Burnt Lighthouses

heckofabecca asked for a story with Círdan and Eärendil and/or Elwing:

The Fëanorians had torched Elwing and Eärendil’s house. Círdan tried not to feel surprised at the act of arson. It was not the only area of the Havens put to the torch. With the silent patience of a fisherman, Círdan watched the black charred remains of what had been rafters, beams, and furniture slowly smolder and collapse in the harsh shore breeze. A beam slipped free of where it balanced precariously and thudded to the ground, but the sound was muted by the heavy layer of ash. All the embers had cooled by now, and Círdan knew he could approach the ruins of what had been the house of his dear friends without fear of burns. No, give them truth in the silence of his heart as he stood and paid his respects before the ashes of their lives. Elwing and Eärendil had been his adopted niece and nephew, yet another war orphan he had taken in as his own, as Ereinion became the beloved child of this lifelong bachelor.

And because of that deep love, Círdan feared approaching closer, feared to walk through all those charred black piles, worried that it would be more than burned wood that he would find in the wreckage. His men, searching the other buildings, had already found bodies. Elven and mortal, male and female, old and young, every sort imaginable. All except bodies of orcs, and that was the key difference that confounded the searchers, for they were all veterans from Brithombar and Eglarest and all the points inland, all familiar with the aftermath of towns and cities sacked by Morgoth’s armies. Strange it was for them to find only elven and mortal dead, only those weapons, only red blood. Some bodies had burned in the arson; most had not. Identifying the dead was easy if they had been neighbors and friends. Círdan’s men had the survivors of the Havens assisting the search, looking for any other survivors, looking for the dead, looking for names to give the slain refugees. Some of the dead elves the survivors did not recognize, but they begged that the bodies collected for honorable burial, as they had tried to stop the attack or tried to extinguish the fires. Some of the buildings were still too unstable to investigate.

Círdan did not wish confirmation of which he would find in this house.

If he refused to cross the threshold, the horror remained an abstract.

The Fëanorians had also burned the docks. That he was not surprised at, for they had no more use for ships. Or at least still had the self-awareness that no boat upon these waves would tolerate them. Still, Círdan knew one ship had not been present, and thus one body he shall not find.

And, staring at the charred ruins of the home of Elwing and her young children, for the first and only time, Círdan fervently prayed that Vingilot had foundered upon the waves. The Shipwright, who prided himself on the soundness of his ships, wished this betrayal of his craft. He hoped that only pieces of driftwood returned to this beach to join the charcoal that lined it. Let not the lad return to this, he prayed. Better he dies, drowns in a storm, not seeing the destruction of his home, the death of his people. Never have I asked this of you, Lord Ossë, oh, how Círdan wept, but never allow him to return to this shore, when this sorrow is all that awaits him.

Those Wisp'lights Aren't to Be Trusted

Continuing this sad tale:

He has found his parents. If he keeps repeating this, reminding himself that the time to fear is over, to calm his racing heart, wipe away this sweat that makes him shiver and cold, it will stop. Mother has knelt in the forest floor, knees crinkling and crushing the decaying leaves, and has opened her arms wide. She calls for him to run into her arms so she may devour him into a hug, her mouth split into a wide smile, the white of her teeth shining like a wisp-light in the darkness. Father leans beside her, neck bent oddly but his face smiling with relieved delight, eyes almost hidden by the creases in his face from the sharp grin. The boy wonders what has happened to his father’s bow, for his hands are empty. Neither parent is carrying their travel packs, and the boy wonders if they lost all the family supplies, if that is but one minor calamity to have happened when they became separated. He has never been separated from his parents, never for this long, and some disaster must have struck to have kept them apart for so long. The boy asks what had gone wrong, how they had become separated from another, why his parents had not heard him calling for them. He had been calling for a long time. Scrambling down an outcropping of rocks, hands skidding on the stone, scrapping away a layer of skin, the boy ignores the pain that blossoms in his palms to reach the lower incline where his parents wait for him. Pressing his injured hands to his side and ignoring the blood, the boy feels the sharper sting of irrational anger. He had called and searched and had panicked for so long because his parents had disappeared. That should not have happened, but it is now over, and his parents are here. And yet his heart is racing like a hare in one of his father’s clever snares. “Where were you?” he shouts again.

His mother does not answer the question, nor any flicker in her eyes show that she acknowledged it. “Come to me,” she calls, her voice low and sweet.

His mother never croons. She has a pretty singing voice, but when she speaks it is always loud and harsh like a jay, and Grandmother bemoaned that her middle child was fortunate to have found a spouse that could handle her brier voice and thorny temperament. Father is that, calm and soothing, but now he is too quiet, has said nothing.

“Come here,” Mother pleads, as soft as there would be tears in her eyes. But there are none.

Her eyes…there is nothing.

“Come here,” the voice commands. This time the underlying sternness spoils the sweetness. The fingers of her outstretched hands twitch and curl inward like spider jaws. The boy does not run to her, pauses and shifts his weight back, presses against the rocks behind him. 

Something is wrong.

“Hurry to us,” his father says. “It is no longer safe here in the woods. We will take you to a safe place.” This is his father’s voice, and his father’s face, handsome and pale, his black hair grown long to swing around his ears but still recognizably him. And his father is wise, rightly praised by the rest of the Forsaken as clever and cautious. The boy was instructed by all his family that he should never doubt his father’s wisdom, that his sight was keener and clearer that his mother. The boy knew his grandparents believed his mother to be too reckless, but staying in one spot close to the shore would not find them Great-uncle Elu the missing king. But the boy wishes his grandparents were here, or uncles, even the long missing one. Because something is wrong. And his father has not called him as he normally does, has not said my son. My son, my son, said with such love, such joyous pride, as if there is no other name worthy of the boy, no other words that could contain such deep emotion.

“Come here,” his mother says.

The boy does not wish to disobey, wants nothing more than to run into his parents’ arms, feel the embrace of reunion squeeze away this panic in his chest, but his bloody hands stick to the rock at his back.

Something is very wrong.

That Summer When Aegnor and Angrod Had to Intervene in the Inception of a Clan Feud

A quick explanation of a line in this fic- 

Aegnor hands his brother the drinking horn of Edain beer with a hidden grimace, wiping his hand on the tartan wrap across his shoulders, then frowns at the stain on the green and yellow fabric. He goes to ask the matron of the house about adding the garment to the laundry, as it was a gift from Boron’s wife and thus one of the first gifts that Aegnor received from a member of Bëor’s family, holding for him a particular sentimental value.

Angrod hides his own smile and turns to Belegor to inquire after the reason behind this impromptu and boisterous party. The brother of the Lord of Ladros replies in a more than mildly inebriated voice that the engagement between his oldest son and a woman with very annoying and parsimonious parents has been annulled, to which Angrod replies he did not know that -an annulment of engagement- was a cause for a celebration. Belegor laughs, jostling the drinking horn in Angrod’s grip, and says, ‘It would be if you knew these potential in-laws!“

At this point Aegnor returns to interrupt the conversation with an even more pained expression on his face to ask if Belegor knows about the men outside trying to steal his cattle.

Boromir and the Swamps

“Do you think we have not courage?” Boron asks Lord Finrod, when the elven king warns of the dangers of Dorthonion, of its proximity to Thangorodium. “Do you think we chose not to fight against Morgoth, that he is not the avowed enemy of our race? That the harms he has done to us and our families is somehow less than those he did to the Noldor, and we have less cause or motivation to bring war to him, to stand against him?”

“Well, you certainly have more conviction than many of my cousins,” interjects Lord Finrod’s brother with a sardonic smile. “If Lord Boron and any of his people that wish to join him want to move up to our lands, Dorthonion has land for their choosing. It is not as if we have many men or homes on the land as it is, or warriors to patrol it. I will not gainsay anyone willing to fight, not when our efforts to encourage anyone beside Uncle Fingolfin have fallen on defective ears.”

King Finrod makes a strange little expression that starts as a glare but transforms into a huff, as if he cannot decide which part of his brother’s statement to rebut first and if any are worth the effort to deign a response.

Boromir has a odd moment of empathy, seeing the elven lords not as mighty figures but as a pair of bickering brothers, and wonders if his father was ever embarrassed by Belegor and him sniping to each other over family. Then again, his arguments with Bereg have shamed the family enough. He glances to his father, who is nodding vigorously at Lord Angrod with a particularly stubborn set to his jaws and remembers that this is how the situation started, that Boromir’s cousin was foolish enough to play into the enemy’s hands. The Dark Lord up in Thangorodrim did not desire Bëor’s people allied with the elves or anywhere in this new land, and Boromir cannot think of a better reason to do anything than defying the Master of Lies. And, staring at his father, Boromir knows the surest way to prod anyone in his family to avow a task is to impinge upon their courage or imply they are forbidden.

“The Master of Lies will hunt us anywhere we live, and his emissaries in disguise have already tried to come among us in Estolad. This is an old trick of which my father and the Wisewomen of our tribe long recognize. But the servants of the Dark Lord fear the power of you elven lords and your ability to perceive their seemings of deceit.”

“Imperfectly,” interrupts the Lord Finrod.

“Yet you have the power of the mind we do not,” counters Boromir’s father.

