welcometolotr

[welcometolotr]

One of my favorite Elrond headcanons is the idea that he starts out looking very much human and elvish. He has ears too pointed to be a man's, but not nearly long enough to be an elf's, his father's (grandfather's, really) blue eyes and brown hair that shines like an elf's, but gets tangled far too often.

Sure, some weird things happen around Elrond as a child– the birds that seems to follow him, the way some injuries mysteriously resolve in his prescense, the unusual flowers that bloom outside his windows– but really, it's easy to see those as distant remnants of an ainuric power that Elrond clearly didn't inherit. When he comes to Gil-Galad's camp, it's much easier for them to see Tuor or Beren in him than it is to think he's descended from Melian.

But then time passes. The changes are slow enough– happening over decades or centuries– that no one really notices at first. Elrond's hair darkens until it is as black as the night sky– as black as Luthien's was. His eyes leach color until they are gray– not Noldor gray, mind, but a strange, starry gray that some of the Iathrim whisper about. His voice changes, almost seems to take on an echo of itself, sometimes.

The strange things that happen around him only get stranger– the trees bend to shelter him, during storms, and sometimes when he sings, the birds sing with him. Elrond got a cat, right at the start of the Second Age– a gift from Gil-Galad. Somehow, it never seems to grow old or die. The parts of Lindon Elrond most often visits always seem to be in full bloom, no matter what season it is. His healing abilities surpass what is to be expected of a man– an elf– eventually, of what seems possible at all.

At the end of the First Age, it would've been hard to believe Elrond had more than a trickle of ainur blood in him. By the beginning of the Third Age, many have started to whisper about Rivendell– a new Doriath, ruled by a Maiarin lord with all Melian's grace, and her eccentricities.

Elrond doesn't realize just how much he's changed until the day, late in the Third Age, when he finds Maglor wandering on the shoreline. Nothing he says will convince Maglor that he isn't Luthien's spirit, returned from death to haunt him.

#text #elronddd

[welcometolotr]

Maedhros and Maglor.

"pride, jealousy and harp" 😂😂😂

#maedhrosss #maglorrr

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Golden scars

#maedhrosss

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When a mysterious handsome man appears in your sect 🤔

#LiuJiu (but i'm going to give SJ an old hot Liu. he deserves to be spoiled)

#svsss

[welcometolotr]

@maedhrosmaglorweek, Day 7: Storytelling

Maglor sings, and the ruins of Tol Himling come to life.

I'm actually really proud of all the art I've made for Maedhros & Maglor Week (and I have so many new fics saved open to read)! Thanks to the mods for hosting this :-)

#maglorrr

[welcometolotr]

I’ve been thinking about Nerdanel’s body a lot recently and wanted to sketch her. She was pregnant 6 times, so her body definitely isn’t “perfect”.

#nerdanelll #non-sexual nudity

[welcometolotr]

Trials By Fire (After).

Maglor afire post-Bragollach, for @maedhrosmaglorweek. Also on AO3.

Part 2 of this installment, with no need to read it first.

-

It does not seem possible that Maglor may survive the year.

So Maedhros wrote to the king - his new king, Fingon, along with his vows of fealty and the full promise to avenge Fingolfin, written and sealed in his own blood.

Maglor nearly followed his half-uncle. His flesh burned with a terrible fever. The whites of his eyes were fully red with smoke; he kept weeping, not with grief, but the poisonous grit that had become the fertile plains of the East.

He had refused to wash the last of the ash that had been his land; and barely permitted the healers to attend to him. He nearly went back to the Gap - would have gone without warning, if Maedhros had allowed it.

"Let go, release me," Maglor demanded.

Maedhros stood before him, between the landing and the gate. He had risen with a cold clarity of premonition, the sudden certainty - One whom you love is to die.

His voice broke and broke, until blood shone on his teeth. The power in it was a monstruous thing, filling the tall, tall stone halls of Himring.

He had been out of the healer's room and nearly down the staircases, enough beastly might in the ugly scrap of his throat to make ruthless warriors turn into peons, opening doors and gates for his passed.

Maedhros wielded in his hand his sheathed sword, the one he slept with like a lover beside him.

Release me, Maglor ordered with the fury of his mind, all his spirit warring against Maedhros; outraged, and betrayed truly to be held hostage.

