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lotrchallengesAuthor: Celeritas
Title: Slipped under the Door of the Master Bedroom, September 25, 1444
Rating: G
Theme: Send It In A Letter
Elements: A Letter of Apology
Author's Notes: "...but I outright told him that if you referred to yourself as ‘Frodo’ there was nothing wrong with it, and that you had made out the entire will to him so that meant we didn’t have to ‘Mister’ you anymore, because if you’d done great things so had he." (From The Sandbox: Elanor)
Summary: A heated argument with her father leads Elanor to some serious self-examination.
Word Count: 1,216
September 25, 1444
My Dear Father,
I know you have always told me it’s best to talk to people face to face, especially when you’ve wronged them, but I’ve found that words come easier to me on the page than out of thin air. And aside from that, I feel simply dreadful at the moment and I don’t think I could stomach apologising to your face. So please accept this little note, and don’t feel too ashamed that I had to write this down.
You shouldn’t have let me read so much, Dad. It’s your book, after all, not mine, and seeing as you lived it you know it a lot better than I ever shall. I’ve grown to love it too much, and I know people on paper better than I know them in real life. Some of them I never knew at all.
I know what you’d say in response to that, if I had the heart to tell you all this in person: “Ellie-lass, you did know him, and he knew you, and you remember him,” but that’s just the thing, you see? What if it’s not a memory? What if it’s just a bunch of wishful thinking, combined with picture portraits, and tales, and reading, and all that? You can’t tell me you know for certain. I don’t know for certain, and it’s my memory!
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Dad. Don’t laugh—I know, I do it all the time, but I’ve been thinking about myself, as if I were someone else looking at me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a very strange lass and I’ve been entirely too selfish lately. The truth is the Downfall will always be just a story to me—with real characters, it’s true, yourself not the least of them—but something I cannot and will not understand because I’m from the Fourth Age and not the Third.
And that’s why you did all of it, isn’t it? Well, perhaps not in your own mind—you were too concerned about Frodo—but that’s why he did it—so that we would remain ever untouched by Shadow, and we would never be able to understand the great deeds of the past—just look back on them with longing and pride.
So: I cannot and will not ever know him, and it’s time I learned to accept that. Oh, but you must understand a girl’s idle fancy!—there’s always been a part of me that’s longed to be truly known and understood, because I am so appallingly different! That’s why I said you shouldn’t have let me read so much, because maybe I would have turned out half normal and not half mad, and I should never have gotten into this silly mess in the first place. I know you were fond of elves in your time, and still are; but I practically breathe them—their tales intoxicate me, and their tongues even more. And then you know the many times I’ve let my own tongue run away from me, and said something I shouldn’t have said because I thought it was blindingly obvious and everyone already knew—no matter that I was right!
And I know you understand this, my dear Father, more than you have ever let on, but a lass sometimes needs more than that—someone so far away he can’t judge her, nor she him, whom she can give all the qualities she needs him to have. The Frodo I ‘knew’ was—is?—all of that, and more: ordinary and alien, with an ability to read hearts and heads stronger than mine, eternally bound to the past and the future, astonishingly and frighteningly elvish! He wouldn’t be so awed of me that he wouldn’t sit down with me under the mallorn and talk to me as a friend would, and we’d be able to talk about the strangest things that everyone else would find dull, and I wouldn’t have to wait for him to understand what I was trying to say. And how much of that was him, and how much of that is what I want him to be? I suspect I shall never know, and I suspect that a good deal of this has nothing to do with my so-called ‘difference’ or ‘oddities’ or ‘elvishness’ but rather the fact that down in their hearts all tweenish lasses are really just lonely little girls who want life to be simple again. I wonder if it’s that different for lads?
I am jealous of you, Father, and of Mum, and Merry, and Pippin, and of my youngest brothers and sisters, too, because you all know where and when you are. I belong to the Fourth Age, but oh! I wish I were in the Third, because I think I understand it better. And I suppose I was, if you want to go by when the ships sailed. But then there are all the things he said about me, and about you, before he left, and how, how can I be friends with a voice and a pair of eyes?
It is a very strange thing, but I am a strange girl and perhaps it will all make sense one of these days. But it doesn’t right now.
By the by, I always wondered why we call it the Downfall. I know what it refers to now, but when I was little I always thought it referred to Frodo, what with the way you always spoke of him so sadly, and I thought it was a terrible misrepresentation. Yes, he did fall, by a cruel and inexorable process, but at the same time he rose, like Eärendil’s star, until he was so different and so beautiful that no one here could know him (except for me, when I was in a particularly selfish and idealistic mood), and so he had to leave. He outgrew himself, if that makes any sense, and got to the point that nothing about him matters anymore, not his deeds nor his friends nor his titles—nothing but who he is. And that is why I could not use his title, and that is why I wanted you to stop. Well—that and I really do think that if he had managed to stay on he would be on my side. I don’t care what you say; you’re just as worthy as he is, and if your fate was to stay and his was to leave, what of that?
But I suspect that you know this, too, deep down inside.
Anyhow.
The real truth of the matter is that you were always the one who knew Frodo, not I. His cousins, perhaps, knew him the longest, but you knew him the best out of anyone still in the Shire. And so I hope that you’ll forgive me for my foolishness, and for my impertinence in presuming to tell you how best to honour his memory.
But if you don’t mind it terribly, I’d still prefer to call him just “Frodo.” I do love the tales you tell me, but they are your tales. If I’m to know him at all I’d rather know him the way he knew himself.
