Cerulean Shores by stormfallen

Chapter 1

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Maglor had learned over the centuries that attempting to set a morning routine and stick to it was simply never going to work. Attempts at composition in Laurelin’s awakening light, calvary drills at the crack of dawn, pre-breakfast Sindarin grammar lessons for Elros and Elrond; none had he been able to persist with for longer than a fortnight.

(The twins had continued their lessons alone once his presence became erratic and then ceased, which he counted as a great victory in their upbringing. It was over a decade later when Elrond admitted they thought his absence was a test of their dedication, and continued only out of fear of reprisal.)

And so, each morning he simply…went with whatever felt right. He made breakfast if he was hungry enough, sang to Gil-Estel if he was bold enough, begged the seabirds to carry his apologies if he was desperate enough. Sometimes he simply lay on his face in the sand until the scavenging birds and crabs got too curious.

(Once, a long-wandering Sinda had come upon him as he lay and drew her sword. He simply waited and asked if she was ready to become a kinslayer.

She was not.)

This morning was as beautiful as all of them were; brilliant blue sky greeting Anor’s arising, waning Ithil distant and not quite set as Tillion tarried for one more glimpse of his beloved. A grey blot far over the ocean promising future rain. The white gulls calling, calling.

As good a morning as any for song. His harp technique would make his teachers despair in its inelegance, yet when he first found the strength within him to take up instrument again, his scarred hands could not sit in the correct positions without terrible pain.

(Had Varda Elentári taken this too from him, in her justice? What was he, without his harp? No more alive than dearest Maedhros.

But he had adapted, and learned, and if his music was less precise than before then none was around to judge, save himself.)

He sat on the bluff near his campfire, overlooking the western sea. He could almost imagine the wilds of Avathar on the horizon, the strange borderlands of Valinor’s south where few dwelt (last he knew). Has Oromë’s hunt cleansed the shadowed land of Ungoliant’s taint? Have more reborn elves of Middle-Earth found homes there? It was not for him to learn.

He played a simple tune, and sang a simple song, in praise of the wonders of Arda and the beauty of the ocean and the call of the gulls. And when the last notes were plucked and he returned to himself, he was not alone.

An old man sat near his fire across from his sleeping mat, watching him curiously. He was dressed in the usual garb of this land’s people, a loose robe and turban. Maglor would have presumed him to simply be any common traveler, but for the deep blue dying of the fabric—such dye was difficult to obtain in Ak’lerad unless you were extraordinarily wealthy. A local lord, perhaps? Wooden beads painted in a lighter shade of blue decorated his grey beard.

“Hail and well met, traveler.” He hopes his grasp of the local common tongue isn’t too archaic. “You are welcome to share my camp, though if you hoped for breakfast, some simple porridge is all I can offer.”

“Well met indeed! Pray, do not be discouraged by the quality of your gruel! I often find a meal offered happily tastes richer than any grudged.” Maglor cannot even attempt to place the stranger’s accent, but it certainly is not a local one. Unless those have also become archaic in his time on these shores. How long has it been anyway? He quite lost track of the years after news of Celebrimbor’s fate reached him, long after it was too late to do anything but mourn.

The old grief strains his smile as he spoons out a bowl for the stranger, and for some time the two of them eat in silence. The music of the surf swells in his ears, the gulls singing their own tunes and yet harmonizing with the ocean’s heartbeat. Gil-Estel sets in the West.

The stranger watches the fading light also, and murmurs some phrase which Maglor barely catches. What little he does hear sets his bones to ice.

“Repeat that.” He laces Song into each word nearly without intent, motifs of command such as he has not used since they failed to halt his brother’s flight towards the abyss.

The stranger is unfazed by the command, turning to face him with unnerving grace from one so aged. ⟪Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!⟫, he repeats in sonorous Valarin.

⟪Sent over Middle-earth to Men.⟫, Maglor completes instinctively. He has not spoken the tongue of the Ainur since—since he swore the Oath in it. The words burn his lips and tear his lungs. The stranger’s gaze pierces him down to the heart. A predator’s gaze, honed in black woods where even Treelight dared not pass. “Who—what are you? What do you want with me?”

“I am called Pallando,” he answers, now in Sindarin. “And I am here to seek your aid, Maglor Dagorlind.”

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Chapter End Notes

Ak'lerad is a completely made-up name for the land where this takes place. It's somewhere way past Far Harad, south of the equator.

It's probably not very evident in the text, but this Pallando was an owl maia pre-Istari.