The Message is Me by StarSpray

It was said in later tales, in the songs and in the histories recorded far away by those who had not been there, that Eärendil came to the Valar glittering with diamond dust, radiant in the light of the Silmaril, that he spoke fair words (though they went unwritten) in ringing voice, and thus moved the Valar to pity and to action. 

The reality was: dust is only dust, even in the land of the Valar. He was dirty and salt-crusted, sweaty and hot from his walk from the beaches of Alqualondë through the Calacirya to Tirion. He was thin and browned by the sun, his hair limp and tangled. His eyes seemed too large for his gaunt face with its too-sharp cheekbones. 

The Silmaril was as all the songs and tales said it was: the most beautiful thing in the world, shining with a Light that was lost, perhaps softening the toll that grief and long voyaging had taken. But it could not hide the tatters of his clothes or the blisters on his bare feet. 

He stood before the faces of the Valar, gathered on their tall thrones in the Ring of Doom, but only for a moment before he threw the Nauglamír to the ground before him, Silmaril blazing, and knelt—falling, rather, to his knees. “Please,” he said, hoarsely and near to weeping, first in the tongue of the Exiles, then in the tongue of the Sindar, and then in all the tongues of Men that he knew. “Please help us.”

Manwë rose from his throne and knelt to raise Eärendil to his feet. His eyes were the clear blue of summer skies, and his voice was quiet but carrying. “We have heard you. The banners of the Valar shall march unto Middle-earth.”

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