Your loving and obedient daughter,
Elanor Gamgee
Title: Slipped under the Door of the Master Bedroom, September 25, 1444
Rating: G
Theme: Send It In A Letter
Elements: A Letter of Apology
Author's Notes: "...but I outright told him that if you referred to yourself as ‘Frodo’ there was nothing wrong with it, and that you had made out the entire will to him so that meant we didn’t have to ‘Mister’ you anymore, because if you’d done great things so had he." (From The Sandbox: Elanor)
Summary: A heated argument with her father leads Elanor to some serious self-examination.
Word Count: 1,216
September 25, 1444
My Dear Father,
I know you have always told me it’s best to talk to people face to face, especially when you’ve wronged them, but I’ve found that words come easier to me on the page than out of thin air. And aside from that, I feel simply dreadful at the moment and I don’t think I could stomach apologising to your face. So please accept this little note, and don’t feel too ashamed that I had to write this down.
You shouldn’t have let me read so much, Dad. It’s your book, after all, not mine, and seeing as you lived it you know it a lot better than I ever shall. I’ve grown to love it too much, and I know people on paper better than I know them in real life. Some of them I never knew at all.
I know what you’d say in response to that, if I had the heart to tell you all this in person: “Ellie-lass, you did know him, and he knew you, and you remember him,” but that’s just the thing, you see? What if it’s not a memory? What if it’s just a bunch of wishful thinking, combined with picture portraits, and tales, and reading, and all that? You can’t tell me you know for certain. I don’t know for certain, and it’s my memory!
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Dad. Don’t laugh—I know, I do it all the time, but I’ve been thinking about myself, as if I were someone else looking at me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a very strange lass and I’ve been entirely too selfish lately. The truth is the Downfall will always be just a story to me—with real characters, it’s true, yourself not the least of them—but something I cannot and will not understand because I’m from the Fourth Age and not the Third.
And that’s why you did all of it, isn’t it? Well, perhaps not in your own mind—you were too concerned about Frodo—but that’s why he did it—so that we would remain ever untouched by Shadow, and we would never be able to understand the great deeds of the past—just look back on them with longing and pride.
So: I cannot and will not ever know him, and it’s time I learned to accept that. Oh, but you must understand a girl’s idle fancy!—there’s always been a part of me that’s longed to be truly known and understood, because I am so appallingly different! That’s why I said you shouldn’t have let me read so much, because maybe I would have turned out half normal and not half mad, and I should never have gotten into this silly mess in the first place. I know you were fond of elves in your time, and still are; but I practically breathe them—their tales intoxicate me, and their tongues even more. And then you know the many times I’ve let my own tongue run away from me, and said something I shouldn’t have said because I thought it was blindingly obvious and everyone already knew—no matter that I was right!
And I know you understand this, my dear Father, more than you have ever let on, but a lass sometimes needs more than that—someone so far away he can’t judge her, nor she him, whom she can give all the qualities she needs him to have. The Frodo I ‘knew’ was—is?—all of that, and more: ordinary and alien, with an ability to read hearts and heads stronger than mine, eternally bound to the past and the future, astonishingly and frighteningly elvish! He wouldn’t be so awed of me that he wouldn’t sit down with me under the mallorn and talk to me as a friend would, and we’d be able to talk about the strangest things that everyone else would find dull, and I wouldn’t have to wait for him to understand what I was trying to say. And how much of that was him, and how much of that is what I want him to be? I suspect I shall never know, and I suspect that a good deal of this has nothing to do with my so-called ‘difference’ or ‘oddities’ or ‘elvishness’ but rather the fact that down in their hearts all tweenish lasses are really just lonely little girls who want life to be simple again. I wonder if it’s that different for lads?
I am jealous of you, Father, and of Mum, and Merry, and Pippin, and of my youngest brothers and sisters, too, because you all know where and when you are. I belong to the Fourth Age, but oh! I wish I were in the Third, because I think I understand it better. And I suppose I was, if you want to go by when the ships sailed. But then there are all the things he said about me, and about you, before he left, and how, how can I be friends with a voice and a pair of eyes?
It is a very strange thing, but I am a strange girl and perhaps it will all make sense one of these days. But it doesn’t right now.
By the by, I always wondered why we call it the Downfall. I know what it refers to now, but when I was little I always thought it referred to Frodo, what with the way you always spoke of him so sadly, and I thought it was a terrible misrepresentation. Yes, he did fall, by a cruel and inexorable process, but at the same time he rose, like Eärendil’s star, until he was so different and so beautiful that no one here could know him (except for me, when I was in a particularly selfish and idealistic mood), and so he had to leave. He outgrew himself, if that makes any sense, and got to the point that nothing about him matters anymore, not his deeds nor his friends nor his titles—nothing but who he is. And that is why I could not use his title, and that is why I wanted you to stop. Well—that and I really do think that if he had managed to stay on he would be on my side. I don’t care what you say; you’re just as worthy as he is, and if your fate was to stay and his was to leave, what of that?
But I suspect that you know this, too, deep down inside.
Anyhow.
The real truth of the matter is that you were always the one who knew Frodo, not I. His cousins, perhaps, knew him the longest, but you knew him the best out of anyone still in the Shire. And so I hope that you’ll forgive me for my foolishness, and for my impertinence in presuming to tell you how best to honour his memory.
But if you don’t mind it terribly, I’d still prefer to call him just “Frodo.” I do love the tales you tell me, but they are your tales. If I’m to know him at all I’d rather know him the way he knew himself.
Your loving and obedient daughter,
Elanor Gamgee
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