Soledad's Journal

A BROTHERLY GIFT
by Soledad

Author’s notes: It’s an historical fact that – despite the actually existing bath-houses in medieval towns – the eastern realms had a much more sophisticated bathing culture in the Middle Ages. My own hometown, Budapest, was unique in this area, as the Turkish invaders had built a great number of bath-houses there during their 150-year-long rule. Some of them are still working.

As always, Lord Orchald(or) is “played” by Sean Connery. Imagine him as he appeared in the first Highlander movie. His son Herumor is "played" by Stuart Townsend.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PART THREE

They spent a few highly enjoyable hours in the baths that could have put the ones in any Haradric city to shame. The bather, an expatriate from Khambaluk by the name of Sinsar, had very skilled fingers and a great gift in setting dislocated limbs and soothing sores; apparently, those were skills taught in his family from generation to generation.
( Read more... )
~The End~

Note: In medieval terms, honour also means the lands (manors, etc.) a lord owns.

Title: A Brotherly Gift
Author: Soledad

Disclaimer: The main characters, the context and the main plot belong to Professor Tolkien, whom I greatly admire. I’m only trying to fill in the gaps he so graciously left for us, fanfic writers, to have some fun. Andrahar, Mahiran and the blade Nightshade belong to Isabeau. Only Halabor and its inhabitants belong to me.

Rating: General – suitable for all.
Genre: not specified.
Series: None, but the story belongs to the “Sons of Gondor” story arc and takes place in my imaginary Gondorian town, Halabor.
Summary: Prince Imrahil makes his sworn brother, Andrahar, a very special anniversary gift.

Author’s notes: This is an anniversary fic, written for Isabeau, as an answer to the Edhellond Group’s Anniversary 2006 challenge.

My heartfelt thanks go to altariel1 for beta reading.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PART ONE

[The 23rd day of Urui(1) in the year 3006 of the Third Age]

The summer was unusually warm in Gondor in the 3006th year of the Third Age, tiring both men and beasts whenever Arien(2) steered her golden ship high above upon the deep blue sky. Even Anduin, the Great River, seemed tardy, rolling the heavy mass of its waters slowly southwards. There was no wind, not even a light breeze that would catch the sails of the barges heading to the North, thus they had to be moved laboriously by the oars against the stream or hauled up by long ropes along the river bank.
( Read more... )
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
End notes:
(1) Approximately our August. Unlike the Elves, the Dúnedain used the Sindarin names of the months, all of which were 30 days long.
(2) According to the “Book of Lost Tales”, the Maia who steered the Sun-ship.

It was long overdue, so I've finally updated telekis_vendiak, my fanfic recommendation page.
( Read more... )
Oh, and when we're already talking about updates: "Tales of Halabor 05" has just been posted to all the usual places. Dedicated to all the fans of the manly Men of Gondor.

Story #3: Emerië Manor has been added to all the usual places, including edhellondawards.

Herumor is sent to his father's bailiff to overlook the training of the men-at-arms under the command of Lord Peredur. We meet some familiar faces from "The Last Yule" and "The Young Knights", and Númenórean dining habits are discussed.

Have fun! (more cookie reports coming up tomorrow)

I've posted two short pieces to the Halabor-related section of the
Otherworlds board. Both deal with the "Hanse of Lebennin", a trade
alliance based on the Hanseatic League, created quite unintentionally
while I was writing "An Autumn Fair in Halabor" last year.

You can take a look here.

One of the pieces is a short introduction to the Hanse as a whole, the
other one an ongoing list of member towns and their short
descriptions. Not that I really expect any great interest, but perhaps there are a few other trivia fans out there. It's only for geeks, you understand. *g*

"The Shoemaker's Daughter" is one of my favourite stories. Granted, it's not exactly the kind of story that would attract the average Tolkienfic reader: it deals with a bunch of OCs, it has an ungodly abundance of trivia and long, loving descriptions, and it's updated about once in a year or so. Still, I've hoped that at least the handful of people who seemed to like my other Halabor stories would be interested.

Well, not so much luck. The two recently posted chapters not only didn't get a single review (together), despite having been posted to four (!) different places, on SoA, they didn't even get a single hit! Yeah, hit counters can be depressing sometimes. On FF.Net and TFF at least they had a handful of hits.

I know, we aren't living in the times when people would be willing to crack open an epic novel - or start reading a fic of the same proportions. I know the reasons, and I'm sympathetic, really. It's still depressing, though.

Well, at least it hasn't attracted any malevolent "critics" yet, either. I guess I ought to count my blessings, small as they might be.

Chapter 2 of the Elfhelm story is posted to the TFF archive - practically trivia-free and with barely any footnotes, I swear!

Elfhelm has several fairly unpleasants conversations and learns what the King wants of him.)

Also, I started this year's Advent Calendar, The Young Knights

It has Boromir, Faramir, Prince Adrahil, young Lord Herumor of Halabor and many, many other peoples. And nobody will die this time, honest. *g*

Enjoy, and feed the muse if you like what you see.

Note Other than that, Yahell just crashed on me completely. I hope it's only temporary...

Yep, I've finally come around to update that story. Actually, Chapter 2 has been finished for several months by now, but I wasn't sure whether or not I should keep all the descriptions I'm so overly fond of. As my poor, generous beta has been caught up with RL issues, I posted a copy to Otherworlds, hoping that people would tell me what they think. They haven't so far. So I decided to post the chapter the way it is. There might be some corrections later, but actually, I like it this way and will probably keep it so. We'll see.

In any case, here you can find Chapter 2: Old Craban

It's the main Halabor story, in case you were wondering. Enjoy!

Finsihed the first chapter of The Shoemaker's Daughter, I have. Well, more or less. I'm still not entirely sure that it ends the way it ends. Confused yet? I certainly am.

Put the dratted thing into my Edhellond folder. Hope the crowd would tell me if it's too unfinished or whatnot. There are also some expressions I find too modern, but for my life couldn't think of anything else.

Writing in a third language can be truly frustrating at times. You leaf through dictionaries of various size, because you are looking for the One Perfect Word(TM) for that particular sentence. You either find none, or if you do, it turns out that the native speakers interpret it differently.

And then there are the words you simply can't keep in your head. I have looked up the word "inspiration" at least forty times in the recent two months by now. I just keep forgetting it.

I remember when I started reading (and writing) fanfic in English, I had such a respect for native speakers who had no difficulty expressing themselves that I lived in constant awe and fear. It took me a year or more to make a difference between good grammar, purple prose and good story. *g*

I'm a lot more critical now. I found that some authors I greatly admired at first were simply lucky enough to be native speakers. But I also found that quite a few of them I still find wonderfully talented and enjoy their writing a great deal.

I can't remember if there was a point to make at all. It's late and we are having a heat wave. My brain doesn't function at its best.

I found a piece of my past today - a very small one, but one that I liked very much as long as it lasted.

( Read more... )