#I even got the wave of Numenor reference in there

[sweetearthandnorthernsky]

@hallothere asked me about gondorian yule hcs on discord and because i'm So Very Normal about gondor, this got way out of hand and exceeded the character limit which i am not surprised by at all.

disclaimer; all of this is headcanon, none of it is actively supported by canon, though theoretically you should be able to install it without canon crashing and that's the important thing.

firstly; yule's kind of a misnomer bc it's more of a mettare/yestare thing (last & first day so... new years? almost) but it falls on the winter solstice which led me to wonder why mettare/yestare is in the winter for gondorians & not in the middle of spring like elves.

from there, i decided (made up the reason) that the main reason it's celebrated then is because mettare (last day) is a day of remembrence of when numenor fell whereas yestare (first day) is a celebration of the faithful reaching middle earth and since jirt didn't give us a specific date for either of those that i remember at least, i tend to hc that it happened in winter because it just. feels right

mettare is usually very somber, and i don't imagine there's much like. Active Celebrating going on other than like. reflecting on the last year, asking forgiveness for wrongs etc etc.

yestare however is full-on party time!

during the day there's festivals, dancing etc - in dol amroth i feel like there's a parade where a popular snack is frycake drizzled with honey

sae was awful about getting this in the hair of whoever drew the short straw of carrying her on their shoulders so she could actually See the parade.

when the parades are done, they make nine paper boats per family (in reference to the nine boats that elendil & co took to get to middle earth) and take to The Water* as the sun sets & the stars start to come out

*(usually, just a river since gondor has a ton of them, but in the coastal regions you can just take them down to the docks and straight up put them in the ocean, which is what sae's family does when they live in dol amroth)

they do that while singing and carrying lanterns marked with the sun & moon (double reference! isildur & anarion, and i could've sworn i remember reading something about numenoreans and the sun/moon but for the life of me i can't remember what it was.)

when they get home, they place a branch that's painted white over their hearth ('and one white tree')

then the head of the household reads the story of the downfall of numenor and arrival in middle earth, and they eat one of seven star cakes texture-wise they're more like cookies but i have no idea if that's even a word they have in middle-earth to symbolize the 'seven stars' that they baked the day before.

(sometimes this is also expanded to include the seven stones depending on how many people are visiting lmao.)

giftgiving usually follows that, but.... this about as far as i got building the headcanons since that's as much as i've needed for the *waves hands* stuff i've worked on so far.

[melyzard]

All of the congratulations on your new assignment! You rock on and offline! I have two quotes for you to choose from as I can never make up my mind. 1) "The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny." 2) "The future disappears into memory / With only a moment between / Forever dwells in that moment / Hope is what remains to be seen"

(Thank you! I’m also going to pitch this one towards @crazy-fruit, because I promised her 1000 words for 1 hour of studying and here’s a bit more than 2k, complete with references to sewing, and OC that she likes, and of course, pining. For your prompt, I chosethe first quote, because Eowyn and Faramir? That’s my eternal jam! I mean, comeon – “in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure,” ugh, what a good line. So I re-read thatpassage in the Return of the King, when they are standing on the walls of MinasTirith, injured and tired and afraid, waiting to see if the darkness will fallbefore their allies’ efforts or rise to destroy them all…)

He finds her on the roof, just over the hangar doors thatgape at the Temple’s base. She’s far back enough from the edge that she cannotbe seen from the ground, partially hidden by the shadow cast by the upper layers,and wedged between two old, crumbling pillars. It’s the exact spot he wouldhave chosen, a perfect sniper’s nest with plenty of visibility from her pointof view but with almost no access, protected on all sides and hard to spot. Insteadof laying stretched out with a rifle, however, she’s leaning against the largerpillar, her arms folded around her middle and her face tilted up to the curveof Yavin, far above.

Briefly, Cassian wonders why the Death Star doesn’t justblast the gas giant itself rather than wait the twenty minutes or so left to geta clear line of sight on the base – wouldn’t destroying the planet take out allit’s moons, too? – but mostly, he finds himself concerned with the raggedremains of Jyn’s shirt. It’s the same shirt she wore on Wobani, the same oneshe wore throughout their month-long insane dash around the galaxy, the sameone she wore on Scarif. It’s worn so thin in places that he can almost see herskin through the fabric, there are at least three carefully darned tears thathe’s noted, and on her left side, the faded brown remnants of a large bloodstain. Absently, Cassian rubs a hand across his right side, where newly-graftedskin itches around the memory of her body pressed against him.

He can’t do a thing about the Death Star, or the patheticremnants of the Fleet that are even now desperately throwing themselves againstit, or the slow burning rage in Leia Organa’s eyes every time someone barely stopsthemselves from whispering ‘just likeAlderaan’ in her hearing. He can’t do a damn thing about any of it, infact, most of his energy went into just climbing up here, looking for his –looking for Jyn. It’s the winter season on Yavin IV, which is still relativelybalmy, of course, but means that cool winds tend to buffet these higher levels ofthe Temple. And Jyn’s shirt is clearly inadequate against even that slightchill.

