Tattered and Split by StarSpray

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
- "Breakage" by Mary Oliver

- -

The sea is huge, and grey, and loud, and Elwing hates it. She hates it and she fears it, and so once she is old enough to slip away from her nurses and her guardians, she goes down to the beach.

They say that Lúthien was never afraid, and that Thingol was fearless, and that Dior was bold as Beren his father and that Nimloth had a hunter's heart, and that Emeldir led her people out of Dorthonion through fire and smoke and danger and she never faltered, and Barahir saved the life of Felagund. None of them would fear the sea, Elwing thinks. And so she steels spine and clenches her fists as she stands just beyond the reach of the foam as it washes up over the stones and sand and broken shells. Her feet are bare, and the stones are cold beneath her feet.

There are always strange things littering the beaches. Broken shells, whole shells—sometimes with things still inside, with spindly legs like spiders, or squishy lumps of muscle that pulse and pull back when she lifts them up. Elwing is as happy as they are to drop them back into the surf and hurry away. Other bits of shell she keeps, like the perfect scallop with mother-of-pearl coating one side that shines like a tiny moonbeam in her palm beneath the noonday sun. And there are stones that the sea has worn down into smooth and pleasing shapes, and bits of wood that have also been worn by the waves into something unlike the boughs of trees that they once were.

Or not boughs, perhaps, Elwing thinks as she picks up one piece that was definitely once straight and smooth and rectangular, and she thinks of the stories she has heard of the sailors Turgon of Gondolin sent off into the West, the ones that never came back and never, if the whispers are to be believed, reached their destination. She shudders, and drops the wood. It splashes into the surf, which washes up and over her ankles—the tide is coming in, and the water is very cold, and Elwing flees.

.

She does not return to the beach until the refugees from Gondolin come down Sirion—until Eärendil comes. He is not afraid of anything, it seems, and because they are of age they are thrown together as playmates, and so she is dragged down to the shore with him. He collects seashells and stones and bits of sea glass, which he keeps in a box under his bed, and is more fascinated than horrified by the pieces of wood that were once parts of ships.

"I am going to build my own ship someday," he tells Elwing as she stands well back from the water while he splashes about, up to his knees in the surf and wet up to his nose. It is a cloudy day, and beyond the shore the sea is flat and colorless as the sky. A few fishing boats drift lazily about between the Havens and Balar, and gulls wheel about, calling plaintively to one another. Elwing wonders, sometimes, what it is they are saying.

"Where will you sail?" she asks Eärendil, as he bends down to pick up a shell.

"I don't know," he replies cheerfully. The shell has a crab inside it, and instead of dropping it he pokes at the spindly legs, and only narrowly avoids getting his finger pinched. "North, south, west—south and then east, maybe. I want to see the world—all of it, wherever the winds will take me."

It's an impossible dream and they both know it. But he says it with such confidence that for a moment, while the sun breaks through the dreary cloud cover to shine on his golden hair, Elwing almost believes that he'll do it.

But then the clouds close again, and the world is grey and dull again and a chill wind blows down the coast from the north, making even Eärendil shiver and abandon the water in favor of going home to dry clothes and mugs of hot tea.

.

Eärendil never loses that habit of collecting bits and pieces from the beach. He keeps them in small boxes and then in a chest that he makes himself from pieces of collected driftwood. It is a patchwork, crooked thing—like most things are, in Sirion, even the people.

When he is gone, Elwing will sometimes go into their room to find the chest open and its contents strewn about the floor, and Elrond and Elros sitting in the middle of it all, examining each piece like it has a story to tell if they can only find the secret.

Their faces light up brighter than the Nauglamír when Elwing gives them each a box of their own, to fill up with their own treasures discovered on their long walks along the beach. The boys have inherited their father's fascination rather than their mother's fear, and Elwing is glad of it. She stands on dry sand and watches them splash in the shallows, and thinks of her brothers splashing about on the banks of the starlit Esgalduin beneath the beaches of Neldoreth. It is a hazy memory—only a glimpse of shimmering water and dark heads and the sound of children's laughter—and it makes her wonder what Eluréd and Elurín would have thought of the sea.

