For the First Time in Forever by quillingmesoftly

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By the Shore

Maglor returns to the beach, along with Goldberry.

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The dawn woke Maglor from the paths of reverie to tears slipping down his cheeks. It had been another memory from Tirion that he had walked in. Teaching little Carnistir to sing, and listening to the way his tiny little brother would stumble over the syllables of the lullaby, his face turning a bright shade of pink from concentration. The tears and the tantrums that had followed, until Maitimo had come into the room to console Carnistir, with all the hard-won skill of having soothed a baby cousin and two little brothers through innumerable temper tantrums already. Maglor gave himself another moment to linger in the memory – in Maitimo’s chuckle as he brushed Carnistir’s hair out of his face and kissed the tip of his nose, in the feeling of his arm thrown around Makalaurë’s shoulder.

And then Maglor rose from his bed roll and walked to the estuary bank, to splash his face with the cool salt water.

“What’s wrong?”

Ah. His impromptu guest, who was reclining in one of the willows that formed a grove on this bank. If it had been an uncomfortable night for her, she certainly showed no sign of it.

“Nothing is wrong,” he lied smoothly, splashing the water on his face, and then standing to turn and face her. Everything was wrong in his world, but if she hadn’t worked that out yet, he was not going to hasten the discovery. “And haven’t your parents told you it’s rude to poke into other people’s minds without permission?” An obvious deflection, but really, he could think of a few people who would have taken very quick offence at it. Although whether they’d be able to hold a grudge against her for it was another matter. It might work out like holding a grudge against the twins – very feasible, in theory, until they’d turn enormous green pleading eyes on the offended party. Not to mention that considering how subtly it was done, it would probably take them a while to work out that it was osanwë. He hadn't figured it out until moon-rise last night. 

Neniellë sat up in the willow, turning to face him, her blonde brows curving into a frown. “It is?”

Maglor nodded, pushing away memories of Arafinwë having a similar conversation with Findaráto. Back when Findaráto was a laughing, toddling golden whirlwind who, when picked up by his older cousin, tugged on his hair, only to abruptly let go before Makalaurë could even voice his yelp of pain and press apologetic lips to Makalaurë's shoulder. 

“Yes, it is,” Maglor said.

She bit her lip. “But then how…” she asked, the words still brushing against his mind. 

“You’ll just have to speak in Sindarin like the rest of us,” he said.

“Can’t,” she said, after a moment of clearly reaching for the word.

Maglor sighed. “You’ll have to learn,” he said, without much sympathy in his voice.

It wasn’t particularly fair of him, he knew. He could easily recall how hard he’d found it to adjust to Beleriand. But still, there were always consequences for leaving one’s home, and having to learn a new language was getting off lightly.

She nodded, her mind apparently made up, and pointed to the water, with a raised eyebrow.

“Ah, that one you know already. Nen,” he told her. The bronze finger switched to the remainders of the campfire. Maglor poked at the coals and said, “Naur.” To the willows. “Taur.”

This, he foresaw, was going to be a long morning.

And so it proved. What Neniel lacked in terms of books, grammar or better candidate for a tutor, she seemed determined to compensate for in sheer tenacity, as they walked to his stretch of beach. Thankfully, the closer they got to the waters, the fewer objects there were for an vocabulary lesson.

After less than an hour’s brisk walk, they stood upon the shore of his little cove, and Neniel grinned at him, setting her bow and arrows down and unstringing it.

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

Neniellë frowned at him, and he sighed, picking up the bow and the string and holding them out for her. She frowned again, and shook her head. Part of him was tempted to dismiss it as foolishness on her part, and string the bow anyway. But then – the girl was no ordinary elleth. Given the skill she’d displayed yesterday, if any Orcs came near-by, she could probably just drown them.

So, very reluctantly, Maglor set the bow and the string down, taking the opportunity to study them further. Crafting weaponry had never been his specialty, but he hadn’t held the Gap for so long by being ignorant of them, either. It was a different design than the standard longbow used by Sindar and Noldor, he realised. The ends dipped and curved more dramatically than a longbow would unstrung.

Her father is an Elf, and she carries a bow, but she cannot speak Sindarin. Is she half Avar?

That would explain a lot…

He glanced up, and flushed red, heat spreading across his face to the tips of his ears. He turned his back again, the sight of her yanking her jerkin off imprinted into his brain.

Think of something else. Anything else.

…Well, perhaps not quite anything else, he didn’t feel like ruminating on Dagor Bragollach today. He hunted and scoured for a suitable memory, until at last he found it: the time a young Makalaurë in Aman had seen maggots for the first time.

