Reviews (114)

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All right, but you'll have to get to the end of the line... lol!

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Well, something happened initially to make them direct their minds towards this approach. But Kira's generation of readers (Kerry and Sandra, for instance) seems to be against that, so hopefully eventually things will turn around.

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I do like writing Kira's dreams; they give me a different way of expressing exactly what she's thinking. There must, of course, eventually be a good enough end in store that hobbits are willing to keep enough copies around for Tolkien to get his hands on one; and while the Thain's approach may be helpful in the short term, in the long term it's just going to stymie interest in the past, within the Travellers' families as well as outside them. But I hope the last chapter of this tale will give Kira enough hope that I can satisfactorily draw this portion of her life to a close.

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...Yup. And it took about 4 pages of backstory to square away Auduin's character with that of his illustrious ancestor. It's a good story, if I ever get around to it... anyway, suffice it to say that Kira does NOT like the Thain very much, at all, and rather wishes that Pippin's shade would come back just to disown him. But Holfast really is a nice one. That quoted bit only actually made it in today as I realized that I had never addressed what happened to Tom, and something did need to happen to him as an immediate consequence of his actions (aside from the licking he's already gotten from his dad. The really long-term consequences won't come for a while yet, but when they do they'll be gooooood *cackles*). Unfortunately the encounter happens right after this tale ends (I'll try to slip in a mention of it somewhere in the sequel) and although I don't know if Kira ever figures out exactly what happened she teases Tom mercilessly for it.

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...Yeah, pretty much. (In case you couldn't tell, this chapter is a shameless setup for the sequel.)

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*grin* I love Kira's bookish friends--but unfortunately they live so far away that I don't get to use them very often! I've always hated the "sorry if" apology, so often used by politicians today. It fails to recognize that some actions are objectively wrong, regardless of whether anyone was offended or not. So of course I had to put it in the lips of Tom, who may indeed be sorry, but if he is it's for all the wrong reasons. And you're not the first person to wish that Tom gets beaten up at some point... ^_^ Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the review!

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Yes, we're moving from despair to catharsis, so that hopefully Kira will be set to heal over the next few years. It was a real shame about Elanor's passing, but I couldn't in good conscience let her live long enough to know what happens to the book--that would have broken her spirit. Aragorn's death, on the other hand, was a conscious element of the setting--it's the time when almost all of the remaining relics of the Third Age pass beyond. I wish I could have done more with him than I have, but there you have it. And you're right; we've still got a number of canons out there for Kira to meet! Glad you liked the memory as well--Elanor has to be one of my favorite minor canon characters, so I had to give her something special (and put in an obligatory eyecolor jab, heh!).

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*grin* Glad to have pleased, though, sorry, it really is gone and I'm not going to try to retcon it back in... I loved the reunions, too! Even though it may be a while, Kira will definitely spend 'real' time with them again--even if she has to wait till she's of age!

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I think just about all of the knowledge we have about the 4th Age Shire gets put into this story somewhere; I couldn't not use such juicy nuggets as the Tree and try to come up with what the hobbits themselves would have thought of it. I did like getting Kira angry enough to tell Tom off; unfortunately it seems to have had no effect. And yes, Kerry and Sandra were bound to turn up again; it just took them both a while!

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Although I try to go for realism in all of my fiction, I dislike writing that's set in the past in which there are medical conditions which, even though the characters can't recognize it, the modern-day reader can. It always throws me out of the story. So when I write about any sort of uncommon illness I deliberately try to make it the Mysterious Victorian Illness which, when it was used by authors, served whatever purpose the plot demanded. So Kira's condition isn't directly based on any sort of disease as recognized by modern medical professionals. That doesn't mean I haven't tried to analyze it in any way, so here's the best information I can give you. Kira's condition is almost entirely psychosomatic. As the vivid dreams show, she has a very, very active imagination that was only unleashed by her reading. Now that the Book is gone there's all of this creative energy and nowhere to put it. So what started out as a fairly innocuous faint, brought about by the shock and grief of the book's loss (compare with Sam's faint when he first thinks Frodo is dead--if the parallels are obvious it's because when I was researching I was trying to look for comparable events of hobbits reacting to grievous dire news) turns into an entire little world in Kira's heart that, as she encounters it, becomes more and more real to her. It's a suitable method of coping at first (because it stops the nightmares), but the more she relies on it the more it hurts her. After a winter of this being the only way she can begin to come to terms with her grief, it resolves into a permanent condition. If you can recognize any real-world illnesses in the blackness, though, by all means go ahead and read it in there. I can't guarantee that it'll match up, of course! ^_^

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Nope, you can't get over the loss of the Book with distractions alone, but it's a nice thought. Excellent; I love hobbit idiom!

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*grin* Glad you liked the dream sequences; the first one freaked me out! What now? Well, that's what just about all of my writing in this "universe" will answer. The other chapters that are up right now show how Kira tries to cope; when Spring rolls around I'm able to show some of the rest of the Shire's actions. I'm afraid that up till now at least Kira's mother has had to take a bit of a back seat on the action and mostly serve as a guardrail against Kira's missteps. But there is (and always has been, even if I haven't been good about showing it) some genuine love there. Almost losing Kira is just going to make her show it a lot more.