Elros runs out of the waves to show her a shell he has found, a silvery translucent jingle, shimmering with water where it sits nestled in his small cupped hands.

A month later, her sons are lost in the smoke like her brothers were lost in the snow, and Elwing throws herself into the sea because even drowning is better than burning.

The beaches of Eldamar are not like Middle-earth. They are smooth and wide, stretches of white sand that feels soft beneath Elwing's feet. Beyond the reach of the waves it is loose and hot, shifting beneath her feet as she walks along. The waves are not the same, either. They are gentle and almost quiet, washing up with a whispering sound over the sand, and the water is pleasantly cool beneath the bright warm sun. The bay glitters, sun-speckled and dazzling, and the water is a clear bright blue. It is not a thing to be feared, not here.

The white sand is soon streaked with green, and blue, and a dozen shades of pink and red, until there is hardly any white to be seen. Elwing stoops to scoop up a handful, and finds herself holding the dust of gemstones, crushed and scattered to be worn smooth and soft by the water. She lets the grains fall back to her feet, like tiny bright stars winking in the sunlight.

And there are shells, different from the ones she knows, but little driftwood and less seaweed and muck. Elwing pockets a periwinkle. Somehow it is reassuring to find a plain brown shell amid the splendor of the gem-strewn shore.

.

The tower they build for her sits on a bluff overlooking the sea and a small stretch of beach onto which a little quay is built for Vingilot. There are more woods along the coast, here, and more driftwood that washes up. Elwing does not visit the beach often. Her bird shape lets her fly from the sea inland to the deep woods whenever she wishes. She has long since lost her fear of the sea and its crashing waves, but in her heart she loves better the music of the sweet-tasting forest rivers and the little streams that tumble down the mountain slopes, frigid with snow melt and glittering like silver ribbons in the moonlight.

But when Vingilot returns, she flies out to meet it, and disembarks with Eärendil in the little cove, where there is a path marked with white stones leading up to the tower, and another leading back down to Alqualondë. And Eärendil loves still the flotsam and jetsam that wash up onto the sands, and without fail he pockets a shell or a stone or a gnarled bit of water-worn wood.

Elwing stands in the shallows, water swirling around her ankles, and watches him bend over to plunge his hands down into the sand, stardust shedding off his wet clothes to float away. He brings up handfuls of whelk and clam and scallop shells, some whole, most broken—even here. She watches and thinks of their sons on the beaches of Sirion and of her brothers on the river banks. Above them the tower feels too big and too empty.

.

Elrond comes to Valinor at last, tall and fair as Lúthien had been, and on his finger is a golden ring set with a sapphire of the deepest blue. Its power is gone, but Elwing can feel an echo of it, like the last lingering note of a song on a still-quivering harp string. He comes to Elwing's tower, up the stone-lined path, and they walk along the rocky coast together as he tells her of Imladris, nestled in the mountains far from the sea, with silver waterfalls and tra la la lally echoing through the trees. And he tells her of Lindon when it was full and merry and Gil-galad was king, and also of Gondor and Arnor where Elros' children built their kingdoms after Númenor was drowned, and of his own children and their adventures and accomplishments. Elwing looks at him and thinks of what her brothers might have been if they had gotten to grow up, and what Elros must have been like when he took ship for Elenna when it was new and green and the Edain young and strong and hopeful.

They do not speak of Sirion, or what came after.

When they return to the cove where Vingilot docks, Elrond stoops and picks up a jingle from the surf. "These were Elros' favorite," he says, turning it over in his fingers.
"I remember," Elwing says.

"Elros took all of the important heirlooms," Elrond goes on, "but we both kept the boxes you made for us, and all of the shells inside. But Father's chest was lost."

"He has new ones," Elwing says, both surprised and pleased that they were able to rescue something out of the ashes, and that they were permitted to keep them. "These days he brings back strange things from his sky voyages. Would you like to see them?"

Elrond's smile is bright as the sun on the waves, and as they go back up the hill together he hands Elwing the jingle. It shimmers silver in her palm, and when Elrond's visit is over and he returns to Eressëa where Celebrían waits, Elwing does not put it in a box, but on the windowsill by her bed, where it can the moonbeams and the starlight.