Bearer of Chiaroscuro by AdmirableMonster

anfauglith: splendor lost

He sheltered in the green grass of a vast mound.  The restless spirits of Men and Orcs muttered beneath it, trapped and mired in grief and held here by a memory of death as strong as a quagmire.  They whispered their own memories, over and over again, and Mairon could not but listen.

They were just Men and Orcs, he told himself, but he could not push away the memory of his joy when the first Orcs awoke.  He could not push away the thoughts of their gratitude, their love.  He had not been, then, what he was now, he thought.  But that young Maia was long gone.  He himself had seen to that.  (And Melkor?  The glory of his icy majesty all turned inward, all turned dark, like a forest through which a fire had raged that, instead of growing taller and greener in its wake, belched up black ooze and remained blasted and dead.)

The small souls shifted uneasily, and Mairon whimpered.  One of the ghosts stirred at the sound, a Woman.  Her form rose, almost lifelife, from amid the bones and long green grass, and she reached out a smokey hand towards him.

The touch of her fingers was cold, but Mairon was too exhausted to do much more than lean away from her.  Hush, little ones, she whispered.  Let me sing you the lullaby I sang to my own son.

Mairon stared at her.  She had been a beautiful, in life.  Now, in the way of some restless ghosts, the bones of her skull were visible beneath the misty outlines of her face, and her eyes were hollow.  But he had experience with such creatures, and she did not appear to offer harm to him or to the crying little ones.

“Sing then,” he told her hoarsely.

Her voice was a plangent whisper in the world, but to Mairon’s eäla and to the two unready souls within it, it was strong and sweet.

A bird beneath the bluest sky

Dancing on the wind

Met the Sun’s child climbing high

And pinned her heart to his.

They danced in hidden valleys

They sang by secret streams

Till midnight past they dallied

And parted sweet and sad.

From bluebird’s sunny marriage

A ray of sun was born

He took a moonlit carriage

And wandered to the sky.

There might have been more verses, but Mairon was exhausted, and the song was oddly soothing.  He fell asleep in the soft grass and never saw the ghostly woman vanish.