Melillin (What Comes After)
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Maglor arrives in Valinor, but this is only the beginning of a long journey of healing and mending that which has been broken. To his surprise, he is far less alone than he would have thought.
Melillin is Sindarin for daffodil, but its literal translation is "yellow singer".
[AO3]
The ship docked at the white harbour of Tol Eressëa. Hundreds of people had gathered beneath in order to welcome the Ringbearers. The plank was lowered; the white wood nearly appeared to glow silver in the light of the moon and the lanterns that had been hung around the dock.
Maglor’s entire body swam with dizziness. He craned his head back and looked at the stars, prayed they would lend him strength. For the moment, hidden strategically behind Galadriel and Gandalf, he was safe from any prying eyes, particularly those of Olwë and Arafinwë and Ëarwen, though the Maiar waiting with them must have already sensed his presence. Would they say anything? Take him in chains, cast him out? No; he was allowed to come home.
If he was afraid of being recognised, well, he had no right to be. If he would be hated or feared, it was because he had given these people reason to. He had to understand that. The compassion and kindness he had received in the two years since Elrond had found him had been a blessing, a gift, but that was precisely the point: a gift was freely given, not owed. Maglor was certainly not owed kindness by anyone.
No - that was not quite true, he had to remind himself. He owed it to himself, if only for the sake of his loved ones. He would face his past bravely, he would atone as well as he could possibly manage, and he would do his best to carve out a place for himself to heal, however small, however lonely. That was his purpose, now and until the remaking of the world.
It was frightening, to say the least. Terrifying.
The Ringbearers descended the ramp first and were welcomed with song and cheers. Maglor, trailing behind with all the other ordinary elves that had been on the ship, watched with a quiet smile on his lips.
Galadriel seemed to bask in the attention, but kept poor Frodo safely by her side. As she had halfway made the way to her parents, she suddenly dropped her high and mighty act and ran, leapt into their waiting arms as if she were a little girl again, and her brothers came around and surrounded her in a cloud of golden hair, all weeping with happiness. Elrond, at the same time, caught a woman with a long, silver braid in his arms. They dropped to their knees and clung to one another for a while before she, still holding Elrond’s hand, went to Galadriel and sunk into her motherly embrace. He saw Findekáno there as well and Írissë; their brothers and parents were surely close by.
Maglor could have wept; so much joy born of so much pain. A family, finally reunited; and he decided he had to be content to watch from afar. His heart cried out to meet them all, as well, but he would not intrude on their moment.
Surely, if some of them had sung for him every year, had remembered him this way, they might at least not cast him away entirely if he came to them. The moment had to be right, though. As desperate as Maglor was to set everything right, he had to remind himself to be patient.
A quiet thing, perhaps, once everyone had settled in. He might write to them, ask if they even wished to see him at all. It ached terribly to remember them in his heart as people who loved him, but, in his mind, to know they had only reason to despise him. All the aching made him weary. He was no longer used to feeling much of anything at all, even if he did welcome it. The pain demanded to be felt, and dear stars, was it felt.
The crowd slowly began to mingle. Despite his heavy heart, and even though all he wanted was to be alone with his sorrow, Maglor did his best to blend in, but remained close to the edges. He twitched and startled easily and for no good reason. Although surely, everyone there must have found him very odd, no-one seemed particularly wary of him at all.
There was a buffet with food. Maglor’s stomach was in a tight knot, but he forced himself to get a small bowl of rice with a vegetable stew, one of the dishes that seemed less popular as not to take anything away from others. At least with a bowl in his hands, he had somewhere to put them, he thought. He was ready to find a quiet corner to sit down and try to have his meal.
At least, that was what he should have done. When he found himself standing suddenly next to one of his cousins, he should have quietly slipped away, and yet he could not stop himself.
“Turno?”
Turukáno saw him and gasped softly. He still had the same tall, broad frame, the same dark curls as always. Maglor would have recognised his old friend anywhere - no, his former friend. He must despise Maglor in so many ways now!
