Aching Wings by Narya

Chapter 1

“As yet no flower had bloomed nor any bird had sung, for these things waited still their time in the bosom of Yavanna; but wealth there was of her imagining, and nowhere more rich than in the midmost parts of the Earth, where the light of both the Lamps met and blended.”

***

The Years of the Lamps

I beheld them first in Almaren, in the mind of Kementári.

“Look,” she whispered as we walked in the shade of her trees, and she opened herself to me, and showed me the wealth of her dreaming – bright creatures like gemstones who danced through the air; great, proud hunters who swept over mountains; plump ground-dwellers with plumage like log-bark; strutting, flightless, solitary creatures with terrible claws; and singers of the Song, whose voices, like water, caught some of our Music and set it flying through the Earth. My soul soared – and yet I felt sorrow too, for the creatures sang in a strange half-light, as though the fire of the Lamps had been dimmed.

“When will they come?” I asked her.

“When they are needed.” She smiled, and her golden eyes shone. She is strange, Kementári. Kind, yes, and generous, and gentle when she wishes it – but wild, and not so meek as the Children's tales might have one think. “Some will hunt their fellow kelvar; others will eat of the fruits of the olvar, and so spread their seeds far and wide.” And she showed me then an Earth in full bloom, covered not only with the joyous greens of her mosses and grasses and ferns, but alight with colour – great clusters of petals turned up to the sky; blossoms through the branches of trees; bold, shouting flowers clinging to succulent desert-plants; tiny blue hoods with delicate veins, peeping up through the forest floor. Each bird she named for me – eagle; nightingale; wren – and to her sister, Vána, she gave the names of the flowers to come.

I went to her often in those days, and I learned the songs of her bright-winged charges, so I might sing with them when the time came. Until then, we waited; the dream slept, and we laughed and ran and danced through the Earth, full of pride and hope and joy.

***

When the Lamps were felled, we fled to Aman. The world grew dark, and our grief was heavy, and the Enemy claimed the lands we had once called home.

For a while I remained with the Healer, whom the Eldar would later name Estë. I had sung with her in the Time before Time, and I heard her music in the voice of the songbirds that dwelt in my heart. With her spouse I tended the trees in their gardens of healing and rest. At times, too, I met with the Young One, Kementári's sister, whose flame had kindled with joy at the promise of flowers. Together we worked, my kindred and I; we sang to the earth and the stones and trees, and all was hallowed and fair. Slowly, our joy returned.

Of the Lady herself, I saw little. She sat alone upon the green mound of Ezellohar, deep in her imaginings – until at last, she called us there, her voice a wild bud in each of our minds. With her voice, too, she called wonder forth from the ground. The Young One danced, and the tears of the Weeper watered the earth, and two shining saplings stretched out of the grass – Telperion, the elder, with silvered leaves and dew; and Laurelin, warm and radiant, young-gold and glorious. We watched in wonder as their light waxed and waned, and at the close of the day, their faint beams mingled.

Yavanna's mind touched my own. Sing now, forest-child – and listen well.

Her voice was weary, as though she had spent her very essence in calling the Trees from the earth – but it was gentle, too, and almost amused. I sought the Song, and found new melodies there, soft like shadow and this strange new dusk. I raised my voice, shaping the Music I recalled from Almaren – for we do not forget, we who came into this world at its birthing, and who cannot leave it even now – and I called out into the twilight.

On the cool, sweet air, their answers came. Delight burst through me, sharp and wild, as I heard the nightingales sing.

***

My kind do not perceive Time as the Children do. There is an echoing back and forth, perhaps because we know the Song from long ago – though the echoes and their meanings are not always clear.

I had dwelt with my love in the forest for long, long years when the dreams began. At first I dreamt of silence, of an un-sound so thick it could almost be felt. There was darkness too, and cold – terrible cold that crept into one's soul.

Later I began to see death. The riotous jungles of Aman's south turned yellow, then black, and rotted away. Butterflies fell cold and exhausted from the sky. I would wake with sylphs and hummingbirds stiff in my hand, and scream – and then wake again, for there were no such birds in Doriath, and it was a trick of my sleeping mind.

I spoke to Elwë of the visions, and he grew fierce and grim. Together we worked to protect our land. As we fashioned our halls, the Khazâd brought dark tales from the North – fell beasts that hunted my husband's kin; wild shadows that preyed on the weak, and drank their children's blood. I reached for the minds of Estë, and Vána, and felt only reassurance, like gentling hands on a startled fawn. Melkor walked their lands, I understood – but he had repented, and was not to be feared.

I remembered the darkness that fell on Almaren. I thought of the grief that had torn through me then, with all we had worked for destroyed. Not to be feared? I wished I could believe it. I closed my mind to Aman, and sang instead to the stones and caves.

In time, Menegroth was wrought. My husband's people marvelled, for never before had the Eldar dwelt deep in the stone – yet the pillars were carved in the likeness of oak and beech, and hung with lanterns, to mimic the Mingling's light. As we worked I had sung to the stones of the forests, and their cool, deep shadows, and the birds that dwelt in their eaves. Perhaps the stones listened, for even to me it seemed they took on the feeling and hue of a woodland at dusk. Songbirds dwelt there with us; they came and went between the halls and the trees, singing all the while.

When my daughter was born, she sang back to them before she could talk.

***

When I dreamt Kementári weeping, I knew what had come to pass. Yavanna could be wild, and strange, and fierce at times, but even when Almaren fell, I did not see her grieve like this. Un-light and Un-sound had come to Valinor. The Trees were gone, not to be remade.

I vowed it would not happen to Doriath. When I set my enchantments at the bounds of our lands, I wove them into the very songs of the birds and trees themselves, pouring forth my own Music as I had not done since the birthing of my child. I called on the echoes and shadows, and the whispers of the forest, and the allure of the nightingale's song. I wove it together, as I had heard the Lady and the Healer and the Young One do, long years ago, binding the threads of Song into something different and wondrous and powerful.

It flooded me and thrilled me like nothing I had done since I robed myself in flesh like the Children, and when it was done I was weary and spent. I thought of Yavanna after the raising of the Trees. Look, I wanted to call to her. By her teachings, a part of what she loved and worked for would be kept safe – but I knew that in her grief, she would not hear me.

And for all my power, I was wrong. In the end, it was not enough.