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raointean · 3 years

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Half-elven week: Day 5 - Legacy

"Eldarion, come with me." Eldarion looked up from his books. His mother stood in his doorway, beckoning him.

"Where are we going, Mother?" He stood to follow her and grabbed her hand.

"We go to see friend of your father's whose child was recently born. It is my belief that the two of you will grow very close and you shall guide them as they grow." Eldarion looked up at her, confused and annoyed.

"But Mother, I am a prince. Why should I be the one to teach the child? I ought to learn from those above me, not waste my time teaching one so far below me." Arwen raised her eyebrows at him incredulously. How could he be so blind as not to see his own hypocrisy? Nevermind, she would address that another time.

"My father always said to me, 'Care for those smaller than yourself, Arwen. Protect them and teach them and they we be your legacy.' I understood not those words at the time, but they are clear to me now and so I pass them to you. Care for those smaller than yourself, Eldarion." Eldarion sighed and rolled his eyes but followed her anyway.

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"Ada?"

"Yes Arwen?" Elrond looked up from his book, a novel by an edain author of Rohan, to see his daughter's tiny face peeking and the bushes that obscured him from the rest of the garden.

Arwen clambered up onto the bench to sit beside him. "Why do 'Dan and 'Ro follow me around and coddle me so? I am plenty old enough to wander the house on my own."

Elrond laughed and set his book down. "I think it may have something to do with what I told them. It was a phrase that your... grandfather told me often as a boy."

Arwen looked up at him curiously. "What did he say?" She had missed his hesitation about her grandfather.

"He said 'Care for those smaller than yourself, Elros.' He often got us mixed up, 'Protect the young ones. Guide them well, for they will be your legacy.'" Elrond’s eyes saddened, thinking of his fathers' fates.

"And that is what you said to 'Dan and 'Ro?" He nodded. Arwen thought for a moment. "Can you un-tell them? Please?"

Elrond snorted. And then he laughed. He drew her close to his side and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I will tell them to give you your space, little one."

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"Maedhros?"

Maedhros looked towards the elfling walking his way. "Which one are you?" They had taken the twins months ago and they had finally stopped trying to escape, understanding the the Fëanorians were their best hope for survival. Maedhros could still not tell them apart however.

"I am Elrond." Maedhros turned back to watch the treeline.

"'Tis late. You should be asleep." Elrond looked down ashamedly.

"I could not sleep. Maglor was teaching us of Doriath this afternoon and it left a question that burns at my heart." Maedhros looked at him and, after a moment, gestured for him to sit beside him on the rock.

"What was your question?"

"Why did you search for my uncles? They were lost in the woods and you knew that they did not hold the silmarill. It could not have been your oath that motivated you."

Maedhros looked down upon the child. That was a lot of large words from such a small being. "I searched for them because they were children. They did not deserve to die."

When Elrond sat in silence, he continued. "My father once told me something a very, very long time ago, before everything. The jewels, the oath, even before we left for Middle Earth. He told me 'Care for those younger than yourself, Maitimo.' For that was my name then. Guide them, show them the way for, if nothing else, they will be your legacy.' That is why I tried to save your uncles, and why we took you in. Our legacies are fire and blood and death but, perhaps through the two of you, we may atone for some of what we have done."

Elrond blinked... and blinked again. That was not the answer he had expected. It was much deeper and more complex than he had thought. Maedhros took notice and sent him back to bed.

As he gazed back into the treeline, he could not help but think of his father. All of this had happened because Fëanor could not be satisfied. He had seven sons that he had cared for and taught, but he had not accepted that as his legacy. He wanted more.

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"Maitimo, come and see. Your brother has been born!" Maitimo bounded over. Only twenty years old and he was already a big brother!

Fëanáro directed him to sit in a nearby chair and hold his arms like so. Then, he gently set the sleeping babe in his arms. Maitimo wondered at how tiny the child was, his fingers spindley, his nose just a dot, his ears like the shells of a small snail.

"What is his name Atto?"

Fëanáro looked down on the two of them, tears welling in his eyes and love in his heart. "Makalaurë, his name is Makalaurë."

Maitimo looked down at his young brother and suddenly felt a wave of anxiety wash over him. How was he to be a big brother to this tiny, delicate creature? He feared he would crush him by accident.

Fëanáro noticed his son's breathing speed up. "What is it my son? What is wrong?"

Maitimo choked out a sob. "I don't know how to be a big brother. I will break him, I know it!"

Fëanáro chuckled as he took the baby back into his arms. "You will not break him. Soon he will grow and be strong enough to play with you. From there, your job will come naturally to you I think."

Maitimo looked at him, lip trembling and eyes still filling with tears. "But what is my job?"

"Your job comes down to a saying that my atto once told me. 'Care for those younger than yourself. Teach them, guide them, protect them. If your life amounts to nothing else, they will be your legacy.' To put it more simply, teach him what you know. If you can do that, you will be great among elder brothers."

Maitimo smiled and reached his arms out for the baby. Fëanáro set Makalaurë in his arms once again. Maitimo was no longer afraid of crushing him.

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"Fëanáro? Come here a moment." Fëanaró rolled his eyes. Ever since his father had married that... woman, he had been trying to get them to bond. Now Indis had gone and reproduced, which meant that Fëanáro would have to "bond" with the whelp as well. Ugh.

"Yes father?" He got up and walked into the room where his father was holding the child.

"Come, meet your brother. I have named him Ñolofinwë." He gave his father a nonplussed look and bent over to look at the beastly creature.

"Greetings, son of my father. Just know, I care nothing for you. Goodbye." He straightened and made to walk away, but Finwë called him back.

"Fëanáro, sit down! You are going to hold your brother so that he may become familiar with you." Fëanáro rolled his eyes again and stomped to a chair and slumped into it, arms crossed.

"It is only half my brother." He muttered under his breath. Finwë rose and passed the baby to him.

He held him a moment and asked his father, "And why am I to care about this?"

Finwë sighed. He would never stop trying to make peace within his family, but he knew already that it was unlikely to ever come to fruition. "You should always care for those younger than yourself Fëanáro. They will be your legacy. Whatever you teach them, wherever you guide them, they will remember. You will always be a part of them."

Fëanáro looked down upon his brother in disdain. Perhaps he could teach it to be like him. Perhaps it would become his loyal servant forever. Perhaps having a brother wouldn't be so bad.

