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daywillcomeagain · 5 years

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galadriel

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. this is the first, but you’ll be able to read the rest here once i’ve posted more. they’re from discord chats, so they’re in a very casual style.

2.9K words under the cut!

galadriel is born in valinor, in the undying lands, in the west. death is unheard of. only one person has ever died in the history of the entire universe, and it was because she wanted to die. the streets are paved in diamonds; emeralds and rubies and sapphires are scattered on the beaches as a gift. galadriel is the youngest child of the youngest child of the king; she's a princess, yes, but she's fifteenth in line, eighteenth if the noldor get over their sexism by the time the king dies. and she's smart. she's absurdly smart. she goes to the valar and begs them to teach her everything. they agree to teach her as much as they are willing to. she learns mathematics and astronomy and biology and botany and anatomy and poetry and physics and chemistry. and she runs out of things to learn that the gods will teach her.

she starts dreaming of going to middle-earth. ruling her own kingdom. she's in paradise and she knows everything there is to know and nothing she does matters, not really, she could have learned it all or she could have been the best archer and runner and swimmer in the land or she could have sat at home and done nothing and it wouldn't have mattered because she's already in paradise. and she's still not taken seriously here, she has all the knowledge of the gods but in the eyes of everyone else that still doesn't make her anything more than a young girl. she is valued most not for her knowledge but for her hair, so beautiful and golden, the most beautiful anyone has ever seen. from strangers it is flattering. from those who know her, it is nothing but an insult. and she doesn't fit in anywhere, not exactly, half-lindar quarter-vanyar quarter-noldor, with blonde hair and a telerin accent that speaks so confidently of her own knowledge.

and then the king dies.

feanor gives his speech, full of fire and rebellion, and his sons jump to his side to swear an oath, and she can't tell if her shivers are terrified or excited. (maybe it's both.) he says: say farewell to the gilded cage of paradise. let us go to middle-earth. let us pursue evil, let us destroy it, we will never turn back, and we will win, and all shall bow to our glory.

galadriel has always hated feanor, but it surprises nobody that his speech wakes something up inside her. her brothers, her father, her mother, they all council calmness, of cool heads, of softness. galadriel wants to go. she is described as "the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes."

they have, of course, no boats. perhaps you have already heard this story. but let me tell it again, as she would have seen it:

it is dark. galadriel has never seen night before, not truly; she grew up in a world where the hours were marked by whether the light was the sharp gold of laurelin or the gentle silver of telperien. at least there is starlight now--it is not the pitch black of void that came with the darkness at first. but still, it is so very dark. her sight is better than humans, but it is not perfect, and she has never before lived in dark.

she is at the front of finarfin's host, which is to say that she is still at the back. it chafes, of course, because it all does, because every second in valinor aches and all she wants is to be gone.

and she arrives to see her uncles fighting her aunts, she arrives to see blood and death, she arrives at the end of a long line of people who are in sword battles with her mom.

the noldor--her dad's people--are smiths and hunters. they work with iron and diamonds. morgoth taught them how to make swords and armor and then how to point them at people. the lindar--her mom's people--are singers and fishers. they work with wood and rope, building boats and tying knots and harmonizing with the sound of crashing waves.

the outcome was, of course, inevitable.

what did galadriel do? well, that depends on which version of the story you heard. some say she fought with the lindar, used her swords and armor in a desperate attempt at defence. some say she just stood aside in shock, because everything is dark and full of blood and metal and screams and nobody has ever died before. i suppose it's your choice, in the end, because nobody could ever get up the nerve to ask her. how could they walk up to the great Lady of Lothlórien and ask her, did you kill your uncles, or did you stand aside and let your mom be murdered?

either way, it doesn't matter, in the end. the lindar are killed. the boats are taken.

this is, of course, when the valar choose to speak up. mandos lays upon them a doom that is maybe a curse and maybe a prophecy, and says that everyone who leaves now is exiled forever, and that they shall be killed, "by weapon and by torment and by grief", and that the valar do not care. he declares that every good deed they do shall end in evil, that anyone who survives shall come to see their own existence exhausting, that they shall fade and diminish and become shadows of themselves.

