Hold Fast Ere Night Comes

Loving mortals will end in death. Angrod knows this.

“Darkness fell in the room. He took her hand in the light of the fire. 'Whither go you?' she said.

'North away,' he said: 'to the swords, and the siege, and the walls of defence - that yet for a while in Beleriand rivers may run clean, leaves spring, and birds build their nests, ere Night comes.'

'Will he be there, bright and tall, and the wind in his hair? Tell him. Tell him not to be reckless. Not to seek danger beyond need!'

'I will tell him,' said Finrod. 'But I might as well tell thee not to weep. He is a warrior, Andreth, and a spirit of wrath. In every stroke that he deals he sees the Enemy who long ago did thee this hurt.”

‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’ History of Middle-earth X : Morgoth’s Ring

 

 

---

Iron-grip he must be, for Angrod must hold his baby brother tightly. Keep him grounded as Aegnor’s rages and new-found fatalism turn the Fell-Fire as dangerous to himself as his enemies. Grief and impotence against the unchangeable realities of the world make Angrod’s brother bitter. Faced with a gulf that love cannot ever bridge, the anger curdles inward, the despair lashes out. Aegnor becomes almost mortal in his ways - changes that frighten Angrod.

Angband looms before them, the iron and sulfur reek on the wind, that stinging wind that blows eternally from the north. Up here on the slopes of Dorthonion its lords cannot forget or ignore the enemy. There is no northern peace, but only the long truce of the sentry ever-watchful for the next enemy foray.

The tension binds them, but none more so than Aegnor who no longer sees what to live for beside death. Death for the enemy, death for himself. Angrod thinks this must be how the Firiath, the mortals, feel. This certainty of their death with every breath, the inescapability of it.

Angrod knows he and his brother will die on a battlefield against the forces of Morgoth, that he will return to his father and mother through the embrace of Mandos. Then he will join the people he could not protect from the enemy, the ones who fell on the Grinding Ice, his uncles and cousins from Alqualondë. His sorrow is strong, but stronger is the shame for failure, rage for murders, the guilt that he allows for crimes to rest unanswered.

But reckless Aegnor courts his inevitable death in lieu of the mortal maid he cannot.

Angrod knows he must not blame the adaneth, this Andreth. Angrod has lived with the Edain, the people of Bëor, for four generations, befriending them, fighting at their side, watching them wilt and die. Their greatness, their strange fascination with the world around them, like they are hearing pieces of the Song in notes too high or too low for his ears, how they surprise him with what they can say or do. Finrod is right, such odd and intriguing sources of new knowledge they are. How the mortals are so frightfully fragile in hröa and fëa, and yet bear under stresses Angrod knows he could never take. It must be a special flame from Ilúvatar, and how can he fault his brother, Aegnor, for being so badly burnt?

But oh, how Aegnor gives no heed to his duties or safety anymore. Angrod must restrain his brother, hold him back from this assisted suicide by Morgoth. “Iron-grip” he must be, with the strength of Tulkas himself, to hold Aegnor from his doom. To pretend to those that he has sworn allegiance that nothing is amiss. To inform his oldest brother, both liege lord and family head, that their dear baby brother has tasted the sweetness of love, but it was bitter before it left the tongue. A mortal poison. Finrod tried to soothe the pain with philosophy, explain away the cruelness of the divide, the unfairness of knowing such mortal beings. That Aegnor’s grief would scar over, would become a gentle grief and wisdom. Nienna’s song. Any true healing and erosion of pain could only come in Mandos, they all knew. Or at least Angrod thinks in this he sees clearer than his older brother. Only Mandos, maybe. But Angrod lies to Finrod and says Aegnor’s grief does not affect his duties as Lord of Dorthonion. Lies to Aegnor by never mentioning a woman in Ladros who sits in honor next to the lord’s place, the mind who drafts the yearly tithes that supplied Barathonion, hands that weave the cloak Aegnor wears. Lies to himself.

In desperation, any battle with such foes as orcs and balrogs would be welcome, for as strongly as he grasps, Iron-grip can not hold.

