Songs of the Sea by Raiyana

A Singer Doomed

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Part 1

“He’s back again,” she frowns, as she always does. Ulmo sighs.

“Just leave it be, dear; we have done more than enough for the Children of late. Manwë is not best pleased with our way of dealing with Melkor’s lingering taint.” Ulmo feels weary; even his strength is not endless, and the War stole much he once held. Truthfully he does not understand her mingled vexation and fascination any better than Ossë’s utter disdain.

“Eternal Darkness, or eternal lamentations - what’s the difference?” Ossë replies, tugging playfully on some of her trailing hair.

Uinen’s teeth are bared, sharp as knives, as she hisses in warning. She’s gone in the next minute, the only evidence of her presence one of the crabs that like to hide in her green locks. It gives them both a baleful look, as only a crab can. Ossë winces, though he tries to hide it.

Ulmo sighs.

“You should not goad her so,” he rebukes, but it’s soft, because he does not truly think Ossë’s feelings unmerited. Neither he nor either of them have forgotten the wailing of the Teleri, or the blood that stained Sirion red.

 

Uinen watches; the small pouch is further down, farther out, than usual. Remaining unseen by the eyes that barely care to glance away from their prize is simple, no more work than the wave of a hand. She could kill him - it would be easy - but her hand never lifts, no matter the roil of anger she still feels, does not crush the air from those lungs, press down on him with all the weight of the water that surrounds him.

It’s the look of his face that stills her fury. Dark hair blows in the small currents, tangling and curling about a pale face, scarred fingers reaching for dark, water-stained leather.

Revulsion and longing, grief and desire... They’re all there, anger, too, and a yearning so deep she compares it to one of her favourite chasms where no light ever reaches the bottom.

So much emotion; so much pain. Mingling in familiar features like rivers running into the sea.

Sometimes, she looks at it; looks at the pouch, she even opened it once, trying to understand what made him keep going. Sometimes, she’s spiteful, reminded of wailing mothers, hiding the pouch behind rocks or beneath plants.

She always puts it back; he can go only so long before whatever it is that makes him need it makes him dive into her waters, ungainly like all the Children; lacking fins or smooth scales, and not so good a swimmer as her favourites by far, but doggedly determined to find, to reach, to hold.

When he clutches his prize, fighting his way back to the surface and the air that beckons him ever closer, Uinen watches, wondering at the loathing twisting into peace and back with each kick of bare feet.

Each time she wonders if he will give up, will choose to end this… torment.

She watches, her eyes no more than the foam of a wave, as he collapses on the beach, the sea lapping at his uncovered feet. He cut one on a sharp shell, the waves washing down red, staining the sand. It goes unnoticed; one more among the scars he already has, and far less painful than the one which is coming.

Almost on cue, the scream rends the air, sorrow and pain made sound.

The weeping is worse, somehow; he would be easier to hate if he was less pitiful, if she did not have the prayers his mother, standing on the cliffs far above where she pounds her waves against the cliffs of Aman, hurls into the wind in her ears.

Uinen watches, pity not enough to move her to offer compassion – sometimes she wonders if she should offer him words, but Manwë’s doom was quite clear, and pity is not enough – bitterness of lives lost having tainted it long before it was ever born in her heart.

The light glimmers from atop a rock, and he does not see her as he gathers foodstuffs; he likes mussels, though he is not so good at finding them. Uinen births a new colony on rocks he may one day discover and tells herself it is not pity that moves her hands, not compassion that leaves tiny bounties of the Sea where this lost soul might find them.

She stays, staring in silence; the music is everchanging, though the theme remains sorrowful.

 

In the morning, the finely worked leather pouch drops down through the waves to land in a nest of her hair, almost immediately wrapped in long green strands of tangling seaweed.

 

It will be sitting on the clear sandy bottom the next time he gives in to the song, hears the call of the voice that the waves cannot silence.

It is his voice.

 

 

Lacrimosa

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The singer does not leave; continuing his cycle for many seasons, throwing the pouch away and diving back in to reclaim it. Uinen remains watching, and finds that she does pity him, even if she does not think she should. Ossë certainly does not pity him, but that does not make her change her mind whenever she looks to the shore that had once been green lands and mountain foothills and sees the broken spirit wandering along the tideline, his feet making the gravel move beneath him. Sharp edges cut him, when he goes into the water – he removes some of his clothes each time – leaving droplets of coppery red in the surf. And always, there is singing - those mournful tunes she finds it difficult to ignore entirely.

She returns often – well, she turns her attention towards the waters that hear his songs – and watches him grow haggard and thin. She sends him fish, fat herring in large shoals, and even a few cod once, but in truth he is a terrible fisherman. It confuses her, at first, this dedication to slow starvation – whatever else could be said of his kindred, they had been skilled and it seems odd that the last son of mighty Fëanáro should not try to improve his tools, if nothing else. Hunting food is one of the pillars of life as she knows it, noting the way her favourite creatures devour others, only to be devoured in turn. From the mighty whales that sing so beautifully to the smallest silverfish that hide in her hair: everything in the sea has a place, and eventually that place is the belly of another.

She keeps watching, intrigued despite herself, and tries to entice him with delicious things that go unnoticed more often than not. Sometimes, she wonders if she should tell him of his mother’s tears, listening to the songs that are clearly meant as apologies for leaving her behind. He does not sing of his father, and only rarely about any of his brothers, the eldest not at all.

She doesn’t speak, remaining silently watchful, though she no longer feels tempted to squeeze the life from his body when he dives into her domain to find his precious jewel once more.

Uinen watches, sitting deep beneath the waves and floating atop the foam at once, considering what she should do – if anything.

“You want to help him,” Ulmo rumbles, seeing the thought that floats in the water before her, suspended like a clear crystal yet fragile like a bubble and gone in a moment as her focus shifts.

“I should not,” Uinen replies, though she means ‘yes’.

“Perhaps you should,” Ulmo disagrees, “perhaps we all should have helped them…” They had raged, after Alqualondë, but they had also understood, more than the rest of the Valar, Uinen thinks, what the beleaguered Elves of Beleriand faced, what awaited the Exiles. They had seen the darkness that was so easy to miss from Aman’s cosy light, for water connected all places, and carried their voices to all corners of the world. “The choice is yours,” Ulmo continues, “I commend this Child into your keeping.”

That is new; usually the souls in her keeping do not stay so, those unlucky Children who perish at sea, their final breaths caught in the seams of her skirts. Usually, her duty of care ends when the soul leaves the water, journeying to Mandos or beyond as is its fate. A token few may linger, but the Sea is vast and those who do not heed the call become her companions in other shapes. The crab resting on her shoulder clacks its claws, fishing something nutritious from the water around her; Uinen pets it slowly, thinking.

She does not know what to do with a soul that is still in possession of a house, except teach it the ways of the sea, but her singer doesn’t wish to be taught, has no great love for her songs. Her Teleri friends had been altogether easier, though they, too, were not hers entirely, their lives spent elsewhere as well.

 

Studying the singer, Uinen wonders how to help him; she has heard enough of his curses to know he doesn’t consider her kind – wrathful, is one of the nicer epithets he had named her – and so she does not think he would accept an outright offer of aid. The food does not count, she tells herself, is not enough to truly help his spirit heal.

First, she tries to give him comfort, turning her considerable forces to the task of making fine sand from the sharp-edged gravel that comprises the rocky shoreline, each wave pounding just a touch harder than it probably meant to, until Singer’s Cove has been churned smooth. She carries driftwood to him, knowing that the Children like fire, and though she enjoys the pretty flames from afar, her singer does not seem to improve; this one, his mother had once said, was a force of creation, and she has heard all his songs before, in one voice or another.

Ulmo does not understand her fascination with this last Fëanorian, though she can feel his silent approval still. Ossë is too angry to see what she sees, refusing to join her silent vigils and so Uinen is always alone when she visits the Singer’s Cove as she has come to name it.

Laments.

When she finally hears him make up something she doesn’t recognise, it is a lament. One of his brothers, not one she remembers well, though she believes he had been well liked by one of the rivers that ran through the mountains and so she thought kindly of him. The words come slowly; the melody seemed easier, somehow, but Uinen stays until the piece is done, watching tears make their way down his cheeks as he sings.

The singer does not hear her approval in the voices of the gulls calling overhead, but it doesn’t matter. She sends him a few spiny lobsters that evening, feeling something like pride in him, and ignoring the frown on Ossë’s face when she catches sight of him further out, watching her as intently as she watched her singer.

She thinks she might understand the sister they had named Melian, at least a little, understand her fascination with these beings who were so foreign to her mind and yet so strangely familiar. Captivating.

 

 

“I have seen your son,” she says, appearing from the waves and startling the two ladies walking along the shore. Eärwen smiles, nodding in welcome – always polite, that one, her whole family among Uinen’s favourites – but Nerdanel stands frozen, staring and silent. Uinen waits, pretending not to see the way Eärwen nudges her friend.

“My son?” Nerdanel says at last, grip tight around Eärwen’s fingers. “Maka- Maglor? He lives?”

Uinen feels curiously guilty for ignoring her prayers now, surprised by the question; she would have expected the Host to bring back word of the last Fëanorian.

