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[mittenyaare]

Arafinwë Character Sketch Idea for a story I just started developing.

Arafinwë has spent the years leading up to the Darkening of Valinórë and the Flight of the Noldor angry. 

Angry, but silent. Angry, but patient. Angry, and only growing more angry with every passing year. 

With every passing death of his family in the Middle-Lands. 

With every passing year the Valar go not to war against their brother and other kin.

With every passing comment he may only ignore, denigrating his brothers, his sons, and his people. 

And then, at last, he is allowed to make war. 

To make war against the one who killed his father, who killed his older brothers. 

Who killed all three of his sons, his precious, noble boys. 

Who means to kill his daughter, who has somehow survived against all odds. 

Arafinwë is angry when the Host of Valinor rides out at last to war, but he has learned better than either of his older brothers how best to use his anger and control it rather than allow it to control him. 

And he means to use his incredible, burning anger to finish the war his brothers had started. Hopefully, he will find what little remains of his family during the process, and reunite with his only daughter. 

[mittenyaare]

So I totally didn't realize, until I clicked on someone else's reblog of this, that I somehow dragged a sentence from the middle to the bottom. Well, perhaps I'll look out for that sort of thing when I post from now on. (Though, undoubtedly I'll just make other mistakes and not see them until I post).

What People Know About Finrod:

Finrod is a naive fool.

(Finrod is not naive, though he dearly misses when he was so. And he is only a fool because he knew he was walking to his death when he walked away from his father—his father knew it too—and he walked anyway).

Finrod is kind.

(Finrod is not kind, he is calculating and knows how to hide his cunning behind kindness and his sharp smirks full of teeth behind smiles of summer).

Finrod is beautiful.

(Finrod is not just beautiful, he is devastating and exceedingly fair to look upon and he knows it. He had once attracted a fair Vanyarin maiden to his side with his mask of kindly summer smiles, his falsely bright laughter, and his beautiful visage. He thinks it is better that for all he did genuinely love her, he left her behind. She did not deserve to find out too late the cracks of his soul hidden behind the beauty of his form).

Finrod is gifted with foresight.

(Finrod is not gifted, he is cursed, has always been cursed. Finrod had known the shape of his death since before he had understood what death was beyond the abstract idea of a silver-haired queen fading in lands undying).

Finrod is powerful in Song.

(He is, but not quite enough. Never quite enough against one who has helped to Sing the world into existence).

Finrod is a good king.

(Finrod cannot say that is any more true than other things people think and say about him as he walks out of his realm for the last time beside the son of he to whom he swore a fated oath. A good king does not abandon his people to snakes and liars and thieves).

[mittenyaare]

Maeglin feels it the moment he lays eyes on the tall, dark-haired ellon who can only be his uncle, the brother of his mother, Turgon—the shift in his Fëa, the weight of a Doom yet unpronounced.

His eyes take in the gleaming brightness of the white-stone city—oh how it burns— and for just a moment, laid over top like a thin, transparent film, he sees the bright whiteness of Gondolin fouled by shadow and flame and hordes of grotesque monsters under a blackened sky from which even the distant starshine cannot penetrate. 

The day is warm, the sun is bright enough to hurt his eyes, and yet Maeglin shivers.

He is introduced to his uncle and feels...nothing. Or, well not nothing, but nothing good, nothing warm. Certainly not kinship.

He tries not to read into it. He is yet young, he knows, his gifts even younger and less developed than he himself in body.

Still, it hurts.

He is introduced to his cousin, and oh! she is a wonder to behold. She gleams bright and golden,  and her smile is like the sun rising after a long darkness. He could fall in love so easily, but—no.

In her blue, blue eyes, backlit with the Light of the Two Trees, shines not warmth and acceptance, but rather a distant, cold wariness.

He is her kin, her cousin, and she sees only his dark father.

Idril Celebrindal is not for him, and Maeglin might mourn the loss of her light, her warmth—he does, will, just a bit—but he has lived his whole life under the dim shadows of tall trees, has loved the night and starlight far too fondly to mourn the passing of day.