galadriel knows, now, that fëanor started the fight. she hates him more than ever. but she cannot help but think again of his speech, decrying the valar, decrying paradise. for she did nothing, and now they are punishing her for her half-uncle.

her father turns back, to stay with her mother. her mother whose people have been killed. it's a good decision.

but--she's been dreaming for so long, and her people are still going on, and she knows that if she stays she will never forgive herself for losing her only chance.

it is a day (or it would be, if it was not still endless night, a black sky with so very many stars) before they realize.

there aren't enough boats.

fingolfin doesn't trust fëanor. fëanor doesn't trust fingolfin. the house of finarfin doesn't trust either of them. they argue and argue and argue, who will go first, how will they do this. feanor's people took the worst losses--feanor's people started the fight--fingolfin's people trusted them and followed them and they wouldn't have if they had known--but they still trusted them, and the people of finarfin were the only ones who knew the other side--

--in the end, none of the argument matters. fëanor takes the boats when they are all asleep. sails across an ocean. waits for everyone to wake up before he sets them on fire.

this is the alternative: the helcaraxë, an arctic wasteland of freezing cold and mountains. they had already deemed it impassable. if it had not been, the first kinslaying would never have happened. by all rights, they should be trapped there, in valinor. making that walk would kill countless people. it would be suicide as surely as it would be suicide to hike across antarctica in the winter, or trying to cross siberia during a night that lasts forever.

with no light, there were no years. but later, timekeepers would calculate. it is 37 years of the sun later when galadriel steps foot, shivering, on middle-earth. and with that footstep, the moon rises for the first time.

the war is, of course, exactly as hopeless as they were told. fëanor is dead; maedhros is being tortured, publicly, visibly. they are not winning; they are only in stalemate because the enemy is not, currently, doing anything. galadriel is no longer the young princess who did not know death. she has learned something about herself, on the ice: she does not want to fight a hopeless war, no matter how beautiful the songs they sing about her death. she wants to live to tell this story.

she moves in with her great-uncle from her mother's side, instead. elu thingol. his people call themselves thindar, not lindar, but they look the same. not like the ñoldor. it's welcome. their realm is warm, and full of flowers, and safe. his wife, melian, is a wizard. galadriel has changed a lot, but this has not changed: she goes to melian and says, teach me everything you know.

and so she does.

they learn from her about the silmarils, about the oath. they do not learn from her about their dead family; she is too coward for that, still. but they do learn. when thingol learns, he makes his decree, bans quenya. she has to change her name. artanis she is no longer. she chooses her own name, in this new language. galadriel.

she gives speeches, writers letters, begging her people and her family. please, abandon this war, stop using your forces to fight morgoth and start using them to defend your people, it cannot be won, your job is not to win it, your job is to mitigate the damage. she petitions thingol and melian to take in refugees, to save as many people as can be saved.

they don't listen. nobody listens. every battle is a new casualty. her cousin, her brothers, her uncle.

(she falls in love. his name is celeborn and he has and if her hair is laurelin then his is telperion and he does not compliment her hair. he meets her after a speech, compliments her way with words, proposes meeting and teaching the men and dark wood-elves to the east. she had always thought that it was silly, when people spoke of love at first sight, but as soon as she hears that, she knows she will marry him.)

she visits the one brother who is still alive. he has collected names for himself--once findaráto, now finrod, felagund, nómin. he has made a beautiful city in the caves, where thindar and noldor and dwarves mingle. he has named himself king. he has sworn an oath.

meanwhile-- a human comes to doriath. he watches the daughter of thingol and melian--the princess lúthien--as she dances, as she sings. he calls out her name and she looks back at him and in the songs they will sing thousands of years later it is that moment that they will point to as the moment she is doomed. she brings her love to her father. her father laughs, says "he can marry you when he holds a silmaril in his hand." beren does not take this as a no. beren looks thingol in the eye and says "you're on".

finrod’s oath is to beren. galadriel’s half-cousins are still sworn to get the silmarils back at any cost. she weeps when she hears the news.

in the end, there is not yet another kinslaying. this is mostly because sauron kills her brother surely enough that her cousins do not have to bother.