“He lives in Singer’s Cove, where once lay Beleriand,” she says, twisting her focus slightly to throw the image into the waters before them. “He fights the spell of the Silmaril he threw into my waters,” she admits, though the picture they see is what she had seen when he composed the first of his brothers’ laments. “It burns him, still.” She does not enjoy the screams, never did, but less so now that she allows herself to care for him.

“Why have you come to tell me this?” Nerdanel asks quietly, her eyes never leaving the slowly moving image, each wave passing through and obscuring it a little more unless Uinen keeps her attention firmly anchored on the showing. “I was told… there should be no pity for them, I should expect to hear nothing after… after.”

“Pity, no, and yet pity and compassion have never cared much for permission,” Uinen replies, though it does not feel like the full truth. “I have watched him for some time, now,” she continues, “and as your son has been commended to my care, I think that I do have compassion for his plight.” The Oath hurts him, she knows, remembering the screams, and she pities the way he seems unable to leave it be nonetheless. “I have no fondness for many of his deeds,” she admits, “but does that mean I should not grant him a small measure of mercy?” Perhaps, in truth, her mercy is for Nerdanel – she does not speak to her singer, after all – but the red-haired elleth nods, something like relief in her features. Eärwen looks pleased, hugging her good-sister.

“Will you…” Uinen tilts her head, noting the thread of desperation in Nerdanel’s voice, “tell him, tell my son… I love him. Still, I love them all.” Biting her lip, she holds back the please that Uinen can feel lingering behind her teeth.

Uinen nods slowly, watching, while her assumed shape collapsed back into the waves of the sea, salt tears trailing down Nerdanel’s cheeks.

The Puzzle

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Returning to Singer’s Cove, she studies her singer – he belongs to her, now, she feels, with Ulmo’s words a soft rumble in her mind – wondering how she will keep her promise. She had not been able to deny the request, yet she has no plan for how to approach the elf sitting on a large boulder, staring across the waves with a far-off expression on his face. His fingers are busy, moving across the holes of a small reed flute; she hasn’t seen him play the flute before, and takes a while to enjoy the soft sound. Somehow, the flute is playing with the indignant squawks of one of her servants, a gull trying to remind her singer that he needs food. The elf, however, does not understand her tongue – Uinen had thought he would; Oromë was so proud of his brother, surely a few of his skills should have rubbed off on this one? Considering his dismal success as a hunter she should probably not have expected that to be the case; his snares tend to break when a rare rabbit actually trips them, and though he is capable of finding the mussels she keeps offering, he seems unable to contrive of a way to catch fish except for a bit of string attached to a rod he then forgets about entirely, focusing on his music. Sometimes, she wonders if she should give up, let him starve, but she feels responsible for him, now, somehow, which is all the more vexing for his lack of self-care.

Shaking her head, amused by the apparent helplessness of her charge, Uinen floats just beneath the surface, invisible to the singer; the gull eventually flies off, landing on the water and spends many minutes complaining about the task she set it. Uinen rewards it a fat herring for its trouble, and the gull flies off in a reasonably good mood, off to find its mate and chicks.

When Arien falls beneath the waves, Uinen still hasn’t solved her problem. On his boulder, her singer seems to be in a trance, of sorts, the flute still sending small bursts of melody towards his unnoticed audience.

In the morning, she is still there, though the instrument is different now, soft and sorrowful as only a harp can be. The metal strings sing beneath fingers that have healed from the last time he touched the Silmaril, and Uinen knows he will need to retrieve it soon. For now, however, there is a new lament on his mind, less easy to pin down, it seems, hesitant notes slipping through the careful weave of melody.

“I don’t understand you,” Ossë says darkly, appearing in foam-crowned glory beside her where she drifts some ways from shore, listening to Maglor try to pin down the conflicted emotions he felt for his brother. Curufinwë, his name was, the one who had disliked her most of all for taking away his pretty wife; Uinen had not wished to take her life, but she had died in the water, one of the many lost at Alqualondë.

“I think, Ossë,” Uinen replies, her eyes closed as the gentle current swells around her, “that I may yet come to understand how Melian loved her Elu Thingol.” There is something about the Children, the way their experiences shape the world around them – not like she and her kin do, of course, but they do bring change in the smallest of ways – that she finds more than fascinating.

Ossë is gone when she opens her eyes, wondering why he had no response.

The music falls silent.

Uinen does not watch him dive into the water; instead, she feels, feels the dark stickiness that clings to his soul take shape in the water around him – she had thought it was his guilt, all the evil he had done that created a noticeable taint, but as she keeps studying her singer she knows that is not what the darkness is made of. Guilt there is, yes, and more than guilt, colouring his fëa sickly green in places, blood-rust red in others, with spots of pus-yellow self-loathing everywhere. The dark strands are woven from a different power, however; not unlike her own, but a different kind of magic. The Oath, she thinks, feeling the rightness of the knowledge settle in her mind; the Oath is this thing she can see, more clearly when he is just about to head into her waters, but always there, silent and watchful. It tugs, it pulls, it hurts – more than the guilt, she thinks, though a lot of the emotion she can sense when her singer is submerged is dark with self-loathing and agonising guilt.

An idea is born, almost crystalline in its perfection, and Uinen moves.

Surging towards the shore, she notes the surprise on her singer’s face, sees the bubbles of breath leave him. He struggles, feeling her webbed hands cup his face, but Uinen does not let go, staring into eyes that skitter away from her gaze. Tendrils of her power move across his soul – he is in her element, now, and she is stronger than anyone but Ulmo in the water – seeking out the dark webs, trying to see their weave, trying to undo… whatever it is. More bubbles float towards the surface. Leaning in, Uinen breathes into his mouth, her powerful gills easily able to pull enough air from the water for him.

The darkness fights back, and Uinen is scared to feel the dead weight of his body suddenly going limp. Flowing with the currents, her tailfin speeding them both further towards the shore, she absentmindedly scoops up the leather pouch on the way, continuing to force breath into his lungs until she has brought him up above the tideline.

“Lóra,” she says, the power she breathed into his fëa obeying her words even as she pulls it back, worried that the Oath will harm him. Sleep. “Forget…” Reaching out, she gently smoothes tangled black hair away from his face, her mind preoccupied with the puzzle before her.

Leaving the pouch by his hand, she watches him curl protectively around it, even in sleep; the darkness is stronger than expected, but she can study it now, as she studies her charge, remaining on the sand beside him, even as Arien’s light dries the salt water on her skin until she itches for the cool of the deep.

When it finally meshes in her mind, the puzzle lock breaking open with the ease of a proper key in place, she rejoices, the sea around her crashing with her happiness. On the shore, her singer is silent, but Uinen does not care, laughing to herself as she jumps through the waves in the company of dolphins, her strong tail fin slapping the waters around her, stirring up the depths. Uinen dances across meadows of seagrass, the bounties of the sea reacting to her joy and growing ever swifter. In her wake, new things are born; small things, but also a new kind of sea bird that seems confused to find itself in existence.

Uinen’s laughter embraces her creations, her spirit jumping through waves and diving down to the depths of the sea where she finds Ulmo, who smiles at her joy and offers her a small twirl through the glittering shafts of sunlight filtering down from above. Ulmo laughs to see her happiness, though he does not ask for its source; he is heading to a council, she knows, and does not truly have time for talking. Deciding the fate of Melkor who is chained in Mandos once more is no easy task and Uinen does not envy him the heartache. She would go with him, but Ulmo charges her with the keeping of the Seas in his absence, and so she obeys the command, tendrils of her mind stretching to encompass the wide waters of the world.  Ossë is playing in the Bay of the Anduin river to the east, and she sends him south around the parts of Endorë the Children have not yet explored, keeping an eye on the currents there and playing with the giant whales that roam those deep seas. Part of her wants to join him – the whales that live in the south have learned new songs since her last visit, and she promises herself she will go once Ulmo is returned – but a larger part of her wants to keep an eye on her singer, who is waking on the sandy shore, seeming confused to find himself asleep at the water’s edge.

A Change in the Music

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Part 4

Uinen continues watching, even as her attention is taken mostly with the charge that has been laid on her, ensuring that the Seas – everchanging, yet ever-constant – are cared for. She cannot leave Núramartan[1] untended, the currents disturbed by the submerging of Beleriand still need guidance and care. Mostly, she remains in the Deep, currents running through her veins as the Seas move, but sometimes she sends her eyes to Singer’s Cove on a wave, or her ears carried on the wings of a frigate bird hovering above her singer, out of sight, but still in range of the music. On the shore of Singer’s Cove, her singer continues to make his laments, ripping his heart out for each one he has lost, the melodies floating away across the waves. She keeps trying to fight the Oath when he journeys into the waters, though her efforts are hampered by distance; she can spare only small tendrils of power, and the Oath struggles to free itself from her grasp, making more sticky thread to tie itself to Maglor’s fëa. Instead of washing it away, as she tried the first time, however, Uinen carefully wraps strands of her own power around the darkness, biding her time; Ulmo will not be gone forever, and when the Oath becomes complacent with her presence, she will strike, patient as a moray waiting for its prey to swim by.

