Author's Note: This is a bit of a joke that I wrote with the help of a friend. We thought that Faramir was skilled at different languages, and wondered just what languages he could speak.
Trying to think of as many as possible, and writing a story on each. Some languages will be from Lord of the Ring, some will not, but we will name them and where they come from. So Have no fear
The Lord Demeni is not an evil lord, he is merely a bit confused at times. (Read that as all the time.) He always means well, but not necessarily what he says. He might say a word while actually meaning to say another word, or he thinks the meaning of the word is entirely different from what he means.
Using misinterpretations of the English Language was an idea that Breon Briarwood gave me, and I have used it, so if you like it, give some credit there. Lord Demeni shall appear later as well.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Ring, I only borrow parts of it and shall return them as soon as I am done. Completely undamaged, as I am certain it will be impossible to see where we glued the pieces back together.
Now, please read this, 'ehurm', masterful work, or whatever it is. I do however hope you enjoy it.
The People's Skillets
Restoring a country to working order after a war is not easy. Things are handled different in war than in peace. Also certain things tend to be in high demand during war. Soldiers for one thing. A smith will find himself unable to match the demand of swords and weapons, while a bookbinder might find that he has no demand to meet, and that if he wants to survive he has to join the growing number of smiths.
Unfortunately after the war that means you might find yourself rather short on bookbinders, amongst others.
Now a smith might be good to have around, but if he was to try and fill the vacancy, the books would be quite heavy subjects. As they would have a tendency to be crafted in polished steel.
To avoid this burdening situation more bookbinders would have to be found, and that means convincing the smiths that one can not put a book on the hot coals, and then proceed to give them a good whack with the hammer. Well, one can do it, but it tends to utterly ruin the books. As the meaning of this procedure was to create more books, this would be rather pointless.
The best thing to do is to find a bookbinder that never ceased being a bookbinder in favour of being a smith. When one has found that bookbinder, one can give him the task of teaching former smiths, to be new bookbinders.
Thus you might be able to restore some of what needs to be restored when one is going from war, into peace.
This however means that politicians have to spend many hours talking before they even realises that the smiths have not yet ceased making swords.
"If we shall get things to run smoothly again there is much to do."
King Elessar, formerly, and sometimes still, known as Aragorn, frowned at the words. They were all to true, every syllable of them. They were short on several quite necessary supplies. They had not been necessary during the war, and so they had not been manufactured. Now however there was a rising demand for them, and that demand preferably had to be met.
"Too much, given the time everyone wants it done in." Aragorn sighed.
"There was many things that the people thought was wrong while the King was gone." Faramir stated. "Now that there is a King again they want to see them righted within the first week."
"Remind me never to leave a country Kingless for this many generations again." Aragorn joked without any real humour.
"I myself never thought it would be thus." Faramir sighed. "And I'm afraid I'm not the best one to help you deal with it. I was never instructed in these things." As he said so he hefted a pile of documents, and suppressed a shudder at their weight. There was an awful lot of things that 'needed the King's most urgent attention.' That whole pile preferably had to be dealt with during the week, if not it would grow twice as high as new ones were added.
"It seems most of them wants the King to tell them to continue doing what they already have been doing for some time, and what is the most logical thing to do." He sighed. What he had just said barely made sense, but he was to tired of the documents to care.
"I agree." Aragorn nodded. "I do not understand why a farmer that has been a farmer his whole life suddenly needs my direct order to harvest." The joke was meant to lighten the mood of the two men. "I suppose they want to know that I really care about their work." He decided.
"True." Faramir nodded. "And that I can understand. What I shall never fully grasp is why the councillors can not decide to tell the poor man to harvest before they have spent a week discussing the consequences."
Both men chuckled at the joke. Aragorn feeling very pleased that the younger man now was enough at ease with him to make jokes.
"Still we shall have to venture into that room, and struggle not to lose against the utter boredom as they argue." He said as they headed towards the council chamber, and yet another devastatingly boring session in there.
The arguments had already started they noticed as they walked into the room. The councillors all stopped speaking in honour of the King. Then as he took his seat they seamlessly took up their arguments again.
