The Way of the Wombat

This drabble set looks at two days in the life of a post-war family in Rohan. They should be quite readable even if you have never seen or read anything about the Lord of the Rings; it could almost be any rural family living through the first winter after a major war.

I have a soft spot for these people - the Rohirrim who lost so much - you may have realised!

So

Author; curiouswombat
Title; First Snow Day.
Source: LotR
Characters; Rohirrim..
Rating G.
For the 'Water' challenges.

Disclaimer: The characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only, and all rights remain with the estate of JRR Tolkien.

( First Snow Day )

And yes - goodness knows how/why I was inspired to write about the inhabitants of a landlocked country when the prompts were all related to water!

As many of my friends know, I take part every week in the Tolkien Weekly Drabble Challenge - and try to keep to a theme for each set of challenges. Over November and December I returned to Firiel and Eldarion.

Eldarion is the son of Aragorn and Arwen and about five years old in these - Firiel is his young governess and an original character. I first wrote about Eldarion and his governess in these drabbles, and thought it would be nice to go back to them.

Put together under the cut are most of the ones I have just written. I realised two didn't quite fit with the others - I'll post them separately in a day or two.

So;

Eight true drabbles about Firiel, Eldarion, and his close family.
Rating - G

( under here )

I don't know how many of you remember the set of twelve drabbles Edoras to Ithilien in Twelve Moves - but a few weeks ago there was a single drabble prompt over at Tolkien Weekly to celebrate the community's sixth anniversary and I found myself writing a post-script to that series -


( Anniversary )

I have completed another set of drabbles at tolkien_weekly, this time the theme was 'meals'.

We received the challenges in proper order - breakfast, elevenses and so on. I took, as my own, secondary, theme, the Fellowship of the Ring - and so I have reorganised them into chronological order instead.

Special note to those of you who read these at the community - I have added an extra one as someone requested - tea-time now has a second, considering cakes...

( A Fellowship of Food )

Those of you who read the Returnverse stories will understand why Legolas originally was going to get blackberry jam - but I changed it to fit the title that occurred to me!

I have finished another set of drabbles at tolkien_weekly - the theme was 'weather.'

I have got into the habit of trying to use a theme for the whole set and so this is really the story of the first year of the Galdhrim (the Elves of Lothlorien) after Lady Galadriel sails West. It is book-verse - in other words Lord Celeborn is tall and slender and didn't sail with his wife...!

So, under the cut are 800 words with an over-all title of ( Winds of Change )

They would fit into Return-verse 'canon' I think, too.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of JRR Tolkien. I am about to raise a glass to his immortal memory - Raspberry and Red Currant wine - which has a suitable sense of hobbitness, or perhaps of the Northern Dunedain.

Which fits well with the squeeing - I have won a first and a third with two of my drabbles at the Middle Earth Fanfic Awards -



A First for By Pastures Green...




And a Third for The Hardest Month

- which features just such a bottle of wine!

Thank you to everyone involved - and especially thank you to the memory of The Professor.

Recently on tolkien_weekly the challenges have been linked by the theme of The Good Earth.

I am not posting them here in the order they were written - because all but one of them form a short series.

So - I will start with the one which does not fit in with the others -

( Marshland. Memories )

The other drabbles are all looking at the relationship between Legolas and Gimli - I have put them into chronological order.

( Woodlands. Field Trips )

( Grasslands. When The Wind Blows... )

( Barren Lands. A Question of Definition. )

( Coastlands. I must go down to the sea again... )

And finally -

( Garden. ...But Not Forgotten )

We are starting a series of 'Harvest' challenges this week.

Firstly - D-d reports that her eye-sight is now perfect. She says she can see everything really clearly, but then she can when she has her contacts in, and so she has to keep reminding herself that "this is now the default - there is no blurry option"!

Optical Express have fallen over backwards to apologise for her being upset and distressed after her surgery, she says she has had a personal call from the Clinic Manager to say that when my surgeon is next in he will show him the copy of my questionnaire, and comments from our phone-call, and basically give him a talking to - agreed it was unacceptable not to tell patients what is happening to them or what to expect.