The weighted shift of Doom in his soul settles as his father, who has followed them all the way from Nan-Elmoth, curses Maeglin to die as he will. Maeglin feels his Fate settle in his bones and sink into the earth beneath his feet. He decides that if he is to be the harbinger, he will at least try to ensure as many as can are eventually saved.

...

When Idril commissions people of his House to help her build the escape tunnel, Maeglin is aware. He tells his people to gladly swear to the secrecy she demands. The wording of their oath allows them to speak, privately, with him of her project. He makes adjustments to plans that his people claim as their own, regigures numbers and approves supply lists that would be suspicious at best if he remained unaware.

All the while, he walks around Gondolin smiling and whistling, glad it is all almost over.

...

When he scoops up little Eärendil from the side of the cliff before he can stumble off it, he smiles sadly as Idril draws her sword on him. His expression causes her to pause just long enough for Tuor to find them both, standing face to face, swords drawn and locked, and then Tuor pushes.

Maeglin releases his Fëa from his Hröa before his body hits the ground.

[mittenyaare]

They think him foolish; they think him mad.

Perhaps he is, but the moment his sea-bright eyes fall upon Beren—looking so much like dear Barahir—he knows.

He Sees.

The time has come, he thinks as he sinks into the dark eyes of a mortal man who will outlive his immortal flesh. The time has come to meet his Fate, his Doom, the one he foresaw long ago.

He nearly welcomes it gladly, he has been waiting so very long it seems. He only regrets what—who—he must leave behind him.

They think Beren's quest is foolish, and they would, perhaps be correct. They think Beren himself mad, for what mortal man could lay claim to the child of a goddess and a jewel blessed (cursed) by the Queen of Stars herself? And though each is true—foolish and mad—Finrod Sees the truth of the coming future, one he will not see with his own eyes clad in flesh and bone, and knows that though ahead there lay torment and death, there is also light.

Through the connection, behind Beren's dark eyes, Finrod sees a bright new star sent to hang in the heavens. He sees hope where before there was only darkness and death. He sees life after despair, triumph after desolation.

Finrod looks into—through—those beloved, mortal eyes, and he sees.

Death, yes, and his own. But life and love and laughter too.

They think Finrod will fail in his quest, but they know not what his quest even is. Finrod is not departing Nargothrond to succeed in stealing a priceless treasure, he is departing to support the hope of a future yet to come.

Finrod locks eyes with the son of a dear friend, one who has come to herald his demise, and smiles.

[mittenyaare]

Maedhros and Fire

Even after rebirth, there are moments Maedhros stares blankly into a hearth-fire and remembers.

He remembers Losgar and the burning of the ships and how he fought, desperately so, against his own father. And how he lost.

He remembers the demons of fire—Balrogs, the first they'd seen—surrounding his father after his reckless, foolish, mad charge.

He remembers the fire of his father's own spirit consuming his broken body and turning it into so much ash.

He remembers the fires in the pits of Angband, remembers each burning cut into his skin, remembers choking on the putrid stench of death and decay and something other.

He remembers the Bragollach. Remembers holding firm—though not easily, it was never easy—against the fires and hordes Morgoth sent then. He remembers many, so many, who met their ends in sudden fire or choking on smoke. Remembers the once green plain of Ard-Galen burning to black ash as Anfauglith.

He remembers Balrogs—oh how he hated them even now in this Fourth Age of the Sun—and the whip of fire which caught and strangled and burned his beloved cousin, ai Fingon—

He remembers the burn of a hallowed, shining jewel in his left hand. The burn which was hotter than flame, pronouncing justice and judgement. The flame which drove him...

He remembers the fires of the earth as he kept into its chasm. Remembers consigning himself to that fire and thinking of fire was I born and of fire shall I perish, burn without what burns within.

Sometimes Maedhros will stare blankly into the hearth-fire and think: it is only a memory and a mockery, a mockery and a memory of fire.

[mittenyaare]

Curufin

He is not his father.

His father-name is his father's name. His mother name is simply a reminder that he is a reflection, a shadow, in both looks and skills.

