Refusing Every Offer. by Urloth

Chapter 1

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In the silence there was peace.

Celegorm let his body float and let the pain melt away with his sense of living.

There was no more Oath. There was no more constant toil. There was no more eating guilt for Finrod and no burning hatred for Beren. There was no darkness but there was no light either.

There was just the silence and the peace.

Softly though he began to hear what was happening amongst the living, the cries and shrieks. There was blood spray all over the beautiful fake trees of Doriath’s grand hall. There were bodies strewn about like the leaves of Autumn. Bodies twisted, fallen, crushed, mangled, unbreathing, unmoving, dead things and all about him the Fea of those who had inhabited it.

They lined up like ants and began to slowly drift west and a voice came from that direction, soft at first but growing louder.

Son of Fëanaro, come to me.

It was a voice that promised a deep, warm bed to lie in and large warm hands to glide over your body and massage away all the pains. It was a voice that was calm and sure, like a father’s should be.

It was a voice that had doomed a father and a people for being free in thought and want.

Like a unexpected storm ruins a day that everyone thought would be beautiful and had made plans with friends for, it rolled darkly across the quiet, peace.

Son of Fëanaro, come to me.

No, said Celegorm.

-

He let his not-body drift away from the place of death and destruction, and ignored Mandos’ nagging voice which never quieted and never ceased. Into the forests of Beleriand he vanished, to the places where trees still knew no one but their own company.

Here he found a peace again though it was no longer silence because the voices of the trees sung in his ear, clearer now that his ears were not flesh and his fea was not harnessed and muzzled by bone, blood and body.

Son of Fëanaro, a voice interrupted his simple enjoyment and he turned, finding the trees were swaying softly and the voice came from them as their creator used them as her mouth peace.

Son of Fëanaro you must come home, said the quiet voice which brought to mind all the good green things of the earth. It was a voice that promised growth and creation, the blooming of flowers and a garden to walk through and enjoy.

It was a voice that, like green things did, could rot inside and not show the blight. A lazy voice that had demanded his father turn over that which was most precious to him when she could remake the trees, surely, because she had made them the first time. It was a greedy voice.

No, said Celegorm.

-

A hawk cried softly above him and he turned what might have once been his head towards it. He understood all animals, his former lord had been a fine teacher, but now he understood. There were nuances that a human him could not have even begun to understand but now he knew as he knew all the glory and wildness of nature.

Then higher than the hawk came the scream of an eagle.

SON OF FËANARO! RETURN WEST AND FACE YOUR JUDGEMENT, proclaimed Manwë Súlimo in his voice that was a tempest, a typhoon, an eagle’s mating call. This voice did not offer peace but it did offer equality and justice.

Celegorm might have listened to he who Eru had placed as king over his siblings but this was one who was also Manwë the coward, Manwë the stupid and Manwë the easily deceived.

NO, shouted Celegorm in reply, the first time he had felt his infamous temper since he had died, and there was nothing Manwë’s eagles could do, for the fea of the renegade was ephemeral and their claws could not pierce it or hold it.

-

“Son of Fëanaro” he turned in his non-body with a non-eyebrow lifting in sheer shock at the dark haired woman who stared at him with flat eyes that gave no emotion. Her voice was beautiful, the song of the nightingale and he knew her without her saying another word, though he had thought her forever departed from this dangerously beautiful land.

“If only by the love you had for my dau-”

No, interrupted Celegorm, endlessly amused that they thought Melian would be able to move him.

-

The ground groaned as it split itself apart but not beneath Celegorm’s feet for he had none. Whole mountains and valleys disappeared in a few torturous hours and Beleriand was undone, sunk into the ocean with only a few hills now become islands. Celegorm found himself drawn to Himring where the shattered remains of his brother’s mighty fortress still persevered. He sat his non-body down on the foundations and watched the sun rise over a whole new landscape or maybe it was now a sea scape.

Son of Fëanor, said one of the waves that crashed against the new isle. He did not need to define this voice for it defined itself in how it was every wave lapping against the broken steps and masonry.

Don’t bother, he told Ulmo as the water bubbled and pulled back from the form of the Valar, you already know my answer.

You are destined to return and be judged, Ulmo told him, for Ulmo knew a great deal about what was destined, didn’t he?

No, Celegorm would have wept if he had the ability, so he cried non-tears for ravished Gondolin as he slipped away over the water, following the flight of exploring seabirds into the new bays and coves where Elu’s kingdom had once been.

-

 “Tyelkormo,” Oromë came to him in the form of a beautiful hunter and all the things that the renegade Fëanorion had desired in life. Had he had a body Celegorm would have become impossibly hard at the sight of the strong, male body covered in leather. All he could do now was sigh in appreciation at the sight the Lord of the Forests made.

Dogs milled about Oromë’s legs and leading the pack was a hound that Celegorm knew well.

Huan, he murmured, reaching down and his former companion came to him willingly and tried to place his great muzzle in Celegorm’s hands, only to pass through the spectral hands. The dog whined gently at his former master in pain and confusion, trying to seek scratches and a hug but passing through Celegorm’s non-body again and again, his whimpers of confusion and distress growing and tugging at Celegorm’s non-heart.

Huan stop that, he beseeched the hound who eventually stopped and lay on the ground, muzzle on paws and eyes begging his former master for reassurance.

It could almost be worth going back to Valinor and facing judgement if it meant that he could one day give Huan the attention the hound was now denied by Celegorm’s being incorporeal.

“Tyelkormo you need to come home, there is nothing here for you as a wandering spirit,” Oromë’s voice was the same deep rumble that had soothed his feelings of inadequacy when he was not drawn to the forge like his brothers, the same throaty tones that had lingered in Celegorm’s youthful dreams and left him waking up in a sweat and in an embarrassed mess.

His lord’s voice held no condemnation and only offered him a return to what had been before all this had happened. Before his lord had not stopped Celegorm leaving, knowing what would happen because all the Valar knew, witnesses of Eru’s song as they were. His married lord, ever faithful to his wife.

Celegorm looked at Huan, looked at the hound that had abandoned him for a pair of thieves and took a non-step back with his non-feet.

“Tyelkormo,” Oromë begged, “please stop this and come back.”

A hand was offered but Celegorm was looking around him, seeing the eagle resting a tree nearby, listening to the sound of a nightingale in a nearby bush and feeling the awareness in the water of the stream nearby and in the trees all around him.

No, Celegorm refused.

“You will find no peace here,” Oromë reasoned, “and even if I leave you alone, Namo’s call will hound you and Varda will watch you from the stars at night while Manwë’s eagles scream your sins so you cannot forget them.”

No change from when I lived then? Celegorm retorted, feeling worn-out and misused, his faith in Eru himself a broken thing.

Then my reply is no. It will always be no.