#halfelvenweek #eldarion #arwen #elrond #elladan #elrohir #maedhros #feanor #maglor #finwë #legacy #definitely was not thinking about hamilton while writing this #Fëanor didn’t take his own advice #Fëanor was an angsty teenager

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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‘today’s silm vocaloid song: clear sky engine (クリヤスカイ機関) by nyanyannya and hara ft. rin kagamine and zunko tohoku

this one’s about elrond, maglor, and the sudden non-ending of the world. you know that thing where you build an elaborate fandom video in your head for a completely unrelated song, but you don’t have the most basic art skills you’d need to make it a reality? yeah, i square that circle by writing them out. here, have an extremely long songfic/filk/commentary/thing

It was just another day, beneath a black sky

The bustle of camp churned on around me

I wasn’t paying attention to what my hands were doing

Dreaming of a shining star-lit sky

we open on elrond, living in a world about to die. the fëanorians were forced to abandon amon ereb years ago, and now the last of the host ekes out a precarious nomadic existence, raiding deserted villages for food and losing more people they can’t replace with each battle. they’re still doing better than everyone else on the mainland, though. their blades, at least, remain sharp

(the smoke from the fires of angband has risen to cover the whole continent in dark clouds. some of the sun’s warmth still gets through, and on good nights the star of high hope is still faintly visible, but the light-filled skies of old are little more than memory. all the survivors know that the end is near. it’s only a matter of time)

He’d broken a promise he’d made to us

So I was a little more annoyed at him than usual

He chatted with me while I worked to make up for it

And I made all my usual complaints

elrond and elros are at this point... i’d say very early teens? not that they had much of a childhood; the fëanorians are so short-staffed the twins have been doing odd jobs around camp pretty much since it became clear they weren’t going to run away. today elrond is taking stock of the medical supplies, less because he has any interest in the healing arts than because it’s a job that needs doing and everyone else is busy

maglor is hovering within talking distance, doing elrond-doesn’t-care-what. the twins’ relationship with maglor is extremely complicated to say the least, their mercurial hellbeast protector who scares the shit out of everyone else they’ve ever met and who has stood between them and the darkness for as long as they can remember. recently, he promised to stay with the twins while they did something difficult, but he failed to do so for a whole host of reasons, including getting into a two-hour shrieking match with maedhros at the last possible moment. elros shrugged it off, like elros shrugs everything off, but elrond is a simmering cauldron of adolescent rage at the best of times

which is why maglor’s checking on him, giving him an outlet for his anger before it can turn into despair. because what would be the point, in the end? they’re all going to die anyway. one of the reasons maglor’s resisted sending the kids to balar so hard is that no matter where they are, eventually morgoth will sweep down and destroy them all. there’s nowhere safe left, nothing they can do to protect them. none of this is even new, it’s a shadow that’s hung over them all since the twins grew old enough to understand this

so maglor and elrond chat, or rather elrond grumbles incessantly and maglor snarks as upliftingly as he can remember to. it’s a day like any other, nothing about it to distinguish it from the hundreds that came before or however many will come after. that is, until one of the lesser minions comes over, yelling, ‘boss! boss! you have to see this!’

elrond turns around. for the first time ever, he sees true hope on her face

“Have you finally grown tired of us?” I hissed

But in that moment excitement ran round the campsite

And someone cried out with joy

“The hour we thought would never be, the return of the light, has finally come to pass!”

far, far away, the hosts of the valar are landing on the shores of beleriand. disembarking from their luminous ships, clad in radiant armour and carrying blessed weapons, their brilliance pierces the dark fog that has settled over beleriand for so long. shining like the stars come to earth, the hallowed army of valinor begins its long march towards the gates of angband. far above, ships riding jets of light slice open the smog

this news - this unexpected, unbelievable, impossible miracle bestowed unto doomed beleriand, this chance that their enemy might actually fall - is the greatest thing anyone in camp’s heard all century. maybe in more prosperous times the host would have groused about the valar finally seeing fit to get off their asses, but in this world turned to ash any chance at victory is to be celebrated. the minions throw a massive impromptu party, of the kind they haven’t since before sirion. elros is right there with them, singing off-key and laughing as loud as anyone else. even maedhros cracks a tiny relieved smile

maglor watches the festivities from the outside, more genuinely optimistic than he thought he was still capable of. elrond joins him, brow furrowed as he tries to comprehend it all. they talk

“It feels like a dream I’ll never wake up from”

“What are you blabbering about now?”

elrond is voiced by zunko, maglor by rin. the song’s more of a dialogue than a duet, so i’ll be bolding maglor’s lines

The sheet of paper I held in my hands read

“The hosts of the West have come! Our world is saved!”

the letter’s from gil-galad, or at least his administrative apparatus. it’s not even that hostile; apparently the armies of the gods showing up out of nowhere to save them all from certain doom has him in a magnanimous mood. there’s some drivel about surrendering and eärendil and all wrongs being forgiven, but neither maglor nor elrond is paying attention to it

“Hey, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Love and justice and valour and hope”

“I remember the sea of blood you drowned everything in for them”

elrond didn’t really have any formal schooling - nobody had the time - but he has managed to pick up a lot of stuff from the stories the people around them tell. that the fëanorians came to middle-earth for high noble ideals, and that it was trying to fulfil those ideals that led them into darkness, is something maglor told him once, when he was in a darkly honest mood

“Haha, that’s just details, everybody makes that kind of mistake when they’re young”

“Why are you like this?”

a mood maglor’s obviously not in at the moment, if he’s laughing off the kinslayings like this; elrond knows this isn’t how he actually feels about them. normally elrond would just roll his eyes and move on with his life, but things are different today

The camp was full of laughter, as if everyone had lost their minds

elrond’s not used to happiness. not full, unironic happiness, untainted by the shadow of their inevitable death, not from the fëanorians. the sheer jubliation suffusing camp is fundamentally alien to him, a child of a world about to end. he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that maybe they won’t all get eaten by dragons. he doesn’t know what to do with the hope in everyone’s eyes

so instead, when maglor wanders away from the party, elrond catches him with a song

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! For certain”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the fears I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine songs I can give to you”

maglor’s been teaching elrond how to do this, how to snatch someone into a world of music and throw your voice at them until one of you can’t take it any more. maglor wins this one, as usual; even if his song is incapable of anything but violence he’s got centuries of experience on elrond, enough to turn the sharp edges of his voice into blades in elrond’s hands. and that is what he’s doing, clumsy and harsh as he is; he’s trying to give elrond a reason to hope

elrond is the one who breaks the spell, dropping the melody, letting the music dissolve into the air. maglor flashes him a grin and walks off, humming merrily. elrond just stands there, still unable to understand

