The Queen Comes To The Mountain by Lyra

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Fanwork Notes

Written for the Rise Above challenge, for the prompt:
That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show. ~ Ada Lovelace

Fanwork Information

Summary:

In the last hour of Númenor, Tar-Míriel attempts to gain ground with a final prayer.

Major Characters: Tar-Míriel

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Poetry

Challenges: Rise Above

Rating: General

Warnings: Character Death
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 340
Posted on 26 April 2018 Updated on 26 April 2018

This fanwork is complete.

The Queen Comes To The Mountain

Read The Queen Comes To The Mountain

I have come to the Mountain to pray.
Not for myself; there is no hope in that.
The Mountain groans and quakes, as if to say
Away, away. Too late. I cannot run.

I am the Queen. My duty is my land,
My people, and for them I raise my hands
Unto the leaden Heavens, and my voice
Unto the One: All-father, hear my prayer!

The Mountain shakes and trembles, and the air
Is stifling hot and smelling of foul fumes.
It will not carry prayers far, I fear.
But I must speak and pray, while there is time.

I am the Queen. I know I'll be remembered
By my mistakes, by what I could not do.
My loves, my work, my people and my faith:
All turned, or turning, into dust and ash.

I loved the King. I married him for love.
I thought that we, drunk on young love like wine,
Would reconcile the old ways and the new.
Alas, he tasted of a stronger vintage.

I loved my country, sought to rule it well,
to end our fathers' strife, and like a child
I thought that good intentions were enough.
There would be peace because I wanted it.

I loved my brethren, thought I could protect them
since I was of their faith, and also Queen.
I thought I had that power. I was wrong.
They burned, the Tree burned, now we all must burn.

We all must burn. The Mountain belches fire
and smoke. The end is coming. I can see
The sea receding to the black horizon.
It will return, no doubt, with greater force.

We all must burn, or drown. Now hear my prayer:
If end we must, then let the end be swift.
No drawn-out torments and no endless terror.
Let there be one short scream and one clean cut.

But if I, Míriel, may ask one favour,
Let some of us survive. Let them find peace.
Let them achieve redemption. Let them show
That we can be more than mere mortal minds.

Chapter End Notes

I am assuming that Tar-Míriel did not, as the Akallabêth claims, ascend to the Holy Mountain as the wave was already rolling in. We're told Meneltarma is actually erupting at the same time. You don't try to save yourself from a tsunami by running into oncoming lava. I trust that, if Tar-Míriel was on the Mountain at all, she went there (to escape Sauron, or to actually pray) before the actual cataclysm began.
What does the chronicler know, anyway? They obviously escaped on Elendil's ships, so they can't actually know what happened to the Queen.

As you probably figured out, I'm following the earlier version where Tar-Míriel married Ar-Pharazôn willingly and out of love. It gives her much more agency.

Comments

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This is really good. I like so many of your choices--that she married out of love, believing that the two of them could make positive changes, could repair divisions among their people.

I love this description of that,

"Would reconcile the old ways and the new.
Alas, he tasted of a stronger vintage."

I liked her prediction of a tsunami. I also loved that she prays for survivors who will carry the positive legacy of their people into the future.

I'm so happy to hear that you liked my choices. Tar-Míriel is dear to my heart (even though I don't write her much) so these headcanons (is that the word these days?) are quite important to me! I'm certain that - if we go with the version where she married Ar-Pharazôn for love - she wouldn't have done it out of selfishness or purely to spurn Elentir, but because she genuinely thought that it would be a step towards reconciliation. She probably got a lot of hostility from her fellow Faithful though. :(
I'm not sure she would even be able to see the behaviour of the sea from up there, depending on how high the mountain is and how thick the volcanic fumes etc. etc., but I felt I needed to allude to the wave somehow after all that talk of smoke and fire. Some say the world will end in fire, but Númenor ultimately didn't! Glad you liked that addition, and I'm glad that you liked her prayer for the survivors. Thank you for your lovely comment!

It has very little to do with the original context, I'm afraid, but somehow that's what the "merely mortal" part did with my (merely mortal! ;)) brain. Glad you liked it! I've been rather suspicious about the idea of Tar-Míriel running helplessly and fruitlessly up the mountain before the waters overtake her as it's presented in the Akallabêth for a while, so this was a welcome chance to present her in a more dignified manner - and as somebody who ascended the mountain before all hell actually broke loose. (I mean. Would you run up an erupting volcano, even to escape a tsunami? I don't think I would!)

Thank you!

I absolutely adore this poem. I have already read it at least five times and saved it as a favorite. Something about it just keeps pulling me back. First of all, the writing itself. I really appreciate the way it is interwoven with rhyme, but never feels bound to it if that makes sense. The rhymes give it a sense of flowing rhythm as they are interspersed throughout, and yet they are never forced in place of emotional power. Not that there is anything wrong with fully steady rhyme schemes of course, and they certainly can hold emotional power, but I have a special fondness  for pieces like yours where the rhymes allow it to flow, and yet you are never quite sure when you are going to get another, which adds something to the unsteadiness felt in the scene, and with it you are pulled along in the full weight of what is being said. I know I am rambling on about the same subject, so I will move on.

I am not particularly interested in Númenor, so I really wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. Even though the characters are ones I hold little special fondness for,  nor do I know much of the depths of their stories and lore, you wrote in such a way that I felt fully for them. 

Something about this piece feels... compact, in a good way. Everything just seems to fit so perfectly into place, especially the way the prompt is inserted, so that the whole piece seems to be building up to it. 

You can see that I am rather gushing about this piece, but I truly mean everything I'm saying. Well done!

Thank you so much for your lovely, long comment! And please don't worry about gushing! I love to hear what my readers think (especially if they're so generous!).

I didn't focus on rhyme at all, merely on rhythm, so any rhyme that happened just... happened. The formal language of prayer allows for a reasonably steady rhythm, but a fixed rhyme scheme would probably have taken away the sense of urgency and insecurity, and I wanted to bring just that across. I'm glad that this has worked for you! And even more thrilled that you felt the emotional impact even though you don't have any particular emotional attachment to the characters. I'm taking it as a huge compliment! I'm also happy to hear that the poem feel compact, with everything necessary in place but no undue circumlocution, and a noticeable build-up to the final line. That was my intention, and I'm very excited if I managed to pull it off!

In conclusion, thank you so much for your thoughts!