A Special Find by Himring

Bonus Gapfiller: Maglor's Memories

This gapfiller is from Maglor's point of view and fills in a bit of background.

(It was originally written for Feanorian Week on Tumblr.)

Content warnings: References to canonical brutal exploitation by Numenorean invaders of Middle-earth, who also worshipped Morgoth and Sauron. More explicit than the main story but still non-graphic.

Maglor stood among the buried ruins. He remembered the fortress of the Black Numenoreans when it had been recently built, towering menacingly on its headland, dominating the coast. He had not known yet quite how far some of Elros’s descendants had fallen, but he had begun to suspect. In his long journeys along the sea coast, even though he still avoided contact, it had been difficult to miss how the nature of the Numenorean voyages to Middle-earth was changing.

That was the time he had found the woman in the vineyard near the sea, curly-headed Aua, too young to be so heavily pregnant and nevertheless made to work in the blazing sun—and utterly terrified of those who had enslaved her. He had helped her escape. It had been a near thing, even with his assistance, but she had given birth safely, in the end, in a village farther inland that was still free of the invaders.

He had picked up here and there after Elros’s fallen descendants after that, all the way down the coast. Minuscule mitigations of the harm done. He should have fought them outright perhaps. Probably he should have. It was a decision he found himself unable to make, having fought before when he should not.

The stones of the fortress still remembered the Numenoreans' dark cult, even now, thousands of years later. The fear of their victims clung to them, emanating from the soil. He would at least stop those echoes from harming anyone now, ever again. He sang the memory of that old pain to rest.