“And it would be harder for a disguised sorcerer of the enemy to sneak into Dorthonion, if there are so few people that live there to begin with, and few visitors,” Boromir adds, hoping he sounds intelligent and adds value to this weighty conversation. Often he feels as if he is but a callous seventeen instead of twenty seven, but he knows he has a point, so crowded has Estolad become with new arrivals from the East trickling in each month. Amlach’s doppelganger could pretend to be him because no one knew that Imlach’s son had not joined the pressing crowd. Few there knew Amlach intimately to know if his words were those of his mind or true manner. Bereg had derided Boromir for being too trusting of the elves, but Boromir holds that it is his younger cousin that was naive. The elves can do what the People of Bëor cannot and are willing to give what they need. Land, as much and more than can be had in the overrun settlement of Estolad, and the chance to fight against the true enemy of his people are not gifts to be tossed aside. Boromir can not fathom what Bereg hopes to find by returning to where Grandfather Baran fled from, but he knows Bereg will not find it. There are three tribes of men, whom the elves are now calling Edain, who have entered Beleriand because the unknown on the western side of the Blue Mountains was a better prospect than what they had.

Boromir thinks he has much in common with the spirit of his forefather Bëor, for the appeal of a new land to explore and the hope it offers fills him with a desire to sing. Boromir desires a life of greatness, in the manner that truly matters, of leaving the world better than he found it, and standing firm against the Master of Lies is the greatest calling he sees.

The elven king clears his throat in the manner of over-corrective older brothers everywhere -which makes Boromir feel even more strangely elative to know he shares a trait with Nóm himself - and smirks as only an older brother to an younger sibling facing their comeuppance can. “What about the swamp?”

Lord Angrod grimaces, and Boromir’s father shifts his eyes between the faces of the two elven lords.

“Are those the fens I’ve heard of?”

“And the only way to enter Dorthonion from Tol Sirion, unless you take the long way around from the Pass of Aglon,” states Lord Finrod. “I’m sure you remember Lady Haleth’s stories of leading large groups of Edain through unwelcoming terrain, and you are very familiar with those fens, aren’t you, Brother?”

Angrod scowls and folds his hands in front of him, but before he can retort, Boron laughs.

“I fear no swamp. We shall take that route, for I wish to see your city of Nargothrond again and the white tower you have built on the river.”

All the elves gathered around observing this conversation make appalled faces, and Boromir blushes, praying his father has not made an over-bold and foolish promise. This conversation was to prove they had more sense than Bereg.

“We’ll go through the swamp,” Boron states firmly, the declaration tied to the decision to move to Dorthonion itself, and he will budge on neither. Finrod and Angrod look as if they wish to argue, and both pairs of bright eyes land on Boromir.

The young man swallows and rubs at his beard under their scrutiny. “As my father says,” he says and prays he does not sound foolish.

King Finrod mutters something under his breath that sounds like ice, but Lord Angrod smiles brightly. Perhaps too brightly, for his cheer seems false, but he clasps Boromir’s arm with a warm hand. “Do not fret; my brother and I will help your people through the Fen of Serech, carry you all if we must.”

Boromir has a bad feeling about this. 

Heart Shield/Ways to Say I Love You

 Barahir falls in love with her when they are both ten, and she shows up for beginning lessons on how to hold a shield in a tunic that is too small over a pair of too-big trousers stuffed into the tops of her boots and rolled thrice at the waist as to not fall off her skinny hips. She brings her own shield, painted bright green. Lessons on holding sticks are saved until next month’s instruction, and they must train for at least one full planting season before sticks are exchanged for dull pieces of metal. Barahir doesn’t realize what he feels for Emeldir is love until years later as she holds a green shield above his body to protect him from arrows, his own shield shattered at their feet. “We were taught to use our shield to protect our heart,” she tells him later. “That is exactly what I was doing.”

Barahir sulks off into the woods to find a moss-covered stone to sit on and attempt to compose heartfelt love songs to match the suave poetry of how Emeldir declared her feelings. Eventually he gives up and trudges back to her house, feeling as if he had returned to the awkward days when his beard first grew in. She meets his eyes with the same cool aplomb he envies and admires, and for a second Barahir worries he misunderstood her declaration. “Dagnir is leading a party down into the plains to hunt for enemy spies. You are the first warrior I want by my side,” he tells her. Emeldir nods. Then, before his courage deserts him, Barahir blurts out. “I want to fight by your side.”

Emeldir blinks slowly. “You said that.”

“I mean it! I mean, what I also meant was I want to be by your side. Always. I love you. I think I always have.”

Emeldir thinks he is ridiculous, and stubborn, and oblivious, and beloved.

Ele!

The Duel. spoilers for "Of Ingwë Ingweron."

