Title: Deal Table
Fandom: Oh My Darling Clementine - Song, The Silmarillion
Challenge: Deal
Bingo prompt: Mending
Rating: G
Length: 500
Content notes: Yes, this actually is a crossover.
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking. Deal, in this context, is pine or fir-tree wood cut in planks and used for furniture and so forth.
Summary: A proposition out of a faery tale



The much-mended deal table was surprisingly well-preserved, especially for having apparently been in the back of a cave for a ridiculous number of years. (It couldn't be 'years uncounted' — the table had to have been bought originally, brought up the mountain to the claim in a wagon with the rest of the miner's gear and supplies. The style alone dated it to within a few years, though she'd have to consult her books to pin-point just when. Not more than, oh, 80 to a hundred, 120 at a stretch. Quite long enough. Though if she didn't know better, she would say the entire cave looked to have been preserved by a spell or enchantment, it was so remarkably untouched. Even her entering hadn't apparently disturbed whatever it was that seemed to set this cave — indeed the claim — outside time.) The drawer came open with only a little tug, and there, indeed, was what she was looking for, just as the letter had said. And oilskin packet, neatly rolled and tied, containing the deed to the land, the mining permit, several other official bits of paper, and another letter. Addressed, apparently, to her, just like the first one. She was well past wondering why at this point, though how remained an itch she could not scratch.

Dearest Clementine, the letter began, Or at any rate, I assume you are a Clementine, but I suppose you could be a Clemency or even a Clement-something else, for that is one of the conditions of this Working. Names have power, and resonance, and there is that absurd and inaccurate Song. (Maglor says the song is essential, though, wildly inaccurate or not. I don't understand how it works either.)

I have a proposal for you, a deal if you will, and I hope you will hear me out while I attempt to explain.

There followed an even more astonishing tale/proposal/fairy-tale contract than the letter that had brought her here in the first place, and it was signed Clementine Fournin Minerul, a name indeed of legend in her family.

Clemence Durin Darrow felt for one of the upended log seats near the cave wall at the end of the table and sank down onto it — a perfect height for her short legs — and started reading the letter over again from the top. It still said what it did the first time.

Hers. All this claim, the land, the water, the peace and quiet, the sun in the morning and the stars at night, would be — was — hers, if only she could bring herself to believe, and act on that belief.

Not drowned, like the Clementine of the song, but fallen through the stream to another Place, and it seemed that path could work yet, to potentially ill result, and should be guarded, watched, cared for. Not of course without return, the least of which were the mineral rights and the deed to the land.

Would she do it? Could she do it? She took a deep breath of the cool mountain air, feeling the sturdy rock beneath her feet.

If nothing else, she would give it a go, if only to re-write the song.