Culture Clash

Har’ili knew that Father was at his wit’s end. She had always been the ‘safe’ daughter in his mind, she knew. The eldest, with the most sense—the daughter with the most Dwarf in her, going wholly unnoticed through her teens by the Men of the city of King Ellassar. Dwilly’s flirtations during those years had occupied the First Steward’s mind far more often than her own interests in metalsmithing (while her mother lamented that she was choosing the working of metal over stone, but her mother had always had a preference for stony things). Her younger sisters, Lanny and Essy, acted like a hive-mind of strategy—they gave Father no troubles, rather serving as his helpers as well as his Dwarven heirs. The instant he’d realized that they enjoyed strategy and understood it as well as he did, Father had declared to the King in Erebor that the heirs of his line were to be his two youngest daughters. 

Pain Management

Pain Management

“My wife left me.”

Duncan’s hair is military-short, neatly trimmed because of the recent inspection—once a year, all hell breaks loose in the form of waterlogged bleach- towels, clean uniforms, timers, and thermometers. Managers like us have to have nice hair, freshly cut. Today there is a hint of stubble on his chin, evidence he could grow a thick beard if he ever wanted to. His hair, however, is thinning. He’s thirty after all. 

Children

His daughter is three when Gimli gives him another child, another little girl. Har’ili’s cheeks are dusted just barely with feathery auburn stubble, and she resembles her mother more and more every day. This other little girl has dark hair which fuzzes out from her head like a dandelion-head. He wants to give her a Dwarf name, as they’ve given their eldest. Gimli wants to give him a name from the race of Men. 

In the end it is their adopted-son Merry who starts it. He offers up his mother’s name—Esmeralda—to which their other adopted-son Pippen strongly advocates his own mother’s name—Eglantine—and then Gimli’s eyes turned to Boromir. She was named after her father’s mother, her mother had been named after her grandfather’s mother, and that woman had been named after her father’s mother—it was the way of the Dwarves. He knew it caused her relatives to talk and gossip, that Har’ili was given an entirely new name rather than her grandmother’s. 

Small Freedoms

While Merry and Pippin always disputed his wife’s claim as their adoptive parent, it was when Gimli gave birth to a squallingly-healthy daughter that Boromir started to believe that the hobbits’ protests were ones of duty rather than belief. The two doted on his daughter in a way which reminded him of how he had doted on Faramir as a child. The two young hobbits lived with the Steward and his wife, after having found their beloved Shire no longer to their liking.

The little girl was nearly bald, which Gimli tried not to be horrified at—and Boromir himself tried not to laugh too much at Gimli, who had threatened him with amputation of the face while she had been giving birth. She was a tiny child, cradled in his arms hours after her birth. Merry and Pippin had been sent out into the city to look for birth gifts, and their absence had given Boromir and Gimli time alone with their daughter. 

Wife of the Second Steward of Gondor, Princess of Ithilien, and Lady of Emyn Arnen

Eowyn kept her shock to herself that Aragorn’s Dwarven companion was a woman. There had been hints enough, she realized as she looked back, but no outright statement. The tears which had fallen so freely from Gimli’s eyes, the long tales about the legends of Dwarf women, the sadness in Gimli’s eyes when telling Eowyn that Aragorn seemed to have fallen, the intricately braided beard—far more lovely than any beard Eowyn had ever seen on a Dwarf. 

Drunk

 

She loved drinking. The heat sweltering off her cheeks, insulated by her beard, as well as the general fuzziness she experienced. She loved drinking with other people even more, because of the laughter and songs—and the disjointed, nearly unintelligible conversations which followed. It was because of her love of drink that she’d hated Rivendell. 

She knew of the dangerous quest they were about to embark on, it was because of it that they should take this night to celebrate life. But everyone had their own plans, it seemed. So Gimli and her father—and her father’s small retinue—drank alone on one of the balconies. Her laughter wasn’t quite as booming, or as raucous, as she would have liked, but it couldn’t be helped. 

Gimli

She was quite proud of her braids. The beads worked into them had been given to her mother by her grandfather as a wedding present, and she was happy to be allowed to wear them now. She was getting married, after all. When she’d been told, so many months ago, that he had fallen she had felt her heart rend in two. She was strong, of course, and had powered through her grief so that no one noticed how it had hurt her.

In her heart she had despaired.

