Echo of the Music by StarSpray

Echo of the Music

Most of the tapestries Melian wove depicted scenes, or figures. Here was Varda flinging stars into the sky, picked out in bright silver thread amid many hues of dark blue and black. Here was Yavanna towering over the forests of Aman as a great tree, her branches spread out in an almost protective gesture, shimmering with hundreds of tiny emeralds woven into the tapestry. Here was Aulë at work in his forges, using the fires of the earth itself to heat his creations, woven with the brightest shades that could be dyed in Doriath. Here was Manwë sitting atop Taniquetil with eagles circling him, cooler tones prevailing, and the whole scene coming alive with the winds if the tapestry were disturbed into rippling. 

Yet this newest one was different. Elu saw that immediately upon walking into the room. Melian’s hands moved swiftly across the the tapestry, woven in brilliant colors and shapes, picking out new details and marvelous things in clever embroidery, her silver needles flashing in the lamplight. She sang as she worked. He sat beside her and waited until the song was done. When it was finished she turned to smile at him, though her hands never ceased their work. “What is this you are making?” he asked, tilting his head toward the tapestry. “I do not recognize any of it.”

She laughed. “Do you not?” she said. “We are living inside of it even now! But no—it is difficult to make this memory into something you Children can see and understand. For there was nothing to see, not with eyes as you have them. There was much to hear, though, even for one of you Children, and you can hear echoes of it still in the waters of the rivers of this land, or of the Sea.”

Elu understood. “The Music,” he said. “The Song that was sung in the time before Time, from which the world was made.”

“Yes. I cannot weave music into my tapestries, alas, but I hope something of the host of us, the children of our Father’s first thoughts, can be understood.” Melian ran her fingertips lightly over the center, a figure of brilliant whites and golds and silvers, a figure of fire and light. “Do not judge it too harshly yet, my love, for I am not finished.”

“I would never.” Elu leaned forward to kiss her. “When it is finished, it shall hang in a place of honor in our greatest hall.” 

When he left the workroom Melian was singing again, her voice sweet as a nightingale, and seeming to be present there in that room but also coming from somewhere far away and long ago, singing the same lilting, haunting song that could at times be heard in the rushing waters of the Esgalduin before their gates.