Maedhros expelled his followers from the room - an effort of will, his dominion fighting against his brother's, and their own awareness flickering at the corner of his mind with animal terror.

And then he raised his blade from its sheath, without hesitation.

Maglor's best weapon had even been his voice - he had meant to make his way back to the Gap unaccompanied, none of his riders were about him.

He had ridden into safety for them, the lives bound to die with him if he had stood fast; he fled, now, as a thief in the night, dying of his wounds, alone, so that they might outlast him.

Maglor in his clear mind would not do such a thing. Maglor, Maglor as himself, took loyalty too solemnly; he would have given them the choice to follow him to the last, if he had been thinking clearly, and not wild with anguish. That was when Maedhros knew for certain what he must do.

Maedhros had his warriors close all the doors and all the windows, and leave them to their reckoning.

Maglor's face looked at him, repelled more than afraid at finding himself trapped. The worst of it was the bubbling foam at the corners of his mouth as he laughed, incredulous. Maedhros, he called. Nelyo, so you too are my enemy?

How could you allow this - how could you permit it! The East was yours to keep - look at what your keeping has made of us, O Lord of Himring! 

Maedhros ignored his insults, his threats, his bragging and begging. He loved him too well not to press him back, back, back, down staircases and corridors.

Maedhros had to lift him up - bearing against his teeth and clawing fingers, pressing him down on the cold springs at the secret base of Himring's thermal baths. Maglor only went limp at last when Maedhros dunked and dipped and half-drowned him back to sense, when at last the terrible blood-fever in his receded.

It took many days, for that. A fortnight and more; and the harm of that time never lifted from him, and left its deep marks.

And years of silence. The healers did what they could, sang the open sore that was his mouth whole; it broke apart, again, again.

He coughed blood at night, stained scraps of cloth scarlet - Maedhros remembered the sail-cloths of Alqualondë, red on white, whenever he saw him wiping his mouth. 

White scars engraved his cheek, from the broken length of his spread as it broke in many parts a gnashing dragon's teeth; and he did not speak for years.

Maedhros knew too well this despair, and loved him too much. He kept his closed away, at first. A high tower, the highest, with not even an arrow-slit to escape from.

Maglor's voice, closed like a fist in his throat; Maglor's face terrible and worse than terrible, the flaring of him as he paced the battlements, when he was permitted to walk, under Maedhros's own guard.

He sought always to see if someone was riding towards Himring, or away from it. Few of his riders had survived the great conflagration; few survived their flight. They went off into the wilds to ride against bands of orcs, or the rumours of Balrods or wyrms, as King Fingolfin had.

They meant to die, as King Fingolfin had.

Maedhros took to sharing his brother's cot, arms holding close his trembling limbs, lest he rise again in the dark before dawn and make for the stables, the scorched plains, the long homeward path back to what remained of the Gap.

Maglor wished it. Maglor wanted it with such a burning desire it left Maedhros breathless, painted the mirage of leaping dragon-fire behind his lids.

He went quiet and cold, that winter, once the fire left his veins - too cold, coals turning to cinders. He shook with chills, until he was wan and exhausted, and then longer still, and made no sound, gave up on the making of sounds.

He looked at Maedhros with a face empty, one eye blind - but it was the loss of his voice that defeated him. That, and Maedhros's unrelenting determination to make him live.

Let me go, release me, he had howled, until he could not any longer. His voice overlaid itself over memories of Angband, when Maedhros slept. The chains of Thangorodrim, and Maglor riding barely in front of a wave of fire, Maglor behind the thick steel-and-stone of Himring's highest tower, sweating through his fever and his fury.

The look on his face, when Maedhros raised him up from the water. At times he woke with the bones of his arms reverberating with the force of pressing him down, certain as he woke that he had done it - drowned him dead. He had to turn and check, make certain he was not in bed with a corpse bloated blue and black.

It did not seem possible that Maglor may survive the year. Maedhros was a mad fool set on accomplishing the impossible - in this one instance, at least, he earned a bitter victory.

Fingon, he suspected, envied it terribly - his dearest person, saved from the aftermath of Morgoth's flames. Maglor, Maedhros knew for certain, did not forgive him. He had not wished to live.

