Thirty Day Character Challenge: Feanor by eris_of_imladris

Prompt 21

Prompt 21: In Dreams. Your character is asleep and dreaming. What are their dreams typically like? Write or sketch a dream sequence that explores your character’s subconscious.

Choose, said the voice, at once familiar and strange. Two lights shone before him, at first glance the same.

Choose, the voice said again, and he blinked a few times. He was not in the palace or one of his forges or anywhere else he knew. He tried to look around, his curiosity piqued.

Choose.

The voice sounded angrier this time – well, perhaps not angry, simply determined to ensure he did, in fact, choose. He looked towards the lights again.

“They are the same,” he tried to say, but no words came out of his mouth. Nevertheless, he heard a response.

Look closer, the voice said. And then, choose.

He leaned over, squinting at the lights. The first, on the left, gleamed bright, like a fruit from Telperion, a silver beacon. He tried to reach out and touch it, but the voice returned.

You can only choose one.

He turned to look at the other, fairly determined he would make his choice without even seeing it. But then the light resolved, and the second light coalesced into a braid of hair, cut off from the source, but still tied at the bottom with a crimson ribbon. The hair was as silver as the light to its left.

The voice was silent, and he was struck by the possibility that, at last, he could choose.

He knows what he would have chosen for all of his early life – his mother in his life, supporting him and guiding him. His father not marrying elsewhere and disgracing him. The lack of tears cried in the night because he would have to reason to ever be upset, with an intact family and his honor unblemished. He would have gladly given up everything for a chance to meet her once, let alone to be the one to tie the ribbons in her hair, to walk beside her, to feel her hand warm in his.

But on the left, there sat his silima, finished the way he knew only he would be able to – and that was only for all the years of study, for all the rage poured into his work, for the fires of his spirit stoked at Mahtan’s forge. His gift had been nurtured from his despair, and without it, he was sure he would be positively… ordinary. There would be no reason for him to study at the forge. He would work with languages only, and he would grow into his role as a wise diplomat, all other potential lost in the wind.

Choose, the voice implored, and both of his hands reached out. How could he choose one over the other? For all that he wished to be a son of his mother, how could he forsake being the sun of his people?

Choose, the voice boomed, and he jolted, one hand inadvertently reaching forward over the other. When he woke up in a puddle of sweat, with Telperion’s light still gleaming, he was relieved that he did not have to make a choice. It had been made for him – and he had work to do.

Chapter End Notes

This story is posted independently on Archive of our Own: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12957024