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Gone Fishing

Angrod and Bregolas in Dothonion before the Dagor Bragollach

---

When Bregolas asks his liege lord if he wants to join in on a brief fishing expedition (“Dagnir says they’ve been biting this week”), Angrod almost refuses. Reports need to be filed, a younger brother needs to be watched over (If he hears of orcs, Aegnor will rush after them headless of personal safety), and once-sweet memories of uncles, aunts, and grandfathers fishing on the quays and boats of Alqualondë are now dark and stained. But Bregolas is insistent, and the long thin poles he carry sway beckoningly, and Angrod wavers. The Edain promises that fly fishing on the mountain streams is quite different from sitting on the lakeside and silently waiting for the fish. True skill and dexterity is needed to cast. To lure a fish to the surface with the imitation of a fleetingly landing insect takes cunning and timing. To not entangle the line around oneself or in the branches of the pine behind one - that is the warning Angrod thinks Bregolas should have made.

Yet the outing is fun, a welcome distraction from his troubles. The constant flicking of the lures, swishing of the poles, to reel in a trout every once and a while. Bregolas chatters away in his pleasant rough twang, talking about his sons, of his many siblings and their children, of the people back in Ladros. Of how pleasant the beer they brought tastes on the tongue. That part especially Angrod appreciates, though he thinks back two hundred years to when he first tasted the brew and winces. (Finrod still disbelieves he can drink the concoction willingly, but Angrod boasts in a falsely mild voice that as an acquired taste, one must truly live shoulder-to-shoulder with the mortals and attend at least four weddings, three funerals, eight barn raisings, and one “Thank Eru they called off the engagement because I refuse to have them as in-laws” party before the exposure overwhelms good judgment and beer now tastes as refreshing as miruvor.) It ends up as the most relaxing and refreshing afternoon Angrod has spend in years, and he thanks Bregolas for the invitation. The Bëorian smiles and reminds the elf that the fish will return tomorrow.

A box of brightly-colored and finely crafted lures, made to mimic the jewel-like bugs of a distantly remembered Aman, bits of feather and thread around each sharp hook, make their way into a new year’s gift to Ladros that year. A matching set of lures and a custom pole with bands of green and gold and white thread carefully wrapped around the cane make their way from Ladros to the fortress at Foen in return. A note accompanies it. In roughly-crafted letters it reads, “For next time the fish are biting.”

---

In memory of my grandfather, who even with Parkinson’s would handcraft custom decorated fly-fishing poles for everyone at his workbench in his garage, and took us fly-fishing one year at the family cabin in Montana.

The Smell of Raindrops and Lightning

A quiet moment between the King and Queen of Beleriand long before the rise of the Sun and Moon, the building of Menegroth, or the birth of Lúthien Tinúviel. Plus Science!

Something light and romantic for a pairing that I love but rarely saw focus solely on them, especially this period before Menegroth and the arrival of the Nandor when the Sindar are still nomadic groups wandering Beleriand.

All terms for the Valar and geography of Beleriand are in Sindarin.

Basic primary school meteorology and earth science.

---

Elu stretched out on the damp soil, his back resting on the folded gray cloak he had been wearing earlier, looking up at the trees. Melian, his wife, rested on the ground next to him, her shining eyes closed as she hummed a counterpoint to the rain. A storm was passing through the pine woods, and they had found shelter under the largest tree with the densest branches, waiting for the falling rain to end. Most had fallen, and now there was only in comparison a few drops to shake the pine needles and shimmer to the ground, making a soft yet constant melody. When the storm would finally end, the birds would return and burst into song, but for now the only voices against the rain were of Elu Thingol and Melian.

There was a profound sense of peacefulness, Thingol thought, to listen to the voices of the rain, unbothered by anyone else but his wife.

Gently he clasped one of her hands and kissed it, which made her eyes open and her lips bow into a gentle smile.

They returned to listening and watching the rain, the damp air making their garments cling to their skin.

"The winds of the Aran Einior carrying the moisture from Ulu’s seas," Melian explained, watching the rain fall through the canopy of the trees.