I’ve heard it before, it’s all anyone can talk about, even if I try to avoid it it stabs into my ears

cut past a decade or so, to well into the war of wrath. elrond and elros are in their mid-teens now. they’re still with the fëanorians, but these days the fëanorian warband is effectively an auxiliary unit to the amanyar army, skirting around the edges of that much larger force. for the first time in a long while, elrond and elros have regular-ish contact with people outside the fëanorian sphere of influence, mostly peripheral edain and the sindar who run messages between the camps. it’s different, talking to new people

(the sky is still covered with smog, but it’s gloomy grey, not oppressive black. the sun is faintly visible through it, most of the time. the rain is much less poisonous than it used to be, and on good nights you can almost see the moon. the closer they get to angband, the darker the clouds grow)

“It is as the gods have decreed, soon the darkness will be swept away and the Enemy will be cast down

And after the war in the purified world, we will all live happily together

Building new homes in a land unmarred by evil”

the people outside the host are much more optimistic about the future, for one. the fëanorian minions are happy morgoth is getting trounced but they don’t really talk about what comes after that, like they can’t imagine a world without war. the sindar, and especially the edain, on the other hand, have all these plans about the cities they’ll build, the arts they’ll perfect, the children they’ll raise in a world without danger. elros is super into this; he barely spends time with the fëanorians any more, he’s so busy going between different edain camps, making friends, planning for the future. elrond, though...

Even my twin knows what future to reach out for...

elrond doesn’t know what to do with any of this. the very concept that someday the war will end and the sky will clear and he’ll have a bright future is still something he doesn’t fully understand. even more, he’s defined himself for so long as not-a-fëanorian, now he’s regularly interacting with people who doubtlessly aren’t he’s having trouble figuring out what else he is. he’s stuck between people who are lowkey hoping they’ll die gloriously in battle and people who have been dreaming about what they’d do in a world without darkness all their lives, and he doesn’t know what he even wants, not really, not yet

so he keeps on living, just like he always has. he’s been promoted to sick tent dogsbody and is learning how to heal with song from the last minion who can kind of still do it. he acts as a proxy between the fëanorians and the more timid outsiders they keep running into. when he goes (or elros drags him) exploring in other camps, he keeps track of every new detail he comes across, in case it’s somehow useful later

and he keeps talking to maglor, with anger and spite and sarcasm and whatever other emotion he’s covering his uncertainties with today. maglor always listens, usually offers to help, and sometimes elrond even lets him. the fëanorian camp settles into a rhythm of buildup-fight-recovery-buildup-fight-recovery, so regular it lulls elrond into complacency. he takes the future he still doesn’t quite believe in one day at a time, until suddenly the ground crumbles beneath his feet

You say it’s to ‘fulfill our ideals’ but what you mean by that is ‘to sate our bloodlust’, I know

With their blades and teeth sharpened for battle, the kinslayers broke away from the light and disappeared into the shadows

there’s a whole mountain of reasons why, as they draw near to angband, the dregs of the fëanorian host abruptly peel off from the valinorean army and vanish into the night. they know they're more effective as a stealthy shock ambush unit, they’re somewhat concerned the amanyar will turn on them the second morgoth is no longer a problem, they're making one last desperate rush for the silmarils, all that and more. it’s not the first time they’ve suddenly packed up and left before their enemies can react, probably not even the first time they’ve done it to the hosts of valinor. there’s just one little difference

Leaving us behind? Leaving you behind

they’re not taking the twins. said twins only find out about this, like, the day before they decamp. maedhros’ justification is something about them not being able to support noncombatants on the march, but the twins believe that about as much as they believe that the fëanorians are doing this for any kind of hope. elros, of course, was half-planning on leaving anyway, going off to chase his own ambitions with his new edain posse. he copes with it pretty well, relatively

but elrond’s mind goes blank. once he thought the day they let them go would be the best day of his life, but now it’s come it feels so wrong, and this horrible coldness is seeping into him. in a flash of what feels like foresight, he suddenly knows the people who raised him will never come back. how dare - why - he can’t -

with a sharp desperate burst of sound that’s a surprise to even himself, elrond lashes out a song to catch maglor

“For ten more minutes, one more week, half a year, please, let me stay with you!”

“In a year’s time, ten years’ time, a hundred years’ time, we’ll see the starlit sky together”

“What if one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight times I begged you not to go?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine of your other wishes I’ll hear”

and elrond just stops. he lets the song trail off, staring at maglor. he’s in an incredibly weird mood, with something that could almost be compassion in his eyes

there’s only one way he can find out what’s happening, elrond realises

“In that case - !”

maglor was never really demonstratively affectionate with the twins. it would never have come off as real on his part, and they wouldn’t have believed it in any case. still, he supported them. he let them trail behind them, all but cling to the backs of his legs, in those first horrible weeks when they were terrified of absolutely everything. he taught them to ride and he taught them to read, how to reinforce a blade with nothing but song and close a wound with needle and thread. on the darkest nights, when all the world was filled by the howling beasts of morgoth and the wailing of the unhallowed dead, he held them tight and flared his own fires high, a warm smoky bonfire between them and the void. he answered their questions, and told them stories

and sometimes, he tried to be kind

“Sing me a lullaby like the flat of a blade”

“Which one would you like?”

“I want to see a flower that will still bloom”

“I know just the one”

“I don’t care what kind of monster you are! Just please stay with me, for even one more tomorrow...”

“...I’m sorry”

“What do you mean?”

“You were given your name because your parents wanted you to see the stars someday”

it was easy for maglor to justify keeping the twins when they didn’t have a future. the shadow of death blotted out the sky, so why not hold them close for whatever little time they had left? no matter where they were, the void would soon claim them all

except it didn’t. in the end they were not forsaken. the sacred light came out of the west to burn away the darkness and finish the war he once thought they could never win. the hosts of the valar have gotten farther in decades than the noldor did in centuries, and soon enough they’ll cast the enemy down and release the world from his terrible maw. and then the future the free peoples dreamed of will stretch out before them, full of possibilities beyond measure

and that’s why maglor has to let them go. the magnificent people that elrond and elros are already becoming will only wither among hopeless kinslayers who have nothing left but the sword. to flourish into their full glorious selves, they need to be with people who dream, who can travel towards the future alongside the twins with light hearts and songs on their lips. maglor refuses to let his own darkness drown the last people in the world he does not hate. elrond deserves so, so much better than maglor is capable of giving him. he deserves to see the stars

hearing all that, there’s only one thing elrond can say

“You can’t even keep one miserable promise! Don’t pretend like you’re my father, kinslayer!”

