The Branch
Friday, July 25th, 2003 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seraiOver the next few days, I'm going to be posting the fics I've recently written. An archive of sorts, for those of you that aren't familiar with them. Enjoy!
Title: The Branch
Pairing: S/F
Rating: R
Archiving: Please email me. I like to know where my stuff's going. :)
Disclaimer: All credit for Middle-Earth and its extraordinary characters, places and stories go to the blessed Professor Tolkien. I don't make a dime off this, nor would I wish to.
Summary: A gardener's passion for his lover.
The Branch
...In the gardens of the King, I wander.
At the center springs a tall apple tree.
Shall I kneel there,
watch branches appear among the leaves?
That young tree is my beloved.
Enrapt in his shade, I lie blissful,
sated with the fruit of his love...
--- "The Lovers’ Song"
All his life, he'd been a gardener. His hands had held rakes and hoes, tools that had roughened his palms with hour after hour of hissing friction. They had shaped stakes to drive into the soil, supports for the infant seedlings blinking eager and curious into the singing sun. They had steadied and fit together rails of fencing that storms had pushed astray, and gripped the handle of a well-loved hammer as he nailed the wayward pieces back into place. It was work, and it was good. It was what his hands were meant to do.
His hands had wrapped around the legs of cows and goats, gentling them when a sudden noise startled their early-morning milking trance. Once they had gripped the horns of a keening heifer as she cried her way through a bad birth, murmuring soothing nonsense as his cousin worked the calf out, and he'd shivered a little to see the streak of blood Jem's arm left across his forehead as he swiped sweat from his eyes. That had been close, but his hands, sure and quiet, had kept the cow from kicking, and the little one had slid into the world with lusty bawling, bringing laughter to his cousin's face.
As a lad, his hands had gripped the trunks of trees, pulled him laughing up into great expanses of leafy light. Bark had scored his fingers, working tiny flecks of brown and grey dust into the lines of his palms. His hands had rested on either side of him, balancing his weight as he sat in those friendly green embraces, dreaming of far-away castles and great roaring waterfalls, the mountains that marched along the horizons of sleep.
And as a tween, his hands had yanked at the ankles of friends he'd wrestled, gripping with roaring strength to slam them to the ground, heat and dust and "Give up now, do ye?", for as he grew straight and strong there were fewer every year who could best him, not even Tom, halest of all the Cotton brothers. They'd held other hands as well, the hands of Tom's pretty sister, all gentle yearning as they toyed with her plump fingers and encircled her tender wrist. They'd even sneaked a loving stroke along her shapely neck one day when the two of them had run ahead of the others along the Water and stopped for a breathless kiss before they could be spied leaning against that same welcoming oak. Rosie's waist had been warm through her bodice as his hands settled there, and they imagined the feel of what was beneath, as firm and real and blushing as her name.
All these things and more his hands had held, grasped soft or strong, pushed or pulled or bent or broken, turned and shaped, coaxed and led. Time had made his hands confident and agile, knowing their craft and the world where they practiced it, the way roots know the soil in which they delve. His hands were happy, as he was happy, as anyone is happy who knows his place and the joy of fitting it well.
Yet never in his life had his hands held anything like this. It was none of those things and yet all of them, and within its warmth that turned to heat that turned to fire was every object he'd ever touched, roiling together into one blessed icon of desire. Like a calf it was skittish and frisky, like young corn luscious and full of promise. It filled his hand with the strength of turned wood, yet alive as any wood had ceased to be. He supposed in his daze that it was most like that oak that had cradled him, a young limb filled with the moving susurration of sap below its surface, whispers of heartbeat that rushed louder when he gripped it tight.
But the bark of this branch was a silken slide of honey, smoother than a summer dawn and softer even than the skin under Rosie Cotton's knee. Like a warm riverspring it slid under his fingers, just loose enough to move the sap up and ever up, a secret sliding movement only he knew.
And what tree was there in any forest that would bend so to his touch, would wrap its limbs around him, enclosing him like a dryad in its heart? What shapely birch would so fill the hills with its creaking cries, scattering birds to the heavens as it groaned and screamed his name, a long, long word that took ages of time to utter? There was no apple that burst so into flower for him, no rosetree whose blossoms would glow like starfire, rimed with dew so like the glitter and storm of the Great Road across the night, across the endless sky.
No, there was no tree in all the world like this one, unless it were that tree, the First of Trees, that had leapt up singing at the word of a goddess far back in the deeps of time. Yes, yes, here was that tree reborn, arching lovely and supple in his arms, its skin dazzling silver and long sweet leaves dark as ancient midnight, pouring brilliant rains that could light all of Arda forever.
Yet that rain was his alone, a secret gift that filled him with its light, and no other feeling in his life had been as deep as his wonder, his deep and humble wonder at the blessing that he held within his hands. How this beauty had come to him, how he had come to deserve it he would never know, but never would he cease to hold it dear. Perhaps if he'd been an Elf, some scribe or minstrel in an ancient realm, he might have had words to sing its praises, or write a Lay that would last the centuries to ring in hearts not yet conceived.
But he was only a gardener, and his praise was in his hands. No words his lips could form would ever match this sylvan beauty, or do justice to the rapture of this love. So happily he would sing lines and verses formed of touch, gladly spend his life in that rejoicing. With his hands he would shield and nourish, cradle and caress, and with every scrap of knowledge he possessed, with every patient lesson gleaned from blossom, root and vine, he would tend this holy Tree, this jewel of the Valar growing hidden in the Shire.
