Until the final flicker of life’s embers by Quente

What pierced through his shock first was the noise. Menegroth had echoed with the screams and cries and clanks of steel before, when the dwarrows of Belegost came and slew his grandfather in his own city.

Dior had striven toward the hope that it would be the last time. He’d studied Melian’s defenses, and with the Silmaril’s aid, he’d shored them up – hoping desperately that it would be enough. But those defenses had frayed, along with Melian’s other workings, despite his strongest efforts. Even with a Silmaril and his mingled blood, he was not Maia enough to save his land.

And now it had come again: the screams of death-agony, the blood of his people mingling with the water in the carven rills, spilled beneath the stone birds twittering on the stone trees. All signs of his own failure to protect them, his realm, his people, his family.

Woven into it all was the Silmaril’s own voice, urgent and throbbing in his head: it needed to get away, far from the darkness that threatened it.

The urge was receding now, thank the stars, as Daeron and Elwing fled with the Silmaril in her little pack, but Dior knew the doom he’d chosen to separate himself from that power.

Now there was nothing but chaos in the deep-carven throne room. Dior pulled his sword out of the red-clad Golodh before him, and wiped the sweat from his eyes. Nimloth still fought, desperate and faithful, before the door that led to their children’s quarters. She was in the green gown she’d worn that afternoon for the midwinter festival, but the blood-smeared sword in her hand was her grandfather’s; last night it had been a dusty decoration on their wall.

In hard strokes, Nimloth slew an elf who sought to move beyond her, but then one with red hair below a dark metal helm strode forward. “Do not force my hand,” he warned her, defending easily against her blows.

“Morgoth has twisted your minds,” Nimloth cried, her voice breathless. “The Silmaril does not want you. Stop!”

Dior knew with a sick certainty that the one combatting her would overmaster her. He could not look away, nor could he reach her, blocked as he was by a ring of dark-clad soldiers fencing him against his grandfather’s throne.

Numbly, Dior saw the bright Golodh steel fall. Then a strange silence descended as all watched the Queen of Doriath stagger to her knees.

“Go,” Nimloth choked to Dior, but he knew that there was no place he wished to go, not now that they were to be parted forever. He watched as she slumped to the floor – at least the slice through her chest was clean, and her end swift. He hoped her rebirth would be just as painless.

Blinking away the sudden shock of tears in his eyes, Dior turned to those who assailed him, elves in the livery of Fëanor’s sons. They faltered, perhaps halted by the darkness in his eyes. Now was not time to spare himself, not when Nimloth was dead.

Dior’s only hope was that his children would survive, and that the jewel would continue onward, out of the grip of those whose oath twisted them to Morgoth’s purpose.

One came near him, hair bright below his helm. This brother was the mighty hunter, Dior remembered – legends told of him riding in Oromë’s retinue before the sun rose. Dior would never have been able to best this one in combat, not with his grandfather’s blood alone, nor even mingled with that of men. Well, no matter. Dior drew upon his grandmother’s legacy to show him the best end, and time went strange.

“I send you to the void,” Dior said, his voice sounding warped in his ears, “A mercy for you. I shall not see rebirth, myself.” He moved forward, watching the Golodh’s slowed movements and looking for a weakness in the armor. Ah, there – through the seam of the armpit and sideways, into the heart. His death would be swift. “And for that, I would curse you, if you were not already cursed – for your kin has sundered me from those I love, til the end of time.”

Dior was alive for long enough to watch the surprise blossom slowly over the face of his foe, as if he never thought he would be overmastered in battle – and then the wave of agony as he recognized that he was dying. But Dior did not see the arrow until it pierced his own flesh, a hard thrust of a point entering his back and blossoming out of his heart. The pain of the wound, and the feeling of his body in uncertain panic around it, was almost secondary to his curiosity.

Now what?

Dior felt strangely detached, as if he had stepped out of his body. He watched himself fall over the body of the Golodh he’d slain. Dior had worn no helm nor armor that day – and he saw his hair fan out to cover them both. They died together in the dark cloak of it.

As Dior felt his life flicker out, the solidity of Thingol’s throne room melted away. Slowly, the scene faded, even as Dior saw the water in its carved rills run red with blood, and the birds on the trunks of trees freeze to never sing again. He felt something then – not anything from his body, for that felt far away now. No, most of all he felt the harsh pain of regret, for the shortness of his span of years, and for all that could have been.

Dior’s eyes closed, and all was dark.

~

And then Dior opened his eyes – figuratively, for he was unsure that he had eyes anymore – and looked around him, immediately perceiving that he should not have been able to do such a thing.

He was standing on one side of a hallway of statues, in a vast building of fair stonework, shoulder to shoulder with his father Beren. On Beren’s other side was Dior’s mother Lúthien, fashioned to such a pure likeness that Dior felt she might glance sideways at him at any moment.

Across the corridor from Dior was a row of statuary that he was familiar with from tales and rumor, and a chance meeting or two: the family of his father’s cousin Baragund, Baragund’s daughter Morwen, and her husband Húrin. Beside them was one that Dior had met in passing at Menegroth, a woman holding a child, her stone face streaked with the smallest of carved tears. Niënor.

But next to her, face frozen in a paroxysm of grief and rage, caught as if he was in movement, was one that Dior knew not. Rumor had reached him, however, and he surmised that the figure must be Túrin.

Time, or whatever was happening in that hall, passed. At first, Dior felt at peace. Here he was in the death-fastness of his forbearers, memorialized. His statuary body held no pain, and seemed to be a vessel that did not do much to anchor his spirit.

The peace of the halls was profound, almost like a heavy blanket lying upon his spirit, whispering to him of eternal things. Starlight and moonlight, it whispered; the first dance of the great powers upon Arda, the very last battle for it, before all would be remade in beauty and endless glory.

All who slept there were caught up in this dream, and for a while, Dior found it was enough, and let himself shut his eyes again.

The visions took up his spirit in the great music, and time passed.

But then, something troubled him – it was a strange longing, as if part of his soul was elsewhere – and Dior opened his eyes again. The weight of suggestion, that he lose himself in the dream, did not seem to hold him as strongly as it had. He was not entirely at peace; he was not entirely whole. And so Dior cautiously unmoored himself from his statue-shape and drifted outwards.

Dior saw that he was a cloud, now, a blue mist shot with stars. Well, no matter, he could move, at least. He let himself wander, and look, and piece together from memory the stories of those he saw. At the very least, it might cure him of his restlessness.

One statue that arrested him was a woman garbed as a warrior, surrounded by a guard of other women. They were dressed in the garments of the earliest men of Arda, in rudimentary leather that bore little of the stamp of the Golodhrim upon their design. Haleth, Dior thought, contemplating her. Haleth and her retinue of shieldmaidens, flanked by men who seemed to gaze upon her fondly: her brother Haldad and her father Haldar. These were all in the row that ended in Túrin and Niënor, and Dior took them therefore to be distant law-cousins of his.

The statues were varied in composition, all in accordance to the subject’s nature. Túrin was crafted from the darkest of stone, and polished so that the white veins that ran through it twisted about his face and clothing like scars or rends – beautiful, he was, Dior thought, and somehow all the more so for his grief.

Haleth was carved from stone that came from a long-petrified tree, as if to reveal that she was the root of her house. The wooden grains still trapped in the stone adorned her like lines of age and stress and work, and gave her a sense of ancientness as she stood at the foot of her line.

Drifting in the softly lit halls, Dior passed by a woman carved so that her body was twisted to look upward and back, out of the high windows to gaze ever upon the stars beyond. Dior paused – stars? Indeed, he could see them faintly glowing in the strange light, as if he observed the lightening of sky just before morning.

For a while, Dior looked from window to window to see if he could identify any of the constellations and thus place himself within the world, but he soon realized that all was a puzzle. It was as though he looked upon the familiar stars from a different angle, from somewhere far beyond the realms he knew.

Putting aside that thought, he returned to the woman who looked upward. She was part of his line, standing near his father’s father’s father… She must be Andreth, sister to Bregor, father of Barahir.

Dior understood her expression, then. She too longed for one who would never be laid to rest in this place of silence and drifting silvery light. And it was then, caught in that moment of contemplation of his ancient aunt, that Dior knew he also would not be content in the Halls of Men.

Nimloth was not here – Nimloth, who held the other part of his soul.

And yet, what could he do? Drifting closer to his own statue, Dior observed it. They’d managed to capture him for what he was, those hidden makers of this hall. It was hammered from a three-part metal alloy. Instead of wood or stone, they’d smithed him out of iron, silver, and mithril. The metals mingled in some places, and formed veins in others, swirls of silver and pale white and dark that surely represented his three natures. He was clad as he was when he died – in his robe from the midwinter festival, standing in defense of Doriath with his sword in his hand.

The memory of that moment was of despair, and Dior wondered why such a moment of bitterness was allowed to mar this hall of contemplation – which led him to suddenly wonder why he had not run into any other souls drifting this way and that, in similar meditation.

Was he the only one, of mingled blood as he was, with part of his soul too tied to Arda to find peace outside of it?

No. Dior knew that there was another. He drifted to the statue of his mother Lúthien, caught as if on a spring day in the height of the power of Melian’s girdle. Her arms were lifted in dance, and she was made from the clearest of pale marble, mirroring the glowing brightness of the nimphredil wrought in mithril, twining about her feet. Dior peeked into her face, hoping to see some sort of expression in her eyes.

For many long moments it seemed as if his wait was in vain, but he had tremendous patience in that space beyond the world. He let himself go still in front of his mother, waiting.

Finally, as if she tired of pretending she was resting like the statues about them, he saw the eyes of her statue go bright, and then the spirit of her – a velvet thing, like the shadows at dusk – formed around her statue, and she came to him.

“My son, why do you not sleep?” Lúthien asked, but let him see her joy as brilliant flashes within her unshaped form. “And why do I not sleep, as I promised Mandos I would?”

“Are we two the only ones that are awake here?” Dior asked, touching her gently with his own mantle of energy. “Surely it is due to our mingled blood.”

Luthien was silent for a moment, and then said, in a frustrated tone, “You must have the right of it. Long have I wondered if I alone would be awake unto the ending of Arda. But here you are, and if you are, then likely the rest of our lineage, if they have Beren’s blood as well as my mother’s.”

“Lineage? So my children survived?” Dior could not keep the pain from his voice, and Lúthien let her gentle light lap over him.

“Of that, I know not, dearest son.” Lúthien said. “I only heard rumor of Arda once, when the sculptors came. And when I saw who they were creating, my son, I grieved!”

Dior imagined her here for an endless span of time, drifting and lonely, with only the still faces of Beren and his forebears as her companions, until the craftworkers entered the hall – only to confirm that her son was dead. “Would they speak to you?”

“I did not speak to them – I wondered if they would remove me from Beren for stirring from my rest before my time, and I did not wish to be parted.”