and that’s the last elrond sees of maglor. the fëanorians vanish in the middle of the night, leaving elrond and elros (and about half a dozen minions who are taking their last possible chance to get out) behind. elros takes up with his edain buddies and starts making contacts and forging alliances. elrond winds up in gil-galad’s orbit, surrounded by people who are very understanding about how awful his childhood was, which just pisses him off more. he doesn’t throw tantrums or refuse to work, those aren’t luxuries he was raised with, but he spends a fair bit of time spurning every bit of sympathy and aid he’s offered and trying not to cry himself to sleep

with time, though, he finds a place. it starts with círdan, the first person who believes elrond about what his time with the fëanorians was like. then he befriends erestor, and then gil-galad starts actually respecting the way elrond feels, and then he gets officially taken on as an apprentice healer. he starts learning about his own ancestors and their peoples, and reaching out for stories he never knew could be his. as the final battle of the iron hells begins, elrond is doing... better

and soon, the hope that no one in beleriand once dreamed would be fulfilled becomes a reality

And then, as if it had never held power, the darkness was cast down...

they win the war. the armies of angband are crushed. the peaks of thangorodrim are torn down. the prisoners of the deepest pits of the iron hells are freed. the forces of evil are scattered to the four winds. morgoth, the fallen vala himself, is defeated and captured and bound with great chains, unable to ever hurt anyone again. the precious remnants of the light of the trees, the remaining two silmarils, are recovered. the dark clouds evaporate, and for the first time elrond can remember, the sky is perfectly clear. the war of the jewels is finally over

elrond has grown so much since the day he first heard that the hosts of the west had come. he still can’t quite believe it

They held a great celebration beneath a star-speckled sky I’d never seen before

“The world is saved and we are freed! Evil has been vanquished forevermore”

The triumphant voices of the generals poured out over the victory feast while the stars shone true above the happy ending

the soldiers of valinor and the people of beleriand (what’s left of them) throw a truly massive party. it’s still tinged with their grief over everything they’ve lost, but the atmosphere is primarily one of ecstatic relief. they’re alive, and they’ve come out the other side. dwarvish tailors dance with high maiar, humans who don’t remember the moon get drunk with elves who remember cuiviénen. even after the official festivities die down and people start hashing out what they want to do next, the general mood remains buoyant and cheerful. at long last, they live in a world without danger

none of it feels real to elrond. gil-galad’s talking about building a kingdom on the other side of the blue mountains, elros and his grand edain alliance are trying to bully the maiar into letting them set up on tol eressëa, and elrond feels so disconnected from it all, like he’s watching someone else’s life. he’s happy the enemy has been overcome, of course he is, but he’s not feeling the overwhelming joy everyone else is. he can’t let his guard down yet, something is still wrong -

Except he hasn’t come back, they haven’t come back, where did they go, what have they done?

The word raced around as fast as the wind, giving me an answer I never wanted to hear -

where is maglor? the fëanorians broke off to fight the war their own way, but the war is over now, where are they? they were so happy to hear that the amanyar had arrived, he can’t imagine them not thrilled to see the enemy they hated more than anything else fall. in the warm afterglow of victory, it feels like even their sins might be forgiven, and they could finally go home. they have nothing else left; why wouldn’t they take that outstretched hand?

but nobody’s so much as glimpsed their flag since some time before the final battle. elrond quietly assumes, perhaps even hopes, that they all died fighting, and yet he can’t shake the cold dread crawling up his spine

elrond has mixed feelings about the silmarils, and doesn’t particularly care to be near them. by the time the news of their theft reaches him, maedhros and maglor have already fled into the night

Still driven on by their oath, they turned their blades on their kin one last time

“And stole away the hallowed light”

Yes, that light which sank all of our lands beneath a deep dark layer of corpses and ash

all elrond sees is the aftermath, the blood sinking into the ground. it’s far from the first time he’s seen people killed, but somehow now it’s all hitting him, all at once. he sees the bodies and it knocks the breath out of him. all he can see is the dead, from finwë on down, the rotting carcasses of every last person who was slaughtered for these gems, a whole continent bleached with death. they call the silmarils the most beautiful things in the world, jewels shining with the very light of creation, but elrond can’t see it for the blood they’re dripping with

that’s the immediate thing that has his hands shaking and his breath running cold. by morning it’s had a chance to sink in a little, and -

He lied he lied he lied he lied

maglor regretted the kinslayings! elrond knows he did! it was never even something he actually said, it was obvious from the way he talked about them. every single one was a complete disaster, nothing the fëanorians ever got out of them was worth what they lost in the process, and afterwards things always got worse in ways they never expected. and maglor hated the person the kinslayings had turned him into, elrond spent enough time around him to pick up on that much! surely he’d do anything to not have to commit another one?

apparently not! apparently all that regret, all that loss, the arguments and the nightmares and the coldly determined efforts to stop them following his path, it all meant nothing! he still gave in to despair or maedhros or whatever, killed yet more people, stole from the army whose return he said was like a dream come to life, spat in the face of his last chance to go home, and vanished! gil-galad’s people were right! he really is nothing more than a monster!

the shock of it all makes something snap in elrond, whatever fragile optimism he absorbed from the people around him draining away until he feels completely hollow. hundreds of years of suffering and death, and for what?

Smeared with the blood of untold hundreds, untold thousands, untold millions of people

Did they buy us peace for even half a year, even a week, even ten minutes?

Noooooooo!

Even the very land we lived on crumbled and drowned

What was the point?! What was the point?! What was the point?!

I feel like I’m going insaaaaaaane

morgoth may have fallen, but beleriand is dead! nothing remains, not the lush green lands of the stories, or even the dessicated forests of his childhood, just desolate earth and the devouring sea. almost everywhere he’s ever known, almost everyone who lived and fought and dreamed there, are lost forever. nothing was saved, everything was destroyed, what good is a clear blue sky when there’s nothing beneath it?! how can they call this a happy ending?!

elrond can’t see any light here, all the great battles and heroic deeds seem absolutely pointless in the face of everyone and everything immolated in the endless grasping for these gems. the hosts of valinor leave the continent they shattered, the remnants of gil-galad’s people escape the raging forces of nature, and the survivors bicker and fight over resources just like the fëanorian minions elrond grew up around. the world is never going to get better, he realises. the dream of a paradise will never come true

and then one night, running a message down the craggy still-turbulent coastline, he hears a snatch of a distant, familiar voice

I can hear a voice whittled away to a weapon singing what could almost be a lullaby -

elrond leaps off the ridge and onto the rocky beach, scrambling over the uneven ground. he’s heard the rumours about where maedhros and/or maglor went - all of them, there’s dozens of them, he didn’t pay any particular heed to the ones where maglor wandered the coast, but if they were right, if he’s here -

his own voice has grown strong over the years, solid and forceful and mature. elrond screams his song into the emptiness, hoping against hope it will be heard

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! Isn’t that so?!”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the griefs I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine days for you to live!”

