Far Too Many Of You Dying by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying

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The only good to come of Uinen's storm of grief was the washing away of Ungoliant's foul Unlight that had coated all of Valinor where she passed by. When the storming ceased, and the wailing winds quieted, the stars came out, shining as brightly as they had ever done upon the sea and the jewel-littered beaches.

They also shone upon the bodies of the dead, both Teleri and Noldor, who had died in that awful confused fight for the ships. Some—mostly Noldor, in their heavy armor—had drowned, but Uinen had retrieved their bodies from the sea, washing them up onto the shore.

Minyelmë helped to lay them out, closing blank staring eyes, combing salt-tangled hair, washing blood from faces and from hands. The Noldorin armor they discarded, tossing it into a haphazard pile near the docks, alongside the swords and spears. Minyelmë would have liked to see it all melted down, but no one else seemed willing to go anywhere near it again, let alone handle the stuff long enough to dispose of it.

Uinen's wailing had subsided, leaving a void of silence that was filled with the screams and cries of the survivors, those whose sons and daughters and brothers and sisters had been slain. Minyelmë bit her lip until it bled to keep from joining them. She had been born beside twilit Cuiviénen, and had died there, but it had been an orc who killed her, not someone meant to be her friend.

And once all of the slain had been gathered, the eldest among them, who had dwelled beside Cuiviénen, were called upon, for they were the only ones who remembered the funeral rites—there had been no need of them in Valinor, until now.

Minyelmë was asked more than once what to do. "I don't know," she had to say, every time, until finally she fled back to the palace, where her uncle was struggling to find a messenger willing to ride to Tirion. His normally-pristine braids were unraveling, and his skin looked sickly pale in the flickering torchlight. The wounded had been brought to the palace in a frantic flurry of activity, and even in the entrance hall Minyelmë could smell the sharp scent of herbs.

When Olwë saw her, his shoulders sagged a bit. "Minyelmë," he said, embracing her. "There you are. We feared you had been with Nolofinwë's host."

"No, I arrived too late."

"Minyelmë!" Her cousin Ëassalmë came rushing over. Her dress was crusted with sand, and her hair tumbled in wild silver tangles about her shoulders. "Minyelmë, have you seen Ellindo? I cannot find him anywhere!"

Olwë immediately called for a search, anyone who could be spared. Minyelmë tried to calm Ëassalmë, to learn where Ellindo had last been seen. "I don't know, I thought he was here, in the palace," Ëassalmë sobbed. "I told him to stay inside, but when I went to his room he wasn't there—"

"All right, all right. We'll find him. Just breathe, Ëassalmë." Ellindo was young and curious, and fearless in the way only a child of Valinor could be. And in these times that could well be a recipe for trouble. "Where might he have gone?"

"I don't know!"

The search for Ellindo was eerily reminiscent of Minyelmë's youth in Beleriand. Her sister had been the first in their village to disappear, leaving behind no trace but an upturned basket and a scattering of roots and mushrooms that she'd been out gathering. They had searched, even knowing there would be nothing to find, and her father had torn at his hair and wailed his grief to the stars; her mother had wept silently. Minyelmë did not remember weeping herself, but she remembered all too well the icy, sick feeling of fear that had settled in her stomach. It came back now as she joined the searchers combing dark streets, every time she discovered a young boy who turned out not to be her young cousin.

It was Ellindo's father who found him, lying unconscious in an alley near the docks. There was blood matted in his silver-gold hair; someone had struck him, or he had fallen and hit his head in the confusion—it was impossible to know.

He did not wake, and one more small cairn was added to the cluster built outside the city. "This wasn't supposed to happen here," Ëassalmë said as they lowered Ellindo's shrouded body into the grave. "We were supposed to be safe. They promised we would be safe!"

Minyelmë gazed up at the Pelori, towering over them. They were meant to keep monsters out, but the Valar themselves had released Melkor from Mandos, to sow his seeds of discord—and Minyelmë had no doubt that he was at the root of all of this, not only the death of the Trees but the strife among the Noldor that preceded it—and in the end death had come not from without but from within.

What were they to do now? The Noldor had long been friends of the Teleri—Elwë and Finwë had been friends since childhood in Cuiviénen, and Olwë had continued that friendship here after Elwë had been lost. But now Finwë was dead and it was his sons who had come as thieves in the night. Minyelmë thought of them, of Nolofinwë and Lalwen and their folk making their way through the dark wastes of Araman, and of Fëanor and his sons upon the stolen ships, their clumsy hands guiding them north and east. All of this grief, just for some ships. Just for the chance to flee into darkness and danger.

Minyelmë had not made the Great Journey. She had come to Valinor by way of Mandos, and she knew that someday these dead would return, and their deaths would be like a memory of a dream. But that would not be for a very long time, and until then those left behind had to carry a weight of grief that seemed too heavy for these shores.

"It was Ingwë who taught us the first word for grave," Olwë said later, slowly and carefully folding and sealing a letter for Ëarwen and Anairë and Indis, or whoever remained in charge in Tirion.

"I don't remember that," Minyelmë said. She had volunteered to take word back to Tirion of what had gone on here. Besides Ëarwen, she had had the most friends among the Noldor, although most she thought were now Exiles.

"No, you would not." Olwë sighed. "It was for your grave that we needed the word." He handed her the letter. "Be careful. Darkness makes even the easiest road treacherous, and I do not wish to bury you a second time."

"You will not, Uncle."

Alqualondë was quiet as Minyelmë passed out of it. Always, in all the time she had known it, there had been music, and singing, and laughter, and many colored lamps, and crystals strung up to catch the Tree-light or the starlight. Now even the music of the Sea seemed dulled, and the darkness oppressive, where it had never seemed so before. Minyelmë shuddered, and turned her feet west, toward Tirion.