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Yes--although unfortunately I can't focus on Sandra in this tale as much as I'd like, she does have to deal with a lot of Angst for giving Kira the book. I think that for once the insanity of the whole situation jolted Daffodil into inaction, for maybe a minute. Then she walked there (Kira ran), either figuring that things couldn't have gotten that bad in so short a time or dreading to see what state they were in. Either that or 'because the plot required it.' *sigh*

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Interesting, and it should have some interesting implications down the road... I hope...

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Well, if it helps you feel better, Kira hasn't forgiven Daffodil quite to the extent that she says she has... it's a case of "fake it till you make it" and whether it works or not will become evident next chapter. I think Kira understands what was lost as much as anyone who's 16 and only just come into education can. And if she understood any more it'd hurt so much harder that I really couldn't wish that on her.

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No worries; you find 'em eventually... Here, have a hanky. *passes*

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Kira definitely DOES need to get new friends, but she doesn't have much choice. Her area of the White Downs is underpopulated, she's naturally quite introverted, and in order for a new friend to be valuable to her, that friend would have to be literate. It's one of the grim realities of living in an era that had limited communication (though she will write letters to those bookish friends she has as she is able). So one of the harder things ahead of her is to make some sort of peace with those friends she has. Because Kira is facing a long-term problem now, the ending cannot by its own nature resolve all of the problems that she has, but hopefully it'll stop at a milestone. Then I've got a sequel planned and semi-drafted that moves the action ahead about twelve years or so and deals, among other things, with the very long-term consequences of the things that have happened in this story.

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Penny has burdened Kira, but given her limited means (I often wonder how the winter would have gone if they'd allowed Kira's bookish friends in to talk with her) it was the most she could do to shake Kira out of her passive despair. The term "soul-hurts" was the best way I could try to talk about those medical ailments that aren't strictly physical. I imagine that since the Shire has its heart in the right place much more than any of the other branches of Men do, that such things would be rare. The aftermath of the War would probably bring some awareness of them (maybe this was when the term was invented?) but that would die quickly as those affected, and the Shire itself, healed. But the very inclusion of the term "soul" implies "we have no idea what's going on," because hobbits were agnostic about spiritual matters, just as they were about those ailments that we would now assign to psychology. For your last sentence--wait till next chapter!

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Yes, it's about the best we can hope for from Kira at the moment. It'll be interesting to see how she manages to rejoin the world, so to speak, and still create a time and space for her learning--and for spreading the stories. You have a LOT more hope for Tom than I do at the moment, which isn't to say that you're wrong...

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Well, I fate hasn't been very nice to her, honestly. And yes, well-meaning relatives can be very, very difficult at times. Hopefully things will get easier again if she can get through the winter in one piece. The dreams are a fascinating subject, especially taken in conjunction with what normally passes for out-of-the-ordinary dreams, visions, etc., in Tolkien. If Kira hadn't gone through the madness of losing the book, she probably wouldn't have gotten them. But what exactly she dreams of, now and in the future, I can't say at the moment...

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Of course he's right, but Kira's feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment. The problem with remembering and not giving into the darkness is that to Kira right now they're mutually exclusive, because she hasn't yet realized that it's possible to remember and move on. And the will not to forget is stronger in her right now, especially with the book's loss, than the will to continually fight. She's in for a rough ride, I'm afraid.

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I had a lot of fun writing that whole introspective/descriptive section. Thanks! Hobbit xenophobia, I'm afraid, is just the real thing intensified. Strange, yes, but not terribly surprising.

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Happy to have pleased! I like trying to take concepts that were existent or came about during the Ring War and then extend them down a couple of generations; that those races that still came into contact with the Shire would have some hidden way of honoring them seemed to be quite logical! Too nervous; too caught up in other things--those are the best explanations I have. Kira's gotten to the point that she's no longer trying to actively reassure herself that everything's fictional, too, so the mention of his name isn't going to jar her as much. If the book hadn't gotten taken away from her she probably would have thought about it more and would have remembered two days later. As it is she's too distraught that something as good as her reading is starting to turn out bad.

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Oho! Someone picked up on the Buckland ponies!!! XD XD XD Hmm... how do I answer this one? I guess it was just a logical conclusion on my part: that with Merry's ties to Rohan he'd at least know how to pick out the best lines for breeding--if he didn't actually receive any stock from Rohan itself! The elven cloak was a bit unexpected when I wrote it (I had to come up with a bit of backstory as to why they would cut into one of them anyway), but it seemed to work at the time and just about everyone's agreed with me. Glad you enjoyed the chapter! ~C

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What a compliment!! Being from the States Enid Blyton isn't part of my cultural heritage, but I used to eat up as many children's adventure novels as I could find in my youth. Since I grew up in a small town that was just beginning to lock its doors I always found something dreadfully romantic in the Shire, which because of the function it has to serve during LotR is (at least up till the scouring) pretty carefree! I think it would have to be one of the best places to grow up, until all the pressure to develop some good hobbit sense squashed your imagination (fortunately it's not quite squashed for Kira's friends yet, though it's starting to get there!). I don't think I consciously borrowed any ideas from the Adventure Novel, but part of Kira's character arc is by nature very closely tied to its cousin, the Coming of Age Novel. Anyway, I'm glad that this delights, and I hope that as Kira begins to grow up all of that whimsy isn't wholly lost!