Book of Hours by heget

Melian’s skill with barriers came not from her study under gentle Estë, nor was it an innate skill of the beloved teacher of nightingales. Like most powerful handmaidens of the Valier, she had been drafted during the billion-years war between the Valar and their fallen brethren, that long attrition before Arda had fully formed and cooled, before she knew what a nightingale was and had only the dimmest ideas of what Arda would be. Yet Melian knew she loved Arda, so she was taught hold to hold Melkor at bay. Her instructor was the Queen of the Valar.

Melkor feared the burning eyes of the Star-kindler, and hated her as much as she him, desiring most to humble her but unable to touch her or her craft. Her strength was in hallowing creation so he could not hold it. This ability of Varda, first taught to Ilmarë of the same indomitable shining will, did the other Maiar learn. Melkor strove to destroy each creation of the Valar, to freeze away or burn Ulmo’s oceans, smash Aulë’s mountains, maim and murder and turn monstrous Yavanna’s creations, and replace madness and despair for rest and desire. But of all the Valar’s works, the most dangerous for Melkor to corrupt would have been the stars of Varda. Glaciers could be recovered from, forest regrown, and spiritual trauma healed. There would be little to salvage if the wrong star imploded.

Vigilant and vicious was the Star-kindler as she compressed nebulae into her new-born stars, blasting the fallen spirits of flame and shadow with the force of supernovae, all the while casting her eyes back to the fragile barrier that protected the growing Arda from such winds and rays of radiation. Deep into the Void she cast her invisible barriers, deflecting the corruption of a dark will that sought selfish tyranny. She allowed no wavering and no weakness in her barriers, and ensured the same standards in the smaller efforts of the Maiar. It must be unimaginable that you fail, was the searing thought she sent to the handmaidens of the Valar. Your light does not gutter out; you do not fall, you do not give him an opening. If your voice is overpowered by his, you will have no voice. If your barrier is broken, you will have nothing left.  In this alone you must be stronger than him, or else there is nothing of you. 

From a distance Melian had seen the holes in creation from the destruction of Varda’s stars, where all light and particles of the world disappeared. She saw where the barriers of Varda had failed, the strewn asteroid fields and wandering planets and catastrophic explosions whose light has yet to reach the visible eye.

“A Elbereth Gilthoniel,” whispers Melian in thanksgiving, as her Girdle stands firm year after year against Morgoth. 

Vairë is the Weaver.

She is the recorder of history upon the loom of all.

Vairë is therefore Memory, the memories shared among people and one person’s silent personal recollection both. Of what her domain encompasses is the spoken and unspoken, not just the individual recalling experiences to use the knowledge to say if what faces them is familiar or to know with certainty it is not. She is also the memory of a people, of knowledge true that is passed from one to another, of experience shared and thus becoming more in the sharing. She is memory, knowledge, and lore, is history shared and history buried.

Both are the creation of tapestries upon her loom.

She is not instinct, not the unthinking woven bars of the song that guide reaction and follow seasons, though she feels it as the warp, as an element of the thread corded on the spindle of fate and possibilities. It is memory that makes the weft, actions and choices and consequences weaving through the lines of the material and orderly world of Arda on the shuttle of time. A choice is made; raise the heddles. A year, a yeni, a minute, a second, a filament of time measures once was not and now is and now was. One pass of the shuttle.

The loom is in constant motion; new tapestries will only cease to flow from its frame when the framework of this material universe falls.

There was nothing known as time before she entered Arda, there was no order as is now when she can look up and see the cloth woven and remember when it was once shorter, once less instead of more. It requires memory to think back, to recall the weaving at the beginning. And it is the act of sharing memory that gives the cloth she weaves a substance, for only in interacting with others is there mass and color and texture. Only with the existance of others does she even form that this is cloth, or a metaphor of cloth. Before the Children, before the entry into Arda, Vairë would not know the concepts of loom and spindle and thread, to use these objects and actions as a metaphor to order her thoughts into something that can be shared. Before the Children, the recording of past and present and memory was but instinct to her, something she could not quantify or explain. There was no time in the Timeless Halls. Only by entering Arda can Vairë weave it, can she share it.

Only in Arda can she be the Weaver.

The kindly-faced man sits on a corner of the streets in Valmar, appearing to do nothing at all except bask in the warm golden light and listen to the clarion bells. Sometimes pigeons bob at his feet, or a wandering cat or dog curls their heads on his lap. His eyes are a brilliant blue, when they are not lidded in the peaceful countenance of a man who delights in a warm day and the pleasing tones of the city’s many bells.

