Aurora: What Cold, Clear Air May Show by Lferion

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Aurora: What Cold, Clear Air May Show

 

I - Storm Damage

Fingon woke from inchoate dreams to a sudden crack! and the slap of wet, cold wind. He could feel an ominous weight of water gathered overhead in the slack of the canvas, and a steady drip from the lowest point, growing from patters at they hit dry ground to small splashes as puddles spread. A corner tear was the source of the rain-laden wind, letting in a little clouded light as well, revealing the failed fork in the corner pole. The entire structure was going to come down on his head if he didn’t act immediately to relieve the water-weight.

The tent, the stand of trees, the undercut of the cliff that was nearly a cave, all had been enough with the addition of some stones to stabilize the bowl of the spring and guide the stream into a firmer-walled channel where it ran beside what had become his working-space. In the Spring and Summer. But now the summer was ending, and that end brought with it storms colder and fiercer than any of the summer showers had been. He'd woken cold and in a puddle. One of the corner poles had cracked, and the canvas now sagged and dripped.

If he intended to stay up here for the winter -- and he did, with a need he couldn't explain but felt deeply. He wasn't done here, indeed hardly started. So then, proper shelter, with walls and roof proof against storm, big enough to be comfortable in the event of deep snow. Proper ventilation for the whole space, not just the hearth... Windows, light, air as well as warmth. The rain was stopping, the sky lightening quickly as he untangled himself from his damp cloak. It wouldn't be easy, building a place alone, but not impossible. He was Noldor, after all.

As he hung his cloak and bedroll over accommodating branches, then stirred up his small fire kept dry under the ledge, he was already thinking about how he would use the space, where to begin. Foundations, shapes, materials. What songs, intentional, respectful, asking of the earth and trees and spring their blessing and assistance. The hearth of course would be here, where the stone slab already served as one, hummed with the warmth of focus, of use, a delight in holding a spark of the Maker's Fire, as true and bright as the great-hearths in Beleriand. He remembered those halls.

 

II - Hearth

The Hall of Fire, the room the family resident in Hithlum, in Barad Eithel, gathered in regularly at evening in summer, all day as well in winter, and could be found occupied by one person or another at any time in any season, had hearths at both ends and another centered in one of the long walls, opposite the formal double doors carved in the likeness of the lost Trees. That hearth, cleverly, contained a raised section with a lidded recess: a stove, kept always warm — banked or lit — for warming hands, bellies, blankets, spirits: the heart of the house.)

 

III - Postcards and Ink

A postcard had come, from Anaire, delivered by one of the messenger-birds that would fly about Valinor, delivering letters and messages and very small packages. Not the slowest communication, nor the fastest, effective for maintaining links without needing a fixed abode. Though it seemed he was fixed for now. He felt no need to travel further, certainly. Fingon turned it over in his hands, looking and the ink drawing, the way his mother's words flowed across the small card, feeling her love, hearing her voice in every curl and stroke. He was reminded of other, more fraught correspondence, long ago.

Sometimes, when the reports piled high with dreary sameness of content however diverse the form, High King Fingon would entertain himself by guessing who sent which packet. Some of course he knew, no guessing involved. That waxed canvas tied with onion-yellow woven tapes held wax tablets, closely and neatly written; readable even when the news was not the happiest, came from Tir Inforn, the grain of the wood and the color of the wax a reliable indicator of what and how much Angband was burning, that came out in smokes and fumes. The shell-strings came from Cirdan, useful and inscrutable.

Missives from Himring, from burnt, persistent Lothlann, Dwarf-reinforced Rerir and lonely Amon Ereb could not be told apart from the wrappings. Could often not be picked out from the tiresome missives of urgent need from the scattered Noldor picking up the pieces further south, until opened. None of the Feanorians labeled the outsides of their beautifully-made, waterproof message satchels, and Narmir's work was well known and widely sought after. But once the pages were in hand, Fingon knew how each of his cousins fared: the shapes of the tengwar, flourishes or lack thereof telling him far more than the words.

The words in the reports were formal, informative, incisive, clear; even from Celegorm. Maps or lists were detailed and precise. Hestegon of Tir Inforn scattered notes of daily life, weather, astronomy and other observations in his missives. His cousins did not. He gleaned Caranthir's distress from the sharpness of his stems, Curufin's from the thin, hard precision, grid-like density. Maglor flattened his curls and left off the dots. Good spirits saw all those things ease. As for Maedhros's communiques,-- pressure, slant, shape had meaning, but Fingon did not need to analyze anything to feel, to know, Maedhros's mood, mind, heart.

 

IV - Aica (Sharpness)

Aica, Sharpness: sharp, keen, honed, tuned precisely a half-part higher; an edged voice, bladed, cutting, crafting; a blade fit for purpose (what purpose? What use? Form? Art? Aid?) Was he a mind, an eye, an ear percipient, advertent, fitting aught together, taking then apart?

