Hearken Still Unsated by polutropos

I have tried to keep this Preface brief and useful, but feel free to skip or come back at the end. It is not necessary for understanding the fic, but is meant to enrich the reading experience and explain some of the thinking behind it.

 Art 

The original art for this fic was unfortunately not completed (I can't post it, but it's slide #103 for TRSB participants). The final piece would have depicted Maglor standing beside a golden concert harp in a large hall with a large arched entrance, with Daeron facing him, his back to the viewer. The last scene of Chapter 3 is directly inspired by this art. There would also have been portraits of both of them on either side. Prompts included Daeron/Maglor ("bonus points for making it a threesome with their shared lover (=music)"), "passionate takes (be it hate, love, rapture, angst…)", complicated relationships, and Doriath's magical court.

I owe a tremendous thanks to Melesta for first surprising me with illustrations and then formally becoming this fic's 'art pinch-hitter'. See the illustrations here.

  Names and Language  

Sindarin place and people names are used when in Daeron's POV and Quenya, at least initially, when in Maglor's. Exceptions and changes to this are probably intentional.

I had neither the energy nor the skill to conlang Iathrin cognates for Daeron and the other people of Doriath to use, so they use common Sindarin.

All Elvish names and words that do not appear in the The Silmarillion are footnoted the first time they appear in the text. The exception is Quenya names for the Finwëans, of which the following are used in this fic:

Ambarussa - Amrod and/or Amras
Curufinwë - Curufin
Maitimo - Maedhros
Macalaurë - Maglor
Ñolofinwë - Fingolfin
Fëanáro - Fëanor
Findaráto - Finrod
Findekáno - Fingon
Tyelkormo - Celegorm

 Canon Background and Timelines 

This fic is canon-compatible and assumes pretty in-depth knowledge of certain canon events, timelines, and characters. I am aware not everyone has this knowledge ready to engage at all times. I think the fic can be enjoyed without, but for those interested, it might be helpful to recall a few things.

For Chapter 1, those less familiar with the history of the Sindar may want to remember the particulars of the First Battle of Beleriand. I have layered a lot of my own headcanons onto this period of the history of Beleriand and its people but it is all built up from canon.

The following dates, or at least the sequence of events, are relevant (based on the Grey Annals in War of the Jewels):

YT 1497. First Battle of Beleriand. The Fëanorians arrive in Beleriand. Battle Under Stars. Death of Fëanor. Capture of Maedhros.
FA 2. Host of Fingolfin settles on the northern shore of Mithrim. The Fëanorians remove to the southern shore. Morgoth releases dark, poisonous vapours from Angband.
FA 5. Maedhros rescued. Fingolfin becomes High King of the Noldor.
FA 6. Angrod is the first of the Exiles to come to Doriath.
FA 7. Council of the Noldorin princes held at Mithrim. Fëanorians remove to eastern Beleriand.
FA 20. Mereth Aderthad hosted by Fingolfin at the Pools of Ivrin.
FA 60. Dagor Aglareb, Morgoth’s forces pushed back by the Noldor.
FA 66. Thingol learns of the Silmarils and the death of Finwë via Melian via Galadriel.
FA 67. Thingol learns of the first kinslaying, the doom of Mandos, and the burning of the ships at Losgar. Ban on Quenya being “openly spoken” in Beleriand; command issued to Sindar not to speak or answer to it.

  Big Questions      

I thought a lot about Elvish beliefs and worldviews while writing this. Many thoughts were inspired by Tolkien's own writings on the nature of his world and its inhabitants (most of it in Morgoth's Ring and The Nature of Middle-earth), others just bubbled up from fandom discourse. Some questions I kept on rotation in my brain:

Did the Valar make a mistake bringing the Elves to Valinor from Cuiviénen?

What's the 'correct' relationship between the Ainur and the Elves? What is up with Melian? Why did she stay? Was it a good thing?

Is the Music of the Ainur 'fate' for the Elves? (No.) If not, what is it? How do the Elves (at least two of them) relate to the Music? What is up with the linguistic relationship between the words for 'doom/fate' and 'World/habitation' in Elvish (see footnotes to chapter 1)? What does it mean to say the Elves are bound to Arda? Where is home for the Elves?

I thought about these questions, the characters think about these questions - the fic does not answer them.

“And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
- The Ainulindalë

The night sky is darker here and the stars shine brighter against its deep indigo.

The bay of a vast lake is cradled in the arms of the mountains and a dense forest slouches towards its glassy-blue waters. In the canopy, a nightingale trills. On its last note, the elf hesitating on the shore springs off a sloping rock. He breaks through the surface noiselessly and emerges moments later with silver hair clinging to the sharp angles and smooth lines of his face, star-lit droplets scattered across his skin.

“You look like a painting,” says a dark-haired elf, gliding through the water towards him. Weightless arms circle his waist and only the film of water separates skin from skin as hands ghost over his bare back. “A painting,” he kisses him, “a dance,” and again, “a song.”

Each time their damp lips brush against each other, the water contracts into a ring around their bodies and spreads out in perfect waves. To the beating of their legs below the surface, a lilting melody rises up from the lake bottom.

“We are home,” says the silver-haired elf.

But this is only a vision. It dissolves back into the Song, as it always has.

“From the Elves of Mithrim the Noldor learned of the power of Elu Thingol, King in Doriath, and the girdle of enchantment that fenced his realm; and tidings of these great deeds in the north came south to Menegroth, and to the havens of Brithombar and Eglarest. Then all the Elves of Beleriand were filled with wonder and with hope at the coming of their mighty kindred, who thus returned unlooked-for from the West in the very hour of their need, believing indeed at first that they came as emissaries of the Valar to deliver them.”

“Now King Thingol welcomed not with a full heart the coming of so many princes in might out of the West, eager for new realms; and he would not open his kingdom, nor remove its girdle of enchantment, for wise with the wisdom of Melian he trusted not that the restraint of Morgoth would endure.”
- Of the Return of the Noldor

The stars and swirls of silver on the domed ceiling of Menegroth’s Great Hall, however beautiful, are an imitation of the firmament: jewels pried from the earth, rearranged in stone, and given light by the arts of Melian. Beneath this mosaic of constellations, Daeron leans upon a beech trunk hewn from rock and listens to the rustle of linen and silk and the clinking of strings of pearl.

Thingol’s council files in, taking their seats along curving wooden benches.

His nephew and chief counsellor Galadhon,¹ who proved steadfast in his loyalty even when the King’s own brothers despaired of his return, greets the other courtiers warmly. Mablung, Thingol’s Captain, carries himself wearily. He rests his arm on the hilt of a sword that has lain idle since they fenced themselves off from the war with Bauglir. Arriving by another entrance, Eöl stands apart. Thingol’s distant kinsman has not been seen here for many star cycles, preferring to skirt the borders of the forests ruminating, Daeron guesses, on how his weaponscraft failed them.

On a dais before them stands the twin seat of Thingol and Melian, carved from the cave floor to resemble the roots of a riverine tree clinging to the banks. The Queen sits first. Layers of green silk spill over the stone chair like a blanket of moss and lichens. The glass spheres of fireflies that hover above cast a yellow glow on her dark skin.

The ceremony is much the same as it has been since this cavernous city was first delved into the hills of the forest, but Daeron observes intently. He is the memory of Eglador – no, Doriath now. Land of the Fence: enclosed, guarded, safe. Much like another land that they – the Egladhrim, the Forsaken – never reached.

The King takes his seat last. Silver robes, a shade darker than the fall of hair around his pale face, pool at his feet. The grey figures of his counsellors look to him as Melian chants a prayer to Elbereth. The jewelled stars flicker overhead.

“Counsellors and kinsmen,” Thingol says when the prayer has concluded. “We have received a message from Eglarest at last.” The air in the hall tightens– “The Enemy’s forces have withdrawn from the Falas.” –and releases.

Daeron remembers how the King’s cheeks were rimed with the salt of grief when he returned, victorious but greatly diminished, from the war to the east. The wounded bodies and broken spirits of the Laegrim² were pulled from carts with cries of pain and anger for the loss of Denethor and of so many others of their people. No messenger came to Menegroth from the coast. Only by the thread of thought that stretched over the long leagues between him and Círdan did Thingol know that he had failed in his duty to protect his realm. There had been no way to bring the Falathrim into the safety of the forest before Melian at last put forth her power and ensconced Neldoreth and Region in shadow. Círdan had been cut off.

Galadhon stands. “Withdrawn? How can that be?” Several others mirror his expression of amazement.

“The Orcs retreated to do battle with the host of the Golodhrim, and were defeated.” As Daeron observes the muscles twitch above Thingol’s jaw, his own hope contends with the shame he senses pooling in the King’s heart.

“So it is as I had thought,” Galadhon says, “when first the rumour of this host came to Menegroth. Our long-sundered kinsfolk have come in the hour of our need.”

“So it would seem.” There is suspicion now, and fear, drawn in thin lines between Thingol’s brows. “But the army out of Balannor³ has still sent no word themselves. All we know of them comes from reports Círdan has received from the Mithrim.⁴”

Eöl emerges from the shadow of a pillar. “And why have they sent no message? Surely they must know Beleriand is not an uninhabited plain on which to pitch their battles? Let them not forget that we are the first of the Eledhrim⁵ to call this land home.”

Eöl’s dark eyes dart across the floor to where Daeron stands, seeking his support as he once did on the plains of Estolad in those long, uncertain years of waiting. Daeron recalls bitter words exchanged between kin. He hears again the accusations of betrayal breaking against Olue’s⁶ proud composure as he prepared to lead yet one more piece of Elu’s splintered people on towards the Sea. He sees again the faces of his own parents among that host and he is pricked by the abiding sting of resentment and regret. Where are the Lindai⁷ who followed Olue now? Why have they not returned?

“Remain hidden, if you wish,” Eöl says sharply, slicing off the ends of Daeron’s thought. “I at least will not stay enclosed in this fence forever, while the Golodhrim run over Beleriand with their trumpets of war and gleaming weapons.”

