Distractions by Lferion

Distractions

He was failing utterly to get anything done. There were more than enough things needing doing, wanting doing, pleasant and useful to do, and on none of them could he focus for more than a moment or two, not long enough to make any progress. There wasn't even a good reason for such distraction, restlessness and failure to focus. There was nothing significantly different about the day, no new worries or news (only the old, ever-present aches and absences, unresolved and unresolvable), no pressing requirements for his presence or carefully-worded dis-invitations to some occasion he might be expected or desire to attend. Just … failure to focus; to lose himself in making or mending or reading through one of his father's essays, Finrod's papers, Rumil and Pengolodh's elaborate running historical arguments.

In Beleriand he had always been too busy: with things that had to be done, yesterday if possible, with things new and surprising and probably dangerous, possibly useful, always interesting. Rarely indeed had Beleriand been boring, and even that had been restful, if odd. Valinor on the other hand …. In his long ago youth he did not recall ever feeling this way, but then, things had been very different indeed.

This was a stone in the pit of his stomach, an itch between his shoulder blades, a tightness in his throat, a sourcelessly heavy weight on his spirit. Distraction did not help. Sleep — never easy at the best of times, since he had been Returned — was impossible. There was very little of the physical labor requiring scant thought that had been ever-available in Beleriand, and even if he wanted to sweep out the stables or polish silver or pull weeds, those whose chosen task it was to do those things here would be scandalized at their Prince doing such things.

Eventually, Fingon found himself at the top of the house, sitting on the stepped roof-walk that looked out over the shining city. The sun had vanished beneath the western horizon, but the sky was still bright and all over the city lamps were being lit. It was never truly dark here, though not in the way the Treelight had never been entirely dark. He wondered if people born here since the rising of the Moon and Sun ever thought about that. He wondered if there were a song about the difference. And with that thought, he began, quietly, to sing.

It was not a song of Valinor in Treelight, moonlit Beleriand, sunlit Tirion. No song of starlight. Not a song of battle or victory, neither hymn nor threnody nor lament, drinking song or teaching song or working song. Certainly not the Noldolante. Indeed at first there were hardly words to it at all, but it had all those things underpinning it, shaping the sounds, the melody, the key.

Sing from a high place, sing from a low,
Sing of the heart-place, the hearth-place aglow
Sing of Returning, sing what you know
Sing hope in the darkness, no matter the foe