Of Ingwë Ingweron by heget

Of the Beginning of Days

Of the fellow Powers like himself did these gathered elves of the Nelyar village who now called themselves the followers of Elwë question of Oromë, wanting to know of the Powers what were their numbers and their strengths and where the Valar lived and what all the Powers looked like. The total number of Powers who came into this world from the Timeless Halls, a hand gesturing to the dark sky but obviously pointing to some indescribable void beyond it, Oromë could not answer, though he explained that of his kindred, fourteen were accounted the strongest, the appointed leaders. Fourteen, the man that would be Ingwë noticed smugly, was the first number of the Minyar after Imin and Iminyë found a cluster of golden-haired elves sleeping and claimed them as their people, back in the beginning when the elves were awaking and searching for one another.^[7] Evenly divided by seven were the Valar, but as Oromë explained, not an even seven couples. Thanks to the query from a woman of Elwë’s tribe, the gathered elves learned that Oromë’s people had kinship bonds that the second generation of elves possessed but not the first, for the Unbegotten were sibling-less. A strange dissimilarity, thought the followers of Elwë, for all that the Powers had emerged from the thought of Ilúvatar just as the first of the elves had awoken in the clay.

“We haves bonds to one another,” said Oromë, “many different types of which I search for your words to describe. Some were a part of us at our creation by the One who made all. Some we found among each other, that we saw a likeness in our songs and what we loved. Friendship and that internal qualities by which you divide yourselves into tribes would be the parallel. Then there is one of whom the bond between us was set at her inception, whom I love I would say the way you, Elwê, love these two before you that you call brothers.” Oromë pointed to Olwë and Elmo. “The way the two who raced up to see you returned safe, that is very familiar. When I return to my home, my sister who is swiftest of all us shall race up to me and demand an accounting of my journeys. She shall be cross if I have come to harm, delight in anything that pleased me or my victories, and then shall still scold me for leaving in the first place, while understanding why I must go. Is that not the bond of siblings? Then the deer that surround her wherever she goes shall nibble at my hair, and I will have to shoo them away.”

He pointed back to the questioner, a heavily pregnant Lindar woman with her dark braided hair twined with duck feathers and whose hands gripped those of Elwë’s youngest brother. “The one you would say I am husband to, that I love as Elmo loves you, she is very dear to me, and shall be the second to greet me. Her song is the fairest of anything I have heard, since long before I entered Arda. That is how we found one another, the bonds between us, in the place that had no place or time. We would at first sing alone, or with those the One had said we shared a bond, but as we sang and listened to others sing, we found those that we preferred to sing with, or those who singing we liked most to listen to and they to listen to us. It is that way with my wife. Beauty itself would be her name, Banâ, and not be sufficient enough to encompass her. Her songs are ever those of new life, of the creation of newness and beauty, of the young things. She is the seeds that will make new trees, of the nursing animals and act to make them, the new leaves that unfurl pale and green. Always she is newness and youth and love.” Oromë’s voice sang with love to describe his wife, and even without the mind-sight of the Minyar, all the elves present could feel the tender joy and see without sight the image of a woman none had met. It was not a clear picture, just a pair of soft hands cupping a caterpillar and allowing the fuzzy creature to crawl up her fingers, but there was a golden light that infused the image.

"Not all of us have bonds of that you would call siblings or spouse. The one that delights most in the song of water, be it the smallest of rivers or the oceans that make this lake seem small, has neither. Ulumô is what his name would be, before you interrupt to ask.” Oromë gave a teasing glance to Finwë, and that the Power could joke with such easy and gentle humor dissipated the villagers’ lingering worry. “But he does have companions who also delight most in the songs of water, river, lake, and ocean.”

The wife of Elmo smiled and placed a hand over her bulging body, her other hand holding her husband. “I am most glad to hear that, Good Hunter. That the powers that made this world are like us. Or that it is the other way around, that we are like you? I would like most to meet your spouse the Everyoung.”

Oromë smiled to the wife of Elmo, Linkwînen of the reed cloak and duck feathers twined in her hair. “There is the echo of her song in you, Linkwînen.”^[8]

“What of children?”