Melian’s loam-dark lashes flutter like the wings of moths and the flickering white light of her eyes deepens the shadows on Eöl’s face. “You do not know their plight. They have suffered great losses. The death of their king, and the capture of his eldest son.”

Galadhon’s face falls. “Finwë is slain?”

“I can uncover no news of Finwë’s fate,” Thingol says, “save that he came not with them. Nor does anyone speak of my brother Olue and our kin across the Sea.”

So it is certain. Only the Golodhrim have come, and without the king who led them from the Waters of Awakening.

“His son, Faenor,⁸ led them to Beleriand as their king, but he was slain as he marched on Angband. Faenor’s eldest son has fallen prey to the Enemy’s deceits. We do not know who rules them now.”

“That is grievous news,” says Galadhon, “but they are courageous indeed to have come so near to the Enemy's stronghold!”

Thingol hums, dissatisfied. “I mistrust the manner in which they wage their war. The Mithrim report that they establish settlements where others of our kind dwell already, with still no message of allegiance, not even of friendship, sent to us.”

Mablung, who has been listening with brows pinched in concentration, shifts in his seat. Though the Captain returned a hero from the war, he says less at these councils than he once did. Daeron feels in his silence the holes left by the loss of sister, spouse, and child, all under his own command.

But now he rises. “King Elu, may I speak freely?”

“Have not others done so?” Thingol’s eyes slide between his nephew and Eöl.

Mablung nods. “We are safe now. But there may come a time when we must go out to war again. Though we may mistrust them, I would advise you to seek friendship with the Golodhrim. We will need their strength.”

“I value your counsel and your valour, Captain, but I will not so hastily risk an alliance with those who may already be enmeshed in the Enemy’s lies. We know that Finwë’s heir has been captured – who can say what other evils Bauglir has worked upon them?” Thingol straightens in his chair and his gaze strays over the many faces of his counsellors. “We will send no message, nor will I take thought of war for many long years. The Girdle will hold. Melian will receive council again from the Belain.⁹”

At those words, Daeron searches Melian’s face, extending a tendril of his thought towards her. He is seeking the reassurance of her wisdom – as Elu is, as they all are. But he cannot reach her: she is far off, outside Time, listening for some strain of Music that is not there.

Macalaurë plays a broken scale, running a thumb over the newly-wound gut strings of the harp set before him. He sighs heavily and draws the thumb away to rest along his jaw.

“Thank you.” He looks at Curufinwë seated across the board.

His brother leans back in his chair, one arm crossed over his heart, clutching the opposite shoulder. He absently kneads at the tight muscles of his neck. “It is all I could do, with what we have.”

It is too dark to discern expressions, but Macalaurë forces a smile all the same. “And I am grateful for it. There is not a single flaw in its construction.”

“But you will not play it?”

Macalaurë’s fingers tap out a marching rhythm. “When I feel the need, I will.”

On his way out, Curufinwë pauses by the doorway. “I am sorry. For the one we burned.”

He stalks out into the constant night.

The instrument is gilded with the silver of their father’s belt. (Likewise there is a crown, fitted to his head but better suited to its shelf in a cabinet, moulded from the visor of Fëanáro’s helm; Finwë’s true heir never stopped fighting long enough to wear a crown.) Curufinwë did not receive their father’s name unjustly. Even in this strange village built for warfare, he has found a place for his craft. It seems he has even improved upon it, Macalaurë thinks, as he traces the finely-carved likenesses of the flora of Aman on the harp’s frame. But the wood, light and strong, is of Endórë.¹⁰

Even in this dim light, the harp glistens. Perhaps it is only the reflection of his eyes. Macalaurë scoffs at the absurdity of it all and drags his fingers down his face.

There is no place for music in this grim encampment, so he wraps the small harp beneath his cloak and takes it to the shore. Sinking down onto the damp silt, he leans against a log and props the instrument between his folded legs. He barely feels its weight against his chest. His palms fall open on his thighs and he stares blankly over the smooth plane of the lake.

Nothing comes.

Perhaps it is simply that there is no place for music anywhere on this side of the Sea. Not for him. Not for his people.

Since Anor blanketed the land in fire, Melian has still received no word from Balannor. No word has come to Doriath from the Golodhrim, either, but messengers report that their host has grown and settled on both sides of the lake now. From atop the highest trees in Neldoreth, one can see the sky is dark over the North. Hope, that bright yet brief flame, is swallowed again by fear and doubt.

In the twilight, Daeron watches his Queen wading among the plants where the Esgalduin is wide and languid. Her feet do not stir up the river bottom, and her robes drag through the water, their dark green turning almost black around the hem. She stoops to fill an ewer.

“Esgallind.¹¹” Melian addresses him by the name she gave him an age ago, when they first met under the eaves of Nan Elmoth. The water ripples in response. “It has been too long since I have heard anything.”

She scans the skies. Ithil crests behind her. Against his bright beams, it seems that the light that flickers just beneath her flesh has dimmed and cooled. “We are alone,” she says to the treetops. “The Belain have shut us out.”

Daeron is suddenly hollowed-out. He feels in himself the depth of her isolation and uncertainty as she searches in the darkness. He knows that darkness, for long ago she instructed him in the art of Seeing as well as Song, and for too long now he, too, has heard nothing of that Music.

Yet as he is Doriath’s memory, he is also Doriath’s hope. He weaves stories out of despair and arranges disorder into comfortable rhythms. Hope is meaning, and without meaning the tales are nothing but endless lamentation.

He asks, “Do you not believe then that the Golodhrim have come as their messengers?”

Melian steps out of the river and smiles. Her voice is in his mind. ‘I do not think we need lose hope yet.’ She lifts a hand to brush a strand of silver hair from Daeron’s face. ‘Come with me.’

Cradling the ewer against her stomach, her bare feet carry her over the mossy ground. The forest groans and the encircling trees bend and reach towards her. Solid as her flesh may be, always does it seem that she might disappear from the earth, dissolve back into the Music, as if she had never been here.

Melian leads him to the Great Hall to witness her play upon her harp. It is an ancient instrument, carved of living wood preserved from forests that Ivann¹² herself nurtured when the World was young. She fills the shallow basin beneath it with the waters she has collected. As the harp takes nourishment, it flushes gold. She says it is a vision of the Flame Imperishable that was before Time and she may play strains of the Great Theme upon it.

A feathered touch, calling upon his devotion and sense of duty, brushes Daeron’s mind. He draws a shallow breath through parted lips. Never before has she asked him to join her in this Music. “Híril.¹³” He bows deeply. “What would you have me do?”

“I can no longer hear the voices of my brethren in the thought of the One. Yet there are some also among the Children of Eru who may know one another through the Music played upon this harp. You are Eruchên,¹⁴ and gifted in Song.” Her hands are poised on either side of the strings. “Listen, Shadow Singer, and tell me what you see.”

She plucks a string and the silk shines. In time with the rapid movement of her fingers, thin wisps of light make constellations on the ceiling. Her voice, deep as the sky and clear as the stars, floods the hall. Daeron is already slipping into the sounds between notes. With a rush of bright colours, he is folded in.

*

There should be hope now that Macalaurë’s brother has returned. They should be able to see the skies again, to hear the birds again. That is how it would be told in song: even as the people’s hearts were lifted did the clouds break, revealing… some convenient and empty parallel drawn between mood and weather. But the ash still lines Macalaurë's lungs like a creeping mould and he feels no surge of hope, no sudden release of grief. All is silent, leaving the mocking cries of Manwë’s eagle to ring between his ears.

As they ride back from Ñolofinwë’s camp, Macalaurë watches the shapes of Curufinwë and Tyelkormo’s horses retreat into the death-grey distance. Everything is grey. The flat surface of the lake stretched out between their two settlements; the eyes of his kinsmen, sapped of any spark of colour by relentless ice and anger; the wool coverlets draped over the bed; the skin clinging to Maitimo’s bone-thin arms resting upon them. His brother's spirit yet lives in that marred body, but only just.

*

Menegroth’s walls disappear and Daeron stands knee-deep in a murky lake. A ceiling of smoke bears down upon him.

The screech of an eagle breaks the silence. As Daeron scans the horizon, suddenly the beat of its enormous wings is over him. The surface of the water is stirred; the grime rolls back to reveal a pale face, his skin the faded, flickering hue of a body whose spirit clings to incarnate life.

Even so was the flesh of the fallen on the battlefields under starlight, where Daeron sang and wept until he had poured so much of his power into them that he could scarcely draw breath. Some grew hale and strong and stayed to thank him for his Songs; but many more fled their bodies, too broken to return.

Daeron drops down to his knees and peers into the hollows of the elf’s shut eyes. They fly open: his irises are fire, flames leaping from the edges of black pupils. There is a scorching heat on Daeron’s face and he falls back.

“Forgive me!” Daeron screams.

*

What purpose would there have been to singing as Maitimo lay grey upon the bed? Would he have heard him, as he had heard Findekáno singing, far below those towers of sheer rock? What use is there in asking? Macalaurë had not even tried. He had watched, his hand over his brother’s breast, waiting for the rhythm of his breathing to move him – to song, to tears, even to madness, if madness it must be. Nothing had come.

This was not how the story was supposed to end. Maitimo had died.

“Forgive me.” He feels the shapes of the words on his lips, saying at last to the dense haze what he could not when he looked upon his brother's face. But his eyes remain dry as he rides on to tell the people that their king has returned.

*

There is rain, thick and heavy, hurtling down. “What is there to forgive?” Daeron shouts, before the sheet of water breaks upon his face and spills over his cheeks, cooling the heat that still burns upon them.

*

A gust of wind whips over the lake. Macalaurë’s mare huffs and tosses her head. “Shh, Quildë.¹⁵” He sinks a hand into her mane. “We’re almost there.”

He looks out over the water. A layer of deep blue separates it from the hanging grey smoke.

A drop of rain lands on his hand. The tiny spot expands and disappears into his parched skin. Another falls, and another, and he can hear the drum of heavy drops striking the surface of the lake as the clouds are carried swiftly towards them.

