All The Heart's Orthographies by sallysavestheday

All The Heart's Orthographies

Read All The Heart's Orthographies

Calma (lamp)

Finarfin climbs the Mindon Eldaliéva through the purpling sky, rising as the night descends. He prays as he climbs: each footfall a link in a chain of grief and entreaty. He lifts his aching heart, calling out to the Powers for mercy, for grace. He prays for the dead; for his loved ones gone East behind the Sun; for Eärwen, cold and sad in Alqualondë; for all the wandering, sorrowing hearts of the Eldar, broken and bruised and bereaved. Last of his line, but not least, he sings for the lost, then lights the tower’s lamp to guide them home.

*****

Ungwë (spider's web)

They are cousins of a sort: the web-weaver and the fence-builder.

Similar in skill and knowledge; both sprung from the same fundamental Song. Always dancing around each another, cheek to jowl in the starlit spaces and the seething dark. Binding, shrouding, hiding, feasting on what stumbles out of the world and into their webs.

Whether Melian is fortunate in Elwë’s trembling against her silken wires is a matter of interpretation. Their child shimmers into and out of life, caught by the wind and blown beyond. Ungoliant’s spawn squat in the borderlands, on the dark edges. They are never truly gone.  

*****

Alda (tree)

He is younger than she is -- barely out of his youth, but steady as an ancient oak where she suffers through the turbulence of the winds. His roots run deep, tapping the slow waters, dreaming the sweetness of the earth. His quiet smile settles her flaring temper; his tender touches soothe when she has raged.

Artanis has turned her back on suitor after suitor, certain of never finding a match for her own flashing mind, her thundering heart. She drifts into Celeborn’s orbit irresistibly, drawn by that silver certainty, that constant equanimity, the calmness of his forest’s cool assarts.

*****

Númen (west)

Círdan builds himself a watchtower on the cliffs of Balar – clinging to the farthest edge, poised above the waves as a lonely sentinel, grown out of the rocks that still crave their other halves, lost to Ulmo’s tug and draw. On moonless nights he climbs to the top, yearning, pulled to the Farthest West, yet unable to follow the call. He is faithful. He will be worthy of the Powers’ trust. But the waves and the wind and the weather wash through him: his heart leans seaward, always. Out of the vastness, he can almost hear the vanished Lindar’s songs.

*****

Unque (hollow)

The Withywindle steps down and down as it winds through the forest, chattering and singing as it falls. All its songs slip, finally, into a pool of darker water, smooth as silk, or glass, caught among the willow-branches from which pale leaves fall.

Goldberry bathes there: river-daughter, wild of mind and soft of limb, her hair like golden weeds, dancing in the water. She collects the river’s gifts: strange blooms, water-polished branches, and the last son of Fëanor – poor lost, wet thing – turning in the hollow’s gyre with wide, pale eyes that look beyond the trees into the burning sky. 

*****

Aha (rage)

Fëanor lives always with the taste of fury: the sour pinch in the back of his throat, the roiling bitterness as he swallows and burns. He craves spice, succulence, flavor, but can only stomach the fibrous, the water-rich, the pale and bland and plain. While others feast, he grinds his way through lusterless meals that do nothing to sate him or soften his loss.

The first grapes after Mandos are a revelation. What melting sweetness, what a sharp, bright bite! His second life begins with the unfamiliar urge to savor, to relish the infinite flavors of joy on his tongue.

*****

Essë (name)

Who knows better than they what power a word has, what a name can do when used to bind, to hold, to call? Not for all the world will they share their true selves thus, free for the taking in the hungry dark. Already hunters roam the woods, winding webs of evil to catch and claim the ones who dance, unwary, in the clearings, or climb the trees to try to touch the stars. Let the fools shout the songs of their souls into the wind. They will remain Imin, Tata, Enel, each whispering his true name to only one.

*****

Essë nuquerna (name reversed)

They are brackets, braces, supporting walls. Anchors to windward and to leeward as Maitimo tacks his way through the storms of Aman and Maedhros claws off the dark shores of Beleriand. Kanafinwë and Findekáno, closer to his heart than any others, keeping his secrets, chasing his dragons, barring the way to misery as long as they are able. Among a people who pair for life, their triad raises eyebrows, sparks whispers, prompts debate. But a triangle is the strongest shape: distributing force and fiercely resistant to pressure. Maedhros will not buckle -- not while Findekáno and Kanafinwë share the weight.

*****

Parma (book)

Pengolodh is gifted his first book as a child in Nevrast: a small, plainly-bound anthology of tales of the Sindar, collected and edited by a Noldorin scribe.

He binds his first book in Vinyamar, taking as much pleasure in the folding of the signatures, the stitching and glueing and pressing, as in the words he has inked in careful Tengwar, training his hand.

