A Sinister Drama by Harnatano - Lithenna

Chapter 1

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If only death meant oblivion. If only death meant deafness, blindness, senselessness. If only the walls of Mandos were thick enough to prevent any images from reaching the spectral dwellers of the Halls. If only the Ainur were not giving them access to what most of them would rather not see… forcing open their mind to images of doom.

If only he did not have to behold his grandmother’s masterpieces. Oh, how he had craved them during his youth, Miriel’s tapestries… how he had yearned for an opportunity to behold his grandmother’s talents, greedily listening to what Finwë would accept to say about her skills. And indeed, the hands that wave those tapestries must have been made of light… but those scenes… why those scenes?

In the beginning, time still meant something. He could still position himself, contemplate this not-so-remote drama from a temporal perspective. Not anymore, despite the constant flow of images and scenes which he knows to be chronological. But are they? Or is it but another trick? A trick of his mind? Of Námo? He refuses paranoia. The very paranoia which had hindered him, corrupted him while he was alive. This paranoia who had kept his body and mind in chains, or, paradoxically, which encouraged the most nonsensical demeanour, which set fire to his body. Now his body is but a memory, rotting particles like crumbs on a heap of ashes, specks of dust swept over what used to be Beleriand.

But Beleriand is no more. He saw it. Now all he wants is to be able to shut is mind, to put off the flame of his consciousness so that he could not see. The sufferings, the remorse, the horror. Guilt and anticipation. He sees the scenes, and his son at the centre of the drama. He is proud – oh yes, he is – but this pride is increasingly mingling with dread and dismay. And yet, no other choice but to watch passively the dramatic painting of his son’s distress, the display of Tyelperinquar’s paradoxical behaviour which Curufin does not fully understand yet.

What did he miss?

On the long path of confusion and dismay, he follows the ghost of his memories, haunted by the shadows of a future which he cannot foresee, stalked by the chasm of fear, the depths of which he cannot fathom. In the mist of his regrets he watches the unravelling of a tale which seems to poison the very fabric of reality.

Tyelperinquar shows no fear, and the strength and power of the Lord of Eregion is both a joy and a curse for the vanquished father. Bitterness drips from the fangs of guilt, intoxicating his very being, and the source of his disarray lingers in what had not been said.

Tyelperinquar is not afraid. Tyelperinquar rules and protects, creates and keeps alive a flame older than the moon. And in spite of this force, which anchors Tyelperinquar in reality and sharpens his reason, the lord of Eregion prays. Curufinwë hears him so very often that he has begun to question his own mind. Tyelperinquar prays and it is his father whom he calls. Silent yearning for a reality which has not given itself the opportunity to exist, resentful cries, muffled cries, cries made dull by his own guilt, the quiet echo of a child’s nightmare. But there is no time for solace, and as Curufinwë grabs the essence of his son’s bitter laments and excruciating rancour, he realises he has no choice but to suffer them, deprived of any mean of action, voiceless and paralysed by the spectral sentinels of his mind. Tyelperinquar resents him, and Tyelperinquar needs him. Through the acknowledgment of both anger and love, Curufinwë discovers the threads of a fate which he has always dreaded.

But his own guilt is no match for what is to come.

A shadow floats over Ost-in-Edhil, and if Tyelperinquar himself doesn’t see it, he is no less warry. From his cage, Curufinwë witnesses, and in his son’s demeanour he sees his own cunning, along with a melancholy which increases with each new day, with each new creation. The entropic destiny of a craftsman who devises the tool of his own punishment. The father’s teachings have not been forgotten, but the light in Tyelperinquar’s eyes is obscure, and its meaning remains out of reach. He wishes he could rejoice at the way his son reveres his name, his teachings: a tribute to a broken bond which should have been preserved. But how can he rejoice when the fiend watches greedily?

The Maia is not to be trusted – Curufinwë sees what lies behind the fair mask – but what game is Tyelperinquar playing? Does he not know?

Trapped in the nightmarish prison of his agony, Curufinwë cannot answer his son’s prayers, these prayers who ask for solace and support, advises and wisdom, accompanied by a new expression on his face: Determination. A longing for retaliation. The promise of doom, of a desperate and equivocal act of penance. If not a sacrifice, a tribute to his bloodline, to the Noldor, to Middle-Earth.

And the Three are forged.

From the misty halls, Curufinwë beholds them. Power encapsulated. Remembrance of Light. Ex-votos, eulogy of an old Oath aimed at the preservation of what is. Shields against what may be. Tyelperinquar has not only learned his lesson, he enhances it. Drawing a subtle strategy from the devious example whom he called “father”, he too considered this dreadful word: power.

Ost-in-Edhil sleeps in its own ashes.

There is neither present nor past. The cycle goes on and here, within the cold walls of his last home, Curufinwë’s sanity gets lost in the chaotic dissolution of past and present, while the future remains a blurred mirage. If only he had tears to shed, cries to shout, flesh to torn apart. His own expiation, no matter how painful, he has accepted. But his son deserves no mortification. The tormenting display of the horrors inflicted upon mind and body, the atrocity which Curufinwë is made to witness, they dismember what is left of his rationality; his son’s body destroyed and disgraced, his mind assaulted by the spectres of the Maia’s sadistic venom… Disgust and hate. Curufinwë’s fëa is torn apart by the violent flow of his aching aversion, immaterial filaments burning with loath, particles of affliction throbbing under the stinging gripe of his son’s anguish.

To save him. To hold him. To deliver him. To protect and avenge him. Curufinwë’s fëa is only pain and hate. Not a single thread of sanity will be left. He burns and quivers, aching for his son, not even capable of praying for the end of his sufferings.

But Tyelperinquar, although defeated, although dying and humiliated, stands. Under the shadow of Thauron’s perverted power, through the wicked spells and the foul haze of his curses, Tyelperinquar’s determination doesn’t fail, he holds on, clinging not only to his own pride, but also to the memory that he cherishes. And so does Curufinwë. Perhaps it is nothing less than his son’s tenacity which pulls him out of his own distress, perhaps Tyelperinquar’s silent callings, his last prayers for a father who cannot save him, have reached Curufinwë’s desolated fëa, dragging him out of the viscous swamp of his delirium. And how he clings to his son’s last breaths.

Thauron intended to make a mockery of the Fëanorian bloodline through the utter humiliation of its last scion. Instead, he made a martyr out of him. Oh, not alone. It is also Tyelperinquar’s achievement, his last invention, a masterpiece: now he stands for the very symbol of resistance.