Clearer than Clear Water by StarSpray

Clearer than Clear Water

The world begins with starlight and clear water. The River-daughter opens her eyes to see the stars as shimmering streaks blurring together. It is such a delightful sight that she reaches for them, and gasps when her hand breaks out of the water into cool air. So she sits up, water streaming down her skin and through her hair, which whirls around her with the flow of the river, and she laughs as the cold air hits her face. The river laughs with her, and now that she is above the surface she can see how it sparkles—and she can see the stars clearly, too, sharp and clear. They are so lovely that she wants to catch them up in her hands, but the sky is farther from her river than it had seemed at first.

She lays back down in the water, keeping only her face above the surface, and lets the river flow around her, and carry her along a little ways, until she catches on a tangle of river-weeds where the water swirls away from the main course into a little calm pool. There she sits up among the weeds with their flat open leaves floating atop the water. Her hair floats on the surface with them, long and shimmering in the starlight. When she looks up the stars are obscured by tree branches, mostly bare; they form a net over her head through with the stars peer like little peeping eyes. She laughs again—but only the water laughs with her. The trees are silent. That should not be, the River-daughter thinks. She does not know how she knows this, only that she does. She rises from the water and steps onto grass that tickles her feet and eagerly drinks in the water that sluices off her skin. But even the grass is not fully awake. It is sleepy—as are the river weeds. Only the water and the stones are fully awake.

The River-daughter kneels beside a tree with long drooping branches and sings. Her voice is like the river and like the wind, and it contains no words. She does not want to rouse the tree if it does not wish to wake, but she wants to know why it sleeps at all, when the world is so delightful, silver-bright beneath the stars. The tree stirs, its thin branches quivering, just enough to answer. The whole world sleeps, because they cannot fully wake. The starlight is wonderful but it is not enough for trees and for flowers and other things that once blossomed upon the earth. So the Earth Queen set a sleep on them until such a time might come again.

For a long time the River-daughter sits on the banks and ponders this—what light might be brighter than the stars, and who the Earth Queen might be. She rouses when in the distance she hears a strange music indeed, loud and fierce. She runs lightly and soundlessly through the wood, and comes to the edge of it at the top of a small cliff where the river tumbles in silver foam over a fall to a deep and clear pool below. Beyond, open lands stretched out and away, nearly as wide as the sky above, and in the distance the River-daughter can see the source of the music. It is the Hunter, whispers the water to her, with his great horn and his great steed, and sparks fly up like little short-lived stars as his hooves strike the stones beneath his feet. The horn calls echo off of the hills, and the Hunter rides away until he is naught but a pale glimmer in the distance, and then gone altogether.

The River-daughter returns to the water and slides, laughing with delight, over the fall to splash into the pool, where she sinks down to the dark bottom where fish dart about and tickle her fingers and hide in her hair. She stays there for a long time, exploring every inch of the pool and getting to know the fish, both tiny and large, and exploring the caves behind the fall, where the water has shaped the stones in strange and exciting ways, and things grow that make their own light, a pale and wondrous echo of the starlight outside. Sometimes she sees the Hunter again, riding to and fro, east and west, hunting dark things that sought to destroy the peace of the starlit world. These things she does not see for herself, but the beasts that come to the pool—deer and foxes and wild horses and bears and many others besides—have. The River-daughter loves all of the birds and beasts that come to visit her. She learns all of the songs of the sleepy world, from the low haunting notes of the owls to the crisp wild dances of the winds. At times she lets the river carry her away for miles downstream, so she can explore the lands below where the forest opens up onto the plains, and the river widens and slows to wind lazily through grasses and marshes, lingering there beneath the wide skies, and at other times she climbs the cliffs and swims up the stream again, half-thinking she might find the source of her river, though she never does.

Then the Speakers come, who love the songs of clear water nearly as much as the River-daughter does. They bring light of their own, flickering red and orange at the end of long sticks, or built up from piles of them on the ground. It is very different from the starlight, and brings color and warmth that the River-daughter had never known were missing. She watches them from her reeds as they make their camp by her waterfall pool, and dance and sing and hunt together. Small ones come to the water's edge to splash each other and toss rocks as far as they can, giggling at each ker-plunk, and cheering when one is thrown just so, so that it skips across the pool before sinking at last to the bottom. The River-daughter dives down into the dark waters to retrieve the stones for the children, and so she is discovered by the tallest among the Speakers, one with broad shoulders and long limbs and eyes with a Light in them that was different somehow from starlight—somehow more.

