Yavanna Kementári by hennethgalad

Chapter 1

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Maglor gazed at the surging sea, which drew ever closer to the Ered Luin. The drowning of Beleriand was too great a catastrophe for his mind to endure, and the pain of the loss of his brother burned him more than the pain of his wounded hand. The Silmarils had burned even their eyes, and when he closed them the shadow remained, a great blackness in the core of his sight, foreshadowing the endless dark of the void which awaited him. The small chest was heavy on his lap, the time had come, he must return the last Silmaril to Yavanna, shaper of the Trees, from whence the Light had come.

Maedhros had understood his answer to the riddle, that they must give the Silmarils into the hands of Aulë and Ulmo, for the path to Valinor was closed to them. But Maglor hoped that he would never come to know why his brother, upon casting the jewel into the rent earth, bleeding molten rock, and intolerable heat, had then cast himself into the fire.

The welcome tears returned, they soothed his spirit and numbed his wits, leaving him calm, and fixed in purpose.

He rose to his feet, holding the chest before him, an offering to those remote beyond his reckoning, to Yavanna Kementári, to all that lived. Blinded by the burned eyes and the tears, he opened the chest, feeling the force of the Light beating against him. He remembered his vision at the summit of Taniquetil; the great Tree, formed in pulses of the Music, the rhythms of life beating intricate little measures that grew and were enriched by deeper, slower waves of sound, the whole woven through with the myriad melodies of the life that moved.

The Tree had towered over the mountain, joining earth to sky, blending the stuff of Aulë with the waters of Ulmo, and breathing in the fresh winds of Manwë. For long he had believed his vision was of the Two Trees, or of one, in some remote future time, but since their theft of the Silmarils, the truth seemed burned into him as had the Light.

The Tree was Yavanna herself, the rhythms that had driven him to the harp and drum, in vain strivings to convey the vast and intricate landscape of the sound of life, were the heartbeat of Yavanna; the unconsuming fire of the greenwood and the flickering flames of the beasts. The Light must be returned to its source, Yavanna awaited his penance.

He sighed, he knew that his grief would outlast him, the Music would elude him, and the Light be forever beyond his grasp. He thought of the truth of life, the surging growth and the endless dying, the trees and grasses flickering forth from the ground and falling back into decay, as new life devoured them, or thrust them aside.

The vastness of Yavanna shrivelled his spirit, he cowered on the edge of the turbulent sea, then, with his eyes shut fast, he swung the open chest behind him and cast it, and the Silmaril, into the hungry waves, and cried aloud, not in words, but with his whole heart, pleading with Yavanna to accept his sorrow, and the return of the Light, though he himself should perish.

For the hurts of the world were too great for his spirit to endure, and as the Light sank into the sea, casting strange flickering beams through the deep water, he wept for all the slain, and for all the pain and death to come.