The Small and Secret Things by Dawn Felagund

A Hand Held by Stars

For Sara, who asked for a story about Maedhros in love for her birthday, a quibble (500 words) about superstition, logic, and love. Happy birthday, my dear!

He waited for a clear night, when the winds blew the smoke from the forges away from the meadow and the stars lay bare and bright. Lying upon his back in the tall grass, he gazed upon them, summoning his courage, his breath coming fast and shallow with anticipation.

So the old legends said that fate was woven amid the stars, and long ago, the first Elves at Cuiviénen had learned to speak the secret tongues of the heavens in voices akin to the primordial groans of the earth yielding up mountains. This was an age before reason came to prevail over the ache of instinct in the marrow of one's bones; this was an age when meaning was strung between correlates in the same way as astronomers sketched constellations in the spaces between stars, yet then, it was not superstition but magic that gave meaning to seemingly senseless constructions.

As part of his education, Maitimo had translated from Primitive Quendian the old superstitions (magic) as they'd been remembered by his grandfather and others of the Unbegotten. And one in particular he recalled with a keen almost-pain near where lay his heart:

He that stretches his fingers against a star-strewn sky and finds his hand held by stars shall be lucky in love.

Fëanáro had wished to debate the finer points of the translation: "hand held by stars," he said, had been the subject of dispute among loremasters, who felt that the word should be enveloped or crusted rather than held. "Hideous," said Fëanáro with a sneer, who felt not the magic but understood nonetheless the need for speech to be beautiful.

But Maitimo had been unable to concern himself with such linguistic minutia in light of the meaning of those words: that one need not wander in ignorance and fear but might know, in a single moment, with a single glance, his fate.

And so, lying upon his back in the meadow, Maitimo stretched his arm to the heavens and splayed his fingers wide, his eyes pinched shut, wanting to look but frightened to know, to see the whole of his existence shrunk into a single moment and described in the stars. For there was one whom he loved with such fervor that he was ill with it, mad with it, and he wished to know if he should dare to hope for reciprocation.

He sensed Fëanáro before his father sat beside him: the whisper of boots in the damp grass, the familiar smell of forge-smoke and hard work. "Nelyo," said Fëanáro in a voice that should mock yet did not. "You should not be here with a hand full of stars but in Tirion, with a hand full of pebbles to pitch at her window." Gently, he laughed; gently, his hand stroked the hair of his eldest, foolish son.

"I should," said Nelyo, and in that moment, found the courage to wrest open his eyes and considered his hand held by stars, the palm empty, full of possibility.

Chapter End Notes

Today's Word:

supernal soo-PUR-nuhl, adjective:

1. Being in or coming from the heavens or a higher place or region.
2. Relating or belonging to things above; celestial; heavenly.
3. Lofty; of surpassing excellence.

Supernal derives from Latin supernus, "above, upper, top, hence celestial," from super, "over, above."