Scope of Imagination by Himring

Scope of Imagination

Maglor's wife in my 'verse is named Solosimpe and is Telerin.

Maglor remembers how, after playing together at a concert in Valmar, Elemmire once said to him: ‘You are off on yet another journey with your family, Makalaure? I can understand your loyalty to your father, but surely all this restless moving about must be detrimental to your work?’

He can still recall Elemmire’s half-pitying, half-disapproving face, his golden head framed by a glittering burst of rays depicted in the mosaic of precious stones inlaid on the marble wall of the concert hall. He also recalls the sweeping gesture of his hand, as he added: ‘All this questing and seeking—do we not have anything we can imagine, all an artist could need, right here?’

At the time, Maglor replied: ‘Anything we can imagine? Perhaps it is not such a bad thing, occasionally, to push the boundaries of our imagination a little?’

It was intended more as polite evasion, on his part, than a genuine answer. He had already decided, by then, that there were things that it was useless to try and explain to Elemmire and many others among the Vanyar.

Now he knows that he had no real idea of how limited their imagination was, in many ways, back in Tirion and Valmar, despite the daily presence and familiarity of so much that was wonderful and mysterious… Events during the Darkening and in Beleriand have blown their imaginations wide open.

Not that that is necessarily a good thing, even from an artistic point of view—not if they don’t survive long enough to make those songs, not if guilt and fear stifle their voices. Would Elemmire now consider Maglor still had the right to be singing at all? The world is much wider than they had imagined. It also holds many more terrors.

Maglor looks across the hearth at Maedhros. It is late; the fire has died down to glowing embers. Maglor’s hand on the harp strings has fallen silent some time ago.

Maedhros is leaning back in his chair. His eyelids are lowered and his face is unguarded in that way it now only becomes when he allows himself to dream of Fingon. Maglor doesn’t need to be told the meaning of that expression. In fact, it is best to say nothing at times like these. Any word, any unexpected sound will certainly break that dream.

And if Elemmire, back in Valinor, would be scandalized by the subject of the dream, if Maedhros himself is still too inclined to see it as another way in which he is broken, Maglor is only grateful to see the shadow of pain on his brother’s face lifting for a time—especially as things have not been going too well on the borders. It will be months before Maedhros has a chance to go and see Fingon in person again and by the time he manages it, maybe it will have been as much as three years of waiting, despite the steady flow of messages between Hithlum and the Marches.

Maglor made a song recently about the grief of a woman whose husband dwelt far away. He had just thought of it as something inspired by the Falathren song about a sailor’s wife that he learned from one of Cirdan’s guards, to begin with. He had almost finished working on it, before he looked again and saw how much heart he had put into it, despite the deceptive simplicity of the words. It should not have surprised him.

He will include that song in the Noldolante, he decides now.

He wonders what his own Solosimpe will think of that, if she ever hears it. Will she feel he is putting words in her mouth? That he has forfeited the right to make such a song?

But, of course, it is not likely that she will ever hear it.

Maglor takes another look at his brother’s face and then allows himself to wander off into his own dream, along the winding paths of memory to a meadow near Alqualonde, a time filled with sweet hope, when the wind blew in from the bay of Eldamar and Maglor, newly in love, could almost hear it setting the harebells ringing.

Elemmire did have a point, of course. There were many things they had not appreciated nearly enough while they still had them…

Chapter End Notes

Written for the following Kings & Kink challenge prompt:

"'But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,' said Gilbert sadly. 'It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.'

Anne laughed.

'I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I’m quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more "scope for imagination" without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter. We’ll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.'

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew."

~ Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery