#Ilonweg

[yellow-faerie]

Ivárë Filegol

I felt that a bit of a longer post on Ivárë and the general chaos of her family was in order, so here we are! I bring you this!

Ivárë Filegol is born to Avari parents Ilonweg and Monais in the seventh age - which is around 1980 - in the south of England. She is named by them Melilot in their language. (This mean Flower of Love in Gnomish, which is the language I use for the Avari a lot of the time).

Her mother, Monais, is afflicted very unwillingly with sea-longing that has got worse and worse over the many years she has tried to fight it. She and her husband thought that maybe having a child - something they were putting off for they didn’t want to bring a child to the undying lands - would help quell the feelings but it in fact magnifies it tenfold due to the stress it has on her and her soul.

Despite her best attempts, Monais eventually caves to it when Melilot is two years old. Ilonweg then has to decide whether to stay in Middle Earth without his one constant companion through the last millennia to raise their daughter or to go with her and to bring their very young daughter.

They have both heard stories of the undying lands and what they did to the Ñoldor who went there and while they - very old Avari - are fairly sure they can fight whatever it is that changed the other elves, they do not know what it would do to their young daughter.

This decision is solved for them by the introduction of a third party.

This third party is Maglor and Daeron. They are, at this point, on fairly good terms due to the decision that it is too difficult to stay angry at each other and that they are each other’s only company from the old world. They have taken to travelling the world together, committing identity fraud and playing music.

When Monais and Ilonweg see them, they are having a rather unhappy beer before they board their boat for Valinor (with Melilot, although they are unhappy about this) in a pub in Wales and it just so happens that Daeron and Maglor are playing music at the same pub.

Now Daeron and Maglor are being very careful at keeping their elvishness secret to humans but to another elf, it is perfectly obvious.

This, Monais argues, is the perfect opportunity. If they leave Melilot in their close vicinity, they’ll find her and see she’s elvish and so won’t give her to the authorities and would raise her, far away from Valinor.

Ilonweg is a rather bit less happy with this plan but his wife is very persuasive when she gets an idea and soon he is agreeing to go along with it.

They take a sleeping Melilot and, when no-one is watching, lie her in Daeron’s guitar case. Monais leaves almost at once due to the guilt of abandoning her child but the absolute surety that this is the right thing for Melilot in the long run.

Ilonweg stays until the pair of them stop playing for a break and Daeron finds the child in the guitar case. They are naturally rather concerned at first but, true to Monais’ thoughts, they do see she is elvish and talks about taking her to the police stop at once.

They do search around the pub a bit but they do not see Ilonweg who, after hearing them decide to look after his daughter if their search proved fruitless, had followed his wife to the shore.

Ilonweg and Monais leave Middle Earth that night and do not see their daughter again for fifty years.

After a few weeks with no sign of her parents, Maglor and Daeron make the decision to be her official parents. For the modern world they live in, they forge some paperwork, making her Ivy Felicity Smith, daughter of Martin and David Smith.

For Maglor’s Ñoldorin tradition, they do the traditional Ñoldorin naming ceremony (the ceremony which announces a new child in the family, of blood or not) thing of giving her a name each and something they had each made.

Maglor calls her Ivárifinwë (Finwë Who Protects in Quenya) which shortens to Ivárë (She Who Protects) and Daeron calls her Filegol (Small, Nimble Bird Running Free in Sindarin), which was a nickname he used to have for his sister. Maglor manages to wheedle his way into a forge to make her a thin chain to collect charms on when they travel and a silver charm of a tree and Daeron embroiders a head scarf in the traditional Doriathrin way.

For Daeron’s Sindarin tradition, they do the Sindarin thing of gifting something very dear of theirs that they would give up for her and creating her a braid for her hair that’s unique to her. Daeron gives her one of his flutes - the first flute he got from his mother when he told her he wanted to be a minstrel (this becomes one of her favourite instruments when she learns to play) and Maglor gives her a hairpiece that his father made him for his Naming Ceremony, which is a rather simple bird pin that sparkles when the light hits it just right and she wears it almost all the time despite Maglor being worried she’ll lose it.

When Ivárë is young, she grows up with Maglor and Daeron on a rather rundown farm in Wales, far enough away from people to avoid them noticing her strange growth patterns but close enough that should her birth parents reappear, they would be able to find her. There is a brief stint where they send her to school but she hates it so much, she gets herself expelled after a term by burning down a climbing frame.

When she is around 20 (about eight and a half in human years), Daeron and Maglor begin travelling again, this time with child in tow. She is subsequently well versed in many languages and writing systems and musical instruments and notations, among other things.

She is a naturally curious child who has a tendency to wander off after things that catch her eye, much to her fathers’ chagrin. She gets into trouble because of this a lot and is subsequently very good at getting out of trouble. And then getting back into trouble because she doesn’t stop.

