Where the Ocean Meets the Sky and the Land by StarSpray

Chapter 13

It was very quiet in Alqualondë after the fleet's departure. Many of the Teleri had gone as sailors, including Olwë's sons in the fleet's flagships. Elwing saw that for everyone it was difficult to return to any semblance of a normal routine, when their eyes were forever drawn to the horizon. She knew that feeling well; she had sat for many long hours watching the Sea when Eärendil had been gone on his long voyages. The worry was almost comforting in its familiarity, though now her chief concerns lay with Elrond and Elros, wherever they dwelled now with the remaining Sons of Fëanor.

The Noldor were the first to recover. They had watched their friends and family march away before. There were very few now left to return to Tirion, but return they did, bidding the Teleri and the remaining Vanyar in Alqualondë fond farewells as they went back through the Calacirya. As they did, the Vanyar stirred, eager to return to Valmar and to the mountain slopes beneath Taniquetil where they kept their sheep and roamed beneath sun and stars.
Anairë prepared to leave also, and as promised she invited Elwing to go with her to see Valmar and its towers. Elwing agreed eagerly. She wanted to see the famous city up close, and she wanted even more to see Anairë's plans completed and come to fruition. She wanted for nothing in the homes of her various relations, but she did not want to always be a guest.

They traveled with Ingwë and his wife Lúnamírë, and with Indis. It was a quiet journey with little conversation, all of them lost in their own thoughts. They came to Tirion and stayed a while, but the city was all but empty now, and the silence was oppressive. So they went on to Valmar where Anairë and Elwing were welcomed as guests to Ingwë's own house, a sprawling mansion of white and grey stone. There were several towers from which the countryside all around could easily be seen, and the stars too on clear nights. Towering above them was the great mountain of Taniquetil, where for the first time since the first imprisoning of Morgoth Manwë was not to be found.

"This is the city of the Valar," said Anairë as she and Elwing left Ingwë's house to walk the streets. Somewhere bells were tolling in clear sweet tones. "It is normally overflowing with Ainur." As they walked, however, the streets were quiet. There were Vanyar, though of course relatively few—barely enough to make the city seem less desolate than Tirion. "It will be very hard to get used to…I am glad we will be returning to Alqualondë to build your tower."

There were many towers in Valmar, as there were in Tirion, but they were of very different construction. Some had been built by Elven hands, but many had been raised by the Valar, who needed only to put forth their thought and will to shape the earth into what was needed or wanted, and so they came in many shapes and colors and forms. There was one made entirely of gleaming emerald. They entered and looked out of the windows at a world all in shades of green. Another seemed straightforward stone from the outside, except that there were no windows, but inside the walls were lit by strange mosses that made their own pale blue light. Others were not straight, but crooked or twisted and branching out like gnarled trees, and Elwing could not tell how they could stay standing at all. More than one building turned out to in fact be a great living tree, hollow inside with carved out steps and rooms and windows, always with the sound of wind in the leaves overhead or, in the upper floors, all around.

"So what do you think?" Anairë asked Elwing after they had spent many days exploring the city together, Anairë showing her all of her favorite places and introducing her to the Vanyar who remained behind—including the great singer Elemmírë, who they had found hanging upside down by her knees from a tree branch for apparently no reason at all, her long hair piled on the ground in a tangle of grass bits and thick curls beneath her head as she hummed to herself.

"Of the towers?" Elwing replied. Anairë nodded. "They are all beautiful. I would not like to live in one made entirely of emerald, though…"

"Sapphire, perhaps?" Anairë suggested, and laughed when Elwing wrinkled her nose. "We could do it, you know. There are some Noldor still in Valinor who know the secrets of gem-making."

"No, thank you," said Elwing. "White stone, I think. Or pale grey. I would rather it be simple than something strange. It must withstand the winds and storms off the Sea."
"Oh, it will do that regardless."

"And…I would like an open room at the top," said Elwing. "Like the rooms in the palace at Alqualondë, that are open all the time unless there is a storm. A big wide open room." As she spoke Anairë scribbled some notes in the little notebook she kept in her pocket with a pencil nub. They were seated together on a bench of branches that had been grown for the purpose, with leaves and flowers all along the back and arms where jewel-bright butterflies were flitting. "Big windows," Elwing added, watching a butterfly take flight and disappear up into one of hate malinornë trees that lined the path through the park.

"Naturally," Anairë agreed. "Now, I have an idea—I was speaking with Elunis before we left Alqualondë, and she was talking of the Laiquendi who live in the trees. They build platforms and little houses in the branches of the tallest and strongest trees."

"Yes," said Elwing, "though I never lived in one."

"What if the tower was a tree?" Anairë asked. "Not a real tree, I mean, but carved in the shape of one? A thick and sturdy tree." She turned the page of her little notebook and in a few strokes sketched out her idea. To Elwing it looked merely like a sketch of a tree. Anairë laughed and promised a model that would show her ideas better.

When Anairë became busy with her sketches and models, Elwing found herself welcomed into Queen Lúnamírë's circle, all golden-haired Vanyar who delighted in music and singing and dancing, though there was little dancing now and the songs they sang were somber and quiet. They went walking and riding through the countryside where many of the Vanyar lived instead of in the city, tending to sheep and goats on the mountain slopes, or living lives of quiet contemplation either alone or in small groups. It was very quiet and peaceful, with only the baaing of sheep and the tinkle of their bells to break the silence.

It was Lúnamírë who took Elwing to Ezellohar, not far from the western gates of Valmar, where the blackened and gnarled remains of Telperion and Laurelin still stood. The great vats that had gathered light from the trees were there still as well, empty but for some recent rainwater. The Trees themselves were still enormous, bigger than the biggest trees Elwing had ever seen in Doriath, and she had once thought that no tree could have grown taller and mightier than Hírilorn outside of Menegroth's gates.

"I remember," Lúnamírë said as they stood on the hill between the Trees, "I remember when Elwë returned to us after Oromë brought him here. He spoke of the wide green lands and the safety and the mountains and rivers and the Bay of Eldamar under the stars—but most of all he spoke of the Light, and of the Trees themselves, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen." She sighed. "I have often wished that he had not been lost to us. But perhaps it is better that he was not here to see the Darkening. Perhaps that was why he desired a Silmaril."

"In part, maybe," said Elwing, looking up into the bare branches of Telperion. "Maybe that was why he refused to give it to the Sons of Fëanor, after."

Lúnamírë sighed. As they turned to leave the Trees behind she said, "What happened at Alqualondë was grievous for many, many reasons, but among them is the gulf that it opened between our kin and Finwë's children. Once upon a time Finwë was as close to Elwë and Olwë and Elmo as a fourth brother. And now…"

Elwing thought of tapestries burning in Menegroth, and blood on the snow. And she thought of choking on smoke in Sirion and the wailing of terrified children, before she had jumped. "If only Maedhros and his brothers felt the same," she said.

"The Maitimo I knew as a child would," Lúnamírë said. "I think Fëanáro in Mandos must be horrified by what his Oath has wrought."

Elwing did not answer. She hoped Fëanor knew all that had happened, and she could not summon any pity for him. And she did not want to think about him anymore, so she turned the conversation away from the Noldor entirely by asking about Vanyarin poetry, whose modes were so different from what Elwing was used to.