(beren gets the silmaril. they get married. everyone in doriath is full of joy and hope. everyone but one.)

more die. once, she was eighteenth in line for king of the ñoldor. more have been born since, but counting herself, only two of those original eighteen walk on middle-earth. there are scarcely enough ñoldor to justify having a king. the silmaril still burns in doriath.

thingol dies in a fight over who owns the silmaril. nobody's quite clear if it's his fault or the fault of the dwarves. it doesn't really matter. melian goes into mourning, goes back to valinor. takes her protection with her. for the first time in a very long time, doriath is vulnerable. (the sons of fëanor send messengers, reminding: neither thingol nor the dwarves own the silmaril. it is theirs by birthright. and, they add carefully, they swore an oath. they do not have to say what they will do for it, because everyone knows.)

more cousins fall. if she wanted to claim High Queen of the Ñoldor, she could, probably. or maybe the kingship orodreth's, or idril's. she finds to her surprise that she doesn't really want to. she has learned at the knee of dozens of ainur, and she knows nothing that will help win the war. she wants to rule, yes--but not like this.

she still gives speeches. she doesn't really expect them to mean anything.

the sons of fëanor come. she has known them since she was a child, grew up with them. she has memories of riding and laughing and going to classes and learning how to work in the forge and being babysat when her own brothers were busy.

they kill everyone. even the children. they do not get the silmaril.

the survivors flow into a refugee camp that her cousin's daughter leads. they had crossed the ice together when galadriel was an adult and she was still a child. it is strange, to take orders from someone when you were there at their birth. but they are both old now. she does not bother to give speeches.

(they come. they kill. they do not get the silmaril. they do keep two children--twins--hostages, not dead, and she has fallen far enough to be grateful for that.)

seven years after the third kinslaying, five hundred ninety three years since fëanor’s speech, the valar arrive in beleriand. the war is horrific, but at last, at last, it is not hopeless.

galadriel fights. it is a grueling war, decades long, ainur against ainur. chunks of land break off, crumble into the sea. doriath is lost. arvernien is lost. dor-lomin is lost, hithlum is lost, nevrast is lost, all of it lost to the sea.

but they are winning.

she loses her last two cousins. they were murderers--she shouldn't care--she still cares, a little.

they win. the valar declare: you are pardoned. we forgive you. you can return to valinor, if you wish.

she almost laughs in their face. she has done nothing wrong to be pardoned for. she rejects it a thousand times over. they should be begging her pardon. they trapped her in paradise. they came six hundred years too late to save her family. and then they act as though it is such an act of mercy and graciousness, to forgive her for the terrible crime of being related to kinslayers.

she learns that another of her relations--gil-galad--has taken up the kingship of the noldor. she and her husband build a city within the land he has claimed as his kingdom, for the sindar who chafe at noldorin rule. she moves, after a while, to eregion; her half-cousin once-removed rules, there. grandson of fëanor, son of curufin. he does not call himself that, though she has seen the star he puts on his work. he introduces himself instead as a craftsman. celebrimbor of eregion, and that is all.

she is happy enough, for a while, but she is restless. her husband says that he has connections on the other side of the mountains. they speak a language there--silvan--that is not quite telerin and not quite sindarin; she learns it quickly enough. she agrees to move, and they do, passing through khazad-dum at the height of its glory.

it is not long after that they learn that sauron is still around. celebrimbor sends her a ring.

this, too, is a song you have heard. gil-galad was an elven king, of him the harpers sadly sing. they wave celebrimbor’s corpse as a banner.

and then--then, it is just her. they are all dead.

she becomes a queen, but not of the noldor. laurelindórenan, the native silvan elves call it. they are a peaceful people who know as much of battle as the lindar did. it breaks her heart to change that, but she knows it is a choice between that and death. she takes over, crowning herself queen in all but name. she establishes borders. she helps them to fight. galadriel and celeborn become lady and lord of lothlórien.

she has a daughter. celebrían's hair is as silver as her husband's.

she marries elrond. she is so, so happy.

celebrían is on her way to visit galadriel and celeborn when she is captured and tortured by orcs. elrond heals her, physically, but she never recovers. she leaves for valinor, for real. and again galadriel is alone.

all the while, she wears the ring. because she knows that mandos spoke true when he gave his doom so many thousands of years ago, and she knows that she has rejected his pardon. here in middle-earth, she will fade, she will diminish. she has seen it happen: elves whose bodies just give out, becoming thin and transparent and then just a voice on the breeze and then nothing at all.

but as long as she wears the ring, that does not happen in lothlórien. as long as her ring still has power.