Quildalótë stomps and tugs at the reins. He lets her break into a gallop, taking them under the cover of a large yew.

*

Lightning illuminates the lake, scattering confused images across its surface. Daeron's eyes dart among them, trying to follow their meaning.

White ships are borne swiftly over a dark ocean. Their sails billow like the wings of swans. The water shimmers with the gleam of sunken weapons. Lifeless bodies are carried on the current. A blinding silver-gold light sears Daeron's unblinking eyes.

Then a murmur of thunder heralds an outpouring of noise.

A crown rattles across a marble floor. Torches burn. ‘Ambar-mettá. Umbar insa.’¹⁶

Words spoken in a tongue familiar but unknown. ‘Oiyámórenna.¹⁷Ilúvatar.'

The crack of burning timber. The echo of vengeful laughter.

Daeron gathers up all the sounds. There is nothing more than disconnected notes at first, but he sings them all the same. He finds shapes; he fits them into Song. He tilts his neck towards the sky and sings until his lungs are near to bursting with the swell of sound. He sings until his throat burns from shaping such ragged discord into harmony. He sings until a single star appears above him.

“Ambar,” he sings. “Umbar.” His last mournful notes float up towards the firmament like tendrils of mist.

The storm drifts off.

*

It's twilight. The first stars appear against a muted indigo sky. Macalaurë raises a hand to his cheek and it is warm and damp.

“The clouds are parting.” He laughs and pats his mare’s neck. “What did I say?”

In the branches of the tree a bird greets the night. It is shifted down slightly, has a cadence of its own, but he knows its song. There was one like it that he listened to as he drifted off to sleep in the wilds of Aman, far from all but his family. His father had even composed a lullaby to the tune of that birdsong, and he sang it to each of his children as he rocked them in his arms. Macalaurë returns the call. There is a pause and then an answer, a perfect echo. He sings.

Onya, onincenya, hína¹⁸
Stars are shining, hína
Walk along the gleaming trail
To Lórien’s vale, hína.

Pressure builds and quivers around his eyes. He sucks in a sharp breath that rattles in his chest. Quildalótë extends her neck and one round black eye slides back to look at him. She blinks sadly and sighs. Macalaurë's exhale comes out as a choked cry as he collapses against her, wrapping his arms around her silken neck, burrowing his fingers in her mane, and heaving great sobs.

The memories unravel.

*

Daeron returns to find himself seated on the stair to the royal dais, bent over his knees. He rubs his fingers against his thumbs and they are cold and numb. His tongue is dry in his throat.

Melian has a hand on his back and strokes his hair to the rhythm of her steady humming. There is a comforting heat on her palms.

“Amar,” he mutters. “Amarth.”

He tries to recall the images, the Music, but it is as though he was emptied of their message the moment he returned. Only those words linger: The World, Doom. So closely akin in sound and shape.

“I am sorry.” He clutches Melian’s hand on his shoulder. “I cannot remember it.”

“Shh.” She draws him up and cradles his head against her breast. “That is enough.”

He weeps silently until his face is wet with tears. When the Music returns it is but a confusion of muddled notes. The feelings, though, take root and drink of his soul, cling to his flesh, as though he were their sustenance: loss, despair, and displacement. As they reach and wind their way through him, he hears their story: the Golodhrim were not sent. The Belain offered them no aid on the journey but still they came, in defiance and determination.

He draws a long breath and looks into Melian’s bright eyes. For the first time, they fill him with disquiet. For the first time, he doubts. Was it for more than love that she stayed among them? He casts a veil over his mind and does not tell her what he hears.

Despite the dark Music that thrums through the land beyond their protected realm, Daeron has not lost hope for Ennor.¹⁹ He chose this place, the land of his birth, not out of loyalty to a king he had never met, but out of love. The Eledhrim who have returned to it out of longing will find what they seek here.

Amar: home.²⁰

Chapter End Notes

¹Named in Unfinished Tales as the son of Elwë and Olwë’s younger brother, Elmo.

²The Green-elves, Sindarin, class plural.

³Valinor, Sindarin

⁴The northern Sindar who lived about lake Mithrim.

⁵Sindarin equivalent of Eldar (class plural; singular Edhil, plural Edhel). It is my interpretation that the Sindar used Edhil to include all the Elves, unlike Eldar which is only those who set out with Oromë on the Great Journey.

⁶Telerin for Olwë. This assumes that Telerin had already developed or partially developed from Primitive Elvish at the time of Olwë’s departure.

⁷Primitive Elvish, ‘The Singers’, what the Teleri called themselves.

⁸The "genuine Sindarin form". The form Fëanor "probably arose from scribal confusion" ('Shibboleth of Fëanor' in Peoples of Middle-earth). In his brief time in Beleriand, Fëanor befriended and learned from the Mithrim, so I think it likely that they would have conveyed messages about him using this form of his name.

⁹The Valar (singular Balan).

¹⁰Endor (Q.), Middle-earth. This is just a longer form.

¹¹Esgallind = Shadow Singer, a name I created for Daeron that Melian gives him. It is meant to evoke the meaning of dae in Tolkien’s earlier writings, namely ‘shadow of trees’ (later, ‘great’). Tolkien had many words for ‘shadow’; I chose esgal because of this specifically meaning a ‘cast shadow’ and by extension a ‘veil, screen’ and referring to Daeron’s ability to see past veils and screens. The linguistic confluence with the river Esgalduin is also neat.

¹²Yavanna (Sindarin).

¹³Lady (Sindarin), chosen instead of Rían, ‘Queen’, because of the tree Hírilorn in Doriath.

¹⁴Child of Eru in Sindarin (plural, Eruchîn). Eruhíni in Quenya.

¹⁵Short for Quildalótë (Q.), the name I have given Maglor’s horse. It means Quiet Flower.

^16'Doom itself. World’s ending,’ phrases from the Oath of Fëanor (the first phrase is from this translation by Marie Prosser for the SilmFilm Project. The second is in both that one and the better-known one by Milan Rezac. Rezac uses ambar for both ‘doom’ and ‘world’ -- both emphasising and erasing the similarity and significant difference between the two words!). For the (I think) fascinating relationship between ambar and umbar and the concepts of fate, the world, and dwelling see entry for Primitive Elvish root √MBAR ("settle, dwell; establish, fix, decide, determine, make a decision") and Chapter 21 of The Nature of Middle-earth, 'Fate and Free Will'.

¹⁷’Everlasting Darkness’, also from Rezac’s translation of the Oath.

¹⁸’My child/offspring, my little child, child,’ (hína as in Eruhíni), Quenya. cuarthol has incredible song-filking talents and wrote lyrics for three verses of this Elf lullaby in about 10 minutes, which I have adapted. It is based on this song.

¹⁹Middle-earth, Sindarin.

²⁰Amar, the Sindarin word for World (cognate of Quenya Ambar), is etymologically related to the root meaning ‘settlement, dwelling’. Daeron, a linguist, has I have taken the liberty of including the concept of ‘home’ in this cluster. See note 16.

"The joy of that feast was long remembered in later days of sorrow; and it was called Mereth Aderthad, the Feast of Reuniting. Thither came many of the chieftains and people of Fingolfin and Finrod; and of the sons of Fëanor Maedhros and Maglor, with warriors of the eastern March; and there came also great numbers of the Grey-elves, wanderers of the woods of Beleriand and folk of the Havens, with Círdan their lord. There came even Green-elves from Ossiriand, the Land of Seven Rivers, far off under the walls of the Blue Mountains; but out of Doriath there came but two messengers, Mablung and Daeron, bearing greetings from the King."
- Of the Noldor in Beleriand

The wood-beamed feasting hall reminds Maglor of the one they hastily erected on the shores of Mithrim. There, for dark years unreckonable, the Noldor grimly took their meals and held their councils. At his command, they abandoned it. At his word, they retreated before his uncle’s host, delaying the march towards their foretold Doom. Now, but twenty years on, Fingolfin welcomes them as honoured guests. He speaks of reuniting and peace, of kinship and common purpose. He says nothing of the past but speaks only of future hope.

Both much and little has changed since those grey years by the lake. His name has changed. But there was no sudden fullness of life that came to Macalaurë’s hollowed spirit when he called himself Maglor. The language of his new name has roots in this land; he does not. In the same way, the scaffolding of half-built fortresses rises up from the hills like the tall masts of ships adrift on this ancient landscape.

Certainly, there have been moments. When he wept under the branches of a tree as a storm rolled over Mithrim; when they crossed over the blooming plains of Ard-galen in spring; when he first washed himself in the swift, bracing waters of the Gelion. He has found ways to squeeze hope out of those moments — to find the strength to command, to inspire, to comfort.

He has still found no way to turn those moments into songs.

“It is good to see you smiling, cousin.”

Two glasses of honey-wine appear below his field of vision, one extended towards him. Finrod’s fingers are ringed with emeralds set in silver, his arms draped in white silk embroidered with gold.

“Was I smiling?” Maglor takes the offered drink and swirls his cup, watching the eddy of amber liquid rise and settle. “That is good.”

“You have been since you arrived this morning,” Finrod says. “But your answer tells me that perhaps there is an element of performance to your joy.”

“Aren’t we all performing?” Maglor sips the wine and his smile falls. “It is too soon.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps waiting too long would only have let old wounds fester. Look there, the Falathrin lords with Turgon's. And your brother laughs with the Laegel¹ – your neighbours, are they not?”

“Ambarussa’s neighbours, yes. But I assure you that every word is spoken from behind a veil. Maitimo has mastered the craft of diplomacy, despite everything. Or perhaps because of everything. He is more resilient than any of us. But do you see him laughing with our uncle in that same light manner? No. Unless it has been scripted for their audience, they exchange words behind closed doors only, each syllable scarcely containing the tension vibrating behind it, despite the mutual respect there between them.”

“My.” Finrod shrugs his brows and sips the wine. “Is that how you perceive our converse now?”