He is not his father.

The image that states back at him in the mirror, his father's old red cloak hung about his shoulders, the dark hair simply plaited even dressed for court, the the shining grey eyes mocking and wrathful.

He is not his father.

Two hammers strike the anvil, a perfect echo. Four hands move hot metal to cool the blade, a mirror. Two dark heads bent over hot fires, a shadow.

He is not his father

Proud, they deemed him. Arrogant. Sharp words that cut as if steel, passionate speech to move the masses. Silver-tongued.

He is not his father.

Blood trickles from his lips as he gasps for dying breaths, a hand pressed to his gut to keep his innards intact and inside.

His vision darkens, but fire does not consume his failing body.

Finally, he is not his father.

[mittenyaare]

What is Forgiveable

Findekáno's eyes are icy chips of lightning-struck steel staring down at him as he stands at the foot of his sickbed.

He had thought—when he could be reasonably sure it wasn't another form of torture—that his cousin's valiant (foolish) rescue of him had been a message of some kind of forgiveness.

The white-knuckled fists clenched at Findekáno's sides tremble and jerk, nearly imperceptible, furious.

Maitimo—he can't be called that anymore—has been through every possible conceived method of torture, and quite a few new ones which would have been frankly fascinating in their masterful cruelty if he'd not been the subject of such. But he had not endured the long march over the ice after a fiery betrayal. Nelyo can see in his favorite cousin's eyes remnants of the shadow of that crossing, of the bitter cold unfathomable, of a love that had once burned as bright as any of his father's silmarils gone cold and dark.

It makes him want to look away as his stomach flips and something like shameful nausea works it's way up his throat.

"I did not—" he rasps, voice still hoarse and dry from years without other than intermitent rainwater to slack a perpetual thirst. "I tried to stop him." He closed his eyes in a long blink. "I failed."

Findekáno's forcibly neutral—but for the cold burning in his gaze— expression does not change as he nods once, nostrils flaring with a sharp inhale, and turns about-face with silent, deadly precision.

"I had thought," he stops at the door leading from the infirmary room but does not turn his face, "that I was the reckless one."

Nelyo blinks and before he can think to reply, Findekáno has swept out of the room.

He blinks again, and the heaviness in his chest abruptly churns with the desperate need to laugh, and maybe cry.

He can only hope Findekáno's anger is due to his foolishness in getting captured, but even broken as he still is, even as raw and worn out as he feels in both body and mind, he knows that is not all there is.

There are three hands between them stained red, and a forth somewhere laying at the base of a fell mountain.

[mittenyaare]

Your dark Lalwen is fascinating. I’d love to see more if ever you wanted to write it

-@outofangband

So, that one honestly popped into my head while I was driving home from getting an early breakfast this morning because I did not go to bed last night.

I want to write it too. Or read someone else writing it.

I tend to "see a movie" when I read stories, and "picture words" when...writing. I never have that picture of a scene, it's rather a picture of a sentence of words instead.

So there I was, driving down the road between our small town and my house out in the middle of nowhere when this wild bunny ran across my mind:

Two princes are fighting each other for the throne all the while forgetting their sister lurking in the background who suddenly comes to snatch it away from them both, mostly out of spite for never having been considered a threat.

Then I wondered how I could put that in a silm verse.

Boom! Enter dark Lalwen and alive Fëanor.

And now there are just SO so many potential possibilities.

Because I HC that Cannon Lalwen is pretty close to Fingolfin, and brutally smart. That could be twisted in so many different ways to make dark Lalwen.

And then, if Fëanor had lived long enough for them all to cross the ice...I imagine Lalwen's already considerable anger being magnified exponentially.

But the best thing, and I didn't write it on the post because I wanted to get what I did out before I lost it in my mind, would go something like:

Fingolfin: You know this is kinslaying, right. I'll be reborn someday.

Lalwen, laughing cruely: Oh, dear brother, you swore to follow Fëanáro, and he has sworn himself to the everlasting darkness if he fails to reclaim the 3 silmarils before dying.

