Book of Hours by heget

Girdle of Starlight

Varda and Melian

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.