Names are important to the Speakers. They are the Eldar, they tell her, the People of the Stars. Their leader with the bright eyes is named Ingwë, and it is he who first calls her River-daughter. They teach her what they call the different trees and the grass and the water and the stones, and they teach her names for the stars, showing her the pictures they have drawn between the bright points. It is easy to learn their language—almost easier than learning the ways and tongues of birds and beasts, because a badger does not care and will not take the time to teach, but the Speakers take great joy in it. The River-daughter learns enough to put words to her own songs, and she teaches them to the Speakers in return, and their voices as they sing together of wood and water and raindrops is the loveliest thing she has ever heard.
But too soon the Speakers move on. More will come, they tell the River-daughter, but not to stay. The Hunter came to them and told them of a bright land lit by two great Trees, where there are no dark things that will hunt them in the forests, and where the Powers—the Hunter and the Earth Queen and the Star-kindler and others—will welcome them and teach them many new things.

This place beyond the Sea is a place that the River-daughter will never go. She is not one of the Star Children, and her place is by her river and among her hills. She does not regret this, though she regrets the loss of her friends. They gift her many things before they go—clothes after their own fashion, and combs carved out of wood and of bone, and strings of clay beads with clever designs to wear around her neck or to drape over tree branches so they click together in the breeze.

Just as Ingwë had said, more Star-children come. Elwë's people come with their silver hair and sweet voices, and downstream the River-daughter goes to meet Finwë's folk, with their clever hands always making new and better things. Silver-haired Therindë sits for hours with the River-daughter on the riverbank, weaving mats and baskets out of reeds, or fashioning needles out of bones, or devising new stitches for clothes that are both lovely to look at and strong enough to weather whatever hardships the wearer might encounter. As the River-daughter weaves and Therindë stitches, they speak of many things, of hopes and dreams and of the lands around the river.

The River-daughter begins to wander farther from her pools, to see the hills and the plains and the forests that the Star-children tell her of. She finds other pools and other streams and learns their songs. She comes upon a wide lake in the north and there she meets dark Melian with her hair like shadows and nightingales clustered around her. They sing together for many turnings of the stars, before Melian flits away with her nightingales, and the River-daughter dives into the deep waters of the lake to find whatever may be down there, before returning to her river and her hilltops.

In the end, not all of the Star-children depart across the Sea. Some never wanted to leave at all; others changed their minds along the Journey. Some of these still love to wander, though, and their feet carry them to the River-daughter's river valley. Some of them continue on and others stay, and the River-daughter finds herself never wanting for company. Tales trickle back east like tiny brooks from the hilltops, to tell of Elwë and Melian and their meeting in nightingale-haunted Nan Elmoth, and of the doings of their people who stayed behind when Elwë was lost.

The stars wheel overhead and the River-daughter combs her hair with the gifts of the Eldar and sings with the nightingales. Elves come to her sometimes and stay and sing a while, and swim with her in her waters, and all is peaceful.

And then she hears it. She is sitting in deep tree-shadows, plaiting her hair after the Elvish fashion and listening to the sleepy whispers of the trees, and all else is silent—until an echo off of the nearby hills of hey! ring-a-dong-dillo! merry dol, derry dol, my darling! Ha ha! The voice is deep and booming and merry, and not like any elvish voice that the River-daughter has ever heard before. She stills her fingers and listens very hard. The song repeats itself, alongside other lines of similar joyful words, though it is a tongue she does not know. It fades away into the distance, until she is left in silence once more—or near silence. The trees have roused, just a little, and their branches tremble while the singing lasts as though they might wave them in a dance.

The River-daughter thinks of going in search of the mysterious, joyful singer, but she forgets him altogether when all of a sudden the ever-twilight brightens. She looks to the sky to see rising out of the western hills a great silver orb. She cries out and reaches for it, for it seems so much closer than the stars, as though she could pluck it out of the sky. But of course she cannot. It is not as far as the stars but it is among them. And it rises farther up and grows smaller, though the light does not dim.

Around her the trees stir, just a little. The river sparkles. A nightingale trills.

Even stranger and more astonishing is the light that comes after. Just as the world seems to begin to grow used to the new silver light, a brighter, fiercer light arises, stealing away the stars and turning the clouds and the sky brilliant, fiery hues before they fade to white and bright blue. All around the River-daughter the world awakens. The grass leaps up and flowers of every color blossom at once, and the trees awake. She laughs and leaps up to dance among them, calling them all by their Elvish names and bidding them sing to her, and they do, as leaves unfurl to drink in the light and roots stretch deep to drink in the water. The River-daughter laughs and springs up the branches of the tallest tree on her river bank, a beech with limbs growing stronger every second as she hoists herself higher and higher, until she emerges at the top. Woods stretched out far away on either side, falling away as the river drops toward the plains below. The hills rises up on one side, and her river gleams in the new bright light; the world is a riot of color and of life and it is the most beautiful thing the River-daughter has ever seen. The River-daughter throws her head back to soak in the warmth and lifts up her hands toward the new light and sings a song of her own devising in its praise.