“Excellent. My services include Bad Advice, Napping, Pest Removal, Loud Purring, Freestyle Acupuncture, and Laundry Decorating. I expect wet food delivered twice daily and access to sink water at all times. I notice you wear a lot of exclusively black clothing; I can help with that. Also if you happen to see a little gold ring lying around, be a dear and give it to kitty, won’t you?”
“…she was the wife of one of the ship-kings of Pelargir. She loathed the smell of the sea, and fish, and the gulls.” and “Well, Berúthiel went back to live in the inland city….” (1966 interview with JRRT)
“Berúthiel lived in the King’s House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea….” (Unfinished Tales, Part 4, Ch 2, The Istari: Notes, Note 7)
Throughout Tolkien’s works, there are some trends which recur. Physical beauty is associated with goodness, and the loss of that beauty (in Sauron’s case, for example) with corruption. Cats are demonized. (Tevildo, Berúthiel herself, who’s a villainous figure in the canon. And the sea/water is associated with the Valar, the music of creation, and, by implication, moral uprightness or goodness. (Yes, I’m simplifying greatly; no, I’m not providing sources on these points, but they exist. Anyway.)
In the “choosing not to oversimplify the canon” department, I’ve always considered these few quotes about Berúthiel and her hatred of the sea. She’s stated by JRR to return back to “the inland city” and when last sighted, her ship was “flying past Umbar.” The clear implication is that she was from, originally, an inland city of the southern continent of Harad, which is probably roughly analogous in location/ climate to Africa. (Gondor being roughly northern Mediterranean….) In my writing, I’ve chosen to locate her city as inland of the Haven of Umbar, though still within the wider region also known Umbar, and at the edge of a large desert roughly analogous to the Sahara.
So she’s from an entirely different climate, a different ecosystem than that of Gondor. She’s put on a ship and sent to marry a man who is the hereditary enemy of her people; and, to make it better, a man who’s named himself Falastur – translated as shore-lord or Lord of the Coast, the first of the Ship Kings of Gondor. A man who has literally made his very name by the sea.
And have you ever smelled the sea? The docks, or the beaches at low tide? There’s a lot to romanticize in the salty freshness of the air, perhaps, but it also smells heavy and rotten and fishy and unpleasant. Dead fish and crustaceans and strange plants heaped in the sand, baking under the sun. Thick dark mud caked around the pilings in the brackish wash of the river where it empties into the sea. The detritus of ships and of human occupation, wastewater and bilge and tar. It’s not at all a nice smell even if you don’t mind the scent of the sea itself, minus those other elements.
And even that ‘cleaner’ scent was strange enough to her… and it only pointed out to her how foreign she had now become, how much of an outsider, how very out of place. The foreign queen, the enemy queen, whose clothing and whose art were strange, whose tastes were strange; and strange was all too easily translated into dangerous, menacing, nefarious. They were afraid of her; and they loved the sea. She hated them, and hated her ship-building shore-lord husband (to whom she would not even give an heir), and she hated it. The ocean represented to her not goodness, but the very opposite.
“Great Hells…” he swore, turning over the note quickly to see if it bore a signature, or any indication as to who had left it. Finding it as blank as the box was empty, he heaved a sigh and got down on all fours to better see under tables and the dark spaces beneath the forge. Why did this keep happening??
Whatever it was, he hoped it wasn’t infant dragons again… or worse, geese.
An incredibly feeble-looking orc arrives on the southernmost isle, wheezing and coughing sporadically as he produces a scroll case and begins to read:
My Dearest Madam,
Forgive me if I doubt your sincerity. I would have less trouble believing a brainless stomach with teeth was capable of sympathy than you. I suspect any pain you’re feeling right now might be due to the largely indigestible bitumen and combustable gasses that balrogs are composed of, and should not be mistaken for sentiment.
You didn’t have to mention the scar tissue, but you did, because you are Very Rude– and in doing so you reveal the only genuine worry you possess: that my tender metaphysical flesh is becoming less appetizing with each passing century, and you wish to cut your losses now and devour me before I get any worse.
The peace you offer me would be found in the bottomless reaches of your internal Void, which I have NO interest in experiencing.
GOOD DAY TO YOU.
The Elder King, Rightful Heir of Arda, The Mighty Arising,
~Melkor
P.S. This messenger has been coated in asbestos. Yes, write that down too, Langon, I want her to know–
“– wait, I’ve been coated in WHAT?”
