No Regrets by clotho123

Chapter 1

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Some days he barely remembers his name.

 

He does not regret: this was the price he chose to pay.  The cloud seas are wonderful and ever changing, the winds give him the illusion of pitting his sailor’s skills against them, although he knows in his soul this craft cannot be wrecked.  Always there is the Light, as it must have been in Valinor of old.  He misses the Night at times, but although Night is all around it is banished from his craft; a pool of the Tree Light surrounding him alone.

 

Not the bearer of the Silmaril, but the guard, although what use a single Man could be (a Man still in his heart, forever,) he does not know.  Perhaps mere pretext, their way of giving him a task to fill his endless wandering.  This was his choice.

 

They had told him that he could not go back.  There was too much of the Mortal in him, even once the choice had been made.  Set foot on the mortal shores again and he would die.  They had not understood his protest (how should they, the Powers that dwelt in the West), had not understood why he felt he must go back.  He could not leave them, his kin, Elves and Men, could not remain in ease upon the further shore whilst the battle against Morgoth the destroyer was fought.  He had to aid them.

 

The Powers had taken his craft and worked their enchantments on it. The ship which had borne him so long was now to carry the Jewel, the Silmaril, cause of so much suffering.  There was grieving then, that the gem would not be held in Valinor, more grief, it seemed to him, for its loss than for the suffering of his kin.  For the Stone was bound with a fate not to be broken, never to rest or be owned until Arda ended.

 

It is not for biding here 

 

The words had run through the light rain which fell as he stood before the Valar.  Ulmo had taken no form. 

 

Yours was the locking of the words  A voice of earth and metal.  Aulë.

 

Earth, Sea and Air  The endless night of Mandos.  So it shall be  This for the Air

 

So it was.

 

That had been after they had set his sentence.  After the voice of Manwë had pronounced that Doom should fall not on him, nor yet on Elwing, and the words meant as mercy had set fast his despair.  For how could they call it merciful to lift the Doom from her, who had no taint of Noldor blood?  How could they call it justice to punish the victims for the crimes of their slayers? (…the broken bodies of Círdan’s mariners cast upon the shores of Balar…)  Yet so they named it, seated in grace and brightness in their unstained land, and so they believed, not seeing their Doom as cruelty. 

 

And so he despaired, even as his prayer was granted.  Just as desperation came upon him, when he learned the Elves of Tirion had come to festival, making merry whilst their kindred perished, for how could he love a land where the griefs of his home were as nothing? 

 

No regret.  No regret for his plea, better abase himself than see the last legacy of Beleriand perish.  No regrets for his errand or its price.  Yet this pitiless mercy was no answer to Morgoth.  And so in weariness of life he had despaired.

 

And then his wife had chosen immortality.

 

He must go back, he told them. No matter if he set no foot on land.  No matter if it was his death.  He must go back.  They had told him there were fates not even Manwë could set aside, but still he had persisted.  He must go back.  Then at last they had told him, he could go, if he must, if he set no foot on land.  But he could never return, never tread the shores of Valinor, he would have no choice but to wander the skies for the touch of land, mortal or undying, would be his destruction.  His body would wither, his soul not be released from Mandos within the history of Arda.

 

He had accepted the price.

 

Not a high price in truth, what would a sailor do in Valinor?  Better to voyage eternally, however lonely.  At times still he could pause in his faring, those ashore had seen to that (for her most likely, which of them understood him?)  The tower was tall, to rise through the clouds, the platform at its top wide, so his ship could ride beside it as though at anchor by a quay.  He could not set foot on land, but in the Tower’s high apartments he could join his wife.

 

He could remember that he loved her, yet so often she seemed strange now, more a child of the Maia than of the mortals with whom his heart lay.  Only a child of the Maia could have assumed a bird’s shape.  Fair and strange, a creature to be treated with wonder rather than a partner of the soul.  Yet how strange was he himself grown, a man who could scarce remember his name?

 

(She had chosen immortality, for Lúthien’s sake she said.  Yet Lúthien had chosen to be mortal.  He would never understand).

 

More star and bird now than man and wife.  So few come to the Tower now.  Some had, in the early days, but he no longer knows how to hold conversation.  She tells him the Light is beloved.  It seems to him cold.

 

He has no regrets.

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Chapter End Notes

I know canon has the Silmaril bound on Eärendil's forehead, but I can't feel that would be practicable, therefore this story has it atached to the masthead of the ship.  Say if you like the reports that got back to Middle-earth were a bit garbled.  The words of the Valar about the Silmaril refer to events in my story 'Beyond Hope'