Maglor laughs and places a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “If only we were all as forgiving as you. Or as well-liked. What of the Fenced Land? Has Elwë sent no one?”

Finrod hums in an evident tone of resignation. “King Thingol refused at first, when my brother presented the invitation. But two have come.” He tilts his chin towards the strong, dark-haired elf speaking to Angrod. “Mablung, his Captain, and Daeron –” he gestures to the one beside them, who wears a crown of ferns around loose silver hair, “ –his minstrel.”

“Good of him to send us some entertainment.” Maglor finishes his drink and sets the glass down.

Finrod scowls disapprovingly.

“Oh, do not worry.” Laughing, Maglor casts a glance towards the ceiling. “I am sincerely relieved it won’t fall to me to provide it all. I find I have little desire to entertain.”

His cousin’s grey-green eyes, set in soft rings of gold lashes, are sinking into him. There’s a sting at Maglor’s temples and he squints away the sensation.

“Gods, I forgot how you can do that. If you must know – I cannot find it. Music. Not since…” He waves a hand. It is difficult to know when he lost what he cannot remember ever having at all. “I have learned to pretend, of course. But the unclouded stars, the wide lands, the freedom of which my father spoke — I do not feel it. I cannot hear it.” He turns to Finrod and whispers, “Is it the same for you?”

Finrod only sighs and smiles sadly.

“Of course it’s not. Well, please do not give me away. I am sure the Sindar would love to know that Valariandë² rejects me.” He squeezes his cousin's forearm. “What is one more secret to harbour?”

A roar of laughter from a nearby table swallows the answer on Finrod’s lips. They settle into a comfortable silence and for a moment Maglor allows himself to imagine they are still young and irresponsible, standing under the mosaiced lintels of Tirion’s palace.

At the urging of half his family, Maglor does play that evening. His harp, the one crafted by Curufin, is shoved into his hands. The instrument still gleams as brightly as the day it was made.

Shouts for a song of Valinor, a legend of gods, one of his own compositions. He chooses instead a fast and vibrant dance song. Quickly, their disappointed groans turn to cheers and excited steps as partners are passed and glasses raised. It is so simple to play a room into jubilation. So simple that his mind need not even be present for it.

Maglor laughs as he slips away from the music. Though his ears mangle the melody, he knows how to force his fingers into perfect form. To him, the sound of his own voice is distant, but the revellers whirl, their mouths split wide with merriment. It is no different from any other choreography he has picked up since that day Finwë lay bleeding and broken on the marble floor. His hands have orchestrated the deaths of kin with as much skill as they now play through the memories, springing up and falling down one after another like enemies in the way of his progress.

His lips move and his voice sings without him, while his mind concentrates on the scents of wine and spices, of fresh-cut wood and burning oil; on the shapes of bodies as they move through space; the texture of jewelled chains against velvet and silk and linen.

A grey shape wreathed in green stays seated, alone. Daeron looks through him, expressionless. The melody gallops fiercely and stumbles, but Maglor raises his voice to cover the dropped notes. Daeron’s eyes dart over him.

Maglor hastens his song to its end, sending the dancers spinning, raising their laughter to a fever pitch. His hands are numb when he rests them on either side of the strings; he does not feel their last vibrations under the applause. His jaw aches from smiling. He stands, bows, and finds the swiftest way out of the hall.

*

The round Moon rises above the mountains of the east. The last time Daeron visited Eithel Ivrin, there were no long white beams painted between the shadows of trees. Ithil is too bright behind the pines that have climbed too quickly towards the sky. Yet the land is still familiar beneath Daeron's feet and he follows a steep hill down to a pool in the river.

He breathes deeply of the spray rising around a small fall of water. The enchantment here feels less potent than where the Esgalduin flows beneath the bridge of Menegroth, but it is more profound and more ancient. They say the springs of the Narog are protected by the Lord of Waters himself, and Daeron has come to listen to his Song. He sets aside his wreath of ferns, slips off his soft leather shoes, and shucks off his robe. His ankles and arms are bared to the cool night air. Seating himself on a round stone at the pool’s edge, he lets his feet fall into the water. Starlight shifts and twinkles as he moves them through it.

He asks the Lord of Waters for clarity. He and Mablung were sent to this feast with the Golodhrim to bring back messages from the lands and peoples beyond the Girdle. Even Thingol in his pride knows that Beleriand’s heart cannot forever be cut off from its limbs.

Daeron is here especially to observe the unfolding of history and learn the minds of its actors. But there is one mind now among them whose Song drowns out all others. While all danced and laughed about him, Daeron felt an empty space, one that has lain quietly within him for many years, opening again.

“I should have expected to find you here.”

The new presence does not unsettle him, although Daeron had not heard his approach. He finds it is as comforting as the water lapping around his feet.

Daeron greets the minstrel of the Golodhrim by his titles. Maglor’s smile is gracious but tired as he returns the courtesy. He sits on a rock at the opposite end of the pool with his legs folded in front of him, hands clasped around his knees. Somewhere on his way from the hall he has unburdened himself of the jewels that hung from his wrists and around his neck and released his hair of its silver twine. It falls over his shoulders in dark waves.

Although the words he wants to say are, ‘Why have you come here?’ and, ‘For what do you grieve?’, Daeron instead reaches across the gap between them with a compliment: “You played well tonight.”

Maglor grins and his eyes rove over the hillside. “You listened intently.”

There is suspicion written in the way Maglor rolls a thumb over the finger of his opposite hand. Daeron considers him: bright-eyed and as finely-formed as a statue, as they all are, but softer somehow, and more transparent. Perhaps that is why he limns his expressions with such hard lines and moves with such deliberate grace. Before he knew of him as their minstrel, Daeron had heard reports of him only as their king. One whose soul is so open should never have had to bear the burden of leading a people.

His round and curious eyes are looking into Daeron now, expectantly.

Daeron smiles. He could elaborate, expound upon his virtuosity and safely let the tiny spark of their conversation die out as if he had flicked it into the water below. But that yawning space inside him begs to be filled. So he says, “May I ask you something?”

Maglor raises his brows slightly and thin lines curl around his mouth. “Certainly.” He lifts the fingers of one hand in invitation.

“What troubles you?”

The warm expression fades. Maglor chews on his lip thoughtfully. “First you must tell me,” he shifts his gaze to Daeron, “do you ask me as an emissary or as a peer?”

“Neither,” Daeron replies. “Or rather, I do not ask as one who wants information. I ask out of concern. As one who wants to help.”

“You are awfully quick to offer your assistance.” Maglor’s laughter is an empty sound.

“And that surprises you. Because the king who sent me was not?”

Maglor frowns and sets his jaw. “That is not what I meant.”

“You were not here for the first wars of Beleriand.” Daeron meets the colourless light of Maglor’s eyes. “We were victorious, but it was dearly-bought. I understand why Thingol no longer shows the same warmth and compassion he showed us when Bauglir was yet confined in Balannor.”

A muscle ripples over Maglor’s cheek. “And yet we have a common enemy. What do you know of the woes that he brought upon us?”

“I know something of them.” A sense of duty tells Daeron it is not wise to confide in this prince of the Golodhrim. His instructions have always been to listen closely, remember clearly, and speak little. He rehearses and accompanies and improves upon others. It is a role that aligns well with his nature.

But tonight the Music of the Narog urges him to sing, so he says, “Though I serve him, my heart does not agree with my King in this.”

It never has. Not since he felt a wash of tears over his face, years ago, when he suddenly felt the pain of the Golodhrim as keenly as if it were his own. He has kept that pain to himself. Though he knows not whence it comes, his heart tells him that its exposure would be akin to tearing the dressing from raw wounds before the approach of the enemy.

Maglor studies him from across the pool. Webs of light reflected from the surface of the water dance over his throat. “Why do you not share the feelings of your king?” he asks with sincerity.

“I pity you.” A dissident compassion.

A sharp burst of laughter and a proud tilt of the chin and Maglor says, “I am sorry,” and draws himself back inside, “but your answer surprised me. What reason could you have to pity us? Look at us,” he sweeps an arm through the air before him, “we have fine clothes and adornments, wide realms and mighty towers, we are surrounded by friends and kin—”

“Yet you are troubled.”

Maglor’s gesticulating hand comes to rest slowly on his knee. “Yes,” he admits. “And is there not much to trouble us all?” He squints into the distance as if searching for something. “Though we may take delight in reuniting with long-sundered friends and drink deeply of the healing power of this place,” he mimics the words of King Fingolfin, “our hearts high and full of hope—” then stops himself short with a sharp breath in, swallowing the rest.

Daeron exhales. There is a long silence in which they simply watch one another, eyes roaming, tracing, and returning to the other’s face. Maglor looks down and tilts forward to drag a hand through the water. Daeron’s feet grow warm and a gentle tinkling like waves lapping over broken shells enters his mind – and Maglor’s, too, for he pulls his hand away with a short gasp, his gaze apprehensive when he lifts his head. He runs the hand through his hair, pulling it forward to obscure his face, and folds the arm around his knees again.

“Why do you pity us?” he asks at last.

Daeron said pity, but he should perhaps have called it love. He sighs and looks to the stars, trying to weave this feeling into words. “We are all Edhil and we can all hear one another’s Songs at times. But I can feel beats between Songs, the connections in the silences. I can feel the grief in your people's memory, and the longing.” Impressions of emotions that he has held in himself for so long. Now one sits before him who understands.

Daeron’s soul is spilling over. “I have never felt the connection between the Eruchîn so intensely as when your people arrived here.” But it was not his people, he realises. It was him.

Maglor looks away and kneads his palms and Daeron knows it means he should stop, but there is a racing rhapsody of sounds sliding over one another — plucked strings and vocal harmonies and frothing waves tearing at cliff sides — and the confessions tumble from his throat in the same moment as they are thought. “I can hear you, now.” His own voice is faint under the swell of Music when Maglor turns his eyes back to him. “But you cannot hear me. You cannot even hear yourself.”

