RoP-Further Passages

	General-- Vignette -- Post Quest Reality sits, cast to the side of fictive crimson. Words, so many words there, and all of them scrawled hastily upon a thick stack of unbound papers. These are not the Book—the Book, arrayed before him like an offering, is only for the final draft—he has spent vast amounts of parchment readying himself to lay down final ink to final surface.

	GENERAL -- Vignette -- c. 1380 SR It is a beacon, a haven, the last of all possibilities and of elegant necessity for only River can quench the flames, only stillness can quell the voices, only action can stave what has happened, what is happening, what will happen…

	GENERAL -- Vignette -- Post-Quest I took my son's hands—my son who bears your name and looks nothing like to you—and felt his pulse race, heard his laughter ring into the rafters, and recognised, amidst the mayhem of my family's joy, what I should have known years before.

	Adult -- Short Story -- Tween Years "When did you start playing gentlehobbit's retainer, eh?" Merimac demanded. "I can find my own bloody shirts." "Someone has to look after you, my favourite cousin." Paladin raised his eyebrows. "Particularly when you insist on jumping in the middle of tweener routs and getting the whey pounded from you." "I didn't get the whey pounded from me!" Merimac protested with a lurch forward; almost immediately he winced and sunk back into the tub. The sound he made was not a whimper… well, not quite.

	Adult -- Short Story -- c. 1356 sr In fact, Bilbo thought to himself appreciatively, how had he so missed Primula's earthy curvaceousness? Too busy looking to the brother to pay any heed to the sister—but now the brother was married with tween sons of his own and truthfully, the sister had been a freckle-faced tomboy until just yesterday, he was sure of it.

	Adult -- Long Story -- Pre-Quest (TEMPORARILY REMOVED FROM THE SITE) (THIS IS THE COMPLETED VERSION OF THE PARTIAL STORY WEB-POSTED TEMPORARILY IN '03. THE ENTIRE STORY, PARTS ONE AND TWO, WAS PUBLISHED IN VILYA 2.)

	ADULT -- short story -- c.1353 sr Merimac came to realise, near the summer solstice of his seventeenth year, that he had not known Paladin, not at all. Not really. He came to this awareness amidst a simple game.

	GENERAL -- vignette -- diaspora from the East Tricksy, they call him, Tuck, for he can no more resist the wandering than he can turn away from ripe honeysuckle, sweet and damp with nectar. Only now he is lost, home far behind; only now the hills all look the same and the trees grow tighter about him. Whatever possessed him to wander the woods, alone like this? Finally that fair Fallohide strain, which runs like a trickle in his siblings but rushes like rapids in his own veins, it will demand its price. His uncanny curiosity has been the end of him, he will roam these vast-deep forested hills until he falls; there will be nothing remaining of him but bones carpeted with moss and lichen and he will be but another name on the lineage charts of his kindred: 'run off to sea', or 'disappeared'.

	ADULT -- short story -- tween years "You’ve never done this, love, and you’re not thinking clearly, and it’s late," Frodo quietly replied, with the air of saying all that was to be said. "Game’s done, now." "Frodo," Merry said uncertainly from behind him, "You can’t just—" "This is not fair!" Pippin insisted vehemently. "I might not be as good at this as you and Merry, but you clearly have no idea of what I've done and what I've not!" "Tangling with more than the one is not the same as groping with the bairns," Frodo countered, quite levelly. "I'm not a bairn. Neither am I a candle you can just be snuffing to forget!"

	ADULT -- short story -- tween years “Da said I was moping about like a tweener who’d lost his playmate, and that I wasn’t a tweener yet.” Merry's words were rushed, as if bursting forth. “That he wasn’t to have this kind of pining in his Hall, never again because the once had been enough and more than enough for him with your mum and mine, and that I needed to just accept it, realize that you weren’t…” Merry shut his lips firmly over the words; once started, they had burst forth as if out of control. Frodo stiffened. “That I wasn’t what?” he whispered. “That you weren’t coming back,” Merry finished miserably, still not looking at him, clutching his blanket so tightly to him that his knuckles showed yellow through skin..

	ADULT -- vignette -- tween years A companion piece to 'nexus'

	*GEN*ERAL -- short story -- quest "Have you ever wondered, Father, if it was all as it was meant? If despite my youthful arrogance, I somehow helped set this child’s feet on a road that he was meant to take? That perhaps instead of hindering, I helped him bear this?" "As you helped his mother?" Elrond queried pointedly. Elrohir flinched; his fingers stiffened against Frodo’s temple and his grey eyes, shimmering in the firelight like shadowed gems, were huge with regret and pain. "You acted where you had no right to bestow. I can only hope that Arwen’s mistaken act of kindness shall not end as tragically as yours."