To this question Oromë grew still. “That we do not have, nor can.” His solemn face returned to the bright smile, “but of the weaker Powers that follow me and my wife, our tribe perhaps you would call them, there are a few small and foolish ones that despite my love I would say I am in constant exasperation trying to tend and parent them. One of my hunters, for example! Oh, he is very strong and determined, very skilled, but he has no head for directions or time, constantly distracted and forgetting his duties. Hopelessly in love, the poor sod, so I forgive him always if he errors. But I worry, for the Enemy may take advantage of him. The reason I was riding in this direction was to find him, for he has not checked in with me in a year. The explanation could be as innocent as he found something silver and stopped to admire it. Or it could be ill.”

“The Enemy steals your people as he does ours?” Elwë asked.

The likeness between Oromë and Elwë grown more pronounced than ever, grave did the Power answer, “Sometimes. Or Mailikô convinces them to join his side, through persuasion or by overpowering them. Many of his number are such, Gothombauk and the other horrible ones, ñgwalaraukô if I were to use your words. And then there are the willing traitors like he that was chief servant of Aulë. Ah, there is a story I must tell.”

Once more the Vala regaled his listeners of how he and his brethren fought against their Enemy in the vast expanses outside the world, the emptiness on the far side of the stars, and then in Arda itself, back before anything grew in the soil or in the water, not even the algae and tiniest particles that the minnows and shrimp fed on. How the very stone raged as molten fire so there was no firm land to find purchase, and Aulë was sorely pressed. He told of how Mailikô used the extremes of temperature to turn Ulumô’s waters to steam or ice, then pausing to explain what ice was, as the land surrounding Cuiviénen received no cold snow. Fortunately for the need of example there were mountains in the distance tall enough to see that their crests were paler than the rock below. The concept of snow kindled a new wanderlust in the breast of the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. Before Oromë, the elf had not pondered the possibilities that the distant mountains may hold.

Continuing on, Oromë told of how their battles were long and inconclusive until help arrived in the form of a newcomer. Uninvited, unexpected, but gratefully needed and welcomed, Tulkatho defeated all the Enemy’s followers and scared Mailikô away from Arda. Oromê described Tulkatho running into battle with laughter and a ruddy smiling face, carrying no weapons and using little in the way of strategies to fight but so strong as to not matter, and of his good humor and golden hair. Collectively everyone turned to look over at the only member of the first tribe that these elves had any regular contact with. Appraising Elwë’s friend, together the Lindar shook their heads and decided there was no resemblance.

Oromë described the time of peace and bliss that existed for a while, of their first home in Arda on a green island in the center of a lake. Two tall pillars topped with bonfires Aulë crafted, one to the south and the other to the north, and together much of the entire world was bathed in light. Here the Powers rested and made long celebration of their victory against their Enemy, though their chieftain mourned the brother who had turned against the One. He hoped that having been driven from the confines of Arda perhaps Mailikô would return to Iluvatar and repent the folly of his destructive avarice. The Enemy did not choose that wise and goodly course, alas. But with Tulkatho’s overwhelming strength, none saw a way in which the Enemy could hope to assault the peace of Arda, and in this false confidence, unaware of treachery’s threat, the Powers celebrated their victory on the verdant island in the center of the world where the light of the two great fires met and mingled. Wearied by his long labours, Aulë the shaper and tamer of the stones of the earth rested upon a bed of soft grass that his spouse, she that created all living things, grew for him. As he rested, so did the mighty warrior Tulkatho, who had lent his strength to all the Powers without reservation. As the warrior rested and received the congratulations of others, the sister of Oromë proclaimed her love for he with golden hair and a laughing spirit. As this, the weary warrior sprung from the grass with a glad shout brighter than any he had in battle and proclaimed his equal admiration of the lithe-limbed and deer-swift sister of Oromë. Nessa she was, the Dancer, the Bride, and Oromë smiled to describe her. It was decided to have a wedding to celebrate their love and choice to espouse another, and so many of the Ainur, from the fourteen great Valar to their least servants, attended. Only in hindsight did the absence of many servants who should have attended or the swift departure of those like Mairon, the highest of Aulë’s attendants, once the initial vows were made and the dancing begun, reveal that Mailikô’s departure from the confines of Arda had been only temporary. ^[8]

The concept of a wedding, to make a large celebration involving the entire community out of the decision between two people, was unknown to the Kwendî. The union of two tribe members would affect the tribe as a whole through the changes in the social network, this was true, yet it was not occasion to hold a tribal event on par with the raising of a new communal building. The true motive of this particular wedding, as the listeners could readily perceive, was to have an excuse for joy after a long and terrible period of conflict. For what could be more contrary to such a violent division between those that should have been complementary in thought and efforts than the celebration of a new union?

