Scribal Frustration, by Elleth

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

B2MeM Challenge:
B10: Occupations: Scribe, Off the Map's Edge: Fell Beast
Format: Drabble
Genre: Er. Uninspired meta-ish humor?
Rating: G
Warnings: N/A
Characters: OFC
Pairings: N/A
Summary: Well, what do you write about Fell Beasts? A young Gondorian wonders.


Aeleth sighed, spat out a frazzle of feather, and looked from the chewed-on quill to her parchment.

Lebedrevail are

The words were mocking her. It was impossible to write convincingly on these creatures. The Ring War had been an Age ago; every piece of writing that otherwise would have been able to give a factual account of them, such as the Lady of Emyn Arnen's battle with one, showed the influence of Black Breath, and thus made them altogether unreliable, compiled, above all, by a fanciful, overdramatic Perian: Forgotten mountains, cold beneath the moon...

Ai.

Perhaps tomorrow. Aeleth went home.

Notes:
Lebedrevail translates (I hope) to 'winged finger (pl.)' in Gondorian Sindarin. The joke may become more obvious (but probably not much funnier) if you have read Tolkien's letter 211 to Rhona Beare in which he describes the Fell Beasts: I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras. "Semi-scientific mythology?" Ai. (And yes, Aeleth is rather intentionally an obvious pastiche of my online handle, though no quills were harmed in the writing of this drabble.)

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

Short, sweet and funny. How much better can it get?

- Erulisse (one L)

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :D

(I genuinely couldn't bring myself to write anything about Fell Beasts as Pterodactyls, or pterodactyl-like creatures; my inner Palaeontology nerd - which prefers the movie version of these creatures - wouldn't let me. So this happened instead.)

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

Hee. This is excellent, and very true-to-life. Well done!

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :D

[aliana1.livejournal.com]

I like this a lot! I'd never considered it before, but it would be difficult to get a clear account of what the fell-beasts were actually like, since everyone who'd seen them and lived to tell would have seen them through a haze of all-consuming fear.

"Semi-scientific mythology"? Oooh, that's our Tolkien. *Rolls eyes*

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) And yes - it was quite striking to notice that Éowyn and Merry (him especially, and he must have been the one to relate the story to Frodo for the Red Book) were quite affected - reliable textual information is different.

... oh, yes. I boggled quite a bit. Though to be fair to Tolkien, Mantell and Owens did make some strange mistakes reconstructing early Iguanodon finds, and (albeit much later) the Jurassic Park Velociraptors also were quite a flight of fancy, so I can't entirely blame his scepticism. Such a thorough dismissal, though... huh.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

compiled, above all, by a fanciful, overdramatic Perian...

HA! Nothing like the Black Breath to befuddle one's ability to observe and collect data! :^)

Re: my inner paleontology nerd looked at PJ's fanciful critters and shake my head; had to shut off my inner pedant who was screeching -- those things should not be able to fly! A dormant fic in the LC caused me to do a fair amount of research on critters beyond the pterodactyl and there are a couple of candidates that could work.

I'm a bit less forgiving on his "semi-scientific mythology" comment, although I take it to be flippant since JRRT was apparently quite interested in paleontology. My great-great uncle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Perry_Hay), 46 years JRRT's senior, was a paleontologist; that second citation in the Wikipedia entry is still in use. Not so mythic.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

HA! Nothing like the Black Breath to befuddle one's ability to observe and collect data! :^)
Precisely!

had to shut off my inner pedant who was screeching -- those things should not be able to fly!
That proves how much I know about aerodynamics; little enough by far to happily suspend disbelief about the movie Nazgûl beasts... it helped that I really love the design.

Not so mythic.
Oh no, I wasn't trying to dismiss the entire field of palaeontology on basis of one comment by a linguist - it's been 20-ish years since I've been actively reading in it (yes, 6-year-old me could quite happily babble on and on about dinosaur nomenclature and taxonomy when other kids my age had only just learned to read), but I do know that there definitely wasn't a lot of mythicism, at least not in the scientific community even prior to Tolkien's time (though what popular reception was like I have no idea). But I am inclined to agree on the flippancy of that comment. -- And you seem to be from quite a formidable family! :D

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Most enjoyable!

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[blslarner.livejournal.com]

So, the Black Breath could interfere with memories, eh? And Frodo was overdramatic? Oooookay! Heh!

Thanks for a giggle.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, thank you for the comment! :D

So, the Black Breath could interfere with memories, eh?
Apparently! Fear actually serves as a stimulus to retain memories a lot better (which I suppose makes a great deal of sense from an evolutionary standpoint) but with dark magic (TM) also in play, who knows! ;)