pilfered_words

(sisterly bonding under the cut; probably boring to anyone who is not Future Manya. Future Manya will find it fascinating.)

 

“If ever beyond hope you return to the lands of the living and we re-tell our tales, sitting by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief, you shall tell me then. Until that time, or some other time beyond the vision of the Seeing-stones of Númenor, farewell!” 

My sister and I are half a chapter away from the end of Book III in LotR. Gandalf has just grabbed Pippin and galloped away on Shadowfax, following Pippin’s little adventure with the palantir. Things are tense.

 

I love this chapter. The first part, with Merry and Gandalf and then with Merry and Pippin, is sweet and funny (my sister: “Merry is the best!”). Then it veers off into sheer terror when Pippin steals the palantir. You can feel the compulsion Pippin feels, the compulsion to do something he knows is a bad idea because he just needs to know. And obviously there’s something magical going on here, but I think we’ve all felt the non-magically enhanced version of this, and that’s a terrifying feeling in and of itself.

 

Favorite quotes from this part:

 

All Wizards should have a hobbit or two in their care - to teach them the meaning of the word, and to correct them. 

 

(S: Wait, aren’t there only three wizards at this point? and one of them just turned evil?)

 

‘He has grown, or something. He can be both kinder and more alarming, merrier and more solemn than before, I think. He has changed; but we have not had a chance to see how much, yet. But think of the last part of that business with Saruman! Remember Saruman was once Gandalf’s superior: head of the Council, whatever that may be exactly. He was Saruman the White. Gandalf is the White now. Saruman came when he was told, and his rod was taken; and then he was just told to go, and he went!' 

 

(Merry is really perceptive sometimes.)

 

What’s the harm in my telling you what I should like: a look at that stone? I know I can’t have it, with old Gandalf sitting on it, like a hen on an egg. 

 

(That’s an amazing visual.)

 

The hobbit relaxed and fell back, clinging to the wizard’s hand. 'Gandalf!’ he cried. 'Gandalf! Forgive me!’

 

'Forgive you?’ said the wizard. 'Tell me first what you have done!’

 

'I, I took the ball and looked at it,’ stammered Pippin; 'and I saw things that frightened me. And I wanted to go away, but I couldn’t. And then he came and questioned me; and he looked at me, and, and that is all I remember.’

 

'That won’t do,’ said Gandalf sternly. 'What did you see, and what did you say?’

 

Pippin shut his eyes and shivered, but said nothing. They all stared at him in silence, except Merry who turned away. But Gandalf’s face was still hard. 'Speak!’ he said.

 

In a low hesitating voice Pippin began again, and slowly his words grew clearer and stronger. 'I saw a dark sky, and tall battlements,’ he said. 'And tiny stars. It seemed very far away and long ago, yet hard and clear. Then the stars went in and out-they were cut off by things with wings. Very big, I think, really; but in the glass they looked like bats wheeling round the tower. I thought there were nine of them. One began to fly straight towards me, getting bigger and bigger. It had a horrible - no, no! I can’t say.

 

(Holy sh-)

 

'Dangerous indeed, but not to all,’ said Aragorn. 'There is one who may claim it by right. For this assuredly is the palantír of Orthanc from the treasury of Elendil, set here by the Kings of Gondor. Now my hour draws near. I will take it.’

 

(Aragorn is being Kingly. :D)

 

The Nazgûl have crossed the River! Ride, ride! Wait not for the dawn! Let not the swift wait for the slow! Ride!’ 

 

Tonight, I read the second half of the chapter ‘Helm’s Deep’ to my sister. I kept trying to send her to bed, and she kept not going. So we finished the chapter. It’s far from my favorite, but I think I appreciated it more this time around: reading aloud makes me go a lot slower than I would normally, and I think that really makes this chapter work a lot better.

 

My sister has predicted that Theoden is doomed, though I think she thinks he’ll die sooner than he really will. Still, impressive genre savviness for a 13 year old. Or maybe not; I don’t really remember when I started seeing those sorts of patterns. 

 

Ugh, I don’t want to write anything. I’ve been skipping around, reading anything that happens to catch my eye, and not having thoughts about what I read.

 

Before that, I was reading LotR aloud to my sister. “Isn’t she a bit old for that?” you may ask. Why, yes, yes she is. She’s 12. The last time I read aloud to her was years ago. But she started LotR on her own once before, and got bored and quit, and that’s just not acceptable. We started at the beginning of Book 2 earlier this week, and we’re in the middle of the Council of Elrond now. That chapter is… really long. It doesn’t seem that long when you’re reading to yourself. Especially if you’re me, and use every line to go, “Oh! He means that dude from the thing! And this is the part that will be super important later! Oh, there’s the canon part of that one fic!” S. doesn’t really care about any of that, obviously, because she doesn’t know enough things to really make the connections. She also doesn’t quite approve of descriptive language, so it’s sort of slow going.

 

Eh. I’m just going to post the beginning of a perennial WIP. It’s a translation of one of my favorite Russian books, actually:

 

 

The only things I have left of my classmates now are the memories and a single photograph. It’s a group portrait, with our homeroom teacher in the center, the girls around her, and the boys at the edges. The photograph has faded, and since the photographer carefully focused the camera on the teacher, the edges, smudged even when the picture was taken, have now completely blurred; sometimes I wonder if they have blurred because the boys of our class long ago passed into nothingness, before they had a chance to finish growing up, and their features have been dissolved by time.