Oromë listed unfamiliar names and described fantastic forms of the gathered Powers: of the lord of clouds with wrens and warblers nesting in his hair and on his shoulders, his lofty lady wife who made the stars and whose eyes were as bright as her creations, the spouses who fashioned the earth and then filled it with the living growing things, of Oromë’s wife with pale yellow and pink flowers floating from her feet to coat her hands as she braided the bride’s hair, and himself, the nervous older brother. Of the three siblings whose duties were not the material world but those of spirit Oromë noted as having been in attendance: a sister who wept for all and thus encompassed both grief and wisdom, her brother who resided over judgement and would have in his custody the spirits of those departed, and the youngest of the three who dealt with dreams and unlike his elder siblings was actually pleasant to share company. More Powers he described, attending the wedding with their host of servants and followers, of the lady of repose and healing with her soft pale robes and hands as light as lake mist and the lady who recorded all that had come to pass, each who had as spouse one of the lords of spirit, of the lord of waters standing uncomfortable in the gathered crowd but smiling as the butterflies that followed Banâ sipped at the water that dripped off his scales, and last of all the bridegroom and bride. Oromë described the procession on the soft grass as bride and groom approached each other to the resounding cheers and songs of the gathered, of the lord of clouds standing in witness for Ilúvatar as Tulkatho and Nessa spoke vows to another. The bright purple eyes of his sister had glowed with joy to announce the golden warrior as her husband, and she only released her grip on his hands as to make a dance of celebration at the completion of their vows.

Oromë grew silent as he conceded that in even the language of the Valar there were no words adequate to describe the Dance of Nessa.

No celebration would last unended, and it was as the newlyweds slept, and all the attending guests in likewise slumber and stupor, that the betrayal came. Servants of the Powers who had switched their allegiance in secret to Mailikô hastened to the north and south to destroy the pillars that upheld the lanterns of Aulë. While Tulkatho snored and Oromë admitted he too had been lost in hazy remembrance of his own first union with his lovely spouse, and none of their loyal warriors were stationed with alert eyes facing outside the island where the wedding had been held, no one noticed these traitors approach. Former servants of the Star-kindler cloaked themselves in shadows and the blue wolf that once hunted beside Oromë stilled any warning cry. Ossai, rebellious servant of Ulumô, generated terrible storms to pound at the great stone pillars with lashing winds and drown the light with onslaughts of water, yet it was the chief servant of Aulë who caused the most harm. Once a figure most admired, chief of those admirers being himself, this Abhorred One knew the fissures and stress points in the pillars that held the world’s illumination, and it was his hands that showed Mailikô and his terrible followers where to strike. With blows to the wide base of each stone pillar, cracks that reached through the centers to spider out on the far side, the grinding of loose and liquified rock, down the columns fell with a roar greater than any peal of thunder. Long shadows fell over the earth before the twin lights guttered out, and in darkness the broken pillars smashed into the earth. Continents broke. The two fallen lamps pushed out the very oceans, causing tidal waves and earthquakes as the once perfect symmetry of the world was irrevocably shattered. The Powers awoke to darkness and the despoilment of the world they had long laboured to create. Fires raged where the land had once been green. In shock did they behold the seabeds emptied and dry, trees uprooted, gentle hills flattened, and over everything immense clouds of dust. Of the multitude of species of both plant and animal Aulë’s spouse had devised, only a handful survived this cataclysm.

Oromë bowed his head. “If my sister’s dance is the expression of joy indescribable, then the song of grief from Nienna was the expression of sorrow no words of mine can recount. Not even the poetry of my king can match the articulation of feeling.”

