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Interrupted Journeys: Part 3 Journeys Begin  by elliska 4 Review(s)
BrazgirlReviewed Chapter: 1 on 2/5/2005
Ah Elliska! I was so deeply absorbed by your story that I did not want this chapter to end. That was wonderful.
Thranduil is so right with his fear to bring a child in such a world! But sometimes he just thinks too much and does not allow himself to enjoy things. I think the love his has for his nephew is beautiful but very fatherly-like. Poor one. He will end up succumbing to the ladies' pressure! Ahahah. Lindomiel knows how to tease and reach the right nerve of her husband.
That serious elf was the son of Arandunnon and Amoneth? Hum... they should be very proud and scared! They must have been delivered the child of Thranduil instead of their own. Wonderful chapter. I missed your story very much.

Author Reply: I'm glad you liked the chapter, Brazgirl! Yes, at some point Thranduil is just going to have to relax and give in and Lindomiel knows how to make him do it. :) And you are right, I can see Dolgailon as Thranduil's son for certain. I think Thranduil is right the living in the south has put pressure on his nephew and made him very serious. I little time with Lindomiel and a few smitten ellyth in the capital will do him good and provide a little balance. :) And maybe a little inspiration for Thranduil.

Thank you so much for the reviews!

BodkinReviewed Chapter: 1 on 2/5/2005
Thranduil has made Lindomiel wait ANOTHER THOUSAND YEARS!!!! in his angst not to bring an elfling into a marred world? And she hasn't attacked him with an axe? She has unbelievable patience. I would like to point out to him that he could now have several grown offspring up to twenty times the age his wife was when they married - how would he like it if Amglaur had decided the world was too dangerous to have elflings?

It's odd to think of Aradunnon and Amoneth having a son half a millennium old - and I think it's probably time for them to move north to get away from the ever-encroaching danger. Besides, that way we get to see them again.

I liked Dolgailon. He seems very driven and responsible. Must be a family characteristic. One that is concealed beneath the light-hearted surface in Aradunnon. Thranduil is wise to bring him away from the Shadow for a time. And Aradunnon was probably wise to insist that he thought his son should lose his captaincy. (Made it more likely that Thranduil would look for an alternative. And avoided charges of favouritism from the troop commander.)

One thing that worries me is the suggestion that older mothers are more likely to fade. I am concerned that Lindomiel will barely get the chance to greet her son before the dramatic imperative disposes of her.

Author Reply: I am chuckling away at your comments about poor Lindomiel. I definitely have credited her with far more patience than I have. Thranduil would have had the axe if it had been me. :)

But a couple of your statement here are fairly prophetic. I will leave that there since I promised myself that I wouldn't give too much away in reviews in this one.

Dolgailon is a good kid. :) I'm glad you liked him. I do think that being driven and responsible would be a family trait. I mean, obviously Legolas, who takes on the Quest for the greater good rather than returning home where he had to know there would be a battle, had to have a sense of responsibility to more than himself. And a bit of a sense of adventure too, it seems to me. (I really love the way Daw's story, A Question of Duty, handles that--I remember Beliond saying something like "We all have many motivations and some we are less proud of than others." That is so true.) And I think everyone in Legolas's family faced choices like this. Oropher decided to lead a group of Sindarin on his own Great Journey in the opposite direction. There had to be something really driving him to such a major undertaking and some sense of adventure there too. Thranduil must have faced a series of difficult decisions while trying to protect/preserve Mirkwood. It would take real drive and persistance to be able to lead under the circumstances the House of Oropher found themselves in, I think. Of course all the members of the Fellowship and those that aided it had those qualities and that is what makes them the heros we love.

And I do think that older elven mothers would have a harder time. After all, LaCE does say that Elves can't just have children at anytime ("It might be thought that, since the Eldar do not (as Men deem) grow old in body, they may bring forth children at any time in the ages of their lives. But this is not so. For the Eldar do indeed grow older, even if slowly: the limit of their lives is the life of Arda, which though long beyond the reckoning of Men is not endless, and ages also.") And later on it kind of gives a reason for that by saying that the child's fea is nourished by the parents' ("Therefore they hold that the fea, though unbegotten, draws nourishment from the parents before the birth of the child: directly from the fea of the mother while she bears and nourishes the hroa, and mediately but equally from the father, whose fea is bound in union with the mother's and supports it.") That sounds tiring to me. :) So I think this is something that Thranduil and Lindomiel would be thinking about. Poor Lindomiel.