A tongue that wields words as weapons, a wit that hones the words, the tones, the timing all to purpose. Stones, shards, sudden sounds that crack the silence, split the air, tools that bore and prize and prick, etch, engrave, leave lines of bleeding light, ice-edged air, weapons cleaving, reeving, slicing, shaping, making death and life.

What bitter edge, erose, serrated, biting, tearing fea and flesh, more destructive than tooth or claw or blade, this grief, regret, reproach of self for self that will not bend from faith or love or hope, though cut, pierced, trammelled, riven by the pitiless report of horror, sacrilege, atrocity, in hopeless, hateful measure.

How was he less guilty? Less at fault? His blade ran red, his face set East, his heart fast caught even yet on starry points eight-fold. He had chosen harp-string over bow-string: was that now why he lived? His death had been a bludgeon; Return a knife.

 

V - True Leader

Fingon had never set out to be an inspiration. He did what he did because things needed doing, or were an interesting challenge, or because he would do something even more ill-advised or unfortunate than doodle if he couldn't get out and moverather than sit still and listen to the same argument for the dozenth time. He took his duties seriously, and that meant being a good example for his siblings, learning the less-interesting parts of the work of being a prince, not just the fun things. Half the time he was more embarrassed than not at his epesse.

He had never set out to be a leader, either, for all he was trained for it, but people did look to him, emulate him, dream things and do things and reach for things because he had somehow sparked their imaginations. Sometimes that terrified him far more than facing a horde of yrch with nothing more than a spear and a sound partnership with his horse. He was responsible for those people, in some way. It behooved him to inspire them to good, not folly, to be more, not less, to know he stood in the vanguard against the foe.

Now it seemed he was attempting something much more difficult (in some ways) than being High King of the Noldor in Exile. Who was he, this Returned Findékano, Fingon, Astaldo, Laurëlomion (no one, not even his mother who had given it to him, called him that, but it was one of his names, and in a way it was where the idea of weaving gold in his braids had come from), other names and titles and deeds too many to list, stately and silly and downright perverse -- Remmirianhol, Many-coin-head, for Morgoth's bounty on him, Amlugildagnir, for having not slain Glaurung.

How would he name himself? Who did he want to be? Who was he as only himself, not in relation to others? He'd known the answer to that, once, long ago.

Whole unto himself. Comfortable in his skin, this new hroä, like and unlike the old. Someone who built. Who lived fully in his body (Had he not been, in this undamaged if not unmarked hroä? He supposed not, if the idea of constructing a shelter that would withstand a mountain winter made such a difference.) Perhaps his task was to find his self-name, rebuild his inner hearth and home.

 

VI - Building

It was an excellent time for building a house, the warmth of summer returning after the storm system passed, and lingered as the days shortened. Stones came easily to hand, in useful shapes and kinds. The trees gave him forked branches, and told him where the storm had toppled older trees. His tent, with a new corner-pole, withstood the winds that blew more gently on his terrace. On a longer ramble, looking for the right clay, he came upon a tumbledown shelter -- a hunter's hut perhaps -- with a number of useful, salvageable things within. Fingon found himself singing a song of Orome he had learned from Celegorm all those ages ago, and it felt right, to sing something the Ainur might hear, without it being weighted, fraught, performed, a prince's duty, a King's. He flinched away from those thoughts, falling silent, then deliberately picked up the melody again, singing just for the pleasure of it, and not letting the memories take hold. He ended up taking much of the hut's contents and material back up the mountain. It sped his progress considerably.

He saw Manwë's Eagles flying high, glad they were there and that he had no need of them.

 

VII - Grasshoppers

The grasshoppers were fiddling a great chorus in the meadow as the sun descended slowly in the West. The late Summer afternoon was warm, even as high as Fingon's dwelling. He'd been working on the porch, and now he sat on it, chin in hands, listening to the complex music of wings, carapaces, legs, and manidibles rising from the grassy mead. Some of the insect orchestra were as bright and large as the wildflowers they flew among. He remembered Makalaure joining in the meadow-song in Treelight, playing grass-harp in the long summer twilight of Lothlann amid a cloud of wings.

Maglor had taught him how to fashion a grass-harp, make a bow of hair and twig, though he could not remember when he had last made one. His hands were already sifting the grass clumps near him for suitable blades, the right twigs. By the time he had finished fastening the ends of the strands of dark hair at the right tension for the bow, the Moon was rising, and the meadow chorus had added crickets and the high echo of mountain bats. As Fingon coaxed music from his impromptu instrument, he felt connected with both memory and present moment.

