Atmospherics by Anérea, sallysavestheday

Nine thousand years of stars is not enough, Círdan thinks, drinking in the night sky like rejuvenating nectar. He tips his head back onto the wale of the small boat he has rowed until the Havens hang low on the horizon, their lamps no challenge to the lights that arc above. The long fall of his hair meets the water, suspending him between sea and sky. Pearls above and pearls below, he chants: the chorus of an ancient song of balance and fulfillment, of finding peace in letting go of one’s desire. Valinor will wait, as it has waited for centuries beyond memory. In the meantime, he has the night, and the light, and the waves. The rower’s ache in his arms and shoulders is pleasant, and the gentle rocking of the boat lulls him toward his dreams. Oh, the stars, the sweet stars…Elbereth willing, he will bask in their light for at least a millennium more.

Cloud dancing, Tuor used to call it: the way the shifting light and air transform the color and the texture of the sky. Eärendil remembers long afternoons on the deck of his father’s ship, watching as the great shapes swirled and spun together and asunder: here, an eagle, there a whale, or a rabbit, or a lumbering bear. He takes his own boys cloud-watching, now, dreamy under the heat of the noon sun, sprawled on the boards as the wind whistles in the lines and pulls the bright puffs this way and that. The bowl of the high sky curves over them, its blue hand cupping and protecting. Elros crows: a dragon! and Elrond laughs: a star!

Uinen in the morning is all silver scales and spangles, spread across the surface of the ocean in a great, bright cloud, calling and reflecting the awakening light. Dawn is her moment of greatest delight: the mingling of the sky and sea draws her deep into the Music. It blurs her edges, feathering the lines where her essence ends and the water begins. She is fair and tender in those argent hours: gentle elder sister to all creatures of the sea, kin to the water-weed and the shy crustaceans and the rolling, leaping whales. Fortunate are those who meet her, smiling as the day breaks, curling and lapping, singing – but softly – with the great, round tones of the waves.