The Music subsides, its last notes dropping into the water below them. Daeron brushes away the tears that cling to his lashes. He is relieved to see compassion among the emotions that flit across Maglor’s conflicted expression.

Maglor’s movements are cautious but deliberate as he unlaces his boots and pulls them off, setting them on the rock beside him. He lets his feet hang in the water and leans forward on his wrists, head bowed. For an instant, the whole place holds its breath.

“How did you know?” Wells of grey light peer up from under dark brows.

“The way you played tonight.” Daeron’s words are heavy on his tongue and he feels as if they might drag him down into the pool as they leave his mouth. “It seemed you were not there.”

Maglor blinks away a sheen of tears. “And you, minstrel of Doriath, want to help me hear it again?” He swallows. “Why?”

Words roll through Daeron’s mind in all the tongues he knows. Connection, learning, understanding, freedom, love. Language fails. “Because I want to know you. Because I was meant to.”

Harsh laughter is swallowed by the hillside. “Fate,” Maglor scoffs. “Do not talk to me of fate.” He pulls one foot from the pool and tucks it beneath the leg that still dangles over the rock. “Besides, I do not think you want to know me.”

“I already do,” Daeron confesses.

Folds of skin twitch beneath Maglor’s eyes; his pupils are wide and black.

Without asking for permission, Daeron begins to unthread the notes of Maglor’s Song as best he can, humming each as it comes free. It is nothing like the music in his mind, only a simple sequence of tiny vibrations sent through the air between them. Then one catches on an echo of some melody, and the breath in Daeron’s lungs shapes itself into words as it travels to his tongue. They are rich with the rolling vowels of the language of the Golodhrim. A lullaby.

Close your eyes, hína
Draw the covers, hína
Dreams collect in light wells deep
It’s time for sleep, hína.

Ripples reach across the pool in widening curves and break softly against the rock on which Maglor sits. He abruptly pulls his other foot from the water.

“How do you know that song?” he snaps. “That is a song of Valinor.”

The sharpness of Maglor’s voice melts by the time it reaches Daeron’s ears. “I suppose it is a song of Beleriand now.”

Maglor’s fear is concentrated in the tips of his fingers as he laces his boots with practised dexterity. He stands and pierces the mist rising from the pool with his gaze, the only movement the slight quiver of his mouth as he considers what to say. The mask of faultless beauty slips and well-worn creases appear on his face, criss-crossing his expression like the bars of a cage. There is nonetheless a startling symmetry to this bare beauty — art where before there was only artifice. His lips straighten and settle and Daeron knows he will say nothing. He turns his back and walks away with precise and rhythmic steps.

Daeron waits for the warmth brimming in his heart to drain and leave him empty once again, but the feeling of fullness remains constant. If anything, it only swells, spilling out through his pores and settling like dew on the verdant life that grows and breathes all around him.

*

Maglor has spent the night following the river up to the highest pools, deep in the shadows of Ered Wethrin. He discarded his boots some time ago so his feet could feel and grasp the ground beneath him. His robes he shed soon after, leaving them in a pile where he stopped to bathe. Now he wears only his loose tunic and trousers, rolled above the knees.

Here the river spills languidly from the side of the mountain and he can follow it no further. So he pauses and sets his hands, rimed with grime, on his hips. He tilts his gaze towards the sky. It is not from exertion that his heart hammers against his ribs as if trying to escape. Fear, then?

What does he have to fear?

A silvery, lilting voice fills his thoughts. ‘What troubles you?’

Such a simple question, and spoken with such sincerity. And there is no way in which he can answer truthfully. No way that can be put in words, at least. Perhaps if he could put it in music. In touch. It has been so long since he has touched another.

Maglor laughs aloud to himself and shakes his head. He recalls the ever-bright, ever-elegant features of the one he called his spouse contorted in anger and hatred; the memory of his³ lips as they shaped themselves around the words ‘betrayal’ and ‘murder’. Then Maglor’s lids pinch shut and he sees instead sensitive black eyes and the delicate curl of a pale mouth. ‘I pity you,’ it says. He allows his eyes to stay closed a moment longer. Those words should shame him, but their memory melts over him as warmly as if they had been an expression of love.

There is a rustle of leaves in the knotted oak behind him. Maglor starts and snaps his neck back. (What does he have to fear?) Gathering his breath, he lets his gaze drift through the layered branches set against the grey hues of morning. The blackbirds trill, the first to perceive the coming dawn even as Arien brushes against the eastern edges of the world.

Another sound floats down and washes over his face like a mist of warm rain: a flute, warbling in pure and unobtrusive harmony with the chorus of morning. Maglor tips his chin back down and dares not look for the player among the branches — as if on seeing him the song might end. He stands awhile, listening. Has he fallen into dreaming? He closes his eyes and smiles at the notion that comes to him then: to join his voice to Daeron’s music. If only reconciliation were as simple as two breaths joined. There would be no need for feasts such as these, for promises. For oaths.

Perhaps it is that simple. He looks up and almost at once lights upon the figure seated deep in the tangle of thick branches. Daeron leans against the tree’s trunk, one bare foot hanging down and the other bent and steepled on the branch. Long, elegant fingers move over his flute. Even so must the Firstborn have conversed with the forest as they made music guided only by the sounds of wind passing between leaves and water over stone.

How long has Daeron been there? How had he climbed to this place so quickly, and unseen? Maglor finds he does not care, for he is brimming with something pure and light and full. Perhaps it is the power of these waters, perhaps it is some ancient impulse, but a rush of syllables comes to him then, in the old language of the Quendi, and he raises his voice in song.

The flute skips a beat, the birds stop singing. But then they resume, clearer than before. The three songs braid themselves together. Like flower buds, sticky with life, the notes quiver before unfurling into fullness. Each new petal rests upon the last until heavy blossoms release bursts of colour and fragrance; even so does sound caress sound in the joining of their music. The dawn chorus has fallen silent and it is only them. As their Song closes, Arien is already pouring her fiery light over the western hills.

In years to come, neither will be able to say how they came together, but they awake in each other’s arms, damp with dew upon a bed of clover.

Chapter End Notes

¹Green-elves, plural.

²Beleriand (Quenya). Maglor’s use of Quenya names and Finrod’s use of Sindarin throughout this dialogue is quite intentional.

³The gender of Maglor's canonical spouse is never given. He is male in my headcanons. See this Tumblr post by arofili if you're curious.

"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song."
- Of the Sindar

They might have concluded their Song when they parted at Eithel Ivrin after many blissful nights of furtive trysts. They might have left it to thrum, untainted, in the stones and soil of that place. But there are letters, and poetry, and memories that do not fade. So they drift together at times in the empty, unclaimed spaces between realms, despite all that stands in the way of their love.

(There is a fence, of course, but there are also secrets; too many secrets. Maglor does not speak them, even for the sake of love, for to do so would be to fracture every other bond that ties him to this world.)

Daeron is standing barefoot on a mossy hillock, only a straight skirt tied around his waist. He looks out over the rolling landscape of Dor Dínen, holding a fingertip between his lips and gathering his brows.

“What are you thinking, meldanya?¹” Maglor rests his head against the tree that cradles him in its spreading roots.

“I was thinking of where I would go, if love and loyalty did not hold me here.”

Love and loyalty: two things that pull Maglor in so many different directions.

“And do you know?”

“I would go back, I think. Where our ancestors came from, into the East.”

Maglor hums, reminded of the gulf that stretches between them, even now when they are so close. It is not rivers and forests that he sees and hears in his dreams but the open expanse of the Sea and the endless push and pull of waves against the shore.

But those are dreams and this is now. He rises and goes to his lover, wraps his arms around him, and presses them to his chest where flowering vines have been painted under the skin.

“Where would you go," Daeron asks, "if your oath did not constrain you?”

He means the oath to avenge a father’s death. Pieces of the truth slip through the blurred spaces between them.

“Home.” A gap opens in Maglor's soul.

Daeron’s breathing stills. “Oh.”

Maglor knows what he is thinking: across the Sundering Seas. West, as far west as one can go. He cannot tell him how much more than duty and vengeance lie between him and that home, so he draws his hair aside to look at his face and says, “But I do not know where that is.”

Starlight shines in those deep eyes. Maglor kisses him to silence the lingering question on his lips; he tastes of clean, still water.

*

Time unravels when Maglor sinks into him. Daeron’s nails cling to the earth and it gives way like soft clay. He is seeking something solid, anything to keep him here, so that he might hold this forever in memory.

Maglor presses himself deeper and moans. The sound, full and fearless, travels down and through him, flooding him with his voice. Fingers clutch wrists and eyes lock onto eyes. Maglor’s hips rock over him and there is heat, so much heat, where their bodies move against each other, with each other, seeking that blissful place between friction and coalescence.

The Sun bears witness. A sheen of sweat blossoms over his lover’s skin. Strands escape that cascade of dark hair, pulled to one side, and cling to his face, his shoulders, to Daeron’s own shining arms. He frees himself from the grip on his wrists and lifts a hand to hold it against Maglor's chest, there above him. To feel the watery warmth of his skin and the drum of his heart, now, when flesh and soul are as close to being one as they will ever be.

The hand travels up, wraps behind his neck, and pulls him down where their gasping breaths meet. Lips chase lips, kisses caught between the steady pull and thrust of bodies chasing ecstasy. Voices strain, cries as the edge draws near – too near. Do not fall over yet, let it rise higher still.

Somewhere deep in the mountains of the East, there is a roaring fall of water that topples into a turquoise lake. Though neither has been there, they both see this now, in the moment when they shatter and dissolve into each other’s Songs.

To Maedhros Faenorion, Lord of Himring, dear cousin, from Finrod Arfinion, Lord of Dorthonion and Warden of Minas Tirith:²

Please accept my warmest greetings by way of my brothers to you and yours.

I write to inform you of a matter that concerns you closely. On our most recent visit to the Kingdom of Doriath, messengers arrived from the Havens with a report of the rumours that have been circulating, as you know, concerning our coming to Beleriand. It also came to my attention during this visit that only a short while before Queen Melian was informed of the death of our grandfather and the theft of your father’s jewels.

