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b2mem2012-03-05 08:26 pm
huinare.livejournal.com) wrote in b2mem2012-03-05 08:26 pm
Entry tags:
o68 A Story of a Hound (cont.)
B2MeM Challenge: First Lines "One mid-winter day off the coast of..."
Format: ficlet/chapter 930 words
Genre: Humor, General
Rating: PGish for references to intoxicated Ainur
Warnings: ^ Bottoms up
Characters: Huan, Oromë, Varda
Pairings: No, precious, we hates it
Summary: So just what is Huan, and why? And what do they do at parties in Valinor, anyway?
The chapter on SWG [link's not working, sorry, whatever, it's on there]
or
The asterisks denote facetious “footnotes;” which are inserted in brackets directly after the germane paragraph, as there are no pages as such to put them at the bottom of.
______________
“One mid-winter day off the coast of Avathar, the crew spotted a letter in a bottle with a note in it.” Tilion took another swig of ale.
“We’ve no winter yet,” somebody complained.*
[*Indeed, without a proper Sun, Arda possessed no seasons as such for the first few epochs of its existence. The Ainur naturally knew of such things, having seen them in their musical hallucination outside of space and time, and it was a niggling point of collective shame that there were as yet no seasons. The Dark Lord contended that, with the oversized Lamps, the Valar had been “compensating for something.”]
“The crew of what?” said someone else.
“You know. Ulmo’s crew. Ossë and Uinen and them,” Tilion said, looking to me hopefully. Unfortunately Tilion was an inept though creative storyteller when he imbibed, thus I could not in good faith defend him. So I sat by like a supportive friend and wondered, “Why put a note in a bottle?”
“I’ll show you, by my very honor, just hand me that bottle there.”
It was then that Oromë came bustling into the corner of the hall where our group was telling stories and tapped me on the shoulder. “Huan, a word.”
I followed my Vala through the broad hall, which brimmed with singing, dancing, chattering Maiar and Valar. Behind me, the voice of Tilion rose in a righteously affronted yell, “Not the gin bottle, the mead bottle.”
Once outside the hall on the great, pale marble patio, Oromë coughed politely into his hand. The light of Telperion, a dusky silver, fell dramatically over his noble form. “Um, Huan,” said he, “Varda has just reiterated that I would be thanked not bring my hounds into the great hall on special occasions.”
“But you brought not any of your hounds, Lord Oromë,” I pointed out; and I named them all, along with whether each was in the yard or in the lord’s house, to illustrate this point.
“The thing is, Varda saw you from a distance and thought you were one of my hounds.”
“I’m a Maia,” I said, both flattered and mortified. “Can the dread lady not discern this?”
“By sight, no. You appear as a hound. Frankly, you smell like one sometimes, too. You inhabit that form so frequently that it seems second nature to you.”
“I should like to explain to her, then,” I decided, and I trotted back into the hall to where Elentári sat enthroned alongside Manwë Súlimo. There was a long queue of people waiting to do obeisance or gossip unto them, but I have never lacked for patience when such is needful, and thus I stood finally before Varda, Queen of the Stars. I looked into her lofty eyes, full of the wisdom of the ages, nearly ink-dark but glittering with rich cobalt undertones as the light from a thousand torches and lanterns danced off them, and I said: “My lady, I’m not really a hound, you know.”
“I can see that now and hear it, and I know you, O Huan, Maia of Oromë,” answered Varda. “Yet I would know why you have come here in such a guise. I could have sworn you were an overgrown deerhound.”
“I prefer this guise. I have since my lord Oromë first bred his hounds with the advice of the lady Yavanna, his great ally. Their forms and natures are extraordinary and admirable to me, Elentári, thus I manifest as one of them.”
“Do you run and hunt with them?”
“Often, yes.”
“What is it you find so compelling about them?” wondered Varda, leaning forward a bit in her great carven chair.
“If I may, my lady, what would you perceive that Lord Oromë appreciates in these animals?”
Varda considered this. “They are loyal, brave, fleet of foot, graceful, affectionate to master and colleague alike, and fierce in pursuit of a target.”
“And so would I be. These are all admirable virtues, which I can only hope to emulate half as well as these creatures manifest them instinctively,” I said with reverence and sobriety. I perceived then that something, possibly a tick, had burrowed into the fur behind my right ear, but I deemed it best not to scratch it at that time.
“They also stare at a person in a sad, soulful, and vaguely creepy way at times,” Varda mused. I quickly looked at the floor. “Well,” she resumed, “your point is well taken, Huan, and for your humility and ambition I commend you. I wish you all enjoyment of the remainder of the evening.”
I bowed as best a Hound can, bending three legs and tucking one forepaw up by my chest, and trotted back into the party* with my tail waving mildly in approval of the situation. Returning to my colleagues in the corner under the southeast balcony, I found them trying to float a bottle in the small decorative fountain there while some voice of reason chided, “No, no, you need to put the cork back in first…”
[*The renegade historian and self-styled ‘writer’ Huinárë asserts that a particularly large and memorable party was convened in Valimar some hundred years after the colonization of Aman, for the purpose of celebrating the advent of the Two Trees, musical instruments, and avian organisms. Huinárë’s body of work has often intimated that the Valar and the Maiar enjoyed frequent and emphatic libation, which has garnered accusations of anti-Vala sentiment and Melko-centrism. Others have noted that Huinárë makes similar, if not identical, references to the drinking habits of the Dark Lord and those therewith associated.]