"We must somehow restock all supplies." One of them said.
"Agreed, but how shall we go on about it. There is no one to actually do the task." Another objected.
"There are several professions were we need more people." Faramir stated calmly. "It seems the best thing would be to make sure they could take on apprentices. If everyone could take two or three, there would soon be a growing number whom had learned the trade."
A new argument arouse regarding his words. Mostly concern whatever there would be young men that wanted to be apprenticed, and if anyone would take them in. Finally Lord Demeni spoke. He was a large man with taste for good food, and he was not completely corrupt.
"This is indeed a troublesome situation." He claimed. "Yet it is no worse than we have faced before. I say that if we merely trust to the skillets of our people all shall be well."
Aragorn gazed at him in confusion.
"Pardon me my Lord." Faramir said carefully. "What should we do."
"We must trust that our people can solve this situation with the valuable knowledge they have of their trade."
"Ah. " Faramir nodded. "Skills." He turned to face Aragorn. "The Lord sometimes gets confused over his vocabulary." He whispered with a small grin. "I believe he meant skills, and not that we should trust their frying pans."
"If their frying pans can suffice to make a meal I for one would be pleased." Aragorn said with a smirk. "I am getting quite hungry, but I do believe he is right. The people have some useful skills, and they know far more about them than we do." He made sure to pronounce the word skills correctly.
"If we made sure that the craftsmen could afford taking on apprentices, I'm sure that they would." Faramir stated.
"Sounds reasonable." Aragorn nodded. "We can afford a small founding as an aid." He grinned at the councilors and winked at Faramir. "I trust we can decide on this action, and wait for them to come to the same conclusion."
"I believe you are right." Faramir grinned. Trust to the people's skillets indeed. If nothing else the Lord kept one amused by his misinterpreting of the language. Trust to the peoples frying pans, he kept the smirk from his lips, but it was hard.
Again, sadly, a temporary end until the next chapter.
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Annoying Author's not: The word skillet is used for a heany iron frying pan. Here Demeni has confused the words skills and skillets. This is suposed to be a funny thing by the way he said it.
Breon Briarwood: Glad you liked the Latin bit, I hope you like what came out of our suggestion as well.
Raksha The Demon: You have not seen the last of 'The Kingdom of Dust.' If nothing else I shall later post poems on that subject.
LalaithoftheBruinen: Yes, the chapters tend to be short. I am working on some longer ones. Also, there is more Carl and Faramir planned. We just have not gotten to it yet.
Earendil Eldar: I am thrilled that you like my Faramir. As for torturing, this tale is mainly humour, not to say there will not be some torture here upon a later date. We have some chapters with more action later, but since they are longer they take more time to write.
silvren ithildin: Ah, we simply do not know how he came to be on earth just yet. We mainly thought it would be a fun idea. Since we are after humour and not fact we ignored that temporarily. So that we could get to the fun bit. We will throw in other people that he could not really be with later as well. Meaning there will be some slight cross over up ahead.
Silver Sniper: Just because we have not done it yet does not mean that we will not try to put a few of these chapters on film. We actually might try to do it at some point. I take it you would like a copy if we do?
sidheranma: It makes me very happy to know that. I hope you like the rest as well.
Lindahoyland: I enjoy your comments as well. As for the ghosts, if you allow me some time to work on it I might be able to find a way to include them as well.
Aragorn waits for Arwen: Thank you, and do not worry. There is a lot more to come.
Dumbledalf: Well the Swedish book was not sure how it got there, but since it was feeling very alone it was just happy that someone found it. We just assume that somehow it had just wound up in the Kingdom of Dust at some point. There will be more of these strange things. Some of them are not explained as it would be rather boring to read, and not really any point to it.
Ah, who is Carl. He is a friar, a monk of sorts, in the movie Van Helsing. The joke is because both Carl and Faramir id being played by the same actor, David Wenham. If you want to know more about that, give me the word and I shall send you an email.
Big Thanks to all who reviewed. I loved every word of your comments.
For you who have not yet reviewed, I like you guys to, and I would like you even more if you did review.