Turukáno’s face, however, brightened instantly.
“Cousin! It is really true, then; you are alive and returned.”
He wrapped a long arm around Maglor’s shoulders. Maglor let him, even returned his half-hug, although it cost him all his willpower not to break into sobs as Turno gently ushered him along. Never mind where they were going - Makalaurë simply felt that he was safe.
Findaráto sat cross-legged in the sand in front of Mister Frodo, his eyes glinting brightly as if he were a child and the little Hobbit were telling him his favourite tale. An absurd sight, almost; Findaráto was wearing about half his father’s treasury in jewellery and it appeared that he had placed one of his more opulent bracelets on Frodo’s head, whom it fit perfectly like a circlet.
“Lord Maglor!” cried Frodo, who noticed them both first, and raised his drink in greeting. “I had almost feared you might have wandered off!”
Despite himself, Maglor had to laugh. “Oh, nonsense, my friend! When have I ever been known to wander?”
“Ah, Makalaurë! There you are, what joy! Come, sit with us, both of you! Mister Frodo was just telling me of one of his fascinating attempts to compose poetry in Quenya. Come, sit!”
Even if Makalaurë had wanted to protest, he could not have; Findaráto grasped his wrist and pulled him down to sit beside him and then took him into a firm, perfumed hug.
There they sat around Frodo as the Hobbit rambled on about his artistic process. Findaráto listened attentively, nodding and agreeing with the utmost eagerness. Even Turukáno made an effort to be polite.
Makalaurë wanted to laugh at every joke, absorb every word his cousins said. Oh, how he had missed them! And the food, even the simplest food, was better than anything he had tasted in Ages. Whether the fruits of Aman’s soils were still as delicious as they had been in his youth, he could not say, but those of Middle-Earth had contained but a fraction of the taste. If only he could have seen Elrond’s face as he had tried his very first bite!
They sat until the hour grew truly late. The crowd began to thin out and Frodo retired for the night with promises that he and Findaráto would speak more, and that Findaráto would help him with his Quenya.
Finally, Makalaurë could ask his most burning question.
“Do you know about my mother? How is she?”
He did not fail to notice the look his cousins traded; there was sadness within it, mostly on Findaráto’s part.
“She still makes her art and sculptures,” Turukáno began, “and oftentimes, she wanders Aman for months at a time, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends or a grandchild. When she is in Tirion, she visits with new tales to tell of her travels.”
“If you are hoping she might be here tonight, I must disappoint you,” Findaráto added softly. “At least outwardly, she has long accepted that you were lost. I believe she still hopes, but wishes she did not.”
“Then I should write to her immediately to let her know I am here.”
“No.” Findaráto shook his head. “Go to her. She will not believe it unless she sees you with her own two eyes.”
“But should I not write ahead?”
Although he knew a few days or weeks were nothing compared to all these Ages of the world that he had spent in selfish exile, the idea that his mother was suffering so, torn between hope and despair, shattered Makalaurë’s soul. It should end as soon as possible. When Findaráto maintained he should leave it, he dropped the subject, but his mind was on the yellow flower he had pressed for her in Endórë.
After that conversation, Makalaurë’s cousins decided to join their friends at the fire, assuring him that they would keep him safely between them. Of course, that moved him to tears once again.
“I cannot believe you would welcome me so,” he told them under his breath, “despite everything.”
“Despite everything, you’re family,” replied Findaráto, once again cheerfully, and clasped his shoulder. “There will be plenty of time to reckon with the past, but not today.”
“And not while you look and act like a beaten dog,” Turukáno supplied.
“I don’t act like a beaten dog!”
Findaráto laughed. “Yet even you can’t deny you look like one.”
Makalaurë chidingly clicked his tongue. “What an unfair move, Cousin. My old mind can only process so much at a time!”
Turukáno smirked. “An old, beaten dog, then.”
But there was something he had to do first.
