The Small and Secret Things by Dawn Felagund

Blindness

Fëanor and Finwë argue about the Valar. I've intended something of a chaotic feel to this piece; Finwë is only reluctantly coming to the realization that something is afoot. This will culminate, of course, with Fëanor's exile from Tirion and the Valar taking Finwë's right to make the decision concerning the fate of his son and subject.

I have progressed to the point where I no longer hear his words, just the sound of them. They are like keen knife edges, slicing illogic and hope in a single resounding tack against the brutal bone of what he calls "common sense." It is common sense, Father, he says, if you would just listen.

I have been listening, Fëanáro, for the whole of your life, don't you know?

But behind your rhetoric lies a haze of memory that you would not recall. Not recall, Fëanáro, because you were not born yet. I had no intentions toward fatherhood at all, actually. That always silences him, to consider my life without him, without a center. Wobbling off course, perhaps, he imagines, for even as I followed Oromë over soil and sea, I know that he--my precious Fëanáro--would have stayed, savage in his beauty, with light in his eyes that need not come from the Trees, and there would maybe have been more Avari than Eldar.

But I followed, and he was not there to behold Light for the first time. You have not lived forever, Fëanáro, I remind him, and for all your genius, the memories of those times will always elude you. And no, your books do not do it justice, even the words of Rúmil. No, you were born into Light; you do not understand what it was to come from darkness into Light and to think that those who gave such a gift, freely and willingly, would never intend to harm us.

But they do, they do. The passion in his voice is torn by another emotion. Grief, perhaps? Grief at my blindness, they way that staring unblinking into a light makes the rest of the world disappear, and soon, one can see nothing at all.

Chapter End Notes

Today's Word:

trenchant TREN-chunt, adjective:

1. Characterized by or full of force and vigor; as, "a trenchant analysis."
2. Caustic; biting; severe; as, "trenchant criticism."
3. Distinct; clear-cut; clearly or sharply defined.

Trenchant comes from Old French, from the present participle of trenchier, "to cut." It is related to trench.