She is around fifty when their life of flitting from place to place, getting money from busking and the occasional bit of fraud, gets turned upside down by the introduction of Cantasië Timpinen.

Cantasië is a Teleri woman, the daughter of a fisherman and one of Alqualondë’s greatest sailors due to the power of her voice, enough to tame the sea. She is also married to Maglor, their marriage bond having never broken down after Maglor’s departure due to lingering feelings. It is this and her skills at boating that mean that when the Valar want her husband to return to Valinor to join his recently reborn family, they choose her to go.

Cantasië, after the flight of the Ñoldor, had also adopted a young Vanya who’s parents seemed to have disappeared during the darkening. No-one will acknowledge them as theirs and so Elemmírë is adopted by Cantasië, who is the one who found them.

(It should be noted that this family does, in fact, have a monopoly on The Greatest Minstrels of the Quendi, and this is a running joke with everyone who knows them).

So Elemmírë and Elrond - who is also fairly determined to get his father back - join Cantasië on her journey, equipped with a fairly nondescript boat; absolutely no leads other than ‘he was singing on the coast, last I heard’; and a lot of misplaced faith in the fact they will find them.

There is absolutely no planning involved and it is complete chance that they meet each other in a port in Spain. It is night and Maglor plays his harp on the dock wall and Elrond hears and is reminded of dark nights when Maglor would comfort him and his brother with a soft lullaby and knows that it is him.

They appear at the same time as Daeron and Ivárë return from shopping and there is an argument as Cantasië is furious because Maglor got remarried without their bond breaking and without telling her; Daeron’s furious because Maglor hadn’t told him that he was already married; and Maglor is trying to explain that he actually thought the bond he has with Cantasië was broken because it was so dull and how he couldn’t imagine how she would still want him etc, etc.

Elrond, Elemmírë and Ivárë are standing on the side of this awkwardly because those are their parents and it’s always weird when your parents are arguing.

They sort of sidle away awkwardly when it’s been about ten minutes and it doesn’t look like it’s ending any time soon. Ivárë suggests that they go adventuring round the streets of the port town at night for sibling bonding reasons.

They have a remarkably chilled out first bonding experience despite Ivárë’s tendency to invoke the wrath of literally anyone she comes into contact with (probably Elrond’s influence) and they arrive back at the small house Ivárë, Daeron and Maglor are staying at exhausted but kind of happy to find their parents curled up on one of the beds, having apparently made up.

They stay in that place for another three months before Maglor finally agrees to go back so long as Daeron and Ivárë come too, which they do.

In Valinor, she lives at first with Daeron and Maglor and Cantasië in their house by the sea although she quite often goes off to stay with relatives who she loves to meet. It is actually when she goes hunting with her uncle Celegorm and aunt Aredhel that she meets her mother again, completely by accident.

She is hunting too and they end up sleeping near each other and talking about themselves and their lives and they both sort of put the pieces together.

Ivárë is not actually that angry (although she is a bit because she does have a few abandonment issues) because if she hadn’t been left, she wouldn’t have got her fathers or the family she has now. And she does understand where Monais is coming from.

It is with an open mind that she remeets her father and meets her younger brother and joins that side of her family too.

She also meets, in Tirion, a young elf by the name of Tecoluin who is a history nerd and hangs out with other young history nerds and they all collectively Do Not Trust the official sources like Pengolodh because they are constantly finding factual inaccuracies in them all the time but that’s something else entirely.

Ivárë and Tecoluin initially hang out because Tecoluin wants to ask questions about her family and Ivárë loves talking particularly about her family so it’s a win-win situation. Except after the first one or two meet-ups they have, they end up talking about things unrelated to Tecoluin’s work and are just hanging out.

Ivárë invites her to one of her concerts and then Tecoluin invites her to dinner and then they’re courting and then betrothed and then married in autumn.

It is like the wedding from Up where Carl’s family are few and politely clap and then Ellie’s family is just full on crazy except instead of Carl, it’s Tecoluin, and instead of Ellie, it’s Ivárë.

They get themselves a house in the country between Tirion and Alqualondë and they stay there, Ivárë quite happy in her composing and Tecoluin in her constant search for what actually happened (which is rather difficult when you are looking at the house of Finwë because all of them have wildly diverging tales that barely ever match up in any way).

A bit of a long post but I wanted to go a bit more into detail about Ivárë and her general chaos family and I love going off about my OCs.

#Ivárë #Monais #Ilonweg #Daeron #Maglor #OC: Cantasië #Maglor’s Spouse #Elemmírë #Elrond #Tecoluin #Tolkien #Silmarillion #Headcanon #OCs #tolkienocweek #Fae's Stuff