Sometimes, she borrows the shape of one of the creatures of the Sea, coming up close; sometimes, he speaks to her in these shapes, but he does not know she watches and she still does not know how to tell him, the promise she made his mother lingering unfulfilled in the back of her mind.

The first herald of the decision that has been made in the Council is imperceptible to anyone whose soul was not involved in the Song that gave Eru’s theme form and shape, and Uinen hardly dares believe it at first. Staring towards Aman, her agitation spreads through the water, the creatures of the sea reacting to her mood; birds take flight, calling loudly, fish swarm, predators forget their hunger for a moment, calling in confusion to each other and to Uinen, who hears none of it.

She knows what has happened, knows what the Council has decided, what they have done, and at once she is elated and horrified, joyous and melancholy. Leaving Núramartan, pulling herself back from every corner of the world, she waits for the inevitable backlash. Changing the Music like this; the note is deep and sets her soul afire in ways that are both disturbing and pleasant.

The parts of her that have wrapped around the singer’s fëa remain tied to him, even as she feels a surge of Change spread across Arda, and almost unthinkingly, she strikes, her surprise making her pull her power tight, washing around and through the accursed dark stickiness of the Oath, and when she opens her eyes once more, the Music is changed and the Oath with it, her powers having washed away much of the stickiness. She can’t remove its grasp, not entirely, part of the fëa that anchors it doesn’t want to lose it, but she thinks he might be able to teach himself to ignore it now, might be able to mute the call of the Silmaril.

Wrapping her arms around Ulmo, offering silent support and understanding when he flows through the doors of Núramartan, Uinen still finds a moment to ask a raven that has learned the Common speech of Dwarrow and Edain to lend her its wings. When Ulmo lays down, his head resting in her lap as she sings a lullaby, part of her mind is gliding on the wind far above. The gulls that screeched out her agitation still flock above the waves – they won’t settle again, for some time, feeling the uneasiness of the seas – as she wings her way towards Singer’s Cove, studying her singer through the raven’s eyes.

“What was that?” he asks, laughing – she has not heard him laugh before, but she thinks she likes the sound – confusion painted on his features as he stares across the seas.

“The Enemy is gone,” she replies in the raven’s croak, making him whirl to face her, taking a step to block her from reaching the Silmaril. Uinen wonders if she could simply take it; would he fight for it, now, when the sticky darkness has thinned, diminished in strength?

“What do you mean, he’s gone? The Enemy is one of the Valar.  He can’t be killed,” he tells her, frowning. “He was defeated and chained after Thangorodrim was broken. He is a prisoner of Mandos, as he was before. What more is there to do with him?”

“Well, hark at you, the expert on the Ainur,” she replies waspishly, bending her head to scratch at the itchy feathers along her leg.

“Very well then, master Raven,” her singer replies, smiling.  “I am a mere foolish elf with no wisdom to match yours, it seems. Will you enlighten me?”

“The Valar have thrust him through the Doors of Night, beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void,” she says, wanting to laugh, for a moment tempted to take her own form just to see what he would say then, but refrains.

“They can do that?” Astonished gawking – she expected that, feeling pleased that she can speak to him properly in this form, wondering if she should obtain a few Ravens for the purpose, but equally certain that Manwë wouldn’t approve.

“They have done it.” Tilting her head, she looks at the shining light of the Silmaril. Her singer draws his sword, this time, making an emphatic shooing motion with his free hand. Perhaps not yet time to test her work, Uinen thinks, and better left to her own physical form, just in case. The Raven is innocent, after all, and does not deserve to be caught between her will and the will of the Oath.

“Shoo!” her singer exclaims, his eyes a curious dark colour; she so rarely sees him this close.

“Oh, very well!” she says, annoyed, releasing the Raven to its own will and returning to herself in Núramartan.

Singing softly, she cards her fingers through Ulmo’s hair, soothing the heartsickness she feels in him with her voice. Several new molluscs are born of the sound, but Uinen does not notice, for once keeping her attention entirely on herself and her surroundings, letting the currents of the Sea continue to flow in the patterns she has so carefully constructed. Ossë returns, joining the song, and together they try to comfort Ulmo.

---

[1] Deep-dwelling – Ulmo’s home beneath the Sea where all currents are controlled and where the voices of waters across Arda can be heard.

The Passing of Years

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Part 5

Uinen does not truly notice the passing of days; even the measure of years mean little to beings like her, but she knows that her help has worked; the time between her singer’s desperate dives increases steadily. The Oath, its stickiness almost washed away, except for that stubborn root she knows she can’t sever until the singer himself wills it, has lost some power. It slumbers, still there, in the back of his mind, but she continues to wash away its attempts at forging new footholds each time her singer touches the water – he does not dive in, as often, but she needs no more than a small touch to feed another tendril into the tangle of Oath and fëa and Music that is her singer.

His laments are done, six of them, though he refines the melodies endlessly, adding flourishes to the basic theme as is his whim; she thinks he tries to match the rhythm of her Sea, sometimes, wonders if part of him is aware of the power that flows across his soul, a tide of music and love.

Yes, love.

It has been a long time since hatred became unwilling pity, and what began as mercy has grown deeper, stronger, until Uinen thinks that love is the only way she can describe what she feels for her singer.

It is not love as she feels it for Ulmo, who is her closest friend, her kin, nor is it love as she feels it for Olwë and his kin, her favourite of all the Children, but love it is, and it helps her heal him, pouring her love into his soul like water; washing away the darkness that traps him. She does not touch the guilt, the remorse, even the self-loathing that still shows up in ugly bruised colours when she looks at her singer; he has earned those scars, and she has not forgiven the blood he has spilled. Part of her thinks she never will, but it does not seem to matter.

She still has not appeared to him by the time Arien has completed her long journey through the skies more than two hundred times since the first time he threw the leather pouch with its glittering treasure into her hands. The promise she gave his mother still binds her, a light guilt that she has not done as she said she would – no one but Uinen will know, of course, but it still feels cowardly to stay silent.

 

It is a bright spring day, though the water is cool around them when she appears before him, her form that of one of the Children, though her hands are webbed, the skin greenish where it stretches taut between her slender fingers, and her legs have been replaced with a long tail, the fins that same translucent green that her hair takes on in shadow. The rows of gills along her neck flutter with each breath; this form needs to breathe, and the gills allow her to feel the strong heartbeat of the Sea – it is always with her, but she loves the feel of the water filling her body, one way or another, too much to give it up. For once, she is clad – her singer never dives naked, it is an odd sense of modesty, but she doesn’t mind – wearing a short dress made from a sail once lost from a ship; woven by one of the Teleri, and the deep blue of the Sea, decorated with pretty shells from the deep. Her head is adorned simply, her crown made of conch shells – the work of one of her crabs, which is clinging to its creation, filling her with a sense of amusement. Once, the crab was a Child, a singer who loved her, composing odes to her savage beauty, and when he died – in Alqualondë – he chose to stay with her, rather than following the call to Mandos. Glaring at her singer, whose full attention is still on his target, the crab clacks its claws menacingly, making Uinen chuckle and pat his head lightly.

“Makalaurë,” she calls softly, her words appearing in his mind without needing to go through his ears. Silently, she watches him clutch the leather pouch to his chest, surprise and sudden fear making the air escape his lungs in large bubbles. “I am Uinen.” Introducing herself might be slightly superfluous – she could hardly be mistaken for anyone else, but she sees his eyes widen, the way his legs begin kicking frantically, trying to escape. “I mean you no harm,” she says, reaching one hand towards him, trying to calm him with her presence. He need not be afraid of her, after all, the days where she might have killed him have long passed.

He is too far down – he throws the pouch as far as he can, these days, off a steep drop underwater – to reach the surface even though he struggles towards the air above. Panic clear in his eyes, he tries to stop himself gasping for air, cringing away from her when she swims closer, fear turns his face into a mask – fear of her, of death, Uinen doesn’t know, but the sight of it hurts more than she had thought it would.

A few strong flicks of her tail brings her close enough to touch, as her singer begins to choke on salt water. Cupping his face with her hands, she leans in, covering his mouth with her own, and though he fights against her hold, he seems to realise that she is saving him, breathing air into his struggling lungs. This time, he does not lose consciousness, but clings to her as she swims towards shore, keeping her lips sealed – his are surprisingly soft – and using the gills she usually grows, even when she takes Elven-esque shapes, to breathe for him.

Breaking the surface, she stares at him for a moment of infinite length, and then it seems to dawn on him that he is wrapped around her like an octopus, his lips still pressed against hers even though he could breathe the air on his own.

“La-lady Uinen!” he stammers, kicking away from her, fear still clearly visible. Sadness fills her, giving him a small smile as he puts as much distance between them as possible, never turning his back on her as he flees her domain. “P-please!” She does not know what he begs for – neither does he, but her heart cannot bear that abject terror on his face.

