#also combined with the light of earendil of course

[rohirric-hunter]

Returning to an old conversation about magic in LotR, something occurred to me the other day: Sting was a far more effective weapon against Shelob than Sam's sword, slicing through multiple of her webs with a single sweep and cutting into her belly without much apparent effort from Sam. The text is a bit unclear for the brief portion of the fight when Sam is using two swords, but it seems to me that the only wound Sam's own sword scores against her is against one of her eyes: "The shining sword bit upon her foot and shore away the claw. Sam sprang in, inside the arches of her legs, and with a quick upthrust of his other hand stabbed at the clustered eyes upon her lowered head." While both swords could potentially be shining, Sting is established to be glowing at this point due to the proximity of the orcs in the tower, so I'm inclined to believe that the shining sword here is Sting, the one that chops off the end of one of her legs no problem, while the other one strikes against her eye, established two paragraphs later to be her softest spot.

Now Frodo attributes this potency against Shelob to the sword's origins. "There were webs of horror in the dark ravines of Beleriand where it was forged." And basically this pans out, Gondolin, where Sting was made, was not too far from Ered Gorgoroth, where Ungoliant and her spawn (including, most likely, Shelob herself) lived until Beleriand fell. The logic here, is, perhaps, similar to the reasoning for why Frodo and Merry's barrow-blades were so potent against the Witch-king, having adopted a portion of their makers' loathing for a particular enemy. And there is indeed evidence enough for this: the first spider Bilbo encounters in Mirkwood "evidently was not used to things that carried such stings at their sides, or it would have hurried away quicker." This spider lived not too far from the Elvenking's halls, surely it had been attacked with weapons before, which does call up an idea of there being something especially terrible to it about this particular sword. (Though this spider is also inarguably quite inept and possibly stupid; no shade to Bilbo but losing a fight to a mostly-tied-up enemy that can't see in the dark and has never before fought anything more dangerous than a particularly stubborn door-to-door salesman doesn't exactly reflect well on its capabilities.)

But I think Sting had another enchantment on it, and one a great deal more recent, and possibly even more direct: the enchantment of its name.

Bilbo takes a sword from a troll-hoard, puts it on his belt and under his jacket, and then proceeds to carry it around for months without thinking about it at all -- until, that is, he finds himself face to face with a giant spider, a giant spider who, as is made clear in the text, was one of Shelob's own descendants: "Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Duath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood (emphasis mine)."

So Bilbo takes his sword and makes his first kill, and what we witness next is a Moment by any definition: "Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves of of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath."

Then Bilbo names the sword, and he names it Sting, calling to mind the thought of a fly that can fight off a spider, a tiny creature coming out on top in a fight with a fierce predator. And then he sets off and uses his newly minted sword to rescue his friends from giant spiders. And though he uses the sword again in his adventure, it is never such a great moment, and indeed he ends up missing a great deal of the battle where it would have been most useful, leaving this incident with the spiders as not only his first use of the weapon, but his most significant -- as The Hobbit is meant to be adapted from his memoirs, certainly the only one he felt important enough to write about.

And for sixty years Sting laid quiet in the Shire, hanging over Bilbo's mantle, where he told stories about it to his nieces and nephews and cousins and anyone else who would listen, and doubtless the story he kept circling back to was the one about the great spiders and the christening of his sword, and even if nobody believed it, a bit of a legend grew about it, and whatever deeds, if any, it was involved in before it found its way to the troll's hoard were forgotten, and it became the Sting, the sword that was used to defend friends from Shelob's brood.

I hardly need to point out the power inherent in names and the naming of things and people in Tolkien's work.

