Fic: Steward, Captain, and King - by Dwimordene
Personal homophone challenge: weak/week
*surfaces* Wordplay got me again... hope you're all well! *resubmerges*
Title: Steward, Captain, and King
Author: Dwimordene
Challenge: Homophones: weak/week: personal homophone challenge
Rating: T
Characters: Ulmo, Faramir, Boromir, Aragorn
Summary: One call, many answers.
Disclaimers: Not Tolkien, not related, broke, not making money. Don't sue please.
What the Water Gave Us
Water is the womb of the world - life from lifeless depths, it flows in all that lives, just beneath skin; men hear the rush of their blood betimes in their ears like an endless shore.
All waters bear word from the Deep-Dweller, and some there are who hear Him...
Upon bloody battlefields, blood shed cries out, a sea of sorrow, and three stir as his seeming-strengthless word whispers of seven stars and stones, seven sevendays adrift on brutal seas, calling each forth to one end…
But dreams, like waves, break on life’s varied shores, ‘til ebb-time draws them back together…
Under the Shadow
Sunset brings orders for a fatal day: Break Osgiliath’s bridge!
Between dusk and dawn, Faramir and his Rangers must shift the balance of life and death a little - cut years enough from enough soldiers’ lives, and Gondor counts another week, another month.
Yet time runs short.
Time is the Enemy’s terrain - on false hope of elven escape from it, Gondor grew weak, to be flanked meantime.
So sayeth death, the world is mine - yesterday’s lost, tonight passes, tomorrow gapes an open tomb…
The bridge breaks, falls away. The shadow-rider brings terror, but no revelation - clear-sighted hopeless, Faramir shall fight on…
__
“So sayeth death, the world is mine” - line taken from Medaeval Baebes singing So spricht das Leben on Worldes Blysse
“’What hope have we?’ said Faramir. ‘It is long since we had any hope.’”- “The Window on the West,” TTT. It struck me this time how totally without hope Faramir is - kind of gave more kick to Gandalf’s diagnosis of him as having fallen under the Black Breath a long time ago.
The King is Dead
Upon the map, names show stark: Minas Tirith. Pelargir. Belfalas. Anfalas.
Captain-General, Boromir reads butcher-like: strongholds mark weak points. A week and the Enemy can claim Gondor’s heart, or take the port-provinces, or strike Pelargir, cleaving Gondor at the midlands.
Walls stand against final failure. Others were wrought hitherto: a pride of princes leached the kingdom’s strength.
Denethor might’ve claimed the crown, made Gondor one.
He refused.
Thus Osgiliath haunts Boromir - royal city ruined, for want of that concerted will to war where the Enemy is weak.
As the king, so the kingdom: i aran fern - the king is dead…
“'And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that his father was not king.’”- Faramir, “The Window on the West”, TTT. I figure it’s only fair to let adult, battle-hardened Boromir, Captain-General of his country, have his say on this matter…
Life in Legacy
The horses’ hoofs beat out hours; waymarkers loom, then vanish beneath weak starlight: Dimholt’s door, Erech, Lamedon. Thence Pelargir, and lonely Minas Tirith.
And beyond - Morannon, Orodruin, Barad-dûr.
Aragorn has been Ranger, Captain, Chieftain, vagrant - to defeat the Dark Lord demands no less, demands more.
Against armies overwhelming, a Ranger knows: attack is defense. Strike first: shake Sauron to open ways to the Fire - but he’ll need Minas Tirith to finish that gambit.
If we fail? asks Imrahil.
Land, weather, and side-strike are Fíriel’s dower, Aragorn answers. Draw Mordor to Mithlond, scatter, then harry Sauron across Middle-earth all winter’s weeks!
Fíriel’s dower: draws from my drabble series The Fall of Arnor, in which Fíriel gets to be war-master, not a name in a genealogy.
*surfaces* Wordplay got me again... hope you're all well! *resubmerges*
Title: Steward, Captain, and King
Author: Dwimordene
Challenge: Homophones: weak/week: personal homophone challenge
Rating: T
Characters: Ulmo, Faramir, Boromir, Aragorn
Summary: One call, many answers.
Disclaimers: Not Tolkien, not related, broke, not making money. Don't sue please.
What the Water Gave Us
Water is the womb of the world - life from lifeless depths, it flows in all that lives, just beneath skin; men hear the rush of their blood betimes in their ears like an endless shore.
All waters bear word from the Deep-Dweller, and some there are who hear Him...
Upon bloody battlefields, blood shed cries out, a sea of sorrow, and three stir as his seeming-strengthless word whispers of seven stars and stones, seven sevendays adrift on brutal seas, calling each forth to one end…
But dreams, like waves, break on life’s varied shores, ‘til ebb-time draws them back together…
Under the Shadow
Sunset brings orders for a fatal day: Break Osgiliath’s bridge!
Between dusk and dawn, Faramir and his Rangers must shift the balance of life and death a little - cut years enough from enough soldiers’ lives, and Gondor counts another week, another month.
Yet time runs short.
Time is the Enemy’s terrain - on false hope of elven escape from it, Gondor grew weak, to be flanked meantime.
So sayeth death, the world is mine - yesterday’s lost, tonight passes, tomorrow gapes an open tomb…
The bridge breaks, falls away. The shadow-rider brings terror, but no revelation - clear-sighted hopeless, Faramir shall fight on…
__
“So sayeth death, the world is mine” - line taken from Medaeval Baebes singing So spricht das Leben on Worldes Blysse
“’What hope have we?’ said Faramir. ‘It is long since we had any hope.’”- “The Window on the West,” TTT. It struck me this time how totally without hope Faramir is - kind of gave more kick to Gandalf’s diagnosis of him as having fallen under the Black Breath a long time ago.
The King is Dead
Upon the map, names show stark: Minas Tirith. Pelargir. Belfalas. Anfalas.
Captain-General, Boromir reads butcher-like: strongholds mark weak points. A week and the Enemy can claim Gondor’s heart, or take the port-provinces, or strike Pelargir, cleaving Gondor at the midlands.
Walls stand against final failure. Others were wrought hitherto: a pride of princes leached the kingdom’s strength.
Denethor might’ve claimed the crown, made Gondor one.
He refused.
Thus Osgiliath haunts Boromir - royal city ruined, for want of that concerted will to war where the Enemy is weak.
As the king, so the kingdom: i aran fern - the king is dead…
“'And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that his father was not king.’”- Faramir, “The Window on the West”, TTT. I figure it’s only fair to let adult, battle-hardened Boromir, Captain-General of his country, have his say on this matter…
Life in Legacy
The horses’ hoofs beat out hours; waymarkers loom, then vanish beneath weak starlight: Dimholt’s door, Erech, Lamedon. Thence Pelargir, and lonely Minas Tirith.
And beyond - Morannon, Orodruin, Barad-dûr.
Aragorn has been Ranger, Captain, Chieftain, vagrant - to defeat the Dark Lord demands no less, demands more.
Against armies overwhelming, a Ranger knows: attack is defense. Strike first: shake Sauron to open ways to the Fire - but he’ll need Minas Tirith to finish that gambit.
If we fail? asks Imrahil.
Land, weather, and side-strike are Fíriel’s dower, Aragorn answers. Draw Mordor to Mithlond, scatter, then harry Sauron across Middle-earth all winter’s weeks!
Fíriel’s dower: draws from my drabble series The Fall of Arnor, in which Fíriel gets to be war-master, not a name in a genealogy.