Ceven i Nesta by Chestnut_pod

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Ceven i Nesta

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Elwing had neither eaten nor drunk for three days. Among the Laiquendi such fasts were undertaken to purify the mind and glorify Elbereth; for Elwing, it was merely the sickness of grief and fear. The pillars of Olwë’s great receiving hall blurred to ghostly fronds of kelp above her, and she could not say if that was design, or merely the confusion of hunger.

She leant against one of those mutable pillars in the receiving room where Kinslayers reborn and repentant awaited the delivery of Olwë’s judgement in the open hall. Once a year, the attendant had explained, they would tell their story before an audience of their victims and those victims’ families and express their repentance. Then, after a day of fasting, they would walk down the aisle between as many residents of Alqualondë as could fit between the columns, and wait for Olwë to deliver the consensus of those wronged. If he lowered his scepter of narwhal tusk and gold, they would be granted leave to remain in the land of the Falmari and work at restitution. If he kept it raised, they must leave, not to return for another year.

Elwing had told her story once before the court, and Olwë seemed anxious that she be treated as a kinswoman, granted all possible honor and her stories, in exchange, granted first to him. But the fear that never ended and the guilt that gnawed at her drove her to tell them again, and again, to finally do something, something unequivocal and helpful and fierce. And there was none in this great city she could turn to, unless it was them all.

She had restitution to make, after all. From the outside, she supposed, it looked like bravery.

Yet she could not eat, and as the last Kinslayer departed the hall, weeping in relief or grief she did not know or care, she felt she could not speak, either. What would they think of her, stranger, refugee, dispossessed, queen of no people, mother of no living children, failure, craven, suicide?

Her hands itched with the feathers waiting beneath the brown skin, and the hall blurred to the jagged rocks of the harbor cliffs, and her ears rang with-- but no, that was true ringing. A immense, resonant tone reverberated through the air, a call like a thousand rams’ horns blown at once.

“The Horn of the Máhanaxar!” the attendant cried, sinking to her knees, “The Valar sit in judgement!”

Elwing remained standing. She felt the sound buzz through her teeth and disturb the rhythm of her heart. Eärendil would do his utmost, she knew, and she could do no less.

Let none say, she thought, that the get of Lúthien fail in their audiences, or cannot make an entrance.

Heartened, she waited until the inconceivable sound drew to a close, and on its last quavering seconds, she threw open the doors to the hall with all her force. In she strode, crownless and queenly.

Olwë looked distinctly chagrined to see her striding down the aisle before the assembled citizens of Alqualondë like a penitent, and his scepter was lowered before Elwing had even reached his dais. Elwing touched its sharp point, and waited.

“Speak, kinswoman,” Olwë said. “Why have you come before us in such a manner?”

“I crave a boon,” Elwing replied, and her voice was steady, though the crowd around her murmured in confusion.

“Anything, any wish and any request,” Olwë said, and beneath the kingliness Elwing heard something almost desperate, and she smiled inwardly.

“If it pleases Your Majesty,” she replied, “Let Your Majesty and all your court and all your citizens hold a sunset feast, that I may tell all the tale of their kin across the sea, the people of Elwë Singollo.”

She say Olwë’s shoulder’s sag in relief at such a small thing, and without so much as a pause, he said, “Let all hurry and do Queen Elwing’s bidding.”

--

Elwing’s voice was no nightingale’s, but it was deep and penetrating, and she had always had a facility with the osanwë of song. She stood before the assembled Falmari and sang of home. She began with the dark glories of Doriath and its emerald forests and its noble children, but as the evening wore on, she sang of Sirion. She lingered over the marshes sheltering their tiny dove-colored mice, and the red sandstone cliffs eroding to red sand that glowed like rubies in the sunset, the cypresses that reached the waterline by growing in dancing poses, the children playing marbles with their dodecahedral cones, and the rough sea bridges hosting auks and gulls and cormorants. She spoke of the driftwood structures erected on the beach, and the shell-pressed walls of their dwellings, and the sea-caves filled with lovely sculptures revealed only at the neap tides, and the tall cliffs covered with relief carvings reachable only at the king tides. She dwelled on the natural music of the many languages of the Havens spoken together, strength in openness and the stubbornness of compassion, the ingenuity of grace and the tenacity of hope, of children from different worlds growing up to love each other, and of parents finding family among strangers. She sang of her world as she had loved it and ruled it and lost it, and she shaped its image for all in attendance.