“But Emil,” Dior said slowly, but this explained his mother’s reticence to greet him. “Surely they must find elsewhere for you to be, for us to be, if we are not at peace in the Halls of Men.”

Dior looked up at the face of his father, captured in the strength of his years. The sculptors had performed a mighty work for Beren – the pale marble that housed his form was inlaid with mithril, down to the cloth that bound his truncated hand. Even in death, Beren’s form reflected his deeds, and Dior wondered if his own statue faithfully recreated the wounds given him by the soldiers of Fëanor. He drifted closer to his father and tried to sense his spirit, but felt nothing.

“I greatly desire to be at peace beside him. He is quite asleep here,” Lúthien said, and her tone had a longing in it that twisted Dior’s heart. He remained silent, thinking of Nimloth – feeling again the anguish of being sundered from her forever, beyond the ending of the earth. The ties of marriage within him were truncated, and he ached.

“Ah, my Dior,” Lúthien said, perceiving why he did not speak. For a long moment they leaned their forms against one another. After a time, Dior opened his mind to her, and shared memories to ease the pain in his heart.

“Nimloth died bravely,” Lúthien said, watching the moments that he showed her. “Mandos will not let her linger long. She will surely rise again to live and dance under the stars of Arda.”

“She never liked dancing quite so much as you did, Emil,” Dior said, smiling at the memory. They’d done many things beneath the stars of Arda – but Nimloth’s desires turned more to long rambles beneath the trees, or hunting orcs, or lying within the circle of Dior’s arms. The memories made him ache again, and for a long while he let himself be lost in them.

~

A span of time flowed by swiftly in the softly lit halls. Lúthien remained beside Dior as he mourned and remembered, her own thoughts turning to her time in Arda. Memories flowed between them for a while, and Dior felt glad that he had this time to spend with his mother. He’d thought her lost forever when she died, along with his father. This time by her side was precious, and their different perspectives on the Silmaril was – strange, and troubling.

Lúthien examined his memories of the Silmaril, comparing them to hers. “It had strong opinions, did it not, about who could wield it, and how,” she said wryly. “Even in my waning days, the stone compelled me to urge Tol Galen to put forth fruit and prosper.”

“It is in the hands of my children now,” Dior said bleakly, “And I know that trouble will surely come of it.”

“The Silmaril has always preyed upon the minds of our family, from the very moment my father learned of it,” Lúthien said. She shared with him then her memories of the Silmaril, the threads that led to her father’s challenge to Beren — and then how it caught up Finrod Felagund and the Sons of Fëanor in its snare.

“I slew that one,” Dior said, feeling rage like a lightning storm as he watched the sons of Fëanor and their deeds against his mother. “I cannot bring myself to feel sorrow for it.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps they did no more than my father sought to do, when he imprisoned me.”

Dior thought on her words, recasting his grandfather Thingol as one of the villains in her tale. But he did not proceed far down this path in his thoughts, for there was a sudden commotion in a distant part of their hall.

Figures – elf-like, or maybe man-like – flickered into being at the edge of one long twilight-filled corridor, entering the hall carrying various materials.

One pulled a cart with a man-sized block of granite, and alongside it were workers who took the forms of many of the houses of men and elves, carrying chisels and whetstones and soft cloths. They came to Dior’s side, and his heart quailed – would he see his sons, or his daughter, being wrought slowly out of granite until their death was confirmed?

Beside him, Lúthien shared a wordless and gentle comfort: Men died; that was the nature of his father’s race decreed by Eru Iluvatar, their deaths a blessing that brought them closer to Him. Still, it could not have been so very long since Dior had died himself.

But instead of a form in the likeness of any of his children, the sculptors raised a massive and forbidding shape. The face held some trace of Dior’s likeness, but not as much as his own sons would have. The figure dwarfed Dior in size, and the face, when it was revealed, held nobility and age. This king, at least, had lived full long in Arda before his demise.

”This is not Elúrin, nor Eluréd,” Dior said quietly to Lúthien. “I see little of us in him.”

The placement of the statue was curious. It did not stand directly by Dior’s side, but instead in the middle of a joining of three hallways, clearly signifying a joining of three lineages of men. The statue’s right palm was held outward as if in warding or warning, and in the left was a mighty sword.

And when at last the craftsfolk retreated, Dior was struck by something. “Emil, he has our hair.” Sculpted out of granite as the figure was, they’d carved his hair loose to flow down his back, and carefully shaped the lines of it with a dark portion of the rock. The length and grace of it was like Lúthien’s, and Dior’s.

But the sculpture’s eyes were simply stone, and Dior knew with a strange intuition that there was no restless spirit trapped within.

“If he is of our blood, why does he not wake and speak with us?” Dior asked.

“I know not,” Lúthien said, staring at him. “But however he came here, he did so at peace, and of his own will. That I sense.”

Dior was struck by urgency. “Emil, if we two are the only ones – if only we two awaken here – then we must go forth. Before they go, let us follow the sculptors.”

Lúthien hesitated, and Dior could sense that she was loath to move from Beren’s side, but Dior turned. His answer did not lie in the Halls of Men, and he knew that they must make haste.

Drifting behind the creators, Dior found that the halls became strange, as if the workers had made them out of thought that unraveled the further they went toward the edges of the light. When the makers reached the edge, the form they took changed – they became shapeless energy like Dior and Lúthien. And then they drifted toward something that looked very like a tunnel out of the light, a darkness that took them in, one by one.

“Emil, come with me,” Dior called, “We must depart. I would not leave you here alone until the end of all things.”

Lúthien held back. “I vowed to remain with him, and I would not break that vow or be parted.”

“The mortality in your nature remains with him still,” Dior said. “Yet for the part of you that is still alive, we must find Arda again, or suffer.”

“Perhaps,” Lúthien said at last. “Perhaps I am not meant to linger here, not this part of me. But will Mandos allow me to return, should I leave? Still…” For a moment longer she hesitated, staring up at Beren. But then she looked down, and turned, and they both moved toward the tunnel. “My husband is dead and will remain so; if I am awake, I would spend this time with my son, at least, before I return to him.”

“Can you hide from Mandos like you hid from grandmother, when you fled Menegroth?” Dior asked.

“I will try.” When they came close to the dark tunnel, Lúthien spoke softly to him. “Now, I believe we must sing. Hearken to me, Dior – learn the song that put Morgoth to sleep.”

Lúthien began to hum it, and the shapes drifting toward the tunnel seemed to pause, and slow, and still. Dior joined his mother in a harmony, a low counterpoint to her lullaby, and they passed within the mouth of the dark tunnel, and beyond.

“We pass as a shadow at the edge of dawn,” Lúthien sang, and Dior with her. “We are a breeze in the darkness, a scent of flowers at dusk, the gloam of a deep wood in the afternoon.”

And somehow, as they moved through the tunnel, their formless shapes coalesced into a physical form. Something of himself was left behind, Dior felt – and wondered what he would be like, with his mortality left carven in the Halls of Men.

What would he be like, without his mortality?

This time, when Dior opened his eyes, they were not figurative at all. Feeling strange, he looked down at himself – clad all in silver linen, he sat on a sloping bank outside of the high walls of a forbidding keep. Next to him, he saw his mother clad similarly in silver – but she was not as he had known her.

“You arise to a fair morning,” Lúthien said, smiling at him. “I have been singing the sun up, while you recovered. This is how my form used to be, before I died last. I missed feeling the song of Arda through me. When I was mortal, I lost the sense of it. Now in my third life, I delight in it again!”

Dior’s mother looked ethereal indeed, and not grounded by age as she had been when he’d known her on Tol Galen. Dior wondered at himself, staring down at his limbs to examine them. What was he, now that he had left his mortal half behind? He had died before his limbs could feel any of the weight of mortality, but now he felt none at all.

“Emil, do I look an elven lord now, like grandfather?”

Lúthien looked at him thoughtfully. “We see in the same way,” she said. “You have ever looked beyond physical form, and into the hearts of those you observe. I sense that you have lost that which has kept you from Nimloth – the weight of Beren’s mortality in you. I find I miss it, if only because I miss him. But this form suits you, Dior. Your spirit shines forth, and folk may see it now unimpeded by mortality, if they look beyond your fair face.”

Dior put his arm around his mother’s shoulders then to comfort her, and realized with a strange jolt that he might be very tall now, for she seemed small to him – Beren’s lack of elven height was no longer part of his physical form, and he might stand as tall as Elu Thingol. He clambered up and walked as awkwardly as a colt for a moment, staring down his body at the length of torso and leg.

“I do not feel like myself,” Dior said, laughing, turning about in a circle. “But I no longer feel trapped! There is much to see and do here, and I delight in it.”

Lúthien smiled at him and looked about her somewhat more cautiously. “For your sake, then, I am glad. But we are far to the north of any city or dwelling,” she said. “And I deem that we shall be in need of aught to eat before long. We must walk south, and get some distance from Mandos’ halls, I feel, although I do not know this land.”

“At least it is downhill,” Dior agreed, and together they shook out their limbs and began the long walk down.

~

Dior learned much from Lúthien on that walk. Though it took them a long while to clamber down the mountain, they never suffered. She taught him to draw upon his Maia spirit to sense the pathway through the scrub and rocks, and call to the birds and beasts to aid them in foraging for food and finding water.

Sometimes they let themselves fray into mist again, their bare feet floating above the rough stones and bracken to spare their flesh, until they found the bottom of the mountain, and espied the road that led south along Aman’s western shore.

Fascinated, Dior stared long into the wild waves that swept to the edge of the world. He’d never seen the sea before, and the wonder of that ungovernable force touched his heart. He saw in himself the power to join with it – in the form of a sea bird, or a fish, perhaps – dance and be lost in its beauty.

“A true grandchild of Thingol then,” Lúthien said, catching his arm before he could fling himself off the cliff in a long dive. “Well, perhaps we shall go visit our kin in Alqualondë, and see if your wife has come there before you.”

Dior cast his senses southward to see if he could sense Nimloth, but after a moment, shook his head. “If she lies that way, I cannot feel it,” he said. “But I do feel other beings coming near. I do not know if they are elves.”

They stood and waited on the road, and Dior felt a growing nervousness. Who would be the first people they would meet, in their new lives? Would it be a Golodh, full of resentment for the Silmaril? Or was it a Maia sent to direct them back to the Halls of Men? Or was it someone on an errand of their own?

There was singing, coming from the road, and what they saw approaching them from the south was none of those things.

Instead, it looked to be a parade, or procession, led by a throng of musicians and dancing elves clad all in white and garlanded with flowers. In the midst of it all there was a Vala in the shape of a dancing woman, emanating the sheer joy of existence like a power that Dior had not felt before.

Immediately, Lúthien hummed a tune to obscure their identities, drawing shadow around them like a cloak of their hair, and they stood to watch the dancers process past.

