Red Wool by Elfique

Red Wool

The loom towered over her, dark and foreboding with grey and black weave. There had been bleak days under her fingertips, choked with ash and poisonous cloud, stained with every shade of violence. Thrice already she had sent for more reds to be dyed; where, she wondered, would she find enough?

Vairë seemed to look through the intricate threading as she worked, with eyes glazed and unfocused in grief and fatigue. Today she wore the form of a Noldo. Despite their doom, despite their exile and all their misdeeds, she would honour them this day as her fingers spun their sorrows.

The slaughter sprang to her hands as they flew unbidden across the frame. In and out, back and forth, slash and hack. Deaths of thousands would be woven into the history of Eä over the course of mere days. Sighing heavily she took up new threads. It was her labour to see it recorded, and so she would see it done. Thus she embellished the gruesome faces that loomed in her mind, fanned the raging flames of the battlefield and wove the broken bodies into mud and mire.

As the days passed and the battle raged on, even her own face, wise and godly as it was, bore signs of those tears unnumbered that were shed. How long had it been since her lord pronounced that doom, how long since the beloved children who now lay bleeding left the pale shores?

There the rusted blade cut down fair Gelmir. Valiantly into the fray went the forces of Turgon. And then how slow, how painful the callous betrayal of Maedhros seemed as she fitted it into the frame. The wool felt heavy in her hands as she felt the final forces gathering, the calm and swell before the eventual storm. Such valour she wrought into Fingon’s face, such gleam to the armour shining through the dirt and crusted blood.

And still she needed more reds. 

Chapter End Notes

Thanks to all those at the Hall of Fire for their advice.