Noon by sallysavestheday, Anérea

Noon

Cloud dancing, Tuor used to call it: the way the shifting light and air transform the color and the texture of the sky. Eärendil remembers long afternoons on the deck of his father’s ship, watching as the great shapes swirled and spun together and asunder: here, an eagle, there a whale, or a rabbit, or a lumbering bear. He takes his own boys cloud-watching, now, dreamy under the heat of the noon sun, sprawled on the boards as the wind whistles in the lines and pulls the bright puffs this way and that. The bowl of the high sky curves over them, its blue hand cupping and protecting. Elros crows: a dragon! and Elrond laughs: a star!