On and on and ever ever on by UnnamedElement

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On and on and ever ever on

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Elrond and Elros had long understood that their parents were favored by Ulmo. They were young, yes, but even children know how to listen to tales at bedtime under the stars. 

What they did not understand, however, was why Ulmo did not favor them—had the ruins of Sirion been too far for a god such as he to wander? Had they—Elrond and Elros—not the worth of an absent father, marked as he had been (even in childhood) by the possessive hand of a Vala? Were they, somehow, not equal the worth of their sweet mother, who had been claimed also, by the Sea—forever marked—that day their parents chose each other? 

It was a strange blessing to skip—this double-edged love of a god—and such a strange blessing, too, to offer in its place: the Gift of Man buried deep in their hearts the day of their conceiving. It was made into a choice—a thing breathing and real—that first day they each drew breath (one after another in a small bower below the curve of a finely wrought arc, in that haven that collected families like a child collects stones: pebbles and crystals and small cuts of schist—unique and different yet, still, equally coveted and precious, equally sacred—adored.)

A strange blessing, Ulmo’s, that called away a father and lord in their time of great need. 

A strange blessing, too, that stole their mother from them, that twisted her—mid-flight!—into a thing of dreams, into a picture from tales woven by parents as encircling vines for their children’s minds, to protect them when the sun dropped low and the stars flung wide, and the sky was peppered like snowdrops in spring...  They were nets to catch Melkor’s creatures, sent forth and stalking; they were tales to arrest childish minds before lonely sojourn; storybooks to silence eager mouths when they opened wide, ready to ask after a parent’s glazed and northeast gaze, one hand firm on each twin head (a mother’s breath caught by the grief that vibrated from her hands into the souls of her children, on and on and ever ever on) —

(Their mother never told them why. But Elrond and Elros were not normal children, and she did not have to say a word.)

The children did not see their mother jump from the cliff with the Silmaril clutched to her breast like the most precious of babes, but they did not have to see , to know— It came to them in lingering dreams, splashed on the page like a scene they would never forget—wind underwing and uplifted white, stones like stars and a ship cross the sky...

So Ulmo, yes, was fond of the parents of Elrond and Elros. But, for them, their parents’ blessing was a curse, and Ulmo’s love delivered them—alone, in the end—to the hands of the Sons of Fëanor, tucked away and hidden, in place of their mother’s Silmaril. 

.o.

Elrond and Elros were young, but they knew enough to be scared. 

It had been almost a quarter year since the fear first found them, but still they could not sleep (and seldom did they eat), for every time they closed their eyes to rest in stony silence they heard only these things: 

clashing of swords and screaming of friends; 

smelled only these things:  

iron tang of despair, blood on lips like tainted meat; 

felt only this: 

skin scraped and pressed against a collapsed door, salt on cheeks in scratches raw as they clutched the other’s face—

(They had pushed against that door for hours and hours; tiny shoulders heaved—they pulled with nails torn from desperate scratching, until so long had passed that the screaming outside stopped, until so long had passed that—by the time they got out—the city was still and silent, burned and dead. All kin, all neighbors dead or fled.

They had picked their way then, alone, amongst the bodies; they had wandered for hours—til day turned to night—wandered for hours through the wreckage of their home, and everyone they knew was gone...)

Every day, now, when they came back from those wandering dreams (curled about one another like chipmunks in winter), they saw almost always those brightest of eyes that had haunted them, since blessing became curse, at Sirion.

Eyes piercingly bright came to them daily. 

“We still do not like you,” they told the Eyes on that particular morning, and the man who had found them among that carnage faltered, then smiled, then frowned—

“That is fine, children,” he said. 

There was no mother to save them now, not even a white-winged thing driven by the gods into a flash of forgotten beauty—

“You do not have to like me.” 

They stared up at him from the pallet they shared, and the man laid food on the floor and then stepped backward out the door.

“But you do have to eat,” he said from the doorsill, hands—that when first they had met him were sticky-dark with blood—raised now innocently (clean) as if in supplication. 

And then the door was closed and Elrond and Elros were alone, and hungry, and yet—still—children. 

So Elrond and Elros ate. 

And Elrond and Elros slept. 

And, over time, Elrond and Elros became their own faery-story, and they tried not to hate themselves when love and affection grew, when the men who killed their folk and chased their mother so far she was stolen by the gods—

Well.

They tried not to hate themselves when they started to love. 

(“Will you let us call you your names, or must we give you new ones?”)

For children, normal or not, are children still, and a murderer—they at some point decided—was better than no one at all. 

.o.

Elrond and Elros: beloveds of Elwing, future leaders of folk—  

Elrond and Elros: cursed by a blessing, abandoned to a house of the damned, forced not to hate when love came to them—desperate—from those curséd, tending hands—

Elrond and Elros: gifted with choice, a choice one would make and then run, run as far away and fast —fast and then long—to lay memories to rest with that forfeiture of life. He claimed the blessing offered in his parent’s stead, freed himself from the histories that had molded and made them...

Elrond and Elros were not normal children, and they were not normal elves, and they were not normal adults; and even over all the years, they never spoke of it and, yet, they knew— 

Between the two? They did not have to say a word.

Only centuries after they had found again the sun! Centuries, after they had come to their peace—it was then! Mid-flight!—in those earliest years of Elrond’s unimaginably long life—that Elros left. He cut through the sky, and laid his legacy behind him like flashes of stone in midmorning light, generations and generations like ripples in time...

But Elrond? Elrond stayed , and he was an anchor, a star with less points than the one that shone on them that night in Sirion; than the one that had filled his vision when he looked up, lost, to find those brightest of eyes taking him in as he and Elros stood in silence in the middle of the bloodied square—

Elrond was a star and the star was a guide, left behind to fill the cracked wounds of an Arda horrifically marred.

.o.

Centuries turned and Ages passed with the cycles of life—Spring to Autumn, Summer to Winter, good to evil and back again—and still Elrond was there, still the legacy of Elros stretched on from the day of his death into an impossible future, and Elrond watched, and Elrond knew. 

He watched kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall. He watched friends rise, and friends—horrifically—fall. And the centuries went on, and turned and turned and turned. 

Brother, gone; parents, gone; heart-brothers, gone —those hated Eyes he had come to love despite himself?—

(“I will be back soon—be good.”)

—Gone and, wandering, gone.

.o.

Sometimes forgiveness is an impossible thing. 

Sometimes hurts are too intimately deep, too connected to who one was at a moment of growth that, for the bearer, it is like a rose ripped from the ground with too heavy fists, clumsily replanted elsewhere. (But the ‘elsewhere’ is a hole that is, yet, not quite deep enough, with soil not quite packed enough, and with water only intermittently offered, and not at all at need.)

Sometimes to forgive is to discount the hurt, and yet…? Even when forgiveness is impossible, it may be put to rest:

Havens rise elsewhere. 

Stones are collected and nurtured as if cupped in the hands of a child’s far memory: pebbles and crystals and small cuts of schist—unique and different yet, still, equally precious and sacred—equally adored. 

The hurt in a soul turns, transformed.

Wind underwing and uplifted white:

A flash of beauty suspended in the ever-darkening night—

(a haven, a home, the last homely house )—

on and on, and ever ever on.