Aurora: Seeking the Northern Sky by Lferion

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Aurora: Seeking the Northern Sky

Escape

In a way, his journey North had felt like an escape, though even at the time Fingon would have been hard put to say what it was he was escaping from. He was very glad to see his parents, especially his mother. He was glad to see friends and people who he had known in Beleriand who had returned before him. It was a relief to see people who had looked to him as Lord and as King settled in and making their way in Aman, whether or not they had been born here or there. It was fascinating to see Tirion and the other places he had known in central Aman under Moon and Sunlight.

But it was also all too close, too fervid, and, oddly, much too warm.

He was restless, energy prickling and sparking through his new hroa almost as if his new skin could hardly contain it, and yet his mind, his spirit still - again? - felt scorched and fragile and not up to whatever it was he surely must-needs do, be doing, have been doing already, however eager it seemed his body was to be doing that so-important thing, and the next, and the one after that. He quailed at the thought of it, in the privacy of his mind (no one here now to overhear him there, no loved presence on the edge of thought, no proud puns or wordplay, only silence, ever-empty stillness in that corner of himself) hardly the attitude of one named ‘valiant’. Perhaps it was time to reassess that about himself as well.

He took little with him -- journey-bread, camping gear, bow, arrows, rope, long knife, travel-harp and writing kit, with colored inks as well as black. Perhaps he would try drawing what he saw, as he knew Amme would wish.

Wandering

Fingon wandered North (there was no need, no urgency, not at all), exploring the land under the light of Sun and Moon, as he had rarely done under Treelight, dark and chill and mostly silent as the lands distance from the Trees had been. He had not had much time for exploring in Beleriand either, beyond the bounds of their leaguer, though he had seen some marvelous places and things even so. Now he climbed over the rocky scarp to discover a long, narrow bay of sky-blue water, the green-grey rocks startlingly relieved with brilliant red creeping plants, astonishingly beautiful.

Waterlilies

Once, Fingon came on a wide lake covered in enormous waterlily pads, brilliant with green floors and upturned red edges. Long-legged water birds walked in the lily pad bowls, as if they were coracles. He recalled nothing like this under Treelight, certainly not this close to Tirion. He clambered down to the lake edge, and sat on a mossy rock. The pads hosted bright butterflies and gauzy dragonflies as well as the birds, and inquisitive golden fish investigated his toes dipped in the water. A very Finrod kind of place, Fingon thought fondly, but not what he was looking for.

Fugue

There were times when he would come to himself with the moon or the sun in his eyes, dazzling, after an unknown span of time, having not moved from the stone or stump or grassy tussock where he sat, taken not by sleep or the ordinary paths of memory, but by a kind of blankness, inchoate, a formless inertia, wherein thought, feeling, will, sensation, were all held distant, difficult to reach, and seemingly without any reason to make the effort needed to even try. Afterwards, the state frightened him, reminding him of the Ice-stupor, which had too often led to inattention, carelessness, a seductive, dreary, weary sense that it would be better to just lie down and let Ice make an end to it. He had never succumbed, though he had felt the tug of it. Too much to do, promises of his own to keep. This blankness was not the same, any more than the hazards of the landscape were. Nor was it at all like the -- for lack of a better word -- rest-state that occurred sometimes in Mandos, where the paths of memory were bent away, and one rested, formless, in an undemanding, timeless Now, still and calm.

It seemed to be a thing of the body, this new hroa, not of the spirit, the body processing what the spirit and memory knew, but the form had not experienced. He did not feel disconnected, precisely, though he recalled times when Maedhros had fallen into a similar state.

(But Maedhros had reason to process trauma. He had never been in the hands of enemies. And he did not think being killed by them counted. Another argument for the reconsideration of 'valor' as applied to his returned self. But that was part of why he was out here, wasn't it.)

Sea-Gems

Even far to the North the beaches held gems (scattered by hands, brought by the waves); sea-washed, gleaming red, green, gold, blue, opal and iridescent colors. Many held sparks of light deep in their hearts, shining like fireflies, like stars, amidst the grey rocks, the ice-rime, the snow and sand and sea-foam. A glassy, jeweled ocean, reflecting, refracting, containing and contained by the restless, capricious, capacious sea. No knowing if they had been here when the Noldor fled North, those ages ago. Likely not. Fingon sat on wind-scoured rock, watching the waves playing among the stones, sparkling in the sun.

