melestasflight

[melestasflight]

Findecáno Astaldo Ñolofinwion, Fingon. My personal interpretation, as per Light.

[melestasflight]

Two Half-Kings and a Full Lake Between

In the aftermath of their tumultuous arrival in Beleriand, Maglor has scarcely managed to hold together the bruised and splintering House of Fëanor and their Sindarin allies. Then, the Sun's first rising brings with it Fingolfin’s host of Ice-hardened Noldor, hungry for retribution. With battered hearts and fraying minds, the two half-kings must navigate fragile relations even as they face the impossible task of reuniting the Noldor under a single leader.

Join @polutrope and me for this Mithrim drama fest for @silmarillionepistolary. All chapters are now up!

Cover art by the brilliant @myceliumelium Read on AO3

[melestasflight]

Tragedy and Doom @russingon-week day six

Fic below the cut with warnings for gore, death, trauma, non con kissing, or read it on Ao3

Maedhros was being pulled away, fleeing. With his company, his brothers. And Fingon was an aching hole in his soul. He reached out for it and the merciful emptiness swallowed him whole.

He went away from himself for a while, aware his body was moving, being led places, but not connected to it in any way, unseeing.

He was tether-less as a dead spirit unwilling to seek Mandos. Not that he knew if he would be able to seek Mandos when he died, he might be casting into darkness, be claimed by Morgoth, or be tethered by his Oath to roam Arda as an unclothed spirit.

Had he thought his death salvation he would have thrown himself down on the field and let the enemy crush him into the same dust, the same mud. Let their blood, their bones be one with the dirt and their souls free, together. Such happy things were not for him.

His fëa was a maelstrom of loss and shock and rage.

It exposed him.

The mind that had scrabbled against his walls for days at last found purchase in his sorrow and threw open the doors that had been held shut for centuries.

He fell. Or floated. Or hung suspended, as he was drawn into familiar surroundings made unfamiliar. He stood in Himring, in that great fortress that had held for so long between Morgoth’s forces and Eastern Beleriand, within his own bed chamber.

Morgoth did not speak at first. He did not need to, his smugness radiated through their connection, crashing up against Maedhros’s desolate fury.

He cut a dark figure against the window over Anfauglith, a red ruin of the land, smouldering with battle fires, littered with wreckage. This dark hair swept loose down his back, his ragged, scared, broken-nosed, profile showed dark skin and an aspect more Mannish than Valarin. Despite the mild appearance, he radiated the uncanny sense of his power, a raging storm caught in fragile glass.

‘I would have thought you would look down upon Beleriand and all you strove so hard to protect. Instead you face north, gazing ever towards my fortress.’ Morgoth turned from the window to him, a smile snaking across his face like channels of flame across the land. His eyes were the pure black of a hunting predator. ‘Should I be flattered, Maitimo?’

Maedhros lacked the fight to move, he had poured it all out on the battlefield and still they had failed.

‘How are you here?’

‘I can still craft illusions when I wish to roam my lands unseen. Or perhaps I am not here and only draw on it as source of torment for you.’ He was beside Maedhros in a thought, running his dry, cracked, blackened hands over the matching scar of his face, relishing them. ‘Oh, I am not so shrewd as my sweet little Lieutenant at the work, but I know fear better than any, do I not?’

How quickly Maedhros was undone again. All the years of freedom from Angband unravelled beneath his desperate fingers as he grasped for his sense of self. There was only Morgoth, there was only Thangorodrim, an endless sky and his own failures glaring into his broken spirit.

He stared up at the hated, awful, familiar face of his torturer and realised very late what was missing from the picture.

‘Where are the Silmarils?’

Morgoth hissed as though wounded, he dropped his hands and paced away to the far wall. He tore a tapestry of the Fëanorian star from the wall, tearing the threads apart almost lazily.

‘Safe in my fortress.’ He glanced back at Maedhros. His smile twisted like a knife in the back. ‘If only there were one more readily available to you and your merry band of brothers.’

Maedhros glared at him. He would not be made into a blade for his enemy to wield in wickedness, not again.

Morgoth abandoned the tangled mess he had made of the tapestry, opened a drawer, drew up a golden ribbon. His eyes met Maedhros’ knowingly, the slender ribbon curling into his fist.

It was as though Maedhros stood on the battlefield again, too many bodies between them, as brilliant, bright Fingon charged forward into the awful mass of shadows and flame they fought. He was too little, too late, too useless.

‘Will you take up Kingship of the Noldor now?’ Morgoth asked, letting the ribbon fall from his hand to the dirty stone floor. ‘Avenge yourself upon me for the failure of your little alliance?’

‘I cast it aside.’ Maedhros snarled. ‘I cast it from me still. You will find no thrall for your evil deeds with me.’