But he was strong as well, and when Gandalf had hinted that he had survived—rather than being carried off and eaten, as she had been forced to accept—she had broken down in joyful tears. She remembered Lady Eowyn’s hands patting at her hair softly, asking what was wrong. She could barely choke it out, that a comrade who had been lost was not so lost after all. 

The two little ones were with him, Gandalf had said. His voice was soft, knowing. He knew of their budding romance, of course—he had to. It was hard to hide. She rode on a stout pony all the way to the White Tower of Saruman, trailing the group but brimming with spirit and happiness. She cared not for however she found him, so long as he was alive when she did. 

The heir to the Stewardship of Gondor was haggard and pale. His dark, curly hair was longer than she remembered, she thought as she knelt down with a little effort at his side. He had his arms around the two little ones, Meriadoc and Peregrin, the three of them deeply asleep. She blushed a little at seeing his torso exposed, bandaged as it was—her father had been rigorous with decorum, and his daughter, his only heir, was not going to be mentally damaged by the sight of naked man-flesh. As though teaching a girl how to wield an axe with intent to kill wasn’t mentally damaging already. 

Boromir’s eyes opened and her breath caught. His eyes were gray, always some sort of gray, but right at this moment they were that light gray of ancient granite. It was her favorite stone, as common as it was she hardly ran into it in the mines. Its crystals grew too close to the surface to be hallowed out into galleries and palaces. She had once carved out a bedroom in granite the color his eyes were now, a secret one high above her regular chambers. 

“You’re here, we thought you’d never arrive, that Gandalf would take you on to Minas Tirith without us,” there was a suspicious sort of pain in his eyes as he spoke of Gandalf, but she passed over it in favor of taking his hand. It was bloodied and scratched, but unbroken. 

“Aye, we thought to travel on to that white city, but Gandalf had unsettled business here it would seem,” she paused taking a calming breath to steady herself, and Boromir’s hand tightened over hers, “I thought we lost you, Laddy.”

“I thought I lost me too, Gimli,” he said softly. His free hand was buried in young master Meriadoc’s hair, ruffling it slightly as the little one slept deeply. Gimli felt her eyes crinkle with a bit of unforeseen joy. She hadn’t lost him, and it seemed they already had children to look after. The two young hobbits would of course protest, but after the not merry at all chase she had been led on she was in no mood to hear it. 

“Gimli?”

“Yes?” her voice was low and gruff, more vulnerable than she’d like it to be around Boromir. He had a way of hearing that vulnerability that made her hopping mad sometimes, while at the same time endearing himself to her. 

“Should we survive the coming evil, I should like to ask your father for your hand,” his eyes were half closed, but she knew his words were not the phantoms of his drowse. His hand was still clutched hard around hers, after all. She smiled, wide enough that it must have shown through her beard properly. 

“And what of that father of yourn?”

“My father can chuck himself into Mordor, I cannot attempt to care about what his opinion will be,” Boromir said. There was a hint of malice and a pinch of regret to his teasing reply. Gimli wished she could lay down next to him and cuddle into his body like the young masters were, but knew she couldn’t. Not yet. 

Later, Gandalf had taken Peregrin to the White City. The rest of them travelled to Edoras, recovering their strength and healing. They decided that Boromir would remain among the Rohirrim to make his recovery, whatever happened. He had survived his ordeal by dumb-luck and little else, and she chose not to think of how close she had truly come to losing him. Meriadoc wanted to talk, and talk, and talk of how Boromir had saved them. But she couldn’t bring herself to hear it. 

When they left to go to their doom, Gimli and Meriadoc themselves had tied the Steward’s son to his bed. Her goodbye had been as tearful as his nearly had been—neither of them wept, but Boromir wanted so badly to go to the Pellenor Field, to ride among the Rohirrim as one of them. He wanted to earn his place, and to aid where and as he could. Gimli had kissed him, she could do little else. Her glove-less fingers stroking slowly through his soft curls. 

“If I am to die in this fight, I will die knowing that you live on to defend this world as I could not. You shall help me best, Laddy, by being alive when I return here. Promise me not to get yourself killed? You would do such harm to all around you if you did.”

That had been the last time she had laid eyes on him for weeks, and when she did again she nearly had a stroke. He had felt the lessening of the evil in the world, had felt it nearly going out of the world, and had known it was time. Boromir seemed to have stolen away from Edoras in the dead of night and ridden alone to Minas Tirith. No one knew who he had encountered on the way, or if he had seen even one face during that long, lonely ride.

