Into The Dark by elvntari

Chapter 1

The first lyrics are this passage from the song Äijö by Värttinä:

Screamed in the woods alone at night
Screamed in the woods hot coals on his hands
Smoking palms shoes in the woods
At night alone, tired old man

The original Finnish:

Rääkyi männikössä yöllä yksinänsä
Rääkyi männikössä kekäleet käessä
Kämmenet käryssä kengät kankahalla
Yöllä yksinänsä, äijä väsyksissä

You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Jsr49142k

Considering the theme of the song, and the influence of Finnish on Quenya, I thought it was appropriate to use it. The other Elvish is translated in-text, and my good friend Fairy (ravenditefairylights) was an amazing help with that.

Amelie is a collaborative oc between me, Fairy and Opal, so I decided I absolutely had to use her here (although I may have tweaked her backstory and her relationship to Daeron and Maglor ever-so-slightly.)

Read Chapter 1

You would take me, singing through the forests. Nothing pretty. Nothing beautiful. One of the chants your grandfather taught you -- to ward off the demons, you said, and I bit back my competitive nature for once, staying silent about our own songs. The lyrics -- but ‘lyrics’ is too kind a word -- the words whip around your mouth like half swallowed screams and growls.

Rambuva imi i taurë eresse ye fui 
Rambuva imi i taurë, saiwa ondor apa maiya 
Usquad mai, hyapati imi taurë 
Fuissë eresse, lumba aira ner

I can’t say I understood what you were saying, but I could discern one line from the web of the song. An addendum -- spoken in low tones at the end, after the true song had finished.

Hilyani iminna i lúna

---

Maglor was, as always, standing alone on the front path, eyes closed, letting the sting of the wind and the kiss of the rain cover him, make him feel real again. He claimed he liked the chill. It reminded him that he had, despite everything, lived. The waves were high enough to breach the top of the cliff but, no matter how close Maglor got, they never seemed to threaten him.

Nonetheless, Daeron worried.

He was wild. He had always been wild, and he always would be, but then, standing there in the midst of the storm, he was wilder than anything Daeron had ever seen.

He stood watching him like that through the window for a good five minutes, before slipping on a raincoat and daring to take a step outside into the gale, fighting against the force of it to stand by his side.

“It’s a shame,” Maglor sighed, not even turning to look at him, “that the weather should be so violent on a day like this.”

Daeron slipped his hand into his husband’s and they stood, wordless. It was unusual for two men such as themselves to find there to be nothing to say, yet nothing there was. But they stood, and it was like that, that Daeron found his mouth drop open at the sight of rolling black clouds, almost merging into the surface of the ocean water -- like some scene from a painting, lightning flashed within them. The storm hadn’t even hit.

Maglor squeezed his hand. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was our reckoning.” Then he turned and let him back inside, leaving the storm to rage around them.

That night, the ceiling above their bed leaked.

---

You simply recited your version of the same prayer we all knew. A prayer for safety, for protection, for power.

Aphad im an i duath

You would smile back at me. You understood. We both did.

---

Maglor had insisted that they walk through the forest, fresh with the remnants of the storm, making the paths almost impossible to find. Fallen trees and leaves blown over the stone trail, the maze of trees even more maze-like than before.

“This is how it is meant to be,” Daeron breathed, drawing a quizzical look from Amelie as she slipped her wool gloves on inside-out (she had made the mistake of touching the soaking wood of a moss-covered stump). “The world always takes back what belongs to it. It does not like to be reigned in.”

She turned, taking in the world around her, the golden and red hues of autumn turned muddy by the rain. The depths of the forest were dark enough to block out the winter sun, but she had long ago learnt to bring a torch. Once, she had accidentally shone the torch light at his face, and he had exclaimed that he did name her prophetically -- Caledminuial. It had taken her years to figure out why her Atar had snorted at that. Bright dawn.

She just wished that the leaves would crunch underfoot. She had no need to concern herself with hunting, no matter how many times Atar insist she adopt a hunter’s gait. She liked the sound.

She wound her way between the trees, further and further from where the path should’ve been, had it not been hidden. It got dark. And then darker, as an impulse to turn off the light took hold of her. Her ada had told her stories about the demons that used to roam the forests, how they would get inside of your head, insist you take their hand -- just trust them, they’d say, they knew somewhere safe, where you would have nothing to fear ever again.

She shut her eyes, feeling the thickness of the dark surrounding her. She thought about those humans who would seek comfort in sensory deprivation tanks, like some memory of the womb. But the womb was loud. She had always found it easiest to fall asleep when Atar was playing something loud and bursting with bass. The forest, too, was loud; if she really listened, she could hear every living thing, from the twittering of the birds to the gentle thrum of worms moving beneath the earth.

You are a fae child. You are a part of everything. An old woman on the beach had taken her hands when she was thirteen, stared into her eyes. You know all, and all know you.

She opened her eyes to two gleaming white points of light before her.

Ada had never claimed that demons stopped roaming these forests.

Everything within her, outside of her, around her screamed -- no, crooned: Come with me, you will be safe, you will be warm, you will be free, fae child, free as you were always meant to be. Follow me home, dear, where you will be safe. She strained to keep her eyes open, to keep her thoughts alert. To let down her guard would be to accept the demon.

