#have been beset by maglor brainrot (more than usual) but am too tired to make a decent post (life is indeed cruel)

[searchingforserendipity25]

something something maglor and maedhros being burned by the silmarils as equivalent to the divine judgement they might have faced in valinor (but with zero of the amelioration surrender might bring).

something something maedhros' torment under varda's hallowing being too much like morgoth's torture. being under the punishing power of one valar is not so different, in the end; the despair is very alike, and all the more final.

maglor lingering on and on in a state of celestial horror: closing his eyes and seeing the great expanses of the starkindler's dominion, darkness and numberless lights, and the burning fire of the heavenly bodies turned against him in loathing and revulsion.

on him is a sentient judgement that does not wane. older than the world, the oldest justice beyond the circles of the world. starlight burns him at night worse than the scorching sun at midday; and nothing can ever heal the wounds of the silmaril.

he clings to the laments and the regret, and repeats the same songs, with the same exact words, lest the terror of the hallowing on unworthy flesh and unworthy spirit claim him entirely.

he clings to the story of his life, which is the cause for his pain, and the only thing that keeps him from being swallowed entirely but the great expanses of the heavens, the tremendous heights that pried open his mind and revealed the filth of his self without ornamentation or ambiguity, and do not relent. truth, absolute and immense and foul - and in the end, the despair is very bad.

the eldar are not made for absolute truth. the eldar are made to sing, and wander, and -- not this.

maglor sings, and wanders as he sings. he loses words. names, verses, speech, the thing for which the elegy is sung, until only the voice remains, very like the sea. not all the solemn and linear and familiar songs of the eldar can stand forever as a shield between the hugeness of the starlit skies, and neither the sea nor the heavens care about his regret.

he does regret. he must. all that is left of his own history, in the great vastness of nebulas and suns that lingers always beneath his lids. his hands hurt constantly, and the flesh beneath his skin breaks and steams sometimes as if it were old wood with hidden embers. the bones themselves blackened, warming him always with a fever like the moment of epiphany at the end of a long fast.

if only he had not yielded to maedhros' will! but then, that is only another illusion so swiftly burned away as a veil of mist in the morrow at the touch of the silmaril. the jewels would never be given to those who had slain the blood of the kindred, were they the best behaved and most patient of penitents.

no unholy creature would be suffered to touch any hallowed thing, in valinor. even the valar were not so cruel. maglor yielded, and yielded, and yielded; he can only regret it, and never enough, though all the unbearable loveliness of the midnight sky be set to consume him with righteous wrath.

he does not return among elvenkind. maedhros is dead, and carcaroth is dead, and morgoth is cast out. there is not much left in arda that shares great kinship with the thing he is; and that, he knows - for the stars are keen and absolute teachers, judges with no pity - is a righteous and holy thing.