White Stars on a Deep Blue Field by grey_gazania

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White Stars on a Deep Blue Field

This was supposed to be a story about fiber-crafts, but it turned into something else entirely.

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She’s going into battle. She’s going into battle, a real battle, and she’s leaving you behind. She’s leaving you behind and she thinks it’s the right thing to do, because she knows you’ll be safer here at home than you would be with her. She doesn’t want you to die.

 

You don’t want her to die, either. But she's going into battle nonetheless.

 

Those were the words that echoed in Maewen’s head as she sat before her loom, shuttle in hand and linen thread at the ready. Ereiniel Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor, Maewen’s first and best friend, had told her three days ago that she and Círdan, Lord of Balar, would be leading as big an army as they could muster to the Havens of Sirion, with the plan of helping the princess Elwing defend her city should the Sons of Fëanor come down upon them suddenly.

 

It wasn’t that Gil-galad had never gone into danger before. She’d been part of the small parties that harried Morgoth’s forces up and down the coast, striking with stealth and swiftness and then retreating to the sea in the light ships that Círdan had built just for that purpose, since before she’d been crowned. (A king at age sixty-six! It was absurd.)

 

But the Sons of Fëanor were different. They were Elves, but they destroyed cities like orcs and slaughtered indiscriminately like orcs, killing children and the unarmed alongside the soldiers of their foes. Worse, they wrapped it in the guise of diplomacy: Yield to us your treasure and we will leave you in peace. Refuse and we will have no choice but to kill you.

 

What an incredible lie that was! There was always a choice. Maewen had believed her whole life that everyone went through life faced by choice after choice after choice, and that it was the duty of all people to choose the right thing every time. No oath, no matter how fearsome, could absolve any man or woman of making the decision to kill their own kind. That was an evil that exceeded even the dark machinations of Morgoth.

 

And now Gil-galad – the king the Sons of Fëanor refused to recognize – was going to face those bloodstained monsters in battle, the first true battle of her life.

 

Maewen had tried to talk her out of going, arguing that Lord Círdan would be commander enough for any army, begging Gil-galad not to throw her life away. But Gil-galad had refused to even consider staying behind. I have a duty, she’d said. The Iathrim are my allies. The Gondolindrim are my allies. It’s my responsibility to stand alongside them.

 

Then let me come with you, Maewen had pleaded. Let me stand beside you. I may not be able to wield a sword or a spear, but I can shoot a bow.

 

Absolutely not, Gil-galad had said. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you were killed on my watch.

 

And what if you are killed? Maewen had said. How do you expect me to live with that, to live with having lost my dearest friend?

 

But Gil-galad had only repeated, I have a duty. And now a great frozen silence had descended between them, a silence that neither of them seemed to know how to bridge.

 

But Maewen wasn’t going to let that stand. The only thing worse than her best friend dying would be her best friend dying when they had never made up. That was why Maewen was at her loom now, deep blue and pure white linen thread at the ready. Lifting her shuttle, she began to weave – over, under, over, under.

 

Let her survive.

 

Let her be unharmed.

 

Lord of the Breath of Arda, protect my friend, who is only trying to do what she thinks is right.

 

Lady of the stars, watch over Gil-galad, who has named herself after your creations.

 

Let her live. Please, I beg you, let her live.

 

Beneath her hands, a banner began to take shape – white stars on a deep blue field, the night sky mirrored in cloth. And with every pass of the shuttle, Maewen prayed for the safety of her first and best friend, weaving her prayers into the very fabric of the banner.

 

She couldn’t stop Gil-galad from going into battle, but she could give her something to carry with her.

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Chapter End Notes

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