Author's Note: Set as slightly AU during the approach and ascent of
Caradhras, this story is written in alternating viewpoint, shifting between
Aragorn and Frodo; it should be fairly easy to tell which is which.
Chapter Ten will be from Frodo's viewpoint; Chapter Eleven will likely alternate.
In answer to questions, I hope to have the next chapter of "Shadows in the Dark" up some time between April 18 and April 20, hopefully sooner rather than later. I'm anticipating about four chapters left and will likely be putting two up quite close together. My goal is to complete it before the end of the weekend, but before I close I'll also be posting the start of a new angsty Frodo fic set during his youth in the Shire. :) Most likely it will be the memory described in "Mithril." In addition, I'll soon be posting the opening chapter or two for another piece in the set of Caradhras AU fanfics I'm writing. :) So. . .I'm slow to update, but there's lots coming, I promise!
Curu Ithilin asked, "I was wondering if maybe you could clear something up for me, since you mentioned the whole 'new world' food stuff--what sort of bathroom facilities would the wealthier inhabitants of the Shire use? Out houses, or what? Did they have running water, in your opinion?" Well, CI, I've not really addressed it, but that's a great question. . .truthfully, I think that the norm would have been chamber-pots and perhaps a pump either outside or in the kitchen, possibly in a wash-room, with the wealthier inhabitants having actual bath-rooms and running water. Tolkien describes Bag End as having had bath-rooms, and Crickhollow clearly had a bathing- room. There are some charming little anachronisms in Shire life; it's one of the peculiar charms, and so yes, I do think that they had running water in the wealthiest homes, though far from in all. :) Granted, that's just my opinion, and I'm not Professor Tolkien, but hey. :) (BTW, did you notice in the movie the chamber-pots under the beds in the hobbits' room at the Prancing Pony?)
No news yet on the group's move sigh. As I said, it's quite PG, but I'm trying to get it switched so you don't have to click on that warning bit.
Please feel free to leave reviews. . .and thank you all so very much for being patient and encouraging! :)
For permission to reproduce, please contact frodobaggins@frodo.com
DISCLAIMER: The characters, places, and story of The Lord of the Rings are the property of J.R.R. Tolkien and consequently of the Tolkien Estate, with select rights by Tolkien Enterprises. This piece appears purely as fanfiction and is not intended to claim ownership of Tolkien's work in any way. Please e-mail me if you have concerns. This is a non-slash fiction: no slash or sexual connotations are implied or intended.
CARADHRAS
Chapter Nine: Whimsy
In the past two days I have learned more about the Ringbearer than I did in the two months we spent in Rivendell. Not since the journey from Weathertop, when he was often in too much pain to sleep and conceded to talk to me of his past, have I heard nearly so many of the small details of his life, and while I am not unfamiliar with hobbits, these tiny facts make the present situation all the more painful, for they force me to see him as so much more than simply "the Ringbearer". . .and to realise what he means to the other little ones.
Gandalf remembers well meeting a laughing, bright little slip of a thing, a pretty little ladyhobbit by the name of Primula, visiting Bilbo with her infant son, a bright-eyed child contentedly eating applesauce as his mother spoon-fed him. Primula Baggins, still Brandybuck to the core.
Merry speaks of days when the Ringbearer was better known as "absolutely impossible!" by his aunts, uncles, and cousins at Brandy Hall, who hardly knew what to do with the lively orphan. I have at times seen children among my own people who have become fairly wild after losing their parents at a young age, unless given a great deal of affection and attention by a surrogate parent, and something in the tenor of those tales reminds me very much of such children. Bilbo himself has commented before that Frodo was quite the young terror once, but a sweet and perfectly mannered young hobbit for him, which only confirms my suspicions. Still, Merry speaks with such affection that I cannot believe anyone holds Frodo in contempt: the tales apparently are more a source of laughter than aught else these days.
Sam, tearful, murmurs about the shy tweenager who came to live with "Mr. Bilbo" when he himself was just a small lad, learning his letters. . .a pale, quiet boy who spent a great deal of time reading and talking with Bilbo, a lad who never seemed to fatten up sufficiently for hobbit standards, though he clearly adored Bilbo's cooking and was fairly competent on his own. Sometimes he would appear in the kitchen in the middle of the night, broiling bread to make cinnamon-sugar toast to have with milk while reading a book.