‘Yet here you stand, your mind bared to me.’ Morgoth cocked his head, his manner winding flirtatious, ‘It is almost as though you missed me.’

Maedhros choked on hatred and bile and fury, unable to make words of it.

Morgoth was upon him in a moment, pressing him down against his own bed, clutching his head with so strong a grip Maedhros was almost convinced he was there in hröa not held only by his mind.

‘Tell me Maitimo, when you take yourself in hand, do you think of me?’

Morgoth kissed him and without thought, or only with thought as it was, Maedhros gasped into it utterly appalled and horrified and needing Fingon, his Fingon not his enemy there.

And as if he willed it, Fingon appeared before him, leaning back from their kiss, smiling his kind, brilliant, joyful smile down at Maedhros.

A sob caught in his very fëa.

Fingon rocked, restless as always, his fingers tapping a playful rhythm on Maedhros’ chest. As Maedhros watched, unable to protest or through him off, a liquid line of bright red appeared at his forehead. Mesmerised, Maedhros wanted it trail through the centre of his forehead, down his nose, through the dear, beloved, lips, colouring the gold ring he wore, dripping off his chin.

Maedhros gasped at the pain of it touching his chest, as though it cut through his chest, rending flesh and organs and heart. Upon Fingon the line grew, a crack, a cavity into darkness, his face splitting to either side.

He fell upon Maedhros, as he had many blissful, beautiful, better times before, his blood staining Maedhros red, red, red.

‘He died because of you.’ Morgoth said softly, almost pityingly into his ruined ear. ‘Why is it that those you love the most are so eager to burn, Maitimo?’

Maedhros knew it was because of him, he tormented himself with the thought. That if he had not arrived late to the field Fingon would not have been bolstered and charged into danger, that if he had only cut down those between them faster, that if he had seen the betrayal sooner, if he had not given the kingship to Fingolfin’s line, if he had never brought Morgoth’s attention down on the one he loved more than anything in all Eä.

Morgoth took Maedhros with him to the window, forcing him to stare down at the wasteland below, the wretched battlefield of his utter defeat.

Morgoth’s voice was seductively smooth in comparison, as he crooned against the crown of Maedhros’ head.

‘The Noldor are lost, little prince. Come to me, return yourself to Angband, bow before me as your master and spare those left further suffering.’ His hands were at Maedhros’ waist and throat, his evil caressing his spirit; a more inescapable manacle than the one holding him to the Thangorodrim.

‘You would swear their safety for my surrender?’ Maedhros closed his eyes and leant into it, let the greater spirit envelop him, drawing him deep into darkness.

‘I would reward my willing liege lord, allow his merciful rule over our dutiful Noldor.’

Maedhros gathered all that was light and good in him, all that was Fingon’s memory, his nobility, his kindness, his wrath against injustice. All his fiery spirit held as a blade, shining silver and blue and, as he drove it deep within the spirit about his, bleeding black, black, black.

Morgoth howled as Maedhros wounded him where he let few tread, and slipped from his grasp.

Maedhros woke achingly alone, the splinter of his goodness left lodged within his enemy, and none spare to bear him forward in his own shattered life.

[melestasflight]

[melestasflight]

The Fate Of The Silmarils, my digital art.

This story is about Elwing, who turned into a white bird. She took the stone to the sky. And about the two brothers who disappeared with the stones. One in the sea, the other in a fiery pit.

[melestasflight]

Fuck it, sharing my fav photos of my Maedhros cosplay on here too.

[melestasflight]

Contusions

Still feeling that lingering @russingon-week high...so here's a little something for @melestasflight, my comrade in Russingon angst. A little Hump Day sweetness and misery, if you will. ;)

The problem, Maedhros thinks, as he grinds his teeth, is that Fingon has always craved tenderness.

Read it on AO3. Rated M.

[melestasflight]

Having summoned all my lore, power, and subtle skill, I have completed Gnostic Gnomes and published it on ye olde AO3.

Summary: When he was trapped on the burning ship, Amrod received a divine relevation, and the Wisdom of Iluvatar revealed to him the true nature of the One. Nearly two hundred years later, Maedhros travels to Ossiriand to visit Amrod and Amras and he finds that they have founded a mystery cult. Soon he makes another startling discovery. What are the cult's beliefs and practices? And how will the brothers navigate the complexities of grief and faith when they are forced to confront both the past and the future? 6 chapters, 16k words total. Reader discretion advised for angst and death.