“You’re supposed to be using a cane,” he calls from severalsteps away, letting her know that he’s there. He watches her shoulders tenseand then relax, and her arms tighten around her waist, but she keeps her faceturned upward.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” she fires back, but there’sno real heat or accusation in it, only acknowledgement. Neither of them couldstand to hang around medical at the best of times, let alone when their deathwas floating serenely through space towards them. A death, Cassian thinks as heslowly makes his way to her side, that perhaps has been too long in coming. He’doutrun it on Jedha, been dragged from it on Scarif, but now…

“Do you think we’ll see it?” Jyn asks suddenly as he stepscarefully into the narrow space between her and the second pillar. “The DeathStar,” she jerks her chin towards the sky. “Think we’ll even see it?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, watching her lips thinand her shoulders grow a little more rigid. She tilts her chin just a littlemore, her jaw set and her eyes narrow. Like she’s squaring up against the sky,bracing for the blow she can’t hope to block. It makes Cassian’s heart twist,and because there’s nothing he can do about that, either, he turns away from Yavin’shorizon and holds out the material in his hands. “Here.”

She drags her gaze down to look at him, and then at hishands, and he almost smiles at the way her mouth drops slightly open and hereyes widen. “Where did you get this?”

“Quartermasters,” he shrugs one shoulder carefully, becausehe tried it with both this morning and that had…not worked out well.

Jyn unfolds her arms slowly and takes the thick shirt fromhim. It’s thick, sturdy material, not much different from his own practical workshirts, but Cassian didn’t pick this one from the supply pile for the material.He’s a little bit embarrassed to admit why he did chose it, but since he probably only has about fifteen minutesleft to live, he firmly decides not to worry about it.

Jyn traces her finger down the neat dark blue stitching alongthe collar. It’s small, just a scattering of dark stylized stars that twist overone shoulder and disappear into the back of the collar, and at close inspectionit’s obvious that the embroidery is meant to obscure the edges of a patch,where the material on the shoulder had been damaged too badly to just bestitched back together.

“You’re a man of hidden talent,” Jyn muses, raising aneyebrow even as her fingers trace gently along the stars.

That does pull a smile from him, small and weak under theweight of their imminent deaths, but there. “I am,” he agrees lightly, “but Ican’t take credit for this. One of the quartermasters apparently passes hertime making the donations and recycled clothes…” he makes a vague gesture, “prettier.”

Her mouth curls slightly at the corner, and moreimportantly, she doesn’t glance back up at the sky. “Prettier.”

“She fixed one of my jackets a few years ago,” Cassian recalls.“The inside pocket was torn out, and my hands were - ” nearly burned to the bone “- healing,” he swallows quickly andrushes on, and though Jyn’s eyes flick to him, she doesn’t interrupt, doesn’task about the hitch in his voice. “She sewed a vine of some kind into it. Shesaid it was for good fortune.”

“Pretty,” Jyn murmurs, and then to Cassian’s disappointment,she hands the shirt back to him. His stomach drops, and his hands feel cold; hetries to shrug it off, but before he can think of anything to say, any way tohandle the abrupt rejection, Jyn crosses her arms and grabs the hem of hershirt and –

Oh.

She pulls it up and over her head smoothly, and Cassian’sinstinct is to turn his head and look away the moment he sees the pale skin ofher belly. Except there is nowhere to look but the silent jungle that might burnto ash in about ten minutes, and the great blue sky that will unleash the fire.And if he’s going to die with her anyway (like he should have, more than oncealready), then he’s going to spend his last few minutes accepting whatever sheis offering him. So Cassian holds the new shirt in his hands and watches Jyntoss the old one carelessly to the stone floor, and when she looks up at him,he meets her eyes. She reaches for his gift again, pauses with it in her hands,and then suddenly lifts her chin again, but this time to him, a challenge, andan invitation.

He has maybe eight minutes to live, so Cassian takes it. He leansback against the pillar and looks at her, at the heavy-duty combat bra she musthave scrounged from Yavin’s stores at some point (she got that, he thinks, butdidn’t get a shirt too? Or did she think that would be asking too much?), atthe smooth skin across her torso, shoulders, and arms, marred and broken by oldscars and new skin grafts. He looks at the tension in her posture and the bruiseson her knuckles, the shackle scars on her wrists and the faint depression onher ribcage that marks where her ribs had once broken and been patched togetherwithout bacta or bone stabilizers. The skin graft on her right shoulder, theone turned towards the blast when she held him on Scarif, is an angrier red thanthe rest of her marks, although he can see that the lines are already blurringgently into her skin. His hands itch suddenly, a powerful urge to reach out andrun his palms over the curve of her shoulders and down the slopes of her sides,but if he only has seven minutes left in this life, he’s not going to spendthem crossing the boundaries of someone who matters the way Jyn matters to him.

So he simply looks, and then meets her eyes again and thistime the smile comes easily to his face.  “Beautiful,” he says simply, honestly, and Jynstares at him, clearly not braced for that blow at all, but Cassian doesn’ttake it back.