She had given the same lecture to the children of Mithrim earlier that day, while Elu was conferring with the lord of that land, the son of Eredhon who was the brother of Elu's brother Elmo’s wife. A nephew by marriage only, but Elu trusted the man and counted him among dear kin. He was a good steward for the people that chose to make the northern plains their home, herding great numbers of deer and horses across the rich plains. The people of Mithrim and Lothlann traveled year-round, moving the herds from pasture to pasture, but at this time of year they were always near the pine forests near the white peak of Foen, and that is where Elu and Melian would meet them. Elu would listen to any cases or concerns the lord needed his king to hear, and Melian would gather all the women and children to a circle around her in the center of the tents, holding her own court. There, kneeling down to accept flower crowns and hugs from the youngest children, Melian would laugh and bless each child, ask after the mothers and young women, and dispense her wisdom. She would give lessons to those that gathered near on how to grow the necessary herbs, mix poultices and remedies for any ailments, bake a bread that would sustain them on their long journeys, and sing the greater knowledge of the workings of the world she learned from the One. Melian delighted in sharing her knowledge with their people, of finding new ways to bring not just needed advice but ways to add beauty. There was not a gray cloak among the people of the northern plains that Melian had not eventually stitched at least one border of tiny flowers or galloping horses, and she would mend button holes as well as gift tapestries and blankets to grace their homes. The size of the task had no bearing on the brightness of her smile, and Thingol thought it typical that for each journey they made, Melian would instruct her maidens to fill her packs with clothes and bolts of fabric and needles - and that by the end of their visits, only the king’s travel bags were even halfway full.

Melian continued her recitation of this morning’s lecture, but Thingol tuned out the words, listening only to the song-like cadence of her voice. His eyes lingered on a droplet, following its path as it slid down a pine needle, falling and then rolling off another, until finally the drop of water escaped down to the earth and sunk into the rich loam of the forest floor.

The soil was damp and smelled strongly of dirt and growth. Elu found he loved the smells of each region of his home, from the marsh reeds and salt of Nevrast to the heather carpeting the northern hills to the various forests of the land of rivers: willow, beech, and pine. Each was enticing, but more so with Melian as his companion.

His wife murmured of the rain shadows of the mountains to the east, of heavy clouds laden with tiny droplets of water too burdensome to carry over tall peaks. Of water falling down the western side of the slopes, running together into seven rivers that fed and nourished a great forest.

"It is a gentle rainstorm," Elu observed, listening to the slow patter, the splashes as the raindrops found the puddles forming between the ground sheltered by the pine boughs. "No lightning," he said, thinking back to how the sky had raged with blinding networks of burning light back in Cuiviénen, before he had gone with the Balan Araw, back when the Belain had waged war to imprison their fallen brother. Then it had looked as if a hammer was being taken to the sky, and the lightning was the great spidering cracks as the star-knit heavens were about to crumble into great jagged pieces. Fear, Elu remembered, holding his younger brothers to his body tightly as they tried to shelter in their roundhouse near the lake.

"Energy," Melian said with a faint smile, a soothing hand running across her husband’s forehead, "built up in the clouds, the friction rubbing against another like when you rub your palms together swiftly. Elbereth releases the energy across the clouds or into the earth safely, drawing down to the ground from into the sky like two points meeting, and the lightning is the outline of her path. But not today’s storm; there is no lightning."

"Is that why it goes after the tallest trees and peaks," Elu asked, "because the Kindler does not wish to waste too much light drawing the pathways?"

Melian laughed quietly at this and rolled over to hug him. “Exactly,” she whispered, staring into his gray eyes, the loose dark tresses hanging down from either side of her face to curtain his. The feeling that the world was only the two of them once more, that an eternity could pass while staring into each other’s eyes, came over them, and Melian leaned down to touch his lips.

Before they kissed, a stray thought came to him, and Elu, smiling in amusement, said, “It is good there is no lightning, for as the tallest of us all, the lightning would hit me first before anyone else.”

Melian leaned back, her face suddenly dark and stern. “No lightning would ever hit you, my love. I will never allow the Lady of the Stars to make that mistake.” The glittering light of her eyes has sharpened into a fierceness Thingol rarely saw in her. “No lightning will strike anyone,” she proclaimed, and he could see into her thoughts, that vast current of a Maia who sang her spirit along pathways an elven one could not journey. Of how the purely academic knowledge of lightning, static electricity discharging during storms suddenly became reevaluated, reclassified as dangerous, as a threat to her people. Visions of lightning striking the tent poles of the Mithrim camps, of flash fires that burned across the plains and threatened their herds, trees stuck and crashing and falling on her people, all came to Melian. She locked her elbows as she pushed up from the ground, any calmness of her expression gone as she stared up at the sky with a deeply furrowed brow. “I must find ways to keep the lightning from striking where we wish it not. The next storms may carry some, and nothing must be hurt.”

"We cannot protect everyone from everything," Thingol told her, but he could still see the yearning of her eyes, the calculations and vows to do just that. Melian believed it was her sacred duty to safeguard all his people, and he did not know how much of that drive came from being one of the Servants of the One who entered the world to shape and protect it, and how much came from his desires.

