Journeys of Vása by Dawn Felagund

I. Eclipse

Tilion, steersman of the Moon, considers his love for Arien of the Sun and her corruption by Melkor.

Please note! There is canonical rape mentioned in this vignette. It is not graphic, but I caution readers who are sensitive to this sort of material.

But Tilion went with uncertain pace, as yet he goes, and was still drawn towards Arien, as he shall ever be.
"Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor"

I. Eclipse

When first did I know thee?

~oOo~

It is the nature of all thinking beings to ponder their origins. I am neither wise, nor a loremaster, but this I learned of my betters while still in youth, if the early days of my kind can be called that. I am an act of creation; a dream; an inspiration. I am not a being of flesh so much as a being of thought, a series of connections made in the mind of Eru Ilúvatar and brought into being with an explosion of stars.

So began she, and so I suppose that I knew her from the first, that awareness of my own existence was concurrent with awareness of hers. And need I say it? That I loved her?

For if I was the deliberate construction of an artist awakened, then she was the senseless and phantasmagoric stuff of dreams, that which makes little rational sense yet the memory of which sets one's heart racing. One cannot stare too long at light without the purity and beauty of that entity slowly eroding sight of all else until one sees only light, even when gazing upon darkest shadows. Yet no matter his joy, still, he is blind.

Thusly, I stared too long, too hard upon her--my Arien--in the early days of the Music, when our fates were decided in harmonies that sparkled amid the stars. An incarnate upon Arda, I saw none but her, though I gazed long at other objects of beauty and sought to love them: the star-frosted leaves of the deep forest; the sheen of Telperion upon a lake like someone had scattered a handful of diamonds thereupon, and one ambitious could set his feet upon the water and collect them.

I traveled in the company of Oromë by advisement of Irmo Lórien, who perhaps knew the pain of sorrow that one such as Arien--I knew--should be forever unobtainable to one such as me. That company was a joyful one, enamored of the heady sweetness of mead drank in profusion around leaping campfires. That company brought me laughter, yes, but never the perfect abandonment of joy, for centuries had passed, and I had not seen her, though prudent inquiry brought me word that she served the Vala Vána Tuivána, and she tended Laurelin.

At times, I needed solitude to think on her, for she brought forth emotions as raw as her beauty, and to the wide lakes of northern Aman, I added the salt of my tears. And it was in such a place--a being wrapped in shadow beneath the heavy boughs of the trees--that I first saw her, for she too sought escape from the rigors of her company, the endless routines of our endless days upon Arda. Mayhap, we should not have come forth but should have lived forever in the thoughts of our Father, in the dark spaces between the stars.

This thought would torment me, in the ages to come.

As I was a follower of Oromë, she became my quarry, and I sought disguise in the shadows to pursue her. As few of us did since the arrival of the Eldar, she dared to walk unclothed, wearing not the shape of the Eldar but raw and elemental, as she'd been conceived in the dreams of Eru Ilúvatar, a note in the Music synonymous with mine.

With arrow nocked, I imagined myself the guardian of her footfalls, and I watched the way that her Light cast the leaves in gold, the way that living things bowed toward her as though in reverence. I am the Guardian of Arien. I am the Guardian, then, of all that lives, for she serves and inspires Life, wherever she treads.

Yet in the tangled dark of northern Aman, far from Valinor and even the Light of the Trees, forbidden secrets lie. There was one whom she met in that forest, one whose heart she sought as I sought hers. One who was terrible in his beauty, a searing power that could express itself in no incarnate form; one who had been a screaming keening across the Music, all ears turned to him: Melkor.

Oh, but the fair words he wove for her, attesting to his affection and her beauty, and the glory of their combined Light was too much for one such as I to bear. In a ring of trees they sat, and I at the periphery, and their radiance filled the clearing but made long the shadows of the trees, until they were a single bright spot in a ring of darkness.

With my eyes pressed shut against the assault against them, I huddled in the thick blackness of the shadows, arrow still nocked but both hands trembling and threatening to send it sailing into the trees. How I would come to hate myself for my cowardice, for I could have faced them, even if I was blinded forevermore; I could have loosed that arrow at a deserving target, and saved my Arien.

His words were fair, and he spoke of plighting their troth, and she in her enthusiasm answered of vows spoken before Manwë and Varda, but this he refused, and his voice became angry. Nay, he wanted to espouse her now, in the darkness with only the stars--and Eru Ilúvatar--to bear witness, to eschew propriety and tradition and custom that would give unto his brother (so he thought) power undeserved.

"He will forbid it, inebriated with power and beloved of my keeping station as his thrall," said Melkor, "and he will force us to part, and it will be akin to having my heart torn from my chest, to forsake you." His syrupy pleas invoking clichés without truth, for he has no heart: none of us do.

And so she was not convinced, and she resisted, and in that darkness forest far from the earreach of all save me--the craven recreant cowering in the shadows--he forced her to wedlock. She made not a sound but I sat nonetheless with both hands clasped to my ears, bow and arrow discarded upon the ground, and the flare of fire that she became as she fought to resist him singed my hair, and never again would it grow, marking my shame, leaving my flesh pallid and gray, that of one who keeps to the shadows and fears the Light. When at last I stumbled into the clearing, many days had passed, and the trees had been withered by the onslaught, and there Oromë found me after the passage of many years, in a ring of flowers and grasses sprung up from the char, watered by my tears.

It was an act of both pity and shame of me--and these proclivities except at their fanatical extremes are versions of the same--that the Valar trusted me to guide the vessel Rána across the firmament. I wept with gratitude for their mercy in allowing me to be unbound from this imperfect world, to soar instead against a backdrop of unclouded stars, to occupy the place near to my origin, where once, she was sung into existence beside me, and she was still free, and pure.

I am lonely here, and I do not pretend otherwise. From my new vantage point, I gaze upon the dark fur of forest at the northernmost parts of Aman, and I imagine that I can hear the laughter of Oromë's company again and taste the mead, but simple joys such as those are lost for me, if in fact they ever existed.

And soon, she will join me.

My Arien, as the Music portended: my beloved and my foil, in opposing orbit from me, yet I will strive against the bindings that hold me to Rána; I will struggle until I nearly falter from weariness, and I face her full on as I could not before. I face her with courage, without fear of blindness, for though I may be blinded, what else will I need but memory of the face of my love?

But she has been forever tainted by Melkor, and she burns. She hurts all that she touches, without meaning it. Her nurturance edges always on cruelty, and many she has goaded to grow, only to wither and burn in the end. Yet this time, I will not be dissuaded. This time, I will come to her as I should have before until our paths overlap high in the sky. She burns me, hurts me, but I care not. I love her.

And beneath us, the world marks our passage from the shadows as a corona of light and, at its core, a heart of darkness, and momentarily, I spare them from her. We are beautiful, I think. We are beautiful in our love, but they know it not. For to look upon us, they would be blinded.

She is rising now, my love: a rim of fire, pushing free of the horizon.