Songs of the Sea by Raiyana

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.