The Daily Drabble--x2!

[dawn_felagund]

Obviously, I missed the daily drabble yesterday. I was a busy girl, finishing AMC and doing beta-stuff (and some work too...really!) and then utterly exhausted for my last two hours at work. So I thought it better to wait until today and do the words some justice.

Just a reminder to those who want to play along with the daily drabble, you can get the words at Dictionary.com or through the dictionary_wotd LJ feed.

So, without further ado, the words for yesterday and today are:


stolid \STOL-id\, adjective:
Having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily excited.

Examples
"Normally stolid, she occasionally joined in the frequent applause and smiled along with the laughter at the
high-spirited session."
-Seth Mydans, "Indonesia Leader Imposes a Decree to Fight Removal," New York Times, July 23, 2001

"The inherent irrationality of markets was first demonstrated in the 17th century, when the normally stolid Dutch population was seized by a tulip craze that caused the people to pay insane prices for a single bulb."
-Robert Reno, "Analysis: A market that rides on bubbles," Newsday, August 7, 2002

"Republicans hailed Kemp as a quick-tongued charmer who would ... appear in attractive contrast to the stolid Al
Gore."
-James Fallows, "An Acquired Taste," The Atlantic, July 1, 2000

"Ulster Protestants are a slow, stolid, quiet, decent, law-abiding people, unstylish and unfashionable."
-John Derbyshire, "Paisley Goes to Washington," National Review, March 15, 2001

Eymology
Stolid derives from Latin stolidus, "unmoving, stupid."



metier \met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:

1. An occupation; a profession.


2. An area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.

Examples
"The pairing of Maynard and Salinger -- the writer whose metier is autobiography and the writer who's so private he won't even publish -- was an unlikely one."
-Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Cult of Joyce Maynard," New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1998

"In Congress, I really found my metier.... I love to legislate."
-Charles Schumer, "quoted in Upbeat Schumer Battles Poor Polls and Turnouts and His Own Image," New York Times, May 16, 1998

"He is in the position of a good production engineer suddenly shunted into salesmanship. It is not his metier."
-James R. Mursell, "The Reform of the Schools," The Atlantic, December 1939

Etymology
Metier is from the French, ultimately from Latin ministerium, "service, ministry, employment," from minister, "a servant, a subordinate."

~oOo~

Today's double-drabble incorporates both words and is built off of the Felak!verse notion that Maedhros is skilled in the arts of diplomacy, something not as obvious in his father.

Destiny
My father found his métier with ease, as though it came upon him from a place beyond the world and took hold of his hands; as though something mightier than him was shaping the artifacts for which he gained renown. He would not entertain conversation on “destiny”—he snorted in derision at the mere mention of the word—but he seemed an example of that very notion he shunned, as though he’d been created with thought of his later works in the shape of his hands.

I too sought my hopes, and the proclaimed superior agility of my mind sent me into the stolidity of scholarship, into hours lost in the company of only books.

It was joy I found, but at what? The praise of my father, my peers, of seeing my words upon the desks of luminaries? It was when I was freed from the confines of the library and chanced to speak with others, to take their hands in mine, that I found happiness, although this grieved my father, that his firstborn should become one of the “politicians” whom he despised, dealing not in concrete thought but in something diaphanous and immeasurable.

Something a lot like destiny.