“That must be it...”

the impression of a hand touching his cheek, the ghost of a smile. for a moment someone else’s voice slips into the ebb and flow of his song, a shadow reaches out to wipe the tears off his face. live, it whispers. you who i held dearest last, live

elrond’s breath catches in his throat, and the song, and the shadow, vanish. it’s just him on a forsaken beach, the only sounds the waves crashing and the gulls calling. the sky is completely overcast, the clouds dull and grey. he watches them drift along for a while, as his pulse slows down and his airways clear up. live, the word echoes in his mind

he waits until his breathing is back to normal and the churning emotions inside him have settled into a form he can handle. then he wipes his face and clambers back onto the ridge

(life. it’s not much, but it’s enough. it has to be. his home is destroyed, but he is alive; his family is broken, but he is alive. he is alive, and they want him to live, as much as he can while he still has a chance. the world he lives in will never be perfect, but he knows how to work with that)

(and besides - elros, círdan, gil-galad, erestor, the other healers, the small knot of elves of all stripes who seem determined to follow his banner. he hasn’t lost everything, not yet, and he won’t let the world take away what he has left. he’ll never abandon those he loves)

the clouds are lightening. soon the stars will be out. elrond takes a deep breath, and starts running towards his future and the person he’s going to be -

thousands of years later, a memory resurfaces

“Two million, two hundred and forty-one thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine days... Ah, yes. I know I forgot to say it earlier, but you did a very good job”

a smattering of notes are lifted by the ocean breeze. they travel inland, across the worn-down mountains, around the weathered hills, above the tangled forests, up the untamed rivers, and finally into the hidden valley

in the gardens of imladris, lord elrond hears a voice he hasn’t for millennia. a watering can slips out of his hands, and suddenly he can’t breathe

It was just another day, beneath a dark sky

The ocean and the wind roared on all around me

I wasn’t paying attention to how my tears were falling

Trying to remember a clear star-lit sky

that youthful dream of a world free from evil never came true. the shadow came back, and it kept coming back, taking his people, his friends, his family, his wife. everything they built after the defeat of morgoth has been reduced to dust by the weight of time, and every year more of it slips through his fingers. elrond doesn’t know how much more of it he can endure. he doesn’t know how much more he can lose

he chases that scrap of music all the way to the seashore

I ran down the path between the rocks and the spray following that voice I never knew why I loved

But in the end I could only stand weeping

elrond searches up and down the coast, scouring the shoreline for clues, asking the locals, listening. sometimes he hears whispers of song, long wailing lamentations that make his heart ache all the more now that he understands how that despair feels. occasionally it’s loud or consistent enough he can track it, trying to pinpoint the singer’s location in the intense storms of bitterness and grief

but he never finds anything

“You fool, he’s already gone. Like he was never there at all...”

all that’s left is a voice on the wind

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daywillcomeagain · 6 years

Text

elwing

i’ve started a series in which i do retellings of the events of a tolkien character’s life, from their perspective, framed to make them sympathetic and help the reader understand their choices. you can read the others here.

2K words under the cut!

elwing is three years old when it happens.

she grows like a human, already toddling around, and so when it happens her parents give her the silmaril and tell her go with Brithiel, do whatever she tells you to, alright? and she is too young to understand the situation at the time but old enough to hear the fear in her parents' voices and nod without argument.

she may grow like a human, but she has the memory of an elf. for years later she will remember that day. the screams, the clash of metal on metal. the gurgling sounds of those whose lungs are too full of blood to scream.

she didn't hear the screams of her big brothers, so she clung to the idea that they were out there as tightly as she clung to the silmaril in her hand. that they'd come save her just like they did when they told her bedtime stories.

when she hears her father scream, she realizes that her big brothers are not coming to save her. it is only years later, long after she arrives at the Havens, that she realizes they are dead. she wonders if they were gurgling, or if they were just too far away. she doesn't dare ask. she knows that, if they had screamed, she would have known.

she throws tantrums on the road to the Havens of Sirion, at first. it doesn't take long for her to get tired of the novelty of adventure. she can't keep up with the adults, so she is held the whole way. they get worse and more frequent as the food supply shrinks. mostly the tantrums aren't about that, though, or the food or the songs or not being allowed to run around and explore. they're the same. i miss ada, i miss emë, i miss eluréd and elurín, and she fights against whoever is carrying her, as though she plans to run all the way back to menegroth, as though if she does so they will be there again. they just hold her tighter.

eventually they arrive. the Havens of Sirion. they are less impressive than she imagined. she had been imagining--well, she had been imagining home.

home is a palace. home is walls and tall buildings and soft pillows and servants and poetry and song bouncing off the walls.

this is--a refugee camp, trying very hard to pretend it is not. the silmaril that hangs down from elwing's neck is easily the nicest thing to be seen for miles; heads swivel to look at it. flags and scarves are everywhere, colored with bright dyes, but it is clear when you look at them what plants they come from: berries that are just that shade of purple, pinks reminiscent of the flowers that grow on the banks of the river, a flag flying in the wind that perfectly matches the color of the grass. people here have what they have carried, and no more. there is song on top of the cries of a baby being rocked to sleep, but there is no poetry being recited.

she should be excited, that she can finally run around without supervision, that she can explore and hear new voices and run as far as she wants and sing as loud as she wants. and she is. but she's--not sure if she's three or four, really, she tried to count days on the journey but she lost track quickly--and she can't help but feel a little disappointed.

they find her a house, of course. people deliver her meals, for the first few years, until she's old enough that she can be trusted to get her own.

she holds on to the silmaril, always. it's her last memory of her parents, of her ada pressing it into her hand before--before she doesn't see him anymore--before she hears him screaming--

it is about this age that she learns that the silmaril is why they died. she wears it tighter around her neck, after that, tight enough to leave pink marks when she takes it off to sleep. some days, she doesn't even take it off to sleep, just loosen the necklace.