“I feel drawn to them,” Lúthien said quietly as they twirled and leapt, cavorted and flew past; her eyes full of wonder. “I have never wanted to be part of something quite so much in all my lives, unless it were my marriage to your father.”

Dior hesitated. Would he part from his mother here? He would, if she willed it. So he waited while she watched, her feet twitching and her body swaying, lost to the music of pipe and drum as the procession passed them on the road. He felt a curious pressure upon his mind then as the procession passed, as if a very large beast was staring down at him from a great height, considering in its calm and wild way whether he was food or a friend. Dior projected back “FRIEND” as strongly as he could, and wondered if his mother felt the Vala’s regard in the same way.

One of her dancers tossed them flower crowns, which Dior caught. He bowed to them, and affixed one onto his head. They were garlands of white nimphredil, and Dior laughed to see it, for they were born on the same day in the woods of Neldorath as Lúthien. “A crown of my aunts,” Dior said, setting the garland upon his mother’s head.

Lúthien blinked up at him, smiling. “Let us journey a little longer together, Dior. I would be with you when you find Nimloth! And then – perhaps then I shall return here, for we have seen the procession of Nessa. One of her maia asked that I join them, just now. Had they been going South I might have considered it, but instead they go to greet Mandos on the slopes before his fastness. Come, let us return to the road.”

“Nessa did not say as much to me,” Dior said, “Rather, she weighed me, and found me curious, but wanting.”

“Not everyone has dance in their nature,” Lúthien said, laughing. “And I did nothing but dance for endless years in the woods of our land, until your father found me. I am simply glad they did not recognize me.”

Dior felt heartened that Lúthien had found a reason to remain in Aman so swiftly, and wondered what he might do, after he found Nimloth again. He did not want to rejoin Thingol, wherever he might be; nor did he want to take up his princely duties over the Doriathrim, although that might not be a choice he could make. The sea, though…

Before long a rattling cart passed them, a fisherman on his way southeast to Alqualondë. They hailed him, and he was struck dumb, staring at them.

They spoke for a moment, exchanging greetings. After a long and puzzled chat wherein neither side comprehended the other save for a few words, Lúthien paused and hummed a song of understanding. Finally the language resolved itself in Dior’s ears.

“...Well, I did not expect to encounter two Powers upon this road,” the elf said, his language a strange and soft burr. “Although I did just pass a Bala as she turned East, dancin’ up the mountain to greet her friends in their great delving.”

“We are not those,” Dior said, pondering what they must look like to passers-by in Aman. “Just travelers.”

“Are you?” He said, looking at them keenly for a moment. “You sound like a Returner. But hop on and make yourself comfy.”

The fisherman’s name was Uilon, and his dark skin and many-braided hair marked him as Vanyar. “I am an odd one among my people, I admit,” he said, cheerfully. “Livin’ with Prince Olue’s folk in Alqualondë as I do. Ware the fish in the baskets, though I packed them with enough salt that they should not be stinkin’ much, ere we turn home.”

They found places to sit on sacks of coarse-woven cloth, and settled in as the horse clomped its slow way south. Dior found that it did, indeed, smell of fish, but not so much that he cared – life on a fish-cart was still more joyous than the ill-fitting half-life he’d had in the Halls of Men.

“Are there not waters enough near your home to draw fish from, that you must journey all this way?” Dior asked.

“Special fish off the coast,” Uilon said cheerfully. “My people call them Morilingwë, although those with my husband’s speech call them elsewise, ‘spinnerfish’ or some such, for they look like spinning tops! My good husband had a yearning for ‘em, so I went to fetch some to keep us for the season. They last a while, if dried properly, and he likes ‘em for seasoning. What did you say your names were?”

“Dior, and my mother Lúthien.”

Uilon nodded. “Ah, those names suit you both perfectly, and if I hadn’t heard that those two were given the Gift of Men, I’d say you were their spittin’ images.”

Dior glanced at Lúthien, who simply smiled.

~

By the time they’d made their leisurely way down the coast and turned east to skirt the northern edge of the vast green fields that held the dwelling of Nessa, Dior had learned a vast amount about the fish of the northeast coast of Aman.

“What does the edge of the world look like?” Dior asked Uilon, gazing westward. “And have you been there?”

“Dark Ekkaia – I have been in love with her all my life,” Uilon said, chuckling. “Wild, she is. Ulmo visits her seldom, and she dances to her own rhythm from our shores to the very edge of the all things. Only once has she let me near it, in my vessel – I was thrown westward by a storm, and she let me trace Tilion’s path all the way to where her waters fall into the dark chasm where he keeps his stable.”

Dior was struck by the impossibility of that – the unthinkable sight of the very moon, a fixed orb in all his life in Beleriand, turned Maia and resting in a chasm beneath the sea. “I want to see that,” Dior said. “I long for it!”

“S’truth, I shall never see a sight more stirring in all my days,” Uilon said, gaze trapped in his memories.

~

The pass through the Pelóri led them northward, again, for a time. Before they ascended, Lúthien fashioned them coats from the spare sack-cloth, stitched with their own hair by a needle borrowed from Uilon, and stuffed with straw to keep them warm.

Dior made them sandals of woven straw, and Uilon chuckled to see them in their new garments.

“What is the opposite of adorning a pig with silk? That’s what the pair of you are. Never have I seen finer folk in poorer garb!”

Lúthien pretended offense at his words, and they spent many merry hours teasing each other back and forth on the long road.

If Lúthien’s humming along their path kept them warmer than they should be, winding through the long valleys and onto the slopes, Uilon did not mention it, nor did he complain.

They met other folk several times in their journey. Once, a hunting party of tall Vanyar with spears came riding past, dark faces painted and garbed in glowing silver mail. They rode past on a night of full moon, and Dior watched with his mother as the horses thundered up the trail near their camp.

Another time, Dior came to a sudden halt while collecting wood for their fire, when he heard noises below them, and turned to see a crowd of elves in the valley coming toward them, in livery of red and black.

He felt his breath seize, then, and he dropped the branches to clutch at his chest. The sounds rang in his ears again – swords, and screaming. Dior fought himself, fought his body for breath, and his mind to wrest himself back into the present moment. “I am not there,” he said to himself, breathing in. “I am here, I am safe.” But was he? His mother moved next to him then, putting her arm about him and pulling him against her shoulder.

“I will conceal us,” Lúthien said.

Lúthien left Dior by the fire and went into the woods, and there sang songs of peace, weaving bindings around them and above them so that those with ill intent would not heed their presence.

Uilon did not question her when she returned, but gave them each a portion of dinner – a fish stew.

“Do you not hunt?” Uilon asked Dior as they ate.

Dior was startled out of his memories. “Ah, my father was friend to many birds and beasts who aided him. I do not hunt, out of regard for that friendship. I suppose I am lucky he did not befriend any fish, or I would be hard pressed to sup now.”

But once more, Uilon fell silent, looking as though he’d answered the last bit of a riddle. Still, he did not ask them any questions, although Dior felt certain he knew who they were.

The next day they passed a branch on the path where a north-turning road led up to Formenos, and Uilon told them of the house of Fëanaro and the exile that had led him there an age of Arda ago. “Must be where all those Goldoi in red were goin’,” he said.

After that, as though the Golodh had no patience for roads of gravel, there was a marked difference in the quality of the roadwork, and their way to the coast went much more swiftly.

~

The eastern coastal road was well paved and wide, although when they reached it, it was quite empty. The Belegaer lay before them, though, vast and playful, and at his first glance of it Dior whooped and tossed the straw hat he had woven high into the air.

“Teleri you are in truth,” Uilon chuckled. “Now, most Teleri Return from out of that eastern exit from Mandos’ Halls,” he pointed north along the shore road, “So that the sea is the very first thing they set eyes to. Strange it is that Mandos had you walk all this way, although…perhaps you are of mingled blood?”

“I am,” Dior agreed. “Have you not guessed yet, friend? At any rate, this is my first time seeing the Belegaer on either side of her, and I find myself moved beyond anything I’ve felt yet in my – short, I grant you – life.”

Uilon looked off into the sea for a moment. “My true love Líson calls me a fool sometimes, for he deems me without curiosity, but I tell him it’s wisdom to know when to cleave to your own business. And my business is fish, and sometimes it is to enjoy the company of travelers come down from the Halls. Who you are, and why you might think it wise to hide away from the Goldoi, well. ‘Tisn’t my place to guess at it. No! Let us go find you some family, for they are undoubtedly wiser than I am, and know how best to keep you safe.”

“Do not call compassion unwise, friend,” Lúthien said, touching Uilon’s shoulder. “I count it a blessing that we met you along the way.”

That night, at their camp, Lúthien and Dior danced and played music for their friend, in thanks for his kindly acceptance of them, and because Lúthien no longer felt the need to hide herself from him.

Dior fashioned a flute out of a large conch, and to the flickering light of their fire, Lúthien danced to his fluted music. He matched the ebb and flow of the great tide as it washed onto the wild shores north of Aman.

Lúthien’s dance was of joy: of rebirth, and singing under the sun and moon and stars, and stealing life and all the beauty of it from death, from the Valar themselves. It was a new dance, and a new song, and Dior felt it thrumming within him too – all the promise of existence, of years added to his short span, to be in Arda and move in the greatest of dances once again – even if it meant contending with his memories, and hiding from the great powers lest they order them back, or sever his mother entirely from his father.

Uilon was silent after they were done, staring out into the sea himself, and at the strange star that drifted slowly eastward.

“Ah,” he said at last, “that reminded me of the first time I was out in a boat, feeling held in the arms of Ulmo himself, for all my family spoke against it. ‘Twas like coming home.”

~

The Pelóri did not behave like mountains should, Dior thought. They swept down to the coast of Araman to form the briefest of seashores, and just before Alqualondë, a foothill of the range jutted forward to form a great natural arch. This was fortified by vast gates of iron, and a guard of tanned but white-haired soldiers stood before them.

“Ah it’s Uilon,” called a guard. “Did you pick up a few strays along the way, again?”

“Aye!” Uilon said, laughing. He fished one of Dior’s woven baskets out of the back – it was full of mussels that they’d picked from the rocks that day on Belegaer’s shore.

“We’ll eat well in the guardroom tonight,” one said, clapping Uilon on the shoulder as they thrust open the great gate. “You never fail to think of us, Uilon!”

“‘Tis no trouble. Líson and I can hardly eat it all ourselves!”

“Your husband is at the aviary, if you wish to find him. He stopped to warn of your approach this morning.”

“I’ll make my way home first, I think! Then I shall find the kin of these two. Líson will have to wait, or find me!”

Lúthien had woven a homely sort of spell into their coats, and sitting beside Uilon, they looked nothing more than a cheerful fishwife and her uncomely son, two that might have fallen and Returned from any village on the far shore, by Orc or weather or accident.