He once nursed Pippin through a bad cold only to catch it himself, and was tended by Sam, who apparently is almost never unwell, unlike those two with the strong Fallohide bloodlines Gandalf spoke of. Evidently he makes a delicious apple cobbler, the recipe for which he attributes to Primula.
One year for Bilbo's birthday celebration with his own, after Bilbo's departure, he had a cake made in the shape of a dragon. Another year he had a "trolls' feast," featuring mutton and lamb as main dishes.
During the autumn, he often makes a favourite supper - roast chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, hot apple salad, baked mushrooms, freshly baked rolls with butter, cheese and bread and pears and apples, gingerbread - and packs it into a picnic-basket with a bottle of wine and a container of hot tea, then walks to one of Bilbo's favourite wooded spots to eat, usually with a few friends.
His favourite colours are blue and green, though he wears a fair amount of purple and yellow. . .but he doesn't think he looks "quite right" in anything without a blue base. Not quite as fussy with clothes as Bilbo, he is less attentive to his buttons, and frequently prefers silver over gold.
Yule has always been his favourite holiday, though as a tweenager he was very ill during that season on at least two occasions, one of which kept him confined to bed through the holiday itself. One year he was helping with the goose and put too much sage in the stuffing, which Bilbo managed to rescue by increasing the recipe. They ate stuffing for days on end, and that was with sending some to the Gamgees' large family as well.
Somehow knowing all of this unsettles me: I wish that I could return him to his comfortable home, to take back the past six months which have been so difficult for him.
And yet I cannot.
Why did I not volunteer during the Council? I have asked myself this more times than not. . .and yet the answer comes into my head the same each time.
*It is not your place, Aragorn. This calling is not for you. Undertake it yourself and you would doom the Quest. Yours is not to carry this burden, but to aid the one whose call it is.*
All the same, I feel deep pity for the little hobbit who sleeps cradled in my arms, resting fitfully between bouts of coughing.
Pity and admiration.
~To Be Continued~
Chapter Ten will be from Frodo's viewpoint; Chapter Eleven will likely alternate.
In answer to questions, I hope to have the next chapter of "Shadows in the Dark" up some time between April 18 and April 20, hopefully sooner rather than later. I'm anticipating about four chapters left and will likely be putting two up quite close together. My goal is to complete it before the end of the weekend, but before I close I'll also be posting the start of a new angsty Frodo fic set during his youth in the Shire. :) Most likely it will be the memory described in "Mithril." In addition, I'll soon be posting the opening chapter or two for another piece in the set of Caradhras AU fanfics I'm writing. :) So. . .I'm slow to update, but there's lots coming, I promise!
Curu Ithilin asked, "I was wondering if maybe you could clear something up for me, since you mentioned the whole 'new world' food stuff--what sort of bathroom facilities would the wealthier inhabitants of the Shire use? Out houses, or what? Did they have running water, in your opinion?" Well, CI, I've not really addressed it, but that's a great question. . .truthfully, I think that the norm would have been chamber-pots and perhaps a pump either outside or in the kitchen, possibly in a wash-room, with the wealthier inhabitants having actual bath-rooms and running water. Tolkien describes Bag End as having had bath-rooms, and Crickhollow clearly had a bathing- room. There are some charming little anachronisms in Shire life; it's one of the peculiar charms, and so yes, I do think that they had running water in the wealthiest homes, though far from in all. :) Granted, that's just my opinion, and I'm not Professor Tolkien, but hey. :) (BTW, did you notice in the movie the chamber-pots under the beds in the hobbits' room at the Prancing Pony?)
No news yet on the group's move sigh. As I said, it's quite PG, but I'm trying to get it switched so you don't have to click on that warning bit.