On the beach of Alqualondë, children pretended jewels were little mice, and parents saw visions of long-lost kin, and youths dreamed of unity.

Elwing sat down, hard, on the beach, exhausted. With a kind of dread, she saw many people, the young ones especially --and strange to think those youths might be decades older than her-- move towards her with a light in their eyes. There had been no word from Eärendil. Home as she had sung of it was gone. Was there yet hope she could draw upon? She could not help but be grateful when Olwë stood from above the strand and the crowd paused to hear what he would say.

“This night has been too much of a gift to us for it to serve as a boon to you, my lady niece. I ask again, what is your wish? It shall be granted to you. And what is your request? It shall be fulfilled.”

Elwing sighed. How much longer can I delay, she wondered, and how much more can I ask that they will give?

“My wish,” replied Elwing, “My request--if Your Majesty will do me the favor, let Your Majesty and all your court and all your citizens but the children hold a sunset feast again tomorrow, that I may tell all of the fate of the people of Elwë Singollo.” She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow, I shall do your bidding.”

--

In the morning, news came by messenger bird from the Ring of Doom. Eärendil had triumphed in his parlay with the Valar; they had heard his plea. Eärendil came now to Alqualondë dressed in royal garb, his horse led by Eonwë himself, and behind him many forces prepared for war.

This part Olwë’s daughter Eärwen read aloud to the assembled crowd, and the reaction was half-joyous, half-enraged, and the rage, as Elwing had seen it do so many times, was growing.

The ships, she heard. They will need ships to carry them, and who else had enough but the Falmari? And who else had such just cause to refuse them? 

Elwing kept her peace, the way a Green-elf might keep a bow strung while scouting. Her arrows were yet to hand, and she had another concern before evening drew in and her time came to nock and loose them.

The bird had carried another small scrap of paper in Eärendil’s dear, hasty hand, saying that he had other news for her, alone. And there it ended.

Elwing worried over what this other news might be, yet she had her sign. The palace kitchens were bustling in preparation for another feast, and she herself prepared lembas according to Melian’s recipe. She ate, and found it was not so hard to choke the food down. Many sought her out that day, and she answered their questions, and found it, almost, a relief. They would not, she knew, forget her stories.

--

That night, Elwing let her dark hair hang curling down her back and wore the bluest dress she could find among those gifted to her by her great-great-uncle. She trusted her eyes to speak for themselves.

She sang again.

In latter days, despite the Choice that made her recollection bright and sharp as ice, she found she could not remember the words or the images she had shared, only that she had been, once again, terror-struck. The back of her throat was bloody with rage when she stopped singing, and the beach was silent but for the waves. The very seabirds had stopped their wailing when she cried out.

The quiet stretched.

At last, Olwë stood.

“Child,” he said, and Elwing restrained herself from baring her teeth at him. “We have heard you. May their blood be avenged.”

The crowd whispered the phrase after him. Elwing said nothing.

Olwë tried again. “My lady Elwing, what is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? It shall be fulfilled.”

Elwing took a rasping breath, and thought of Lúthien, and when she spoke her voice was low as the roar of the water and harsh as the scream of a gull, and all who were present that night carried the memory of it close to them the rest of their days.

“If,” she said, letting the rage and the bitterness and the furious, jagged battlements of hope that she had built out of despair bleed into the night air, “it please Your Majesty, my wish is for my life, and my request is for the lives of my people. For we are yet abandoned, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated. And our deaths stain your hands.”

The listening crowd gasped.

Olwë demanded, “Who are they and where are they who dare to importune you?”

Elwing, at last, showed her teeth.

“The adversary and enemy,” she replied, “Is in inaction. It is in stiff-necked refusal. It is in pride. It is in the despair that is self-destruction that destroys others. It is in the error I committed in valuing vengeance above myself. It destroyed me, it is destroying my people, and in the end it will destroy you.

