Thirteen by Dawn Felagund

Sometimes it takes strength to do nothing?

I was a good wife. He cannot, in truth, claim otherwise (though he may well try. Probably, he will try.) When we departed Tirion, I dreamed we would accomplish a great love, an epic love, worthy of song. I marched at his side, girded with a sword, Telperinquar in my arms, the drumbeat of my boots on the road as steady as my heart.

Within days, those boots were blood-soaked. And the heart--

I stood on the quays of Alqualondë; I let him take our son. I could not--

So I did nothing.

I was in my workshop, the comfort of cool clay beneath my hands, when it happened.

I wasn’t thinking of Fëanáro.
The sundering of the Noldor troubled me not.
(In that moment, I did not even miss my children.)

The amber light of Laurelin, the liquid silver of Telperion, swallowed shadows lurking in the deepest corners of my workspace. This is hope, I realized: that light ever devours dark.

I held my hands to it; thought of Fëanáro, the Noldor, my sons.

As the tsunami of dying photons shattered upon me, terror (for them, for me) fell from all sides.

It was winter when I found the store of nuts and seeds and the kinds of trinkets children would keep, in a hollowed space under a rock. The wetland at the verge of Esgalduin was stripped to browns and grays, a cold wind moaning amid the reeds. Nothing hidden there was fresh or new, but I couldn’t shake the sense of being watched.

Or the sounds: a plash, a whisper.

I crept toward the scraggled bushes and the sounds of children running, hiding, holding their breaths—

But straightened in disappointment. No. Just the wind.

Behind me: a snap. A sigh.

The twist of a dragon on the hilt design was a reminder.

A distant memory—so faded to be nearly an instinct, a collective dream—remembered a black dragon rearing up to fill the sky. Remembered fire sudden enough to peel away the roof of a hall. Remembered bodies incinerated before their ashen tongues could scream.

The settlers, at the verge of the ice-cluttered sea, twitched in dreams (or memories?) of depths too dark to delve.

The black she-dragon, her eggs: a rumor.

So as they established their own long hall, their artisans and poets remembered, exalted. Dreaded what would come.

I locked myself in my workshop, beyond the reach of responsibilities, of food to be fixed and messes cleaned and children instructed. Wives loved. Kingdoms sustained. I didn’t answer when they knocked. This—this was larger than love, even for them. The substance of the silima was easy to assemble: three crystalline shells like drained eggs, propped in a row, their tops open like expectant hungry mouths. It was the Light that was difficult, the Light, the retching Light that poured in fluid past my lips, dry and cold and bright and burning, leaving me complete, leaving me hollow.

“The disappointment of mortality was not death,” said Andreth, her scorn scarce concealed.

“It was the cycle, the endless cycle of disappointment—the illusion of new—of kings raised up and then faltered, of bloodshed and war, of cruelty …”

She went silent for a moment. “Some of us heard the wisdom poems; some of us saw the pattern well like blood through a bandage. But it was not we who rose to power, and every turn of the cycle battered us like a boulder tumbling down a hill—

“We turned our backs on the south.

“It made no difference.”

Melian descended into a kiss. The Elven boy-king was perplexed, the familiar stars that marked north obscured by leaves. His crown of wilted, golden leaves sat awry on his hair. His fingers swiped the air, uncertain if he should—if he could—touch her.

But she centered him. She felt it happen: his feä tottering, then upright, the hand that caressed her cheek suddenly sure and strong.

The stars in those days were so bright that the forest glowed as though moonlit. Leaf-fringed shadows whelmed then ebbed from starlight. The stars turned overhead, unseen, as though time itself had ended.

It was a hot day and he came to her workshop in silks. Her request had been audacious; his answer—the slither of his clothing from his bare body beneath—was brazen.

A bead of sweat crawled down Nerdanel’s spine. She prayed for the courage to raise her eyes.

She clenched then stretched her fingers wide so they wouldn’t tremble as she placed chisel to stone. She dared to look. Laurelin gilded him.

The shape of him, beneath her hand, in marble … were she to touch him--him--he would be pliant, warm. Their eyes met: searching, pleading, inviting.

The trail of mud betrayed Tyelkormo, returned unannounced from his travels to Oromë’s halls. Nelyo drew the broom from the closet with a sigh and followed the mud. He could hear the voices of Tyelkormo and Curvo, kept deliberately low but humming with excitement, beyond Tyelkormo’s door. When he opened it, there was a scurrying that produced a sudden mound of towels in one corner.

That began to writhe a little.

Broom and mud forgotten, Nelyo stammered, “What—?” as Tyelkormo squeaked, “He’s harmless!”

And Curvo, hands folded coolly. “Just towels,” Curvo reassured him, right as the towels began yipping.