Bickering in this manner, they arrived at the fire, where they lingered until daybreak. Makalaurë recognised few faces and had little to say, but his cousins sat on either side of him. He basked in the awareness that he had come home, and that, of all he had thought lost, much was merely changed.
They sat there until the rising sun painted the beach golden and red like the embers of the dying fire before them. Makalaurë let his gaze wander over the white sand, the treetops and flowers, the waves rolling up to land, the chattering crowd of smiling elves, barely thinned out. Gems glinted around the necks of the Noldor and pearls in the hair of the Falmari, as if the night sky were descending upon the world for a brief moment before the sun rose high and obscured it for the day. Amid the sea of stars, Makalaurë’s eyes caught on a single figure in the crowd and his heart began to race, then clenched painfully. She stood tall and straight, silver hair dancing gently in the wind. That was Telumë, whom he had once called his heart. His world stilled, and she was at the centre. It appeared as though she was saying her long goodbyes; some, she embraced heartily and for some, she bowed her head with her hand over her heart.
Findaráto, of course, sensed immediately that his cousin’s mind had gone elsewhere - or perhaps he had been silently gazing at her for so long? - and clasped his shoulder, Makalaurë’s head turning to him.
“I have to go to her,” Makalaurë said urgently. “Now.”
“Right now? With all you did to her people after she left you? You are braver than I thought, cousin.”
Makalaurë drew a trembling breath. No, indeed, he was not brave. He was terrified. Still, in the past, he had failed her so many times because he had not gone to her when he should have, had nearly lost her so many times. He had no illusions of somehow winning back her love - that, he knew, he was no longer worthy of - but he owed her at least a word. This time, he would go. This time, it was he who had sailed across the Great Ocean to meet her.
He patted Findaráto’s hand on his shoulder. “That is precisely why, cousin.”
Findaráto nodded and watched as he rose to his feet, then sighed quietly to himself.
Makalaurë took a deep breath and met her just as she was breaking away from her group, his knees soft; his throat was already closing up and his eyes becoming wet.
“Hello,” he greeted, then choked out, rather unhelpfully, “it’s me. Do you have just a moment?”
She halted about ten paces from where he stood. While her eyes measured him, her expression guarded, neither one of them spoke. She looked well, thought Makalaurë, and he was glad.
“I am early,” he continued, trying to keep his voice steady. “The world has not yet ended and been remade, and a lot has changed since we made that promise, so perhaps it no longer holds, anyway. But even if that is so, I owe you a thousand words of apology.”
Her gaze wandered over him, his form, his features, as if he were a ghost.
Then, before his mind could comprehend it, she closed the distance between them and gently, tenderly, she embraced him, buried her face in his hair.
The sound of her breathing was close to his ear, proof that she was truly there if nothing else was, if not the warmth of her body was, her citrus scent, the blue silk of her robe as his hands came to rest around her waist. For the moment, he was at peace.
For just that moment, it did not matter where they were or what stood between them. All his regrets, his pains, the shadows of the past aside, to have someone once so close to him solidly in his arms untwisted the knots in his chest as tears of relief welled up in his eyes.
Yet, he was weary. There was just enough strength in his soul to hold onto her and to allow her to hold him. What would become of them, he did not know; it would have been easy to pretend, just for the moment, that they would be spouses again, but Makalaurë had ceased to be that for her a very long time ago.
“I am sorry,” he choked out. “Truly, I am. And I do not know where to begin -”
“I know.” She stood back, her hands still on his shoulders; there was an echo of old memory in her eyes. “I will hear your apologies, Makalaurë, but not right now.”
“On your time. And are the children well?” He almost felt as though he had no right to ask.
The brief ghost of a smile flickered over her features. “Worry not, they are indeed well, all of them.”
Makalaurë let out a tense breath.
“But, Makalaurë, I think you will need to let them approach you first.” She took his hands, but did not look into his face. “You know well what happened after they … left. Yet, Ages have since passed. There is love still, and that will never be broken, but there is old pain in the way.”
