Swan Song by Ellie

Chapter 1

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Long he laboured, for weeks and months. Hammer meeting chisel. Rock revealing shapes. Images taking form, seeping from these bare bones of the earth. All the while, his resonant voice relentlessly recalled in song the pictures which haunted his mind, visiting themselves in form and feature in the stone beneath his hand.

Day and night flowed together as one. Still he worked on.

Few knew and none now remembered that he had such skill with stone – a gift he inherited from his mother in the Day before Days. Before he dwelt eternally it the Night of all Nights.

The long fingers of his slender hands lovingly drew forth the faces and features of those who had mattered most to him in his long life. His clever mother would have depicted them in truest form so like to life as to be real. But not he. For him, they would ever remain as they had been in their greatest glory merged with their greatest failures. And for him, creations of stone existed for sound as much as for sight.

As he worked, he imbued each statue with curves and hollows intended to catch the wind and shape it to the tone and timbre he associated with each subject of his art. The process was long and arduous. At times his fingers bled from the fine cutting, but still he carried on undaunted - for what could possibly deter one who had endured so much against so many odds and cost so many lives for so many years?

When at long last his labours were complete, again he waited, marking the signs in the animals and plants each day, looking for the storm that lay ahead which always arrived at this time of year. Each day, he inspected his creations, wandering among their forms, caressing their dearest features, listening to the hum and hollow of the ever increasing winds flowing through their inanimate beings. Occasionally he added a bit here or refined there.

Finally one morning, the whistle of the wind and the whispers of his works called him awake.

It was time.

He prepared for himself an elaborate meal in celebration. Meticulously he bathed, then dressed in faded threadbare robes which once had been the fine colorful silks appropriate for a prince. At long last, he took up his harp and began to play.

Almost whimsically, he wandered among the statues, his comrades in stone. Melodies happily alighted from the strings, echoing delicately around him as he strummed and remembered. Soon the rains began, adding the gentle rhythm of a dance and his singing changed to match the once joyous dreams these sounds evoked.

As the skies darkened, the rain fell harder, beating out the cadence of a determined ambitious march. His words flowed chanting, calling forth, charging onward. He moved among the figures rousing them in his mind, summoning them to join with him.

Then the thunder began, rumbling low in the distance like some approaching battle. Reflexively, the minstrel's fingers stabbed and raked across the strings in semblance of a massive army drawing swords and fitting arrows to bows. The surrounding trees swayed in the growing tempest like banners eagerly proclaiming their might and glory. Suddenly lightening slashed wickedly at the sky slaying again and again the kindred clouds from which it drew its strength. Each flash cast the statues' shadows into their own eerie foray upon the earth.

Louder the singer called, striking his harp, rallying the growing bellows of wind through his creations to a polyphony of sound. Rain ripped his garments, lashing his skin, and he found with great delight that he reveled in the glory of this awesome power and the harmonies of the graven images around him - works of his hand!

But then the rain pooled and the mud began to flow about his feet. In cruel desecration, it sloughed around the statues like blood seeping from gaping wounds, draining precious life. The ground shook with the force of the thunder and the searing blasts of lightening.

Music ceased as the elf cast about in dismay at the horrific apparitions appearing before him, nightmares made real invading his mind. Again and again the flashes of lightening brought forth the faces of every elven life claimed by the point of his sword. The merciless wind wailed with the cries of the dying and those they left behind. Thunder raged in judgment against him for his every sin. Overwhelmed by shame and the burden of heavy guilt, he fell to his knees in utter defeat. His wet grimy clothes clung desperately to his shivering skin like bandages to an infected wound. His eyes poured forth, mingling with the tears of heaven in mourning for all of his past deeds and those of his kin. Clutching the silent harp to his breast, he curled around the pain in his soul. Still the rain pummeled him into the ground, thunder loudly jeering, and lightening flashing in cruel taunts.

And Makalaurë Fëanorion scion of kings lay sodden, mired in the mud of his past - a diminishing echo of the glorious instrument he should have been.

Discordant.

Untuned.

Unstrung.