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The youths are foolish, to place their confidence and effort into elaborate posturing and flashy moves. Duels take one stroke, one stab, if the warrior is right. The fight is before; the hunt is the wait. It is to reach the mind out and feel the echo of the opponent and flow of his thoughts. That is the secret of the hunt, to sing without words and feel as others feel, both companions and prey. To know the challenger across the ring and judge his thoughts. To be either the spear, stabbing boldly forward, to overwhelm the challenger and cow him under force of will - or be the lake, to absorb the attack like the water swallowing everything in its depths, find the weakness and in the same instance push back.

Imin is master of both paths, of spear and lake, knows every trick, has watched every fight that has ever been. Oldest and first, he has no equal and no one before him. There is a pointless cruelty in accepting this challenger, for Imin has no weaknesses, and this boy has no hope. What pride compels him, this boy that hunts alone and has never challenged his companions in the ring, to think he can best the first among all? Imin reaches out to find the challenger’s spirit, to hear the beat of the other heart, and overwhelm it with his own. The boy is tall and strong, his grip on the spear relaxed but right. There is a strange gleam of health to his body and a light in his eyes that Imin does not trust. The boy speaks of a land of light without death, a land that has made him strong. Imin can feel the boy’s strength. He acknowledges it. But the boy is young, and Imin is oldest and first, with no one before him. He looks across to the calm face of his opponent and feels with mind instead of ears the steady heartbeat of the boy. Incredulous! that the boy has no fear. That the mind is as calm as the mask-like face, the heartbeat even, no trepidation to face his leader, no bravado to explain the boy’s presumptuous challenge. Not even the lake is this still, and Imin falters. It is a tiny thing, that uncertainty, which does not show on his face or body. But he is no longer first, alone, no one before him. Imin sees the boy across from him in the dueling ring.

‘Lo!’ he shouts in the quietest corner of his mind, as he feels the intention flow into the action, feels the other man stab forward with his spear, begins a strike than Imin cannot stop or deflect. ‘Here you are, my equal. I thought I was alone.’

The last thoughts of Imin, oldest of elves, as he falls dead to earth and his spirit flies west to a land of light, is this: ‘I am glad I was not. Lo! I see you. Ingwë.’

tumblr cross-post: Ingwë versus Elwë

houseofhaleth asked: In a fight between Thingol and Ingwe, Ingwe would win. Y/N

In Cuiviénen, Ingwë is the strongest, no contenders, qualms, or doubts. He has the body strength, the skill with hunting (both physical and mental, so much of hunting is the mental), the drive. The intensity. Elwë is the most sociable, the one that actively leads and builds alliances and is the one to drive the three of them to do things (Finwë’s hair-brained scheming will come up with ideas, but Elwë is the one to take the new ideas and implement them). Elwë’s overwhelming demand for vengeance for his parents and anger to bring the fight to the dark hunters is what brings the three to Oromë, and he does have a lot of maturity from helping to raise two younger brothers. But Ingwë is still more intense. He has been the outcast son tending to two fading parents and a newborn sister. He has always had the most to gain and nothing to protect him if he falls. He defeats the First Among First and seizes total leadership of his tribe. Ingwë has the most strength and cunning and willingness to be brutal - and there is not a chance that Elwë would fight him and win. Especially because he’s a bit afraid of Ingwë but then everyone including the Maiar are.

But the Elu Thingol with Aranrúth in hand, over three thousand years of leading his people alone without support of anyone but Melian in the dark and Morogoth-tainted wilds of Beleriand, who has matured to the tallest and strongest and most awe-inspiring (more like a lord of the Maiar) elf? Who has fought the forces of evil for a long and bitter age? He could fight the Ingwë who has retired and turned to meditation and peace (though sword to throwing spear …) and it might be a more even fight, even Elu’s victory.

Still, Ingwë has matured as well, in understanding of the world, mastery of the Song of Arda, in wisdom and forbearance and personality. Actually, a philosophical debate between the two I’m not sure who the winner would be.

I still think Ingwë is the better king of his people, but he does have the unfair disadvantage of luck. The Vanyar to stick together and completely reject all of Morgoth’s attempts to suborn them, so I do wonder how they would survive Middle-earth is they were the ones left behind and not the Teleri. A smaller group without any natural divisions, so no split, they would all wait for Ingwë. The question then of spiritual desire for light and dissatisfaction with Middle-earth. This sounds like a really interesting AU… Hmm, honestly I figure if the situation was reversed, Ingwë would be leading his people through the Helcaraxë in thick mammoth and cave bear fur coats, everyone would arrive in Aman (“So we walked over instead of using the island boat. Huh, whadda’ya know? We still beat the ferry over. First elves.”)

 

(In a fight, at any point, either of them would cream Finwë. Except maybe oratory. Maybe. But physical contests or fighting armed or unarmed? Ha. Maybe Finwë could win an arm wrestling contest- nope. And despite a strong late effort by Elu, Finwë still wins the disastrously terrible parenting contest, so there’s that)

Elu is taller and prettier, though. ;)