 

VIII - Cup

The cup was stumpy, awkward, a novice effort, once discarded and now rescued. The wine, old-pressed grapes, the bottle a surprise find in an ancient storm-shelter, new-spilled on the rough-planed table, ran downward along the grain, rivulets red and black in the light from the wick in the dish of oil, staining the wood in interesting patterns, smelling of sunlight and vinegar. He rested his head on his arms, careful of the spill. No metal glinted in his dark braids, rings he would not, could not wear hard and cold against his chest where the breeze reached through his tunic.

He’d chosen this, this little exile, feeling as awkward and stumpy as his cup. Chilled, numb and restless. But, the cup fit his hand, stubbornly sturdy, and any Dwarf (and most Men - women of Men especially) he had known would tease him unmercifully to hear him think himself stumpy: shortest of his family he might be, objectively short he was not. The shelter was snug, the small spring by the door refreshing, and both air and oil were sweet. Life was better than not-life in Mandos, pleasure could be found in simple, unlooked-for things, he could just be, for now.

The stars in the North were astonishing, now that there was no haze or smoke or wavering fume from Angband distorting the air. The Ice had had brilliant stars occasionally, but there had never been time to to look at them for more than direction. Here, on the little porch of his winter-shelter, he could watch the sky in comfort, for as long as he liked. The fixed stars did not seem much changed from when Aman and Ennor were separated, the seas bent into a sphere, but the wandering stars had changed indeed. They danced in the sky now, precise and beautiful and strange.

 

IX - White Horses

That night he dreamed of horses, of harp strings, of long travail and timeless labor. Of the endless grey stillness of the Halls, silent, insensate. A feä might rest there, for a while, but after the shock subsided, Fingon had hardly known what to do with himself, restlessness an itch under illusory skin, illusory fingers unable to scratch, body to move, no wind, water, fire or enemy to wrestle with; dreaming of riding, running, playing.

Oh joyous the white horses dance
Oh see the white warhorses prance
In patterns the foe to entrance
Ne'er will they skill leave to chance

Fingon had not brought a horse with him on his wanderings, and there was no need for one here on the mountain, though the meadow was long enough and flat enough for racing over, practicing the battle-dance, little use for such a skill here and now. But the sunrise had greeted him with one of the step-rhyme songs in his head, and all day it was as if he were accompanied by one or the other of the curious, high-hearted horses he had danced that dance with, partners in racing the wind, confounding the Enemy, happy in the moment.

 

X - Winter: Song and Solstice

Snow squeaked under his boots, the ice in the pond creaked and sang. Under the frozen surface water made its own quiet noises. There were creatures large and small curled in dens and burrows, breathing slow and soft, sleeping through short days and long cold nights. Snowflakes whispered down, brushed off of bowed branches by the faint breeze, melting on Fingon’s upturned face, lingering on the folds of his cloak. Above, stars burned ferociously bright, and the aurora rang across the sky. Under Treelight none of this would have been seen; would not have existed in these forms and melodies.

It never got as cold in Fingon’s mountain retreat as the Ice had, but it did get cold enough for snow and frozen streams. His little spring made plumes of fog rise and wreath about the pillars of his porch (one stone, one wood), and elaborate frost-flowers formed and vanished on the rocks near the water. The snow itself was lovely to see falling, comfortable out of the wet. It had snowed of course in Beleriand, (the Ice had been too cold) but he had never had leisure to just watch it fall. For itself, each flake precise and beautiful.

Fingon, despite everything, loved winter. He loved mist and rain, fog and frost and snow, the grey-brown vistas and the lace of branches bare of leaves. He loved the invigorating nip of chill air, the sudden kiss of cold breezes; though, sensibly, he preferred to enjoy ice-storms and freezing wind from inside a good Noldorin stone structure. The Ice had swiftly taught him respect for cold, and a lively awareness of the damage it could do. He hated still that so many had been lost to the perils of the crossing. But he could not hate winter for being itself.

And he had delighted in every festival, every observance that attended the season. This season, any festival he made would be solitary, but not entirely alone. Not with the reawakened awareness of his parents, the more distant, more tenuous sparks that were cousins and siblings, aunts and uncles -- Faniel, Finrod, Nerdanel, even Findis, high on her own mountain. And there was of course the cat, speckle-spotted and striped, who loved the snow as well, and occasionally deigned to warm his feet, or lap, or grace his hearth-stone. He had candles to mark the Solstice, and the means to make music.

 

XI - Socks

The child had sent him a pair of socks. Carefully, even laboriously made, of wool from the household sheep, sheared, carded, spun, plied, dyed, and nalbound, likely all by her own small hands (possibly not the shearing, though even that was not impossible). A work of great determination and love. He wasn't even sure where she'd gotten the idea, unless it was from overhearing people talking about the Ice. Such a pair of socks as these would have been very much appreciated on that unforgiving wasteland. The love and focused effort alone would have given them warmth beyond the wool.

