Eärendil on Taniquetil by Lferion

Eärendil on Taniquetil

Fire flickered on the precipitous stone walls of the canyon, sparks leaped up toward the distant sky (or was it down toward the firefly-lights of the distant, scattered dwellings of the elves - space and time were very strange here, the stars brighter, the expanse between them full of elusive color, like a dark aurora. Sometimes the Sea looked like that, present and absent at once, Vingilot marking the line of division, intersection, sea and sky. But this was Manwë's realm, and Varda's. Whence and to whom he had come to ask the boon of their mercy and grace for Middle-Earth.

Eärendil wondered if he would understand the answer when it came. Would he hear it with his ears, feel it in the pulse of his blood, sea and salt always within him, echoing the ocean, of Ulmo's call. Or see it in the color of the sky, taste it in the air (was it air here? Or something else filling his lungs, touching cold fingers to his face?) The Silmaril was scintillant in his hand, singing, cool, fierce, remote from his understanding, yet less strange than simultaneously standing at the base of a defile and the top of a pinnacle.

Air or not, it shivered into strings, vibrating with music, plaintive and martial mixed, and an overwhelming Presence surrounded him, breathed through him. His sense of where he was (Taniquetil, place of the highest of Kings, the Queen of the Heavens, the name a rope to hold him anchored in Now, in Here) inverted dizzily, high and low. Now the music collected into measures, a march, banners snapping, spearpoints glittering, drums beating a fierce and bittersweet rhythm. He saw everything from high, high above, Vingilot's stern rail under his fingers, the smoke of battle sharp. The Valar had answered: War.