“Welcome back, Returners!” The guards greeted them, “Glad we are to see you.”

And yet they did not truly see them, and waved them in without a second glance.

The city of Alqualondë itself, nestled into its natural harbor, was like nothing Dior had seen. Menegroth of the many caves, and his home near the Lanthir Lamath, had grown from the land around it like all the architecture of those who had never been to Aman. But this was Valar-touched, and stone-and-steel forged, and Dior felt more of a trace of Golodh engineering in that city than he thought he should.

“Ah, the Goldoi helped the Teleri build this fair place,” Uilon responded to his question. “There was great friendship between them once, before they slew the Teleri and took the ships.”

Still, it was lovely. The castle was carved out of one side of the bay and had slender spires reaching upward like the necks of sea birds, echoing the ships in the harbor whose prows were carved with every kind of bird but the swan.

“Those beautiful swan-prowed ships, those are no longer built,” Uilon said. “You can hear the whole tale of it from Líson, if you care to, later. He was here at the beginning, my lovely Falmari! After that, he no longer wished to build ships at all, and turned to other occupations. He tends to the Prince’s aviary nowadays.”

The streets were paved, and the houses were whitewashed and painted in the delicate colors of shells. The fruits of the sea adorned her, but throughout the city there were strange gaps – places where statues had been removed, with nothing replacing them; fountains where the shapes of gems had been pried away from the edges so that nothing remained but faceted holes. It had been done deliberately and left so, so that the city still looked raw from the rage of its citizens.

“Ah, y’see, we haven’t forgotten,” Uilon said. “None of us wants to get rid of these wounds ‘til they’ve had words with the ones that turned against us.”

At this, Dior was silent, for this history bled into his own. But the city was fair despite the hurts done to it, and the best part of the design was that Dior could ever see and hear the sea.

~

On their way to Uilon’s house in the market square near the docks, he traded mussels for clothes for them, simple and practical robes and pants that protected them from the chill mist of the bay. Uilon hesitated at boots made of leather, and Lúthien shook her head, so they remained in their sandals of woven straw. Belts of cloth he girded about them, and gave them useful knives with thick felt sheaths.

After they bathed and were preparing the mussels and salad of seaweed, Líson stepped into their house. A tall elf he was, mast-thin and scarred, with sea-burnished skin and the white hair and blue-gray eyes of the people of Olue. He bobbed his head in greeting when he saw Lúthien and Dior.

“Whom have you gathered along the road, my wandering love?” Líson said to Uilon, setting his satchel upon the table.

“Some friends newly Returned, and merry folk they are,” Uilon said, giving Líson a hearty smack of lips to the cheek. “And merry you look as well, my beauty. I have brought you the spinnerfish you desired for the winter! But for tonight, we dine on mussels from Araman.”

Dior and Lúthien turned away to let them embrace in peace, and Dior found his mind wandering again, to see if the bond of his marriage would be answered now that he was in the city. But still there was silence. Did Nimloth remain in the Halls? No matter, Dior thought, tamping down a wave of disappointment.

When they sat at dinner, Lúthien bowed her head and began her tale, the true one, with no subterfuge. “And so,” she concluded, “We are here, whether the Valar willed it or not. And therefore, I do not desire to walk into the court of my uncle and proclaim myself – I would have us walk freely in this land, quietly, and live as we may – so that my choice to return is preserved, and Dior’s choice to stay. I know enough of good Uilon to know he will not impede us. What say you, Líson?”

The tall Falmari was silent for a time, sipping on the honey-mead. “Let those live who desire it,” Líson said, “In the way they desire it. Some questioned my husband’s decision to marry a Teleri, and one who could not give him children besides. And yet, more happiness have we had than if we’d managed to please everyone but ourselves. If you find joy in dancing, then dance, Lúthien! If you wish to apprentice here, you should, Dior. But.”

“But?”

“You are known here, in song and legend. You will be recognized. It may be that you should not walk into your uncle’s court, but I deem you should meet with Prince Olue as quietly as you may. He is a wise lord, and he will treat with you fairly.”

“I fear,” Lúthien said, “that if he is a lawful lord, he will tell the Valar.”

“And yet, if he does not know you are here, he cannot help to conceal you. Believe me when I say that the Falmari protect their own – and you, our beloved princess, we would never send back to death.”

Dior could tell that Líson’s words were sincere. These two were honorable. Lúthien would abide by Uilon and Líson’s word, and Dior would as well, for their wisdom was tempered by compassion.

They agreed that Líson would take them to Olue’s aviary the next day, and ask that the prince attend to him on a matter of urgency regarding the hawks, in order to speak privately.
~

The palace, graceful and tall, echoed with the sound of the sea. It was built over an inlet in the rocks, and the sea flowed beneath and under the stone walls, half-carven as they were from the face of the cliff that cradled them. The palace looked like a sea-stone hollowed by the waves and sand, with the tall necks of towers high above, and boats sheltered beneath the first story so that the prince and his court might live as much on the water as on land.

Lúthien and Dior hummed their song of peace and forgetfulness as they walked past the guards at the gate, and all the way up and through the many-terraced palace to emerge onto a high plateau carved from the sheltering cliff. There, a wall protected a yard and mews, and in it were housed many falcons, pigeons, and other birds meant for hunting and sending swift messages.

There Dior gazed at sleeping falcons on their roosts, hooded and banded, and watched as the city below awakened to meet the fishing boats returned from their predawn journeys into the bay.

Soon, they heard a voice, low and courteous. “Líson – tell me, is one of my birds ill? It is rare that you call me. Last time, it was for the birth of a bird that was the color of blood, and you wished me to augur the omen it brought. What is –”

Olue strode forward, and Lúthien let their disguises drop, and he ceased to speak. He stood in the midst of the aviary and beheld them, and passed his hands over his eyes.

“Maiden, you have the look of my brother Elue about you. Tell me, for I have not seen him in a long span of years – how come you here? For his daughter is dead, they say, and in the halls where men go.”

“No longer, uncle. For we chose not to remain,” Lúthien said. And smiling, she came close, and embraced the man who had the look of her father to him, if a little shorter of stature, and with hair mellowed from silver to ivory.

“Lúthien – truly?” Olue said, his voice full of wonder. “I would have the tale of this. And tell me also why you were not ushered to my court with all panoply and ceremony, for your great deeds in Beleriand. And is this – my grand-nephew? He is the very image of my brother, but for his hair!”

And so they sat together in the aviary, and Lúthien told him why they had come quietly and in disguise, and at the end of the tale he sat silently before them.

“And so now you are in my hands, my niece and grand-nephew,” Olue said then. “And you ask for nothing more than the freedom to do as you choose. I cannot lie to the powers of this land. But I say to you: go to Nessa and dance with her, Lúthien. If she accepts you to her train, she will intercede on your behalf if Námo comes calling.

“Dior – I cannot ask that you remain here in Alqualondë, though my heart desires it. For if I am asked where you are, I do not wish to say that I know, and point to you in my own city! But I have tidings for you, however, that may lead you to another dwelling place.”

“Tidings?” Dior sat forward.

“Your daughter Elwing came to this land with her husband, and they dwell together along the coast of Araman. She keeps a lighthouse, and her husband pilots a ship…of sorts, although I’d never make one of mithril and glass myself. Living alone as she does while her husband is on his patrols, I deem she would be glad of your company.”

Dior was struck by the strangeness of such news. “It seems that many things took place while I dreamed within the Halls of Men,” he said. “How came my daughter here? And – why does my wife Nimloth not yet live? Who is Elwing’s husband, is he of Menegroth, or a different sort of elf? What does he patrol for, in this place? Why can she not live in your city?...And my sons, are they not here too?”

Olue dropped his head, remaining silent for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“Come, beloved niece and nephew. Before I tell you aught of what has passed in Beleriand since you departed it, we shall dine. It will take some time to tell the whole tale, and … you must be fortified for it, for I must warn you, the news is grim.”

They lingered a while over their breakfast, rice porridge topped with pickled radishes and shredded dried fish, eaten on one of the many terraces that overlooked the bay. It was a fair morning in late summer, and the fog lingered around the bird-prowed ships in the harbor until it dissipated in the sun.

Dior sipped on the mint tea. He felt a coldness in his gut, wondering if the lightness he’d felt ever since his escape from the Halls of Men was to be short-lived. He’d told himself that any amount of pain was worth facing, for the joy of finding Nimloth again. He hoped that he was right.

Finally, reluctantly, Olue began his tale. He recounted the history of Beleriand, and the part that Elwing had played in summoning help. It took some time to tell, and before Olue had told of the final battle and Eärendil’s part in it, he noticed that Dior was trembling.

Olue called for wine.

“We are almost at an end,” Olue said, “but I see now that this news is painful for you to discover, for it concerns our family.”

Dior took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, pressing his hands to his eyes. Lúthien had drifted over to the stone wall of the balcony, staring out at the water as she listened to the tale of the agony of her grandchildren.

Elwing. Hunted and hounded, abandoned and thrust into power; motherhood and suddenly forced into a decision: to keep the jewel from those who served the enemy’s purpose and abandon her children, or stay and be slain… The decision was impossible, and yet Elwing had done her best.

“I am…proud of my daughter,” Dior said, keeping his voice level with some difficulty. “Yet I am ashamed that she was forced to carry the weight of our expectations while barely full grown. And I fear for my lost sons. And…it is so long ago that my rage cannot now have a purpose.” He could not describe his feelings, save for one: sleep in the Halls of Men would have been a blessing, compared to this. He nearly wanted to go back.

Olue nodded, pouring the wine. Dior took a swallow, and then drained the cup to the lees. Olue poured him another.

“You will need it, the tale has one turn left.”

And then he spoke of the ending of Beleriand, and the part that Eärendil played in slaying Ancalagon – and the damned jewels, again, driving Nimloth’s murderer to his suicide, and the last remaining brother to fading on the shores of the world.

But the very worst news was that Dior’s country was drowned: the trees, mountains, and caverns that he’d known and loved. Menegroth and all the kingdoms of the Elves in Beleriand – every part of it was under the waves.

At the end of the story, Dior stood and joined his mother at the balcony’s wall. His sons were lost forever, then. Sweet Elúrin, loving Eluréd, lost beneath the waves. Where did they stray, that they could not even be housed in the Halls of Men?

After a time, Lúthien put his arm around him, and waited as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

“I see,” Dior said at last. “My daughter is doomed to remain in that tower, waiting for her husband, trapped upon his ship. I feel…I feel that there is much left to learn, and mourn, and think on, and what I must do next is be with her, with them.”

“I am sorry,” Olue said. “I am greatly sorry. But you are here, and in my heart I rejoice that something at least was spared from the victory.”

“Was it a victory?” Lúthien asked, and her expression was a match to what lay within Dior’s heart.