He gathered her in his arms and kissed soothingly at her brow, smelling the faint perfume of flowers that clung to her skin and hair. “Be at peace, Beloved. We shall address that problem for another time, but for now let us watch the rain. When it ends, we will have to go back to the camp. For now, stay with me, and don’t be troubled.”

---

Aran Einior : "King of the Ainur" Manwë

Ulu : Ulmo

Balan : Vala

Belain ; the Valar (plural)

Araw : Oromë

Elbereth : Varda

Melian comes from Melyanna "dear gift" and is also close to the words for love, lover, and beloved.

Foen is the peak of Dorthonion; Thingol and Melian had to have visited the region at least once, for it is noted that the lake Aeluin, famous as the camp of Barahir and his outlaws as well as where Aegnor saw a star reflected in Andreth's hair, was hallowed by Melian.

Elmo is the younger brother of Elu and Olwë, grandfather of Celeborn. Eredhon is an OC, brother of Elmo's (unnamed in canon) wife, and grandfather in my head-canon to the mothers of both Finduilas and Gil-galad.

Wall the Heart

After the first battle of Beleriand, more unexpected tragedy strikes in the heart of Menegroth, and a Girdle must be raised.

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It is the scream that draws Elu’s attention, a scream that sounds like it should come from the throat of an injured animal rather than that of an elf. The sound has echoed down from the serpentine corridors of the subterranean palace system, warped and uncanny. Elu Thingol grabs the heaviest of the rolled map scrolls from the desk in front of him, privately lamenting that he left his sword and armor back in his private chambers. The scroll will make a poor weapon, but the uncanny scream triggers a fear and a reflexive impulsive to defend his home.

After months of wearing the heavy steel of sword and armor, Thingol had relished the absence of the weight, the respite from the fighting. Only a week and a half after returning to Menegroth from the killing fields in the East, Elu is tired of war and death. His muscles are exhausted from the strain of desperate marches across the rough terrain of his realm, back and forth from the stronghold, of heaping the corpses of orcs in stinking hills trying to expend the rage of helplessness from Amon Ereb. The guilt of coming too late save his friend and fellow king Denethor, of being unable to save any of the Laegrim, has destroyed his sleep, and at first Thingol thinks the scream is just a walking dream, another hallucination. Images paint across the back of his eyelids: finding the cooling bodies of Denethor and his two sons that played with Lúthien as children, bright and dear lads who Thingol had taught to use a sword, nephews in all but direct blood, their bronze swords bent and broken by Angband’s steel. Denethor’s wife, as dead as he, found on the hill, who constantly teased Thingol for being too tall and ugly, and who he had retaliated by insulting her cooking. Elu thirsts for at least one sip of her awful bitter beet stew, an irrational craving ever since he returned from the battlefield, and knows the only reason he feels nostalgic for that nasty stew is that he will never have it again. Galathon, last child of his brother Elmo, the only one of Thingol’s nephews and nieces left to him on these shores, is last no more. Thingol hates how he found the dead body, a grisly wound on Galadhon’s head that made all features of that smiling face unrecognizable, only knowing it was his nephew by the dark silver of the hair and the familiar leaf embroidery on the padded silk jerkin. Denethor’s kinswoman and Galathon’s wife, Danaril, stretched out at his side almost as if she was sleeping peacefully, the illusion broke at the ragged bite marks on her arms and the gaping wound that nearly severed her torso in two.

Elu’s first task upon returning the Menegroth and reassuring his wife and daughter of his personal safety had been to approach Galadhon’s two young sons. They had been under the care of their grandmother, Elmo’s wife Linkwînen. That painful walk to their wing of the palace made Elu feel like he was wearing a pair of those ridiculously ugly Naugrim boots, steps weighed down by heavy cast iron. A long walk, in the end unavoidable, for Linkwînen knew. His sister-in-law grew up on the shores of Cuiviénen, had lost friends and relatives to the dark riders. She has comforted Elmo when he and Elu’s parents had been taken by the hunters, stood strong during the long years Elu had been missing, separated by choice from her oldest child when the tribe was split, and lost her second child to the evil spirits during that long and dangerous period when the Eglath wandered the wild of Beleriand. Strong unbroken Linkwînen. Then came the year Thingol had to approach her when the fell false wolves hunted and tell her that Elmo, her beloved husband and Thingol’s precious brother, was among the missing and presumed dead. Tell that the reed girl who grew up with the youngest of the silver-haired boys that she would no longer have her companion, no longer tease a man curious as a squirrel and have his voice answer back, that her walks through forest and wading in the shallows of the rivers and lakes would be lonesome where it once was always with treasured company. That grief had bent Linkwînen harder than the day the Lindar tribe split, or the day young Eöl returned unexpectedly to them with dark eyes haunted by unspeakable events and told a sinister tale to sicken the joy of reuniting with the knowledge this reunion came only to her grandson, that her daughter and son-in-law would never return as well. Thingol had feared the grief would break his sister that day only her grandson returned, but she was well-named, for like a reed bowed by the wind Linkwînen had rebounded. She had poured her energy into helping her people, into building friendship and knowledge with the dwarves that had returned her only grandchild, and then when the Laegrim came to befriend and assist them. She had encouraged her last child, Galadhon, to find happiness with Denethor’s sister, to start a family.

