Stasimon by sallysavestheday

Stasimon

In the evening of the world, as the red sun waxed huge and blazing against the ancient sky, Maedhros took to going to the theatre.

There was something comforting about the antiquated arena on the side of the great hill of Túna. Bitten out rather than built up, it had an enduring stability that appealed in the weary years, when all the towers of the city seemed poised to fall.

The cypresses and myrtles exhaled into the turning air as the audience gathered; bats dipped and darted over the crowd while the sun sank and the night gave way around the pale lights of the stage. A crispness crept in as the dark settled – the day’s dusty sweetness was eased and softened even further by the quiet breeze.

The hush before the actors took the stage always felt like something sacred: those who watched waited, poised on attention’s edge, eager and almost afraid.

And then: a voice, or many, Speaking.

It was what made them who they were, after all: that gift of tongues – the telling of tales that bound and wounded and cleansed, the shaping of the air with meaning. Even then; especially then, at the end.

The great spectacles of the elder days had long been given up. With the slowing of the world a spare and simple staging seemed more suited. In the circle of the glimmering lights, the words owned the air. The actors’ mouths were holy vessels, spilling truth on truth on truth.

Maedhros stretched his long legs on the warm stones, soaking up the remembered heat of the day. He leaned his ear to the speaking, watched the small shapes of the actors in their paper armor and their tinsel crowns as they told of great deeds and Doom, of small miracles, of friendship’s ties and lovers’ griefs and the rounding and fading of the world.

In those late times, all plays were mythologues. The strange passages of his own lives unfolded and unwound before him, sublime and cataclysmic. Such a marvel, such a misery, such a mystery!

Their sparks remained, even as the world wound its way to sleep, its edges softening, growing ever more frail.

Maedhros tasted the peppery air and cast an eye to the sky as the voices wove on. A pale night, a clear night, but even in heavy weather there would be plays. 

Come fair or foul, the Eldar would tell their stories, until the breaking.