Fëanor: I'll just point out I have seven sons who might accomplish this deed.

Lalwen, with a truly unsettling grin: Not if I have any say in it. And believe me, I will.

Well, that's terribly unpolished because I made that up just now, but the idea is there. She kills/causes both brothers to die and laughs knowing each will not be going to the Halls of Mandos but rather the void.

I further imagine she contrives ways to kill off the sons of Fëanor, and maybe even gets at least one slain by her own hands.

Long live Queen Lalwen!

[mittenyaare]

The Cursed, Dark!Lalwen, FëanorLives! Au nobody asked for.

"It was really quite foolish of you," Lalwen states with gentle mockery as she stares down at her two older brothers laid out on cots in the healing tent, "to become so carelessly wounded."

"Írimë—" Fëano attempts a warning growl, cut off by the simple raise of her hand. That, and—

There is a bright flash in Lalwen's grey eyes, as sharp as a spear, as cold and distant as the stars.

"Quite foolish," she repeats, red lips curving back over her white teeth in satisfaction like a wolf who has finally caught its prey. "Foolish of my brothers to think only a Ner could wear a crown."

[mittenyaare]

Finrod and Elrond Chat at a Feast in Tirion during the 4th Age

"Does it not become tiring," Elrond cannot help but ask between sips of wine, eyes on the crowd gathered at yet another royal feast in Tirion.

"You know it does." Finrod's face is a studied mask of just enough pleasant occupation that anyone who bothered to look would see nothing amiss at all. He was suprised, though with all the stories he has heard of his niece's husband he should not have been, that it was Elrond whose gaze saw beneath his eternally pleasant facade. And so quickly too. So quickly the Peredhel's knowing eyes were still sometimes one of the few things that managed to unnerve Finrod.

"Sometimes," Elrond elrond says with solemn despondency as he leans back a bit more in his chair—beautiful though it may have been, it was most certainly not very comfortable, "I wish I had remained with my sons to hunt the last of the orcs."

Finrod is startled into breaking his composure—another unnerving talent his niece's husband seems to have—and barks out into true laughter for a moment.

The sound draws the attention of many, and quite a few Finrod wishes it hadn't, but he slips the benign mask of amusement back onto his face with the ease of long practice.

"You know," Finrod casts his eyes to the side at Elrond, ensuring they sparkle with amused mischief which will be immediately noticed by his companion, "you can count yourself amongst a rare group of few people living and dead, do you not?"

It is Elrond's turn for his mask to slip slightly, and his lips curl up into a grin he hastily hides behind his wine glass.

After another sip and in perfect deadpan, Elrond quips, "Of those who can see through your horseshit, Felagund?"

Finrod gives in, and up. He has lost the battle and he laughs unreservedly now. But he does send out one last salvo, "It is in times such as these I am perfectly well reminded of who raised you, dear kinsman."

"Indeed," Elrond says and smiles truly then, and if it is a half-sad, wistful sort, there is an amused joy lighting his eyes as well.

Perhaps Finrod has won some points after all.

[mittenyaare]

Elrond and Love

Love has always been a dagger in the back for Elrond.

For love, of sea and duty and family, Eärendil Ardamírë leaves his wife and twin sons behind forever. He manages to, eventually, accomplish his goal; he gains his wife, but he loses his children in the process.

One, he may meet thousands of years later. Another, not until Arda is remade, and maybe not even then.

The sword stained with the blood of his people is pulled from from Elrond's gut of Elrond's child-heart and offered hilt first. Gradually, Elrond will learn to grab for not the sword, but the hands which offered it, and he will love them, those permanently red-stained hands, against all thought and logic. Though he will offer that it was logical, too, to love them as well as hate them.

That is alright, he will think, because he has experience already with mingled love and hate.

The sword becomes a knife thrust into his back the moment the hands he has learned to love so very much push him away for his safety (for love of him) and then years later draws blood once more, of red (again) and not black.

Love is a dagger to the back, is a pronouncement of abandonment. Elrond has learned this lesson twice by the end of the War of Wrath, and the gong of fateful dread pounding in his heart when he and his brother are called to appear before the Herald of Manwë informs him he will have at least a third lesson to really let it sink in.

