A Breath of Memory by polutropos

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Chapter 1

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One often lost count of the passage of days on Tol Eressëa, but Pengolodh deemed it had been at least several weeks since the most recent ship had docked. He had watched it arrive just as the last rays of Anar cast a wash of colour on the wispy ceiling of cloud that rested always over the Straight Road. He went down to the harbour at Avallóne to greet every ship, for with each one more knowledge came from Endor into the West.

This ship had brought a traveller he had not ever hoped to meet again. Pengolodh had seen Daeron of Doriath once only, at the Feast of Reuniting, when he was still a child standing only as high as his mother’s waist. But he still remembered clearly the enchantment of his piping, the images and sounds of great forests, roaring waterfalls, and the piercing brightness of stars against an indigo sky. When Pengolodh left Middle-earth, no one had seen or heard word of Daeron for many ages and he was thought lost. So when he disembarked from the ship, there were glances and murmurs between those old enough to recognise him. He carried himself humbly, half-shrouded under the hood of a green cloak and not meeting anyone’s eyes as he made his way into the city.

It was rare now to see an Elf of the Elder Days disembarking, and there was some quality to the Úmanyar who had lived for centuries under undimmed starlight that Pengolodh found even more rare and captivating than the Tree-lit eyes of the Calaquendi of old. Pengolodh knew simply from seeing him pass by that Daeron possessed that quality.

He felt as much like a child now as he had at Mereth Aderthad, seeking out the home where Daeron was currently living in a remote village of Eressëa on the western cliffs. The cottage had a pear orchard and a creek running through it, a portion of which had been shaped with earth and rock to create a gentle cascade of water. Daeron was kneeling by it, holding a hand in the water and watching.

Pengolodh approached quietly. “Master Daeron,” he said, and the minstrel looked up at him. “I am Pengolodh, a historian. I hope you do not mind my intrusion, but I have been eager to meet you since your arrival. I did not think–”

“That I lived?” Removing his hand from the water, Daeron smiled with starlight in his eyes and slowly rose. “I have read your histories, Pengolodh. Those you wrote in Middle-earth, that is.”

“You have?” Pengolodh pursed his lips to hold back a smile, but he could tell by Daeron’s amused expression that he had not managed to mask his delight at being known by the greatest minstrel (in Pengolodh’s estimation) of the Eldar.

“Yes, of course," Daeron said. "I missed most of the Second Age in that part of the world, and after enduring a dozen young loremasters asking, ‘Oh, you had not heard?’ with awe-struck bemusement, I grew tired of thus humbling myself. Your writings were most helpful in filling in the gaps. And enjoyable, of course,” he added, reassuringly.

“If you find me tiring, Master Daeron, I will–”

“No, no – and you need not call me Master. That was my title in a kingdom that is sunk beneath the sea. I am sure you will not tire me. You are not so young yourself. Were you not at Mereth Aderthad?”

Pengolodh felt his mouth fall open. “Yes. I was. But how…?”

“Have the Eldar of Aman grown so accustomed to ease and timelessness that they do not keep their memories as we did in Endor?” Daeron laughed lightly, but even the three short notes of that laughter were music. “You do not remember how you tugged at my robes, inviting me to offer my opinion on a song you had written? I believe it was about the varieties of shellfish that lived on the cliffsides of Vinyamar.”

“That was…” Pengolodh shifted on his feet. “That was presumptuous of me.”

“Not at all. It was the makings of a great storyteller and scholar. Do you think I did not seek the approval of Melian with as much eagerness? And I was well into adulthood when she walked out of Nan Elmoth.” For a fleeting moment, Daeron’s expression seemed to stray somewhere outside of time. “But come,” he said, touching a hand to Pengolodh’s arm, “I have heard enough of what this creek has to tell me today, let us go around the back where we can hear the ocean better. Take a pear, if you like.” He plucked one from a branch as he walked towards the cottage.