She says it is getting a bit embarrassing by now! However, if her negative feedback improves it for other people, then I am proud of her.

So - Rainbow drabbles. The current challenge series over at tolkien_weekly is Rainbow - one colour a week.

So far we have done the first three, and it is my drabble for the first, red, challenge that earned me a nomination to this year's Middle Earth Fanfic Awards.

I am very proud of this, being new to the Tolkien fandom, and so i am sharing my pretty outside the cut - you'll just have to deal folks!!




( Red - Haven )

Then we have last week's - ( Orange - The Gardener )

And, right up to date, this is my answer to this weeks' challenge, which is, of course - ( Yellow - When First We Practice To Deceive... )

It's still nice weather - we really are having summer! I have some nice sunny pictures for this week's 365 post on Sunday.

Must get on with Brotherhood - I think it will be at least the weekend before the next chapter is ready to beta.

I am thrilled to have been nominated in the annual Middle Earth Fanfic Awards for one of my drabbles. Unlike the Buffyverse where there are a number of highly acclaimed awards each year, in the Tolkien fandom there are the MEFAs - so it is like getting an Oscar nomination! Many, many thanks to just_ann_now who nominated me - I really am amazingly chuffed.

I had been going to wait until I got the little pretty to say I was nominated - but I haven't been sent one yet and I wanted to share my pleasure - so when I get the pretty I will share!

However - I am not posting the relevant drabble in this post - it occurred to me that I have quite a back-log of my tolkien_weekly drabbles that I haven't posted in my journal, and so, over the next week or so, I will post them in batches.

So - back in February I posted four of the 'Eat, Drink and be Merry' challenge ones - in this post I will put the rest of that set.

Anyone who has read Starlight Bathing might well recognise the scene in the first one -

( Mead - The First Time )


( Wedding - To Know, Know, Know him... )

( Birthday - Many Happy Returns )

( Celebration. Come and Join the Celebration )

( Performance or Song. It Sounded Sad Enough... )

( Embarrassment. Pillow Talk )

That was the end of the Eat, Drink and be Merry Challenge.

I will post the one I wrote for the 'flowers' challenge later, and we are now on 'Rainbow' - it is one of the Rainbow drabbles that has got the nomination - I will tell you which one when we get to it, and then I will post them here as well as there in future!!

Hi - we are home. Actually we got home about 10.15 last night but I was too tired to unpack my computer!

Getting to Long Eaton on Friday involved leaving home at 6.30 a.m., a ferry and three trains before being met by the inestimable hesadevil and transported the last couple of miles in the Red Devil so that we arrived for a late lunch.

The hotel was very good with friendly and helpful staff and good food. The organised sessions were all interesting and well thought out by whoever led them. The company was the best though!

Getting home turned out to be a slightly tortuous journey; fortunately gillo took four of us and a dog to Derby station a little before S2C and my train was due to leave, where we discovered that the Derby-Crewe trains were being replaced by buses 'due to staff shortages' - and the bus would take so long that we would miss our connection, and eventually our boat home - meep.

However a very helpful station employee calculated that if we headed south to Birmingham we would get there in time to join the Liverpool train that we would have joined when it got north to Crewe. shapinglight was also heading to Crewe, and so she took this detour to Birmingham with us.

Then half way to Birmingham everything ground to a halt - a power outage in a Birmingham signal box had halted all trains in the area! The Virgin Trains staff were very good, and kept us updated, and we finally got rolling again and made it in time for the connection, but I think all three of us were beginning to think our journeys home were fated.

The SeaCat was very busy, but we found seats, and I spent most of the journey listening to music on my tiny MP3 player, and reading some of 'the book wot hesadevil wrote'.

I must just say, to any of my FL in the UK, or indeed elsewhere, that it was wonderful to meet so many of my LJ friends, and also to make some new ones. Hopefully it will be repeated next year and you would certainly not need to be a writer, or a BtVS fan, to enjoy the Meet.

Finally, for this post, one session led by speakr2customrs was on writing drabbles - and he set us all the task of writing a drabble in which Angel loses his soul.

( Mine is under here. )