Plentiful as Sand is Plentiful. LoTR. on ao3.
There was for many years an hourglass upon Elrond’s desk, a tall ivory-and-glass thing from sunken Númenor.
As a little child Estel liked to turn it and turn it, and would sit for hours upon his foster father’s lap following the mother-of-pearl etchings on the handle with his fingertips and watching the sand shift softly.
For a time it was too heavy for his small wrists to turn; but Elrond with his keen hearing would know when the last grains came with an end, and knew when to turn it without lifting his eyes from his papers.
Elrond had given it for him to hold, when he told him the truth of his name: Aragon, son of Arathorn, heir to Isildur’s line and Isildur’s grim failure.
“Yet also to the courage of his people, and their skill,” Elrond told him. “Your forefather it was who made this time piece as a gift to me. From the glass-rooms of Armenelos it came, the last of Isildur’s works of beauty. It has been of good use to me, and good memory; I give it to you, that you should remember him with gratitude, as well as bitterness.”
“Yet bitter is it what you say to me,” said Estel, who was Aragorn. He was startled still, and yet not surprised entirely; for the blood of kings ran in him, and had at times left an uneasy premonition upon him.
Still he would have remained been Estel, and no lost kingdom’s wayward heir; least of all in this century, this Age of the world, with an evil reckoning brewing in the distance.
He turned the hourglass in his hands; a Mannish means of counting time, not to be found in other elvish kingdoms, but common enough in the house of Elrond Peredhel. “Keep it, Master Elrond. I cannot have it as my own, ere I am Isildur’s heir truly. These hurrying moments that are my lifetime shall be a heavy load to carry, I judge, and my course too rough for such a delicate thing.”
“Then keep it I shall, until you wish to reclaim it, or your score of years are run to their course,” said Elrond; and laid upon Estel’s shoulder the heavy comfort of his healer’s hands, which he felt for a time like a yoke as well as a kindness.
It rested between a tall orchid Celebrían had found once in her expeditions in the wilds of Ennor, a narrow and tall and very orange creature, the last of its kind on these shore - and on the other side was his pile of used quills, which he tended to keep until they were worn through into stumps, too blunt to be sharpened.
He used it little, after that day; but at times Arwen his daughter came, and stood by the chair where Aragorn had sat with bent shoulders to her his name.
Her fingers, long broideress fingers, touched the waves and leviathans Isildur had carved, with careful deliberation, in the last days of his youth, the dying of his empire. Her eyes grew clouded, then; not with the memory of the past, but her own designs, a future seen with the force of her want. Her own lord of man, his dear face not like any other’s; her own cities crowded with the smell of stone dust and salt.
She left it there, warmed by her skin, and went away from it but for rare and secret visits; but Elrond at times looked heavily upon it, as once he had not.
That was another Age of the world. There is now an hourglass amidst Tar-Elessar’s instruments - behind the inkwell of Gondorin silver, besides the whittling of an eagle in flight his eldest daughter has wrought him.
Many gifts have been to him, the king well-returned; but none quite as ancient. Elessar turns it in his hands, when a heavy ruling keeps him at work long into the night; Isildur’s hourglass, grown light with the strength of his manhood, feels always a little terrible to hold.
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5 Songs I listen to
I never miss a music tag and to prove that I'm answering this one I got tagged to over a month ago. Thank you @grilledcheese-aspiration and @deedee-sims ❤
So this ended up being sort of lite themed playlist since I've been lately reminding myself how it feels to be young and desperately long after someone.
Waiting On You - ENMY
Never The One - Ocean Sleeper
Blameless - If Not For Me
Help Me Out! - Our Mirage
Hourglass - Normandie feat. Dani Winter-Bates
I dedicate this to @themeasureofasim and tag @tvickiesims, @microscotch, @jellymeduza, and @curiousb! No pressure :)
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I have started this challenge and WITH GOD AS MY WITNESS I WILL FINISH IT
fun fact:
Phantom Hourglass was my first Zelda and my first weird experience in terms of gender, because I was convinced that Link was a girl when he was presented as a boy. This was because I had given him my name, which is a girl's name.
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