Ancient guilt stirred in Makalaurë’s heart - a familiar sensation, still. Indeed, he had done heinous, unspeakable things, and no amount of lamentation would ever erase that fact. Even if those crimes had not been directed at their own kin, he would understand if the children never forgave him at all. After all, how could anyone possibly -
Halt, he interrupted himself just as he was falling into the old habit of despair. There was something to be done! He could try to earn their forgiveness if they might be willing to let him. There was a newfound hope in the awareness that he had some degree of power to change his fate, just as he had done when he had finally left his exile. He had to keep reminding himself of this.
Still, how could even Telumë stand to face him at all? How could she hold his hands in hers? Was she aware her warm palms nearly touched the marks of his evil burned into his flesh?
He thought of her song, still so close to his heart that he did not dare speak of it yet. It was not the same, of course, to remember a ghost that one had once loved as to stand face to face with him, but perhaps it was something.
“And you?” he asked, his voice dry.
Her eyes flicked upwards and over his face; they glinted wet in the orange light of the sunrise.
“We must speak. You must heal. What happens afterwards, I do not know. Whether we could be friends again, or even spouses, well, that remains to be seen, but if, eventually ... I would like it very much.”
Where Makalaurë had been frightened just a moment before, he now breathed.
“Lírië,” he whispered, all in awe, and gripped her hands a little more firmly, lifted them up to his chest. “If there is the slightest possibility that you and I could share in life again - however small a part - whatever work it took - I would.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
She laughed, a small, joyful sound. “Then we shall speak about all of it when the time is right. There is no hurry; first, we should get used to one another again, I think.”
Makalaurë’s heart leapt in his chest.
“I would like that.”
Their paths split; he returned to the fire and she went on her way. Still, he did not doubt they would manage to find one another. Knowing her had always been the most natural thing in the world. In some weeks’ time, he would go to her again, to her house in Alqualondë, and they would speak.
…
Nerdanel wandered. There was not much in Tirion to hold on to besides a few dear people. She had her little house, where she returned to sculpt some of which she had sketched during her journeys, and where Tyelpë now lived and waited to greet his grandmother. At least this was proof Nerdanel had ever had a husband and sons to begin with.
She could no longer tolerate crowds too well. Whenever she returned home, she always thought she saw Maitimo’s copper circlet somewhere, or a pair of redheads that laughed together, or Kurvo’s smithing apron, and so over the Ages her visits home had become farther and farther in between.
People still greeted her, friends, relatives, sometimes Fëanáro’s old followers.
Perhaps it was because it had been so long this time, but that particular day, people seemed to smile at her and wish her a blessed day, and one confused soul joyfully called something after her that she did not catch.
There were whispers of a ship in Tol Eressëa that had landed three days ago. Nerdanel closed her ears to it, kept her head down and walked on, elbowing her way through the bustling city market with her scarf around her head. She caught a glimpse of copper red and a whiff of what she thought smelled like the hair oil Makalaurë had worn. Although she tried to avert her eyes from the source and ignore it, she did catch a glimpse, two elves from the back, one dark, one red, standing as close as brothers. When she looked again, they were gone.
Nerdanel blinked away tears. Even after all these Ages, Makalaurë in particular was still a sore spot even amid all the pain of loss. For all she tried to convince herself and others that this was only because they had once shared such a close bond, if she was honest with herself, she knew the true reason.
Cruel, treacherous hope; it would not die no matter how much she tried to beat it down.
Could it be called hope at all? She had heard how her sons had all suffered, and Makalaurë with his gentle heart and malleable loyalties - he would have been but a shell of himself, had he survived the First Age, nevermind until now. Mandos, with no leave to be released until the end of time, seemed a grim prison, but at least there, their souls would be safe and they would all be together. As a mother, should she not hope that he was there, as well? Oh, selfish, unquenchable hope.
She opened the gate, made her way along the path through the gardens. It would be unrecognisable to her sons now, overgrown with fruit trees and vegetable bushes and herbs, all organised in such a way that the plants required only minimal tending. Her granddaughter Iþilmë, once returned home, had introduced the idea, and it had unexpectedly become a new passion of Nerdanel’s. The garden was as a living organism, one that she had made and raised. Hidden among the trees were seven statues that she visited like graves.