Gimli was sitting with Eowyn as the frail woman waited on the second son of the late Steward. She had glanced down briefly—idly lamenting in the back of her mind the ruined stonework, and that should her father see the white city in such a condition he would fall to the ground weeping—and she had seen him. 

He looked stronger now than he had been, but she knew for a fact that his wounds couldn’t have been completely healed. He was threading his way on his horse up the stairs, a determined look on his upturned face. Obviously Boromir had asked someone where the Dwarf Gimli could be found, and he was on a mission to find her. 

Finally he had walked slowly into the courtyard, and Gimli stood up just as slowly. His smile had been many things over the months she had known him—smirking, playful, self-deprecating, shamed, shy—but the one on his face now could only be described as rakish. 

“Gimli, the day you left I left as well. I rode for the mountains your father calls home, and when I found him I asked for your hand. He gave me these,” he said, taking her hand and turning it over. He put twelve beads in her palm, and looked up at her. Gimli felt herself choking on air. These beads had been in her family for thousands of years, taken from the deepest parts of the world. 

One was a blue diamond, for trust. Three were white, for goodness, clarity, and wisdom. Two more were rough basalt, for faithfulness and passion. Another was red, for a fertile marriage, and its counterpart was green, for a long marriage. The last four were yellow obsidian, for happiness and a sharp wit. Boromir’s eyes were dark gray as she closed her hand around the beads and stepped into his arms. He sucked in a gasp as though he had been worried she would reject him. His arms around her shoulders were definitely nice, she thought, letting her face burrow for the first time into his chest.

She would wear the beads in her beard, arranged at her own discretion, until the birth of Boromir’s heir. Dwarven culture decried birth-order systems, calling them unnatural and unfair, and parents were expected to have many children and choose from among them once they were somewhat grown. But she was marrying a man of Gondor—her first male child would be declared heir, regardless of his parents’ wishes. 

 

This, however, could not distract Gimli as she was married to Boromir. The ceremony in Gondor was small, intimate, and simple. A far-cry from Dwarven weddings which could last days, often being interrupted by random outbreaks of song, dance, and ale.

Writing

I have been making up stories ever since I could remember. Every writer says that as though it is special, but I do intend to claim "special snowflake" status with this statement. You see, I didn't--wouldn't--learn to read until the age of eight. Eight. That is second or third grade, or something.

Visitor

Che Guevara stared at Lucy from the third row back. No one else seemed to see him, but then again he was rather well behaved today. The man who brought him along didn't look like he would have been a typical friend of Che's, but Lucy didn't judge who made friends with who. It was nice to see that Che could branch out and make friends with privileged rich kids—at least ones he admitted to and hung out with in public. It was good for him to have friends at all.

Of course he just seemed to be zoned out completely, so he might just be high, without the knowledge exactly of who he was with. Like Lenin getting carted around by Stalin. He was simply powerless, and was getting taken hostage by this well-meaning rich kid. Because Che, like Lenin, would never hang out with the types of people who took on their ideals like a wolf dons a sheepskin. Lucy hadn't brought anyone with her, at least not anyone that was willing to admit they were with her. Lauren and Calvin were pretty subdued, and they had just tagged along with really a larger group. They weren't really Lucy's friends, more of mutual acquaintances of many people in the class.

Che was really the lone-wolf, sitting silently next to his companion. He looked fierce, like a campaign poster-photo, but that was to be expected—he was a doctor, back in a house of learning. He was also fascinated by the people his friend chose to speak to, twisting and turning around as his friend spoke, trying to see everyone at once, trying to silently represent his political ideal by his simple existence.

Lucy felt he was making a pretty good go of it. His mere presence had gotten her to think about Marxist theory, even, which was far more of an accomplishment than any Lauren could brag of. Calvin didn't have an opinion, he was too busy crossing his arms disapprovingly at Che's friend. Lucy gently cautioned him into giving a more inviting appearance by uncrossing her own arms.











The Che Guevara on the T-Shirt kept looking proudly up into the distance.

People You Meet In the Middle of the Night

"You can go now, Erin."