--you know the rest of the story. frodo comes. he is the temptation. she declines the Ruling Ring. she has seen too much of what her family will do, given power. in valinor, she dreamed of coming to middle-earth for a kingdom.

she knows he plans to destroy it. she knows that her ring will lose its power, should the One be destroyed. she also knows that it is the right thing to do.

and so she has two choices. she can stay, and fade, slowly but surely. or she can go again to the west, a returned exile penitent for crimes she did not do, walk again in paradise, useless and heartbroken.

(at least her father will be there. he had stayed, so very long ago, and she had left.)

out of all the peoples of the world, it was only the lindar who could make swan-ships. thousands of years ago, they were all burned, the wealth of the lindar gone in a single fire.

when galadriel sails back to valinor, it is in a swan-ship.

#galadriel #my writing #different names for the same thing #is my tag for this series

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joyfullynervouscreator · 6 years

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Ghost Love Score

For the @silmarillionwritersguild’s Challenge ‘Just an old-fashioned love song’ as part of the New Year’s Resolution Challenge.

Fëanor in the Halls of Mandos: 2.8k words

based on Ghost Love Score - Nightwish:

Bring me home or leave me be

My love in the dark heart of the night

I have lost the path before me

The one behind will lead me.

My fall will be for you

My love will be in you

You were the one to cut me

So I'll bleed forever

There was no pity in Námo’s white eyes, shining beneath the dark hood of his cloak, when they landed on him.

Fëanor felt oddly pleased by that, meeting the even gaze with an unflinching glare of his own. He had not expected to end up here, to stand before the Doomsman. He did not speak, still filled with the incandescent fury that had consumed his hröa, burning so brightly the world faded from view.

Námo watched in silence. Fëanor resented that. If he was not doomed to the Everlasting Darkness – and standing before Námo told him that he was in Mandos, not the Void beyond the World – then there would be a judgement handed down from this being, who allegedly saw all, knew everything. He resented that as much as he resented the silent scrutiny.

Who were the Valar to judge him, these mighty beings who possessed so much power yet cowered away from hardship when it came to judging one of their own?

How could they judge his deeds when their own actions had forced his hand?

Fëanáro. He had burned, burned so brightly, burned brightly enough to light a fire that changed the world. He heard the voices of those who arrived after him, heard them both curse and praise his name. He wondered which would be the greater, in the end, but it was idly curiosity as he had no way of finding out.

Námo smiled, and Fëanor no longer saw him, saw nothing but a flurry of stars – or were they snowflakes? Seeds dancing on the wind? – stretching endlessly around him.

The stars, whatever they were, danced, moving, some swiftly, some slow, but they moved around him and Fëanor knew they would eventually touch his fëa. His lips twisted in a contemptuous snarl, wondering what trickery this was, what new game the Vala was playing with him as a board-piece.

Because waiting for whatever gambit Námo had just delivered him into to play out was not in his nature, Fëanor – he liked the Sindarin version, short and hard; his Quenya name was somehow softer, floating on one of Nerdanel’s sighs, perhaps – reached out to touch one of the whirling pinpricks of light.

Alqualondë. Recognisable; he had helped build some of the grand houses here, after all, left far too many blank walls behind – Teleri liked painting with wet plaster, for unknown reasons, even though mosaics were clearly the more beautiful option for wall decoration.

Red hair escaping from its binds – so familiar that it took him longer than he’d like to admit, even to himself, to notice the hands that were building stone upon stone.