He makes it to the shoreline, but no further before she catches him, using no more than a word to call the power that still wraps itself lovingly around his soul. “Sleep,” she says, picking him up when he goes limp. “Dream – do not remember,” is her next command, soft as a cradle-song as she carries him onto the beach, the tide following her up to the place he has made his camp, little more than a fire circle and a small shelter. Placing him onto the fur-covered pallet of grass he uses for a bed, she presses a gentle kiss between his brows before turning away, her legs returning to her preferred tailfin as soon as she dives back into the Sea. The pouch – she had forgotten to pick it up, and her singer had dropped it in his terror – is silently returned to where he last left it; he will want it when he wakes, she knows, feeling a pang of sadness at the thought.

She leaves a couple of meaty lobsters in the traps he has constructed, and swims slowly towards one of her favourite places in the Deep; a volcanic shaft that supports a massive coral structure and creatures found nowhere else. Nautili dance around her, but she pays their finely striped shells and amusing puffs of air propulsion no attention, her mind entirely occupied with one thought, the image of her singer’s terrified face clear in her mind.

He fears me. I don’t want him to fear me.

Tempest

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Part 6

When the disturbance of the Sea reaches her, breaking through the thoughts whirling in her mind, Uinen looks up in surprise, moving almost before she has decided to do so, her strong tail speeding her body through the water.

Singer’s Cove is under attack; someone is trying to kill her singer!

Her first thought is at once foolish and accurate, watching the waves that pound against the beach, reaching higher than any tide should, the swells easily taller than her terrified singer, standing on a small ledge as the surf boils around him. Overhead, dark clouds whirl, lightning flashing; striking the sea but moving closer to her singer with each hit.

She sees him, then, his face twisted into an expression she recognises with dread. It is fury she has not seen since the War of Wrath, when he brought down dragons from the sky. Had he simply been waiting for her to leave her singer alone, biding his time, planning revenge?

“No!” she screams it, the sound lost in a clap of thunder loud enough to make her ears ring, diving beneath the surging waves. The maelstrom whirls about him, the eye of the storm, battering her form; Uinen is the Lady of the Seas, but Ossë’s power is no small obstacle, even for her.

“Ossë!” she calls, but he does not hear her, all his focus bent towards the destruction of this one Child, this soul she has claimed for her own, and suddenly Uinen’s sadness is fury, matchless in Sea or Air, her strength enough to make land tremble and fall under wave. “OSSË! She calls again, her voice a gale force wind that buffets him hard enough to make him stagger, enough to let her reach him, stand between him and his target, her own form swelled to match him in size.

Behind her, the singer’s words are drowned out, but Uinen pays him little mind, pushing Ossë away from this place, the hurricane over head now her rage, not his, the waves taller and colder than he had used, the chill of the Deep Sea roaring into her hands to defend her singer.

He fights her, his face a rictus of hatred and desperation she has never seen before, even when his rebellion nearly tore the land apart. He should know better, should know that the Deep is far more powerful than the Waves that she can sap the power of the surface, cut it off from her domain.

She is a bulwark, a shield, armoured in water harder than steel, power flowing freely around her, but she is also a sword, cleaving into his strength.

“MINE!” It’s a wordless roar, understood only by those who hear the Music, always, as she throws herself against Ossë’s form, restraining him in bonds of water that obey her bidding, a current of her power that tows him under the roiling surface of the Sea. She glances back at her singer, trembling and soaked through, but brave enough to meet her eyes, an odd wonderment spreading across his face that makes her smile.

Then she dives, leaving behind a choppy but no longer boiling surf as she goes to deal with Ossë, wondering if this is a second rebellion. Anger boils in her mind, her tail flicking furiously as she moves, following the current that keeps him trapped, easing the seas as she passes, gentling disturbed waters with her presence.

 

“Why?” she asks, staring at him, her silence more painful than any angry words she could throw at him. Ossë writhes in his bonds, but Uinen is not swayed. She can feel Ulmo hovering nearby, but he won’t interfere, she knows; the singer belongs to Uinen, and his life is not Ossë’s to claim.

Ossë hisses, anger and hurt competing for space on his features, boiling the water around him. “Let me go!” he demands, but Uinen has no mind to do that, feeling betrayed by his callous act of war. “He does not deserve your protection!”

“He has not earned your ire, either!” she throws back; time may not mean the same to them as it does to the Children, but her singer has lived for many years in Singer’s Cove, harming no one but the animals he hunts for food. Shaking her head, Uinen swims off, needing to think; Ossë will need time to cool down, as well, and she feels the maelstrom of her own whirling emotions threaten to swallow her whole. “I will go see that he is unhurt; we will speak later.”

“Release me!” Ossë cries behind her, “and I will do what you cannot. You need not claim his soul.” His voice changes, becoming soothing, almost, like he is doing this for her.

Uinen freezes. “He is mine!” she hisses over her shoulder, “I have claimed him!” The singer may not be house-less, but his soul was given into her keeping, his treasure with it, and she will safeguard what belongs to her – even against Ossë.

“He cares not for the gift you give him,” he snaps, struggling against invisible bonds. “That Child is unworthy!” Spitting the last word at her feet, Ossë falls silent, glaring at her as though she should agree with him, free him to complete his vengeance, however delayed.

Uinen – for the first time feeling something that isn’t anger – stares at him, lost in confusion. Ossë continues muttering to himself, glaring at her intermittently as if this is all her doing. His fury is a sudden hurricane on a cloudless day and Uinen is beyond confused by his animosity.

“I will return, Ossë,” she says, feeling tired; he is no easy force to hold, and the roiling anger in her heart does not make the task easier.

“He hurts you!” Ossë spits, so venomous it makes her turn back, staring at him so changed from her usual companion. The skin that is usually blue with his joy has turned a sickly green, his coronet askew on his head. “I saw you, saw you together; he does not want you.”

Swimming away, she hears him call after her, something odd in his voice that she can’t place.

“He will not love you, Uinen!”

 

 

“You are unharmed,” she says, rising from the waves and startling her singer, the hand that was plucking a trembling melody from his harp – trying to soothe himself? – falling silent with a screech of metal strings. He curses. One string has snapped; the instrument is weathered by the time he has spent here, more than one string gone.

“I admit, I had thought your wrath would find me sooner,” he admits, fear making his voice tremble like the harp, but he meets her eyes.

“My wrath?” she asks, frowning. Shaping words he will understand is difficult, but her singer’s mind is closed to hers – she has no wish to force the connection – and so she has to try, using language which is so much less familiar to her than Telerin. “I fear you are mistaken; Ossë was the one who was angry at you.”

“You… you saved me?” he asks, incredulous. Uinen frowns. “Why?” He does not sound like he approves.

Tilting her head, she considers him, sitting there on his rock. He is tattered; his clothes torn by wind and sea and time, and his hair ragged and tangled, but he seems unharmed by Ossë’s furious storm, which is a relief.

Uinen shrugs, a wave of motion that brings her closer to the singer, still sitting above the waterline. Sinking down unto the large boulder, she speaks softly, pleased when he does not move away. “The days when I considered claiming your life have long-since passed.”

There is no room for doubt in her tone; compassionate love – as she feels it for all her creatures – has long-since taken the place of loathing in her heart. It has been centuries since she last considered how easily she could snuff out his life; has she not saved him from death, by her own hand, more than once? Except, she realises, she has made him forget ever meeting her in her own form because she did not like to see fear in his face, though she has visited him, sharing the shapes of sea animals for brief spells. He likes seals, and she has spent more than one day lazing on the shore, her dark fur glistening in the sunshine as he plays something almost playful.

He talks to her, when she stays near as an animal, tells her things she already knows, but which still give her glimpses of his soul as he shares stories long-lost to the vagaries of time, talks about his brothers, the two he called his sons, wondering what has become of them, even as he knows they are better off without his presence. His mind is closed to theirs – to anyone’s, bar her, in truth, even if he is unaware of her touch – she has seen the shields, knows he reinforces them regularly, punishing himself with the lack of word in a way that makes her heart bleed.

Now, however, her singer sits stiffly beside her, fear still strumming a current through his soul, but her words make his head snap towards her so swiftly she hears a small crack. “…What!?”

“Ossë would not tell me why he wished you dead now,” Uinen continues, frowning as she stares across the waves, as though Ossë’s motivation can be divined through observing the motion of the water, “but he was beyond furious with you; I have not seen him rage so since we destroyed Glaurung’s flying get. Did you anger him, lately?” She had not thought Ossë spent any time listening to her singer; surely, he could not have played a song that offended so mightily without her realising? Not that such a song existed…

“Perhaps he wished to end the song,” her singer mutters, “the song has gone on far too long; no end in sight though the audience have all tired of hearing it…”

“Are you the song or the audience, Makalaurë?” Uinen asks, trying to puzzle his meaning. Her singer winces.

“Maglor,” he says quietly, fingers clenching the wood of his harp, which protests loudly, the already tortured frame creaking with the pressure. “If this is to end, let it be with the name I chose myself, not the name I was once given by… her.”

