Wander's Wonderings

I have read all your replies with love and gratitude, and there is no way I can answer each of you individually.

Thank you for all your love; I feel it every day, and I love you all back.

Dear Creator,

This is the actual letter for 2023!

Thank you! Thank you for loving something I love, and for creating for me. I am sure that I will enjoy whatever you write for me.

I have requested fic for my main gift, but art treats would be amazing.

( General Thoughts )

Individual Requests

I signed up at the very last minute (If I read the Request Summary correctly I was the last signup) and ran out of time to put any worldbuilding tags in either my Crossover Fandom or Silmarillion request, so I have put them here instead.

( Request 1 - Silmarillion )
( Request 2 - Crossover Fandom )
( Request 3 - The Fall of Arthur )

Rest in peace, Ma'am.

This looks like fun! Click the image to go to the fest page.



Specific Tolkien-possible prompts/comments:

LotR, Gandalf, Peace here

---------
Any, Any, Quiet comfort here -- Afterwards, in Quiet Comfort

Any, Any, The sea between us here

Any, Any, First sign of spring here

---------
Original Works, Librarian/Library ghost, The rustling of pages here

Original Work, Wizard/Knight, Spellbound here

Yes, I know it is the third-almost-the-fourth :-)

I hope it is a better one for us all.

I enjoyed my two+ weeks off work very much. I slept in, I got a tiny amount of sewing done, I got to see a couple of people and take a walk in the park. I ordered my replacement tent. I did Greyhaven New Years by zoom, which was fun.

And I wrote. For Yuletide I got one full-length (exactly -- it's 10 perfect drabbles, so precisely 1k) treat, and a drabble and a drabble-poem in Madness. The drabble-poem enjoyed a modest success and was recced a couple of times, which was lovely. The recipients all enjoyed them.

I've been working steadily on my SWG Postcards from Middle Earth piece, which keeps growing. On the 29th it grew a 1.2k (and counting) epilogue that will need to be a separate piece, not just a separate chapter. I think I will need to just pick a segment that hangs together to post for the challenge. Since the 1st, I've been doing the daily Resolutions prompts as well, which is entertaining. I did the Instadrabble session on the 27th, though I have a few prompts still to fill, and I'm planning to do the image one this weekend.

I have kept up with Fan Flashworks, got a sonnet done for the current prompt Roof last night and posted it earlier today.

It has been so nice to have the words flowing again, which they mostly haven't been for a while now. Tomorrow I go back to work. I do hope that doesn't shut off the spigot.

I have long had a somewhat adversarial relationship with my teeth. These last few years (with really good dental coverage) have been rather better, especially once I realized/understood that my mouth actually is Really Small, and it is ok to tell/remind the dental people that.

Today I was an adult about it. One of my lower front teeth had started really hurting yesterday, to the point it was waking me up, so I called the dentist at 8, and they happened to have an opening at 9. I went, and it turned out there was an abscess, and the tooth was going to need a root canal & crown. So they got me a same-day appointment with the Endodontist. They were very nice and good at their jobs -- plus they listened, so I got the kid-sized bite block and so forth.

The novocaine was a real relief. I was a little sorry when it wore off. I can tell that the pain now is Insulted Gums/Jaw (and possibly pressure from the infection) and not screaming tooth-nerves, so a definite improvement. I have antibiotics to make sure the infection goes all the way away.

I do hope I wake up without having to think about my mouth tomorrow though. That would be nice.


It has made me wonder if Elves can re-grow teeth. I think perhaps they can, though it might take a while. I know that Highlander Immortals certainly can.

This is really amazing -- Sir Christopher Lee, as a villain, singing a song about cocktails. Marvelous voice and boy does he know how to use it.



--By way of the_little_owl and temve, here.

It is the second to last day of November, and a full moon with an eclipse tonight. I shall not be staying up for it (where I am it is a penumbral eclispse from midnight-thirty to 2:30ish.) I wonder what the Elves thought, the first time they saw one? I could see Curufin figuring it out before it happened, or Caranthir. Or maybe someone else of astronomical and mathematical bent. Or perhaps it would be more likely that they would work out the mathematics after the fact.

Though, since in the First Age, the moon actually generates light, not reflecting it, perhaps there are no actual eclipses. That might be another artifact of the world being bent with the sinking of Numenor in the Second Age. And how does that affect Aman, still a plane?

Elven astronomy, surprisingly complex!

Surviced Friday. Most of it at dads house, many more hours than I wanted to be.

However, now I am home, eating delicious Ivan-bread, and attempting to get my shoulders back out of my ears.

HAve a triple drabble I wrote a while back, for the prompts: Sunlight Quiver, Bowl, Luscious (Caranthir, Feanor)


Cloudberries

Sunlight quivered on the water in the cup Caranthir set before him, a sight Feanor did not think he would be used to any time soon. Not the sunlight, not water, not any and every one of his sons. Then Caranthir put a bowl full of brilliantly colored berries next to the cup, and sat across from him, not saying anything. (The seven of them, Nerdanel, and a so far inexplicable set of others — some but not all of his sibling's children, others he felt he should know but could not recall — seemed to be taking it in turn to bring him food, help him with things he ought to be able to do himself, but could not quite manage yet, in this new hroa. It was improving — he could feed himself now — but no less terrifying. Even if everyone who had Returned themselves — which was, also terrifying, almost all of them — said that it was expected, especially for those who had been without hroa for a long time. They had not yet told him how long, which was probably just as well.) Carefully, Feanor picked up one of the red berries and admired it for a moment, glistening in the warm light, before putting it in his mouth. Flavor burst on his tongue, intense, sweet, luscious, nearly overwhelming. He felt his breath catch, his eyes well with feelings, sensations he had forgotten, had no words for. Caranthir slid a square of hemmed linen across the table, and for a moment the very weave of the fabric was almost too much on his fingertips, but there was nothing but steady affection in Caranthir's smile. Handkerchief. it was a handkerchief, and there was a joke about handkerchiefs he would recall presently, but for now, he and Caranthir would enjoy breakfast, together.

Cloudberries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus

Drawing a blank on what to talk about here today.

So, here is a drabble-poem I wrote on the 31st.

-------
Where do the words go, when the mind goes blank?
Are they still there in potential, if only one could reach them?
Or have they flown away, and breath must bring them back?

Roll the dice, pick a prompt, apply the pen to paper
Coax the words out somehow. No one needs to see them,
Only you, squeezing them out like blood from a finger-prick.

It's not a project without it being bled on, after all --
Pins, needles, knives, chisels, styli digging lines in wax
One by one by one, until there is something on the page

No longer blank
-------

I did get words today, 200+, but I think they need reworking before they fit properly with the SWG challenge set, or even as a solo thing. That's ok. Not everything needs to be postable straight off. I'm allowed second drafts.