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Oh, I like that! It is perfectly lovely, right on the edge of being a horror fic. I really like how strange and mad Elwing seems. This is the kindest portrayal I would be able to give him. She has always been very hard for me to characterize.

I love the description of the Teleri also. Beautiful language there.

<i>Did not want to be heaped in with the scores of Cirdan's men and women, the silver-haired gentle elves who sang the saddest laments Erestor had ever heard, laments that called dolphins to the shore to comfort them. Even the gulls stopped their cries for the songs.</i>

Cutting his hair in mourning--he would share that practice with so many cultures throughout our real world history right up through the present day.

So much lovely detail in this story.

Hi Oshun,

Yes, I seem to love going to the creepy side of Tolkien which is odd since I can't stand gory movies.  I do love suspense.  

I was trying to understand Elwing, and why she would do what she did.  In some ways I do think she was a pawn of the Valar and not quite sane, but I dont' have any canon truth for that!  

I loved the Teler ever since I read that they sat at the edge of the sea and just listened.  I understand that completely!  A lot of cultures do shear hair in mourning.  It makes me wonder what people in the future will make of our shaving our heads to show our empathy for a loved one going through chemo.  

Thank you so much for your review!  :)  I really appreciate it.  

Erestor has an unsettling encounter - and so do we all. Lordie! I read this last night when it was too late to manage a sensible comment and I haven't needed to read back today because it's stayed with me.

Your Elwing with her foreknowing is perfect, a flawed, damaged, fey little creature, too frail to carry so much power within, and your Erestor has so much past to him (does that make sense?) that he feels complete, multi layered. I want to know what happened to him before this, but not knowing doesn't spoil the impact of his here-and-now.  The stark, grey atmosphere is wonderful, the images so strong that I can see the thin child, Erestor's ragged hair, and smell the sea.

This especially I loved: *Did not want to be heaped in with the scores of Cirdan's men and women, the silver-haired gentle elves who sang the saddest laments Erestor had ever heard, laments that called dolphins to the shore to comfort them. Even the gulls stopped their cries for the songs.*

Hi Kei,

Erestor, this one, has a lot going on behind him.  I'd love to get back to him some day and try to do his story justice.  Elwing.  I have always felt kind of bad for her - the child her at least.  To me you have to go back to her past to explain what she did in the future.  Otherwise it just doesn't seem like something a sane elf would do (which is what lead me to this idea).  

The sea elves will always have a soft spot in my heart.  :)  How could I not love elves that love the sea?

Thank you so much for you review!  Insert happy dance here :D

Hi Himring,

I think a lot of Tolkien's elves, for me, come off as fey.  Especially in The Silmarillion.  They feel so deeply and it can drive them to do things you'd think no "sane" elf would do (Fingolfin attacking Morgoth comes to mind).  Elwing is one of those elves I just want to get in her head and find out why she did what she did.  It's so incomprehensible in ways.  Then I thought about what she went through, and this came to me.  

Long winded way to say, thank you so much! :)  

Levade, this is an extraordinarily beautiful and haunting ficlet, and I mean, haunting (in a very good way).  I thoroughly appreciate the way you've shown Elwing with that blood of the Other, noticeable to Erestor, and disturbing to him.  You've layered the characters very effectively - Elwing's strangeness, Erestor's guilt.  And what does see she?

To me, this is the best kind of horror story, something that is there, but that one does not quite see, that might be real, as Elwing says, or perhaps the imaginings of a burdened mind (Erestor).  And all throughout, your prose is poetic.

Very glad to see that you're posting stories here again! 

Hi Pande,

Thank you!  I think the image of this story was so strong in my mind it almost wrote itself.  Elwing has always seemed absolutely otherworldly to me, and I wish her brothers had survived so we could see if it was just her or the whole family.  I can't imagine Arvernion was the happiest of places at first, with refugees streaming in from at least two ruined realms and maybe that played on her mind too.

I'm so happy this worked for you!  I always love to hear that.  I never set out to write horror, and I can't stand the gory stuff, but my brain just tends to lean a bit towards the macabre I suppose?  The what ifs and whys.  

Thank you again.  I never did reply to that wonderful review you left for Forlorn (I was utterly blown away and intimidated by it), but thank you for that as well.  You bring a realism and honesty mixed with possibility in your stories that urges me to get back to the computer to explore my own ideas.  So thank you for the encouragement as well.  I really appreciate it!