Silver Fragments Falling by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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When Finrod thought of his childhood, he chiefly remembered silver and starlight, glimmering on sea foam and pearls. This was punctuated by bursts of bright gold and silver, when they crossed the Calacirya to visit Tirion or Valmar, but he did not spend much time wandering Valinor proper until he was grown. But he always came back to starlit Eldamar, and his favorite thing was to take a small boat—better yet, a simple raft—out onto the water so that there were stars above and stars below, reflected in the water, and it felt not like he was floating but flying.

"I don't think I have ever seen you so still," Amarië remarked as they floated lazily in a little sailboat only just big enough for the two of them. He lay half draped over the side, trailing his fingers in the water. Alqualondë was far enough away that it was merely a scattering of lights on the shore, and the ever-present music was faint, nearly drowned out by the lap of water against their hull. Tol Eressëa was a dark shape in the distance, part of it lit golden by Laurelin's light streaming through the Calacirya like a beacon. Amarië sat near the bow, idly twining her hair around her fingers as she watched Finrod.

"It isn't a very good idea to fidget on a boat small as this," Finrod replied. He lifted his hand out of the water and watched the drops fall back to the sea, shimmering faintly in the starlight.

"Bad ideas rarely stop you," Amarië laughed.

Finrod laughed, too. "It's the stars, I think," he said. "They make me—quiet? No, that's not quite right, quiet isn't really a feeling, is it—"

"I know what you mean. It's the way I feel sometimes at the Mingling." Amarië tilted her head back to gaze at the stars. Then she gasped. "Oh, look!"

A shower of silver fragments passed over them, like stars falling from the heavens. Finrod wasn't sure if it was his fancy or not, but he thought he could hear laughter, as Varda's handmaidens chased them, shooting through the sky for the sheer thrill of it. Somewhere Varda herself was doubtless laughing, having taken handfuls of Telperion's dew from the great vats beneath the trees and flung them over the Pelóri for her own delight and that of the Teleri.

Uinen laughed, too, and Amarië and Finrod watched her rise out of the water to catch one of the falling stars, cupping it like a handful of seawater in her hands before scattering it into the bay so that the stars on the water were not only reflections of those in the sky.

All of it reflected in Amarië's eyes, wide with wonder and delight, and that was the moment Finrod decided he would marry her.

.

But before he could act on this decision his uncles' feud exploded in the streets of Tirion. Fëanor was exiled—and then Melkor came with Ungoliant and destroyed the Trees and murdered Finwë for the last remnants of their Light, and the world was plunged into a darkness so complete not even the stars could pierce it. Finrod followed his uncles and his cousins, feeling as though he were meant to, whether the Valar approved or not. But he did not ask Amarië to go with him, and she did not offer. Their paths diverged, and all they could do was hope they would come together again someday.

.

But it was the starlight in Amarië's eyes that he remembered, in part, in Minas Tirith—the tower he had built that Sauron had taken and twisted into Tol-in-Gaurhoth, and island of curses and werewolves and despair. As he sang he drew on the power of those stars, and the memory of birdsong in his beautiful Nargothrond carved from living stone, of the sighing of the sea on pearly sands and the sheen of Amarië's golden hair—all of this he poured into his song, and for a moment he thought he had the mastery, that they might escape even from the throne room of Sauron—

But the power of Sauron was too great in this dark place, and it was the Noldor's own actions that he drew upon—the black-red blood on those same sands, the howling winds and the wailing of the Teleri and of Uinen. Though he was not himself a kinslayer, Finrod faltered, and fell, stripped of all his disguises, and Beren and Edrahil and all the others with him.

The dungeons were new—Finrod had not built them, but Sauron and his servants had delved them, dark and damp and reeking, filled with the dripping sound of water though there was never any to drink. And it was cold, the only warmth to be found in the breath of the wolves that came, one by one, to devour them in the darkness. They were the bravest of Nargothrond; none betrayed Finrod or Beren or their quest, and they deserved the greatest of songs—but there would be no one to sing for them.

Or perhaps there would. Finrod saw nothing but darkness stretching before him—the time of his death had come, as he had once told Galadriel it would—but there was a Doom upon Beren, and though he did not know how, Finrod thought that he must escape these dungeons and come again in time to the fair green sunlit woods of Doriath, where Lúthien sang with Melian's nightingales.

When Finrod had previously considered his death, he had thought it would come in battle, at the end of a sword or a mace or an arrow. He had never expected to find the strength in himself to battle a cursed wolf with naught but his own hands and teeth. He had never expected it to hurt quite like this. He couldn't even see the sky, or Beren's face as he knelt over him, weeping bitterly; Finrod could feel his tears, warm and wet, as they fell onto his face.

Death was a relief, his spirit slipping from his body gently as a sigh, all pain over and done with. He heard a clear call as of silver trumpets, Námo summoning him to his timeless halls, and Finrod flew to answer. The Halls of Mandos were tall and strong, but not dark. The tapestries of Vairë and Míriel lined the walls in luminous color, and the servants of Námo drifted like gentle breezes among the spirits of Elves and Men that gathered there. It was a place of peace, a place of rest.

And overhead shone the stars, silver-bright and unfading.