Faces appeared next, almost known, pale hair – Arafinwë? – curling around bared shoulders, sleeveless tunic revealing the play of light on skin, muscles tensing and releasing as another stone was moved.

The stars returned, whirling and spinning around him, swift like rapids and slow like the movement of earth.

Fëanor reached out.

Námo’s game let him see things, glimpses of past, present, future, and seeing the mess he had left behind was the worst punishment for his rebellion he could imagine. He resented it, watching powerlessly, seeing things unfolding without possibility of changing anything. Was this how Manwë watched the world; another way to drive home how separate the Valar truly were from the Children? Knowing that others were denied the knowledge he found imposed upon his solitary existence grated against nerves more raw than he had ever felt before, but at the same time he craved it, craved both the harsh pain of knowledge without action, but also the sweet agony of seeing each of their faces, seeing the ner they became.

He felt proud of them, despite it all, for different reasons.

He watched as Curvo stopped little Tyelpë – who was no longer little, growing up seemingly from one moment to the next – from taking his Oath, and for a moment he wondered if Atarinkë had been a prophecy rather than the remark on their resemblance he had always thought she had meant.

For a moment, he wanted to ask, wanted red hair wrapping in curls around his fingers and laughter floating in the breeze. Had she known, somehow?

The thought cut through him, the pain of it sharp enough to steal his breath, the sudden certainty that she had always known Curvo was destined to be a better father to Tyelpë than he had managed for any of theirs. As air rushed back into lungs he didn’t really have – existing as a fëa was too peculiar, and he had crafted himself a pretend-shell that resembled his former house rather than live as fire, taking comfort in familiar expressions instead of roaring like an inferno or flickering like a candle when his thoughts changed – he felt an accompanying rush of pride, watching his only grandchild speak with an echo of the fire that had brought a whole people across the sea to fight an unwinnable war.

They believed in him; in Tyelpë they saw a ner worth believing, worth following, and it was glorious to behold.

He watched trials and triumphs, watched as the Oath slowly corrupted his sons, watched as the words haunted them. No cravens nor cowards, his sons, to shy away from their Doom, even as it tore them apart, tore away one after the other.

‘To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass.’

Nelyo should never forgive him. Nor any of the others, the scars he had left on them would never fade.

He could not even dream that she would forgive him, knowing what he had done to her sons, to her. There would be no healing this wound, this rend in her that would be left bleeding until Dagor Dagorath and the Re-making.

Sometimes, she appeared so clearly in his mind, almost clearer than she had when it was real, when it was happening, when he had been able to act.

Tears spilling across her cheeks, helplessness he had not noticed at the time giving her a defeated posture, making her slump in a way that was simply wrong. She should be proud, standing straight and strong, life and love and fire equal to his own in her heart.

But he had smothered her fire. Eclipsed it, and thus covered his own world in darkness, losing the assured path he had once followed and stumbling off into what he now saw as a mire of grief and maddened fury.

Sometimes, he wondered in dark amusement whether that was the Eternal Darkness he had called upon himself, the absence of any fire but his own.

He rarely saw her, the glimpses never more than the familiar shape of a hand, the curve of her cheek, fragmented sights he felt meant to torment him with what he had lost until the moment he began to wonder if he only remembered these fragments, if what he saw was coloured by his own memory of people and places.

He still remembered the redness of her curls – at least he thought he did. He remembered the feel of her body beneath his hands, those muscles born of shaping stone and hefting hammers. He remembered gentle light playing across skin slightly paler than his own, remembered tracing the scattered stars across her cheek with his tongue.

He saw those stars in the faces of some of his sons, saw echoes of her brightness, marred by the Oath and the deeds they had done. He saw them arrive, brought to him one by one, though they did not see him, and he could not bear to speak to those he loved most dearly for fear they would not hear him.

His sons; how terribly had he shaped their fates?

Looking back at it all, he hardly recognised himself, a creature of grief and pain, unwilling to listen to counsel or reason. She had been right to leave, and that, perhaps, was what hurt the most. To know that he had lost himself so completely that she no longer knew his heart, no longer understood him as only she had ever truly understood.

