Metamorphosis by Agelast

Chapter 1

Elwing did not shy away from the edge.

How often had she paced on this patch of ground before, looking in vain for that tell-tale flash of white on the horizon? But she could not hope for rescue now.

(Her husband's faith in eventual salvation had never been her own.)

She would face this alone.

Her pursuers -- more weighted down than she -- had finally caught up with her. They were indistinguishable from each other. Together they were simply the sons of Fëanor, the nightmares of her childhood come back for her.

(They were her husband's kin, though there was nothing in them that she recognized.)

They spoke with dull voices, tarnished by an age of failure upon failure, of so much violence. This time, there were no flowery speeches, no attempts at reason.

(Reason had died, long ago.)

They said, simply, give it to us.

(Or die.)

The Silmaril was heavy around her neck.

Dully, she wondered what had happened to her children. They had been running (oh, they were too young to run) and their small hands had slipped from her grasp. Elros and Elrond had been swallowed up in the murk without uttering a single cry.  

She thought of her sons (her brothers, her mother, her father, her land, her people, lost, all lost)  and her hands closed tightly around the jewel.

The taller one, blood-red and terrible, took a step towards her.

She backed away.

Please, he said.

But there was no time for mercy now.

She turned and stepped off the cliff and waited for the violence of cold water against a human body, of shredding rocks on human skin. But impact never came. Instead she found  herself shrinking and changing, skin prickling and sprouting feathers, fingers spreading and branching out to into a web of hollow bones and muscle and forming into great white wings.

Her scream turned into a cry of a bird.

She had only a moment to learn how to fly.

Elwing was caught in a swift uplifting rush of wind that took her high above the burning Havens. She flew above the roiling pitch-black waters of the harbor.

Away, away, she dared not look back.