Irmo's Children by Lferion

Irmo's Children

In winter the stars over the leafless, blackened trees shone white and hard, brilliant in the long night of the North. Dragons do not care for stars: they are gems they can neither possess nor destroy; no fire, flight or cold will reach them, and they are Varda's besides.

Fingon found himself looking at those stars, at the serrated, petrified spines of what had once been dragons. Might still be dragons. Children of dragons. They had come here as in a dream (not entirely unlike much of his journey to find Maitimo and bring him out of Thangorodrim had been), finding himself on thin paths his horse seemed to know, gathering provisions from the woods and meads they travelled through. But this time, his friend was with him, hale and whole, if unexpected. They were seeking children, it seemed. Lost children from long ages before the Darkening, who had slipped through time and space and the walls between the round world and the flat, drawn in dream to Valinor, and with a will, a belief strong enough to maintain form. Most had been led home, long, long since, but some few had never been found to lead home, and some had not had homes in the round world to return to. Irmo's Children they were called, though few indeed were children yet, after Ages dreaming.

So here they were, looking for children of Men who lived in, under, among the bones of dragons, far in the North. Fingon shivered, remembering the Ice, and people lost. People who might have found their way to warmth again, in the undivided world. With luck, with determination, with defiant, willful Song.

Fingon had his travel-harp with him, and Maedhros a thin-skinned drum and a pipe.

Who might hear, did they Sing? Who might answer?