Nerdanel stood on the precipice, her bare toes kissing the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the roiling sea. The gale blowing around her caught in loose curls, but she stood frozen, uncaring, barely feeling the breath of Manwë as it tangled her hair, pulled at the fabric of her clothes.

Her sons – bar one – were dead, and the last one… was Makalurë staring at the same grey waves that stretched before her eyes?

Her heart was a small wounded thing in her chest, beating slowly, painfully.

Had they been afraid, her sons?

Had they wished for her to hold them, hold them as they breathed their last, calling out to her with voices she could not hear?

Fëanáro had been wrong in haring off after Melkor – Morgoth as he had named him – but as news trickled back to her, tales of Kinslayings – plural! – of kidnappings, of neri that she scarcely recognised as the boys she had once laid to her breast, had raised with more love than she had thought herself capable of feeling… Nerdanel began to wonder if she had not been just as wrong in her stubborn refusal to follow.

Perhaps she could have… that way lay madness, surely. Where was her vaunted wisdom now? How had her feet brought her down this path, taken her from the life she had loved and made her stumble into this unrecognisable nightmare of a future?

Nerdanel… the wise. It left a sour taste in her mouth, the name, a bitter tang of loneliness and grief that it had not carried when he had named her so. What wisdom had been in remaining behind, in letting her sons – her sons! – throw their lives away thus, what wisdom in staying in this place where she was equal parts scorned and revered for the choice?

She had come here, escaping the looks cast her way in Tirion, in Alqualondë.

She had raised Kinslayers.

She had spoken against Fëanáro’s plan, and been banished for it.

Pity and scorn, always, pity and scorn. And pain. So much pain it felt like she had not taken a true breath since before Finwë was murdered.

There was no escape from this pain.

She did not hear her words even as she spoke them, did not care to note how she threw her fury, her agony, her grief, her love into the wind, screamed against the pain that had wrapped her in chains tighter than she could ever escape.

And still she could not hate him.

Oh, they thought she must, those people far away who had never understood what she shared with him, but Nerdanel knew that love was as tightly woven into her fëa as this new grief that cut a thousand bleeding wounds in her heart.

Beyond the pain, however, there was fury, fury strong enough to topple mountains if she let it.

Others had hope they might see their loved ones again, hope that they might make amends with those who had been wronged, those who had left… hope that was denied her.

For that, she did blame him.

For that, she did blame the Valar, their willingness to abandon the Children to their own devices, for that, she blamed even the All-Father, by whom they had foolishly sworn their oath.

My sons. How did we all come to this, my most beloveds?

How do we find the path that will lead us from this darkness, Fëanáro, when you cannot seek it with me?

She sat in a hall he recognised, her lips pressed tight together as she watched a stranger come before her, speaking words meant to oust her from this place, this seat that Finwë had sat upon when he joined them in exile, and the vehement loathing in her eyes as she stared at the quailing ner before her was something at once alien and so familiar that Fëanáro shuddered to see it on her face. It was a look he had seen on his own face, mirrored in glass, but never in her, never shaped by her brows, her lips, her clenching fingers as anger warred within her.

“No.” Her refusal was plain, only one word; denial, pure and simple.

“You could return to Tirion,” the ner tried, but Fëanáro felt no surprise to see the steel in her gaze harden further. She was at least as stubborn as he; one of the reasons he had loved her.

“You may tell your King that he is welcome to visit me,” Nerdanel replied, and her voice held enough ice that Fëanáro half expected it to come out as a puff of frost, “but I am the Lady of Formenos, and here I shall remain.”

She did not sing when she worked.

Somehow – and it surprised him to feel so, having teased her often that her singing was comparable to a cat that had been stepped on – the silence of Nerdanel’s workshop seemed to number among the greatest wrongs he had done her.

The stars whirled ever onwards.

Fëanor had stopped reaching out, choosing silent endurance as each moment broke him down further.

In the dead of night, she felt the ghost of his touch, wiping away the tears that only fell in darkness, loneliness, felt the way he would kiss silent apologies into her skin when he hurt her.

It was almost real, and almost real was not enough.

