Wayward Daughter, Carry on by Himring

Chapter 3 (of 3)

Gentle warning that if the second chapter led you to expect a tale that is one hundred per cent pro-Valar, this third chapter may let you down a bit.

Also, minor warning for brief description of canon-standard violence.

Ramavoite was on a long exploratory flight in Middle-earth all by herself, when Melkor attacked the Trees. She chose to return by way of northern Beleriand, deciding to have another look at those Iron Mountains that had been worrying her for a while, because she had observed signs of  suspicious enemy activity around and underneath. In this way, she became the first to see the armies of Morgoth pour out of Angband and march south against Melian and Thingol’s woodland realm, toward what was to become the bloody First Battle in the Wars of Beleriand.

‘The Elves have Melian and Dwarven weaponry on their side, but that won’t be enough for those numbers!’ she cried out in distress. ‘I must immediately fetch Orome and his hunters to help!’

She launched herself like an arrow westward, racing toward the Sea. So great was her haste that she only gradually noticed that there was something clearly not right in the direction she was flying, as well. Below her, Belegaer, the Great Sea which she now had crossed so many times and had long ceased to be afraid of, had turned strange and hostile, leaden-looking, and the winds above it were unkind, pushing her back and up and down. Ramavoite was now a strong and experienced eagle who had weathered storms, but this seemed no ordinary weather of the world. She could not be stopped in her urgent errand and flew on, but she was alarmed. Had something else happened during her absence, then?

She flew into what seemed like a wall of air above the Sea and at almost the same time she became aware of darkness ahead, where surely by now there ought to have been a seam of light. Only shadows loomed ahead—and where, oh where, was the Calacirya?

That flight was the worst thing she had ever done. Even the terror of her first flight across the Sea had not been like this. The resistance was so strong that she almost flew directly into the waves, several times, and the sea spray wet her pinions. And all the while the thought tormented her that something was wrong, wrong, wrong up ahead. Her home that had seemed untouchable until now, her family…!

She made it. She reached the bay of Eldamar and it lay in complete  darkness. She was no longer being pushed back, but her strength was nearly spent. Yet she continued without rest, found the pass through the Pelori in the lightless dark and rising upwards on tired, aching wings, passed by strangely silent Tirion.

An eagle in Valinor always knew where Manwe was, even if all other senses were muffled and obscured. Ramavoite tumbled at Manwe’s feet in the Mahanaxar, in a bundle of exhaustion and tousled feathers, and still remembered her errand.

‘Lord Manwe!’ she cried at once. ‘Beleriand is being invaded! Melian’s Sindar are in danger! You must send help…’

She became aware of Orome’s presence, of the other Valar. The faces of Manwe and Orome both looked utterly blank.

*

‘And that is how I came to make my roost in the Iron Mountains, for quite some time, keeping an eye on the movements of the Enemy,’ Ramavoite concluded her tale.

She paused to swoop down from on high and terrify an unhappy orc she had spied straying too close to Ramavoite’s nest and to Gondolin, driving it shrieking and bleeding northwards.

‘I even got permission from King Thorondor, retrospectively, of course,’ she continued, returning to her fascinated listeners.

‘And I dwelt there, not returning to Valinor, until I relocated south to the Echoriath to have you lot,’ she told her bunch of eagle chicks.

Chapter End Notes

This piece was not planned to be set in my main 'verse and I think that is how it will stay.

The suggestion that the eyries of the Eagles in the Iron Mountains were essentially war camps and that they went south to the mountains around Gondolin when they wanted to breed was one that came up in a discussion in the SWG Discord some time ago. I'm afraid I no remember who all was involved in that discussion.