Gnostic Gnomes - Chapter 1 - StarShadeEmily - The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien [Archive of Our Own]

Snippet below cut:

Amrod remembered the burning. He remembered it in his skin, in his flesh, in his bones, for the burning dwelt within him. First he had heard the sound, a terrible sound like the wrath of the Valar from whom they had fled across the hateful sea. The ululations of a thousand tortured voices echoed in the hills, echoed the anguished cries of the white ships ravaged and raped. At first he thought Ossë had returned for them with vengeance out of the West, but then he saw the light, the red red light, and it spread across the clouded sky like blood and fear spread in his clouded mind and the blistering heat spread through his skin. The mast above him broke and crashed like a tree felled in a forest. Flames ran down the rigging, racing over themselves to kiss him where he lay. But he could not run, for flame was before him and flame was behind him, and he cried, and he cried for his mother and father, he cried and the sound echoed in the hills. Amrod remembered the burning. He remembered the fire on his clothes. He remembered the stench of his hair. The smoke from his body. He remembered the pain. 

Amrod remembered His Face. He remembered the Hand of the Wisdom of God, and it had cradled him, and the world was bright, and his fëa was bright, and the Womb of All was bright. And he saw It in the eyes of his father who dragged him from the fire into the salt sea that burned burned burned in the wound that was his body. The Wisdom of God spoke to him with his father’s tongue, and the silver eyes were not his father’s eyes but the eyes of Iluvatar and they were bright and terrible, and he would have wept if he had had any strength left to cry.

Amrod did not remember that his father had afterwards called him a fool, and many cruel names besides in the dark camp by the water. He did not remember much from those days of pain and cold and the changing of bandages.

[melestasflight]

In which Fingon takes pity on an orc, and Maedhros has something to say about it (1,2k words, T).

Read on AO3.

[melestasflight]

that’s not the way i usually colour my arts but i’m quite happy with this one

[melestasflight]

I just found your account this is like finding a gold mine, your designs are fantastic 😭 💕! If your art request is still open, can u plz draw Beleg and Turin together? I love them so much! Your design for Turin is absolutely gorgeous!

Thank you so much!!! ;-; <3 I absolutely love them as well!! I love how Tolkien elevated the Kullervo myth by giving the Kullervo stand-in a tragic gay lover?? Visionary.

I'm not sure if I'm locked in for this as Beleg's design, but as with other Sindar elves, I took inspiration primarily from Celtic and especially Gaelic dress. Since this is the First Age, I did want to make it look more ancient than Third Age Sindar fashion and took some influence from ancient Greece.

[melestasflight]

I really think that for me I’m always going to choose the silmarillion interpretation that gives me the most interesting narrative. I refuse to let moral quantities or questions of who was objectively correct skew my interpretation of a narrative. In fictional not real land, the most important question is whether what I’m reading is interesting or not. I don’t care who had property rights to the silmaril. Maedhros isn’t going to the federal courts on union ave.

Anyway, this is all to say that I’m interested in the recent arguments over whether alqualonde was a massacre or not or whether the teleri were on equal playing fields with the exiles. I also think I’ll make a post soon about the property rights argument because I find it fascinating that that’s as big a discussion as it is

Anyway! So alqualonde! Alqualonde is such a huge narrative turning point in this story. Up to this point we have a very clear delineation between hero and villain. Morgoth as the big bad, the noldor as the freedom fighters who very understandably want to avenge finwe. The valar don’t want them to go to beleriand but that’s not a moral wrong whether they do or not. They’re desperate, the light have gone out in the world. No one has ever died before

So to go from that to marching into alqualonde, where they’re fucking relatives live, and murdering them over their life’s work that’s the original sin that overshadows the rest of the book. Everything that they do afterwards starts here.

It’s a betrayal on so many levels because these are craftsmen who know the value and attachment of a maker to his creations. The desperation with which they go about this completely skews their ability to see the horror of what they’ve done until they are literally doing it. But then there they are with their swords and more mastery of a killing weapon than the teleri would have had fully intent on killing them for their boats. Sure the teleri have their fish hooks and spears but I don’t think they were at all on equal ground with these burgeoning soldiers and i don’t think anyone can really make the argument that the teleri should have just given their boats, not with any real rationale anyway.

The oath is mostly said to be what curses feanor and his sons but I think this is really what changes them and poisons their hearts. Anything they were before now doesn’t really matter anymore, now they are killers. Now they have betrayed themselves for nothing and any allies, any understanding that they might have gained in Beleriand or valinore or anywhere is gone. And it’s because they murdered the teleri to take what is essentially the heart of their people, the swan ships! It obviously parallels morgoth killing finwe for the silmarils, I think that must have been purposeful.

So was this an equal fight? I doubt it. And anyway it doesn’t matter, because what they did was a curse on their souls that follows them for thousands of years after, repeating over and over again until the silmaril that they killed for rejects them entirely.

[melestasflight]

WIP

Thank youuuuuuu @starshadeemilyart for tagging me to share a bit of a current WIP <33333 Not tagging anyone, because I think nearly everyone's been tagged so far. If you see this & you want to share a snippet from a WIP, please do.