Nerdanel had realised ‘almost real’ hurt even more than ‘gone forever’.

“I want them back.”

She said it clearly, decisively, like she was Queen – she was, she was his Queen, and no one would dare say otherwise – tired of smothering the fire that burned in her heart. The serving maiar did not reply, but Nerdanel did not care.

What had she, but time?

Settling with her back against a pillar she could have carved more beautiful in her sleep, Nerdanel waited.

What was there, for her, but steely determination?

Loneliness.

Loneliness, and anger, fury that would find no release, no easing of the pain she felt.

What was there, except the scorn and the pity as those who had died in Alqualondë began to return, while she grew paler by the day, losing more and more pieces of what made her her. Hope. It had been the first thing to vanish, leaving her with such fleeting steps she did not even notice its flight before it had abandoned her.

She had not come for hope.

She had not come for anger, for vengeance, not shown up at the Halls as a penitent seeking absolution.

She had come for love.

Love and fire.

Fire and pain.

Pain and love.

To pass the time, she sang. Badly. She knew her strengths, and music was surely not among them – Makalaurë’s skill had ever fascinated her, the way his mind seemed to hear melodies in everything around him, his fingers plucking them out on a harp, his lips shaping them in a hum, a song.

Still, she had no desire to begin reshaping this travesty of stone that Mandos called his Halls – parts of it might have been beautiful, but it felt oddly unfinished, as though the sculptor had put down his tools while only half the design had been released from the stone – and so Nerdanel sang.

“Why are you here?”

The question came days later, maybe weeks, months, years.

Nerdanel smiled; it was not a pleasant smile. The servant of Mandos took a step back.

“I want them,” she said. “All of them.”

Námo’s hidden eyes saw all.

A wave of his hand made the specks of memory that floated around Fëanor whirl faster.

The stars held no fascination for him anymore, beyond trying not to wince when they pierced his mind with flashes of imagery.

Nerdanel in her workshop, offkey singing as her chisel shaped wondrous things became the stars once more.

The singing continued.

Fëanor started, whirling to peer through the impenetrable haze of stars that seemed to be no fewer than when his punishment had first begun.

Nerdanel.

It could be no other.

Fëanor grinned, feeling a curious sense of uplifting; she really was atrocious, and the sound was more precious to him than anything he could have named in that moment.

Pushing through the stars, Fëanor watched impatiently as each memory blurred together, a collage of thoughts and time.

And still, Nerdanel was singing in the distance.

Perhaps the Valar had found some mercy in the war that had been fought beyond the sea, a glimmer of compassion, perhaps, Nerdanel wondered.

Sstaring at the doorway, she fell silent. Such familiar hair – her own, but sitting on a different head, mingled with darker strands, and single head of pale moonlight – and she reached for them, reached for them even as she saw hesitancy in their eyes, saw the way they expected her scorn, her disdain for their acts.

“Come to me,” she pleaded, reaching, reaching, hearing her blood thunder in her ears as her heart pushed it through her body.

They came.

Her arms were not long enough; they were bigger now than when they had left, or maybe she was smaller, but they fit with her nonetheless.

“Ammë.”

“My boys.” They were. Her boys, no matter what they had done, had seen; they were hers.

Nerdanel kissed brows, wiped away tears, crushed bodies against her, surprised by the strength that returned her hold.

“My boys,” she whispered, wishing that she could take the haunted looks from their eyes as easily as she was putting smiles on their faces.

“I said all of them.” Nerdanel said later, making the seven around her startle, but her tone brooked no disagreement, and they settled around her, adding their stares to her own. “You will give them to me.” She said it, and he could hear the determination in her voice, did not need to hear the rest of her words to know what she meant to say. “You will give them to me, or I will follow them, this time, I will follow.” Silence greeted her. “Do not test me.”

Fëanor thought he was running, following the sound that had underscored much of his life, in truth, the sound of her voice.

He had left her behind in anger, and now he was running towards her, wishing for no more than a true glimpse.

The irony was not lost on him.

#feanor #nerdanel #namo #halls of mandos #swg challenge fic

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