And once more, because of Elu’s failings to protect his friends and kin, he had to approach Linkwînen in the aftermath of Amon Ereb. He had to inform her of more family that would no longer walk at her side.

She had known, for news of the grievous price victory had cost them flew ahead of Thingol’s returning army like bands of crows, and the tales of the Laegrim refugees deciding to shelter in the many halls of Menegroth instead of retreating home spoke loudly. The young boys, Galadhon’s two sons, were old enough to understand what had happened, though the elder, Galathil, had put on a brave face and did not cry, nor did he say that he wished he had been allowed to fight at his parents’ sides, and die with them. Not that he needed to; Thingol read it in the grief and guilt across his face. The younger, Celeborn, had been the one to place his hands around his grandmother’s shoulders. Taller than his bare fifty years would seem, the youngest scion of Elu’s kin had only asked if his parents had been in much pain before they died. Celeborn was wise; he knew his great-uncle had lied when Thingol answered it had been swift.

In the echoes of the unnatural scream, as Thingol kicks the maps outlining the armies of orcs that have overrun his kingdom, the lists of refugees that have poured in from all over Beleriand to crowd the halls of Menegroth, Elu connects the straying thoughts. The scream is coming from Linkwînen’s chambers, deep in the heart of palace. And it is not a wail of heartbreak.

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Family and Wolves

The Great Wolf of Angband leaps, and Thingol thinks of family.

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As the Great Wolf of Angband lunges toward Elu Thingol, King of Doriath, the fetid breath reeking of poison and blackened meat, thorn splinters and broken spears flying through the air and the screams of his soldiers and the baying of the Hound of Valinor overshadowing all, he has time for one frozen thought. ‘This is how Elmo died. My little brother slain by the fell wolf-shapes of the Enemy. And my nephew, too, eaten by a werewolf. Is this the last thing they saw, these teeth? Did he call out for me, a desperate reflex for his big brother to save him?’

 

Then there is a body between him and the red jaws, saving him. The human, Elu thinks coldly in one part of his mind, like the faint echo from a distant cave, but louder is the part of him that screams, ‘Beren, Family, Lúthien’s, Son,” whispers, “family, Finrod, son, Elmo, brother,’ and continues to scream as the Great Wolf flings the body aside. Thingol barely hears the snarl of Huan slamming into the wolf, the fury of teeth and claw as two titanic mirror images rend and savage each other in the twilight. He stares at the body crumpled in front of him, the boy covered in blood, the pale face missing that infuriating, arrogant, familiar, oddly-endearing smirk. “Beren,” he calls, taking in the sight of all the blood, crawls towards the boy, shrugs away the hands of his men that try to restrain him and check for his injuries. He doesn’t matter; Beren does. Lúthien’s Beren, his daughter’s love, his new son-in-law, saved my life, son, family, little son little nephew little brother can’t be dead can’t be dead like Elmo is dead. Thingol kneels at Beren’s side, cradles the boy’s face, feels for the heartbeat, ignores the dark red that is seeping into the grey fabric. Behind them are the howls of the Great Wolf and Hound, trumpeting the echo of the wars of the Valar, the titanic struggle from before the mighty spirits’ entry into Arda, and it is nothing but noise.
 

