Songs of the Sea by Raiyana

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.

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.