when she is eight, more people come, a stream of them. the havens are crowded. people remark about measures to help with that, at least for the humans, who can get sick. the food is stretched thinner and thinner at first, but as the new people settle in they have more hunters and farmers and it evens back out. the rulers of the newcomers--idril and tuor--take it upon themselves to organize the Havens, giving orders, making buildings of stone. (stone will not actually stand up better than cloth if morgoth or the kinslayers decide to come, but it's nice to pretend that it would, so they all let themselves believe.)

when elwing is a teenager as the Men reckon it, she becomes obsessed with Grandmother Lúthien.

lúthien, who won the silmaril. who killed orcs and vampires, who defeated sauron and even morgoth himself. lúthien, who was shot at by the kinslayers and was not hurt, who won their dog over to her simply by being a better person than them. flowers grew where she walked; she could sing down buildings; she could sing the dead back to life.

elwing sings as loud as she can. the dead do not come back to life.

she hears that idril and tuor have a son, only off in age by her by a few months. idril is eleven--tuor is human--

she goes to find their son.

months later, they whisper long into the night, looking up at the stars:

"i was seven."

"i was three."

"it's stupid, but--i still flinch from campfires, sometimes--"

"i hate the sound of coughing."

their hands brush. it was inevitable, really.

they get married when they are twenty-two. he has nobody to ask for her hand. she has nobody to walk her down the aisle. but sirion watches them, cheering, the people she has grown up with, and it is almost as good. her heart is light, and the silmaril around her neck shines.

later that year, idril and tuor announce that they are leaving. for valinor, they say. earendil is excited for them.

elwing--bites her lip. no ship that has gone to valinor has ever returned. there are two explanations for that, she does not say, because everyone knows it. instead, she says: and then we will rule the havens.

yes, eärendil says, i suppose we will.

they leave. elwing and eärendil rule, as best as they can. eärendil starts sailing, longer and longer, as though he hopes that if he sails far enough he will catch a glimpse of his parents.

the first messenger comes, from the kinslayers. give us the silmaril and we will leave you alone. she wonders if they sent that to her parents. she remembers the noises, of people choking on their own blood, of not knowing if those people were her brothers. they had seemed so old to her at the time, six whole years old, but now she thinks of them as the children they were.

she wonders if the messenger was the one that killed them before she sends him away.

they have two children. twins. elrond and elros. she sings, and recites poetry, long lays of sindarin, as she cradles them to her breast. when they are older, she teaches them the certhas, not the tengwar, first.

more messengers come. eärendil is gone more and more. he has finally admitted he is searching for valinor. they fight and reconcile and cry. she spends so much of her time crying now, before wiping her eyes and splashing her face with water and giving a speech to her people. everybody is too busy looking at the light that glows on her chest to notice. she stays up all night, watching the horizon for messengers or worse. her face is a mess of red skin and dark circles. she is thirty-five, though she looks younger, and she is unbearably tired. she would have given up long ago, were it not for her people, and then her sons came around, and she could no longer think of giving up.

she is the first one to see the banners. she runs first, not to the alarm bells, but to the room of her children. "hide," she hisses. "run. now."

they do, wide-eyed. they are older than she was. they are six: the exact age her older brothers had been. they were twins too. she knows the kinslayers will show no mercy. she has heard by now that her brothers starved to death in a forest, that they were not there that day. images flash through her mind: her sons, spluttering and aspirating blood. her sons, skewered like hogs. shot like deer. starving to death, slowly, so gaunt you can count their ribs--

--she does not do what her dad did and give them the silmaril. she keeps it herself, wears it bright. hopefully they will target her and pass them by. she does not wish to pass this life on to her children. the kinslayings over the silmaril will end with her, one way or another.

she is cornered on a cliff, swords cutting off any escape, and as her eyes flicker over them she wonders: which of you killed my mother? which of you killed my father? which of you drove my brothers in the forest to starve to death? which of you are going to kill my sons?

she knows that she is going to die. she knows that they will get exactly what they want, if she dies. she knows she will scream, on the point of their sword, and she does not know if her sons are far enough away not to hear. she knows that it has been many, many years since she cared about her own life here.

she jumps to her doom silently.

before she hits the water, she is flying, wings spread wide.

she flies and flies, west, west, as fast as she can, until she sees his ship.

she does not land; she falls in a tumble. she is so very, very tired. she sees his look of shock and recognition, and then she falls asleep.

she wakes up and she is herself again. it would seem a dream to her were she not aboard his ship. "here," she says weakly, unclasping the silmaril from around her neck, and putting it in his hand, "take it. i don't want it anymore."

they sail to valinor. she would be surprised when they dock in the sea leading to beaches scattered with gemstones, but stranger things have happened to her now. he tells her not to come--they are not supposed to be here, and nobody who leaves for valinor ever returns, and there are two explanations for that--and she jumps into the white foam beside him and takes his hand.

they go to valinor, and he begs. he begs pity for the noldor. he speaks of his mother, who walked for a decade as a child over icy wastes. he speaks of how gondolin fell around him when he was seven years old and how he still cannot look at fire without his stomach turning. he speaks of his grandfather's stories from the nirnaeth, of mountains of bodies. he says, if they could only have sent their children to be free of the ban and live safe here, you would have received boatfulls of babies, do not tell me now that this was a just punishment.

and, miraculously, they listen.

they give eärendil and elwing a choice: to be mortal or immortal, elf or man.

earendil says: i am weary of this world, but i never wish to be parted from you.

and elwing, who had such a short time ago been exhausted, thinks of luthien. she thinks of how the silmaril was said to have aged her, quickly even by mortal standards. she thinks of her exhaustion, her hopeless dive off a cliff, ready for death.

she imagines what it would be to spend an eternity unafraid next to the man that she loves, an eternity bathed in the radiant light of a silmaril, the entirety of forever stretching before them and the knowledge that they do not have to use a second of it watching for enemies. she has lost two homes now. she imagines what it would be like to live somewhere and know that it was permanent.

they call Valinor the Undying Lands. she realizes then that it is the proximity to death that she is weary of, not life. it was just that, before she stepped foot on valinor, those were the same thing.

she makes her choice.

eärendil’s ship flies through the sky at night. she watches it, and an ocean away, elrond and elros watch too.

#elwing #different names for the same thing #my writing

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the-neverending-errand · 6 years

Text

Siren Songs - Fic

“'Twas in the Land of Willows that I heard th' unfathomed breath

“Of the Horns of Ylmir calling—and shall hear them till my death.”