…Eru Ilúvatar, she was tugging on his hand.

“No. No,” he snapped, closing his eyes, yanking his hand from hers. It did no good. He could still feel her presence burning at his right. She felt like all the power of rushing rivers and still waters wrapped in a single fëa at his side.

“Why?” That one word was spoken in Sindarin. Although he couldn’t recall teaching it to her that morning.

“I do not go swimming with ellith!”

“Ellith?”

He gestured vaguely towards her, keeping his eyes firmly closed. “Ellon,” he said, jerking his thumb at his chest. “Elleth,” he said, pointing to where he could just barely hear her feet shifting in the sands. “Ellith swim with other ellith.” He could practically feel her puzzlement deepening, so he sighed and sat down on the sand, making a shooing gesture. “Go. Go and swim.”

Her presence slowly retreated from his senses, and he exhaled, letting the memory of a song fill him and concentrating on that, letting it fill every corner and crack of his mind.

Until, some time later, Neniellë cried something in another language – he could only presume that it was her mother tongue – and the meaning of it was clear, even if Maglor only recognised one word. The tone was of any cheerful woman greeting a dearly-loved kinsman. And the one word that Maglor recognised was Ossë.

…So. His choices had become either not keeping a wary eye on the Maia who had just entered the beach, or to do something that would have made Makalaurë expire of embarrassment once upon a time.

Sorry, Amil, he thought ruefully, as he opened his eyes.

The Sea Maia was laughing, taking the form of an Elf as well, although he was clothed in robes of sea-weed as he picked Neniellë up in a hug, chattering back in the same language. His eyes roamed over the beach, and they met Maglor’s briefly. Maglor froze. Ossë continued to smile, setting the girl down.

“Suilad, Maglor Fëanorion!” And then he continued to talk to the girl in the other language, before she nodded and swam deeper into the water.

Ossë walked up the beach, and Maglor closed his eyes, trying to calm his suddenly racing heart, the instinct of centuries of combat rising. He’s a Maia. There’s no way I can possibly fight him. 

The memory of Neniel’s wry voice last night. If Ossë wanted you dead by now, you’d be dead. 

Was she right?

“I admit, I’m surprised to see you in my niece’s company,” Ossë said. “How did that occur?”

Maglor raised an eyebrow. Of all the ways I had to die, I had not thought it would be because of an irate uncle.

Although, honestly, considering the number of Elves he’d slain, the possible scenario should have entered his mind sooner. Regardless, there was no point lying. Especially when, out of all the things he’d done, this one was...actually quite innocent.

“I was singing. She found me, and asked me to play for her. Before I knew it, she was setting up camp.” Not precisely how it had gone, but he wasn’t quite sure that expressing the fact that Ossë’s proclaimed niece was very charming was a good idea right now.

Ah, Nelyo, if you could see me now.

The thought felt like the stab of a dagger to his gut.

Ossë smiled. “She can be a little…” the Maia seemed to search for the right word.

“Inexorable?” Maglor offered, out of long habit. It had always been his role, as resident bard and poet, to find the right one for a given situation.

Ossë’s smile turned wry. “That will serve. Still, I’m very glad to see you.”

Maglor raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that I’d been far from your sight.” Again, hovering in an awkward liminal space between truth and un. Technically, of course, he hadn’t been far from Ossë’s sight at all, wandering the coastline for a good century or so, and singing laments most of the time when he wasn’t fishing. At the same time, he certainly hadn’t dwelled on the fact, or even really taken it into account.

That wry smile somehow turned wryer. “I will rephrase. I am very glad to have a chance to speak to you, now that I think you might not run away.”

“I hardly think that my running away would help evade you,” Maglor pointed out.

“But it would not be a promising sign that you would listen to me either,” Ossë said. “Which is what I have been hoping for. It’s a good thing you’re not an adan, you know.”

The grief for Elros twisted in his stomach.

Maglor ignored it. Later. For now, there was information to be teased through.

“You want me to listen to you,” he said slowly.

Ossë nodded. “You’ve been walking these shores for centuries, singing your regrets, your sorrows. We have listened.” He paused. “You are not the only soul who walks Ennor who has done things that were evil. Things that could never be undone.”

Maglor’s eyes went wide. He could remember the voice of the Doomsman now.

“Little pity, you would find,’ he said,” Maglor whispered. So where are you going with this?