As is his rightful duty as king, Thingol questioned my brothers and me on these matters. Know that I was greatly troubled and loath to bring charges against you and the other princes of our people, knowing well what the resurgence of griefs now forgiven could mean for our bonds of kinship and our friendships with the Thindrim.³

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I inform you that the manner of our exile from Balannor was at the last revealed. King Thingol was at first wroth and I feared that we might face the renewal of conflict between the kindreds of the Elves. I believe the King’s decree to have been merciful in the end: he has commanded his own people not to speak the language of ours, and requested that Quenya not be spoken openly within the confines of his realm. Word of this pronouncement will no doubt reach your ears soon, which is why I have sent this letter in all haste.

I trust my brothers will be able to tell you more in private conversation. I regret that I was not able to come myself but I have gone as swiftly as I might to bear these same tidings to our King in Hithlum.

Your cousin by blood and in heart, Angolodh⁴

As if they are not his own, Maglor watches long white fingers slide the parchment, face down, across the table. He crosses his arms over his chest and pulls his legs closely around his chair.

He cannot be sure if he thinks or speaks aloud his thanks to his cousin for bringing the letter from Himring, but he is aware of the sharp light of Aegnor’s eyes as they flick up from across the room.

“The manner of our exile?” Maglor draws out the words and then presses them back with a thumb to his lips.

Aegnor inhales like one who is about to duck below water. His mouth opens.

Maglor stops him. “Do not worry, cousin. You have nothing to fear from me. So long as you hide nothing.”

“He was not told everything.” Aegnor runs his hands down his thighs and leans forward in his chair. “Alqualondë. The Doom.”

To evil end shall all things turn. Maglor winces. “And?”

“Losgar.” The crack of burning timber. Vengeful laughter.

There is a coil tightening around Maglor’s guts. There are words rising like bile in his throat; dreadful words that are ever-present, waiting only for the right moment to tighten their hold on him and strangle his will. All of their wills.

He swallows the words down. “The oath?”

“Only that one was sworn.”

Maglor nods. A hot tear spills over the rim of one eye. His relief is only a passing breath of air, though. For is it not only a matter of time before those words rise again to constrain them? To pull them away from all else they love in the single-minded pursuit of that irrevocable promise?

But they have just won a glorious victory. Perhaps there is still time for forgiveness before the weight of words bears down upon him. Some time for bliss before the end.

The report of bloodshed and treason echoed through the caves of Menegroth when the truth came free. A dam broke in Daeron’s mind then, carrying in its flood memories of bodies floating through water and burning ships.

Love has a way of mangling reason; of allowing false harmonies to ring true. So Daeron concluded, at least, when the tears were dry and all that remained were numb fingers and a broken voice.

The relentless years pass. Now and then a thought brushes against his mind with all the coarseness of heat-scorched blades of sedge bound tightly together. Daeron cuts them into pieces and tosses them back to the winds.

“Will you never forgive?” Lúthien once asked when his music faltered. (Only she had known, whose tiny brown hand had clutched his finger as he welcomed her to life. Only she would ever know.) It was near that place where he had bared himself time and again to one who kept so much behind a shroud. Perhaps he could have forgiven the rest, but not the lies. “No,” Daeron had said, turning back into the cradle of twining branches and soft ferns. “For I serve truth above all else.”

Then a letter comes from the North on falcon’s wings. The phrases ‘should have’ and ‘would have if’ do little to move Daeron’s heart, but he can feel the graceful sweep of the handwriting as if it were a finger trailing down his spine, held to his lips, gently opening him to receive the love commingled with those lines of ink.

Even the forest mocks him for his weakness then, so he retreats to the safety of Menegroth's womb, his hand balled tightly around his wooden flute.

Melian’s harp stands gleaming in its shallow pool. Her voice is in his mind as he walks towards it: ‘My child grieves for you, Esgallind, but I cannot help you if you will not reveal your heart to me. You must listen to your own Music.’ He stops in his approach. Does she mean for him to play that harp? No. He is Eruchên. Though he may hear it, it is not for him to touch the fabric of that Music.

He lifts his flute to his mouth with trembling fingers. His eyes fall shut. With each inhalation, he invites the Music to enter his lungs. A melody unfurls in the thin air of that domed hall. His fingers move according to the sequence of notes it sets in his soul. It is a quiet song, each note sliding into the next, gaining in momentum and beauty as it progresses but never peaking. Like a gentle stream, it drifts and bends around stones and mounds of earth, finding spaces to fill along the forest floor. The rich scent of wet leaves and humus wafts around him.

He is joined by the watery cascade of a glissando upon the harp. He gasps and his fingers fumble over the holes but there is no dissonance; the misplaced notes simply disappear. The harp’s clear music resounds against the ceiling. Daeron is afraid to open his eyes, for the warmth that pools inside him with each spill of sound presages what he might see there. So his memory would betray him even here, in the very heart of this fenced and guarded realm, in the presence of that holy instrument.

His eyes are open. There, upon the stool of the Queen, Maglor sits. His fingers, as solid and real as those that once deftly braided Daeron’s hair with vines, dance across the strings. The golden light still shines, even brighter than before. Daeron burns.

He shrouds himself in the blackness of his anger. “No,” he says. “It is not you. No Child of Eru can play upon that instrument, you least of all.”

Maglor does not look at him or say a word. He only smiles and plays on, one chord and then another. The light beaming between the strings refracts into dozens of varied and vibrant colours. His chords become a melody, the sound like water, but thicker. Blood coursing through the cavities of a beating heart.

A mournful scale rings through Daeron’s skull. He asks, “Why are you here?”

The next chords spill over him like a caress of warm wind; like silken skin brushing against his own. Daeron’s nails dig into his palms as he tightens his grip on his flute, as if he would strangle the music that invited this vision here to dislodge his reason.

“To ask for your forgiveness,” Maglor says, at last turning his eyes upon him.

Daeron’s anger is thawing in the heat of their soft light. His heart pounds against his ribs and he is pulled towards the figure seated at the harp. He forgets the apparition cannot be real, so like is this image to his lover, whose touch he suddenly remembers with all the intensity of the spring melt tumbling inexorably from mighty glaciers towards the Sea.

He is in the embrace of the apparition and it is not an apparition. Maglor is flesh and blood and his lips are on Daeron’s mouth, his breath is in his lungs, his hands cup the nape of his neck. The syllables of his golden voice flood his ears. He speaks of love and desire and fate.

Daeron lets the voice pour into every part of his being. It says, “Forgive me,” and the words echo up from the well of Daeron’s memory.

“Have I not already?” he replies, weeping through his laughter, for is he not even now folded together with him, lost in passion and yes, love, to the murderer of his own kin? “What is there to forgive?” he asks, and he remembers then how he once knelt upon a lake and shouted those words to the skies.

Though there are many leagues and even more lies between them, he has never felt as close to Maglor’s mind as he does now. “Tell me,” he says, his throat bared to those supple lips, “what more is there to forgive?”

“You do not want to know.” Maglor lowers them down gently and presses himself over him. Daeron sinks into the floor and it is not cold stone but warm, turquoise water that cradles their bodies on its glassy surface.

The beats of Daeron’s hitched breathing are an ode to the hazy glow of being so surrounded, so completely enveloped in touch. He cannot imagine ever being anywhere but here.

But he hears something in the moment of their union that bites at his skin like frost. His shivering turns from pleasure to fear as the syllables of Maglor’s Song grow dark and sinister.

‘Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself…’

The rhythm of their bodies intensifies. A cold wind whips through the space between them as Daeron arches away but the water tightens its hold on him. Umbar insa.

‘Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh….’

Feeling suddenly weightless, Daeron’s eyes fly open. The water has released him. He is sinking.

‘This swear we all: death we will deal him ere day's ending, woe unto World's end! Our word hear thou, Eru Ilúvatar!’

As Maglor’s body dissolves his voice grows stronger. The water turns black and a sheet of ice encroaches from its edges. Ambar-mettá. Ilúvatar.

‘To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.’⁵

He has heard those words before. Oiyámórenna.

There is a roar of shearing and shattering. Daeron shuts his eyes and a vision is plastered against the blood-dark backs of his lids: an enormous sheet of ice cracks at the edges. A piece as large as a mountain breaks off and smashes against the rough ocean.

Beauty and perfection fall apart.

He opens his lungs to scream and the water pours in. There is no sound. He is alone, falling through timeless darkness.

He emerges in the hall of Menegroth. Maglor stands beside the harp in robes of blue. Still golden, still gleaming.

Daeron confronts the illusion, speaking slowly. “It is not for me to forgive you. Leave.”

Music swells around them as the harp strings are plucked by unseen hands. It is clangorous, broken, but still Song. Colours collapse into each other and fade. A string snaps and strikes Daeron’s face but he does not flinch.

The vision of Maglor breathes yet, but the light in his eyes flickers and goes out. “Nonetheless, I am sorry. For all that is to come.”

The strings begin snapping rapidly, flying in all directions. From their broken ends spurt flecks of red. There is salt and iron in Daeron’s throat. Screams of the dying are amplified by vaulted ceilings.

The beating wings and shrieking cries of gulls over the roar of a burning city. The din of thousands of swords striking thousands of skulls. The earth breaking and heaving in great waves of solid rock.

Then a sucking breath of wind drains the hall of air and sound. A foam spray blows in through arched entrances. Larger droplets are suspended in looming silence until the dome of stars begins to rattle under the weight of enormous waves swelling and breaking against the land high above.

Daeron tries to speak but his voice is swallowed by the noise. He risks touching the apparition’s thoughts. ‘You do not belong here. You never should have returned.’

The tension is lost, the last string is loosed – ringing clearly but mournfully as it unravels. The harp is dull and grey.

Water pours down the stairs and gushes through cracks in the ceiling.

Beleriand is drowning.

‘We never should have left.’ And the Sea engulfs harper, harp, and sound at once.

Chapter End Notes

¹‘My love,’ Quenya.

