Post by Admin on Jan 10, 2021 1:09:21 GMT
Author: Periphery
Ranking: 3rd place
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn’t mine.
Gilraen never talked about his father. He ponders this instead of listening to the tale another young ranger is weaving around the campfire, a story of an adventure his father had when young. This is the third story of the night to feature their fathers’ ranger days, and he still has nothing to contribute.
He’s not quite sure how he’s gone all these years without asking more questions. Evidently he was a content child, comfortable with his life as it ran in Rivendell. Already different, so very different from the elves around him, he was not infrequently aware of their curious eyes. He must have accepted distinction as his lot, taken his fatherless state as just another facet of his novelty. While each of his friends had an adar, he had the words Lord Elrond had once spoken to him privately: Your father was a good man. And then must have come the explanation, but he can’t remember exactly how that went. He only remembers knowing.
He knows his father was a ranger. He knew, years before it happened, that he would choose that path for himself. Is this supposed to make them closer, somehow? It both is and isn’t a ludicrous idea.
“Oh yes!” Another man interrupts the story, laughing. “Yes, my father was on that patrol as well – “ They tell their fathers’ stories and he can’t even listen.
By blood he belongs here but it’s the most alone he’s ever felt.
Inching away from the fire, he shivers – it’s a crisp night in late spring, the kind of weather that spawns jokes about their nine-month winter – and thinks of his mother again. He wonders what kept her quiet on this topic for his whole life. Was the memory of his father too painful? Or did it never occur to her that the man who was a closed chapter in her own life might yet be important to their son?
He scans the campfire and his companions, dirty and jovial; he recalls the day just gone, the past few weeks, his first as a ranger. What might his father think of him now?
Can he see, from Mandos’ Halls? Is he proud? Does he care?
“Excuse me,” slurs an older man from another group, making him start; the stranger has clearly been making liberal use of his hip flask. “Excuse me, I’ve forgotten your name, you see, and…”
“Oh,” he says, and then despite not knowing what it means, “Aragorn. Son of Arathorn.”
Ranking: 3rd place
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn’t mine.
Gilraen never talked about his father. He ponders this instead of listening to the tale another young ranger is weaving around the campfire, a story of an adventure his father had when young. This is the third story of the night to feature their fathers’ ranger days, and he still has nothing to contribute.
He’s not quite sure how he’s gone all these years without asking more questions. Evidently he was a content child, comfortable with his life as it ran in Rivendell. Already different, so very different from the elves around him, he was not infrequently aware of their curious eyes. He must have accepted distinction as his lot, taken his fatherless state as just another facet of his novelty. While each of his friends had an adar, he had the words Lord Elrond had once spoken to him privately: Your father was a good man. And then must have come the explanation, but he can’t remember exactly how that went. He only remembers knowing.
He knows his father was a ranger. He knew, years before it happened, that he would choose that path for himself. Is this supposed to make them closer, somehow? It both is and isn’t a ludicrous idea.
“Oh yes!” Another man interrupts the story, laughing. “Yes, my father was on that patrol as well – “ They tell their fathers’ stories and he can’t even listen.
By blood he belongs here but it’s the most alone he’s ever felt.
Inching away from the fire, he shivers – it’s a crisp night in late spring, the kind of weather that spawns jokes about their nine-month winter – and thinks of his mother again. He wonders what kept her quiet on this topic for his whole life. Was the memory of his father too painful? Or did it never occur to her that the man who was a closed chapter in her own life might yet be important to their son?
He scans the campfire and his companions, dirty and jovial; he recalls the day just gone, the past few weeks, his first as a ranger. What might his father think of him now?
Can he see, from Mandos’ Halls? Is he proud? Does he care?
“Excuse me,” slurs an older man from another group, making him start; the stranger has clearly been making liberal use of his hip flask. “Excuse me, I’ve forgotten your name, you see, and…”
“Oh,” he says, and then despite not knowing what it means, “Aragorn. Son of Arathorn.”