~ From the Horns of Ylmir, The Shaping of Middle-Earth, Tolkien

((Note: Please check the content warnings carefully. This has not been proof read for more than spellings, and, though canonical to the Earendil of this blog, some of it is misrepresentative due to it also being me ditching a really bad mental health day onto a character. A couple of further notes are at the bottom. Quote at the top is taken from a version of the song Tuor sung in the land of willows, that awoke sea-longing in both himself and Earendil. Ylmir is Gnomish name for Ulmo.

((This is very long and rambley and I’m not exactly fond of it but eh.))

His father sings of the Horns of Ulmo, when Earendil is but seven years of age. It is at a memorial feast for all the dead of Gondolin - and all those who have died since, and the people had been begging for that specific song. Though they cannot stay forever, this place is under Ulmo's protection; they can rest and heal and grieve for the time they have, until again they must press on to the sea. He does not understand why father insists on going to the sea, not until that moment.

Earendil does not hear the Horns of Ulmo.

What he hears is an ancient, formless voice. And what he feels is something almost grabbing his soul, tugging at it. Embedding itself there, slowly draining pieces of himself away.

He gasps and his father turns to him, 'no' on his lips and horror in his eyes.

None of the elve can hear it, not yet.

But Earendil does not notice, for all he can hear is the rushing of waves and the voice like a whisper against his ear.

He does not realise father has taken him away from the feast for hours. Not until he manages to fight past the all-consuming of the ocean. The voice is still there, whispering come come come to me come but he can ignore it for now. Almost, anyway. He is cradelled on his father's lap - father who is sobbing and begging for mercy - and mother is running her fingers through his hair, and father's too, and a healer is fussing about them.

"Why are you crying, father? What is wrong?"

His voice is small, and father only holds him closer, rocks them both, and sobs all the harder.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Shhh, shh, I love you, you are safe, all will be well, shhh."

Come, little peredhel, come unto the seas. Come little peredhel, come and join with me.

Earendil burrows his face into father's chest, reaching for mother with one hand. She takes it, kissing it and holding it close to her heart.

He does not understand exactly what is wrong, not yet, only that something has immutably and irreparably changed.

By the time they reach Sirion, Earendil knows why father must go out onto the sea. Why he cannot be with them. He can ignore the calling for his lessons, and he plays with Princess Elwing. But whenever he stops, his eyes turn towards the ocean, and its siren call. Mother sighs and rocks him.

The next year he has to wade into the shallows to silence it. Princess Elwing is starting to do better in her classes than he, for he can rarely concentrate enough to pay attention. Mother is unhappy, but for a while it is enough.

After he turns ten, but before he turns eleven, father starts taking him out on his shorter journeys, teaching him to sail the boat. Its a trade, at least; he learns to fish with both lines and nets, and this is the most he has seen of his father in years. He declares that, someday, he will sail all the way to the west, and force the Valar to save his people. All of them. The Princess is proud of his attempts, and he is proud of how adept she is at the studies of state. Mother tells him that, at his birth, she foresaw that he will succeed.

He turns fifteen, and by now he knows what happens if he does not go to sea; the world turns grey, until he is driven from it by the fact only love of the sea remains. The sea is a jealous lover, and is stealing away every other bit of joy and love he has. He hates the sea for it, but he still loves it. And there are only three loves left to him - his parents, the sea, and Princess Elwing. Mother tries to hide it from him, but she cries each time he leaves.

He is twenty two. His wedding is planned, and for a time the sirens are at bay. His joy at his marriage, about bonding with Elwing, is so great it drowns it out. But not all is well; his parents have promised to stay to see him wed, but father is old. Not only is he old, but the call of the sea has consumed him. He can barely sit up for all the energy it has stolen, let alone stay. He goes to sea and is well on the waters, but he comes back and it is only worse; the joy never returns. He knows that, soon, he will lose his father to the ocean. Father leaves on his wedding night, even as he consecrates his marriage. Mother leaves too.

When he is twenty nine, his sons are born. They are beautiful and everything to him, and he loves them with all he is. Everything pales next to them. Everything but the sea.

He tries. He does everything he can to silence the longing . After two years Elwing begs him to try again; he is so consumed by the song that everyone worries, that he not even barely functions as a person. Still, he does not wish to leave his family for as long as he can get away with; he manages to make a deal with the siren-song - he will not go to the ocean yet, but he will build a ship worthy of her, and capable of taking him all of the way west. Cirdan hesitates, but agrees to help. Earendil will travel west, with three mortals he also grows to love on more ways than one, and he will plead to the Valar for both of his races.

He fully expects to die either on or at the conclusion of his quest.

And, honestly, he's fine with that.

Maybe, if he's dead, the sirens will finally shut up.

He goes further and further and further, giving the ocean more and more of himself in the hopes of a few more moments, a little more time, another laugh or story or smile with his sons.

It is never enough.

He tries to wait until he cannot physically stay longer, until the longing has drained so much of him away that he is little more than flesh stretched over bone, unable to perceive anything but the call. Then he drags himself to the sea once more, and sets off. Elwing frowns a little harder each time she stands on the shore and watches him leave, holds him a little tighter each time he comes back.

He pushes himself to breaking point every time. At least for a while; eventually, the twins grow old enough to realise when he is ill. They know of illness, though thankfully only of the mortal types. And they cry and sob and try to make him better each and every time he fails to find the energy to drag himself from his bed.

He cannot bring himself to hurt them more than he already has, cannot decide if being gone or being only physically present is worse for them. Which upsets them more.

When Elwing tells him they are most upset when he is ill, he cannot bring himself to stay.

He starts staying less and less, leaving once he finds himself to smile. It's a struggle, but it drags out the inevitable.

The ocean is happy to see him more often, after all. But it would rather he came further away. He hesitates and struggles and tries to force it silent; he knows he must go to Valinor, he knows it has been spoken of as his fate to cross the ocean.

Eventually, though, it is not enough. He thought - honestly believed - that it would be enough. He went as far as he dared, gave so much of himself to the sea. But he returns home, and the life doesn't come back. Elwing and the boys are there to greet him. She kisses him, and they pull him and hug him and demand his attention.

He falls to his knees and takes them in his Elros and his Elrond arms. They radiate concern, but it barely reaches him. He clings to them, sobbing. Why is he not happy to see them? Why is his love drowned out by the sea? Why can he not love them as they deserve?

He had lost the love of everything but his wife and his children and the sea.

Now he has lost his family, too.

He wants to love them, he wants to be thrilled to see them - and he does love them, he loves them more than life itself. More than anything else in Ea or beyond. He knows this, it is an absolute truth.

So why can he not feel anything?