“Tyelpë?” she called as she entered the house.
He was usually at the forge at this time of day, but she always called for him when she came in. Not just because she wished to see him if he was there; ever since he had returned from Mandos, he always needed to know exactly who was in a house with him.
Today, he answered from upstairs.
“There’s a letter for you on the coffee table,” he called. “It doesn’t say who it’s from.”
Odd; Nerdanel did not receive many letters. Anyone who might write to her knew she was rarely home, and to address their messages for her to Tyelpë.
The envelope was a sturdy, heavy one made of marbled paper as they were fashionable in Alqualondë. Through the thick material, she felt that something uneven was inside; she thought perhaps one of Lírië and Makalaurë’s children might have sent her some kind of craft, but she did not recognise the hand in which the letter was addressed. The tengwar looked stiff, as if written by someone who had nearly unlearnt how to produce them, and simply spelled, To: Lady Nerdanel Istarnië, nothing else.
“I have been all but consumed by curiosity of what might be inside,” said Tyelpë, who had just entered the room. “It was sent from Findaráto’s residence on Tol Eressëa, but certainly not by him.”
Nerdanel hummed. Her fingers were strangely clammy as she opened it, as if some part of her knew something she did not.
There was no letter inside, not even a note, but out fell a single yellow flower, beautifully pressed. She gasped, tears welling up in her eyes.
Tyelpë’s weight gently settled down next to her.
“How pretty. What is it?”
“Melillin,” Nerdanel whispered, almost in reverence. A sob came over her lips that was half a laugh. “I’ve never seen a real one.”
…
“I had a music box as a child,” mumbled Nerdanel soothingly and kissed the top of Makalaurë’s head, the child curled into her lap and weeping most bitterly into her chest. “It had belonged to my mother before me; her own mother had made it for her before they began the Great Journey. It was very special, you see; it played a melody so beautiful and gentle, it rocked me to sleep every night when I was little.”
At the mention of music, Makalaurë stilled; oh, if only it would forever remain as easy to capture the mind of a loved one as it was with a child.
“How did it go?” he sniffled, his little voice dampened by the fabric of her apron.
“Like this.”
Rocking him gently in her arms, she hummed the tune. Her son listened intently, his broken harp half forgotten. He was an older brother now and took the responsibility very seriously, carried it as a batch of honour, so the fact that he was crying because his very own beloved little brother Turko had broken the harp seemed to distress him the most.
Nerdanel finished the melody, and for a while, they were both silent. Makalaurë’s tears had subsided, and he seemed only to take in her warmth, his small fingers curled around the silk of her sleeves. After a short while, he repeated the tune. It warmed her heart, both because her child seemed closer to comfort, and because she had not heard it sung aloud in a very long time.
When he had finished, Makalaurë craned his head back and looked up to her with a thoughtful frown on his little face.
“You don’t have it anymore, do you?” he asked softly. “The music box. What happened to it?”
Nerdanel smiled and gently carded her fingers through his raven curls; so full of insight, this child was, so much wisdom in his bright, wide eyes.
“I broke it,” she admitted. She almost felt a bit silly when tears pricked at her own eyes. She had never really spoken of the music box to anyone, and now realised it had been because the wound was fresher than she thought, not because it had not mattered.
“I felt very guilty since it had belonged to my mother before me, and I always missed it a lot. It was very pretty. It had a flower painted onto it, one that only grew in Endóre, a yellow bloom by the name of melillin. It does not grow here, which is a pity, for I loved that music box so much, whenever I only looked at that flower painted onto it, I knew all would be well again, and my pain would begin to come to an end.”
Makalaurë nodded, and then, again, he smiled.
“If you’re ever sad again, Amya,” he spoke with that deep seriousness only children could possess, “I shall go and fetch you that flower.”
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