~

They returned to Uilon’s house that afternoon.

Dior was lost in silence, contending with his thoughts. He grieved, and would grieve for a long time: for his sons lost to Arda, for Beleriand lost to the sea, and for the home he’d loved. Even his first fair home on the island of Tol Galen was under the waves, although perhaps his second home, abandoned at the foot of Lamath Lanthir, still remained.

Líson, who had been with them to listen to the tale of Dior’s children, pulled Uilon aside and spoke to him softly. They had a quiet dinner that night, and Dior was given the peace to dwell upon his memories.

They agreed to stay for some days before moving on, so that they could adjust to the ways of their new life, and gather things for the road. Lúthien said she would travel with Dior to greet her granddaughter, before finding Nessa.

“But I think I have a purpose now,” Lúthien said, thoughtfully. “It is not enough that I dance. I must dance in memory of Beleriand, and bring it to the minds of others, that they may know its beauty along with its darkness.”

That night, Dior could not sleep, and walked the shell-lined streets to the harbor instead. Standing on a stone pier, he watched the waves lap against the pillars of a docks. The sea held everything for him now – it cradled his home in its vast lap, holding it close in its sleep.

But how, Dior thought in anguish, how could any who had lived in Beleriand, Golodh or Sindar or Man, stand to know of it and continue their lives as usual, knowing that the home they’d bled for was utterly gone?

For that, Dior had no answer, nor could he answer it in himself. He was torn between flinging himself at the Valar and demanding they right the wrong that they and their cousin Morgoth had done to the land – or dwelling silently with his grief in whatever way he would, since the destruction of his home was long over. He came to no conclusion, and remained staring at the sea until Uilon found him the next morning to lead him back to breakfast.

~

But that day, and throughout that week, it became clear that the citizens of Alqualondë knew, somehow, that Dior and Lúthien had Returned. But they pretended very hard that they did not know who was staying at Uilon’s house.

The denizens of Olue’s city filed by the door of Uilon’s house, leaving things behind. “I hear you have distant cousins staying with you, Uilon, newly Returned,” one visitor said loudly, leaving some folded quilts upon the table. “I wish to leave a few gifts for their household, in thanks for all that you’ve done for us.”

“And on their behalf I thank you,” Uilon replied, chuckling, “although you know I’d trade you fish for your fine quilts any day!”

And quietly, over the days that followed, the house began to fill with goods – fair garments that were gifts from the weaver’s quarter. Baskets and pots and packs made with travel in mind, from Uilon’s neighbors; pairs of boots with the sturdiest of felted soles from a relation of Líson; preserved fruit and fish from the elves around the market; and waybread baked by Olue’s wife, the princess Váialóre herself.

One day, near the day they’d marked for departure, two hardy ponies arrived at their door, all decked out in travel tack. The messenger who led them, a graceful elf with white hair tied up in strands of pearls, bowed and delivered words from Prince Olue. “The Prince bids you to visit again, when you may, and bring your daughter and son-in-law with you. He desires to take you out on Canuahen, where Váialóre is captain, and will bring you to explore the many islands in the bay.”

“I desire it!” Dior said. “Please give him our thanks. We will return, if the Valar allow.”

~

They bade farewell to Uilon and Líson early the next day, before the sun rose to touch the mist of the harbor.

“I will remain a while at my daughter’s tower to the north, along the Araman road,” Dior said to them. “Come and see us when you next wander, and bring Líson with you!”

Uilon would accept nothing in return for their hospitality, save an opportunity to see Lúthien dance once more, someday. “It has stuck in my head,” he said. “Powerful-like, as if I’d seen a force of nature alight and take on the shape of all my sea longing.”

“I will return and dance for you,” Lúthien said, “and for my uncle’s court. After I finish it, you will be the first to see the whole of Beleriand Lost.”

“We eagerly await your return,” Líson said, smiling. They clambered up on their ponies and headed through the city and out of the great gates.

~

Birds circled them as they approached the lonely tower. It stood on a spur of land that sloped down from the coastal road to the east of the Pelóri, standing tall from the wood that surrounded it.

The building was strangely constructed – it was composed of two tall buildings set side by side, with a high platform at the top between them that looked almost like a high wooden dock. No flags or pinions adorned them, but on the rooftops of each there were beacons built of mirrors, angled to refract the light of the sun by day, and great lanterns by night, high into the sky.

Terns and herons, pelicans and storks, mighty seahawks and narrow-beaked ibises flew toward them, and circled about their heads in a noisy honor guard, the closer they came to the towers.

Lúthien looked up and laughed at all the turning and squawking and wheeling. “Be at peace,” she said to the birds, and sought in her pack for crumbs of waybread to scatter. “We are kin here.”

When they arrived at the cleared yard before the towers, they saw a silver-haired figure emerge from the door, and Dior felt his heart clench in his chest. He suddenly regretted the years he’d missed in forgetfulness and sleep, for here was Elwing, grown to her full stature, standing tall amid the birds.

Strong she was like Nimloth, and just as wild, with all of Nimloth’s silver hair. But Elwing’s face was formed of Dior’s own long bones and pointed chin, and she was staring at them both in perplexity and suspicion as they dismounted and walked forward.

“You,” Elwing said to Dior, “You look like my Ada, but not as he was in portraits – you are more elven, and should not be, for my father was half Man, and is with them in their Halls. And you,” she turned to Lúthien, “Look much like the tapestries of my grandmother in her youth! Who are you, and why do you come to haunt me thus?”

“Elwing. I am Dior indeed. I will tell you how this came to pass,” Dior said, holding very still, feeling as if losing all of Beleriand might be a fair trade for having this piece of his heart returned to him.

Elwing came forward a cautious step or two. “There were many elves who came to me in the guise of friendship, in Sirion, who were not. And I hear the Maiar walk this earth in many guises as well, and I sense this power in you two. And yet I do not trust what I see or feel, for my father is dead, my grandmother is dead, and should be beyond the earth in peace! I would not wish my father to be remade here, for all that he loved has passed away.”

“Oh, I know,” said Dior, his words heartfelt. “When I learned of all that had happened, I nearly ran back to the Halls of Men. Let me share my mind with you, Elwing, and you shall see how it is that we are here.”

“I suppose,” said Elwing, coming to him. “And if you take any liberties with my mind, I shall not hesitate to call my birds upon you.”

Dior smiled, feeling a surge of pride in his heart for his brave child, threatening him in her uncertainty. “Here.”

And between them, carefully, carefully, Dior and Lúthien shared their memories with Elwing, revealed the truth of their journey – Lúthien awakening amid the quietness of the Halls of Men, Dior’s similar awakening, their escape and travels with Uilon, their meeting with Olue, and learning of Elwing and all that had transpired in Beleriand.

“I yield,” Elwing said, after taking all of this in, and with a leap, threw her arms around Dior’s shoulders. “Ada. Ada! You’ve returned, beyond hope, and beyond the walls of the world, amid death, and loss, and destruction, beyond all despair – you’ve returned.”

~

“I think you will come to love Eärendil,” Elwing said, standing beside Lúthien and Dior on the high platform in the early morning to welcome her husband home.

The Silmaril sang a greeting in Dior’s mind as Eärendil slowly steered Vingilot closer, and Dior steeled himself for it, sighing. “Yes, there you are,” he muttered. Somehow, this jewel of power had remained in the hands of his family through all the wrinkles of Beleriand’s history, and they were not rid of it yet.

The jewel shone with a painful brightness to welcome its previous bearers, and Dior closed his eyes to fend off the wave of light that reached for him. But it felt different, Dior thought – and realized that his mortality was no longer an impediment to his reception of its power. Well, there was that, at least.

Dior wondered how Eärendil dealt with it, with the slow corrosion of the Silmaril against his mannish nature. Maybe living in Aman helped?

Eärendil tied his glass-and-silver boat to the high dock, leaving the Silmaril in a lantern hung on the mast, and hopped off to come and greet his wife. When he saw that she was accompanied, he called, “It is rare to see guests here – is it kin of mine?”

“Beyond all hope, and unlooked for, it is my own father Dior, and grandmother Lúthien too,” Elwing said, smiling as she placed Eärendil’s hand in Dior’s. They clasped hands, and Dior stared, and stared – it was not every day that two peredhel met.

His law-son was of a height with him, tall for a half-Man, with hair that was a bright shade of gold. Something about his clear blue eyes felt instantly recognizable to Dior. It was the slightly bemused look of a man who’d been forced to deal with elves his whole life, and Dior felt that expression deeply.

“Out of the many questions I have, I will settle on this as my first one – how does a peredhel live in Aman, rather than be forced to depart to the Halls of Men?” Dior asked. “My mother and I had to creep our way out.”

“I was given a choice, to live out the fate of my elven nature, or take up the gift of men,” Eärendil said. “Elwing chose to join her fate to Arda’s, and so to be with her, I did the same. All our children have this choice too.”

“Would that such a choice was given to Dior as well,” Luthien said, brow wrinkling.

“I could not be at peace in the Halls of Men, knowing that Nimloth was here,” Dior said. “She has not emerged from Mandos yet – perhaps she grieves Beleriand as I do – but I will gladly live all my years until time’s end beside her when we meet again.”

“And I will say this to you,” Eärendil said, smiling, “I finally understand why my sons have dark hair.”

Lúthien laughed, and then fell silent, her thoughts far away for a moment. “Your son…before we left the Halls of Men…we saw a tall, noble king with hair like ours. We felt a kinship with him.”

“Elros,” Elwing said, her expression turning sorrowful. “We heard. He chose the fate of men – glad am I that he stood beside you in those halls, if only for a little while. His brother Elrond lives still, and helped lead our people to the slopes of Ossiriand, after Beleriand fell. He chose the fate of elves – and perhaps, someday, he shall meet you.”

A grandson. Dior felt a new, troubling ache grow in his heart. His sons might be gone, but he still had someone to worry about, dwelling in whatever land remained. “I would like that.”

Eärendil sighed, and then yawned. “I beg your pardon,” he said, his voice sheepish. “Whenever I return to these shores, it takes my body a moment to get used to the strength of Aman’s energy. But I am home for a few days before I set out again, and would speak more with you tomorrow.”

~

The next day, they walked to the rocky shore below Elwing’s tower, and stared out at the tossing waves of Belegaer while they spoke of many things.

Elwing recounted her own story of her last days in Sirion, and of the choice she was forced to make, to leave her children. Eärendil stood beside her, holding her in the curve of his arm as she spoke.

“I thought I was jumping to my death,” Elwing said, staring into the water. “The Silmaril knew the Golodh only as evil, as tools in the hand of Morgoth, and did not wish to remain with them. I could not fight them and the Silmaril’s power both, for they were mightier than me – and in despair I took the only path that seemed to remain. I do not thank the Silmaril for winnowing my choices to none, in the end. Had I held any other jewel, I would have ransomed it gladly for the lives of my sons. I hope that someday, I may tell Elrond of this.”