His brother, his twin, the only other on these shores that shares the unique blend of three kindreds, has chosen to cleave to a Fate opposite him. Elros may tarry awhile on this shore, and Elrond might even be able to visit his kingdom after it is established on the new, bright star-shaped island, but Elros will leave him behind. Utterly.

It is well, then, that the dagger which Elros so steadily wields is not shove into Elrond'd back, but into his heart, fast-forward. It does not make the wound hurt any less for all that he sees it coming, but there is an honesty to it which Elrond will, in time, learn to appreciate.

When Celebrían, his beautiful, silver-queen wife, is brought back to him scarred, marred, and broken, he nearly expects the leaving of her too. He fights against it, of course. He has ever fought against Fate, it seems.

But when she sails he can at least allow for a bit of hope. Hope that she will be well, in time. Hope that the knife which has serrated his heart so as to make it consciously bleed will eventually come out and he can heal as well.

Arwen's Choice is not so much a knife or a dagger but a sword and spear. It cuts him deeply, pierces him throughly. Where once, he might have been able to resist boarding a ship for a time despite the greater loss of Vilya's Power entangled with his Fëa, he cannot wait long at all.

That Elladan and Elrohír choose to remain behind—for a time, they say—merely deepens the fatal blows.

His children's Choices were meant to be made when he Sailed. He does not know, cannot hope, what it means that his twin sons have not explicitly stated their Choice and will not Sail with him.

The father in him is both thankful and mournful that they stay behind, in part, to watch over their younger sister. The wounded boy over six-thousdand years old counts it as yet another lesson, yet another blade which cuts deeply.

Love is a dagger to the back, a knife to the throat, a sword in the gut. Love is a blade that cuts and pierces and stabs.

Love is a blessing and a curse, and Elrond has known all his loves to be both.

[mittenyaare]

The Histories Shall Say

The histories shall sing of once noble princes and kings and lords. They shall tell tales beside fires and in halls and dark rooms of valiant acts of surpassing bravery and courage.

The histories shall say that those valiant princes, those once noble lords, those many varied kings had been once blessed with light and peace and hope. And then tossed them all away.

The histories might be true, at least in that regard.

Those tales and songs and lays will go on to speak of hideous monsters wearing the fair shapes of Elves. Perhaps they might be right about that too, but—

Here's the thing:

How do you define a monster?

Is a monster one who commits monstrous acts, or do the monstrous acts make a monster? And if so, can a monster be anything other than a monster? Can a monster not also be an Elf—or a Man, a Dwarf, or anything, really?

Does a monster feel anything about its monstrous moments, its fall into depravity? Does a monster feel deep despair, gasping grief? Can a monster cry in anything but physical pain? Or even that?

I ask, because if we were monsters, we were certainly not only that, no matter what the histories might say.

[mittenyaare]

Stained

Makalaurë has cut himself to bleeding before. He has played the harp until both strings and fingers were dyed red with pearls of blood. He has carved instruments from wood with sharpened blade and worked for a time to learn the basic skills of smithing in his father's forge. Each has drawn blood from his body, like lttle red droplets of thick, viscous rain, a price such crafting has extracted, a stain of red.

There is a price for every craft, every creation. Usually the price paid is not so high to account, to regret overlong.

The white beaches of Alqualondë sit beneath a bright, starry sky, and all Kanafinwë can see is a stain of red. Red blood staining the sands, red blood staining the silver hair of the Teleri he has slain. Red staining his hands with the blood of kin he has sent to Mandos' Halls.

The price of his death-craft is not only small raindrops of crimson, but floods and waterfalls and pools of lifeblood which does not belong to only (barely) him.

It is the first time a craft has stained his Fëa in such a dark, rich color. Swearing his father's oath, he had felt himself (and his brothers) call a shadowy stain upon their souls and bind it with unbreakable chains, but the color hadn't saturated yet.

At Alqualondë, he discovers the color the stain of that terrible oath is dyed in, and silently weeps when he finds a moment alone aboard stolen ships.