So many have tried to cross the sea, dying in the storms and horror. The sea took his love for the world and for the green places. The sea took his parents, on what should have been the happiest of days. And now the sea has taken his love for his wife and his sons; there is nothing left any more, nothing but the irresistible call of the sea.

At least, he supposes, if the sea kills him he will not have to deal with its siren-song any more. Will not have to deal with how only by being upon it he can feel.

The next time he leaves, he knows he will not be able to return.

He is sailing and on the ocean, and still Earendil cannot rest. Here the siren call does not trouble him, but worry for his people does. All his is and was and will ever be is consumed by the fear for his children and his wife and his people. He knows his dreams are no mere dreams, and that the winds have so suddenly shifted to lead them back towards Sirion can only be Ulmo's own warning. They sail and sail and sail, praying they will make it in time.

He sits at the helm of the boat, wrapped in a blanket and tired eyes. The moon is shining brightly, and Erellont keeps them on course even as the others sleep. They keep telling Earendil to rest. He has forgotten how.

Instead he stays awake, praying to any and all the Valar that his family are safe. Tells them he will offer anything he has - his life, his death, his body, his mind and soul... anything - if only they will keep his wife and children safe.

When he sees the light coming from the East, he knows his prayers are meaningless. And that he is too late. He curses the sea and its siren song, that pulled him so far. That stopped him from being any help at all.

He would recognise his wife anywhere, in any form, but the silmaril still around her neck gives her away. He doesn't know what has happened, or why she is alone, but for the first time in days he moves from his vigil at the prow, even if only to reach out to her.

Earendil expects his wife to land on his arm. He does not expect her to fall from the sky.

Not quite quick enough to catch his fallen wife, now a bird and shivering even in her unconscious state, Earendil instead gathers her carefully into his arms. As he tucks her beneath his shirt, carefully over his heart, she is cold as ice itself. But he can feel her breathe against his chest; there is some form of hope still. He cradles her form, squinting out over the ocean to see if any other birds are with her. He thinks he sees two smaller gulls for a moment, but it is merely a trick of the moon's light.

When the winds fall silent, he knows then it is hopeless.

Ulmo has retracted the haste; there is no longer any reason for him to return to Sirion.

His sons, his beautiful, precious sons, are dead.

He tells Erellont to set the anchor and that they will work out a plan in the morning. Without waiting for a reply, he finally heads below deck. Discarding his shirt, he burrows under the blanket, and wraps Elwing tightly in his arms.

He has no idea if she will be able to return to her own form, knows not what horrors she has seen or what will happen now. Indeed, there are an awful, awful lot of things he does not know. Just that Sirion is gone, and so are his children - his half-elven children, who have no fate beyond their deaths. Who are not just dead but are as though they never existed.

He knows that, unless he can make it over the mountains of Aman, that his cries might be heard by the Valar, and unless those cries are convincing enough, that every last elf, man and dwarf in Middle Earth will die in grief and torment, under Morgoth's thumb. That there is no hope left within Middle Earth, that nobody can save themselves. So he will go, he will give everything he has, for the hope that as few people as possible have to know this pain. He will plead on behalf of all his peoples; he will tear the Doom of Mandos, he will break the Ban of the Valar, and force them to listen.

He will save his people, and he will die for that crime.

He cannot think of anything he wants more.

Somehow, he makes it to Valinor. He leaves Elwing on the shore; she must not suffer more than need be. The sirens are quiet now, for the first time in years. He would weep for joy, but that he still grieves his children. Not just their lives, but the time with them that was lost to the sea. There is little left of Earendil now; he does not believe the world can be saved, that any hope is still within it. But he continues on, driven by the knowledge that this is the only chance anyone has.

Driven by the change to spare even just one person this pain.

He makes it, he makes his case, they agree. There is no elation in the victory, nor in the offer of the choice to chose his fate. The emotions when he learns his sons escaped the bloodshed, that they are alive, are too raw for him to process; he cannot understand what he has been told - his children are dead, but they are not dead, and the fact they are not seems to shake the very core components of his reality. With the determination to save the world gone, there is nothing.

Somehow he makes it back to Elwing, and he can barely perceive her as a person; he found her on the beach, and upon seeing the waves again the whisper of the sirens comes back. He wants to die. He wants to die right now and be gone from this reality. He thinks he would still want to be mortal regardless of what happened, and is not sure he could ever be happy living forever, but also knows he is in no state to make such a choice. So he hands it over to Elwing.

And she decides they will be elves.

So elves they will be.

They go to tell the Valar, and expect either to be killed and sent to Mandos for their crimes, to be reborn later washed clean and anew (that would be fine, Earendil things, just so long as Mandos washes the sea-longing from him as well). Instead, the Valar tell him he must take the silmaril to the sky, as a beacon of hope to a world sorely lacking in it. That this is the service they ask of him in return for the lives of his wife and children. And that he will just have to work everything through.

Earendil cannot bring himself to feel anything. Elwing beside him yells at the Valar, screams it is not fair to use his desperation for their own ends. The King of the Noldor is more reserved, but plees for his nephew - for them to at least give him time to rest before he is sent beyond - nonetheless.

Nobody stops him from stepping out of the Máhanaxar. The woman who calls herself his great-grandmother opens her arms to him. He leans against her, and she embraces him. He is too drained to care, too exhausted to weep, too hopeless to try and silence the siren song resurging in his mind . She braids her fingers into his hair and rocks him as his parents did so very long ago, and it is as little comfort now as it was then.

He just wants everything to stop.

((Notes: I feel I should point out that, though they phrase it as such, the Valar are not being entirely malicious here; they are well aware of the fact that Earendil can never feel whole unless he is travelling, even if it is a task - there is no peace for him in Aman. At least, not without fundamentally altering who he is. Also they are aware that he wanted to chose mortality, and would have done even if he wasn't wanting to die at the time, but (slightly willfully) misinterpret a wish to no longer exist with Ea as a wish to know what is beyond the borders of reality - so sending him to patrol the borders of the skies is a compromise that gives him that. They are, however, entirely manipulating him into agreeing to this.

((Also, mortals are not supposed to experience sea-longing. It is bad enough for elves to be drained of all joy for Middle Earth and ability to be at peace there, but for a mortal and a half-mortal child? Who are not equipped to deal with it? Things are much, much worse.))

#fanfic #sea-longing #tw: depression #tw: suicidal thinking #tw: derealization #tw: dissociation #tw: psychosis #((ish))#((Earendil first arriving in Valinor is not a well adjusted being))#((Or at any point between Gondolin and then either))

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