Many Journeys by Elleth

A Swift Sunrise

The Noldor welcome the first sunrise. It is a more eerie experience for others.

Another light, brighter than the flower on the sky that rose not long ago, is creeping toward her. She is not sure how to describe it, lacking the words for something so momentous, but knowing at the same time that this rising dome of light is not the flower, nor forest-fire, for she has fled her share of those with her family, and laughed about the futility of the Dark Foe attempting to bend fire to his will to do destruction. The next year always saw new shoots peeking from ash at the stars, renewal, and with it the certainty that Belegurth would not conquer.

But this? The whole horizon is a brand, sending ahead apparitions of mist and flame writhing across the sky in the colours of old bruises, red and purple blending into yellows and green, squirming and arching like eels in a trap that is hoisted from the water. She is feeling pity for the eels now, especially the ones that hang in the smokehouse across the courtyard. Perhaps they’ll all join them soon. For the light – a globed thing, visible now where it is peeking red and round over the mountains, shows no sign of slowing, mercy, ending, disappearance. Only the eel-flames vanish as it rises, and clouds thin until nothing is left of them. The flower, too, withers. The new light gilds the landscape, briefly, and the snow-fields on the mountains blaze, and then fade out again, as the light turns whiter, cooler, but the warmth increases.

The globe keeps climbing until it is directly overhead. Her eyes begin to itch and water as she follows its trail across the sky, and there is an ache in the back of her neck, and even as she blinks the tears away, still staring, there are strange bursts – as though she’s been staring at a fire for too long, or straight into the center of one of her husband’s lamps, the blue-and-white crystals hung within netted bands - white bursts black in the center across her vision. If only she could be certain these bursts are not the stars vanishing in the light and heat – but the stars are vanishing, succumbing before this new — thing, fading out.

There are cries of joy all around her. The Noldor have come outside, she noticed a while ago, though chose to ignore them, and they splatter the courtyard, brown and black and grey, in a riot of colours – their robes, never this glaring under stars and by firelight, blaze in blood-red and the stars on their chests in silver, and the land – the pines and the meadows – in far different, brighter greens as though they mean to compete at some feast or celebration.

Altogether, it makes her head swim when she looks at the sky again, to the great flaming globe that now hangs in its center like the crown of a ger, with the wooden ribs that should support it invisible and uncarved, where the stars provided ample patterns just a short time ago.

The sky is vast and blue, except for the globe, vast and blue and empty. There is nothing there, and standing exposed, without guidance, terrifies her more than words allow. What all this means for the People of the Stars she can’t say, and the exclamations of wonder from the Noldor – her husband’s people, she can understand the words at least, greetings and rejoicing, and many a hand stretching to try and reach the globe – seem odd and contrary. These people are not right in their heads, not right for her, with their obsession with light and their willingness to lose lives over jewels.

Even when Makalaurë’s later explanation makes sense of the rising globe – and makes her feel foolish for not recognizing another unlooked-for, unbelievable, miraculous vessel of their slain world trees, for he recognizes this light, too – she cannot shake the feeling that it will only fuel their determination to wage war for trinkets and throw away their all. They now have both parts of the light they seek traversing the sky, and yet...

Perhaps it is exactly right for them. 

Chapter End Notes

For people who have been following my fic-verse, the narrator here is Maglor's wife Lasbaneth, a young woman of the Mithrim Sindar, whom he married shortly after the Noldor arrived in Middle-earth.

The flower that is mentioned several times of course is the moon.

Belegurth was a Sindarin name for Morgoth, and the title of course stems from Return of the King. It felt fitting considering the metaphor the movies use it for is death.

The 'eel-flames', which I'm not sure were described clearly enough, are supposed to be the first occurence of Aurora Borealis, and this probably requires a suspension of disbelief insofar that the fic is a merging of Tolkien's early mythological ideas and primary-world phenomena. (I'd like to claim a handwave card for this, please.)

Ger is the Mongolian word for 'yurt'; my idea of the Mithrim Sindar involves a lot of parralels with various Central Asian nomadic peoples, as they can canonically be understood to be nomadic steppe dwellers. I borrowed this particular term since I could not find an attest Sindarin word for 'tent', and it seemed to fit the phonology of the language better than 'yurt' does. Additionally, the this also is where the idea of Telperion and Laurelin being understood as world-trees (a wide-spread concept in Eurasian animistic/shamanistic societies, that some scholars claim actually informed Tolkien's Two Trees) comes from.

Written for Starspray, for the prompt sunrise.