy drops of ale and yawns.

Sam rescues his tankard with a practiced hand and tuts at Fingon’s dreamy smile. Who would have thought the energetic hero of so many tales would show such enthusiasm for plain hobbit cooking – and be so easily overcome?

“There’s a king for you!” he mutters. “Asleep already! And I haven’t even offered him the scones!”

Chapter 4: What Has Been Earned

Summary:

Finrod and Curufin sort things out, Afterward.

Notes:

From a tumblr prompt by amorbidcorvid.

Chapter Text

Curufin drops backward into the drift with an astonished whuff! at the strength of Finrod’s blow. The snow puffs up around him like flour, like the faint radiance that rises from a baking bowl as the dough is turned and punched. Like a lover’s breath in the cold, Finrod thinks, rubbing his chilly fingers together and remembering their most recent kiss, only moments ago.

The fine glaze of impact in the air is like smoke. Like a gasp in the dark, or the dizziness of betrayal, abandonment. Like salt spray at the edge of the Sea, where his other cousins perished and the white ships burned.

But that was a long time ago. In another lifetime. Lessons have been learned.

Curufin’s eyes are tearful, blinking blearily up through the remains of Finrod’s snowball, and Finrod basks for a moment in the satisfaction of surprise and the tingle of a sort of retribution. Then he reaches down to haul Curufin to his feet, embracing him tenderly and kissing the scattered flakes from his lashes, his lips, his cheeks.

The ball of ice he drops down Curufin’s collar is just what his cousin deserves.

Chapter 5: Inheritance

Summary:

An origin story for the imagery in what became the Ring of Barahir.

Notes:

From a tumblr prompt by dissent-in-the-hivemind, for Arafinwean week 2025.

Chapter Text

Ingwë carries the serpents across the water, wound around his arms and neck like living jewels. Their tongues flick, tasting the salt in the air.

At Cuiviénen they had been the protectors of his house: sleek wardens of the byways and the tree-roads, guardians of the hollows where shadows might otherwise linger and lurk. The soft hiss of their shimmering passage kept pace with him in the dark woods and along the banks of the perilous waters. The small gems of their eyes gleamed from over the longhouse lintel, wary and wise.

Indis bears their offspring to Tirion when she dances down the mountain: she is garlanded in serpents, gold as the living light.

Like her, Finarfin drapes them across his shoulders – but he wears them as a warning lest his detractors come too close. Few dare the cool glance of those jeweled eyes, the suspicion in those silently flicking tongues.

Finrod teases the smallest to wind their way around his fingers: blinking, glimmering. Like them, he shines: smoothly beautiful, but with a hidden, bitter bite.

Chapter 6: Loomworks

Summary:

Mandos and Vairë consider Míriel and Indis and Doom.

Chapter Text

The grief Namo feels for those who pass through his realm is formless, wound through the potent air of the Halls like a weight on the tongue, soft and slightly bitter in the mouth.

At Míriel’s passing, that faint tang grows stronger. The Doomsman shifts on his silent throne and frowns. The cost of her loss seems so clear: that unchecked flame that will burn through the world with its ravening heart ever seeking. The Children like tinder, caught in its wake. The lands of their proud hopes all burned and cracked and drowned.

Vairë tastes his sorrow in the air and clicks her tongue. Her many hands do not falter in their weaving. One traces that scarlet thread of pain through the warp of her tapestries, easing the knots. Another lifts a shuttle and binds a gold wire on.

Back and forth, back and forth, the forming shapes shift and dance. Songs ring on the mountain, in the forests, in the towers. Hands are clasped and promises kept. Out of the fiery darkness a great star gleams, cleansing and sweetening the night.

Mourn for Míriel, yet sing for Indis, Vairë whispers. See how this new thread holds the light.

Chapter 7: Insularity

Summary:

Finrod and ancient tortoises.

Notes:

200 words for welcomingdisaster from a tumblr prompt.

Chapter Text

Small Finrod loves the tortoises in Grandmother Indis’ garden. Their ancient eyes have seen so many seasons – more, even, than Grandmother herself, who brought them West in distant memory, over the starlit Sea. They share her patient silences, her glow of hidden humor, and her deep, wise gaze. The tortoises regard the foolishness of the Quendi with puzzled solemnity; their jaws grinding slowly, implacably, as they consider the careless errors of the world.

Finrod feeds them grapes, stolen warm from the vine. He drapes them in shawls and clasps spangled anklets around the leather pillars of their legs. He rides them in ponderous benevolence along the crushed-stone paths, perched cross-legged and gracious on the smooth, cool domes of their backs.

He hides in the dimness of their burrows, dug laboriously into the sandy soil of the garden’s hills with those great earth-moving claws, so unexpected in their sharpness. He curls his own fingers: scratching, raking, digging in.

He envies them their armor, their placid impermeability. Amid the flash and tangle of his family’s woes, Finrod wishes for his own hard shell. Oh, to be able to drop to the earth with such inviolable certainty and draw his small head in!

Chapter 8: Revenant

Summary:

Maglor encounters Maedhros for the first time since his rescue from the mountain.

