Cradle of Stars by Dawn Felagund, Elleth

Outrageous

Ours were an enduring people, and we’d withstood much in the form of suffering and death on the Great Journey, but the words we had for kill and death were inadequate for what Arafinwë had to describe to us. To our people, he would not speak of what he had seen. He became faint and had to be led by Indis and Nerdanel indoors, into his own house, at which point he straightened, and his unbalance was revealed as a ruse. He was braced by something in the midst of his exhaustion, having ridden for days without stop to reach us. (The poor gray mare collapsed upon being taken to the stable, we were later told.) But there were not words for what he had witnessed.

Nerdanel and Terentaulë were driven mad by it, suggesting words ever more outrageous until Indis held up her hand and, in the halting voice of a small child telling a story with his tiny store of words, Arafinwë related what he had seen.

We sat in silence after, in a circle in the room where we used to let our small children play in the middle of the floor while Eärwen and Arafinwë and Nolofinwë and I (and sometimes Nerdanel and Fëanáro) drank wine and told each other the kinds of stories we hoped the children would not understand. Terentaulë had put a cluster of candles in the center of that floor. One by one, in silence, they went out, leaving us in darkness we could not bear to relieve.