Format: ficlet/chapter 930 words
Genre: Humor, General
Rating: PGish for references to intoxicated Ainur
Warnings: ^ Bottoms up
Characters: Huan, Oromë, Varda
Pairings: No, precious, we hates it
Summary: So just what is Huan, and why? And what do they do at parties in Valinor, anyway?
The chapter on SWG [link's not working, sorry, whatever, it's on there]
or
The asterisks denote facetious “footnotes;” which are inserted in brackets directly after the germane paragraph, as there are no pages as such to put them at the bottom of.
______________
“One mid-winter day off the coast of Avathar, the crew spotted a letter in a bottle with a note in it.” Tilion took another swig of ale.
“We’ve no winter yet,” somebody complained.*
[*Indeed, without a proper Sun, Arda possessed no seasons as such for the first few epochs of its existence. The Ainur naturally knew of such things, having seen them in their musical hallucination outside of space and time, and it was a niggling point of collective shame that there were as yet no seasons. The Dark Lord contended that, with the oversized Lamps, the Valar had been “compensating for something.”]
“The crew of what?” said someone else.
“You know. Ulmo’s crew. Ossë and Uinen and them,” Tilion said, looking to me hopefully. Unfortunately Tilion was an inept though creative storyteller when he imbibed, thus I could not in good faith defend him. So I sat by like a supportive friend and wondered, “Why put a note in a bottle?”
“I’ll show you, by my very honor, just hand me that bottle there.”
It was then that Oromë came bustling into the corner of the hall where our group was telling stories and tapped me on the shoulder. “Huan, a word.”
I followed my Vala through the broad hall, which brimmed with singing, dancing, chattering Maiar and Valar. Behind me, the voice of Tilion rose in a righteously affronted yell, “Not the gin bottle, the mead bottle.”
Once outside the hall on the great, pale marble patio, Oromë coughed politely into his hand. The light of Telperion, a dusky silver, fell dramatically over his noble form. “Um, Huan,” said he, “Varda has just reiterated that I would be thanked not bring my hounds into the great hall on special occasions.”
“But you brought not any of your hounds, Lord Oromë,” I pointed out; and I named them all, along with whether each was in the yard or in the lord’s house, to illustrate this point.
“The thing is, Varda saw you from a distance and thought you were one of my hounds.”
“I’m a Maia,” I said, both flattered and mortified. “Can the dread lady not discern this?”
“By sight, no. You appear as a hound. Frankly, you smell like one sometimes, too. You inhabit that form so frequently that it seems second nature to you.”
“I should like to explain to her, then,” I decided, and I trotted back into the hall to where Elentári sat enthroned alongside Manwë Súlimo. There was a long queue of people waiting to do obeisance or gossip unto them, but I have never lacked for patience when such is needful, and thus I stood finally before Varda, Queen of the Stars. I looked into her lofty eyes, full of the wisdom of the ages, nearly ink-dark but glittering with rich cobalt undertones as the light from a thousand torches and lanterns danced off them, and I said: “My lady, I’m not really a hound, you know.”
“I can see that now and hear it, and I know you, O Huan, Maia of Oromë,” answered Varda. “Yet I would know why you have come here in such a guise. I could have sworn you were an overgrown deerhound.”
“I prefer this guise. I have since my lord Oromë first bred his hounds with the advice of the lady Yavanna, his great ally. Their forms and natures are extraordinary and admirable to me, Elentári, thus I manifest as one of them.”
“Do you run and hunt with them?”
“Often, yes.”
“What is it you find so compelling about them?” wondered Varda, leaning forward a bit in her great carven chair.
“If I may, my lady, what would you perceive that Lord Oromë appreciates in these animals?”
Varda considered this. “They are loyal, brave, fleet of foot, graceful, affectionate to master and colleague alike, and fierce in pursuit of a target.”
“And so would I be. These are all admirable virtues, which I can only hope to emulate half as well as these creatures manifest them instinctively,” I said with reverence and sobriety. I perceived then that something, possibly a tick, had burrowed into the fur behind my right ear, but I deemed it best not to scratch it at that time.
“They also stare at a person in a sad, soulful, and vaguely creepy way at times,” Varda mused. I quickly looked at the floor. “Well,” she resumed, “your point is well taken, Huan, and for your humility and ambition I commend you. I wish you all enjoyment of the remainder of the evening.”
I bowed as best a Hound can, bending three legs and tucking one forepaw up by my chest, and trotted back into the party* with my tail waving mildly in approval of the situation. Returning to my colleagues in the corner under the southeast balcony, I found them trying to float a bottle in the small decorative fountain there while some voice of reason chided, “No, no, you need to put the cork back in first…”
[*The renegade historian and self-styled ‘writer’ Huinárë asserts that a particularly large and memorable party was convened in Valimar some hundred years after the colonization of Aman, for the purpose of celebrating the advent of the Two Trees, musical instruments, and avian organisms. Huinárë’s body of work has often intimated that the Valar and the Maiar enjoyed frequent and emphatic libation, which has garnered accusations of anti-Vala sentiment and Melko-centrism. Others have noted that Huinárë makes similar, if not identical, references to the drinking habits of the Dark Lord and those therewith associated.]