Over five centuries of the sun later and Maglor can still see the stain of kin-blood on his hands. In his dreams (nightmares) the red, red blood of the Teleri mixes with the white sand beaches of Alqualondë and the bright blue waters of the sea.

Over five centuries of the sun later, Maglor adds more red dye to his already blood-soaked hands in the fair halls of Menegroth in Doriath. The Thousand Caves are drowned in blood and Maglor cannot grieve his three lost brothers without also thinking their deaths more justified than those of the Doriathrim.

(If a part of him wishes to cleanse the red stains upon his soul through death, well, not being granted such is the price he pays. He is too good a warrior, too good a Singer, and death, he knows—whether to Mandos' Halls or the Everlasting Darkness—would be an escape.)

He does not, will not, cannot die.

What has he become, he thinks as he looks to his bloodied hands, /stained, stained, stained/ with the blood of innocents and kin.

What has he become that the crimson chains which bind his soul to evil acts are the chains which keep his Fëa from fleeing his Hröa? What has he become but a stain upon a once green and fertile land of peace fastly becoming a poisoned, black earth?

He is a stain. A stain which tarnishes his noble, elven grace. A stain of crimson-shadowed evil which bleeds red himself. He is a stain of evil acts when he should be a light and voice of hope and salvation.

The skin of Maglor's hands are milk-white, but he can only see the permanent stain of red upon them.

Blood for blood, as they say. Maglor thinks rather twins for twins.

His youngest brothers, copper-haired both, exchange their deaths for two little half-elven boys with night-dark hair and silver, starlit eyes.

Sirion is at once both familiar and more terrible than any other betrayal Maglor has played part in before.

Sirion burns as its streets and alleys and hidden coves run rivers of death and blood. The flames are bright, hot red, another stain added to the many Maglor has collected since leaving the land of his peaceful youth, since rejecting and renouncing his home.

And his soul is further blackened as he and Maedhros carry two little stars away from what was the last safe haven in continental Beleriand. A safe place they had come to destroy as the continued price for chains of blood and shackles of words of power sworn centuries ago.

Amrod and Amras escaped, either to darkness or the Halls, but Maglor did not, could not, die. He knew then, with a terrible dread that sounded as a rung gong of bronze, that he would not die.

Death would be a release of his collected stains, his sins, and it would not be enough of a price to pay for his crafting of death and ruin. Of his making of grief and despair.

But, oh! how he learned to love those boys, his hostages turned sons, and oh how he stained that love in return for how it had begun.

The first time Elrond and Elros call him Atto he blinks. The shock is a visible stain of crimson light in his vision and salt-water gathering in his eyes. His hoarse whisper of "yonya" is scratched from a dry throat as if opening wounds and is wet with the blood of what he has created in blood.

A family, one he does not, will not, cannot deserve.

Red-haired twins exchanged for dark-haired boys. A father and a mother exchanged for two kidnappers turned foster-fathers. Two sons in the place of children he might have has with the wife he left behind (and who has probably, deservedly, renounced him).

His family is a stain of red—even the Fëanorian colors have always been so—and he cannot escape it.

Should not, will not.

When Maedhros chooses his end, his own escape, after the shining white gems their father created laid judgement upon their palms, Maglor turns to the shore with his treelit eyes blurred and the acrid scent of burning flesh and blood assaulting his lungs.

The silmaril burning his hand is not a surprise but rather an expectation, he thinks as he forcibly lobs the stone into the sea, giving it over to the Lord of Waters.

The Queen of All's very visible, very painful scar pronouncing justice is merely another added stain to the collection he has gathered since he set out to leave Aman.

Maglor's body is as his soul, stained and scared, and most of each chosen by him alone.

He knows what he is—has always known—and will live for however long he does as he carries the stains he has dyed himself red and black with.

[mittenyaare]

Of Elrond and Elros...

Elrond, upon making his choice to cleave to the Fate of Elves, is told (and Elros, though much less publically) that his children will also have the choice to choose a mortal or immortal life.