Thanks for the review! I really love to see how people are reacting to new characters.

French PonyReviewed Chapter: 1 on 2/4/2005
Well, we are certainly getting frisky in this chapter. I suppose spring must be in the air where you live. Come to think of it, according to my gamelan teacher, spring is in the air where I live, too. Unfortunately, there are no frisky Elves around to tell us that, just strangely warping drumheads.

Welcome to Dolgalion! Of course such a brash and flighty couple like Aradunnon and Amoneth would produce Mister Serious. That's practically one of the first Laws of Narrative Comedy. The hippie parents always give birth to the yuppies.

Thranduil had best listen to those around him (of course, we know he does, eventually): There will never be a perfect moment, but there are an infinite amount of nearly perfect moments. No one is ever prepared to have children, but most people tend to do a good job when the kids come anyway.

Aradunnon seems to have got the hang of this discipline thing. Sending Dolgalion to the King with sealed orders, strongly hinting that they contain Dolgalion's fate. . . that's pure military evil genius, that is. No matter what Thranduil does with Dolgalion, Dolgalion will have sweated intensely. And that is Aradunnon's discipline. Subtle.

I do hope we get to see Dolgalion meet his baby cousin. All of my cousins are either very much older or very much younger than I am, so that's a sort of interaction that interests me very much.

And Lindomiel's biological clock is ticking. Just. . . very. . . slowly. . .

Author Reply: I love your reviews 'cause I learn stuff from them. I had to pop over to my dictionary to find out what gamelan was. An Indonesion percussion orchestra is what it said. Is that what you were refering to? If so, you have to elaborate sometime.

I live in Florida. Spring is always in the air here. I sat on my patio today by my pool (after calling in 'sick' from work--I'm sick of work, alright) and typed away at my First Age fic. :)

Hippie elves. Now that was an image that made me laugh. If I talk about it, I won't be able to get the image it conjured out of my head and it's just wrong. So I'm shutting up.

But yeah, when I wrote this, I felt a little bad sending poor Dolgailon on the long trek to the capital from the south sweating the sealed orders and meeting with the King. I despise the, "I need to meet with you tomorrow" thing. Just tell me now!

Just...very...slowly...! That also made me laugh. True. LaCE says they have kids early in their marriage. Well I guess Thranduil blew that. He needs to get the show on the road. There are no perfect moments.

Thanks so much for the review!


daw the minstrelReviewed Chapter: 1 on 2/4/2005
Great chapter. You introduced the new OC -- Thranduil's nephew whose name is hard to spell -- very well. I could see him as a person almost immediately. The battle that took him to the Northmen's town was also very realistically described. I can imagine that that might have happened. And he's so serious and upright in accepting the blame. He does need a nice wife!


Author Reply: Daw I just cracked up when I read, "Thranduil's nephew whose name is hard to spell." That earned you a story: One of the characters in this little tale had a name so bad (but I liked its meaning so much) that I unconsciously wrote a whole chapter refering to him in every way imaginable except by name. When my beta saw that and called attention to it, I thought we would both pass out we laughed so hard. Needless to say, that name was changed. But I think I said before that I often wished that I picked easier names for some of these characters before I got attached to them. You made me laugh. :)

I'm glad Dolgailon came off ok. I have so much fun playing with characterization and it's so nice when people comment on it. He is exactly that--serious and upright.

I think something like that battle could have happened at this point in ME's history. We are just a few years away from the allegiance of the Wainriders and Haradrim against Gondor and the Battle of the Camp. I imagine there would have been some stirrings of the Wainriders around the southeast of Mirkwood at the time. I bet they would have regretted coming into Thranduil's forest if they tried. :)

Thanks so much for the review!

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