Home from War by Himring

Chapter 1

Cirdan felt the Sea from a long way off, sensed the moisture in the breeze on his face, as they began to approach Mithlond, and the closer they came, the more clearly he scented the salt in the air. Home again, after years of fighting before the Black Gate of Mordor and beyond.

The Falathrim hated having to fight far from the Sea. That was partly due to their training and equipment, of course. Usually, they could rely on water and ships being at least nearby and their fighting style was designed to make the most of that. But it was also a matter of emotional security, visceral almost, as if an umbilical cord had been severed when they found themselves out of their habitual environment. They lost confidence and expected bad things to happen, during battle in dry lands, and experience, more often than not, confirmed those expectations.

This time had not been an exception, to say the least. But it had been necessary. Cirdan’s troops had followed him without protest, with much less uproar despite heavy losses than Oropher and his people had caused. Now, however, they were all deeply relieved to be back where they belonged and quickened their pace.

But once they entered the quiet grey streets of Mithlond, their very arrival home brought home doubly, glaringly, the absence of those who were gone—as if some childish hope in them had clung to the idea that they had been deceived, in the desolation of Sauron’s realm, and they would find those lost to them waiting back here, awakening to a kinder reality after the long, bitter nightmare of Mordor. And now they were not here—neither Gil-galad nor any of the many others who had fallen before the final battle—and those who were left in Mithlond were too few.

There were the practicalities of settling back in to be handled, but Cirdan escaped from Galdor and the rest, as soon as he could permit himself, fled to a small rocky cove where nobody was likely to look for him and, collapsing onto a boulder, just stared at the waves for an hour.

He had had losses before and survived them—Elu lost in the forest, Olu sailing west without both of them, all the battles and losses of Beleriand—but this time, he thought, was one too many and he was too old, now.

Gil, he recalled, had teased him, when his beard began to sprout.

‘I will have to remember to treat you with respect now, like the senior figure of authority you are!’

How comfortable they had grown with each other, over the years, as their relationship had slowly changed and shifted until it allowed such jokes.

They would want to leave now, those who remained of the Eldar, or at least many of them, drained with their last long effort among the shadows and the ashes of Mordor. In fact, Cirdan had hardly departed the blight of that last battlefield below Orodruin, bone-weary and grief-stricken, when the requests for ships westwards began pouring in, as if they thought Cirdan, in his exhaustion before his tent on the fringe of Dagorlad, might, by some miracle, start pulling white ships from out under his cloak, ready to sail, as if none of them had noticed that he had been rather busy with other things than building ships, of late…  He had fended them off politely enough, deferred each of their inquiries, telling them to send messages to Mithlond and be prepared to wait their turn for a few months or years. Some of them might even change their minds, in the interim, he supposed.

But he was tempted, really tempted just now, to tell them all to get lost and arrange their own passage, build a small ship just for himself, sail off towards that distant horizon, and leave them to it. Surely, whatever the Valar expected of him, he had done and suffered enough. And whoever decided to stay—Elrond could take care of them. Hardly fair to Elrond, of course, but Cirdan was not in a mood to be fair.

He drew a deep shudder of breath and reminded himself that if he abandoned his charge and went, he might merely find himself waiting too long, over there rather than here, with idle hands and nothing to do. Of those he might look for the most, it was only Finrod who was known with certainty to have returned yet—only Finrod he could already hope to see, beside Earendil, who must spend most of his time in the sky.

And, anyway, Gil-galad had trusted him with that Ring. It was not at all his sort of thing—too Noldorin as a concept, by half, even if it was true that it had always been free of any of Sauron’s subtler influence, although not proof against his brute power—but Gil had trusted him to handle it, nevertheless. He brought it out for the first time, in his lonely cove, and showed it to the rocks and the grey-green waves. It flickered red in his hand, the ring that Celebrimbor had meant to kindle courage in chilled hearts.

‘But what shall I do with it?’ he asked, aloud, as he had asked when Gil-galad had given it to him.

‘For now, nothing,’ Gil had answered.

He received no other answer now. Yet, he felt obscurely encouraged, whether it was the ring exerting its power or merely the memory of Gil’s calm, reassuring voice.

He put the Ring back so that it lay hid, against his chest, and turned to Mithlond again. Time to start building ships! But he would not hurry. He would proceed at his own pace. If he gave himself time to recover, others of those who had been less hurt in mind and body in the War of the Last Alliance, too, might find that Middle-earth could offer healing enough, for now, and might yet decide to stay a little longer…

Chapter End Notes

Name help:
Olu = Olwe (compare Elu = Elwe)
Gil as a nickname for Gil-galad is not canonical; Keiliss uses it and maybe other writers.