Elrond decides for the elves, Elros for Men.

Elros' daughter chooses the elves, lone among her siblings. Arwen, daughter of Elrond, more than an Age later, for Men, due to the love she bore for Elros' (63+ greats) grandson, Aragorn II.

Fate, Elrond thinks (Doom, is rather more descriptive, in either tongues of Elves or Men), is strange and yet also predictable.

Fate, Elros thinks as he sends his only daughter off to her uncle, is strangely ironic. (He gave up the chance for immortal life only for his twilight-daughter to seize it as soon as she could).

[mittenyaare]

How Elrond became known as Elrond Peredhel.

"Eärendilion!" they hail them, even as Elrond and Elros come cloaked in Fëanorian colors, the star of Fëanor's house embroidered on the breasts of each tunic.

Elros' silver eyes harden to steel and Elrond's hands clench so tightly on the reins of his horse they turn bloodlessly white.

How can they be sons of a father they cannot even recall? Who did not come back for them when their mother told him of how the havens burned at the mouths of Sirion? How can they claim to be the sons of a star when the faces they recall as fathers are not golden-skinned and golden-haired, but scared both, one with hair of flame, the other of ink?

———

"Eärendilion!" the High King of the Noldor—Erienion Gil-Galad shouts at Elrond (and not at Elros, for Elros is off with the Men), tone a scathing scolding when he spots Elrond on the battlefield for the first time during the War of Wrath.

Elrond flinches (it will take some time before he trains himself out of that reaction entirely) and the flinch is not from the tone of Artanáro's voice, but by the name he uses.

Elrond has not felt like a son of that star (the star his fathers swore a dreadfully binding oath to reclaim). For all the Eärendil sired him (and Elros), Elrond would pluck that star from the sky and present it to his fathers (adopted they may be) as a gift in a heartbeat if he could.

If only it would make a difference. It wouldn't. Morgoth still has two others, and until he is brought out in chains by the only ones who have the power to do so, regaining the silmarils is hopeless.

———

"Eärendilion!" the golden-haired, reborn, part-vanya exclaims in greeting with a grin as bright as the sun.

Elrond does not flinch in response, he has long trained himself out of such. But his eyes do harden, and his lips thin into a straight line as he turns mithril eyes as sharp as spear-points towards one he is simultaneously grateful to (if Glorfindel had not saved his sire's life, Elrond would not exist) and also wishes to shove away.

"I am called Elrond Peredhel in these lands," he replies to the balrog-slayer-slain-and-reborn. "Welcome to Imladris, Glorfindel of Gondolin."

———

Years later, Elrond will explain to his children (first his twin sons, then his beautiful daughter), each so bright their spirits shine white as stars, why he has chosen to be called by what he is (though not accurate at all) instead of the more traditional patronymic.

He will tell of his fathers, all three of them. He will say he could not choose out of love for each, and so chose what he is instead of who raised him. (His children will not understand for many, many years, that his choice was made between two, and not three fathers).

He has discarded the bitterness by that point, replaced it with understanding. But also Elrond has realized that a father is more than a sire, and even if Eärendil was charged with a lofty Doom, his Fate separated him from his sons too often and too early. Even if Maedhros and Maglor gained twin sons with bloodied hands, those hands had healed and soothed shown care and love.

Elrond becomes Elrond Peredhel because he cannot connect to Eärendilion, and because he cannot be Nelyafinwion or Kanafinwion.

In his heart of hearts, deeply buried under duty, law, and politics, Elrond Peredhel calls himself Elrond son of Maedhros and Maglor, adopted and fostered grandson of Fëanor.

When he reaches out to family on the far-shores of Westernesse, the first he will call grandmother bears not gold, nor white, nor dark hair, but red.

[mittenyaare]

Finrod counseled... but for the first time he did not know

Andreth survives the flames, but leaves life behind her not long after anyway.

Aegnor, Ambaráto Akianáro perishes in fire.

Even as her spirit leaves her body, Andreth Saelind recalls her debate with Aegnor's brother Finrod, Findaráto Ingoldo Artafindë...so many names (it is amazing the clarity and knowledge one gains upon leaving life behind).

