Windborne by Keiliss

Cutting and pasting this comment, slightly edited, from the first time I read it a short while ago--perhaps I am sharing with a few new readers here.   This is amazing. I once thought that nobody could ever make me like Elwing (never mind me and my thing about parents' responsibility to care for their children trumping all other concerns!). Well, a few years back you changed my mind about her by showing her as the fragile, damaged, and managed beggar child queen, sheltered and treated with reverence, but still safeguarded for her heritage than ever truly cherished for herself alone. With this story, you've extended my view of her further once again!

I still want to read it more thoughtfully. It is beautifully done. That ending literally caused me to gasp aloud!

This time though, unlike the others, she had a voice, a vessel to work through, for in this fragile child with the strain of Maian blood resided power barely dreamed of by other elves.

She is still being used here! But I somehow I found Vairë the Weaver attractive and not at all repellent, despite the way she utilizes Elwing.

For a moment she looked down at Elwing, concern vying with satisfaction across her sweet face. Small of stature was the Weaver, with nut-brown hair and bright, hazel eyes, but something in those eyes belied her gentle looks and hinted at a will of steel.

There is so much to love about this story. I particularly like Elwing's glimpse Elrond--the entire experience is so beautiful, poignant, despite ultimately being so painful for her.

He turned his head suddenly and seemed to look directly at her, small lines crinkling his forehead above the long elegant nose that was so like her father’s. She stared at him, willed him to see across the distance, to go to where Círdan stood and look into the other stone, but it was no use. He gave his head a brief shake and turned back to the conversation, but there was an unease that showed in the way he was seated now, which she knew almost as though she had watched him grow up after all.

“I love you,” she whispered into the nothingness that lay between them.

Eeps! I cannot say that stories often make me cry--but these few lines did.

I want to think about it more. Congrats on a wonderful, wonderful story. That must have taken a lot out of you!

The story of Earendil and Elwing has always been one of the least satisfactory of Tolkien's stories to me, mostly because I find the idea of being destined to serve a greater purpose by basically abandoning your family nauseating at best, and having constantly observed its function in real life, I've only ever found that it is an idea that has destroyed much more than it has ever saved or created.

That being said, your story does much to illumine a character who's motivations always seemed strange to me, if for no other reason than she is not that sharply drawn by Tokien to begin with. More than that it is beautifully written, and the personality you've given Elwing here is very sympathetic and understandable. It's hard to tell whether she is really the master of her own desires, even from her own perspective, and that might be the underlying tradgedy of it all, especially since what is considered her bravest and possibly most necessary action could also be considered her most selfish and irresponisble.

On top of all of that, you once again build everything with little details, such as Elwing counting the stairs in the tower, and you always seem to know which details to convey to paint your literary picture. Well done, yet again.