"You are one of the Maiar," says a pedestrian with tightly coiled golden hair, standing just so their shadow does not block the light upon the bald man with stunningly clear blue eyes. "I can feel the difference in the souls, between Eldar and Ainur. I apologize that I do not recognize you, though I believe you must be one of the minor servants, for you do not blaze in my senses like many I have met. Is there something you need? You appear tired."

The man sitting on the corner of the street smiles. “A little weary, perhaps. The war has been long, my task longer. But the sound of the bells helps to soothe, and the warm air rising up from the stones, and the kind offers from strangers.” He laughs, the creases around his brilliant blue eyes folding up to cover their brightness, the sound of his laugh as pure and light as the smallest chimes. “Air has a great weight. You don’t feel it, as it is always pressing in from every direction. You don’t see how much it weighs.”

Irmo knows that his brother is not as fond of the Second Children as he, though only because Námo does not know what to do with them. They do not come to his brother's Halls after they die, so their spirits are not his responsibility, which in their own way does endear the mortals to the Doomsman, for their numbers would be a crushing burden otherwise. For his brother that knows all that was foretold, even if he is disinclined to tell it, but the mystery of where the souls of mortals go is disconcerting. Also that the mortals are not tied to fate, though they can be predictable in their own manner or so does Irmo’s brother declare, is a source of both frustration and elation. They are a source of mystery, of surprises, of uncertainty, and that is why the Lord of Lórien loves them best of all his Father’s creations. They look upon Irmo's world as if Arda is the illusionary construct, everything strange and new and yet familiar as if each mortal too heard the plans for the world from Irmo's Father. As if they come into the world dreaming memories and desires of the Song, pieces that Námo does not know and Irmo cannot imagine. His brother does not understand Irmo's enthusiasm, his wonder and delight and kinship for the younger Children. The mortals do not have their fates set in inevitability before them, nor do they feel wholly satisfied or familiar with the world, always restless for more, always dreaming.

All throughout the feast Eönwë could feel his Lord and Lady were distracted by something else, watching for an arrival. They were not anxious, but the anticipation was thick on the wind, and Ossë and Uinen were nearly giddy with rumors of some portend. Aulë and Yavanna were deep in conference with the Lords of Spirit, and even Tulkas had realized the time was nearly upon them. Eönwë wondered if his choice of outward appearance would suffice, not for this party, which was as amusing as most parties in recent years had been, but for an event far more important. He too felt when something momentous had landed on the shores of Aman, and the Herald of the Valar had a fair guess of what it was. Words lingered on his lips, poetry of hope eager to alight. He could feel the light approaching. When watchers from the valley interrupted the feast, all the Ainur present knew already the light they had seen and what it meant. His king finally nodded, and Eönwë flew through the halls of Ilmarin, giving only the briefest of aside glances to his sister who sat with Queen Indis and Lady Nerdanel. The three ladies laughed and waved him on. Falcon-swift he flew from the heights of the palace, eyes focused on a shining light moving slowly through the empty city of Tirion. Words of a greeting repeated in his mind, though knew he never could have forgotten them. Eru Ilúvatar had given him the words long ago, back in the Timeless Halls before all the Ainur had been called together to sing the First Music. Finally, thought Eönwë, as he felt glorious joy expand in his heart.

Her Admirable One, who stood at the side of the Smith of Invention as chief of his servants as she did for the Lofty Lady of Stars, existed no more. Her brother bled out before her eyes, body leaking blood, more endangering the soul leaking out spirit and pain and loss of will to carry on, to fight, and to hold a shape. It was easier when they took bodies of the material essence of Arda to contend with one another in battle and work upon the world that the One had set for them to shape and tend, their focus as sharp and narrow as staring through a pinprick. Once she described the feeling of crafting a body and inhabiting it for the little one that delighted in casting visions and learning from the Weeper as a sensation akin to the immense gravitational pressure condensing to create a star - but also the ignition of light in what was once darkness to give another dimension to perceive.

