Many Journeys by Elleth

Ghost Lights

A year after the Dagor Bragollach, Maglor has a peculiar experience at a celebration.

Himring’s great hall, decked with holly and ivy, was swimming peculiarly at the edges of Maglor’s sight, and when he moved his head, he could have sworn there were ghosts, afterimages like a faint trail of light following his vision.

Experience told him that he was drunk, told him to remain sitting lest he stumble down the stairs of the dais and attract Maedhros’ or the celebrants’ notice. They would, none of them, take it well (and would be right, thought the sober part of his mind), but that trail of light… and tonight, toward the end of the first year since the Sudden Flame, the longest night, occasion of sombre reminiscence Maedhros had ordered rather than a carousal to celebrate the have-beens of those that had perished since… he rose.

Ghosts. The hall filled up with ghosts when he moved, all those lights, throughout. Even the ivy leaves had ghosts. Even the harp had ghosts, and that must be why the harpist who had strummed her own compositions throughout the evening gladly yielded her place and Maglor sunk into the chair.

Ghosts that no one seemed to see but him. But perhaps, perhaps, he could sing them into clarity.

Chapter End Notes

Written for Zeen on tumblr, for the prompt 'capernoited'.