For the First Time in Forever by quillingmesoftly

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Be Still and Know

In which things do not go back to normal, a hurting Neniel hurts Maglor, and Ossë continues to be surprisingly wise.

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“You can’t be serious,” Maglor said, looking down at the bearskin pelt that Neniel just finished cleaning.

She raised her eyebrows at him, leaning forward to wash her hands in the river.  

“Why not? I’ve said all the blessings, and you need a new cloak,” she said. “And while I’m no weaving expert – I tend to leave that to my brother Helado – between this, and all the rabbit-skins we’ve already got, we should have enough material.” She looked him up, then looked him down. “Certainly enough to start with, anyway."  

“But there is no need, because my cloak is fine,” Maglor argued. 

“Maglor, it’s more patches than cloth at this point.”   

“I’m very attached to those patches,” Maglor said. “They have sentimental value.” 

“Liar.”  Neniel smirked up at him, tucking her hair behind her ears with hands that were still half-stained. “You can’t fool me, Maglor, I’ve heard you talk about the harps you owned once. You like nice things.”

“They’re your pelts, Neniel, the spoils of your hunts,” Maglor said. “You deserve to keep them.” Unlike…well. The corollary was obvious, surely.

 …And from the sudden clench of her jaw, and the purse of her lips, it was easy to see that he’d said something wrong, but he was very confused as to what. 

“Was it something I said?” Neniel raised her eyebrows at him, and Maglor sighed. “I’m not totally oblivious, Neniel. I do have some ability to read you by now. You’re upset. Why?”  

She hesitated, and then said at last: “You.” 

Maglor swallowed. It was to be expected, he told himself firmly.   

“Something I did or said? Or everything I told you last night?” 

“Both. I can’t figure it out. At Alqualondë, you were afraid. At Doriath, you were despairing. Your words made that very clear. But Sirion – Sirion?” 

“Sirion,” Maglor said, and he took down the mental shield he had placed around those memories. “There was an Oath, and a Doom, and an ever-growing Shadow and pile of dead, and...there seemed to be no way out.” 

Neniel shook her head, refusing the invitation. “And that’s what I don’t understand. I don’t even know if I can ever understand it.” 

Maglor let out a long sigh. “Good.” 

“How is that good?” 

“If you can’t understand despair, it means that you’ve never felt it. You cannot understand the Oath, because you have never bound yourself to Darkness. That’s a good thing.”

She scowled up at him. “You’re doing it again. Being strangely kind. I don’t think Kinslayers are supposed to be kind.” 

Maglor shrugged, and tried to find the words, swallowing down the hurt. It was absurd for that to hurt. “I don’t have much left to me,” he said at last. “I’m certainly a shadow of who I was. Perhaps it’s better that way. But I have that much, though. Some scraps of kindness left in me. So I’ll hold onto them, for as long as I can,” he said. “Who knows? If your Uncle is right and the Doom is a little more fluid than I’d thought, perhaps the kindness will do a little bit of good.” 

Neniel’s frown deepened. “I need to go and talk to Uncle.” She got to her feet. “I’ll be back in two days. I’ll get some salt, too.” 

“Oh,” Maglor said. The ache in his chest and the lump in his throat, unlike the ache in his hand, was entirely unreasonable. Unfortunately, it did not seem inclined to go away based on that. “Alright. I’ll see you in a few days.” 

She looked over at him, hesitating. “You’ll be alright. Won’t you?” 

That was still concern shading her voice. He mustered a smile for her.

“I did manage to feed myself for a few centuries before you showed up,” he told her. “I’ll manage.” 

She nodded, swung her packs onto her back, put on her weapons, and started jogging down the river bank.

Maglor looked after her retreating form for a long moment, before he settled in against a tree and began humming a song from Aman to try and soothe the ache in his chest. 

---

 

Neniel jogged down the river-bank to the estuary, where she’d first met Maglor, listening intently to the sound of the water as she walked. The river sang today, soothing the ragged edges of why? and the lingering how could he?  and the nagging sense of betrayal. 

Why? Why do I feel betrayed? He has never lied to me, never pretended to be anything else. 