²Arfinion, ‘son of Arfin.’ Arfin is given as the correct Sindarization of Arafinwë. In 'Shibboleth of Fëanor' (Peoples of Middle-earth), it is said that the Fin- prefix was added by Finrod only after Fingolfin’s death. ‘Lord of Dorthonion and Warden of Minas Tirith.’ Nargothrond was started in FA 52 and not completed until FA 102. I have decided that Finrod would not yet be calling himself King of Nargothrond in FA 67 (and definitely not in the context of this particular note). Minas Tirith, the tower on Tol Sirion, has recently been built.

³Sindar (in Sindarin), class plural.

⁴Sindarization of Ingoldo.

⁵From the text of the Oath of Fëanor in the The Annals of Aman, §134 in Morgoth’s Ring.

Song inspiration: Die Moldau, Remy van Kesteren with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (Night of the Proms, 2012).

Thanks to undercat for bringing my attention to the fact that there is no canonical evidence that Thingol learns the specifics of the Oath of Fëanor, which drove the direction of this climactic moment, and for bouncing ideas around in relation to this.

"And it is told that in that time Daeron the minstrel of Thingol strayed from the land, and was seen no more … But seeking for Lúthien in despair he wandered upon strange paths, and passing over the mountains he came into the East of Middle-earth, where for many ages he made lament beside dark waters for Lúthien, daughter of Thingol, most beautiful of all living things."
- 'Of Beren and Lúthien'

"And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea, and thereafter he wandered ever upon the shores, singing in pain and regret beside the waves … but he came never back among the people of the Elves."
- 'Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath'

Slow but relentless, the Sea presses itself between the peaks of the Ered Luin. A gash opens in the land as it rushes in, driving a gulf like a dagger into the east. The mountains tremble. From where he sits, clutching his knees to his chest in a cleft of the cliffs, Daeron watches enormous masses of rock break off and shatter as they strike the earth.

More than a century has passed of wandering in solitude on the eastern slopes of the mountains. The loss of Lúthien, in whose pure and perfect spirit he had poured all his hope, should have been the end. The beginning of something else. He meant to go further, as far east as he could go, but time and again he found himself ascending the mountain and gazing west over the expanse of his birthplace. Then the Sun would sink over the edge of the world and he would return to the shadows.

When Thingol’s spirit left his body and when Melian followed after him, Daeron felt it as a shearing pain. So the lungs and ribs over Beleriand’s heart were torn away, leaving it naked and gasping. He felt nothing but emptiness when Lúthien passed beyond the Circles of the World. Nothing still when at last the unfenced Doriath bled out, the last trickle of its lifeblood scattering over the ruined landscape. But still he clung to the promise of perfection as he clung to his music, waiting for a reason to hope, a resolution to the song.

Until now. The ground has stopped shaking and somehow he is still there, still weeping, still alone. As the gulf far below settles and laps against the new shore, he knows that he has ascended the mountain for the last time. It is too late. There is nothing left. There is no other way to go but east.

*

The Sun rises but Maglor cannot see it through the thick black clouds. It seems that the only light left in the world is the one now burning a hole through his hand. It seems the only sound left is the roar of waves. He is mute; his screams have been swallowed by the Sea.

He turns to face the looming mountains that mark the eastern edge of all he has ever known. Beyond them is a promise he once chased of unclouded stars and wide lands and freedom. No, not a promise – a fantasy. Let it remain so.

He turns north and there is a gulf. White ships are tossed on the waves like a flock of seabirds riding out a storm, trusting the tide to carry them into the safety of that haven. And so it does, bearing those on board to face the wreckage and rebuild with courage and nobility. To peel back their shame with humility and grace. He cannot go there. Not now. It is too late.

A whipping wind blows from the West. He turns towards it and draws in a breath. It stings his lungs. He would laugh, if he had the strength to do so. But he uses his last drop of vigour to raise his arm and cast the burning jewel into stinging wind, far over the roiling ocean. His voice returns with a crushing weight in the moment that the Silmaril's light is swallowed by the waves. He falls to his knees and he knows that his cry of spite, of pain, of regret is the first strain of a song that he will sing until the end of time.

He lets the salt waves wash over him until his clothes and hair cling to the shell that houses his sick and weary spirit. At last he rises and turns to follow the coast as far south as it will go.

"In the changes of the world the shapes of lands and of seas have been broken and remade; rivers have not kept their courses, neither have mountains remained steadfast; and to Cuiviénen there is no returning."
- Of the Coming of the Elves

The World folded in on itself. Mountain ranges burst from the Sea and extended their spines, belching fire, over the land. At first Maglor could do nothing but laugh. Then his song turned, as it often had in the passing years of that age, to a plea for forgiveness and release as the One poured rains upon the earth for days unreckonable.

So it was that after an age wandering the long strands and soaring cliffs along the fringes of Endórë, he was found on the shores of the changed World by Children of Men with shining eyes as dark as night and skin the colour of the soil they tilled, here where a river spills into the Sea. They welcomed him and for many lives of their people he repaid their love with songs. Songs for their children, songs for their departed, songs to remember their histories, and songs of hope for their futures. Maglor’s own Song rested for a while, a murmur far out to Sea beyond the mouths of the river.

But as the round World settles into its shape and seasons, the great river is changing its course and the rich brown earth is turning to dust. The Men are dwindling and moving on. With each who leaves, Maglor’s Song swells louder in his dreams. The endless push and pull of waves against the shore.

A young man comes to Maglor as he tends to a fire on the wind-lashed beach, a pack strapped to his back. He is the last of them to leave.

Standing in the dancing light of the flames he asks, “Where will you go, Wave Singer?”

Meeting his sensitive black eyes, Maglor’s mind traces a path through the wilderness of his memory to another face and another question: “Where would you go, if your oath did not constrain you?”

Now, as then, Maglor does not know. But he has spent many years singing the mired waters of his doubt into tales and he no longer offers impatient and uncertain answers, so he smiles and invites the man to sit with him. The answer will come. He takes up a rustic harp. He carved it himself of the wood native to this country and strung it with the guts of the sheep pastured here.

He sings a last song for the man.

The lush green hills, hína
Call you to go, hína
To find there another home
A place your own, hína.

That night, Maglor hears another voice out on the Sea. The ocean fills the expanse of his dreaming, but it is as still and quiet as a bay nestled between protective shores — save for a silver melody. The smooth plane of water is pulled back like a curtain over the land to reveal a bowl of caked and cracking silt. The melody drops and stretches on into lamentation, strained and weak.

Maglor’s own story tentatively unfolds between the strands of that music. He longs to make himself known to the other Song but it shifts and strays as if blind and deaf to him.

Somewhere between the desert of his dreaming and the wells of his memory, a voice says, “I would go back. Where our ancestors came from.” It is the voice of someone whose spirit Maglor believed long ago released and summoned West, far from where it longed to go. Maglor has heard that Helcar has drained into the Sea, and to the Waters of Awakening there is no returning. But it can be no other Song that is now carried on some trickle of moisture in the soil. Unconscious of its own need, it reaches out for relief.

As the Sun casts her heat over the sparse brushland, Maglor rises and follows the narrow course of the river inland, deep into the East.

Even when Daeron arrived, centuries ago, there was little left. As the Belain had drowned Beleriand, so they had drained the great inland sea in the East, leaving no more than a shrunken lake beneath the shadow of the mountains. Then the World bent, dragging the last of Nen Echui¹ over its curve and into the Sea. The Elves who refused the summons and for many ages roamed these shores have all but gone. They have followed the changing courses of the rivers, taking their ancient songs and stories with them.

Daeron sinks his fingernails into the emptied and drying lake bottom and shuts his eyes against the brightness of Anor. He curses the relentlessness of change. A vision presses in from the corners of his mind: glassy-blue ripples spreading out in perfect waves.

Jaw clamped, he spits between his teeth, “No!” The protest is enough to leave his weakened body gasping. He must be a sorry sight: torn and filthy linens over dull skin and matted hair, flattened and frail against the grey earth.

'You look like a painting,' says a voice, and Daeron laughs despite the burning tightness in his lungs.

The lake is gone, those stars are dimmed, that voice has fled its vessel and passed as far West as one can go. Why does the Music taunt him yet with visions of the World Unmarred?

“Let me go.” He pushes against his thought, straining to unbind himself from his body. The colours of his soul, green and silver, flicker against the backs of his eyelids.

There is a firm pressure against his back, pulling him away from the earth. The weight of his body gives way to the arm circling his waist and the hand cupping his head. A golden melody slips between the cracks of his wavering awareness. He senses shadows stretching above him as he is carried away from the heat and the light.

*

The branching yew extends over them like a blanket against the scorching Sun. Maglor sets Daeron down beside its trunk and murmurs a prayer to the tree to protect him. He follows the sound of a creek to its source. Returning with a filled skin, he pours the water between Daeron’s parched lips. He stirs but does not wake.

The Sun rolls over the curved firmament and Maglor lies on his back, hands folded over his stomach. Between the tiny gaps in the tree’s canopy, the sky turns a deeper blue. The air is still warm and humid here under the protection of the forest, but Maglor has used his cloak to cocoon Daeron’s sleeping form, curled up on his side with his back to Maglor.

In the comforting haze of dusk, the back of hand brushes against Maglor’s arm. The mud-caked pads of fingertips graze his skin and broken breaths punctuate the continuous flow of the evening’s music.

“You are there.” An affirmation that is yet trembling with disbelief. Daeron’s faint voice is nearly swallowed by the breeze but a quiet Song rises and twists around him.

“I am here,” Maglor says, tears brimming and trailing down the sides of his face in salty streaks. He lowers his hand into the narrow space between them and laces their fingers together.

Daeron’s breath hitches in his throat. “I have been taunted for so long by a vision like this. But there was water, and beauty...” He pauses and inhales deeply. “How did you know I was here? Did you see it also?”

Maglor wishes he could say he had, but until the last desperate strains had found their way towards the coastline, there had been nothing. He had not even thought to listen. He had nearly come too late.