It was a comfort, and a blessing, for Dior to be able to speak to his daughter that tell her that he was proud of her decision, even though the choice was bitter.

“When I placed you in the arms of Daeron and put the Silmaril into your pack, and bid him flee, I did the same,” Dior said. “I knew I would face death, and chose to do so, rather than flee with you. I did it to delay the Golodh so that you would live on, but I know that I placed a heavy burden upon you. For that, Elwing – I am sorry.”

“Our line is unlucky in this manner. We have all left our children,” Elwing said. “But maybe someday I will have the luck of my son returned to me.”

Eärendil spoke then of his part in the final battle, and the strange fate that set him into the sky. “And now I sail alone, save when my father Tuor joins me.”

“Tuor? But is he not a man?” Dior asked. “How can that be? Should Tuor not be in a place of honor in the Halls of Men, in the line of your son Elros? And yet we did not see him there.”

Elwing pointed southward and eastward, to the land that lay amid the encircling arc of smaller islands and the curve of the long bay. “The house of Tuor and Idril lies on Tol Eressëa. He remains, as does Eärendil, by the grace of the Valar. They were like second parents to me in Sirion, for a while – I think you will enjoy them, Ada.”

Lúthien furrowed her brow, and Dior turned to her, seeing her distress. He guessed where her mind might have strayed.

“It is unfair,” Lúthien said. “Vastly so, for has Beren not done as much good for Arda as any of the race of Men? Only one thing keeps me from returning to demand his release: he was at peace, slumbering there.”

Lúthien glared out into the sea for another moment, and then sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Once before I sued for his release from the Halls of Men, before the very throne of Mandos. When we find our places here, Dior, and know whether we can ourselves remain – perhaps I will try again to sue for his release, or finally join him in his slumber.”

~

Working around the tower to prepare for Eärendil’s next voyage, Dior found that he liked his law-son greatly – they had much in common as peredhel, but Eärendil also shared Dior’s newfound love of the sea.

They moved fresh stores aboard the delicate ship, and wove fresh ropes out of a strange silver cord.

“After my parents and I fled Gondolin and Elwing took us in at Sirion, I had my very first glimpse of the sea, alongside a father who could not wait to set sail on it,” Eärendil said, smiling at the memory. “It was Tuor who taught me my way around a boat, and he is never happier than when he is aboard one.”

Eärendil told Dior that his father had built a new boat, Gwingwiril the foam-flecked (he’d sent Eärrámë back with Círdan’s sailors), and often sailed amid the islands. “After all the time that he and my mother and their friend Voronwë spent aboard Eärrámë making their way here, and getting quite lost along the route, being on a boat is second nature to him now.”

“Would he be willing to take on an apprentice in his craft?” Dior asked, feeling a surge of hope. “I want to learn how to ride on these waters!”

“We shall ask him to come, and you can press the question to him yourself. Elwing – can we borrow a bird?”

Elwing whistled down a large gray gull from the crowd of birds that flew nigh her wherever she went, and after Eärendil wrote a note for his father to come and visit them in vague yet urgent terms, the messenger-gull was soon making its way southward over the waves.

“Useful, aren’t they,” Elwing said cheerfully. “They can be loud, but they’re wonderful for sending messages in a pinch, especially if Tuor and Idril are at sea.”

~

In the days that followed they talked together of the future, and Lúthien spoke of her plan to go and dance with Nessa, if she would allow it.

Eärendil offered the use of his ship to take her over the Pelóri to Nessa’s halls. “I do not offer this to many, but you and Dior have held the Silmaril yourselves – it cannot harm you or tempt you more than it has.”

“Far from it,” Dior said, glad the stone was still on Vingilot.

“But I thank you, my grandson. I am curious to see Aman from such a height,” Lúthien said. “And forgive me, but I do not have the heart to meet with Tuor quite yet. It would be a torment to me, and I intend to choreograph an elegy to Beleriand, at least, before I return to Beren’s side – or win him free.”

The journey was resolved, and soon came the day of Lúthien and Eärendil’s departure. The light now bound to Eärendil’s brow was reflected and refracted by the ship of mithril and glass and silver around it, until it became so bright that Dior shielded his eyes, glad that his mother’s nature would protect her from the searing glow.

“And if Nessa forces her to return to the Halls of Men – take her into the sky, Eärendil!” Elwing said. “Make sure she is not driven there without choice.”

“It will make for an interesting journey,” Eärendil said, wryly. “But I shall take a gull with me, and send it back to you with the decision.”

~

Dior remained with Elwing, tending to the lanterns and their reflectors on the towers, helping to forage and farm her small garden, and fishing in the little cove below her tower. He had the time now to speak to her about the short years they’d been together, and the long years they’d been apart.

Elwing’s presence was a balm to Dior’s pain, for she and Eärendil had lived through the last years of Beleriand and the final battle for it. Watching her memories in slow increments helped Dior to understand it, and see how the land had been poisoned and destroyed by the enemy even before it was destroyed by the Valar.

Elwing understood Dior’s moments when he became caught in his memories, too.

“I still find it difficult to face any of the people who were with me in Sirion, let alone our own family,” Elwing admitted one night, while they sat staring at the embers of the fire. “No matter why I jumped, I was going to fail someone, and I feel as though choosing the Silmaril’s path meant that I had abandoned them all. That is why I am glad to remain here, although I am often alone – better to be alone than responsible, again, for anyone else.”

“No, Elwing!” Dior said. He gathered her against him, tucking her head onto his shoulder and resting his hand upon her hair. “None of those who think ill of us have felt the pressure of the Silmaril within their own minds – the pressure that bent our wills and sapped our bodies in its pursuit of its own path. It is a harsh thing, that power – it would have killed me too, ere long, as it hastened the end of my parents. None should fault you, and if they do, they do so out of ignorance.”

“I wonder why the stone chose our family as its servants,” Elwing said, wiping her eyes against his shirt. “And lo, we serve it still.”

“That, I do not know.” Dior said. “Eärendil’s fate is hard indeed, and yours with it.”

Dior added this injustice to his list, for the next time he ran across a Vala.

“It is not so bad a life,” Elwing said. “There is joy in pleasing none but myself. I have my birds for company, and every day I learn more of the history of this world, and I have my husband still when his travels allow. And now I have you, Ada – and hopefully Emil soon too?”

“Me, for as long as the Valar will it,” Dior agreed. “But speaking of Nimloth’s return, I had an idea for building a small house near yours, if you would let me?”

“Of course. Law-mother Idril will be glad of some building to do, when she arrives – Princess of Gondolin as she was, she absolutely cannot sit still.”

~

Soon, the gull returned bearing a message from Lúthien. Nessa has agreed, under the condition that I join Beren again in time. I will not sue for his release, but at least I have more time here to create this art.

Dior considered whether this was good news or ill, and eventually decided it was both.

Gwingwiril came into their sights on a clear day in early autumn, a seagull perched smugly on its mast. She was indeed a fine ship, and Dior itched to know more about her, from the pale wood that formed her, to the indigo sails, to the stylized foamy waves painted in blue upon her prow. He felt a sense of anticipation bubbling through him, and could hardly contain himself as he stood waiting to greet them upon Elwing’s dock.

Tuor dropped anchor near Elwing’s cove, and lowered a little rowboat down to row them the rest of the way in.

When they clambered onto the dock to greet Elwing and Dior, Tuor took a long look at Dior and removed the pipe from his mouth. He was bearded as men became in age; the hair that fell in a golden braid over his shoulder was streaked with silver, but he otherwise looked wiry and hale as sailors did.

Tuor was tongue-tied, and remained silent while Idril gave her greeting. Finally he said, “No wonder my son’s note was so carefully worded. One so fair as you must be the son of Lúthien.”

“Atar!” Elwing said, clapping her hands over her ears.

Idril laughed at Elwing’s embarrassment, at Dior’s chagrined expression, and her husband’s blush. Idril’s hair was golden, and her expression was as open and kindly as Eärendil’s. Below the ankle her feet were wrought of a silvery metal strapped to her legs with leather cuffs, and she wore no shoes. “Forgive Tuor, please! He cannot help himself around a certain sort of elf. But – Dior Eluchil, did you stride into Aman like Tuor did, assuming that all would be well?”

“My path was stranger than that,” Dior admitted, and told them of it as they walked to Elwing’s abode.

“So that’s what it’s like,” Tuor said, recovered from his bout of shyness, after he learned of the Halls of Men. “There are times when I have wished for it – the peace of knowing that there’s nothing more I can do in this world, so I might as well close my eyes and wait for the end.”

Dior nodded his understanding, and said, “I felt a peace beyond peace there – as if our kin had all earned their oblivion, and sank into it gratefully.”

“And yet – I would miss my beloved Idril, and Gwingwiril, and my friend Voronwë, and my son, and watching the moon rise over the waves on fair nights,” Tuor said. “For that alone, I will keep to this life.”

“I see where Eärendil falls on your list,” Elwing said with a toss of her silver hair, and Tuor laughed.

That night, after their meal, they watched as Eärendil wandered his way around the distant east. “I have always wondered if the Valar provide him with a plotted chart, or if he adventures at will,” Tuor said, squinting into the distance. “I can never figure where he will go next, and I’ve spent many a year staring at him.”

“He is given a course,” Elwing said, “but it makes little sense to me. I suppose he is pulled where hope is needed most in Middle-earth.”

Dior finally found some resolve and spoke, for he had also felt shy to express his heart’s desire. “I admit that I asked to meet for two purposes, and not simply to greet you. The first is this – since I emerged from the Halls of Men and saw the dark western sea in all her stormy temper, I have longed to learn more of sailing. Would you teach me, Tuor? I would apprentice myself to you for a time, if you are not adverse.” He bowed his head, feeling a blush cross his face.

“Of course,” Idril said immediately, her expression thoughtful, and then looked to Tuor. “Ah – I mean. I should not answer for Gwingwiril’s captain, eh? But in Gondolin, any who desired an apprenticeship with as much fervor as you’ve expressed was given one.”

Tuor prodded Idril in the side, making her squirm away, batting at his hands. “She likely wants better company than her old husband,” he said, laughing. “And who else but the lovely son of the loveliest of elves?”

“Cease!” Elwing protested, covering her face with both hands.

Dior blushed further. “I am not slow to learn,” he protested. “I will not simply be on your ship for company’s sake, I wish to work!” Many had made the mistake of thinking Dior indolent due to his mother’s stamp on him, and it took all the gentleness of his father’s character to temper the desire to blow them into the void with a Song. Well, little matter, if Tuor gave him a chance to sail.

“I am teasing you, Dior, and teasing myself most of all,” Tuor said, looking sheepish. “I would be glad to have you, very glad, despite your dauntingly fair form.”