("Let me go," he had screamed, with the last of his beautiful voice wrecked to disharmony. "Do you not know it was always meant to end in this? Let me at the flames, Nelyo, it is my land, mine, no good shall follow if I do not die in it. I know this, if you bear me in your heart with any love at all you must release me -"

He kept fighting for the words, even when he could not speak, choking on them. Maedhros dreamed of that, too).

"Not this year yet," he cautioned, when at last he judged his brother well enough to be able to leave the tower, and give him the freedom to pay his due respect to the king. "Call your standards, your vassals and all the forces at their disposal, and all shall answer in full faith. But wait only one year more; the time is not yet come."

Maglor's voice should be fully his own again, by then. The healers agreed; and Maedhros knew it.

He dueled in the grounds, and fought anyone who dared to try him. His body, forged anew from a terrible crucible, healed its shattered ribs, its splintered femur, the cracks in his skull, the fine, fine fractures in his long fingers. He trained as the healers dictated, drank the bitter tinctures, ate well, worked a sweat of pain for hours as he strengthened his body again, and readied himself for the harp again with plucking loose strings.

Even Maedhros lost against him when they crossed blades, not once, but time and time again. It was a sight of beauty and dread, watching the two lords of the fortress spar. 

Down on the training grounds, hands and knees in the dirt, looking up at his brother standing taller than him, for once - taller, fiercer, the whites of his eyes alight - Maedhros was very aware of the picture they painted, and the road he meant to take to keep that fire kindled.

For Maedhros had been brought to life himself with his brother's insistence, by the shores of Mithrim, knew to be patient. Ruthless, and patient, for the times when their blades crossed, and Maglor's face shone with a new passion, a flare of mirth.

It made no difference that Maglor grew dire, afterwards, and evaded all company, and would not look at him. Maedhros might lose the duel, but those brief smiles were his prize, and those he stole more and more often.

Maglor was nearly whole. Kept court once more with his own warriors, and kept some from their fateful rides, and blessed the ones who took their leave in honour.

Slowly, with his customary discipline, he learned his voice-box anew; carefully, inevitably. The face he turned always eastwards looked at Maedhros without resentment, now.

When he won, Maglor held out his hand to help him rise. Maedhros started to wait, to hope almost.

And when at last, at last, Maglor pressed close in his arms, weeping trails of salt against his neck, that was when Maedhros knew it was time to go to war; for together had never been as strong, or more certain to succeed.

#😭🫡🫡 #maglorrr #maedhrosss

[welcometolotr]

Scar concepts for Maglor post silmayeeting

#maglorrr

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#fingonnn

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half-maia siblings <3

#luthiennn #daeronnn

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in shards of crimson ever whisper

Maedhros asks a question and he isn't quite prepared for the answer. Set in the short king thicsmith Eol is a temporary babysitter for the two living Feanorians, an AU squared mess inspired by @welcometolotr.

-

"Are your palms red?"

Eol stills in his movements where he has been packing. The greater army won't leave for a week or more yet, but he intends to be gone by the end of the day tomorrow; this many elves in one place gives him a rash, especially since the dwarves have departed for Khazad Dum.

On the cot, Maedhros the One Handed And One Grippy Carved Into A Cat's Head Because Eol Thinks He's Funny says, "Grandfather had red hands."

"Your grandfather had red linework," Eol says shortly. "It was geometric, as fitted his mind and duties before he left for the West."

"You aren't of the Noldor," Maedhros says. He doesn't mean it as an insult. "You were kin of Elwe."

"Yes. On my father's side. My mother was a Tatyar."

Maedhros inclines his head at the old name. "Yet you have no other red, that I have seen."

"Then you are blind. There is red on my arms and legs, and across my back."

"Not like your palms, though."

"No."

Maedhros laughs. "Carnistir always said you spoke less than a stone. If my line of questioning brings insult, I'll stop."

"It is not an insult." Eol says. Then he says, as he slowly puts down the waterskin he had been lifting, "it is...not private, but."

He hates the understanding that dawns in Maedhros' eyes as he says quietly, "is it hard to talk about?"

"No. No one asks." Eol stares down at his desk. He must be getting on in years, he thinks, to be seriously considering..

"It is for Aredhel."