 

Beren’s eyes focus finally through the pain and looks up at Thingol. The king is aware he is speaking desperately, yammering to the boy reassurances that the healers will save him, the wounds be cleansed, that Beren will live. That the human was beyond foolish, stupid. Why did he try to hold the wolf off with a spear in one hand, arrogant unthinking boy; didn’t he remember how successful the last attempt had been? Foolish boy who thought he could do the impossible, always so reckless. Elu isn’t even sure if he’s calling Beren by the right name, for there is something wrong with his vision, the face is blurred, and he can’t tell if that bold smirk - ‘why is he smiling, that idiot, you never listen, you never listen to me, that’s why Mother and Father have me watch over you constantly, you’ll need a keeper until you’re as tall as me, you’d run off and get yourself snatched up by the Dark Hunters, you’re so reckless’ - belongs to his brother or the human his daughter dragged home.
 

 

"You aren’t going to die on me," Elwê commands, and he knows not who he is truly addressing, only that yet again he will be disobeyed.

---

 

 

the name change was intentional

Of Beren and Lúthien:

But Carcharoth avoided him, and bursting form the thorns leaped suddenly upon Thingol. Swiftly Beren strode before him with a spear, but Carcharoth swept it aside and felled him, biting at his breast. In that moment Huan leaped from the thicket upon the back of the Wolf, and they fell together fighting bitterly; and no battle of wolf and hound has been like to it, for in the baying of Huan was heard the voice of the horns of Oromë and the wrath of the Valar, but in the howls of Carcharoth was the hate of Morgoth and malice crueller than teeth of steel; and the rocks were rent by their clamour and fell from on high and choked the falls of Esgalduin. There they fought to the death; but Thingol gave no heed, for he knelt by Beren, seeing that he was sorely hurt.

 

What happens when I connect my ideas of what happens to the missing Elmo to the canon events for Elu and come away with fresh fridge horror.
 

Also this moment of the Hunt of Carcharoth, Beren's self-sacrifice yet again, Huan's actions to save his beloved friend, and Thingol disregarding everything for the son-in-law he has had such a dramatic change of heart.

Spin Songs for the Sea

Eärwen has a distaste for spinning flax, as the thread breaks in her fingers, and even when she successfully spins it, she can see and feel all the slubs of her inferior work. Her mother laughs and promises that it is nearly impossible to spin a purely smooth thread, and will make no difference in the weave. The cloth will be for sails, so all that matters is the strength of the thread and the tightness of the weave.

 

Her mother sings as she spins for sailcloth, and Eärwen learns the new tunes and words. The songs are about Lady Uinen gathering clams and seashells, or brushing minnows gently out of her hair, or seducing her wild husband Ossë to forgo a storm to come into her arms and enjoy the feel of her fingers on his beard. Her mother has to explain what a beard is, and uses the goats as an example. The maids titter and laugh over that song, so Eärwen decides there must be something especially humorous about beards when they are not on goats. Her aunt, Ilsë, and her wife teach Eärwen other songs, the ones from the Powers, so that the cloth will not rot in the wet and it will catch the wind. Eärwen’s mother praises her niece’s wife as the most skilled of all the weavers in Alqualondë, whose enchanted sails never fail to find even the slightest breeze. The maids chime in with how there is no better in all of Alqualondë, and while the weavers in other cities embroider tapestries to fool the senses or craft smoother and finer cloth, none are as perfect for ships and the demands of wind and wave. Aunt Ilsë laughs at how this praise reddens her wife’s cheeks, tucking a blue flax-flower in her hair and brushing a soft kiss across her cheekbones. “Some are best at spinning the thread, or weaving it. Others are best at using it,” says Ilsë with a knowing wink to her young niece. “Do not be discouraged if your work is not the finest. A ship needs much canvas, and no single weaver can provide it all.”

 

"And you have greatly improved," says Eärwen’s mother, holding up a piece of Eärwen’s thread between her fingers to the gentle silver glow of Telperion.

 

Eärwen smiles, and her mother hums the next song. It is one that the girl learned the other day, about ducklings following their mother through the streets of Alqualondë. It is a humorous song of everyone politely moving out of the way or helping the ducklings over the city steps so they won’t be separated from their mother as the ducks travel down to the docks. Her favorite verse is when the ducklings and their mother cross the path of her father, and King Olwë bows to the waddling waterfowl and politely wishes them a good day and a gentle swim. She easily believes such an event happened, for it is exactly in her father’s nature.

 

When Eärwen sings together with her mother, aunts, and their maids, the task of making sailcloth is no longer onerous.

Wisp'light Through the Trees

A young boy is lost during the long hunt of the Eglath for their missing king.