“Tuor,” Idril said, tone reproachful. She reached out and tugged firmly on his beard. “You will see Voronwë soon enough, you incorrigible man! Treat fairly with Dior.”

“Aye, I will, I will,” Tuor said, laughing as he took her up in his arms. “But you said you had two things to ask, law-brother?”

Dior’s heart ached to see the playfulness between the two – he felt it in the throb of his dormant marriage bond, and he dropped his gaze for a moment. “I hope that someday, Nimloth will choose to emerge from the Halls of Mandos,” he said quietly. “And when she does, I would have a cottage prepared for her near our children. Something small, but sound. Would you help me plan it, Idril?”

“Now that I will agree to gladly,” Idril said, “although I sense I soon will be longing for all the tools we had in Gondolin.”

~

Tuor and Idril tarried with them a span of time, through autumn and into winter and spring again. Sometimes they turned their attention to Nimloth’s cottage – quarrying stones, digging the foundation, and working the timbers.

Idril often looked rueful as she worked her lathe. “It is a shame that you are hiding away here – if you knew how my folk have made mechanisms that aid in lumber production, you would never again wish to shape a beam by hand.”

“I wish I did not need to hide either, Idril,” Dior said. “Nimloth deserves to dwell in my uncle’s castle as a princess of the Teleri, but I fear I cannot offer it to her while I hide away from the great powers.”

“Will they not know, the moment she steps forth, that you are here? They will feel it in the tug of her heart.”

“My mother has woven a spell about me for concealment,” Dior said. “As to how well it will work and for how long – we’ll see.”

They also spent long days on Gwingwiril, and those were some of the happiest moments that Dior had experienced so far in Aman. Tuor was a patient teacher, and taught him much of the craft of sailing that he’d learned from Círdan himself during their days in Sirion.

Tuor spoke to him of many things while they labored together on Gwingwiril – of his companionship with Ulmo; of his first view of the great sea from the western shore and how it made him late for his quest because of his love for it; and of his time in the city of Gondolin.

“I hear that Menegroth had similar workings. We had cogged machines that ran on wind and water, so that many of the worst necessities of a city were done by invisible hands,” Tuor said, standing beside Dior as he taught him knots. “There, pull that end through the loop. This is a type of knot that moves if you want it to.”

“Like this?” Dior showed him, concentrating. “Ah – Menegroth was powered by the might of Melian, and after she faded, by the Silmaril. Perhaps not all the stone’s workings were ill, for it allowed me to wake our city to greatness again, if only for a little while.”

“I suppose that Turgon had to use wind and water for lack of that power,” Tuor said, adjusting the knot a little, and showing Dior how it moved. “He made do! I wish you could have seen it. The city is still in my heart, for all that I had to ask him over and over again to leave it.”

“It is hard to let go of anything created by your own hands,” Dior agreed, staring down at the knot he’d just worked. And then he realized he could have been speaking of any of the Golodhrim, including the one who had made the Silmaril. He made a face.

“Did you swallow a gnat?”

“Ah,” Dior said, “I just felt compassion for the ones that slew me, for a moment.”

Idril nodded, her expression rueful. “It’s harder to square in your heart when your worst foes could have been your friends, isn’t it?”

~

When Midwinter came, Dior’s mood grew bleak with his memories. He spent the day wandering alone on the long strand, picking up shells from the shallows and letting the sound of Belegaer’s waves wash away the darkness in his mind.

Dior was thinking of Elúred and Elurín, and the last time he’d seen them. They’d been dressed in white and crowned with red berries for the midwinter celebration, and played together in the snow below the great tree Helevorn. How cold it had been, that day!

How cold they would have been in Neldoreth that night.

When the sun dropped behind the Pelóri at dusk, Dior found Tuor walking to meet him along the sand. Tuor did not speak, but turned to stand with him and face the sea.

“I do not understand it,” Dior said at last. “Why my sons cannot be found amid the living or the dead.”

“Perhaps, beyond all hope, they live in Middle-earth still. Let us go there someday, Dior – let us go and find them.”

Dior smiled then, his imagination captured by the thought of going on a quest that would be the equal of anything his parents had done, leaving the undying lands in a ship to return to Middle-earth and wander there until he found his lost children…

“It would be reckless and wild, my brother,” Dior said, laughing. “With no certainty of return for either of us. And I await Nimloth’s return.”

“But you have not said no, have you?” Tuor’s smile was broad.

“Tuor! We shall see.”

But it was in a much better mood that Dior returned with him to Elwing’s house.

~

One morning in spring, they were on the roof of the little hut laying slates when Dior felt a burst of something so vivid and joyous that he staggered sideways, nearly tumbling off the side.

“Ho, elig nin – be careful,” Tuor said, catching his wrist. “Sit. What is it? Are you ill?”

“Nimloth!” Dior gasped, and looked to the north and west, where the Halls of Mandos opened onto a slope that looked out over the coast of Araman. “I must –”

“First, get off the roof, will you?”

“Is it she? Has she Returned?” Idril called from below. “I’ll go saddle your ponies!”

Dior clambered down and concentrated, feeling the glow of the bond between them swell into a bright harmony. Nimloth, he thought toward her. I will come for you!

Dior! I felt you, the moment I emerged. Came the reply. How?

Do not speak of me to anyone! The tale is long – I will find you there.

~

Dior and Elwing hastened forth on the ponies, leaving to Idril calling after them, “We’ll finish up the cottage! It’ll be sound and ready when you return.”

And then they were off on the journey north along the coast. The weather was chancy with rain, but Dior carved their way through the gusts with quick notes from his pipe. No rain fell on them, and the cobbled road was remarkably free from slippery mud, although Elwing shook her head and asked in pointed terms if he intended to call attention to them with his song.

Dior reveled in the renewed connection to Nimloth all that day, sending her his story in bursts, and hearing of her time in Mandos’s Halls in return.

She spoke of long years of introspection, and speaking to others within the Halls, and healing.

What finally enticed you to leave, my heart? Dior asked.

There are things I would put right with my daughter. And I want to meet my grandson!

I saw our other grandson in the Halls of Men…

Nimloth was silent for a while. I regret most that our life together was so short. Would that I had met him, ere he passed.

But we live again, together, for however long I can be with you!

Elwing smiled at her father’s silence along the way, and kept them on track when his conversation led him astray. And when they came near the small village at the base of the mountain where the Returned were housed while they awaited their family, she clapped him on the back to pull his attention outward.

“Ada, we are here!”

And there, sitting cross-legged and barefoot beneath a tree, clad in the silver of the Returned, was Nimloth. She was eating an apple, staring at it with rapt attention while chewing, and only blinked away from it when Dior knelt before her.

“I haven’t eaten in a century,” Nimloth said, wonderingly. “The apples of Aman are sweet!”

“To think, I am spurned for an apple,” Dior chuckled, and leaned close to kiss the juice of it off of her lips.

Nimloth’s kiss was fierce in return, but her mood turned to tears before long. She tugged Dior closer to her and gripped his cloak with both fists.

I never thought I would see you again while Arda remained!

They held each other for a long, blessed moment, Dior delighting just as much in the strength and sturdiness of Nimloth’s form as he did in the warm glow of home from her spirit.

And then Nimloth pulled away and stood, looking up to see the fierce warrior Elwing had become. Elwing came to her, then, and took her hands.

“You know,” Elwing said, hesitantly. “I could not remember you. Daeron told me stories of you, of how you’d always wander in the woods and return with your hair full of burrs. But I could not imagine you, and what you were like.”

“And you,” Nimloth said, touching Elwing’s face. “When I last held you, I could balance you on my hip. Elwing, I want to know who you are now.”

At this, Elwing’s expression crumbled, and she embraced her mother. Dior could not stand to watch it, and put his arms around them both, holding them against his heart.

~

Tuor and Idril stayed long enough to greet Nimloth, and pulled Elwing away to sail with them out into the islands for the night. It was a thoughtfulness Dior had not asked for, but he resolved to repay their kindness as best he could the next day.

Dior showed Nimloth the cottage, which was outfitted with a bed, and table, and benches with storage beneath along the sides of the room, and with running water that Idril insisted upon engineering herself. It was sound, and outfitted in a spare and tidy way like the cabin of Tuor’s ship. “I built this alongside Idril and Tuor, in the hopes that you would be comfortable here with me, for a while. It is not what you are used to…”

Nimloth put her finger to Dior’s lips. “Wherever you are is home enough for me, and I thought never to see you again, so this is a richness beyond measure,” she said, and her smile was bright.

They fell together then, Dior’s kisses turning fiercer in his longing – and in the slide of their living flesh, he felt more at peace than he’d felt since midwinter’s day in Doriath, so long ago.

Later, lying together beneath the soft blankets gifted by Olue, Nimloth kissed his tears away as he wept silently into her hair.

“One thing I learned, in the Halls of Mandos,” Nimloth said. “Is that despite the best effort of darkness to overwhelm and swallow all the realms that we create, we are stubborn enough to keep creating in the face of it all. I learned this from the weaver Míriel, who was tasked to weave the story of her son and his line.”

“That seems like an unfair torment for one who had never chosen to do their deeds,” Dior said.

“And yet, Míriel would not allow any other to weave her family’s story. Even their darkness, although it spelled our doom, was hers to tell. And for Míriel, telling the story was her form of defiance. She made sure everyone knew the joy, as well as the sorrow, of it.”

Dior was silent for a moment, sighing. “It seems that in this time I’ve stolen back from death, fate is conspiring to make me develop sympathy for our murderers.”

Nimloth laughed, and kissed his nose. “You don’t have to go as far as sympathy,” she said. “Perhaps just – some measure of understanding. But you are here, and that is worth everything else, for me. And – maybe – we should keep telling our own story, and the story of all that we lost.”

Her body was sturdy and sleek and strong against his, her hair was a silver silken pillow, and her smile was wide – and their souls, where they nestled together, glowed with a warmer fire than the Silmaril.

“We have time,” Nimloth said, and kissed him softly. Then she pushed him onto his back, and rolled to cover him in a curtain of her hair. “But for now, I would learn the new form of this Teleri lord that I have apparently married.”

~

The next evening, out of thanks to Tuor and Idril, and for Elwing’s constant hospitality, Dior drew upon the power of his lineage and danced for them. He did it rarely, but Lúthien’s blood ran true in him, and his body knew the shape of the dance before he performed it, as if it was there beneath the surface of his mind, just waiting for him to take up.

They stood on the sand, with the slow rhythm of Belegaer beside them. Nimloth and Elwing sang to accompany his steps – wordless twining harmonies in the manner of the people of Doriath. And out of love for his family, and his trust in them, he allowed himself to reveal the true power of his Maia form.