“No,” he answers. “I thought you were gone until I heard you reaching. It was not long ago.”

“I am sorry.” Daeron tightens the grip on his hand. “I heard you. I should have followed. But how could I believe it when everything else had passed away, again and again? Even now…” He shifts against the ground. “Even now, if I turn, I fear you will not be there.”

“Do not look, then. I will still be here when you are ready.” Maglor unlaces their hands and rolls to one side, holding Daeron’s shrunken form close against him where he can feel the rise and fall of his breathing. He presses his lips to the tarnished silver of Daeron’s hair that even now smells of still, clean water.

They lie folded together into the depths of the night, not sleeping but exchanging strands of the stories that they have walked through alone. Maglor feels the pulse of a dark lake at the heart of an ancient forest and he pulls Daeron closer as a phrase of lamentation slips between them. From his own mind tales are drawn that Maglor long ago thought resolved. Loss upon loss that he had neatly folded into sequences of sound now unfurl before being stitched back together with fine silk threads of green and silver. A suture of forgiveness.

The shadows of other souls appear in their shared memories: the faces of Men and Elves, even the voices of trees and beasts and rivers, each offering consolation and succour. But all of them are strange, never quite able to reach across the gap in understanding, to pull back the protective shell of solitude. At last they envision the other’s face, soft and star-lit and dappled bright and dark with the reflection of an unseen pool below. The stream of thoughts slows to a gentle trickle.

“Would you sing?” With Daeron’s question, they are back under the branches of a yew on the banks of a lake that is no more, that was before that the eastern reach of a great inland sea now turned to desert.

“Of course.” Even with Daeron’s Song spread across his mind, it has been so long since Maglor has heard the Music of the Firstborn that it takes a moment before the words come to him.

Hína, Eruhína
The singing waves, hína
Call you to wake, hína
To walk upon paths unknown
Go not alone, hína.

The final notes drift up into the indigo and Daeron at last turns towards him, resting his head on one hand and using the other to brush, feather-light, over Maglor’s cheekbone. Their eyes retrace the lines of faces that for so long have existed only in memory.

The faint curve of a smile touches Daeron’s expression. “You make it sound beautiful. The unknown.” His sigh warms the exposed skin on Maglor’s neck. “But to live it, endlessly? To be woven into the Music of a Marred World? In that there is only despair.”

The smile falls and Daeron lifts himself to lean against the tree's trunk. He picks up the waterskin and stares contemplatively into its open mouth before taking a sip.

Maglor pulls himself back to sit beside him. “I do not think there is despair in not knowing.” He leans on his hands, eyes piercing the night as he looks out over the parched basin. It is strewn with dark patches where strange weeds have taken root. The spirit of the place washes over him and suddenly he is seeing the world through a sheet of water as clear and smooth as glass. A vision surfaces of Daeron seated on the banks of this lake playing upon his wooden flute.

“For how many years," he asks, "have we two listened for the echoes of the Music of Creation in the oceans and lakes and rivers? And yet we will never be sated. Like the water in which they say it lives, the Song does not rest but ever moves and changes. It cannot be known. It is the same for all who call Arda home, whether Elf or Man or any other creature that lives. Even, I think, for the Ainur. It may pool in a great lake for an age and then pour down into the Sea in another. It fills whatever spaces it can and flows by whatever paths most easily open before it.”

Moonlight paints a white line down Daeron’s neck as it turns towards him. “You do not believe then that all was sung to completion before Time?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I have given up on the desire to know.”

Daeron’s brows gather, deepening the shadows around his eyes. There is fear wrapping dark tendrils around him, a discordant Song rising. “How can you say that when you fixed your doom to the name of Eru himself? To the everlasting darkness.”

Maglor draws his knees to his chest. He yearns to reach past the fear, to touch and be touched by the person behind the discord, but he finds patience in that glassy flow of water.

“If our deed faileth.” Snatches of words that once held his soul thrall now feel light and ineffectual on his tongue. “Did I not fail?”

Above them, a pair of nightingales chatter and trill to one another and they both listen awhile.

Daeron takes another sip from the waterskin and passes it to Maglor. Only the tips of their fingers touch as he takes it.

“Do you believe you have been released, then," Daeron whispers, as if afraid of the answer, "from the oath you swore? That your doom has been lifted?”

“Released, lifted,” Maglor says, “or never truly laid down.”

He does not know, perhaps will never know; but as his lamentation has turned to acceptance and finally to faint hope over the years, he has allowed himself to wonder. He has asked again the questions that he had let drown in his weariness, when it was still two against the world, in those desperate, final years of a desperate age before he was left utterly alone. He has wondered and doubted and hoped, in the confusion of his loneliness, but not until now has he found courage to again share those thoughts with another.

A tautness that Maglor had not perceived before, like a string seldom plucked but out of tune, snaps in the space between them. What follows is not the gaping, empty silence that Maglor knows so well. It is a potent and comforting quiet, like silence after rains when all things that grow, their roots spread out beneath the earth, drink deeply of their sustenance.

“It is I who failed.” Daeron has barely finished the words before he folds over with a slow and heavy inhalation. He catches his face in his palms, muttering, “I failed to trust. I failed to hope.”

No hesitation remains as Maglor wraps him in his arms. Daeron sinks further into his touch as each wave of truth washes over him and spills forth as tears. There is no soaring crescendo of Song when they melt together now, as there had been long ago at the feet of another mountain range beside a rushing spring. But there is love, expansive and open.

At last Daeron lifts his head. The edges of his profile seem to have sharpened, white against the night and beautiful.

He says, “I have fought against the changes of the World all my life,” and turns to search Maglor’s eyes for confirmation. The tears shine on his face, even here in the shadow of the tree, as if with their own light. Maglor leans forward, brushing their cheeks against each other.

Daeron’s fingers are pressing into Maglor’s back and he continues to speak softly beside his ear. “I hear Music and I am guided by it to the point of falling deaf to its subtle shifts and changes. Then I break against a sudden cacophony of disorder and there is nothing to keep me afloat in that desert of silence.”

“I know,” is all Maglor can say, holding Daeron together as his spirit shivers, feverish with the ache of thousands of years of conviction unravelling.

The puffs of Daeron’s breathing become steady and cool against Maglor’s neck. “Will you sail West then?" he asks, his grip loosening almost imperceptibly. "To your home?”

Maglor draws back, gently moulding his hands to the contours of Daeron’s face as he says, “I find that is the one place that I have no desire to go.”

There is a weight to their joined breaths that pulls Maglor forward to close the space between their lips. The kiss is lingering and warm, like a palm cupped around the slow flame of a candle to shield it from the wind. He knows then that he will never again cross the Sundering Seas.

When they pull apart, there are bright rivulets of tears clinging to the rims of Daeron’s eyes. “Where will you go then, if not West? There is no place left for us in Ennor.”

“No.” The long vowel passes through Maglor’s mouth like a song from somewhere else. “We are the World and we are bound to it. There will always be a place for us wherever we go within it. All of Arda is home to us.” The words are his and yet not his: a certainty that has lain dormant since the day his particular spark of life was ignited from nothing.

Slowly, his arms fall away. He sits back to let the fullness of his heart swell with a longing to see and experience everything. He hears countless Songs unfolding at once: the songs of every stone, every tree, every shore, every river. A surge of joy pulls at the corners of his mouth and he turns to Daeron with a grin so wide it hurts. He laughs, imagining the strangeness of the sight, but there is bright starlight deep in the wells of Daeron’s eyes and though he does not laugh he is smiling, too.

Maglor’s laughter settles inside him like a warm, sweet tonic. “Now,” he says, “will you wander the World with me? Or will I have to carry you still?”

Daeron does laugh then. It is quiet but clear and fearless. Maglor thinks it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.

“Yes,” Daeron says. “You will never again walk alone, meleth-nín.² ”

Chapter End Notes

¹Waters of Awakening (Cuiviénen in Sindarin).

²‘My love,’ Sindarin.

Album inspiration: Places I May Have Visited, People I May Have Met, Pt. 3, Remy van Kesteren (EP, 2022).

Slabs of mottled grey and brown soar upwards from a ravine. Slender, intrepid trunks jut out from shelves where the cliffs have slipped or cracked under their own weight. Below, a roaring smear of silver-blue rolls onwards, tossing up a fine mist.

Along one ridge, two elves follow the course of the river up into the mountains. They walk with assured and light steps, their bare feet shaping themselves to the shifting and changing terrain. As they walk, they sing. Sometimes one to the other, sometimes together, always in harmony with the river.

The Sun shoots spears of white across the horizon before sinking behind jagged mountain peaks. From behind the curve of the World, she throws her light up against the scattered clouds, painting swatches of peach and saffron against the deepening blue.

The two travellers seek out a patch of earth on which to make their bed.

One, silver-haired, sets his hand against a trunk wrapped in rough bark. He tilts his chin towards the crown of the straight, tall tree.

"This is it," he says to his companion, dark-haired, who draws up behind him and begins to follow his gaze upward. He is stayed on his journey by a hand cupped gently around his cheek and black eyes locking onto his pale grey. "Home," says the silver-haired elf. "For tonight."

Their lips caress each other's skin with as much tenderness and curiosity as their feet tread over the earth. Surrendering the weight of their bodies to that ancient tree, they kiss as if forever stretches out before them.

Chapter End Notes

Acknowledgements
Melesta, firstamazon (Ettelene), cuarthol: I do not exaggerate when I say this fic would not have been finished without your constant support and feedback. Thank you for many hours of brainstorming, reading, and encouraging, and for unquantifiable amounts of compassion and patience. PLEC 💧. Thank you also to Aipilosse for providing feedback and help with the ending. Thanks to the artist of the original piece for creating such an evocative image, for some insightful and helpful initial brainstorming, and for throwing some really intriguing and challenging ideas at me that encouraged me to go with my ambitious concept. The art and the prompts that accompanied it were absolutely fundamental in formulating this fic's direction, style, mood, and characterisations. And, finally, thank you to the TRSB Mods for organising and helping me navigate this event!

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