He had not. And yet, the tales of what he’d done had seemed so utterly dissonant with the grief-struck, lamenting man that she had met on the bank of the estuary. Just as the idea that Uncle Ossë could have ever served the Dark Rider who haunted the earliest tales of her people had been so utterly dissonant as to verge on ridiculous when she was a child.

The tough grass turned to coarse beach sand under her feet. The roaring of the waves and Ossë’s laughter filled her ears. The cove was filled with sea otters and fish, teeming with even more life than usual; even the shells seemed to resound with more noise than normal. 

She took a deep breath and cried out with voice and spirit both. “Uncle Ossë! I need to talk to you!” 

For a few minutes, there was silence. And then Ossë rose from the waves, clad in the form of a Linda Elf. His robes of sea-weed were brighter than normal today, somehow iridescent in the sunlight, and he wore a crown of coral that she had never seen him wear before. His smile was luminous when he saw her.

“Streamlet!” He picked her up in a bone-cracking hug, his scent of brine and lightning and fish surrounding her. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. “You feel unhappy.” 

She sighed. “Maglor told me last night. Everything, I mean. From start to finish.”

“Ah,” Ossë said, hugging her again. His spirit brushed against the back of her mind, and his eyes half-closed as he took in the emotions. She let out a breath as she feel the ache of betrayal lessen. 

“I talked to Grandfather Ulmo,” she said.

Ossë laughed, amusement ringing from him. “Ah, no wonder he was smiling today.” 

“About you,” Neniel said, and Ossë’s laughter suddenly stilled. “And why he forgave you.” 

“Ah,” Ossë said, releasing her from the hug. She sat down, suddenly very tired, and feeling like she was forty-five star cycles and organising hunting schedules for the first time. 

Overwhelmed, said the memory of Maglor’s voice gently taking her through Sindarin vocabulary. The word you are looking for is ‘overwhelmed.’ 

“You had to learn at some point,” Ossë said, sitting beside her. 

“Are you telling that to me, or to yourself?” Neniel asked. 

“Both. It’s a hard lesson to learn, I think, for one who has grown in so much peace. Your family knows lack and abundance, knows hard winters and easy ones, but you have not dealt with what it is to have your very self twisted out of key. Not since Cuiviénen.” Ossë closed his eyes. “And with what happens after.” 

His spirit brushed against hers again:

The aching gnawing I will never be the same–

 The shift of the Song that would always have a mournful undertone from that point on, a deep grief that wailed in strange harmony with Nienna's tears–

I cannot go back, I cannot go back–

And the sudden silence, broken only by the memory of a breeze.

What is marred will yet turn to unlooked-for good, the breeze whispered, followed by the defiant, piercing scream of an Eagle.

Neniel shuddered. “Why?” 

“Why what? Why is there evil in the world? In us?” 

“No,” Neniel said. “Why – why did he forgive you? That’s what I asked Grandfather Ulmo last night. He told me to listen to the Song, and that I’d know. But I listened this morning, even though Uinen told me about the otters, and even after that, after what you just showed me, I’m still not sure that I know.” 

Ossë smiled. “My poor, hasty little niece!” 

“Not you too!” Neniel complained. “Bad enough that the Onodrim keep calling me hasty.” 

“But you are,” Ossë laughed. “Ulmo is right. If you listen to the Song, you will understand. But you’ve been listening to that Noldo of yours too much! You are thinking that you can know this, like you know tinco parma quessë, and about as quickly. You will learn to insto this the way you learned to hunt. The way you learned to listen to the forest and the river.”

Insto. To know with one’s heart and mind and soul. A knowledge that ran deeper than understanding of the mind, that ran so deep that it was to an Elf what the groundwater was to the land. Knowledge that could only come slowly. 

Neniel sighed, burying her head in her hands. “I should have stayed home and kept organising the hunts.” 

Ossë shook his head, long hair swinging with the motion. “Nonsense.” 

“It would have been simpler.” 

Ossë smiled, pressing his spirit to hers once last time, and whispering hope into her senses, the feeling of stars burning fiercely in the sky despite the darkness. “But you were not made for simple things, my streamlet,” he said aloud. 

