War and Peace

[altariel]

mraltariel wrote a response to Old Soldiers.

War and Peace

Sometimes, his story could afford a moment's peace and contemplation. Under the shade of a favoured tree, feet in the tingling silver of the winter stream, he would take out the box. Unwatched, he turned the pieces in his fingers, inspecting their dark and sinuous curves, their haughty faces, their minute solidity.

They spoke of his father, and his grandfather out-of-time. They spoke of the rain and the echo of a game that was not a game but history.

That evening, Faramir found an anonymous slip of paper at his bedside, "1.e4" in a childish hand.

He wept.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

He plays, doesn't he :)

I love that, beautiful and terse.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

He does! :-)

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Algebraic notation too! I was wondering if the chess moves of Minas Tirith would not be written in curlicue script. But the brevity of "e4" somehow makes it more poignant.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The nifty think about writing Tolkien-based fic is that you can adopt his conceit of being a translator rather than writer, so this could be read as a translation into our terms of an entirely different notation system.

But it's possible that the Gondorians inherited an algebraic notation system from their forebears, the Numenoreans, who were an industrial power.

[greylin.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. And - of course - King's Pawn.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ha, of course! He got that one past me.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

I'm not enough of a chess player to have spotted that either - I've never got my head round the notation thing. (I only really play when badgered to by the Small People, and can be beaten by Second Small Person at the grand age of four!)

[brinian.livejournal.com]

Mr. A has some mad skillz! He should write more. Thanks for posting this. And, BTW, I LOVEDLOVELOVED Old Soldiers. Any Amrothos/Faramir interaction you or Isabeau write is just wonderfully skilled. Nice job both you and Mr. A!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

He certainly does! I wish he'd write more too. I'll have to keep throwing ideas at him.

So glad you liked "Old Soldiers"! It came from nowhere. Amrothos is a delight to write, Isabeau is a genius.

[genarti]

Oh, this is a perfect follow-up.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Great, isn't it?

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

the echo of a game that was not a game but history.

[sniffle]

I so love that Leof's already fallen for chess. It particularly resonates for me at the moment since I have two small, blond, chess-playing children being taught by their distracted dark-haired father :-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

particularly resonates for me at the moment

:-)

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Another very late comment:

Beautiful! I think it's the 'Unwatched' that speaks to me, that sets the scene even more than the description of the tree and the stream, in that it provides the gap in which the game that is not a game might begin again.