Another fitful breeze raises bumps all along her bared skin,and at last Jyn tugs the new shirt over her head. It’s a little long, andsettles around her hips more like a tunic than a shirt. Her crystal necklace hangsin the unbuttoned gap at her collar, and she reaches up almost absently andtouches the stars on her shoulder. Cassian’s hands almost ache with the impulseto reach out, but he stays where he is and watches.

“I’m - ” Jyn frowns, but it’s more into the distance than athim, so he doesn’t flinch. “I think I’m afraid,” she whispers hoarsely, and dropsher eyes to ground, her head bowing as if in shame.

That galvanizes him, because Jyn with her head bowed isunnatural somehow, wrong, and he doesn’t think he could stand it even if theyweren’t in their last minutes together. Cassian shoves off the pillar andreaches out at last, careful and slow but determined to do this, to fix thisone small but vital thing before he is all out of chances. Jyn’s eyes close butshe curls her fingers when he slips his hand into hers, and tugs gently untilhe’s close enough that she can rest her forehead against his collarbone, herbreath light and warm on his chest.  “Doyou think it will be…” she trails off, and Cassian cups his free hand aroundthe back of her neck and runs his thumb lightly against her pulse point, indulginghimself in this one small thing, this tiny luxury.

“I keeping dreaming it,” he confesses into the last fewminutes they have. Far above them, he guesses that the first grey curve of the Empire’smonstrous ambition is probably peering around the gas giant’s sheltering bulk,but his vision is full of brown hair and dark blue stars, and he doesn’t lookup. “The light,” he continues, when Jyn makes a small, encouraging noise low inher throat, her other hand settling light as a butterfly on his undamaged hip. “Risingtowards us like a wave, too fast to escape.”

“But we did,” she says to their feet. “That time.” Shelifts her head and slides closer, turning her face towards his neck and sendinga shock of warmth and want and desperate, terrible sadness rippling through hisbody. It’s Scarif, it’s just like Scarif, and so Cassian wraps both armsaround her and holds her tightly. To his immeasurable relief, she hugs himback, her arms tender but certain around his bandaged ribs. “Guess that was onetime too many,” her lips brush his throat, and Cassian closes his eyes andbends his head, pressing his face as close to hers as he can, shutting out theworld around them.

“No,” he says, and to his own surprise, he’s still beinghonest. They have survived the planetkiller twice already, found a lost pilot in the middle of a desert, found alost father in the middle of an Imperial prison, and above all, found eachother in the middle of an uncaring universe. How could he look at those incredible,impossible achievements, those momentous victories, and be anything other than hopeful?How could he feel her hands gripping the back of his shirt and her heartbeat sosteady against his chest and be anything but ecstatic, elated, exultant?

“No, Jyn,” he says (and perhaps he’s wrong and they have only a minute or two left, but if he is right, if he is right -) “I think we’re going to live,” he tells her, andthen he laughs, his arms full and his eyes closed, and he laughs as Jyn tiltsher face up to look at him without pulling away, “We’re going to live, Jyn.” And then she is laughingtoo, soft and uncertain and beautiful. Cassian turns his head and presses hismouth to her forehead, and this time when she shivers, it has nothing to dowith the wind at all.

Somewhere far away from their sunlit laughter, the Death Starlights up the darkness of space with a blinding flash, and then fades at last, nothingmore than glittering stardust and memory.

[quiet-sunny-corner]

@avoyagetoarcturus hopped onto my post and requested some Tar-Miriel and Eowyn thoughts!  Here we go!

So I recently read the Akallabeth for the first time, and when I got to this line, I was struck by how familiar it sounded:

Specifically the imagery of that great green wave climbed up over the horizon and engulfing the land in darkness, sweeping away the queen as she flees.  

Now at first my brain supplied me with the thought that this was because of Eowyn.  In the extended RotK film, there’s a scene where Eowyn describes a nightmare to Aragorn, saying 

“I dreamed I saw a great wave climbing over green lands and above the hills.  I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my fate. A light shone behind me, but I could not turn. I could only stand there, waiting.” And this is in itself a very interesting parallel.  Tar-Miriel is a woman whose agency is forcibly stripped from her by a man, and who plays a very (from what I’ve read so far) passive role in her country.  To see Eowyn plagued by visions of this fate lead me to wonder about similar parallels, and if some of the narrative satisfaction might come from seeing her break out of the fate that Tar-Miriel suffered.  Both by being a trusted ruler and also eventually a warrior.  Eowyn makes it to her metaphorical “top of the mountain”, she escapes the wave and is not erased by it.

However!  Upon further thought and inspection, it turns out this line is actually originally Faramir’s line from the book.  He references Numenor explicitly, making the parallel much easier to draw.

And this scene then becomes more of a time to reflect on Faramir’s connection to those long-lost men of the West, how he represents a return to that more thoughtful scholarly nobility as opposed to the warlike kings they became.  It’s also a bit of a commentary on the Hope of men, something JRR is very fond of.  Because even though everything seems lost, like the great wave is about to swallow them up, Faramir still insists that they will survive.  

So yeah, I think it’s really fascinating how this piece of imagery was incorporated into both the books and the movies.  Each scene gives you something different to think about, but both are still reminiscent of the feeling of the original piece.