Sky Islands

High in the Pelori, the view was as if he looked over a sea of cloud, dotted with other mountain peaks like islands. Not a sea that could be sailed, though, not in conventional boats. In Vingilot perhaps, or the Teleri's new balloons. That would be an adventure, certainly. But the one he was engaged on now was enough for the present. The air was thin and chill in shadow, startlingly hot in sunshine. He had left trees behind, well below the clouds, but as the sun set, the stars became visible, shockingly glorious. Worth it, even with the cold.

The Ice

The Ice was not a subject that people brought up with Fingon. Not the journey up to the northern waste of Araman, the Oiomure, not the preparation in advance of crossing the Helcaraxe, not the long, dark, difficult crossing, not even the differently perilous trek down the nameless land between the mountains and the sea, looking for a way in further East. Very occasionally, people would speak of the battle at Lammoth, Fingon foremost in the fray, Argon falling despite everything. Fingon had redoubled his ferocity, harrying the few that remained of the yrch into the water, whence none emerged.

The people had needed a focus for their ire, displacement for their despair. Fingon's shoulders were broad, his hands red with blood from Alqualonde. When Moon and then Sun rose, and they were assured of survival, most people did not like to think of how that survival had been accomplished, and Fingon chose not to remind them. The crossing had changed them all, but there was no point in dwelling on what had been, when there was still so much to do in the immediate place, moment, now that they were there, the smoke of their proper Enemy over all.

He wondered now, as he had not then, of the wisdom of his silence as well as theirs. Silence in Beleriand (though he had answered Maedhros's questions, in the safety of Himring, wrapped warm and near the hearth-fire, shoulder to shoulder or closer, and those things he had spoken of then even now were easier in his memory), Silence in Mandos, though he had thought long on what had happened on the Ice, before and after). He could recite the tale: bloody, bleak, beautiful and terrible, desperate and despairing, but who would wish to hear it, done so long ago?

Stillness

The wind from the snow-fields blew cold and clean, a bright, scouring wind, only air and ice, without smoke or malice or echoes of agony. There was no Thangorodrim, no Angband, no crown of iron mountains at the top of the world, the plane of Aman or the globe of Arda.

Fingon breathed deeply of that untainted air, the cold biting at his throat, sharp in his lungs. It was not safe, this wide, untrammeled scape of ice and snow and short, tenacious growth that glittered neath the sun, dazzling the eye. Not safe at all, but utterly without malice.

Shelter

After wandering long, seeing, sketching the mountains, the sky in all weathers, listening to birds and insects, the creaking song of ice that did not spear him with icicles of dread, only urged he step cautiously, the whisper of snow on evergreen needles, Fingon found a sheltered terrace with a warm spring, a pair of trees by a rocky overhang that could shelter a person with a little work, and a wide view of the sky.

He breathed a deep sigh, feeling his shoulders relax and something inside his chest unwind. Here. He would stay here for a little while.

Aurora

The aurora shimmered above him in the wide, silent sky, green and blue and red ribbons, cascades, ghostly, towering cliffs. Near the end of the passage of the Ice, they had seen that light in the sky, not knowing what it might presage, but choosing to think it a hopeful sign. Light in the sky was always hope. (Unless it was the sullen glow of dragon-fire, balrog-flame, the deadly wildfire running before the Enemy's legions.) But he was done with that fire. That Enemy was defeated. Here, far from people, prying questions, expectations, Fingon could watch the aurora in peace.

Chapter End Notes

The other prompts:

2. Wandering: Mini-wrimo Day 16 image
3. Waterlilies: SWG NYR Day 10 #3 image
5. Sea-Gems: Mini-wrimo Day 30 image
6. Sky-Islands: Mini-wrimo Day 24 image
7. The Ice: Mini-wrimo Day 3 image and Mini-wrimo Day 20 image
9. Shelter: SWG NYR Day 10 #7 image

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