Please feel free to leave reviews. . .and thank you all so very much for being patient and encouraging! :)
For permission to reproduce, please contact frodobaggins@frodo.com
DISCLAIMER: The characters, places, and story of The Lord of the Rings are the property of J.R.R. Tolkien and consequently of the Tolkien Estate, with select rights by Tolkien Enterprises. This piece appears purely as fanfiction and is not intended to claim ownership of Tolkien's work in any way. Please e-mail me if you have concerns. This is a non-slash fiction: no slash or sexual connotations are implied or intended.
CARADHRAS
Chapter Nine: Whimsy
In the past two days I have learned more about the Ringbearer than I did in the two months we spent in Rivendell. Not since the journey from Weathertop, when he was often in too much pain to sleep and conceded to talk to me of his past, have I heard nearly so many of the small details of his life, and while I am not unfamiliar with hobbits, these tiny facts make the present situation all the more painful, for they force me to see him as so much more than simply "the Ringbearer". . .and to realise what he means to the other little ones.
Gandalf remembers well meeting a laughing, bright little slip of a thing, a pretty little ladyhobbit by the name of Primula, visiting Bilbo with her infant son, a bright-eyed child contentedly eating applesauce as his mother spoon-fed him. Primula Baggins, still Brandybuck to the core.
Merry speaks of days when the Ringbearer was better known as "absolutely impossible!" by his aunts, uncles, and cousins at Brandy Hall, who hardly knew what to do with the lively orphan. I have at times seen children among my own people who have become fairly wild after losing their parents at a young age, unless given a great deal of affection and attention by a surrogate parent, and something in the tenor of those tales reminds me very much of such children. Bilbo himself has commented before that Frodo was quite the young terror once, but a sweet and perfectly mannered young hobbit for him, which only confirms my suspicions. Still, Merry speaks with such affection that I cannot believe anyone holds Frodo in contempt: the tales apparently are more a source of laughter than aught else these days.
Sam, tearful, murmurs about the shy tweenager who came to live with "Mr. Bilbo" when he himself was just a small lad, learning his letters. . .a pale, quiet boy who spent a great deal of time reading and talking with Bilbo, a lad who never seemed to fatten up sufficiently for hobbit standards, though he clearly adored Bilbo's cooking and was fairly competent on his own. Sometimes he would appear in the kitchen in the middle of the night, broiling bread to make cinnamon-sugar toast to have with milk while reading a book.
He once nursed Pippin through a bad cold only to catch it himself, and was tended by Sam, who apparently is almost never unwell, unlike those two with the strong Fallohide bloodlines Gandalf spoke of. Evidently he makes a delicious apple cobbler, the recipe for which he attributes to Primula.
One year for Bilbo's birthday celebration with his own, after Bilbo's departure, he had a cake made in the shape of a dragon. Another year he had a "trolls' feast," featuring mutton and lamb as main dishes.
During the autumn, he often makes a favourite supper - roast chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, hot apple salad, baked mushrooms, freshly baked rolls with butter, cheese and bread and pears and apples, gingerbread - and packs it into a picnic-basket with a bottle of wine and a container of hot tea, then walks to one of Bilbo's favourite wooded spots to eat, usually with a few friends.
His favourite colours are blue and green, though he wears a fair amount of purple and yellow. . .but he doesn't think he looks "quite right" in anything without a blue base. Not quite as fussy with clothes as Bilbo, he is less attentive to his buttons, and frequently prefers silver over gold.
Yule has always been his favourite holiday, though as a tweenager he was very ill during that season on at least two occasions, one of which kept him confined to bed through the holiday itself. One year he was helping with the goose and put too much sage in the stuffing, which Bilbo managed to rescue by increasing the recipe. They ate stuffing for days on end, and that was with sending some to the Gamgees' large family as well.
Somehow knowing all of this unsettles me: I wish that I could return him to his comfortable home, to take back the past six months which have been so difficult for him.
And yet I cannot.
Why did I not volunteer during the Council? I have asked myself this more times than not. . .and yet the answer comes into my head the same each time.
*It is not your place, Aragorn. This calling is not for you. Undertake it yourself and you would doom the Quest. Yours is not to carry this burden, but to aid the one whose call it is.*
All the same, I feel deep pity for the little hobbit who sleeps cradled in my arms, resting fitfully between bouts of coughing.
Pity and admiration.
~To Be Continued~