He burns his first book in Gondolin: hurling the contents of the royal library like flaming missiles at the advancing foes. Fleeing, he clutches his scorched palms to his chest, whispering to himself, already composing the tale. 

*****

Quessë (feather)

In Valinor, Fingon wears peacock feathers at his throat, on his shoulder, in his hair. Their iridescence complements the richness of his skin, the deep shine of his eyes, the shifting layers of light and shade in his gold-bound braids. Plumed and resplendent, he draws all eyes.

He gives them up as fripperies in Beleriand. Linen and wool serve well; elegance is a luxury in those first, fraught years. It is Finrod who offers them again in gift, obtained through tangled webs of trade. Pinning them on before his mirror, Fingon stares. What a strange, battered bird he has become!

*****

Yanta (bridge)

Glorfindel cups the small, green stone in his hand, remembering other gems and other times.  He has not felt this urgency in centuries: the adrenaline is running, rising like sap until his body sings with it and the ancient light strains to be seen from under his skin. Three of the Enemy’s servants held this bridge, but he has driven them off – hissing and cringing away from his blade, from the fire in his eyes. But the travelers he seeks are not yet safe. Glorfindel breathes a word of warding over the gem, presses it hopefully, prayerfully into the mud.

*****

Formen (north)

Few among the Lossoth wear jewels: the cold burns metal against the skin, and gems catch on furs and skins, tearing hands and throats. Rather, they carve seal bone and ivory into exquisite, delicate beads, shaping figures and moments from their songs to be strung on sinew, both as ornament and as lore. Their necklaces tell tales: tiny Men flee into the snow; ships are whelmed; great hopes are lost. The exception is the ancient ring the chieftain wears: serpents twining under golden leaves, Finarfin’s fine work still gleaming, snake eyes green as the aurora that arcs through the skies. 

*****

Silmë (starlight)

Annael is grateful for the Sun. That warm orb calls forth plenty from the stony northern soil; his people feast, after so long fasting in the dark. And on its heels the Noldor came – a wall of steel, strategically inclined. The shrinking terror of life so near Thangorodrim has eased behind the sharp palisade of their spears.

But the stars know his true name. Their cool light gathers and enfolds him. He needs their sweet singing like water or air. At the dark of the moon he sprawls in the grasses, bare and tender, shivering, yielding to their primordial caress. 

*****

Silmë nuquerna (starlight reversed)

After the wave whelms Númenor, Sauron cannot be seen. Collapsed under the weight of his own fury, his presence can only be inferred by the behavior of the smaller stars that wander and tangle in his wake. He draws them in: the dark souls and weak wills whose song can be orchestrated to achieve his goal of control. He has no pity for them. They are tools, instruments for conquest, shapes to be discarded when their usefulness has passed. There is no power gained in coming near him; only fools try. Those who draw too close are shredded, swallowed, absorbed.

*****

Lambë (tongue)

Quenya tastes of steel in Celebrimbor’s mouth: smooth and strong with the flavor of childhood. Telerin and Sindarin wash like water across his tongue, their many variations shifting and pulsing like salt, weeds, waves. The Nandor’s music is stranger still: weaving leaves and wind together with the singing of the rivers. The tongues of Men rattle loose against his bones, while Khuzdul echoes in them: solid, deep, profound.

Celebrimbor tastes and savors language daily, shaping the world to kindness with his mouth no less than with his hands. But the sizzling lash of Valarin undoes him, spilling from Annatar’s tongue.

*****

Vilya (sky)

Eärendil likes to watch the backs of clouds on Vingilot’s long passes. As a child he had lain on the deck of his father’s ship and tracked the changing shapes across the sky: rabbit, whale, hawk. From above, those streaks and humps and flaring edges seem both more and less material – neither animal nor bird, but entirely creatures of the air. Perhaps the Maiar hide among the clouds to gather news. The shifting patterns would be good cover for those wily and inhuman minds. But try as he might, he never sees them. Only the vapor-shapes, humming against the sky. 

*****

Anna (gift)

She is a starfish, rough back risen to crisp and dry beneath the Sun, belly still cool and dark, turned away from the world. Her curled limbs protect and enfold, holding the fleets of fishing boats like pearls. Each arm bears its riches: sweet grasses, cool forests, the tang of the vines. Roads and towns and monuments weave and cross and perch on her spines, paths always winding up, to the great, peaked height of the Meneltarma, rarefied and silent, bare under the caress of the light. Elenna, the bright star, gift and reward. Proud dancer, poised for a fall.  

*****

Hyarmen (south)

In her youth in misty Rivendell, Arwen dreams of the South: of chocolate, coffee, oranges, spices unfamiliar to the people of their cooler realm -- tantalizing, teasing on the tongue. She pores over maps and tales of warmer lands; pleads for olives and sumac from the weather-beaten traders who make their way up river and over mountain to her sheltered home. Her feet carve the steps of rumored dances, guessing, speculating where the lore leaves gaps. Turn, bend, weave. She sets her looms with silks, with cottons: lightweight, elegant fabrics blooming with unfamiliar flowers, in patterns suited to a Queen.