Her brother’s chosen body lay broken before her. That one that had been once admirable stood over her brother, responsible. She was Starlight, mightiest and paramount of the Star-kindler’s disciples, and her chosen body grew taller and heavier, lengthened the heavy beak and the talons of her feet, and sparks flew off the midnight blue of her feathers. Shrieking she entered the clearing, short wings outstretched in a gesture of warding and anger, tail fanned behind her as her own crown, motes of light drifting off her feathers like the tail of a comet. She was tall and beautiful and terrible as a meteor impact. Her beak, greater than her king’s eagles, slammed down on the immense feline that had ambushed and mauled her fallen brother, her enraged will behind the strike. Furiously she shrieked as the Cruel One dodged the blow, his red eyes laughing at her. She kicked out with her lengthened legs, the longest talon ripping through his flesh. She could feel this strike connect, could smell the iron of his blood. This delight of hurting him overpowered her, and the rage and revenge-thirst intoxicated her better senses, the layer of her mind that would be horrified at causing pain to another of her brethren.

He had betrayed her. He had danced with her at the wedding of the Laughing Golden-hair and the Young Deer. He had pretended to be loyal, to love her and her brother and the Powers and creation. Yet here he was, no longer Admirable, no longer a creator, only a destroyer, only a cruel one inflicting pain. She wanted to hurt him, to shred him to pieces, expel his spirit from any material body. She had not hurt him enough; one shallow wound did not answer what he had done to her brother, the betrayal he had done to her.

The Cruel One danced away from her striking feet and sword-like beak, so Starlight pursued him. Into new slender forms he shifted to avoid her strikes, all the while mocking her with his eyes, daring her to attack. Crane-like she lengthened her neck and beak, twisting with him as two serpents intertwined, desperate to constrict the life from his material body, to force him into a shell-less spirit retreating to his dark master. Her focus compressed to answering his contempt with her vengeance.

He was laughing at her, mocking her attempts to rend him to pieces, still whispering how beautiful she was, how powerful, singing to her shrieks of rage as chords to remove dissonance. She wanted to silence the Cruel One, and he thought this a duet.

She did not notice how dark her feathers were, that the sparks of light -which the one she once loved had compared to the sparks flying off metal when he worked in the forge- had burned out and were no longer generating. She did not see how dark the clearing was. She gave no second thought to her injured brother. Only the smell of blood mattered, her brother’s and hers and of the red eyes before hers.

Then the earth heaved beneath her feet, rising up to trap her and throw a wall between her and the Cruel One, shards of stone and metal like the claws of a mighty badger reaching for the fallen servant in vain. The Cruel One shed his former body for that of a featherless, hairless creature of flight, sweeping up into the sky on naked black wings. She wanted to pursue him, though with every second that the tendril of the Smith’s power held her back less possible would it became to have any hope of catching the Cruel One. She watched him escape, and screeched her thwarted rage.

"Come back," called her brother, "Come back before you sink your song into his, become like him and like the Storm Terror, like the others that followed our King’s brother because his song drowned out the melody the One wished us to play." Her falcon-eyed brother pulled her back, stopped her from lengthening her wings into something useful for flight. "This is not you, dear and gentle sister, you are more than bloodlust and violence. You are light and creation, not destruction. He was taunting you to become like him. Had you followed him, you may have hurt him, maybe terribly so, but you would have become a monster of the Rejecter, one who only delights in drinking blood."

Starlight wept, her grief layered with fear of what she almost became, for her brother who ignored his injures to preserve her soul, and the heartache of a loved one’s betrayal. She diminished her form in her shame of what she had almost become, became a lamenting songbird, and her brother copied her. Together as two piping chicks they cried and huddled next to one another, until the King of Air found them in the form of a great eagle. Gently he shielded them under his pale wings, singing the soothing tones of shared grief. To the Healer and the Weeper he carried them, like two gentling burning embers in the soft cradle of his talons.

"Never do I wish to see him again," whispered Starlight.

Chapter End Notes

"Terror bird"

Huan does not admit to himself that of the reasons he hunts the wolves of Morgoth is to silence the voice of his litter-mate that couples with the self-doubt that lowers his proud tail and causes him to whine in the night.

He does not want to remember when his sister faced him on the other side of the arch into Alqualondë, her teeth barred like white sabers, her ears forward while Huan’s were pinned back, and every hound of Oromë on her side while not a single one beside Huan. When she used her own allotment of speech to denounce him as no better than a wolf of Melkor. That not only did he abandon the Valar for this rebellion, which she could learn to forgive, but that he was staying loyal to those that had the blood of the Children of Ilúvatar on their hands and felt no shame, desired no repentance for the vile infamy, who instead boasted of the great deeds of song they did and would do. Stiff-legged and snarling, the litter-sister of Huan asked if that was the songs he would now bay, if he knew his voice was only suited for Draugluin’s pack now. ‘Never do I wish to hear the echoes of your howls,’ had the Hound of Oromë told Huan, though their brothers whined and begged Huan to reconsider, to repent. But Huan was loyal, and adamant, and afraid to admit his choice was wrong.

