Sandcastles by Elisif

Chapter 1

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The first time he attempts it, he is already a grown man; discussing politics with his oldest brother at Alqualondë’s crystalline shore and refusing the calls of his two youngest to come build a sandcastle in favour of holding his prince’s robes regally above the earth, the first time he wonders – in jest- if it possible to shape sand through song.

To his delight, he finds that he can make the sand ripple and shift with sufficient focus and alteration of tone and pitch; he strains himself, and with concentration, he manages to draw an awkward, wavering line in the sand of Aman with his voice alone, watches as his baby brothers eagerly grab at the rivulet in the sand with chubby fists.

He grins to himself. With a slight shift in pitch, he erases the line completely. Then when he is satisfied that the Ambarussa’s jaws have dropped sufficiently, winking at his equally awed elder brother, he sings it back.

He teases them onwards as one might taunt a kitten on a string; in time, Maitimo nearly cracks from suppressed laughter as he watches them, chasing after one line and then another, grabbing hold of them just in time for them to vanish from view, then wheeling around only to cry out at the discovery of yet another.

When he too is laughing too hard to maintain the tune and himself doubles over into silent peals of laughter, one of the twins makes the connection and both fling themselves against the vast trunks of his legs, scrambling upwards into his arms, crying: “again, again, Laurë, again!”

Several decades of seaside walks in which his sleeves are tugged to fraying point later, when his twin brothers have turned their hearts towards maidens and their backs upon the sea, he can accompany his songs with simple illustrations in the sand for those who wish him to do so.

...

When they reach Endorë he attempts it once more, unfurls an elegy for Amras in the sand across their path for Amrod to see as they march stalwartly along the hither shore with weapons in their hands and ashes in their hair, hoping that Amrod might by the image recall the song that Maglor would sing if he could, but cannot now utter in their father’s hearing. But in the darkness, Amrod walks straight through his brother’s only elegy and Maglor decides that he and his now-youngest brother both have left such frivolities far behind.

...

He next shapes sand on a whim on the grey shores of Lake Mithrim, supporting his trembling elder brother as Maedhros attempts to walk on his atrophied and all-but-useless legs, barely kept upright by the combined efforts of clinging on with his left arm while Maglor threads his hand under the maimed right, his fist clutching at the sling that supports it to gain the handhold Maedhros can no longer offer. They stop to rest by the lakeshore; his brother’s eyes are pained, his breathing strained and heavy, and as has become routine Maglor takes up a lullaby to calm him; an old song about the kindness and reassurance of the sea. In accompaniment be begins to softly shift the lakeshore below their feet into ripples, paints little waves in the sodden grey mud that like the sky-blue shores of Aman in his song entwine themselves around their feet.

Maedhros cries out in alarm; he buries his head against Maglor’s shoulder in sudden distress.

“Please,” he whispers, his shoulders trembling. “I need to know what’s real. Please don’t—”

He retains his promise to Maedhros and Amrod both for centuries; it is not difficult, for lakes seldom differ, all of them seemingly like Mithrim and unlike the sea in lacking that correct consistency of sand and damp required to shape the sand with tone and pitch. In time, he forgets how.

...

They find Amrod laid out upon the sand, a crimson halo of blood pooled around his cracked head where he fell, their last brother’s eyes softly closed as if in heavy-lidded sleep. Maedhros falls reverently to his knees, takes Amrod’s limp hand into his own trembling, blood-soaked fingers, kisses them; Maglor, standing back in shock, draws breath and begins to sing, sends forth a hymn of deepest mourning across the bay, for what else can he do for Ambarussa, what else is there that he has he ever done?

“You deserved more than this, little one,” he hears his brother whisper through stifled gasps, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Maglor remembers.

Softly, he reshapes his song of grief into one of peace, through his voice draws the pool of blood outwards into scarlet channels in the sand which he shapes into vines and tendrils, leaves and thorns, petals and blossoms of ever greater intricacy. In the dawn light, with the power of his voice, Canafinwë crowns his brother with a wreath of crimson flowers where he fell, and Maedhros’ sobs fall silent.

Behind them, a small voice asks: “How do you do that?”

...

Could you do more than just draw? Could you build a castle with song, if you tried? 
Little one, if I ever have the time by the sea, I promise you I will learn.

...

The wanderer has passed centuries upon centuries alone by the shore. He no longer draws; with his voice, he now raises towers, spins castles and raises their spires to the sky, forges cities with the sand spread out below his bare feet for so long as the night lasts, sings empires into being as he stands alone by the moonlight and the star-strewn sea.

By dawn he sings blank his footprints and travels onwards, a solitary wanderer trailing kingdoms in his wake to be one day crushed beneath unknowing children’s feet and claimed like kindling by the never-sated sea.

It claims them all in the end.

Still, he sings.