*****

Ampa (hook)

Finarfin loves Eärwen’s laugh: that throaty chuckle that builds to an unselfconscious guffaw. For all her silver grace she has a core of humor that entices him – so different from the tense, terse banter of Tirion, where the jokes are aimed to sting. In her presence, he finds his own heart growing lighter, feels a more constant upward curve to his lips. Eärwen laughs at his ship-board missteps with no intention to wound, and Finarfin learns to find them funny, too. When his fishook catches in her collar, he just laughs with her, and reels her in for a kiss.

*****

Óre (heart)

Rôg had not expected to ever know tenderness again. Not after the mines, the branding, the lash. Stumbling into Gondolin had seemed like a dream – the pale rocks, Egalmoth glimmering on his dark horse, the company tense and watchful under the moon. To have been welcomed as he was would have been enough, but he has had the gift of more. Friendship, lordship, life. There is nothing he will not do for this city, for these, his people. Morgoth cannot plumb the depth of his contempt. Let his orcs and Balrogs learn the true meaning of the Hammer of Wrath.  

*****

Umbar (fate)

Nerdanel burns. After five children, her body should know this dance: the press and clench and rush of pain spilling into joy. But this time is different. Her core is aflame, heat radiates outward in bright bursts with each grip and pulse. What has been easy is suddenly uncertain; she is afloat on a burning raft, moaning. Is this how Míriel felt, she wonders: consumed from within by the fierce fires of her only child? Fëanor has always feared catastrophe in birth – is his dread to be confirmed? She pants, bearing down, listening for a cry, letting loose the flames.

*****

Anga (iron)

The great hammer was never his tool of choice.

Like his father, Curufin preferred jewel-work: the delicate maneuvering of wires and gems, the fine taps and gentle pressure needed to position the right stone just perfectly so. His fingers itch for the etching tools, the gilding foil, the tiny clamps and mallets and tongs. He misses the music of a crackling brazier or a bubbling alembic, refining finishing chemicals as he tinkered and hummed.

But it is all swords, now. He lives by the roar of the forge: back bending, sweating, beating out the iron rhythms to pre-empt what comes.

*****

Anto (mouth)

It is not the marriage that hurts. It is the erasure. Tapestries folded and put away, walls washed and painted in a softer palette. The ordered, geometric gardens of the Queen left to grow wild and untempered. Court fashions become loose and light – tied and draped rather than stitched, and lacking a needleworker’s fine details. Even her name is taken; even his father abandons the thorn. And Indis, who might have been an ally with her Vanyarin tongue, complies. Serindë hisses in the mouth, harsh where she was soft and warm. Let them sá-sí, Fëanáro cries, in grief and scorn.

*****

Arda (solar system)

The world becomes round – drawn away from old certainties, from the fixedness of things. The great astronomers in Tirion scratch their heads and mutter, calculating and recalculating the new positions and maneuverings of the stars. Where are we now? they ask, as their pencils trace and slide. The Teleri in their great ships tsk and grumble into Ulmo’s ear. This reshaping is more than an inconvenience: how are they to find their way home, now, beneath the shifted lights? The priests in Valimar only dance through their praiseful circuits in the temples, feet on the earth, hearts in the skies.

*****

Malta (gold)

There is a lake in Aglarond that catches and magnifies light, spinning webs of gold and silver on the walls. Disturbances make the patterns dance, whether at the changing of the torches or when a hand stirs the water.

Gimli positions his workbench at the side of the pool and drapes it with a clean white cloth. He lays out his tools and prays, a deep, resonant chant that sets the walls and the water ringing. He rests a delicate crystal sphere in the center of the table, then reverently unwinds the silken binding that holds Galadriel’s three, fine hairs.

*****

Noldo (one of the Noldor)

Indis is not a vengeful woman, nor is she a fool. She walks into her marriage wise-eyed and well-warned; more certain than Finwë, in her singing way, of the undertones their binding will provoke. Fair among the dark-haired, deft-handed Noldor, she makes her way, smiling and soothing, building bridges where she can, shoring up, patching and sealing and mending her new folk’s holes. 

But she also draws her lines, marks her territory, stakes her claims. She holds her blue-eyed, bright-haired son as her husband preens over Arafinwë, then smiles like a curve of flame and names him: Ingoldo, Ingoldo, Ingoldo.

*****

Nwalmë (torment)

The cruelest thing is the absence of the stars. Not the lash, not the backbreaking work, not the hunger or the fear. But the loss of that light – the sweet touch in which they have always bathed; the slow, predictable arc of the passage of time; the cool assurance of guardianship, of hope…it wears them down.