“Your mother, you mean,” Uinen replies, looking at the waves before them, but feeling him nod silently. An idea comes to her, then, and much like they had once done on the shores of Aman, her thoughts appear like images floating on the water. Nerdanel walking along a beach, her beloved Eärwen beside her; silently, Uinen shows him her meeting with the red-headed sculptor. Mak-Maglor’s harsh gasp makes her look up sharply, breaking her focus on the memory, the image washing away as the wave laps at the sand. He makes a wounded noise, reaching for the image of his mother, but he does not ask her to reshape it, though the longing is undisguised on his face. “I spoke to her once,” she reveals, “though I heard her before then, heard her voice trying to reach Endorë from the shore of Aman.”

“Ammë…” he whispers, broken. “She stayed; Finarfin came, but she was not with him, not even for Celebrimbor’s sake; she gave up on us, surely.”

“She was not allowed,” Uinen says softly; she did not agree with that decision, and Ulmo had been against it in the council, but Manwë had been adamant. The wife of Fëanáro – Fëanor – would stay in Aman. “The Valar went to war, partly on her urging; but Nerdanel was to stay behind…” She does not mention the statues, or the fiery speeches Nerdanel had given, does not tell him of Ulmo’s laughter as he recounted the way she had harangued Manwë himself, but she feels the way he shudders beside her, as though a great weight has been taken from him at her words. “She asked me to tell you…” the words come easily, now, and part of her wonders if she could have fulfilled her promise long ago, had she not been sorrowed by the way he feared her appearing in the waters; perhaps she should have tried visiting him on land?

Nerdanel’s voice flows between her lips, flowing out of memory as though his mother was sat beside Maglor, rather than the Lady of the Sea: “’My son?’…’Maka- Maglor? He lives?’”

Uinen’s own voice replies, soft as the waves that tickle his feet now, “He lives in Singer’s Cove, where once lay Beleriand,” she says, “He fights the spell of the Silmaril he threw into my waters… It burns him, still.”

Nerdanel’s reply, sharp with grief, fills the silence between them, her singer trembling on the rock beside her as he listens to his mother’s despair, “’Why have you come to tell me this?’… ‘I was told… there should be no pity for them, I should expect to hear nothing after… after.’”

Smiling softly, Uinen continues, making no remark on the tears that slowly fall down his cheeks, her singer’s eyes closed as he weeps silently. “Pity, no, and yet pity and compassion have never cared much for permission… I have watched him for some time, now – and as your son has been commended to my care, I think that I do have compassion for his plight… I have no fondness for many of his deeds, but does that mean I should not grant him a small measure of mercy?”

Changing her voice one last time, feeling the weight of her promise fulfilled lift from her mind, Uinen speaks the last words, the words her singer needs to hear, “’Will you… tell him, tell my son… I love him. Still, I love them all.’” The silence stretches between them, but Uinen feels no need to break it, watching the lazy wingbeats of a gull fishing some ways from shore.

“Am I to die now, then?” he asks, when Arien has moved halfway across the sky, staring across the waves. “Will you end it, now that you have delivered her words?”

“Are you so eager to leave your hröa?” Uinen asks, wondering if he knows what he is asking. Maglor’s laugh is a hoarse broken thing.

“Does it matter?” he retorts. “I could never hope to fight you.”

“Did I not say I had no wish to see you dead?” Uinen asks, stirrings of anger still churning in her soul, churning the waves lightly frothy before them. “Have I not kept you well, here?” Gesturing to the sandy cove where once his feet had been cut by sharp broken gravel, Uinen wonders at the sound he makes at her words, comparing it to the squishy feel of a jellyfish.

“Kept me?” he replies, spluttering. Uinen laughs.

“You are my singer, and this is Singer’s Cove,” she says, “that I have made to home you, to give you shelter, and offer you food – thankfully, you’re better at fishing these days.” His mouth opens and closes a few times, no words escaping. Uinen gives him a wry look; he is still not good at feeding himself, though he has learned some over the years. “I claimed you for my own, long years past,” she reveals, “Ulmo commended your soul into my keeping – though you are not so easy to keep as the other souls that belong with me.”

Maglor splutters something unintelligible – a sound of disbelief, nearly laughter, but coloured by the tears he has made no move to hide from her.

Uinen frowns at him, absentmindedly holding out her hand to catch the small crab jumping from the waves to her palm. Delivering him to his customary place on her shoulder – he glares balefully at her singer, but settles with a light caress; she does not aim to replace him with the Elf – Uinen listens to the small creature. Her singer stares, but he does not understand the voices of the Deep, does not hear the music in her creatures as she does. “This is Eärlinno,” she says, catching the crab before he can scurry off into her hair to hide. “Once, he was an Elf,” she explains, “a singer – like you – who loved me, spending his days upon the quays of Alqualondë composing odes to my savage beauty or upon ships, singing as he harvested the bounties of the Sea with his father.” She smiles, pressing a soft kiss to the crab’s tiny head. He still composes songs for her, even if they are not in a language Maglor can hear. Eärlinno clacks his claw in her singer’s direction, snapping it like he’d like to pinch his nose. “Eärlinno,” she rebukes softly, “be nice to Maglor.” Pausing, she nods gravely, “Yes, I know that his people killed you; and many others besides.” But he is mine now, as you are, my friend, she continues, and I know you like to listen to his songs, too.

“I’m sorry! We never… I truly am… sorry.” her singer says, and Uinen believes him. Seemingly, so does Eärlinno, though he simply turns, scuttling up her arm and hides himself in her hair once more, clacking his claws at Maglor a few times for good measure. It is almost enough to make her smile.

“I asked him to keep an eye on Ossë,” Uinen says, “but still he will not say why he came here.” Frowning, she stares at the waters, still as agitated as she is.

“Your lover is a mercurial temperament,” Maglor says quietly, “though I-”

“My what?” Uinen is baffled, nearly falling off the rock they share in her surprise. “Ossë?” Maglor squints, as though she is the one making no sense.

“All the tales of the Sea – Ossë’s rebellion, the Songs of Ulmo, all of them – say that Ossë of the Waves loves none but Uinen, Lady of Water, whose hair stretches across all the Seas,” he tells her, with the affront of an experienced storyteller feeling his audience questioning his recollection.

Uinen wants to laugh, but instead turns back to look at the water, turning the thought over in her mind; she has never allowed herself to consider Ossë in such a role – has not thought so of anyone – but the idea fills her with a glowing warmth, as though she is only just seeing something she should have known a long time ago. Humming thoughtfully, Uinen feels pieces of an ancient puzzle fall into place. “’He will never love me’… indeed,” she murmurs to herself, chuckling. Eärlinno pokes his small head out of her hair, but seems to sense that she is no longer angry, and so settles himself – scuttling quickly up the strands of her hair – atop her head as is his wont, clinging by one claw to one of the spiky conch shells that make up her crown.

“Does he understand my tongue in this form?” Maglor asks, interrupting her thoughts and staring in fascination at Eärlinno. “Or will you tell him I… I am sorry, for Alqualondë… and the rest.”

“He knows, Maglor,” Uinen replies, wanting to leave, to find Ossë and… she does not quite know what comes after that, but she thinks she’d like to find out. “Eärlinno may not speak your tongue, but he understands your music; we have heard the laments you made.”

“You… you have?” he asks, a light flush appearing in his thin cheeks; he needs more food, she thinks.

“You sang them to the Sea, Maglor,” she replies, getting to her feet and turning to look at him with a small smile. Drawing a fat mackerel from a fold of her skirts, she hands him his supper, “and the Sea listened.”

Turning to walk back into the Sea, Uinen begins to sing, her voice taking up the melody of the first lament he composed.

Behind her, her singer is silent, but when she has almost disappeared beneath the waves once more, she hears his fingers pluck at the remaining harp strings tentatively, weaving the notes of the melody into her voice.

Uinen smiles.

Deepest Current

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Part 7

Swimming slowly, Uinen taking the time to meander through the sea-grass meadows as she thinks. If Maglor is right – and why should he lie? – there are a lot of moments to think through, looking for proof. Ossë has been with her and Ulmo always, since before there was Arda, when she was only thought and Song, Music made form and yet formless, shaping reality with her voice. She followed Ulmo, into Eä, for friendship and kinship – their voices have always harmonised together – and Ossë… followed her. She always thought he followed her for the same reason she went with Ulmo, but now… what if that was not the truth – or not all of the truth. Pensively, she lets her webbed fingers run over the soft plants that move with the currents, waving at a passing turtle.

Love… she loves Ossë, she knows that, even if she has never even wondered if there was more for him than friendship when he sought her company. She loves him, her friend and companion, in some ways more than she loves Ulmo; there was more than one reason it was her Aulë asked to save the land-dwellers from Ossë’s rebellion, not the Lord of the Seas, the Smith had once said, laughing deep as thunder. Uinen colours; had he known, then, what she had not?

The meadows end in a steep drop, one of her favourite chasms, and Uinen dives, suddenly desperate for an answer. The chasm is deep, but some light remains when she reaches Ossë still staring at her with hurt and fury mingling in his face.

He turns away from her.

“Ossë,” she says, but the questions do not want to come, staring at his broad back, implacable in the dimness. She swims closer.

“What do you want, Uinen?” he asks, his body painfully stiff to look at. She wants to put her hand on his shoulder, but she doesn’t quite dare, suddenly terrified. What if the Children are wrong?

“Tell me why,” she begins softly, unprepared for the violent way he whirls, pushing back against the bonds that hold him.