“Do not imagine that you, of all the Eldar, will escape with your lives by being in the Valar’s sanctuary!” she cried. “On the contrary, if you keep your ships at your docks and wash your hands of Middle Earth in the name of vengeance or that of restitution, relief and deliverance will come from no quarter, while you and all your houses are destroyed as all of mine were. And that shall be a physical destruction only, at the last, when Morgoth’s taint spreads across the sea. For the true destruction will be of spirit, that family valued heirlooms over heirs and spite over justice and called despair resistance.”

Olwë and his family stood silent before her. The citizens of Alqualondë spoke not either, but Elwing felt the swirling of their emotions like a riptide, calm on the surface and a mystery beneath.

She thought, not of Lúthien, but of Idril and Tuor, sailing into the blue.

She spread out her hands, and said, “I jumped in despair, and I thought not to fly but to fall. It is only through compassion that I am here, and it is my part to make restitution.” For the first time in days, her voice broke, and she mastered herself only with an effort.

“It is not mine to complete this work, but neither am I free to desist from it. I have begun my return to life, and for life. It is not yours to complete this work, but neither are you free to desist from it. And your work is not yet begun. Please. I do not ask you to fight with me, merely to lend what assistance you can in the healing of the world.”

Then Elwing, Queen of Sirion, knelt before the Falmari, and was silent.

Immediately, the strand erupted in shouting, and tears, and the kinds of arguments that Elwing’s council in Sirion would have found familiar. She remained on her knees, spent.

At long last, she noticed ripples of quiet eddying out through the crowd. She lifted her head, and found Olwë standing, in most unkingly fashion, on a barnacled rock, shaking his scepter like a schoolteacher with a pointer.

“Hark!” he cried, and when no small number continued to dispute among themselves, shouted, “Hark!” again, with a current of power in it. At last, all was still.

“Elwing,” he said, and at last, Elwing thought she heard something of her father in his voice, saying her simple name. “I cannot, and I will not, command in this matter. The law of Alqualondë is the law of healing, and I will not order any person into this battle.”

Elwing bowed her head again, and thought of falling.

“Elwing,” Olwë said again, and this time he strode towards her and lifted her up, embracing her. “Neither will I order any person to refuse you aid. Rather, I decree that all shall have their choice.”

He turned to the beach once more, holding Elwing still against his shoulder. “None must provide their ships and their service in this manner. Yet, let all who desire to lend their aid to their kin across the sea, and those other Children of the One yet strange to us, and even the mice we have come to be enchanted by so recently, do so of their own free choice. None shall stop them.

“If a ship is yours, pledge it how you will.”

On the beach, the murmurs began again, and Elwing thought that, for once, the joy was eating up the rage. For the first time since she had struck the deck of Vingilot, Elwing, wrapped in her uncle’s robes, began to weep.

--

On the thirteenth day of the month, Eärendil rode into Alqualondë, led by the Herald of the Valar. His raiment was royal indeed, for all that it looked strange in its divine luster upon his distinctly unwashed self. Elwing was not there to meet him.

A child he importuned on the street shoved a jam-filled pastry at him, saying he looked like he needed it and Maia forgot that sort of thing sometimes, and then their father bustled out onto the street and told him that the Lady Elwing had been at the docks with the expedition these three days.

Eärendil nudged his horse into a canter almost before he was done speaking, and Eönwe had to take to the air to follow him. It was easy enough to find the docks, as what seemed like two thirds of the city were there, and snatches of song and hammering and the snapping of sails made a great din. Junks and sloops and elves-of-war and fishing boats crammed the harbor. He could find no explanation for the crowd or the crowded piers, and could not find Elwing either, but the crowd found him.

Like a ship’s wake they parted for him, singing a song he had not heard before, a song of welcome and work and healing. At the end of their parting he saw Elwing, straddling a sawhorse, hammer in hand.

“Elwing,” he said, and somehow she heard him. She turned to him, and on her face was the smallest crescent of the smile he had known since he was a boy, and had not hoped to see again.

“My bright one,” she said. “I have a fleet for you.”