Ossë smiled. “I am not sure that pity and understanding are the same thing. In any case, I am not here to pity you. I’m here to challenge you.”

…What?

Ossë laughed, his eyes bright and shining, and somehow as hard as rocks that the tide broke on. “You’ve done things you can never take back. Committed so much evil that you can never offset it. And yet, you stay, singing of your regrets.” Ossë paused. “When you could do something.”

“You just said I can never offset it,” Maglor said, frowning at what seemed truly inconsistent logic.

Ossë nodded. “I did. You cannot balance the scales. Even if you laboured until Dagor Dagorath, it would not undo your actions. Even if I laboured until Dagor Dagorath, it would not change the fact that once, I rebelled.”

Maglor swallowed. He hadn’t considered the songs about Ossë’s rebellion since he was a child, and yet– and yet. Was the Maia trying to assure him, as only one who had been through the abyss could, that there was hope?

“It depends on what you mean by ‘hope’,” Ossë said, his voice suddenly soft again. “If by ‘hope’, you mean, wake up and see that all the tragedy was a dream – then no. There is not hope. But if by ‘hope’, you mean, could something beautiful still come from this – then yes. Yes, there is.”

The words tumbled from his mouth before he could consider the wisdom of them. “I’ve never heard anyone call the Noldolantë ugly before.” The story it told, yes. The lay itself, no. 

Ossë smirked. “And you have never beheld or heard anything more lovely than music, child?”

Before his unwilling eyes, his memories replayed.

Maitimo’s smile, proud and warm, when Makalaurë played to be admitted to a Lindar school of music in Alqualondë. Nerdanel’s hair tickling his neck as she flung her arms around him, and he realised that he was finally taller than his Amil. Tyelkormo’s laugh. The peace on Carnistir’s face as his fingers flew over the loom, working the shuttle. Curufinwë’s delight when Makalaurë picked him up on visits home. The Ambarussa, so tiny and so small, balanced in his arms, both blinking up at him in wonder.

(Atto singing a lullaby in his warm baritone, a memory buried so deep in him it was almost part of his bones.)

“One or two things,” he admitted.

Ossë laughed, head thrown back in delight, and blue-green eyes dancing. “Ah, you sound just like your grandfather. And your father, for that matter.”

Maglor’s eyebrow rose. “I did not know that you were friends, my father and you.”

Ossë shrugged. “In the latter days, no. Yet, in early days, when he first came to Alqualondë, he would talk to me about the sea structures sometimes.”

“Of course he would,” Maglor sighed. “You think I can begin to – make amends?”

“No. But I don’t think it’s too late to change the kind of song that you sing, either,” Ossë said. “It will never erase the tragedy, no. And yet – my Father has a way of bringing beauty from ruin. Do you not remember?”

The power that was Ossë’s spirit reached out and brushed against his mind, knocking on Maglor’s walls as a visitor does on a door, with a memory offered almost as a gift. Elros and Elrond, turning identical laughing grey gazes on him and Maedhros, as they teased them about being so strangely Elvish at times. Maglor had been hard pressed to turn the tables and tease that they were the strange ones through his chuckles.

“I remember,” Maglor whispered.

“It did not erase the tragedy. And yet, there in the midst of it, love bloomed. Life blossomed. There was beauty, against the shadow of your days.” Ossë picked up a sea shell, and tossed it to him. Maglor caught it in his left hand. He was often more adept with that one now, these days. “Could it not be so again?”

“The Doom of Mandos still lies on me.”

Ossë raised an eyebrow. “Does it?”

Maglor felt his world tilt around him. “What?” 

“Oh.” Ossë looked a little concerned. “She didn’t tell you – no, no, of course she didn’t.”

“Ossë.” Lord Ossë would have been the much wiser way to address him, but Maglor was frankly too tense for that right now. “What is going on?”

 

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Chapter End Notes

On Goldberry’s apparent naïveté, I imagine that her Avarin culture has much less of a nudity taboo than Noldorin – clothing is much more about warmth and protection of skin than it is about modesty – and that Noldorin taboos are still pretty firmly ingrained in Maglor, even after everything. Sometimes, little things are hard to shake. On the other hand, Maglor hasn’t survived First Age Beleriand by holding customs above pragmatism, either.

If the names seem inconsistent at points, it’s because I’m trying to draw a clear division in how Maglor thinks of his life in a very clear divide of Before Beleriand (Maitimo, Makalaurë, Tyelkormo, Carnistir, etc) and after. Findaráto is Finrod, and Arafinwë is Finarfin.

Adan: mortal Man.