She had not...lied, not exactly. And neither had. Aegnor. The Noldor did not, then, traditionally wed during war.

It had not been war, then, not exactly. It had been called the Long Peace and then the Battle of Sudden Flame.

Andreth had not, in life, begrudged Aegnor for never informing his family (though she is sure his younger sister knew) of his marriage to her. It was not, after all, a traditional Eldarin or Noldorin or even Telerin marriage. They had wed, in secret, with the barest formalities existing among the House of Bëor.

Three others had been aware—though the whole of Ladros had understood in gossip and rumor— that Andreth Saelind, Wise-Woman of her House, was married to one of the Noldorin Lords of the House of Finarfin, and not ever approachable for courtship.

Aegnor had taught Andreth what he could of hiding her mind and thoughts, and though she never could close her mind or lie to the likes of Finrod, she could distract with truths and the blazing brightness of emotion of the Atani which is felt as innunmerable burning bonfires against the steady rivers and lakes of the Elves.

Finrod knew of her heart, of his brother's heart. He did not know of the consummation and continuation of their shared love.

Their only children, dark-haired as their Atani-mother and long-lived as their elevn-father, only met their uncle(s) after long Ages of the world and rebirths of said uncles in the lands which Andreth was fated to never tread upon.

So no, Aegnor and Andreth did not wed, according to Noldorin custom. But they had married and joined their spirits as they could. They had loved and lived and laughed for the time that was allotted to them, even if in mostly secret, and Andreth laughed as her spirit met her the soul of her husband in the Halls of Mandos (before each moved on to the unknown together, cloven as they were) for she was finally able to pull one over the all-knowing, ever-lofty Finrod Felegund.

When Andreth's and Aegnor's children finally sailed West (their lineage and heritage an open secret by the Third Age among those in Middle-Earth) they met their long-awaited uncle in both sorrow and joy.

And somewhere, distantly, both Andreth and Aegnor smiled and laughed at pulling one over on pretentious Finrod.

[mittenyaare]

Of Ice and Flame

What did we know of grief before the Darkening? The Atani would call it a child's pouting, and I tend to think they were correct.

For all that the Elves would eventually marry grief to their lives, the Atani when they woke and eventually ventured into Beleriand LIVED it from birth to inevitable death.

What did we know of hunger? The time spent from one meal to another, or the skipping of one meal until the next day when we broke our fast? We learned on the Ice to marry hunger just as we married grief and death (though not as irrevocably as the Atani married death) and it sharpened some into cold, pointed spears while it gnawed at others to their eventual collapse and proceeding extinguishing.

What did we know of hardship, those of us born and bred in the Light of the Trees? In the peace and bliss (though it fractured well before the rape of the Trees) of Aman? We knew nothing more than scrapped knees against losing limbs to frost and losing loved ones in the blink of an eye to an icy, watery death.

Sometimes even less than that.

Those of use who survived the crossing...well, was it any wonder that the burning of the ships at Losgar were ever present in our thoughts, had burned a stain upon our souls which we carried unto death and beyond to Mandos' Halls?

If the hatred born from that betrayal was our only warmth, it only makes sense to have kept that bitter flame alive then.

Some forgave, others did not, could not.

I could not say whether I overcame my own hatred bred of such a bitter, fiery betrayal, or whether I learned to live with its icy flames as flickering as part of my changed, new-bred soul.

Perhaps both.

Is it any wonder that upon arrival into Beleriand we fought (though none had battled such previously) against the orcs we found with such vigour to drive them back in defeat even as we were starving and weakened and raw?

The host of Fëanáro may have been forged in hasty flame, but the host of Nolofinwë was wrought in the fires of ice and pain and death and starvation.

We learned to adapt, however differently that adaptation presented, and we survived.

Even if our hearts turned cold and still.

We who completed the crossing of the Helcaraxë, everyone from child to weary elder, learned to be one with the ice of tormented years, of both its freezing and its burning.

We were remade, us Eldar of Aman, into Elves of Ice.