Stars, hide your fires by Lyra, Independence1776, , Fernstrike, , Raiyana

Chapter 1: On which I must fall down

he heavens are cold, until the earth comes closer.

We hurtled through space-time. We remembered little. But the cold turned to burning, white hot, shredding, then searing, then flaying. Weaving through us, creating crack upon crack upon crack, splitting us into two, three, five, eight pieces, and more and more. We touch down - crash, terminal - tethered suddenly to something firm and unmoving - a firmament it is, oh - and the World - in the World - all the World stops spinning. There we lie, and we are still warm from the fall. Still glimmering. Still aching. Still thrumming, singing with the Songs of stars, our kin, our sisters. We are hurtling rock, never ignited, but capturing every resonant note. We weep where we lie in the little pit, barely as much as we were before we were sucked into this world, its vortex of activity and Singing and suffering - waiting, waiting, waiting for something to do, something to capture anew.

He liked looking at the stars falling through the sky, leaning back against Aredhel's - Father did not approve of her other name, just like he didn't approve when she called him Lómion - chest and having her arms wrapped tightly around him, snug and warm beneath dark furs.

He even liked wandering through the woods looking for the pieces of star ore they left behind like little treasures. Eöl said he had a knack for finding them, and Maeglin knew that was true; his pile was often much bigger than his father’s when the evening fell and they could head back to the warm fire.

He did not like the times when the stars fell over the Boglands, leaving them to splash through sucking cold mud in places, tripping over knolls of grass in others, all the while trying not to be eaten by the tiny minions of the Dark Lady out for their blood.

Swatting at another of the vile little bloodsuckers - they only wanted his blood, he was sure; Eöl never seemed to suffer the small stings and bites that turned into sore welts on his skin - Maeglin sighed, his toes freezing inside his old boots.

No metal could be worth this, he thought, glaring at his father’s back, bent as he scoured the wet ground with his eyes, looking for any glint of metal in the foggy light.

Not even metal made of stars.