As if summoned by thought of the Ice, a cold breeze touched his face, and his feet were abruptly frigid, seized with a familiar, phantom ache, as if winter had risen up from the laid stone of the terrace, late spring though it was. With the ache came a vision of the kind Artanis declared to be of the Enemy — truth twisted into an untrue shape — unforgiving winter reigning over the ruins of the terrace he stood on, the house, the fortifications, the surrounding lands laid waste. Perhaps it would be so, but not while he lived to prevent it.

Fingon shuddered awake. That was a memory-dream, nothing to do with now -- no terrace, no view of lands for which he was responsible, no fortifications at all, unless one was to count the mountain itself. But knowing that did not change the desolate, desperate feeling it left in its wake, warded only by the memory of those socks, striped in gold and grey and blue. Remarkable socks. They had indeed been warm and comforting.

Those long-ago socks had been a meaningful gift then, and their memory was a gift now. Small kindnesses mattered, no matter to whom or by whom.

 

XII - Box of Colors

There was a box on his porch. A neatly made wooden box, suitable for holding all manner of useful things, and transporting them also. It was of a size that would fit in a pannier saddlebag. His name (both the Quenya and the Sindarin) was inscribed on the lid, but there was no outer indication of who had sent it or how it had gotten to his remote location. He'd been out hunting provisions in the bright, crisp day, a lull between winter storms, far enough away that he had neither seen nor heard anything near his small, snug house.

But the Eagles always knew where he was, and the birds that brought the picture-cards from Anairë, and sent his notes back to her. He wasn't hidden, or even hiding, merely inconveniently located and far from most other Elves. Once he had even ventured down to the small village at the foot of this particular mountain, getting useful things like salt and nails at the market. And so, a box. A mystery. An unexpected, unlooked-for gift. He made himself deal with the results of his hunt, and clean up before taking it inside and opening it, enjoying the small anticipation.

It felt a little like his mother, and also of Aunt Nerdanel, Fingon thought as he loosened the wax sealing the hasp against damp and casual opening. When he lifted the lid, he realized that was because it was from them both, and his sister-aunt Faniel as well. Many small packets were packed neatly inside, and while many were unknown, the fine pair of pens, the packet of small cards, and the hinged piece that unfolded into a writing-slope were immediately identifiable. No excuse now, not to draw as well as write.

To his surprise, he found he wanted to.

Chapter End Notes

--- I - Storm Damage (4 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 1: World Egg - Something breaks
--- II - Hearth (1 drabble) -- Block Party image drabbles 'Hearth'
--- III - Postcards and Ink (4 drabble) -- Day 5: Today's bonus prompt comes from our Postcards from Middle-earth challenge, which is in fact still ongoing!
https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/shop/edit-bookofimages-2-1.jpg?w=640
Message on the card: Have you ever felt you know someone--their voice, their face, their manner--just by the way they scratch ink upon a page?
--- IV - Aica (Sharpness) (2 drabble) -- FFWorks Sharp: July 20 2020: https://fan-flashworks.dreamwidth.org/2174686.html
--- V - True Leader (4 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 2: Underworld - attempt the difficult or impossible
~The bonus prompt for January 24 comes from the True Leader challenge:
"If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are an excellent leader." - Dolly Parton
--- VI - Building (2 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 3: Sky Father - Divine intervention &/or rain
--- VII - Grasshoppers (2 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 4: Axis Mundi - Connection between two different characters
~Day 10 Naturalist #6 Grasshoppers
~Day 22 Soundtrack
--- VIII - Cup (3 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 5: Elixir - gift or necessity given
~27 Dec 20 Instadrabbles: new-spilled, stumpy, downward, discarded.
--- IX - White Horses (2 drabble) -- Day 26 - Postcard - White Horse https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/shop/nov-2020-prints-new-00026.jpg?w=640
--- X - Wintersong and Solstice (4 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 6: Primal Sea - Character gets wet
~Fan FLashworks 'Squeak' 11 Jan 2021
~Day 6 Crackuary bonus A1: Ecology of Treelight
~Day 10 Naturalist #10 Aurora https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50804454627_e21bf9dc0a_z.jpg
~Day 10 Naturalist #13 Snowflakes
~29 Nov 2020 Mini-Wrimo image: Cat in snow https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/u275/paleogymnast/Day_29(1).jpg
--- XI - Socks (3 drabble) -- Archetype prompt 7: The Last Battle - Something falters, fails, ends
~Lockdown Instadrabbles 29 Mar 2020: Summoned, Winter, Ruins, Familiar
--- XII - Box of Colors (3 drabble) -- Archetype bonus prompt: After the Battle - Renewal/Remaking
~26 Nov, Day 26 Mini-Wrimo: quote: It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end. - Ursula K. Le Guin, Coinciding with the arrival of a box full of nifty things from a friend.

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