#Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung : The Musical

[balrogballs]

Just uploaded Chapter 5/5 of Cast in Stone, the fic I made this (hellish) Tumblr to talk about and one I've put way too much effort into, including this needlessly intricate piece of cover art! 35k words of chaos, archival silences, found family, healing, and coming to terms!

"Family too, Maglor knew just as well, was another mirage — a beautiful one, certainly, but still a desperate construct of necessity. People called each other family out of tradition or shared blood, but too often it was circumstance that bound them, not some innate bloodborne tether. But that, he thought, running a practiced hand through the tangled hairs near Elrond’s temple, did not make the bond itself any less real."

A re-embodied Maedhros and Maglor arrive in Imladris with only fragmented memories of their final years — and find that Elrond had built an enormous statue glorifying their redemption, yet omitted their final fates from the histories he wrote as a loremaster. A Return to Imladris fic with elements of magic realism, postcoloniality and the politics of memory, also featuring the youthful sleuths, Legolas and a teenaged Aragorn.