Sparks by Independence1776

Golden Dreams in Golden Days

Narmincë and her sister talk about Narmincë's plans to study astronomy in the Years of the Trees. Rated General.

Many thanks to Pandemonium_213 for confirming I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree in my interpretations. This was originally written for B2MeM 2012.

In a nutshell, RAFA has always used the ideas set forth in “Myths Transformed.” I cannot, in a ‘verse that deals explicitly with modern-day Earth, ignore science. MT allows me that leeway. (For those who are unfamiliar with MT: the Earth is always round, the Trees were formed from the sun and the moon and not vice versa, and Varda makes a dome of stars over Aman in order to preserve the uncorrupted light solely in Valinor. The dome is removed after the Darkening.) I all but stated my usage of MT in RAFA when I said that Tolkien’s Silmarillion is inaccurate regarding the creation myths. This story simply makes it explicit.

My older sister stepped onto the old, gray, wooden dock, and it shook beneath her feet as she walked toward me. I sat up and twisted to dangle my bare feet over the edge, waves tickling my soles and occasionally splashing the hems of my brown trousers. “What is it?”

Meldë sat down beside me, arranged her dark red skirts so they didn’t get wet, and stared out over the water, to the inlet’s outlet to the sea. “Are you sure you want this, Narmincë?”

I glanced at her. “Why?”

“Because you can’t see the stars in Tirion, and you’re going there to learn about them?”

I looked at the golden light dancing on the waves. The light from the Trees was dimmer here, blocked by the Pelóri, and when Telperion bloomed, his silver light wasn’t strong enough to drown all the stars out. But it wasn’t enough for me. “Even Alqualondë doesn’t have an astronomy program at their university. It’s all agriculture and ocean currents and fish.”

“Tirion is mostly stone, architecture, and sculpture.”

“But it has astronomy. I’ll return home at the start of Yávië, for three weeks.”

“And then you’re off to Tol Eressëa and points far north of Alqualondë for half the year, with only your classmates and teachers for company.”

“That’s the only way to study the stars. We need the dark to see them well.”

“They aren’t proper stars, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Varda made her dome in exact replica of the night sky, and we have been assured that our observations are accurate. If need be, if we truly wish to, we can sail east, out of her dome, to make them. But no one has. What’s the point, when we know they’re correct?”

“The point… The point is…” She sighed. “Mother is concerned you’re too busy watching the sky to notice anyone down here.”

I lay back on the dock. Of course the conversation would eventually get around to this. Neither Mother nor Meldë really understood. “I know you’re happy you married right after you became an adult, but I don’t want to do that.”

“Too worried that finding a man tolerant of your interests in math and science will be like finding a needle in a haystack?”

I snorted. “I’m just not looking. You of all people should know I’m not interested in the so-called feminine pursuits. I want a career, and to do what makes me happy.”

“Even though it means learning to make your own telescope, down to grinding your own lenses?”

I ran my fingers along the dock’s weather-worn wood. “You’ve seen the one I put together from a kit. But to craft one that does more than resolve objects to three times what I can see unaided? I’m ecstatic! There is so much we don’t know, so much the Valar won’t tell us.”

“Maybe for good reason.”

I narrowed my eyes at my sister’s golden hair cascading down her back. “How could knowledge be bad? We’re part of Eä, Meldë. I don’t want to ignore it just because we live in Aman, in peace and in safety, where such knowledge is of little benefit. And there’s just something about the stars…”

Meldë laughed. “You and your dreams.” She lay down beside me. “Someone in this family needs to be less pragmatic. Never stop dreaming, Narmincë.”

I smiled and met her eyes. “I won’t.”