Echo of Ancient Song by StarSpray

Echo of Ancient Music

Read Echo of Ancient Music

It had long been said and sung among the Eldar that an echo of the Music that made the world could be heard in its waters, in flowing streams and the roar of waterfalls, in the dripping of snow melt and in the soft lapping on the edge of a lake. 

But nowhere could it be heard more clearly than in the Sea. It was in the crashing of great waves against sheer cliff sides, and in the whisper of foam sweeping over soft white sand. It was in the tide pools and in the tides, rising and falling, unceasing, rhyming but never quite repeating. 

After everything, after the Silmarils, after the war, after he found himself abruptly and utterly alone for the first time in his life, Maglor did not know what to do. He remained by the shore because there was nowhere else to go, and for a long time he wandered lost in his own dark thoughts and unending grief. 

But even grief unending receded after a time, and he began to pay attention—to listen. He sat for hours, for days, beside the shore, listening to the waves and to the Music that they carried. His tears dripped into the foam and were washed away into Belegaer under the sun and under the stars, and he understood a little better the work of Nienna. The winds carried the spray onto his face and he heard a whispering echo of the voice of Manwë, and in the rush of it over his feet as the stars came out in the evening, he heard the voices of Elentári, and Ilmarë, and the others who had made the stars to bring the first Light into the world. 

He remained by the Sea, singing little but listening always, until when he did sing his voice carried in it also an echo of that Music, and the Power that had shaped the world. He sung of his grief and of his pain, but also of the starlight on dark waters and of the majesty of the great waves that splashed against the shore. He sang of pearls and of pearlescent sea foam, and sometimes he thought that he heard another voice harmonizing with him from the water—Uinen, perhaps, or Ossë if he was in a friendly mood. 

The years passed, and the world changed. But the Music, and the Sea, remained.