Accompanying this image, in a nearly illegible scrawl:
“look…im tired. and honestly i don’t give a flying fuck about whether u keep feener’s rocks BUT! i have it on authority i make the best marshmallows this side of the sundering seas, so here’s the question, Melkor: How Many Marshmallow Until Chill?”
(this “letter” almost certainly was not intended to be sent. it may have been found crumpled amongst some loot from a recent raid or stuck to the bottom of somebody’s foot, miraculously intact. why was it written? a joke? desperation? substance abuse? who knows.)
Pictures! Oh, he loved it when there were pictures, they were so much easier to decipher than all that scribbly stuff…
Melkor pinched the rumpled parchment between two claw-tips and held it up to his enormous eye. …Something, something, marshmallows? Someone kneeling very politely in obeisance while a giant bird attacked from above? Yes, yes little face, you are right to cry! Birds are horrible. And this one was holding some kind of weapon, so it was extra dangerous. Melkor shuddered.
A scribe arrived to dictate his reply, which was left approximately where the letter had been found, mysteriously but unmistakably addressed to the Dark Lord– in a trash heap outside of Tol Sirion, now under the command of Sauron.
“Dear Hat Slave,
You ask a very good question: Why ARE birds? We just don’t know.
I accept your bricks, or feener-rocks, or marshmallows, whatever they are; please don’t be sad. Have you tried throwing one of the bricks at the bird? That might make it go away.
You drew my crown very big. You are good at drawing. If you want to draw me again, I would like that.
I do not know how many small squares you need to stack like that until they are cold. Maybe I can help you, I’m good at making cold things, like ice, which I invented. (Do you need them to be cold so that your harp does not catch fire? Is that why it is enclosed inside a fence of marshmallows? I do not understand this part of your message.)
Please be careful around birds, you seem nice.
Fondest Regards,
The Elder King, Rightful Heir of Arda, The Mighty Arising,
–Send me a letter, question, threat, proposal, or a subject line from any (canon, Tolkien) character to Melkor or Sauron, and receive an in-character response.
see I’ve gotta hunt you, I’ve gotta bring you to my hell I wanna feel you in my bones I’m gonna tear into your soul
–
He listens to him, sword rattling, righteous in his fury, shining bright against the wisps of clouds that sweep over the ground. Burning, burning like his brother did once, and the thought brings a smile to Morgoth’s face, all sharp-toothed and the weight of Grond is a comfort in his burnt-black hand.
Oh, it’s too easy.
The doors open, slowly, oh so slow as if to say – here it is, your last chance to reconsider, little one. When he steps forth, rolls his shoulders, blinks against the light he expects to find himself disappointed, to find that this little false king has fled.
Their eyes meet across the gloom, across years and years of hate and death and the wait is finally over. It sends a thrill through him, tastes like gold in his mouth and he can see – oh but for a flash of a moment – that same cold desire echoed in the elf.
It’s a dance; the meet, the part, the meet again. The steady thud-thud-thus of steel against earth sets a rhythm, a flow. Step one, two, three, four; twirl and collide. The bite of metal and skin, dust and ash rising like the fanning of skirts, the heady copper tang of blood and sweat and he’s never felt so alive.
He wonders – no, no he sees it there, bright as gems reflected back at him. Maybe they could be here, in this moment forever. He laughs and raises his hammer once more.
It’s over too soon, anger stickss in his throat, festers in a roar that presses behind his teeth and when he looks down at last, he sees that last spark of defiance, flaring bright in the rush of defeat.
Let us have done with this – Let us continue –
please.
Cold steel bites into him, a final taunt and he steps – the last step of their dance – feels the give of soft flesh beneath him and oh, the disappointment is a greater agony than any wound, not-regret but fury slick as blood.
I started this piece back in January
but didn’t work on it for a while, since I was either too exhausted
,or to afraid of screwing it up. Interior Paintings combine all the
things I’m afraid of and not good in. But you can only improve if you
get out of your comfort zone, right? 😀
So what’s this? It
originally started out as a random sketch of a random anvil, because
I wanted to practice prop design. This turned into a full interior,
then into an elven inspired smithy and then into Celebrimbors Smithy.
Celebrimbor is a character of Tolkien, the elf that forged the Rings. I never played Shadows of Mordor and I have no idea if there
are any official concepts of his smithy. Couldn’t find any. This is
just my own take on it, tho I included the hammer he has with him in
the game.
I really fought my way through this and got
mentally exhausted by this piece. I wonder if it gets easier some
day?
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 