Excruciation by Dwimordene
Mar. 12th, 2012 09:57 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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b2memB2MeM Challenge: O 65: March 3019: Haradrim in Ithilien
N 41: Deep Thoughts: God
N33: Magic and Real: The Seven Madmen - Roberto Arlt
Format: ficlet
Genre: deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See genre.
Characters: OMC Southron
Pairings: OMC/Annatar/Melkor
Summary: On loving the unlovable.
Excruciation
‘Tis the misfortune of men that they can slay gods, yet they have not blood nor fire enough to atone. So the seven sages, loving-mad with wisdom, say, and thus men suffer from the tear in the world that the death of God the Giver left – from chaos in-seeping to wreak vengeance.
So the Children of Fire march north under blood-burden to revenge, through strange lands, and Nhakinet marches among them. He is a farmer in the dry lands, a husband, a father – and he is afraid.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
He has kept all the ways as well as he can; he has left nothing undone in any graceless moment. He has but this time to pass through, which may end soon – so short a time to sanctify!
But the stifling trees inspire horror: the hour of death draws nigh, and he cannot love it. He cannot, and he fears the death this land will bring, fears the racking of his body that shall rend a soul never made to war, for how can he love with so hateful an hour?
Is that a bird singing in the bush? Memory blurs vision: he sees his children waving to him, and his wife’s tearful face. O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
Does something move beyond that tree? Flesh cringes, heart quails – one flinches, and memory is blown to dust. He has only the words left, and then not even that – for he sees him then, among the poison green of this place: the Lord of Death, pale as a corpse, his bow drawn and as pitiless as dawn.
They have crossed the bounds, says hopeless understanding; they were dead men from the moment they said farewell to hearth and kin, and all that remains is a loveless dying, as intolerable as inevitable in this place. All is momentum, as everything comes undone. Nhakinet shuts his eyes.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my – !
N 41: Deep Thoughts: God
N33: Magic and Real: The Seven Madmen - Roberto Arlt
Format: ficlet
Genre: deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See genre.
Characters: OMC Southron
Pairings: OMC/Annatar/Melkor
Summary: On loving the unlovable.
Excruciation
‘Tis the misfortune of men that they can slay gods, yet they have not blood nor fire enough to atone. So the seven sages, loving-mad with wisdom, say, and thus men suffer from the tear in the world that the death of God the Giver left – from chaos in-seeping to wreak vengeance.
So the Children of Fire march north under blood-burden to revenge, through strange lands, and Nhakinet marches among them. He is a farmer in the dry lands, a husband, a father – and he is afraid.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
He has kept all the ways as well as he can; he has left nothing undone in any graceless moment. He has but this time to pass through, which may end soon – so short a time to sanctify!
But the stifling trees inspire horror: the hour of death draws nigh, and he cannot love it. He cannot, and he fears the death this land will bring, fears the racking of his body that shall rend a soul never made to war, for how can he love with so hateful an hour?
Is that a bird singing in the bush? Memory blurs vision: he sees his children waving to him, and his wife’s tearful face. O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
Does something move beyond that tree? Flesh cringes, heart quails – one flinches, and memory is blown to dust. He has only the words left, and then not even that – for he sees him then, among the poison green of this place: the Lord of Death, pale as a corpse, his bow drawn and as pitiless as dawn.
They have crossed the bounds, says hopeless understanding; they were dead men from the moment they said farewell to hearth and kin, and all that remains is a loveless dying, as intolerable as inevitable in this place. All is momentum, as everything comes undone. Nhakinet shuts his eyes.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my – !
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 09:07 pm (UTC)Compliment. Obviously.
I love this phrase: the tear in the world that the death of God the Giver left – from chaos in-seeping to wreak vengeance. And this: All is momentum, as everything comes undone. Wow. The descriptions of Ithilien as "stifling" and "poison green" are also a great turn in perspective. With Nhakinet's repeated exhortations and fragmented thoughts, you capture fear and panic so well. Pretty awful to think of farmer-conscripts coming up against Faramir's Rangers. A wonderful companion/follow-up to your Melkor/proto-Haradrim drabble sequence.
Also: Pairings: OMC/Annatar/Melkor
Threesome with Sauron and Melkor? That sounds almost as terrifying as Newt/Rick/Planned Parenthood! :p
no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 11:59 pm (UTC)Thanks! I tried thinking of some other terms, or ways to get the title to be a play on Deus ex machina (except that I don't know Latin at all, and really couldn't guess, even with help), but in the end, I came back on the original word.
I'm glad the paralyzing panic was well represented - that line of prayer was with all the incarnations of this story, but deciding what context to raise it in was a bit more difficult. And yeah, what an unequal fight - Faramir's Rangers, a number of whom might well be very tough, seasoned veterans at this point, versus the muster of Harad, which would bring everyone together who could hold a sword or a stick.
That sounds almost as terrifying as Newt/Rick/Planned Parenthood! :p
Just for that, maybe I'll do MPREG Newt/Rick/Melkor...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 12:21 am (UTC)Only if you mix it in with at least one of the B2MeM prompts.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 12:48 am (UTC)(I'll be back with some thing coherent to say sometime soon...)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 01:43 am (UTC)I've got to echo the comments about the repeated, urgent prayer. And, the way it gets cut off--damn.
Also liked the idea of the forest as stifling and poison.
...for how can he love with so hateful an hour?
I love how your visions of fear and death are always so philosophical in a very simple yet elegant way.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:02 am (UTC):-D I'm so glad you're enjoying the Haradrim-filtered theological philosofic. Religion and fanfic can be an uneasy mix, but I've enjoyed writing that dimension - it's a fun way to work out different ideas.
the way it gets cut off--damn.
The cut-off is often a good way to get that sense of violence into a story, without showing bloodletting on screen, as it were.
I love how your visions of fear and death are always so philosophical in a very simple yet elegant way.
Thanks! Would that my academic style were as pleasant. :-S I find fanfic is often where I get to play most freely, if not necessarily argumentatively, with certain philosophical ideas. It serves as a processing medium for me.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 10:51 pm (UTC)