The silence becomes immediately thick and cold.

"No one asks about her." He says into this icy quiet. "No one asks what I was thinking, or how I feel, or if I remember. No one asks about our years together or how we met. After that little shitstain from Gondolin published his tripe everyone figures they know, and that's if they care enough to read about her, and wonder if she's more than a footnote in some tragic tale."

Eol slides the waterskin into his pack.

"The red because you killed her." the prince murmurs.

"Right genius, you are." Eol says tightly. "Done your father proud."

"I have done you injury," Maedhros says. "You miss her."

It hits Eol like a blow to the chest with a mithril warhammer.

He should keep his silence, as he always has. It's safer that way.

"..whenever she looked at me, right at me, it hurt," Eol says quietly. "She had seen the light, and it burned. It wasn't as bad as with Elu, but it could be powerful aggravating in large doses. She used to look over my left shoulder, so her gaze never quite touched me."

He looks down at his red washed palm.

"Even in that moment, she didn't look directly at me- just over my shoulder."

He lets his hand drop, closes the flap on the pack. "When she found my halls it was nearing midwinter. The first snows had already fallen. I was out checking traps with my hunters and I felt the burn like when the King and Queen looked at me. I looked up and.."

In his cursed perfect memory he can still see her. Against the thick black trunks of the ghost trees, beneath their softly glowing leaves, she rises from the frost-marked litter of the forest floor like a pillar of ice and snow. She has a pack and a horse, and her hair is a midnight ribbon braided and wrapped around her throat like a necklace made from an onyx river.

Her eyes are mithril silver and they burn oh they burn like a wildfire and he never wants them to look away from him again, he would happily perish under the weight of that gaze as long as it stays on him forever.

"You loved her."

It brings him back to the tent, to the impossible Feanorian sitting on the cot where the OTHER impossible Feanorian had been a few hours before, tuning a lute someone had found left behind and asking improper questions about dwarvish music.

"Don't be stupid," Eol says. "Ask any scholar between here and the sundering sea. The Moriquendi does not know love or kindness."

"I suppose he also doesn't know regret?" Maedhros asks. "or atonement?"

"Can't make right wrongs you've done to the dead, Prince," Eol says. "They're still dead."

Maedhros the One Handed And One Grippy can't say much to that. They both know it to be true.

#eolll #maedhrosss

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mussel armor tol eressëan

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fëanorian kiddos

#feanoriansss

[welcometolotr]

In addition to the drama, I also want to share some thoughts about my headcanon Noldorin traditions. In particular, the tradition of braiding. For the Noldor, braiding is a symbol of attachment to a person, a connection with someone. Elrond is just playing with hair, but it means a lot more to Maedhros.

#maedhrosss #elronddd #the freckles <3

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strong mama Nerdanel

#yes good #nerdanelll #feanorrr #maedhrosss

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I shudder to imagine what was going through Maedhros's head in the aftermath of Sirion. Nothing good, that's for sure. Anyway, a note on character design, (It's his hair, of course it's his hair, I have no self control) when i draw him, his hair is a strong indicator of his mental state. At this point, he's so far gone that he doesn't even give enough of a shit to cut it short any more (which I hc as an act of reclaiming in the wake of angband, controlling one of the very few things he still can about his appearance.) P.S. I spent way too long on this to tolerate tumblr quality, so please click on it and take a closer look!

#oh…the vibes !! #maedhrosss #top tier

[welcometolotr]

I feel like we significantly underestimate the amount of weird fucking people who must live in Rivendell. It's a sanctuary, it's run by a really nice cosmic horror, it's a place of healing, it's definitely haunted by now. And it's absolutely the place where all the elves who aren't allowed in civil society end up. There's an old Feanorian diehard living next to one of Thingol's bodyguards and they hate each other and constantly argue about who gets to guard Elrond. (Glorfindel never participates in the argument, but he usually wins it). There is at least one person who's absolutely supposed to be dead hiding there under a fake name. There's a whole flock of half-elves just kind of vibing there. I assume there's at least one reformed orc who like, works in the library.

Just, I'd love to hear about all the strange people who've washed up in Rivendell over the years because I bet there are some stories there. I want to write about my own OC blorbos but I have far too many WIPs as it is.

#text #rivendelll