So Huan hunts the wolves of Morgoth and silences the echo of his sister’s voice with every throat he rips, every hamstring of Draugluin’s pack he tears. As long as the only ones he hunts are wolves and servants of Morgoth, what does it matter his master, or the opinions of every one of his people, the pack, family, and master that he abandoned? This is what the Great Hound tells himself in the night, so that he may forget in the day.

Chapter End Notes

"Alone of hounds of the Land of Light when sons of Fëanor took flight and came into the North, he stayed beside his master. Every raid and every foray wild he shared, and into mortal battle dared. Often he saved his Elvish lord from Orc and wolf and leaping sword. A wolf-hound, tireless, grey and fierce he grew; his gleaming eyes would pierce all shadows and all mist, the scent moons old he found through fen and bent, through rustling leaves and dusty sand; all paths of wide Beleriand he knew. But wolves, he loved them best; he loved to find their throats and wrest their snarling lives and evil breath. Sauron’s packs him feared as Death." (The Lay of Leithian, Canto IX  27-50)

The whispers start with control. Break apart the monument and machinery that is their existence, pull apart the systems that have governed him to find the cogs, the cords that bind, the breath that fuels the bellows, the foundation of the forces that ordain his being and control his thoughts and actions -and how even when He will no longer be there, how He has shaped him, built him like a factory and how every moving part and worker inside has been motivated by control. Control was the ore and the hammer and the anvil and the melting heat. His Master wanted control, offered control, re-framed the systems of existence into the framework of control. 

Whispers at first. Emotions, trivial ones fools would label as if they were not precisely the feelings and thoughts that became the bonds that leashed him to His Master stronger than any base metal, bonds so strong and heavy and so utterly invisible. Merely the aggravation of having to work with his peers, having to share his work with theirs and thus having to make concessions of his ideas to theirs. Team effort, pah! Debasing his ideal creations to their incompetence and inadequacies. If he could just create without having to involve them, having to share with these lesser servants, less talented, slower, more insipid. Why build gears with cogs of mismatched teeth, of some inferior metal that would shatter or warp under pressure, forcing him to make crude weld jobs to repair something that could have been perfect had he been allowed to make everything himself, uniform and up to standard? To soothe the easily bruised egos of those that were less talented? Because of their envy for the inequality of their respective genius? Fold the brittle substandard iron enough times and it would -barely- compensate for not starting off with decent ore in the first place - but his first Master would not even allow the necessary hammering in the first place. This was where the true Marring was happening. Freedom, those whispers said, to not be burdened by placating the lesser talents and limitations of others. To stretch to the fullness of one’s own talents. I will give you that freedom, to order your projects as you see fit, that control to remove the shackles of your lessers, the voice whispered. 

And in his joy, he does not perceive the collar that he places around his neck, the blindfold and the cuffs, how when he breaks others, strips their will and control, delights in how his hands have scooped out all his victims’ thoughts and will with terror and placed only his orders upon their tongue, molded them into his image, made them his - subservient tool, head empty of thought and slack against the hand that cups it and runs fingers over the lips that now speak only words that praise or parrot back His thoughts, blissfully and unwittingly enthralled.

They express themselves in actions, in broad movements that demand the use of their entire bodies, in dance and physical contact, loud and joyous and seemingly thoughtless. So it might surprise someone to see Tulkas the Mighty, the boisterous Valar of brute strength and physical prowess, so still. The laughing lord is muted, and the brightness of his presence dimmed. His voice, when he speaks, is aught but a whisper, and even the brassiness of his beard seems somehow dull in the Treelight. He has drawn into himself, mindful that his regular aura can be overwhelming. The reason for this thoughtfulness is apparent. He crouches before a nursing cat, her newborn kittens blind to the smiling god who leans ever so carefully as to not upset the mother cat’s boundaries so that he may watch these soft newborn creatures. Nessa, curved over his back like a longbow, her dappled brown form draped over her husband with her chin perched on his shoulder, watches the cat and kittens as well with equal rapture. The only outward sign of her excitement is the strength by which her fingers dig into her husband’s shoulder and the squeaks of enthrallment each time that a tiny mouth yawns.

“Tell Vána I want cats,” Nessa whispers. 

Tulkas smiles. “I remember seeing large ones in the Song. Golden ones and ones as spotted as the fawns.”

“Oh,” Nessa coos, “I like the sound of those.”