Vána, which means I finished all of the Valier! *v* [other Valar]
Treelight.
It spills from the box in a glorious familiar mingling of silver and gold when Maedhros opens the lid, and Maglor is captivated despite himself. This is what they have paid so dearly for, these last precious scraps of light that their father preserved and even though he has for a long time now not thought them worth the cost of their souls, he still not cannot look away.
For a moment Maglor is caught up in the memory of standing beneath the shining, flowering canopies with Maedhros, bathed in light and song. He is breathing in the sweetly scented air of his childhood, home again after so terribly long. For one perfect moment everything is right, the Trees are above him and his brother is beside him. Maedhros looks up, awash in gold light that sets his hair glowing like fire, and a strange horrible foreboding grips his heart.
There is no going back.
The Trees are gone and with them the innocence they once had.
In his heart Maglor knows it.
He blinks, sight clearing the memory away and his vision fills with Maedhros’s face as it is now: brittle, drawn with sorrow, and weary with the burden of the Oath.
His brother does not look at him, focused on the jewels that have been their goal for so long. Maedhros will not to let anything, not even him, turn him from them now that he is so close.
The light that surrounds them is forgiving, untouched and pure inside the jeweled containment it shines through, but even as Maglor’s hand draws near he knows that what now surrounds the light is not so kind.
His eyes are already filling with tears, the light of the moon turning them to silver on his pale cheeks.
A moment before his fingertips brush the glittering jewel, he hears Maedhros scream.
@maedhrosmaglorweek
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
looks like ao3 is down again and i was in the middle of a multi chapter fic when it died on me.
and if that happens to you, this is what you can do to download the fic:
copy paste https://download.archiveofourown.org/downloads/00000000/fic.html in your browser url
replace the pink bit with the number right after /works (that's the work id)
for instance, in https://archiveofourown.org/works/44970790/chapters/113154673 the highlighted bit (44970790) would be the number you swap for the 0s
the download link will look like https://download.archiveofourown.org/downloads/44970790/fic.html
if you want the fic to be downloaded as an epub instead, use .epub at the end of that link
it should start downloading on your device
i'm sure a bunch of people know this and use it but in case you don't, hope this helps