Notes:

For Maedhros and Maglor Week 2025.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

All the way from the Fëanorian camp, Maglor has been preparing himself for horror. Their grinding experience with Morgoth’s creatures has taught him what to expect: Maedhros will likely have been mutilated in some terrible, purposeful way. It is possible that he will have lost his tongue, for presuming to speak on behalf of the Noldor and cursing Melkor's name. Or his eyes, to extinguish the light of the Trees that Morgoth so despises. Or perhaps the Enemy will have carved some hideous verses into his skin: insults to the House of Fëanor, in perfect, inerasable Tengwar. Maglor is not naturally squeamish, but he takes a moment at the door of the tent, pausing to calm himself. To breathe.

But the sleeping form in the bed is strangely unmarred.

Maedhros is twig-thin, yes, from years of exposure. His hair has been shaved, presumably to clear it of vermin. And of course, there is the missing hand.

But the beauty for which he was named still clings to him, in the fine-drawn bones of his face and the elegant lines of his body under the linen sheet. Maglor folds the covering back, trying not to wake him. The badges of torment that he has expected – scars, brands, burns – do not appear. Washed and anointed, Maedhros’ skin is luminous, softly freckled. Utterly clear.

Maglor’s heart pounds; he cannot breathe. The wrongness of Maedhros’ delicate near-perfection overwhelms him. So pure he seems, still, on the outside, after thirty years as Morgoth’s plaything and a symbol of their long defeat.

Maedhros shifts in the bed and his eyes crack open.

Ah, Maglor thinks, shrinking as that fierce gaze lances through him.

It is what burns within Maedhros, now, that must be feared.

Notes:

Tolkien says Maedhros was tormented. Fanfic is full of his physical agony, which makes sense, and I love and have written orc!Maedhros, myself. But I also love a Maedhros whose misery is primarily internal - hence the "white flame," the "as one returned from the dead." Here he is.

Chapter 9: Contusions

Summary:

Maedhros cannot escape Fingon's loving.

Notes:

For Melesta.

Note that this one's rated M.

Chapter Text

The problem, Maedhros thinks, as he grinds his teeth, is that Fingon has always craved tenderness.

"Make love to me, Rus," he had gasped, the first time, after Maedhros had kissed him to the edge of incoherence and gripped him, hot and eager, in his hand. "Please. Oh, please be sweet!"

He had opened to Maedhros like a geode, precious and beautiful and mysterious, too lovely to be treated with anything other than reverence, too loved to be touched with anything but light.

He was honeyed, delectable, inside and out. Maedhros could never get enough of him.

And Fingon has stayed sweet, even after the Ice. Even after the mountain, when the words that fall from Maedhros’ lips at their joining are in a brutal tongue that Fingon does not speak. When Maedhros’ hands are hard and his hips are harder and his mouth twists whenever Fingon kisses him.

It is intolerable: the way he still gives and gives and gives.

"Just fuck me," Maedhros snarls, unable to bear the tenderness, and Fingon winces.

"Hush, all right, I will," he murmurs. "I love you. You'll get what you need."

Fingon bites, with a studied, deliberate purpose. His mouth drags bruises across Maedhros’ skin as he hums, savoring arousal's taste. His strong hands grip as he slowly sinks in, until Maedhros is shuddering with the exquisite drag of it, his thighs clutching Fingon’s waist.

Even in this, Fingon is somehow tender: the fierce pace and power that Maedhros demands are still infused with care. He drives into Maedhros with the precision of a jeweler's hammer, striking perfect blow after perfect blow, controlling their mutual shattering with a forge-master's muscular grace.

And it is sweet, oh! It is sweet. Maedhros, who has not tasted sugar since Losgar, whose every breath is sharp and bitter, finds himself melting. He winds himself around Fingon as if to wring every last drop of nectar from his smooth, firm skin; from his powerful limbs; from the soft, plucked rose of his lips.

No. No, and no, and no. Beleriand will not reward such frailty. This unmerited blessing cannot be borne.

Maedhros rides East in the morning, believing his freedom won.

But once within the walls of Himring, he writhes on his rough, cold sheets, pressing deep into the fading bruises, remembering the patient certainty of Fingon’s touch. His own grip is not gentle, but it carries an echo of that repudiated sweetness. He chokes on Fingon’s name as he comes undone.

There will be no escaping the twisting grace of Fingon's loving. Maedhros will be marked all his life by that insistent tenderness, like the bloom on some tart, dark plum. 

Chapter 10: A Missed Connection

Summary:

100 words of Daeron and Luthien, loving.

Notes:

Never posted this here, although it made the rounds on tumblr. For a request by polutrope.

Chapter Text

All their long centuries together have been a slow awakening. They have loved with the unsteady grace of acrobats on a board, balanced on a rolling log: moving forward and back, forward and back.

For Daeron, that tipping dizziness has always been enough. He has loved, but not longed; sprawled in the sweetness of her lap, braiding small blossoms into her hair, nibbling the sharp stems of clover as she sings. The always-tenderness is assumed – a constant undercurrent of contentment, of comfort, of joy.

It is only as he watches Lúthien watching Beren that he understands what he has lost.

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