And then, seventy-eight years after its christening, Sting finds itself in another spider's lair, the grandmother or great-grandmother of that first spider that earned it its name -- and this is what it is, now. This is its entire identity, insomuch as a sword can have one of those. I think that over seventy-eight years Bilbo quite inadvertently but also quite effectively wove an enchantment against Shelob and her ilk on that sword, never knowing how much it would matter in the end. Indeed, I would put forth that there was no other weapon in contemporary Middle-earth that would have been such a bitter sting to Shelob; similar enchantments, perhaps, could be found in Thranduil's halls from his people's long struggle against the spiders there, but on a blade from Gondolin, which shared a mountain range with the land where Ungoliant herself lived for a time? And Glamdring and Orcrist would have inherited those properties alongside Sting, but they had a legacy of goblin slaying, not spider slaying.

So, quite by accident, Frodo and Sam walked into Shelob's lair with the best possible chance of escaping her.

#lotr #also combined with the light of earendil of course #because blah blah blah earlier version of the histories where earendil killed ungoliant #but even more so something something light of the silmarils being the one thing ungoliant wasnt able to devour #greed hates what it cannot have or something idk #also i realize some people disagree with this but i think the text clearly states that shelob is the direct child of ungoliant #because in the same paragraph where shes described as 'the last child of ungoliant' its established that she has broods of her own #and also that these broods are uhhhhh #pure #if you get what i mean #the bloodline is unbroken #if you follow #but SHES the last. her children dont count as children of ungoliant #because theyre children of shelob theres a degree of separation

[swanmaids]

For the kiss prompts, I'd be very curious to see what you'd do with 40 or 41 for Elwing/Earendil! Could be one or the other, or a combination of both, your choice! Only if you want to of course, and thank you so much!!

- @olorinestel

41. because the world is saved

you should also check out @meadowlarkx 's interpretation of the same prompt if you haven't already!

~

Her husband shone.

Now bathed permanently in the terrible light of the silmaril, Eärendil glowed day and night with the final remnant of the light of the trees, and after several years in the Blessed Realm Elwing had thought herself accustomed to it, as much as one could grow accustomed to anything in this strange fairy realm. But then Eärendil had been called upon to sail the skies back to ravaged Beleriand once more, and in the time in between, Elwing had forgotten.

Eärendil was an Elf who was a Man, but hallowed by the jewel he looked like neither. He radiated light from the inside out.

The Eärendil who stepped down onto the gangplank as Vingilot docked in the haven where their tower stood had changed further since before he had left Aman. New silvery scars stood out against his skin, and he moved slowly.

But when he at last stood before her and their eyes met, the look on his face was the same as it ever was. It was the same look he had worn each and every time, at Sirion and at Elwing's Isle of Seabirds, when they were reunited after every voyage. I missed you. It's so good to see you. Thank you for waiting for me.

After so much time together, they did not really need words. He fell into her arms silently, and she held him there for many long moments, one hand stroking over his hair the way one might soothe a child.

"The war?" she said eventually.

Of course, she knew that it was ended. The birds had told her as much several days ago, and she had heard the celebrations of the elves on Tol Eressëa proper even from her tower, though she had no inclination to join with them. But somehow, she needed to hear it from him - and she thought that he might need to tell her.

"Over," he said simply, into her neck.

"The dragon?"

"Fish food."

She snorted a laugh, and at the same time felt her eyes begin to well up. How strange it all was - their wish from so long ago granted. The price it had cost them, never to be repaid. She thought of Sirion under the waves. Twin bodies kicking in the waters of her womb.

The thought of peace made Elwing picture walking across a rotted jetty over water. It felt fragile, untrustworthy. After all, she had never known it.

"It's over," she repeated, because she did not know what else to say.

"It's over," he said once more, "and I love you."

Elwing loved him too. She told him so.

Their love had ever been an anchor in an uncertain world. In this new, strange peace, it would be so again. They held on to one another for another long moment before Eärendil drew back, and she held his silmaril-lit face in her hands, and he pressed his salt-chapped lips against hers.

They kissed in the unhurried way of lifelong best friends and lovers, as the waves rolled onto the shores and the seabirds swirled above them, and the First age ended and a new age began.

#elwing #earendil #starwing #the silm #kiss prompts #my post #my fic