Darkness is a tool in the Enemy’s great reshaping. Blind under stone, they twist and furl and alter. Without the stars, are they yet Elves?

The quiet rebels still tell the ancient tales. Their children know the stars by name, if not by sight.

*****

Anca (jaws)

Maedhros learns to keep silent. He clenches his jaw when his father brays at Fingolfin, then works to ease the tension behind the scenes. He bites back his dismay as the swan-ships burn, grinding his teeth until the ash settles and their next steps can be planned. He does not cry out on the Enemy’s wall as the rain and smoke defile him, nor when flames destroy their peace or Nargothrond falls. But when the axe comes down on Fingon he gapes wide at last, teeth bared and raging, and lets loose a howl that cracks and chips the sky.

*****

Vala (one of the Valar)

Among her shining kin, Vána holds no pride of place. Of lesser force than Kementári, she wanders with the wind, blossom-kissed and airy, little sister to the light. Her palms catch the dew; the sweetness of her hair feeds the great bees that follow her always, singing, in their low, round tones, of happiness.

But she is wed to the wild, to the fall, to the fierce hands at the edge of life. She knows the ending to which all fair things must come. So, she knows this: each breath is still a chance to begin, and begin, and begin.  

*****

Rómen (east)

They learn to look to the East, to anticipate and hunger for the pale light that limns the hills and trees before the day begins. Dawn, strange cousin of the Mingling, appears in that unfamiliar quarter, rousting the Enemy’s creatures and chasing them into the shadows, frightened of its light.

In other lives they turned to the West, to the shifting light at the feet of Taniquetil, ordering their comings and goings by the dew drops and unfolding blossoms of the Trees. Now every heart calls for the Sun to spring up and claim the sky, herald of the day.

*****

Súlë (spirit)

When the earth claims them, or the water, or the flames, they turn deaf ears to Mandos, laughing. What need have they of that grim, cleansing dark, who never sought the light? The trees make another home for them, grinding their soft bones ever smaller, lifting the waters of their spirits, drawing their names back out of the air. Kindi or Cuind, Hwenti or Windan, Kinn-lai or Penni, they settle into the bark, dance through the rising sap, braid what once was their hair into the long, green leaves. Let the Light-Seekers mourn. Avarin hearts are open to the Song.

*****

Hwesta (breeze)

Bound to the earth the Speaking Peoples may be, but it is air that is their most nurturing element. Breath of life, sweetener of days, channel through which their tales are told. Every whisper dances down the chains of air, every loving moan. Lips and teeth and tongues shape the mystery: sound that is caught and lifted and carried beyond. Even in the pressing darkness; even in the deeps of the earth and the richness of the silent forests, a caught breath tells and calls and rings. What is song but a loving breath, a fold in the shimmering wind?

*****

Hwesta sindarinwa (breeze, Sindarin)

Evranin sings. Words unravel into sounds, sounds into humming, to sustain the buzz in her chest, the soft rattle of her throat that keeps her small charge silent. The woods still ring with the sounds of steel, the clash of arms that tells a tale of horror and of woe. They should be quiet, should move through the trees like a breeze in the night, offering only familiar sounds to the unfamiliar ears that haunt their passing. But Elwing weeps and clings. Evranin hugs her closer, feels her frightened breath gathering for a scream. She musters another lullaby, and sings.

*****

Tinco (metal)

The Nandor only laugh when they are offered armor. Why add weight and bulk where leather moves, and breathes, and gives – perfect for slipping through the undergrowth, running along the sky-roads woven among the branches, hiding in the trees? The Noldor can be heard a league away, blundering and clanking. They squeak and grind, all hinges and joints. They rust when it rains. War in the wood is a game of deception, of ambush, of sabotage. One must be light and quick, able to climb and swing and move like air or water. Wearing metal, it is impossible to disappear.

*****

Ando (gate)

Wood, stone, bronze, writhen iron, silver, gold, steel. The Gates of Gondolin demand the working hands of every Noldo among the city’s people. Each turns to their own tools and gifts to shield the city from the Dark. Lathes and forges, saws and chisels. Anvils and mandrels, crucibles and tongs.

The Sindar watch and listen, then slip into the forest to call the woods awake, to whisper the streams of Tumladen into channels of confusion. Let the bright-eyed builders shape their gates. The trees and stones and water will encircle them in safety, answering to the urgency of song.

*****

Úrë (heat)

Calling fire is a child’s game among the Noldor: shape the flames in your mind and sing their names. For a craft-bound people, skilled in the use of heat to alter and transform, this task is simple -- each of them carries their own embers within. A mental breath, the kindling of need or desire, and then a flare, a flash.

The trick is in the care taken to manage the heat, the delicate handling of the resultant blaze. Some have been forged and shaped to glory by those heart-spawned flames. But what of those who were bitterly, hopelessly burned?