Through Sorrow to Find Joy by Dawn Felagund

White Nights

Maedhros prepares for the Fifth Battle.

White Nights

It inspired a sort of madness, a relentlessness not permitted in the months when the days were shorter and darkness compelled him to sleep. Not since his youth in Valinor, not since the time when he had yet to become disillusioned, when the Treelight granted all activities at all hours, had he worked so hard.

His brother urged him to sleep. Drew the drapes. Tacked them shut. It made no difference.

He could sense Arien's nearness to the north of him. As the light never fully faded from the horizon, the commotion never fully quieted in his mind. Before a half-hour was gone, trying to sleep, he had risen again to his work, to his table strewn with papers and maps, to his inkwell running dry and the growing pile of unsent letters.

In the utter stillness of mid-night, there was no one to argue, no one to declare folly or irrationality. There will be an alliance. No one to express doubt. An alliance of all the forces of good in Beleriand. No foresight troubled him. He threw open the drapes, sent Macalaurë's tacks scattering across the floor. There was light ever on the horizon.

At last, we will prevail.

Chapter End Notes

Last year, my husband and I flew from the eastern U.S. to Ireland shortly after Summer Solstice. I didn't sleep on the plane because I stayed up all night to watch the sun that never fully set in the north. Luckily, I didn't start any battles ...