War resumed, and the Powers retreated to the far west. At the edge of the world there was a large landmass that had survived mostly intact from the cataclysmic collapse of the two pillars, and it was here that the Valar gathered examples of all of the surviving lifeforms. Then they rose a great palisade of mountains, the highest to ever be. Behind the wall of these mountains the Powers built their houses and tended their crafts, creating ever newer and more beautiful things. “And in the center is our city, our home village, and there is a green mound blessed by my spouse’s elder sister, where she has poured all her thought and song of the green things that grow from the earth that is her domain. The Weeper watered this green mound with her cool tears, and from this mound grew two trees. As they grew their flowers emitted a dew that gave forth a light more pure and bright than the lamps that had been destroyed.” The Great Hunter paused and pulled two items from his brown tunic, the leather of the fabric briefly shifting to the texture of bark before parting before his fingers. The effect was deeply unsettling, and Oromë winced in apology. A small pouch grew from his belt like a budding fruit until it transformed, hanging off the braided cord around his waist like an exact match for the bag tied to Nöwë’s belt. Oromë unfurled his fingers. “Here are two leaves from the Trees.” He used his other hand to pull them apart and unfold the leaves until they draped across his lap. “This one, narrow and dark with the silver underside, belongs to the elder. The one underneath, pale green like a beech, is a leaf off the younger.” The leaves were larger than any the elves had seen before and shimmered in the firelight. “The light from the elder tree’s flowers is silver and cool, whereas the younger is a fierce golden brightness. They alternate their lights as to not overwhelm, and thus our time is divided into days organized by this cycle of light.”

Oromë encouraged the audience to reach out and feel the texture of the leaves. They had an aroma that was faint but pleasant, and completely foreign. Once curiosity was satisfied, Oromë methodically refolded the leaves into small intricate star-like shapes and tucked them into his newly-formed belt-pouch.

“The Star-kindler collects the dew of their flowers to make many lights to illuminate all corners of our homeland, vats and jars and small glass vials full of silver and golden light, and has used them to create the brighter stars you see in the sky. I did not bring any of these lamps with me, but I find it a comfort to bring a piece of the Trees with me wherever I travel.”

Such familiar behavior, to carry a physical piece of home while on long journeys away, comforted the listeners and reduced the alienness of Oromë. Then the Vala stood, towering over the elves, and spoke several sharp words in his native language, the syllables stinging their ears. Nahar pulled away from one of the huts where the giant horse had been nibbling at the thatched roof. Ears pinned back in a strange expression of guilt, the horse snorted and bowed its head, then trotted off to the shoreline to sulk and splash his hocks in the lake water. Oromë’s language shifted back to that of the Kwendî, his sounds no longer piercing and painful. “We are guests, Næchærra, and there are plenty other plants for you to eat that shall not inconvenience the Children.” The stallion turned to face away from Oromë, tail swishing back and forth, and waded deeper into the lake, kicking and splashing with his front legs. “Cover yourself in mud if you wish, but know we must leave soon to visit the other villages as we have promised.”

“Shall you leave soon?” Nôwê asked.

Oromë turned to look at the three who had discovered him. “I have promised to travel with them to the village of your leader, the first chieftain who is senior above all other villages. It would be improper of me otherwise. I cannot making binding promises on behalf of my king, but I can convey messages. To the three chieftains in order, as I have been made to understand, shall I visit, and to as many of the other groups as Kwendê and his friends can guide me. As it is my duty to hunt the creatures of Mailikô, it is the first village of the hunters that shall point me in the proper direction.” The Great Hunter smiled. “I look forward to that.”

Chapter End Notes

^[7] As noted in the Cuivienyarna and "Quendi and Eldar" under the section about the Clan Names. -Author's note: as those numbers are far too small to generate a sustainable population, I leave it ambiguous if the first generation of the Minyar stayed at fourteen. Anyways, one of the lynch-pins of this story is the supposition of at least one fully matured second generation at Cuiviénen by the time Oromë finds the elves.
^[8] same Linkwînen
^[9] Much of this chapter rewords information from the first five and half pages of the chapter from The Silmarillion of which shares its name.

Side stories and supplementary materials can be found here. The two-part "Making Friends" functions as an unofficial chapter from the point-of-view of Elwë and is best read before or after Chapter 3 despite chronologically occurring during Chapter 2 of "Of Ingwë Ingweron". Erikwa sets up for the next chapter.