It's four minutes to three in the morning when Alan has me clock out. We look at time, at work, like soccer players do—and if I clock out at three, then I will be "in the sixth hour,"—and he'll have to give me a half hour break. By law. Technically. So I'm off work, the night shift—my first, and hopefully my only—and I am exhausted. The muscles in my back are twitching with fatigue, and my eyes won't track like they normally do.

Critique

Just got critique back on "Rock & Roll Suicide."

Redheaded Liars

She had been in his class, must have been ten years ago. Her hair had been brown back then, almost a default color, with only very bright light bringing any other colors to light. It had a weird red tint to it now, a look which he didn’t think much suited her. She must have thought differently because her hair was very definitely Red on further inspection. He wrote because he wanted to be a different person, she dyed her hair. Really who was he to judge? But seriously, where the brown had had little variation, the red had none, it was all just red. He was going to judge, he just had to. 

Dear Tanya Katz

Hi.

This is Alicia. One of the fat girls in class this term, the one with short, light brown hair. With the opinions and the interrupting, who absolutely hated the Joyce Carol Oates story but still had something good to say about it. Maybe. The one who turns in papers printed in blue ink on white paper. Yeah, that girl. She's me.

I'm a history major here at OSU. I've lost what I'm doing and where I'm going and just everything. I'm taking your 324 class mostly because I want something fun to do and I had the prerequisite. I took the 200 level from Jacob Mercer, a grad student who graduated last year or the year before. He had a nice smile, and he was from New Mexico or something. That's actually the class where I met my friend Monica, so there's that.

I have been thinking about making a blog for my writing for a long time. No, I haven't looked into whether or not that's a good idea. No, I can't really bring myself to care. People seem to have to fight so hard to get published, and they work full-time at it. I don't, and so forgive me if I don't seem all that worried about posting my stories and ideas online.

My stories are all my own. If you search through this blog--After of course, having googled some portion of my writing, looking for whether or not I'm plagiarizing, shocked when you get a verbatim result. Or maybe more annoyed, I don't know how professors feel when they think a student has plagiarized. 

Plagiarism is a sin against academia and all that is right in the world. I would never do it. 


But I realize that posting my work online would make you suspect that I didn't write it. This is why I waited until the day after I turned in an assignment to create this blog. How can I possibly have stolen work from a site which wasn't created until after I turned in my work? Just covering my butt, and since it's a large one you're getting a letter. --you'll find that most of the things I have posted here are from my own endeavors or from the 200 level from Jacob Mercer. Sorry, he was too young-looking for me to call him Mr. Mercer, and it was and IS too weird to call him just Jacob so he will forever be Jacob Mercer and there's nothing you can do to make me stop it. Short of finding me a new way to reference him.

I do plan on posting pieces generated by your class to this blog for the time being. However, I plan to post them after their due-date. So there's that. Rather large behind, I feel, has been successfully covered.

Imaginary: The Erasure of the Life and Memory of Kyle Ormond

This is a brainstorm for the sci-fi movie I would want to make. It has holes, I know. 

Characters:

Kyle Ormond (Young), Mr. Ormond, Mrs. Ormond, Sophie Williams

Jerry Kent (Second Life), Olivia Kent, Nina Kent, and Sophie Kent

Brian Terrance Jones (Third Life), Terese Jones, Abby Robertson, Jake Weston, Tommy Weston-Jones

Claude Parks (Fourth Life), Gloria (the cat)

Kyle Ormond/Alan Williams (Old Age/Fifth Life), Sophie Williams, her nieces and nephews.

Names

He had books. A small bedroom with a closet making it not square, filled with books. The wall which wasn’t a window or a door had a six foot high bookcase—pine wood with Not Ikea Bolts, built sturdy—for books. Piled high and hazardously were small books which made the smell of old socks oddly attractive—printed on cheap paper which wasn’t Bible-tissue-thin but would yellow just as fast. Cheap books, Borders wouldn’t sell them for more than six bucks. Their multicolored Goodwill tags peek at odd places on their spines and backs.

Rock & Roll Suicide

The dishes were drowning in the sink, surrounded by water Robert could easily describe as fetid. He’d never before found a reason to use fetid in his own day-to-day life, and the discovery pleased him despite the situation. It was probably the green beans in one of the sunken bowls. Rice developed that hot, sour smell of decay, and chicken had a musty quality to it. Vegetable matter, on the other hand, could really rot.