The Feast of Reuniting by oshun

Chapter 1

Written in fulfillment of the prompt: start a story with Charles Dickens' opening line from A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. Never since they had left Valinor had Maglor noticed among his people a greater hope for good things to follow. That hope flowed thick and heavy in the veins of the Noldor at the end of the Feast of Reuniting. It was Maglor who took upon himself the task to sing of those events. He would record for generations to come that hope, as well as the fears and triumphs of those days.

The Noldor were never a malleable or sentimental people. True they had lived soft in Aman and accepted the protection and the schooling of the Valar like housebroken pups for the long part of an Age until they could take the chafing no longer. Their breaking free and the Valar’s revocation of their privileges as cosseted pets had not weakened them. The threats that had been made against them forced them to stand up straight and tall, caused each of them to metaphorically throw his shoulders back and grasp his sword's hilt in an artist’s hand, but the hand of a craftsman is calloused and strong.

He would remember to include all of that in his music. There would be need to sing of the sadness and regret, but the bliss would have to be told as well. And this convocation in the wilderness amongst the pools of crystalline water, in this place of haunting and haunted beauty, of still lakes and rushing falls, would stand matchless in the catalog of those moments of joy. But, always behind the hope lay the memory of Namo’s curse and the realization ever clearer with each passing year that they were here to stay. The cost would be inestimable. He did not need the vengeful words of the Doom of Mandos to tell him that. To build, to organize, to defend, and eventually to overcome, those were their goals.

That last night of the formal gathering at the pools of Ivrin Maglor lifted his lap harp into his arms. He let ring a single shining chord and smiled before he began to sing. Daeron met his ardent gaze with glistening eyes and smiled back before joining his voice with that of Maglor.