Title: The Branch
Pairing: S/F
Rating: R
Archiving: Please email me. I like to know where my stuff's going. :)
Disclaimer: All credit for Middle-Earth and its extraordinary characters, places and stories go to the blessed Professor Tolkien. I don't make a dime off this, nor would I wish to.
Summary: A gardener's passion for his lover.
The Branch
...In the gardens of the King, I wander.
At the center springs a tall apple tree.
Shall I kneel there,
watch branches appear among the leaves?
That young tree is my beloved.
Enrapt in his shade, I lie blissful,
sated with the fruit of his love...
--- "The Lovers’ Song"
All his life, he'd been a gardener. His hands had held rakes and hoes, tools that had roughened his palms with hour after hour of hissing friction. They had shaped stakes to drive into the soil, supports for the infant seedlings blinking eager and curious into the singing sun. They had steadied and fit together rails of fencing that storms had pushed astray, and gripped the handle of a well-loved hammer as he nailed the wayward pieces back into place. It was work, and it was good. It was what his hands were meant to do.
His hands had wrapped around the legs of cows and goats, gentling them when a sudden noise startled their early-morning milking trance. Once they had gripped the horns of a keening heifer as she cried her way through a bad birth, murmuring soothing nonsense as his cousin worked the calf out, and he'd shivered a little to see the streak of blood Jem's arm left across his forehead as he swiped sweat from his eyes. That had been close, but his hands, sure and quiet, had kept the cow from kicking, and the little one had slid into the world with lusty bawling, bringing laughter to his cousin's face.
As a lad, his hands had gripped the trunks of trees, pulled him laughing up into great expanses of leafy light. Bark had scored his fingers, working tiny flecks of brown and grey dust into the lines of his palms. His hands had rested on either side of him, balancing his weight as he sat in those friendly green embraces, dreaming of far-away castles and great roaring waterfalls, the mountains that marched along the horizons of sleep.
And as a tween, his hands had yanked at the ankles of friends he'd wrestled, gripping with roaring strength to slam them to the ground, heat and dust and "Give up now, do ye?", for as he grew straight and strong there were fewer every year who could best him, not even Tom, halest of all the Cotton brothers. They'd held other hands as well, the hands of Tom's pretty sister, all gentle yearning as they toyed with her plump fingers and encircled her tender wrist. They'd even sneaked a loving stroke along her shapely neck one day when the two of them had run ahead of the others along the Water and stopped for a breathless kiss before they could be spied leaning against that same welcoming oak. Rosie's waist had been warm through her bodice as his hands settled there, and they imagined the feel of what was beneath, as firm and real and blushing as her name.
All these things and more his hands had held, grasped soft or strong, pushed or pulled or bent or broken, turned and shaped, coaxed and led. Time had made his hands confident and agile, knowing their craft and the world where they practiced it, the way roots know the soil in which they delve. His hands were happy, as he was happy, as anyone is happy who knows his place and the joy of fitting it well.
Yet never in his life had his hands held anything like this. It was none of those things and yet all of them, and within its warmth that turned to heat that turned to fire was every object he'd ever touched, roiling together into one blessed icon of desire. Like a calf it was skittish and frisky, like young corn luscious and full of promise. It filled his hand with the strength of turned wood, yet alive as any wood had ceased to be. He supposed in his daze that it was most like that oak that had cradled him, a young limb filled with the moving susurration of sap below its surface, whispers of heartbeat that rushed louder when he gripped it tight.
But the bark of this branch was a silken slide of honey, smoother than a summer dawn and softer even than the skin under Rosie Cotton's knee. Like a warm riverspring it slid under his fingers, just loose enough to move the sap up and ever up, a secret sliding movement only he knew.
And what tree was there in any forest that would bend so to his touch, would wrap its limbs around him, enclosing him like a dryad in its heart? What shapely birch would so fill the hills with its creaking cries, scattering birds to the heavens as it groaned and screamed his name, a long, long word that took ages of time to utter? There was no apple that burst so into flower for him, no rosetree whose blossoms would glow like starfire, rimed with dew so like the glitter and storm of the Great Road across the night, across the endless sky.
No, there was no tree in all the world like this one, unless it were that tree, the First of Trees, that had leapt up singing at the word of a goddess far back in the deeps of time. Yes, yes, here was that tree reborn, arching lovely and supple in his arms, its skin dazzling silver and long sweet leaves dark as ancient midnight, pouring brilliant rains that could light all of Arda forever.
Yet that rain was his alone, a secret gift that filled him with its light, and no other feeling in his life had been as deep as his wonder, his deep and humble wonder at the blessing that he held within his hands. How this beauty had come to him, how he had come to deserve it he would never know, but never would he cease to hold it dear. Perhaps if he'd been an Elf, some scribe or minstrel in an ancient realm, he might have had words to sing its praises, or write a Lay that would last the centuries to ring in hearts not yet conceived.
But he was only a gardener, and his praise was in his hands. No words his lips could form would ever match this sylvan beauty, or do justice to the rapture of this love. So happily he would sing lines and verses formed of touch, gladly spend his life in that rejoicing. With his hands he would shield and nourish, cradle and caress, and with every scrap of knowledge he possessed, with every patient lesson gleaned from blossom, root and vine, he would tend this holy Tree, this jewel of the Valar growing hidden in the Shire.
