In the Beginning by Lordnelson100

Chapter 1

“But how could it be music, if they did not have ears to listen with, yet?” she asked him.

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Aragorn had Eldarion on one knee, and a great book balanced in the other. He was reading aloud, which he did marvelously: for his voice was rich and kindly, and he gave everyone in the story their own proper voices, even the Valar, who were difficult.

“And they made a great Music before him. In this Music, the World was begun—-”

Gilraen his daughter sat cross-legged on the floor, where she was arranging her favorite battalion of toy Dwarven warriors.

Eldarion sat quite still, and listened to Father. His face was framed by lovely locks of hair, which always fell just so, and he was almost always Good.

Gilraen played restlessly. She had been warned that she must not use the tiny axes of the Khazâd to chop at her brother, nor break in upon Father, while he read to them. Not unless it was a question about the story itself. That was acceptable, for then it was Learning, and not An Interruption.

“But how could it be music, if they did not have ears to listen with, yet?” she asked him.

Aragorn paused. “Do we know that they did not have ears?”

“Yes, because they have not clothed themselves in bodies male and female yet. That is later, when they descended into Arda are astonished at everything.”

“So it is, Gilraen,” said Aragorn, turning a page, and peeking. “You have a good memory. Well, I would say that the word music here means something great and beautiful and powerful, that could stir the heart, and help the mind to call up pictures of things far off, just as music does for us. And the story uses the idea of music, even though the Valar did not have ears yet, so that we people who come long after may understand a little bit about it.”

Oh. That was a good thought. Aragorn was very good about explaining things. He was patient, and Eldarion was patient, and Arwen her lady mother was almost always patient. Gilraen was not. Sometimes she wondered why Eru had given her to this family and not, say, the Dwarves.

She did try, however. Father read on, and she held her tongue for what was, for her, a very long time. Soon he came to a bit she liked:

“But when the Valar entered into Eä they were at first astounded and at a loss, for it was as if naught was yet made which they had seen in vision—”

She snickered, very privately, for she secretly enjoyed thinking about the Valar with great silly expressions on their not-faces, looking all about them in surprise.

In another while came back Melkor into the story. Hearing about him always filled her with dread, and yet interest, and so she listened intently once more. Her father made such a very frightening voice for Melkor.

“When therefore Earth was yet young and full of flame Melkor coveted it, and he said to the other Valar: “This shall be mine own kingdom, and I name it unto myself!”

“But they should have stopped him!” This time it was Eldarion who interrupted. He could make surprisingly stern faces for a little boy, and was making one now. “If I were there, I should have stopped Melkor, and not just chased him away!”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” his sister answered in exasperation. “How could you have stopped him?”

“With a sword,” said Eldarion in an ominous tone.

“But he was as a mountain that wades in the sea, crowned with smoke and fire, what good would a sword do? And how could you do what the Valar could not?” Gilraen felt she was only asking the reasonable questions, but Father waived her to hush.

“What is your thought, Eldarion?” said Aragorn. He liked to make sure each of them had their turn in speaking, and to understand what troubled them.

“The Valar ought to have stopped Melkor and put him out in the Void, and not let him be Morgoth at all. Then everyone would have been saved. They should not have let him ruin things, before the Elves even got there.”

For once, Gilraen agreed with her brother. She had very strong emotions about the later parts of the book. To her shame, her mother had had to take her out weeping when Aragorn read to them about Finrod.

Father had been forbidden to read aloud about the Isle of Werewolves again, till they were older, even if it was part of the lay of Lúthien. She knew it was thousands of years ago, but it was still sad and wrong and horrid.

Why could it all not have been stopped in the beginning?

She tried to ask him, but she could not shape her words to say everything she meant. All at once, she felt tears prickling behind her eyes.

Aragorn put down the heavy book, and took her upon his other knee, and though she usually objected that she was too old for this, this time she did not.

And then he did his best to explain to them, in words they could both understand, about how Ilúvatar had not chosen to create a universe in which all things were fixed and unchanging. How in every age of the world came forth things that are new and have no foretelling. How even very great beings must have the capacity to choose, if this freedom is to be woven into the fabric of the universe. How even the deeds of the very evil, like Morgoth and Sauron, give rise in their turn to that which is beautiful and brave and noble, even if there must be terrible sadness and loss that go with them.

She found that she could not understand all that he told her that day, and so she listened instead to the wonderful sound of the words, and the lovingness of his voice. And long after, many, many years into the future, when her Father, the King Elessar, was but a memory: this she remembered. That always there were choices, and always there was hope.

And in these, lay the beginning of all things.