To Aman from Ard-Galen by Lferion

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To Aman from Ard-Galen

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Calm before the Storm (Ard-Galen | Anfauglith)

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O Green were the grasses, bright was the sky
On wide Ard-Galen, before flames did fly
On Ard-Galen rich, where princes did chase
Fell foes and friendship, ere fire did race

Mourn Ard-Galen, now ashes and dust
Mourn broken leaguer, in which we did trust
Mourn fallen kinsfolk, gold turned to rust

After the firestorm, friends were no more
Fallen to dragon-fire, foes by the score
Burnt were the grasses, the meres and the meads
No more would princes ride forth on swift steeds

Watch smiths preparing, scouring rust
Watch war-folk gather, reforging trust
Watch close Anfauglith, ashes and dust

 

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Working together of Necessity (Mithrim)

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Strife did not always mark Mithrim's settlements. The Northern Sindar that lived there got along very well in their various domiciles, with the exiled Noldor, with Cirdan's Falathrim. If they were cool to the (exceedingly rare) messangers from Thingol, they had reason, but did not take it out on individual Doriathrim. Nor did the long and bitter fight against Angband count as strife, for Noldor and Sindar alike -- that required everyone to work together for the survival of all. The early years of the Noldorin fortress-towns had seen strife, but even that had been settled with sacrifice and valiant alliance.

 

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A Productive Alliance (Hithlum)

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Hithlum remembers. Remembers sheltering Elves of many kindreds, some going West, some deciding to stay rather than leave, then those who returned from the West, those who sailed, those who traversed the Ice. Remembers Men of several tribes, villages springing up, and children, always children. Elven children also, but far fewer. Elves, Men, Dwarves on occasion, sometimes spirits of stream and tree, rock and kelvar-kind, working together, fighting the creatures of the Black Foe side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They did not often live together, but near enough for common defence, shared labor, celebration, grief. Stronger together than apart.

 

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Something has been forgotten (Losgar)

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Once, Losgar had been only a storm-battered beach, rocks pummeled by waves under distant stars, before sea-harried ships landed, unloaded, unsteady on the sand, and conflagration had turned them to ash and smoke and a beacon of desperate measures. The songs do not sing of arrival, of the relief of land, steady underfoot. No, they sing of wind and wave, smoke-dimmed stars, rage and flame and destruction. Yet the stones remember, that bore witness. The land does not forget, though it be rent asunder, drowned, bent and formed anew, and those who know to listen may yet hear the whole.

 

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The Rising of the Sun (Lammoth)

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The stones of Lammoth remember battle and the tread of weary, ice-bitten feet, the slide of runners and then the rumble of wheels. The thud and trample of the creatures of the Foe. (Few indeed are the places in Ennor that have not known those feet, just as few have not been watered with black blood and red.) But Lammoth also holds the memory of the first Moonrise, silvery and cool, followed by the glory of the sun, rising first in the West, a wheel, a chariot, a fiery blaze, limning everything in light, sending the foe-creatures fleeing in fear.

 

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Setting out on a Journey (Helcaraxë)

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The Ice was a journey, a travail of endurance, often bleak, sometimes astonishingly beautiful. Ice-pellet wisps like snow, scurrying over polished, glassy shapes, black mirrors reflecting Varda's stars; cold overhead, frozen underfoot. One foot after another, testing, trying, finally settling firm, pulling the sledges, scouting the way. Hair braided over ears, anchoring head-wraps, breathing into one's face-wrap, conserving warmth, out through the mouth, in through the nose. Careful. Care-full. Watching out for each other, for the Ice will not have a care for you, not like ... other waters, other places, other journeys. An alchemy of sublimation, transformation, an unknown destination.

 

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What happens after one dies (Mandos)

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The Halls do not remember --
Notional stone, conceptional clay
The thought of rooms, of doors, floors, ceilings
Hold fëar
The fëa remembers, not the walls

Oh, Doomsman, Weaver,
Lady of Sorrow, the Lord of Dreams
Hold perception, memory, knowing,
Future, past, the myriad present
Outside the ken of Speaking Peoples

Fëa are memory, experience, thought, emotion
Unmediated by hröa, untethered, unbodied
No hands to Make
Only will to grieve, introspect, repent, heal
In company, alone

No prison, though holding fast
To wait in liminal domain, unphysical
Pitiless surcease
Remembered screams are no less real
The Halls are silent, not unkind

 

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Dream of a far away place (Aman)

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What should those Returned, waking in Aman now dream but of far Ennor, Beleriand, the land of sunrise, the world of Men and Dwarves, Ents and Periannath. Mayhap they dream of sailing beneath the waves, above the clouds, pushing at the edges, pent again, once more over-watched -- or so it feels, for some, standing small in the shadow of the impossible Pelori, at the edge of Ekkaia, Belegaer, impossibly wide, no other land to find, unless the Gates of Morning or the Doors of Night are places one might go. What next? Where now? How long?

Until the Second Music.

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