---

The moss is cool and soft, feels like the hair of his father under the boy’s fingers, short hair right after it is shorn when the boy rides on his father's shoulders, for the boy’s father wears not the long braids with feathers and beads like Mother and Uncle and Grandfather and the others. Dark hair, not silvery like Uncle Galadhon, or even the dark silver of Grandfather, it does not reflect light. Mother says her uncle, the missing king, has even brighter silver hair, as bright as the stars that pierce down through the trees. They will find King Elu, Grandfather’s brother, by the shining silver of his hair, like a star between the branches. Mother says to always be looking for those glimmers of light behind the leaves, move through the forest with eyes open, to never stop and never forget to see. The boy has spent his whole life searching through the trees, even before he was old enough to know what is was everyone was searching for. He knows each type of tree by the texture of bark under his fingers. He can find his path by the scent of earth and outcroppings of rocks. His mother taught him the names of the birds and other animals by their calls as she carried him in their journeys, then how to hunt them when he grew older. His father taught him how to build snares, to find water when there are no streams, to build a fire when the cold comes, what to say to make Mother pause and laugh.

He is not afraid of the dark forest, to be alone in its shadows, for he has always had his parents, known that he would never be lost, ever unable to find them. Even when he could not see them, he could hear and feel his way back to them, and know that in truth they had never been far. They were never truly separated, never truly lost. The king is lost between the trees, we shall search and find him, see my son, see if you can find him, don't become lost like him. You are not a star; do not wander far. Grandfather and Grandmother worried, the last time they stayed in the same camp, told Mother they disapproved. They worried she and her husband and son would disappear into the trees and never return like Grandfather’s brother the missing king. Mother had laughed then, long and sharp, and Father had rubbed the short hair of his scalp in worry.

Now the boy wishes they had stayed with the rest of his family, with Grandfather Elmo and Grandmother and Uncle. Or that he could find them. Even a glimmer of star-silver hair, though in the back shadow cave of his heart the boy never believed Great-Uncle Elu would be found. It was just a story, like touching the stars with your fingers, or dreams of flying, or that there were songs of the family that forsook them echoing back across the waves whispering 'sorry we abandoned you sorry sorry sorry'.

I’m sorry, the boy whispers to the echoing caverns in his heart. Sorry sorry sorry. I’m lost; I wasn’t listening. Why aren’t you replying to my calls? Mother, Father, come back. Don’t join the missing king in the stars.

The boy feels his youth, too young still for an adult name, though just recently he had begged his father for a true name, a name with meaning, old enough to prove his character, old enough to search on his own.

Now the boy is alone, and rubs his fingers across the cool moss and shivers and wipes away tears.

His eyes water because he is straining them so hard, searching between the dark leaves. He must be confident, he must see. Look, look long enough, and we will find him. Behind every tree, look for the starlight. Mother’s echos are weak without her laughter to give them weight and texture.

Look, look long enough and he will find them.

---

If you read Wall the Heart, you know this story does not have a happy ending.

That Eöl's name has no meaning, and he waited twelve years to bestow a name that celebrates the deductive and insightful eyesight of his son, suggests a possibly cultural practice of temporary child names (perhaps even to discourage evil spirits around Cuiviénen?). And yes, I make Eöl related through his mother to Elu Thingol- though his father's heritage I leave purposefully unclear as to work with other proposed family backgrounds, though my best guess is Tatyar Avari.

Pearl

“How is it an insult when your brother calls me your pearl?”

 

Eärwen pauses her fingers in Finarfin’s hair, the discarded silver comb at her feet and her lover’s head in her lap. “Because pearls start off as irritants inside the shells, and they must be coated smooth. Eventually the oyster turns the evasive grain of sand into a beautiful part of itself.”

 

“So I am the annoying Noldo grain of sand who you have softened with prettier words and manners until I fit in Alqualondë?”

 

Eärwen giggles. “And you might dissolve if dunked in vinegar.”

 

Finarfin twists his neck so he can look up her. “Where would I be immersed in vinegar?”

 

She runs a hand over his brow, pushing aside the almost iridescent golden hair. “Tirion is full of sour, quarrelsome people who make you unhappy to be around. It is better for you in Alqualondë. You should stay here. You are beautiful here.”

 

“Because I am with you, and you are more beautiful than any pearl.”

 

“You coat me with flattery, marilla.”

The Swanships

They are the equal -if not greater- in worth to the Silmarils.

