Tales for the New Year by Kaylee Arafinwiel

In The Beginning

OC-centric, Awakened Elves at Cuivienen.

Read In The Beginning

The stars were singing.

In all her life after, she could never be sure how she had known that.

Stars. Such a small word, yet it meant so much to her.

And why was she sleeping with her eyes closed? Eyes. The word flashed across her consciousness, and suddenly she knew, and knew how to open them...a brightness paired against the darkness, so bright that she rolled over on the sand, above the gentle lapping of the waves - and pressed herself into the one lying next to her.

All the while, the stars sang. They sang of welcome, of brightness, of life. Life.

Slowly, she sat up, relishing each new sensation, memorizing the Song, for something told her not to forget, oh, she must not forget...

The one next to her leaned into her as he sat up himself. Awestruck and wondering, he stared heavensward with her as the Music reigned over all. Around them, some near, some further, other figures like themselves were stirring to wakefulness.

A name came into her mind. Caleilil.

"Calelil," she said softly, aloud, to hear the sound of her own voice. Around her, others were speaking softly, now the Music had died away.

Beside her, Caleilil's companion lay a - hand? hand yes, that was the word - on her arm, and spoke just as softly. "Aramath," he said, his voice musical and pleasant to her ears.

Their eyes met, and the two knew they belonged together. "Aramath," she whispered, as he murmured her name, honey-sweet. Around them, others were discovering each other among the hushed whispers of the waves on the starlit beach. Further away, when they had time to think of aught but each other, they would discover camps in the nearby woods and meadows.

The Elves had awoken.

All Its Fear Pass Away

Summary: 

The Elves of Cuivienen work out life, because life is weird if you don't know how to do it. Also, the Calyai (Shining folk, Maiar) show up and help them to do Life.
Prompt: "‘Who’s that? Be off! You can’t come in. Can’t you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?

‘Of course we can’t read the notice in the dark,’ Sam shouted back. ‘And if hobbits in the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I’ll tear down your notice when I find it.’"
~ The Return of the King, “The Scouring of the Shire”

A/N: Title comes from another RotK quote: 'Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fear pass away.' The Return of the King

Read All Its Fear Pass Away

The Quendi, they called themselves. The Speakers. Yet, they were of three Kindreds, that became obvious ere long. For they had wakened, had they not, in three different places; the smallest group had been found in the meadows, the middle in the woods, near outcroppings of stone. This, the largest, had been on the beach itself, on the outskirts of the wood.

 

  Six there were who were chief among them, who had wakened first and claimed their Kindreds as their own. Though Calelil and Aramath were of the Third Kindred, that called Nelyai, the folk of Enel, they liked well enough to meet with the Minyai and Tatyai, folk of Imin and Tata, and exchange information. All the Three Kindreds learned, they would share with one another. That was as it should be, their chiefs proclaimed, and so it was.  

 

Shelter was one thing they learned to make quickly enough, weaving together branches and sea-grasses. Rafts and fishing nets, too, came readily enough to those of the Third Kindred, and they shared their bounty of fish with the others.    When the Awakened Elves had stumbled their way through the basic tasks needed for survival, they were able to focus on other things.   

 

Children, for instance. Bringing forth a new generation under the stars was a pleasurable activity.  When their Chieftain Enel's wife Enelyë brought forth three sons, the Nelyai rejoiced. Daughters, too, were welcomed with gladness, and learned all their mothers could teach them.   Minwë, Towë and Nowë were close to the other Chieftains' sons, Ingoldo, Ingwë, and Finwë, and as they grew up, they fished or hunted together with their fathers while their mothers remained at home to keep the council fires, tend the grains that the Minyai had learned to grow from the Shining Ones, mill the flour and bake the bread.   

 

The Shining Ones were the Calyai, the folk who were like Quendi and yet not. They were helpers and friends, and the Quendi welcomed them as teachers. The Calyai refined the rudimentary skills the Quendi had discovered for themselves, and taught them how to craft things the Quendi had not yet begun to imagine. The skill of spinning and weaving cloth from the shed fur of forest beasts for instance, proved to yield better coverings than the woven grasses they had so far been used to.   Shelters, too, were better. No more were they rude tents of bark and leaves, but huts of stone, which the Calyai had showed them to dig for, and of brick, which they had learned how to bake.   The Quendi made their first town in the meadow by the bay of Cuivienen...just in time.   Then the storm came.