*

They spoke for a long while in the garden overlooking the sea. Daeron’s sister brought them tea made from fresh herbs. The cottage was her home. She had been born in Alqualondë but had moved to Eressëa after her parents fell in the kinslaying, hopeful for the arrival of a brother who had chosen to remain behind many ages ago. She also brought out a wooden flute, which had sat at Daeron's side idle and untouched through their conversation, though Pengolodh had the strange feeling that the instrument was somehow present with them, listening.

Daeron graciously indulged Pengolodh’s curiosity about his time in the East, how it was he returned to the West in the Third Age, and why he had at last chosen to sail.

“So you see,” Daeron said when the tale was done, “it was more than ‘making lament beside dark waters’, do you not think?”

Pengolodh, who had until now fallen into a state of comfortable ease, shifted in his seat. “That was–”

“Poetic,” Daeron finished. “I suppose it’s true.”

“What is true?”

“The annotation you made on it. That her memory was preserved in my music.”*

It was the first time either had mentioned Lúthien.

“I had not thought of it that way before I read your writings,” he continued. “It inspired me to put more of her into my music, you know.” His fingers brushed lightly over the flute, touching it for the first time since it had been brought out, and there was no doubt in Pengolodh’s mind now that some other presence had joined them.

“Would you like to see her dance?” Daeron's dark eyes slid from the flute to Pengolodh, who was once again struck dumb with wonder at the ancient Elf.

“To see Lúthien?” Pengolodh said after a pause. “It would be a privilege unimagined. But not if… if the memory is…”

“Too painful?” Daeron said, completeing his sentence once again. For one who had lived so long, he was strangely quick, almost impatient – but his way of speaking was always kind, and Pengolodh could not deny he appreciated the help. He was not often so lost for words.

“How can that be?” Daeron asked. “I have been told there is no pain in Aman.” He picked up the flute and grinned, the first time he had smiled so freely since Pengolodh had arrived. “But that is not true, of course. We are Eldar, grief and regret are, if not from the moment of our creation, at least by now inextricable elements of our fëar, are they not?”

Pengolodh could not help but laugh softly behind curling lips. Daeron lifted the flute to his mouth.

The tips of his fingers settle on my body. Warm, gentle, certain, and familiar. The life of the tree from which I was made thrums faintly in my fibres, always, but they awaken to song when he lends his breath to me. So he does now, a steady wind blowing softly through me. I strain to find my voice, and he coaxes it from me with assured touches in those places where my body lies open. I cannot hear the music we make, but I know its vibrations as well as I know my own fibres. I know it is beautiful.

He is breathing his memory into me now. Starlight, blue, shining feet grazing white petals. A woman, dancing. She spins, leaving eddies of light in her wake, and leaps, summoning a chorus of nightingales that flit about her. She lands, weightless on the grassy sward, and leaps again, higher, and all around the buds of roses burst open and release their heady scent. Spins, leaps, now faster, now slower, never tiring. I feel through his fingertips the memory of a fire, a fire that was in her, a flame that burned before Time. The heat rises, she dances, I fear that I will burn if he sings this theme through me much longer.

Then it ends, sweetly, and I am cooled by the memory of dew, of rain, of mist rising from a black lake. She is still dancing, far off, fading, until she too becomes mist and disappears.

When Daeron drew the instrument down, Pengolodh’s cheeks were wet with tears.

“I did not know,” he said. “No song or poem could ever capture the beauty of that dance as you have.”

“And that was only a memory,” Daeron said. “There is no music that could bring her back, not even mine.”

There were no tears in the minstrel’s eyes, at which Pengolodh wondered, but he trembled slightly as he set the flute down across his lap and folded his hands over it. He breathed out slowly, and there was a hum, a single note faint but pure, as if the instrument sighed with him.

After a long silence, he turned to Pengolodh and asked, “Will you be able to write of this? What you saw?” There was a quiet hopefulness in his voice.

Pengolodh reached across the space between them to clasp his arm. “I believe I can. I will try.”

“Thank you,” Daeron said. “Because I could not.”

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Chapter End Notes

* "made lament beside dark waters for Lúthien" is a quote from the Silm in 'Of Beren and Lúthien.