She sighed, and lifted her head. “I’ll take your word for it. I like the crown, by the way.” 

Ossë’s smile widened. “Uinen made it.” 

Neniel laughed at the reminder of Ossë’s joy, the product of which filled the sea in front of them to teeming. “I suppose that you two worked things out, then? I thought you might have, from the sheer number of fish in the cove today.” 

Ossë laughed again, smile luminous. “Yes, we did.” 

“Wonderful! It only took you a few tens of thousands star cycles to catch up to what everyone else already knew.” 

“Yes, yes, you made your point,” Ossë said. “And it was your hastiness that jolted us out of a very old sadness, so I thank you for it. Still, I don’t think you can hasty your way out of your current dilemma. You’ll just have to wait and listen.” 

Neniel sighed. “What a cheerful thought.” 

Ossë smiled and drew her to her feet with webbed hands. “Come and play with the otters. It’ll help.” 

Neniel smiled. “What, no moray eels?” 

“I have not forgotten the tongue-lashing your father gave us for that, even if you have,” Ossë chuckled. “No, no moray eels. Not even if you are strong enough to kill a bear on your own.” 

Neniel laughed, stripped off her weapons and her clothes, and followed her uncle into the water. 

---

The trees did not whisper of her approach as she returned to camp, concealing her presence as she had asked them to do. The setting sun bathed the alders and tall, elegant elms in breathtaking radiance, orange and pink light filtering through the trees. She studied Maglor intently, leaning back against a friendly beech tree.

Who are you?  

He had moved away from the river-bank and was singing a song in another language.  He was deftly dicing leeks, and putting them in the cooking pot. She closed her eyes, and saw the images in her mind’s eye from his song: a room filled with silver light, and curtains that were slowly drawn closed to create darkness; a warm hand brushing over a child’s forehead, singing of stars and silver trees, and whispering words of warmth and comfort and love.

It's a lullaby, she realised, feeling a lump in her throat as longing for her family hit her again. 

He is forever sundered from his family, she thought, a wave of horror hitting her at the thought. Unless the Doom has run its course. 

Forever separated from her sisters, her kin – she was not sure she could imagine what it would be like, to live with such a fate. 

How would I have lived? If I had lost both my younger sisters to violent death? 

Maglor kept humming, and stirred the stew. 

“Why do you think I can’t die yet?” the memory of his tired voice played in her ears again. 

She stifled a sigh. 

You really do make it difficult to hate you, Maglor Makalaurë.  

Because in that moment, it all seemed to come together. The youth she’d seen glimpses of in the beginning of the story, who loved his family and music and poetry more than anything in the world; the prince, the cavalry commander, the regent, who had steeled himself to argue on numbers alone to leave his dearest brother to death; the one who had led his people to slaughter three times, and lost five brothers in the doing, and yet had mercy on two tiny, helpless children, and had taught them all he knew.

The brother without brothers, the son without a father, the prince without his people.

The man who, when he had seen her crying, had reached out with thought and mind and comforted her as best as he could. All iterations who belonged to the Elf who stood in front of her, dicing vegetables for a stew. 

The breeze stirred her hair, carrying the scent of pines from the north.  

This is what he is. But what might he yet be?  

I can't look at him the way I used to. Can't treat him as I used to.

But perhaps this is not the end.

She stepped away from the tree, set her pack down, and stomped on a twig so that she wouldn’t startle him. He jumped, his hand dropping the knife and halfway to his sword, before his gaze found her. Slowly, the tension drained away from his body, as he picked the dagger up again and wiped it on his shirt. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to–” 

“I know,” he said. “It’s alright. I know.” 

Storm-grey, luminous eyes were filled with amusement, and warmth, and below that, acceptance, even as the last of the tension around his shoulders rolled out. 

Neniel smiled a tentative smile, and ordered her spirit to be still and listen. “Would you mind teaching me that lullaby?” 

Slowly, Maglor nodded, a small smile tilting the corners of his mouth up, even as he reached for another leek. “I’d love to.”