This is from something I'm working on that is actually relatively not dead dove for once, centred around Maedhros & still in the very rough draft stage:

Up on Thangorodrim’s heights, the world was simple. Maedhros was a tragedy. A cautionary tale, a forgotten tale, but an essentially tragic one; the sort that had pathos and made people shake their heads and say a fine young man and cut down in the prime of his life. Then they would go about their business and none of them would wonder if he ought to be rescued. It was impossible, after all. That was the tragedy. Poor Maedhros. Cut down in the prime of his life, forgotten and abandoned by his brother, the coward. Maglor the Meek. Maedhros surprised himself by snorting at the nickname when he heard it. Maglor winced, then gave Maedhros one of his dolefully guilty looks. That was also a tragedy. Poor Maglor, suffering for his brother’s sake and then suffering again, because Fingon had dared where had not. So tragic, unlike Maedhros. Maedhros had lived and living was considerably less tragic than torture or death. People looked at him now and wondered, well, you lived. So it couldn’t be all that bad, could it, Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion? It couldn’t be all that bad if you lived and it couldn’t be all that bad if Fingon could rescue you single-handed. So really, the tragedy was the wasted time. The tragedy was Maglor the Meek. Really Russandol. The nerve of you. Returning and making things so complicated for everyone. You could have just been forgotten in peace. You could have been mad on Thangorodrim in peace. Instead he was here, inconveniently. Putting everyone’s nose out of joint. Mad and evidently so and every single Noldor watching him, wondering, because if it was bad, if it truly was bad, he ought to, should have been dead. Instead, he was inconvenient. He was alive.

[melestasflight]

Findekano lost in thought

[melestasflight]

inside me are two wolves

One thinks that maglor was so overcome by grief and tragedy that he never stopped wandering the seaside singing haunting mourning songs until he eventually faded or the sea took him

The other thinks that maglors decision to not follow maedhros into death was a deliberate choice. That he thought about drowning himself, but saw the sun rise, felt her rays on his face and the wind in his hair and that he decided that he didn't want to die. That, no, the story of the house of fëanor will not end as a perfect tragedy. One son will continue to live and find joy in that broken world

[melestasflight]

Having intense Círdan brainrot thanks to @nimphelos fantastic artwork so sharing one of the ballpoint illustrations from one of my current WIPs: a “longform essay journalism” piece in which the motor-mouthed amateur historian Legolas (as seen in Cast in Stone) and long-suffering woodcut illustrator Gimli attempt to record the long shadow of the kinslaying at Sirion i.e they go around interviewing people in TA Middle Earth and Aman about it and put together something stylistically similar to, say, a The New Yorker or The Atavist style essay-article.

Círdan is one of the people Legolas interviews, and obviously takes the opportunity bring up Losgar + his trusty ship in a bottle. Enjoy a snippet!

The historical record of the kinslayings also bore the marks of design, the stamp of the Eldar’s craft. Alqualönde, Doriath and Sirion moved through history with the precision of ritual, choreographed and bound by the laws of ancestry, palatability and binary even as it broke them. Like old Beleriand itself, violence lingered not in the songs and maps, which tend to occlude and bear undeniable hallmarks of the craftsperson, but in preserved artefact. Reconstructions had no historical value. Or so I thought.

More than any scholar I had met, including and perhaps especially the archivists of Imladris, Círdan the Shipwright understood the grain of things: how much memory timber could be expected to hold, how a mishandled curve in a hull carried the inheritance of a full-fleet of burned ships that didn’t miscurve. He knew the difference between restoration and reverence, and told me that for him, craft was the truest form of archival practice: not the preservation of history as it was, but a reassembly conscious of its own absences.

When Gimli complimented him on the craftsmanship of the old Teleri vessel-in-a-bottle on his mantelpiece and told him how realistic it seemed, Círdan rolled his eyes, then did so again when I asked him why. “Because it’s still, Legolas. Ships are not meant to be still. This ship shouldn’t be here on my dusty mantelpiece, it should bob around fearlessly on the waves, fleet as it had been in life.”

He passed it across to me and let us look closely at the thing itself. Mist had not yet cleared the bottle’s interior, but I recognised the jagged coastline of Losgar. Masts tilted as though in wind, and impossibly precise figures no larger than ants moved along the decks: a helmsman’s posture, a sailor’s slack arm mid-turn. When I held the bottle in shadow, smoke seemed to be sculpted into the glass itself, feathering up around the burnt rigging.

Gimli and I leaned closer. One side, blackened nearly to vanishing, held a gilded figurehead unfamiliar to me, its angles catching a sliver of afternoon light. Then the light shifted. Shadows fell inward, and the flame vanished from the prow. All that remained were the ribs of wood and thread, and an unburnt ship in a cold bottle.

[melestasflight]

that’s my bday and this maedhros is my gift to myself 🤣🤣