“Release me!” he demands, his anger subsuming the hurt as he glares at her. Uinen recoils.

“Tell me-” she tries again, only to be interrupted once more.

“I’ll stay away from your little love, but you will not keep me here!” Ossë says angrily, one arm flicking out to gesture at the empty space around them.

“I’m sorry,” Uinen says, and she is; she knows how much it hurts him to be restrained, and she had never wished to do it again. Releasing the coils of water with a thought, she reaches for him again, but Ossë does not care, gone in a storm of bubbles that block him from view. “Ossë,” she calls, “come back!”

He is long gone.

 

He is hiding from her, has gone up one of the rivers and asked her not to tell Uinen or Ulmo where he has gone; she spends a long time searching before she realises. With a sigh, she returns to Singer’s Cove, too preoccupied to notice when she gives Maglor ten fat cod instead of one, and too distracted to talk to him. Instead, she floats in the surf, listening to the song he is playing. Aptly, it is a lay involving Ossë’s rebellion, which does not make her feel better, disappearing with a splash of her tail.

If Ossë truly believes she has given her heart to Maglor – a thought that occurred to her soon after leaving her singer, but was dismissed immediately as the foolish notion it is – he would want her to be happy in love, she knows, and when the thought reappears in her mind, Uinen thinks she has found the reason for his anger at last. If Ossë saw her, the last time she went to see her singer, he would have seen her – Uinen blushes deeply at the idea, but part of her knows she is right – kissing Maglor, but also turning away in sadness. Of course, she amends, she had not meant to kiss the Child at all, the meeting of mouths nothing more than an exchange of breath she owed him, but from a distance … Ossë would not have known that.

Lying on a coral bed in Núramartan, Uinen thinks, but does not know what to do. Ossë is capable of staying away from her for years if he wishes, and suddenly she wonders if the other times he has done so have been times when she hurt him without realising how deeply the pain struck. The waters around her grow cool and dark with sadness, the memory of the bright sparkle of his laugh not nearly enough to banish the spectre of his hateful expression from her heart.

“You fought with Ossë,” Ulmo says quietly, wandering into her room. He wrinkles his nose at the darkness; Núramartan is not far enough underwater to be this dim, if not for Uinen’s mood.

“I did,” Uinen agrees, her eyes closed. Eärlinno is scurrying through her hair, but the slight tugs don’t make her smile as they usually do. “He tried to kill my singer, and I… I bound him.” Ulmo hums soothingly. He knows, too, the agony of forced stillness, and Uinen feels guilt rise up in her breast once more.

“He will forgive you,” Ulmo says, but Uinen shakes her head.

“Not this time.” Last time she had had no choice, but this time… this time she had done it as much to restrain as to punish, and Ossë would know the difference, feel her anger in the bonds that bit into his flesh. He would see it as proof, proof that even being scorned would not make her love Maglor less, love someone who wasn’t Ossë less. Ulmo reaches out to squeeze her hand.

“He will.” Uinen opens her eyes to glare at him, which only makes him smile at her. “He loves you.”

“That’s why,” Uinen replies, pulling her hand away and turning her back on Ulmo.

 

She cannot stay in Núramartan, wallowing, of course, there is work to be done, and so Uinen returns to her duties, tending to the herds of animals and the currents alike, crafting storms with Ulmo and Manwë at will and visiting her singer in between.

She does not smile at the leaping porpoises dancing around her, nor does she sing with the whales on their long migrations, she simply exists, moving through the Seas thoughtfully, without the joy of the heart that was stolen long ago, and remains hidden upriver with its thief.

 

“You’re moping,” Ulmo accuses, appearing before Ossë who is making tiny waves across a small lake, hunching his shoulders furtively when he hears the deep voice.

“I don’t want to watch… them.” Ossë replies, cringing at the thought. He always knew he’d never be worthy of her love, but the thought that a kin-murdering Child has been given what he so long coveted from afar is beyond galling. He saw only the one kiss, but it was more than enough for him. Of course, he had not been able to stay away, even if he remained hidden, and so he had also seen the small tears that escaped her eyes as she dove back into the water, leaving her lover’s bed in the dunes. Rage had filled him; the Child had hurt her! He knew she did not like to take lives, and so he had moved to do it for her, avenge her tears with blood… and she had fought him. For the sake of the Child who harmed her.

“Watch who?” Ulmo asks, doing a creditable imitation of obliviousness that Ossë doesn’t believe for a minute.

“Uinen and that… that…” Ossë doesn’t know a word that fully encompasses his loathing, helplessly waving his arm in the direction of the shore where the Child yet lives, a thought that takes his breath away with sharp agony. “I cannot bear to look at her.”

“You are hurting her,” Ulmo says, humming softly. The sound thrums through Ossë’s body, disapproval and thoughtfulness rolled into one large wave of shame-inducing sound.

“She made her choice,” he protests, seeing again the way she kissed him, the way his legs wrapped around her body, holding her close. His wrists ache, as though he is still tied in the deep, struggling to free himself of bonds woven in anger.

“Uinen defended her singer,” Ulmo agrees, “and more violently than you had expected, I am sure, but have you ever known her to be docile when it comes to protecting those she loves?” The designation is a punch to the gut, driving the air from Ossë’s body in a low hiss of hatred. If only she had waited a few more moments, the Child would be a smouldering heap of charred flesh, and she could… no, she would not, and killing the Child would not make her not love him – perhaps she would simply sleep, as Melian did, unable to cope with a world that did not have her love in it? Ossë shuddered painfully.

“Uinen is not Melian,” Ulmo rumbles. “Do not mistake her heart for that of the Queen of Doriath.”

“She made her choice,” he repeats, and does not look at Ulmo, whose stern disapproval still runs through the water. “She wants him, regardless of how he hurts her; she loves him. I cannot watch her destroy herself that way. I will not.”

“You are stubborn as rock, Ossë,” Ulmo sighs, as the light reflecting on the water takes a familiar shape, “but I never knew you for a coward.”

With that, he is gone, leaving Ossë to stare at the image he leaves behind in the lake until it disappears with the sunset.

 

When he flows out to Sea, she is already there, waiting for him; the Five Sisters have called her into the bay, told her that Ossë was coming back.

“Maglor…” she says, falling silent as the words escape her, what she meant to say lost to her mind, lost as she stares at Ossë. Horrified, she reaches for him, guilt spilling over and falling down her cheeks like tears, shimmering even underwater; Uinen’s tears are heavy, heavier than the salty water that surrounds them. She had known that she hurt him, but seeing the rends in his clothes – Ossë likes to wear flowing robes, intricately decorated with pearls and shells – and the deep angry welts beneath, the abraded skin her anger has left behind is heart-breaking.

Ossë moves, and suddenly his arms are wrapped around her, her face pressed into his bared chest as he runs soothing hands down her back in a way that only makes her feel more guilty. “I told you he’d hurt you, Uinen,” he whispers, “I am sorry – this time, I will kill him.”

“What?” At first, she is confused – Ossë’s arms are warm and comforting and she does not deserve either from him – and then the words register properly. “Ossë,” she whispers, reaching to cup his face, to make him look at her, blinking away the tears that continue to fall, “Ossë, Maglor could never hurt me.”

“You continue to defend him?” he asks, anger making him tense beneath her touch.

“This has nothing to do with Maglor!” Uinen protests, catching one of his wrists gently. “This is only about you and me.” Turning it in her hand, Uinen studies the dark marks that run up his arm. Ossë’s fingers are hesitant, drawing a tear from her cheek.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, the anger still hovering just beneath the surface. Uinen traces the marks she made in his skin, her fingers not quite daring to touch.

“I hurt you,” she says, “I hurt you… I hurt you!” The last words are a pained sob, the apologies following almost lost as Ossë brings her back close to his chest. “I’m sorry, Ossë, I am.” She does not deserve to be comforted and yet she clings to him, craving his touch with a desperation that surprises her.

“I forgive you,” he murmurs into her ear, his lips close enough to touch the shell. Uinen shudders lightly.

“You shouldn’t,” she whispers, pressing her lips gently against the dark marks on his skin, watches them fade and heal. He lets her continue, a trail of kisses reaching up to his shoulder, crossing the expanse of his back when she tugs the tattered cloth from his body, offering penance until she reaches his other wrist. The dark line beneath his ribs makes her frown, but Ossë chuckles when she traces it with her lips, tickled by the touch.

“Ui-Uinen,” he stutters, one hand clenching in her trailing hair when her lips move down across his hip, following the path of bruising. “Wha-what are you, uhm… doing?”

Looking up at him, she smiles, bending to press her lips against the jutting bone of his hip – Ossë prefers legs, sensibly finned, of course – feeling him jump at the touch of her tongue. “Do you want me to stop?” she asks, already knowing the answer, surprised when his fingers tighten in her hair, yanking her away. Uinen winces.

“Why are you… what kind of… !” Ossë does not seem to know what he wants to know, so Uinen waits silently. Licking her lips, she feels nearly giddy; still guilty for the pain she has caused him, but buoyed by the sheer joy of being close to him. It has been too long, she thinks, since it was just the two of them, playing in the water. Ossë grips her wrists, tight enough to restrain, though not tight enough to hurt, staring into her face. Uinen smiles softly.