Maglor found her as she flicked the light of her torch back on to empty forest in front of her, not a creature in sight.

“Amelie, Évëalima!” He pulled her into an embrace she weakly accepted, still scanning the trees for those shining white eyes.

“Atar…” She breathed, lowering her torch.

“It would’ve eaten you alive. It has no master to bring you to now.” He clutched her tighter.

“I wouldn’t have let it.” She said, with a calm steel in her voice that reminded him of his older brother.

---

I recall the first time I told you of our own chants -- the identical, and opposing rallying cries of war and escape, of fleeing, and of striving on.

We fled, you told me, but we came back to fight. Where do we fit in?

Nowhere, I said, because I was angry that you could leave a home so perfect behind.

---

The storm had come in the middle of the day, darkness falling before even the midday bells had rung out, and it had raged for fourteen hours after. They lay awake, watching the damp creep across the beams above them, and trying not to think about what would happen if the roof fell on them.

“Storms like this are once in a lifetime,” Maglor said, almost as if he were talking to the ceiling.

“We’ve had more than one.”

“Storms, or lifetimes?” Maglor turned to look at Daeron, grinning -- his grin was some strange relic of when he used to run people through with swords. You could see exactly how sharp his teeth were.

“Maybe both --” He was cut off by a bang against the door, a sound almost as if someone were trying to break it down. But they’d specifically tailored the outside of their home to look uninviting, and there were plenty safer homes to break into, and with plenty more treasures to steal -- or rather, unhidden treasures to steal. Maglor sat up.

“Sounds like something hit the door.” They looked at each other for a moment. “I should go and check. Don’t want to let the storm in.”

“Of course,” said Daeron, before they stayed exactly how they were, waiting for another minute. “I’ll come with you,” he added, eventually. He never understood why Maglor was so afraid of intruders -- he was a murderer, he had a collection of first age swords hidden beneath the floorboards of the back room, he had once killed a man with his bare hands.

The chill was bad, but they went to check anyway. Better to die standing, after all. As they got closer to the front of the house, they could hear repeated banging on the door and -- was it -- screaming? Crying? The voice sounded young, too.

Maglor opened the door.

There, almost clinging to door frame to avoid the storm, was a girl, drenched from head-to-toe, who looked roughly six or seven in age and, most remarkably, had the glowing eyes and pointed ears of an elf.

---

Once you admitted you liked the dark, and I had nothing to say to you. You said it was peaceful, that you’d never been able to sleep as well as you had when it was dark, and you really liked to sleep. You said you heard music in your dreams; the best you’d ever heard, you said.

---

Amelie came of age at thirty-five. It had taken them a full week of research to figure out how she aged -- a half elf in the seventh age? Maglor raised his eyebrows. She spoke with an accent, and claimed that her parents had died sailing across the North Sea -- her father had been the son of someone called Gilmith, she said, and her mother was a Danish baker. Maglor shook his head. He didn’t care, he just wanted to know how often they’d have to move if they took her in.

Just don’t send me to school, she’d said, nursing a mug of hot chocolate. Maglor had laughed but, in the end, she had gotten her way -- it was easier to homeschool her, and then forge her papers once her aging stabilised.

They couldn’t do much special for her on her birthday, but Maglor searched through all of the jewels he had plundered from ruins, and stolen back from pawn shops and gifted them to her. It was a Noldor tradition.

The stealing? Daeron laughed.

The gifting. Maglor punched him in the arm. He didn’t mean it to hurt, but he wasn’t used to the strength he had only recently gained back.

Still, they felt a sense of pride seeing her dressed up like a real Noldo, and Maglor joked that all she needed now was a Silmaril headpiece, and she’d look perfect.

And yet he looked sad, almost, as if he foresaw some painful end.

Maybe he had.

---

You taught her your songs, and I mine. But she did not fear the dark in the way we did.

---

“I understand if you want to be mortal, it’s -- it’s not like I haven’t dealt with that before,” Maglor said, and Amelie looked up from her essay.

“Thanks? I guess?” She shrugged. It’d only been a month since she’d moved out to attend university, but already Maglor had been treating her absence like it was permanent. For all the optimism he’d claimed to grow, he still only seemed to see loss ahead of him.

“I’ll support you, I --”

“Atar, I’m not going to die,” She said, raising an eyebrow. Daeron put down the dish he was washing. Maglor stared at her.

Eventually Daeron realised Maglor wasn’t going to speak, so he made the inquiry himself: “What do you mean?”

“I choose elvenkind, or whatever.” She waved a hand, then turned back to her essay, chewing the end of her pen. “No big deal, right?” She mumbled.

Maglor coughed, “no big deal?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I want to follow you around to all the cool places you told me you went to -- maybe even go west, whatever that means. Can’t do that if I’m mortal and, besides, I’m sick of catching colds.”

“Aman can be a dark place,” Maglor breathed.

“I’m not afraid of the dark.”

---

It was a love declaration, and a prayer. A call and response and a show of trust.

Hilyani iminna i lúna

Saquet

I learnt the response.

Aphad im an i duath

Athon

You learnt the call. A request and an answer, and a proof that the faith we shared in each other was as genuine as the survival in those dark years that I had learnt to forget, and you had been taught to remember.

Follow me into the dark

I will