Dior let his body fray at the edges, and allowed the energy that always lived beneath his skin to come forth. He danced with the elements around him, part wind and part water, forming himself into shapes of the world he loved – a bird on the wind, a wind on the wave, the salt spray rising high toward the stars.

He danced his gratefulness that he had his body, using his elven form to spin again and again over the sand, leaping high for the sheer joy of it.

And finally, Dior took up Idril’s hand, and they all danced in a line together with him on the edge of the sand, singing.

When they tired, finally, in the darkness of the pre-dawn, they sat and watched the brightness of Eärendil as he sailed on the far horizon. Tuor leaned his shoulder against Dior’s. “I think we have half a chance, elig nin, whenever you want to go on that small trip we talked about,” he said. “Your power might even keep us from certain death.”

“Not without your wives, even if you are beloved of Ulmo,” Idril said, tugging Tuor’s beard again.

“Or your children,” Elwing added. “Eärendil would be most upset if he was left out of a chance to visit Elrond.”

But Dior was silent, looking at Nimloth, who folded her hands over her stomach and smiled at him in return.

“Our journey, if we take it, will be delayed a while,” Dior said. “Perhaps sixty years, if the Valar allow it.”

In their night together, Nimloth had decided upon her own act of creation and rebellion. Within her, Dior could feel the tiny spark of a new Fëa, nestled deep.

~

Time passed. Tuor and Idril visited, and went wandering again, and Eärendil too.

Nimloth swelled with the growing life within her that they had all taken to calling Elenas. The child’s Fëa was bright – without any trace of mortal blood, the babe’s nature would be more like Lúthien’s than Elwing’s. Already, Dior helped to sustain Elenas’ rapidly growing spirit with his own.

Before long, Nimloth’s time was nigh, and they sent Eärendil to fetch Lúthien from the fields of Nessa to be with them for the birth. Lúthien’s reunion with Nimloth was sweet, but Idril laughed until she fell over at Tuor’s stunned expression when he saw her for the first time.

“I have been told I have this effect upon the race of men, for whatever reason,” Lúthien said wryly. “I beg your pardon, Idril.”

“Nay, Luthien – Apologize to your in-law, Tuor! You haven’t made this much of a fool of yourself since you first met my father,” Idril said to Tuor, tugging his braid firmly, and he bowed, laughing at himself.

“I see. I understand it now,” Tuor said. “Poor Beren had no choice but to go and find the Silmarils, did he?”

But when the day of Elenas’ birth came, there were other, less welcome visitors gathering slowly outside of their cottage – forming themselves from the mist and wind and sea – and Dior knew that they had felt it: the Maiar felt the impending birth of one of their own.

Dior set Tuor and Eärendil to guard their door, coming forth himself to politely request that the lesser powers wait until the birth was entirely complete for an explanation. Eärendil stood with the Silmaril bound to his brow, in case any should decide they would not abide by Dior’s word.

Idril, Elwing, and Lúthien attended upon Nimloth – Idril taking care of the physical elements of the birth, and Lúthien gently binding the babe’s spirit within the elven form. Elwing sang the songs of birth taught to her in Sirion, one with a driving, screaming refrain that Nimloth joined fervently.

This is how to take a shape, Lúthien showed the little spirit, This is how to be a person of our nature.

When Elenas was born, the loud wail of the new little being caused the mingled Maiar to quiver and murmur to one another, approaching closer to the door.

Dior, who had been holding Nimloth’s hand, glanced at his mother, who made a face.

“I’d best go face my fate, then,” Dior said. His heart ached, for he knew he was finally exposed, and he set Elenas gently against Nimloth’s breast.

Outside, Dior noticed that all of the Maiar were paused, their faces upturned, north and east toward the Halls of Mandos. He turned, and saw an enormous shape form on the high hills of the Pelóri.

Mandos swelled until he was taller in the sky than the mountains, and in a few long strides he came to stand outside of the cottage door, shrinking down and down and down as he came.

Tuor bowed first, recognizing Mandos in his most elven form.

“Get me up,” Nimloth said, feeling the atmosphere outside of the cottage change to one of tense waiting. She gritted her teeth against the ache in her body. “I will be with Dior when judgment falls.”

Elwing and Idril helped Nimloth hobble outside, draped in a blanket with Elenas still against her breast, to stand at Dior’s side.

“This gathering is strange indeed,” Mandos said, observing them, his voice the rumble of a rock-slide, or a tree’s fall in a storm. “Dior, you have surprised even the Lord of the Dead, this day. Not only are you and your mother still in the Halls of Men by my understanding of it – but somehow you are also here outside of it, separated wholly from your mortal nature. How did this come to pass?”

“I am not sure how we achieved it except that it was possible, so we did. And given that we were awake, alone of all our kin, can you fault us?” Dior asked. “My first life in Arda was as swift as the blink of your eyes, and in death, my spirit awoke and longed for my wife, and to live once again. Can you fault me for going where it felt natural to go?”

“I could fault you,” Mandos said, frowning. “For there are many that are dead that might deserve life. And I granted your parents grace once before – and Lúthien agreed thereafter to remain within the Halls of Men.”

“You do not have a place that can properly hold those of of us with mingled nature,” Dior said. He’d been anticipating this conversation since they left the Halls, and now that it was here, he could not name his emotion, save the calm certainty of doom. “But how do I trouble the world, as I am now?”

Dior stood there, in front of his little hut, the prince of nothing but the emptiness between the mountains and sea. “What have I done to trouble Arda? I rule no-one, I have nothing now but what you see. I have my family, and I exist for little more than to stand beside them and take pleasure in my love of them, and of this world that you helped create. My greatest wish is a humble one: it is for just a little more time.”

Mandos opened his mouth, and Dior could see the objection forming. He could even hear it before it was spoken. So all mortals say, and who are you to ask for that which they cannot have? – and before he had to let the bitter words settle into his ears and mind, he raised his final argument.

“My mother Lúthien was not mortal, although you allowed my mother to borrow mortality, the better to live with my father. But after death, our mingled natures did not allow us to rest, and it would not have been a ‘gift’ to trap us in that place when we could not – and I have seen those who have taken this gift, and taken it gladly. We are not they!”

“Besides,” Eärendil said, Silmaril shining on his brow like a reminder of all the Valar owed their family, “Did Dior not bear this jewel, and Lúthien too? Grace should be granted all of the peredhel to choose as we will, as my sons and I had. We have all done much in your service to ensure that this jewel is safe. And remember, mighty lord, that Elwing and I serve you still.”

Mandos was silent after that, considering.

“It is true that your line has been burdened far beyond most with the weight of the Silmaril,” Mandos said, “and equally true that your natures are not suited fully to one or the other fate. And now…” Mandos looked at Elenas. “Now you have created someone that should not exist, and yet, this little power does exist – I hear them calling out to me, in a voice of song, fed by your spirits. Newly born as they are, I know that this one will do mighty work one day.”

“Please,” Dior said, “If you can see into my heart, you can perceive that I have bound myself to Arda – by one more tie, today – and it would be no gift at all to sever me from it.” If need be, Dior would get to his knees. He would beg, to remain here, alive, by the side of his wife and children.

There was a silence, then, as dreadful and deep as doom. They all bowed their heads before Mandos, and all the assembled Maia, and waited for judgment.

Finally, the great voice spoke again.

“Your arguments are sound, and I grant it. But one doom only I cannot take away – you and your mother must enter the Halls of Men one last time at the very end of days, and rejoin your mortal forms – that, we cannot undo. At the end of all things, when your family of men awaken, you must take part in the final battle with them. Will you agree to do this thing, when the time comes?”

“I will have more questions when the end of time is nearer,” Dior said, but his heart began to rise toward hope. “Of course I accept, if until then I can remain with those I love. But.”

“You have a condition?” The voice of Mandos sounded halfway between amused and something else, a quiet purr of thunder on the far horizon.

“Elwing and Eärendil – let them rest! Serving the Silmaril until the end of Arda is a hard fate beyond that which burdens many here on Arda. Surely there are some of my kin,” Dior looked at the assembled Maiar, “who could share in it?”

The silence then was longer, but thoughtful. “I will search for others who might serve,” Mandos said finally, and Eärendil made a nearly silent noise, like a long exhale or sigh, and Elwing touched Dior’s hand.

“And you, little dancer?” Mandos said to Lúthien.

Lúthien smiled at him, bowing her head. “My time to return is nearer than my son’s, for my beloved slumbers there and I will dream with him ere long. When that time nears, I will visit you in your halls, and you can escort me yourself.”

“So be it,” Mandos said, and the proclamation rolled over them all with a power that made every hair on Dior’s body rise. Elenas cried out in their mother’s arms, and Mandos smiled.

“This one will sing songs that will raze and build cities, one day,” Mandos said. “I am eager to hear them.” And then, in the manner that clouds dissipate after a storm, he dissolved his body in a mighty gust of wind, and departed.

They were silent for a moment, and the gathered Maia began to disperse too, leaving a much quieter energy behind.

“I am allowed to remain here with you, Nimloth, Elwing,” Dior said, feeling the knowledge course through him like a gulp of heady wine. He tasted the salt of his tears as he spoke. “I have been given more time. Time enough to do everything that I’ve planned – every part of it.”

Dior shut his eyes and felt his hopes swirl around him. He would bring his family to Alqualondë to visit their uncle, and see Uilon and Líson again. He could meet with the Golodh and work through the pain of their history. He could set sail with Tuor – he could go anywhere with him on Gwingwiril – to Tol Eressëa, or around to the dark waters of Ekkaia, or even to Middle-earth. Anywhere, everywhere. And he could see his mother’s dance in honor of his fallen country.

Dior opened his eyes again, watching the tossing waves of Belegaer surging against the shore.

He had enough time to mourn.

And he could tell his story now – the story of the Silmaril, and how it came to them, and how it drove them to their actions – and maybe even the Golodh would finally understand that Thingol’s heirs had been trapped as much as they had by the tale of their time.

Nimloth put Elenas into his arms, and the babe nestled against him. It was time for him to feed their spirit, and he was jolted from his thoughts by the pressing, urgent reality of their hunger.

“I think I’m going to go lie back down,” Nimloth said, wincing.

Dior kissed her, and carried Elenas toward the sea.

Chapter End Notes

Much like my story about Elúred and Elurín, the title of this one also comes from Bossa Nova. This one is from Jobim’s Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars. There’s something about the bittersweetness of Bossa Nova, about choosing to celebrate small moments amid the inevitability of life’s hard tragedies, that I feel absolutely suits the people of Doriath.

Quiet nights of quiet stars
Quiet chords from my guitar
Floating on the silence that surrounds us

Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams
Quiet walks by quiet streams
And a window looking on the mountains and the sea
How lovely

This is where I want to be
Here with you so close to me
Until the final flicker of life's ember.

I was lost and lonely
Believing life was only
A bitter tragic joke, I’ve found with you
The meaning of existence, oh my love.