“Did you know the Children have songs about us?” she asks, making no move to free herself, staring into his eyes, the colour of the waves above them, grey and wintry. Ossë nods; the Children have many stories of the Ainur – some are even true – even if they do not always understand the whys of their lives. “Maglor told me,” Uinen adds carelessly, giving no reaction when his grip tightens to the point of pain. “In their stories… I am yours.” And you are mine, she doesn’t add, testing the waters for those words. Ossë stiffens, but Uinen catches the flash of longing on his face that he cannot smother in time for it to go unnoticed.

“The Children do not know everything,” Ossë replies, oddly hoarse, and closes his eyes.

“No,” Uinen agrees softly, “though that part is true enough.” The expression on his face is surprisingly satisfying, but Uinen ignores it as she continues speaking, “although I have yet to learn if what they say of you is true.”

Ossë gapes at her, his fingers still loosely wrapped around her wrists, disbelief written stark across his familiar features. “You… Me?” he asks, sinking down towards the bottom as though keeping himself afloat is too much effort. Uinen follows. “What do they say of me?” he asks, trying to make it a demand and falling far short. Uinen smiles – her singer spoke truly – hearing the impossible hope in his hoarse voice.

Repeating Maglor’s words – in Maglor’s voice – she swims closer, speaking them directly into his ear. “All the tales of the Sea – Ossë’s rebellion, the Songs of Ulmo, all of them – say that Ossë of the Waves loves none but Uinen, Lady of Water, whose hair stretches across all the Seas.”

For a moment, Ossë does not react, but he cannot keep his skin from giving away his agitated emotions. Uinen runs her hand slowly down one taut arm, twining her long fingers through his. Her free hand grasps his chin, turning his face towards her.

“And that is well,” she murmurs, leaning in to press her forehead against his, “for Uinen of the Deep loves best of all Ossë.” Chuckling softly, she adds, “Even when he tries to kill her pets, and makes her feel guilty for causing him pain in return.”

“But… pet?” Ossë exclaims, though he does not move away, wide eyes locked on Uinen’s own. “But I saw you… you kissed him!”

Uinen frowns, but then a wave of mischief surges through her and she clasps her hands over Ossë’s gills, just at the bottom of his ribcage, closing her mouth over his and breathing slowly. I owed him air, she explains soundlessly, her fingertips teasing Ossë’s colourful skin, her hands moving away from his gills to sweep over his chest.

His arms flail for a moment, and then one hand wraps around her back, another tangles in her hair and her demonstration becomes a kiss ages overdue and sweet enough to make her lose her breath.

You are mine, he replies, hissing into her mouth when her tail turns into legs to match his, wrapping around his waist.

Always, she promises, nipping at his lower lip once before returning to the novel experience of kissing which is far more pleasurable than she had ever expected, and you are mine.

Waves of Longing

Read Waves of Longing

“You do not think they need you?” she asks him, one day, staring up at the clear sky as Maglor plays a song he won’t tell her who inspired, “The twins?” Eärlinno sits on top of her head, markedly less malevolent towards Maglor these days – Uinen does not let on that she knows her smaller singer thinks Ossë’s interrupted vengeance cleared the air between them – involved in a slow ballet of his claws, weaving strands of music into Maglor’s tune without him knowing. He won’t say it, but she knows it is her friendship made melody, sometimes flowing gently, lapping at her ears, sometimes crashing loudly with the swells of a storm-whipped sea. She smiles, remembering a time when he called her wrathful and vengeful; he still does not dare call her a friend, not out loud, but she hears it in his music, and it is enough.

“No,” he sighs, the fingers on the harp stilling as he contemplates the waves. Uinen turns over, leaning on her elbows to study him, her bare legs splashed by a playful wave. “It is better this way. Bad enough that they began their lives in war without me hanging around like a lingering reminder of the fallen Shadow.” He sighs. Uinen already knew what he felt, but it still hurts to hear him say it, the utter surety in his voice that extinguishes the flame of longing even before it is born.

She does not understand his hesitance, though she thinks it is to do with the Oath, slumbering beneath notice most of the time, but still rearing its ugly visage every now and again. She has had no luck purging it, nor have Ossë’s powers done much except help keep it at bay; Maglor’s songs lull it to sleep, and by now it has been more than five decades since he last cried out in helpless despair, diving for the stone. She had stopped him, a moment, and he had looked at her with such fear that she was reminded of the first time she came to him. He had not cowered, however, trusting in her friendship; an unspoken plea for help written across his face. Standing between him and the shining treasure, Uinen had cut a few locks from her head, wrapping them around the stone in place of the leather that had long-since rotted away in the salt water. Giving him the nest with its shining treasure, she had watched him cycle through emotions swifter than she could follow, staring at her with a mix of gratitude and shame before he turned away, swimming back to shore to stare at the stone in sunlight. He threw it back into the Sea less than an hour later, and she rewarded him three spiny lobsters. She gave him a few days before she appeared before him, allowing that veneer of power to resettle; he needed to feel in control of the Oath, and Uinen never let on how much help he truly received in keeping the dark thoughts at bay.

“He has friends, kinsmen, in Lindon,” Maglor adds, startling Uinen out of her thoughts. She hums gently, picking up the melody of his strumming fingers to avoid agreeing either way. “Gil-galad, Círdan, Galadriel, Celebrimbor, all the Elves of Doriath and Gondolin,” he counts on his fingers, but she knows that the litany is simply his way to distance himself; he knows that the twins wont have forgotten him, just as he has not forgotten the ones he calls his sons. Maglor rarely speaks of them, but their faces appear in his mind from time to time, and she knows he longs to see them, still, even if it is only in the privacy of his own mind that Maglor will admit as much. The thoughts that seem to bleed through the connection she maintains to his fëa – whether Maglor is aware of it or not – give him away. Uinen thinks he is – he is rarely surprised at her knowing his feelings more intimately than he would ever speak them – but they do not discuss the link between them.

The Oath, the Silmaril, and friendship – all unspoken topics, the boundaries of this melody they have been weaving for more than three centuries.

 

 

Most of the Children have forgotten her singer – except one, who stubbornly continues to search every time his path takes him along any stretch of shoreline.

He is kin to her, familiar like a voice she had once known, born of the blood of a sister long-gone – Melian slept somewhere, perhaps, her voice had not sounded since the death of her love – and Uinen knows him the moment he appears, not very far from her singer’s camp. Drawn by the sound of his harp, maybe, or the familiar shape of his mind – it does not matter.

Elrond.

A thought brings her shape and physical presence, trailing seawater and wearing her favourite set of silver scales, appearing in a spray of a sea-foam before him where he sits on the rocky shore, staring defeatedly at the waves that beat against the coast. Eärlinno peeks from beneath a half-finished braid, but Elrond does not seem to notice, staring at her as though he cannot quite believe she is real. Uinen feels puzzled, for a moment; Ulmo has spoken to both twins, and they would have seen her power sinking Beleriand, if nothing else.

“You won’t find what you seek, Child of mine kin,” she tells him. He has come close, but Uinen knows that Maglor does not wish to be found, not even by the elf he considers his son.

“You… you know whom I seek?” Elrond asks, the terrible light of hope in his eyes twisting her heart. “My Lady,” he adds, belatedly polite in a way that makes her smile. Part of her wishes to tell him to go just a little bit further, to show him the one he seeks, but she knows it is not what Maglor wants, and so she keeps her silence.

“I have seen your searches,” she replies, instead, as though one wandering Elf was reason enough for the Lady of Waters to show herself, “coming from one place to another by way of the shore, even when that is neither the fastest or easiest way.” Part of her mind is further along the shoreline, keeping an eye on Maglor, who seems to be tightening the shields around his mind where he hides beneath dense shrubbery; invisible to both fëa and hroa, though not to her. “You seek the singer,” Uinen says, as Elrond jumps to his feet, “the one whose soul I claimed centuries ago.”

“He is dead then…” the young Elf says, crashing to his knees in the surf. “I had…”

“No, Child,” Uinen replies, raising his head with a gentle smile, her cool fingers wiping away the tear that has already fallen, “my singer lives. Rare as it is for me to claim a soul yet housed, I have done so.”

“But, then… why?” Elrond asks, the plaintive tone tugging at her soft heart.

“He was badly scarred, Child of mine kin,” Uinen says, “and the Oath that once bound him so tightly is not yet loosened enough that he would dare challenge its hold – not even for you.”

Elrond stares at her for a while, then he nods, his shoulders drawn tight.

“You speak with him,” he says, “watch him?”

“He needs watching,” she replies evenly, wryly wondering if her singer would be alive yet, if not for the food she still gives him every now and again. Ossë has tried to teach him to fish, to make nets – even to sing fish up the narrow river that runs beside him small camp – but the singer continues to be an abysmal fisherman.

Elrond says nothing for a long while, staring out across the ocean, but Uinen is content to let him think about her words; Ossë will be waiting for her, there is a storm coming in the east, but there is time yet to linger here. Finally, he speaks, the purple clouds of sunset painted onto the sky above them.