---

“But as for our white ships: those you gave us not. We learned not that craft from the Noldor, but from the Lords of the Sea; and the white timbers we wrought with our own hands, and the white sails were woven by our wives and our daughters. Therefore we will neither give them nor sell them for any league or friendship. For I say to you, Fëanor son of Finwë, these are to us as are the gems of the Noldor: the work of our hearts, whose like we shall not make again.”

Their ships are their glory and their homes. Song cannot contain the importance of their ships to the Teleri. No words would ever hold the entirety of their meaning and worth. The ships are the unsurpassed culmination of the craftsmanship of their hands, their creativity, their love for and striving towards beauty, and the product of the collected knowledge of their people. This knowledge was built upon trial and error and by lessons learned from every watercraft that has come before. The ships of the Teleri are the legacy of their people, but also the kindness and friendship of Ossë, the first to teach then to sail and master the waves. Through this they learned to fly across the surface of the sea. The ships are a connection to their roots and also the wings that take them to the future. But most of all, their ships are the breathing present of their culture. Daily life ties to their ships like the netting that hangs from the masts. The Teleri are their swan-ships, for they have poured their souls into their sails and used the planks as the foundation of their lives. The ships are the physical manifestations of the furthest flights of fancy dreamed up by their builders. Seemingly delicate, yet expertly calculated and engineered, they are also the work of an entire community, those long efforts of many hands, of men and women, from eldest to youngest. Every hand has at least some small part in the building and maintenance of the fleet, and all have sailed upon them. Undeniably the swan-ships are masterful works of art, yet they have purpose and a practical application greater than their unequaled beauty. Tools as well as sculpture, homes as much as monuments to their creators. The movement across the bay comes from the performance of their sailors to ensure their white sails catch the winds and their swan-shaped prows cut through the cresting waves, to create a dance that gives meaning to their glorious appearance. It is with pride that their owners gaze upon the work of their people.

The mingling lights of the Two Trees dimly illuminates the harbor of Alqualondë, and even that light disappears when one takes a ship out into the bay. It would be a waste of not the just effort and craftsmanship but of the soul to chain any seaworthy vessel to the docks, especially those as perfect as these masterpieces. To Tol Eressëa they will sail sometimes, but usually there is no destination in mind. The joy of the ocean and to see the jet inlay eyes of the swan-like prows buffeted by spray is goal enough. Uinen combs her hair by the lines of the ships' wakes, her divine voice raised in joyous laughter. Out on the water there is no Tree-light, only the stars, and this darkness holds no fear if it is surrounded by the creaking of sails and the roar of wind and wave. To sail is to dance and sing and reclaim what once held fear. The Teleri can survive without Tree-light, for they came to Aman for its safety and their friends, but their ships are their lives.

When the true darkness of Ungoliant’s Unlight comes, and Morgoth destroys the Two Trees and steals the Silmarils, there is unease and sorrow in Alqualondë. It is strange to have only darkness come through the Pass of Light, and Ossë and Ulmo do not answer their demands for news or reassurance. The Teleri turn to their ships, for the vast majority live upon their vessels far more often than they do ashore. And standing aboard the gently swaying decks, huddled with their arms around their families in the cool holds, here they feel safe. The ships are the most perfected works of their people’s hands, their homes and their pride. And as long as they are aboard their ships, the lack of aught but starlight feels completely natural, whereas the dark streets of Alqualondë hold no comfort when there is no more even a faint silvery twilight. On their ships the Teleri can pretend they are somewhere else, out on the bay away from shore, out near Tol Eressëa with its high cliffs and sweet-smelling trees. This they tell their worried and afraid. One can almost forget anything dire has happened. The swaying of the ships rock their children to sleep.

The Darkness of Valinor, and the madness that comes with it, feels like a hurricane on the horizon to the Teleri. They know one that was elder and envious, fallen in pride, had come demanding works not his own, and once rebuffed had returned with violence and theft. Greed like that would return to steal what could not be given, but the Teleri think their harbor sheltered. Their ships do not falter on the waves and with hand pressed to their tall masts and proudly carved prows, they know they need but to wait out this storm and the smooth waters will return. Strength pours from the wood of their ships to calm them.

With their swan-ships the Teleri wait.

---

One difference between Morogth and Fëanor, aside from the scale of destruction and murder between Formenos and Alqualondë, is that Morgoth didn't destroy the Silmarils after he stole them.