“I would…” he pauses, and for a moment she wonders if her presence frightens him, but then he rallies, “appreciate it… if you would watch over him when I am not here.” Uinen thinks part of him must be aware of the Music, the eddies that show her connection to the singer, even though his blood is diluted.

“He needs watching,” she repeats, “and I watch.” She does not mention the fish, or the mussels, or any of the ways she has changed small things for the sake of her singer, and the Child who is her kin does not ask. Elrond nods slowly, as though she has agreed to his request.

“I thank you.”

 

 

She turns away Elrond with a promise, and he stops his lonely searches, even if it is only because she visits him from time to time – years apart, or even decades – bringing him word or vision of the elf he still thinks of as his father. The other one, Elros, has not asked her, though she has seen him standing atop the tower he built, staring towards the distant shore where Maglor dwells when he thinks no one see him – no one but Uinen and the gulls, at least.

She does not share her knowledge with Maglor – Elrond is content with the titbits she gives him, or, at least, too polite to complain, and Uinen assumes he sends word to his brother; they have both been denied access to Maglor’s mind, the shields that guard him reinforced regularly, as though he expects an attack, still, even this long since Melkor’s banishment.

Uinen visits Nerdanel only once; the wilful sculptor tries to convince her to smuggle her away to Singer’s Cove, to reunite her with her lost son, and Uinen might have, if not for the knowledge that Maglor would not want to see her; she does not tell Nerdanel that, however, instead delivering tightly bound scrolls stuffed in a watertight leather tube containing the laments for her sons. Eärlinno had transcribed them – Uinen hadn’t known what to do with the gift, but her friend had asked her to take them to Maglor’s kin – still a fair hand with ink and pen, even if it took him years to learn to control instruments of writing with claws rather than fingers.

 

Of course, her singer does not go unnoticed; Námo’s anger is a sight to behold, Ulmo tells her, returning from Council. He laughs – Námo’s adherence to rules often amuse the three of them, used to the fluidity of water running through their every decision -  telling her. Uinen spends more than one day imagining the expressions on Námo’s face when he realised how she had circumvented the Doom laid upon the Sons of Fëanor – Námo had complained to Manwë, and brought the fate of Maglor up on a Valarin Council.

Ulmo might not love her singer – he and Ossë still don’t much like Maglor, though they have to admit that he is a good songcrafter – but that does not mean he would let Námo take him away from her. Ulmo made a case for Maglor by saying that his continued existence did not truly violate Námo’s Doom, and if he had a few comforts that was due a rebellious subject; Ulmo reckoned it was better to indulge his Lady of Waters, pointing out how the rebellious Maiar of Aulë’s had clearly done more damage. ‘It is not the first time we have seen rebellion within the Ainur’ he had told them, drawing himself up to full and imposing height, ‘and yet my rebels come back to me; giving Uinen a singer is no great price to pay for Seas that follow their currents.’ Námo had spluttered, but Ulmo had received support from Aulë, whose heart was still heavy with sadness for Mairon – and probably Fëanáro and his kin, too – and in the end Manwë had ruled in Uinen’s favour. No one had truly wanted to punish her; there weren’t that many Ainur who liked water, in the first place, and punishing Uinen for her compassion rung hollowly even in Námo’s ears, even if he put up a might scowl when Manwë laid down his ruling. Ulmo had been ordered to give her a stern lecture, and they both pretend that Maglor’s existence is all Uinen’s doing – ignoring that Ulmo was the original impetus. Ossë nearly kills himself laughing when he realises she, too, has been named a rebel, and that is the end of the discussion.

 

Uinen does not tell Maglor of the Doom that has been haphazardly tacked onto his first; it changes nothing with regards to his life in Singer’s Cove, though she does report seeing Nerdanel, showing him images of his Ammë, windswept red curls tickling her face as she stands by the waves, an ocean breeze catching in the strands. She does not mention the gift she gave her, until years later, when Maglor himself remarks that he wishes he could play his laments for her; lacking in musical talent herself, Nerdanel had prevailed upon Finrod to sing them for her.

Maglor smiles, at that, and spends an hour telling her about Finrod’s Nargothrond – apparently, he went hunting there, and she feels quietly amused when he brags about the stag he killed; he can’t hunt with snares well enough to feed himself, but with dogs to flush out prey and a bow in hand he sounds like Oromë himself in the telling.

Maglor grins, and the sun shines above them.

Piano a niente

Prompt: B2MEM Bingo card
A niente: To nothing; indicating a diminuendo which fades completely away
Piano: Gently (i.e. played or sung softly)
Prompt: Fëanorian Week Day 2 - Maglor & Elrond
B2MEM March 18 prompts:
Elegy: An elegy (French: élégie) is a lament, either vocal or instrumental.

Read Piano a niente

The Oath is silent, these days, smothered by the Songs of the Sea and the Music that fills Maglor’s fëa with its own light; surrounding it in a transparent but impenetrable bubble of water woven with a tranquil harmony – the surf and the wind and the harp together.

The guilt is still there, Uinen knows, and with it self-loathing and agony – but the Oath is silent, the last tendrils drawn into itself, curling like a roiling mass inside its glittering prison, seeking but unable to find escape, to take root in her singer’s mind once more.

The Silmaril remains in the ocean – Uinen knows where, though Maglor does not and does not ask – and the time it has lain there undisturbed is nearing a century.

She visits, often, when it does not interfere with her duties or the time she spends with Ossë, dancing through the waves in shimmery shafts of life or riding the swells of great storms.

In Maglor’s fëa, the Oath sleeps in its cage, and the power required to maintain it is little more than a single wave, reinforced easily and locked with the melody of his songs. There are shadows, still, but Uinen will not touch the scars of his past deeds; the interference with the Oath was different, but she cannot offer him absolution, and he would not ask it of her even if she could.

The dreams that sometimes wake him, weeping, crimson stains on stone quays, are made of grief, not evil, and Uinen is happy to see it. Sometimes, she will sing him lullabies, but Maglor as a right to his memories, and she does not take the dreams away; part of her thinks it justice for the fallen, and part of her thinks the dreams mean he is not as lost as he believes.

 

She knows it has happened, though she can do nothing. The bells ring from the tower, spreading the word across land and sea – the King is dead.

Moving swiftly, she finds Elrond, staring across the sea as grief draw lines in his face that were not there mere moons before when she last saw him.

“You need him,” she whispers, cupping his face gently. Over the years, she has grown fond of the Child, considering him at least partially hers, and in a moment of starlight on waves her choice is made. “I will guide you,” she promises, and Elrond nods.

 

She meets him on the shore, the horse hastily tacked and too few provisions for an extended stay packed in the saddlebags, but it does not matter. Grief fills her, for the pain she sees in this Child, and the pain she knows his coming will spell for her friend, but also determination – Maglor has long denied any desire for the company of others, but Uinen knows that he misses them fiercely, nonetheless.

And, now, one of them is gone forever, gone beyond the circles of the world.

Elrond might have wanted Maglor’s company, before, but now, now he needs it, needs that link to someone who remembers both he and his brother from the beginning and Maglor is the last one left, for though Uinen can do much, bringing Eärendil and Elwing to Middle-Earth she cannot.

“Call to him,” she murmurs, keeping pace with the horse easily, flowing along the beach on the crest of a wave that should not be possible. Elrond does, the name a scream in his mind, less a name and more a feeling as she hears it echo. Father.

Maglor is playing his harp in the early morning, an old song, a cradle-song, though Uinen knows he does not yet know that he has lost his son. The strings falter, and the part of her that is tied to him feels the way he tries to tighten his shield, tries to shut out her companion. For the first time, Uinen moves to stop him, leaving tiny cracks in the rock-solid shields that let the clamour of grief through, the cry resound in his mind.

The horse speeds up, spurred on by its master’s urgency, but Uinen keeps pace easily. She feels the moment Maglor realises why Elrond is here, so close, when she has not allowed him to get so near before, and Uinen smiles to herself when he sets his fingers to the strings once more, the old cradle-song a memory of long ago, and two small boys being sung to sleep beneath the branches of a dark forest.

Sinking into the Sea – Elrond does not need her to guide him through the sheltering dunes, the harp will do – Uinen watches her singer, remaining unseen as she floats on the waves. He had not truly dared believe her, Elrond, she realises, had not dared hope that the long years of separation could be ended with such alacrity. Uinen sees it in his face, the grief giving way for a moment to pure surprise as her singer turns, warily looking at him, the fingers still strumming the harp-strings softly between them.

Then the harp hits the sand, and for a moment there is silence.

“Elrond…” Maglor says, and suddenly the younger elf has crossed the space between them, his arms tight around shoulders that are still too bony for her liking.

“Ada,” he weeps, the tears echoed in Maglor’s strangled voice as he wraps his arms around his… son. Uinen waits, leaning back in the arms of Ossë as she watches, hoping that she has done enough that her singer can take this step on his own.

Humming the same cradle-song, Maglor holds Elrond close, their grief a shared song between them, the melody of years long past fading.

Uinen smiles, sinking beneath the waves, the simple melody of the cradle-song echoing in her mind.