#everbeloved

I didn’t want it to be a long scene or too many scenes, though, because the fic consists of short scenes that are all pretty tightly focused on Edhellos and I didn’t want that derailed by Aegnor’s personal tragedy. And I had to be especially careful with that because Aegnor meets Andreth close to the end of his and Edhellos’ life – close to the end of the fic.

So following a scene that describes the house of Beör moving into Ladros, the north-eastern part of Dorthonion, I wrote Aegnor coming home to Minas Avras (the stronghold I made up for Angrod, Aegnor and Edhellos) and Edhellos being the first to greet him.

She notices at once that something is off with him. She asks him if he’s hurt and because I write Aegnor as someone who expresses himself rather dramatically, unlike Angrod, he answers, 'I have been dealt a strike from which I will never recover.’ Having met Andreth, fallen in love with her, spent a little time with her and then left her to never see again feels to him like his world has shifted and will never be right again.

Later in the evening Aegnor has a private dinner with Edhellos and Angrod and talks about Andreth a little more. I incorporated the descriptions of Andreth and his meeting from the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (in HoME 10), as well as Aegnor’s rationale for riding away from her.

I really like the resulting sentences, and the mental image of that conversation: the three of them sat at dinner but not really eating, Aegnor staring into the fire as he speaks.

Angrod doesn’t know how to react; he ‘sits frozen‘. But Edhellos, whose strength is in her compassionate heart, understands that Aegnor cannot be consoled by anything but the knowledge that he will never forget Andreth (this is also based on the Athrabeth, where Finrod says that Aegnor will always have an elf’s memory, more vivid than a human’s, of meeting and loving Andreth, to treasure). So the scene ends with her expressing her understanding of that, and with ‘She embraces Aegnor's still, stiff form and takes Angrod's hand, and they leave Aegnor to his memory and silence.’

I love that sentence.

If I may cheat a little, I’ll talk a bit about the next scene as well, even though this is already ridiculously long.

It’s a connected scene: Edhellos and Angrod in their bedroom that night, curling into each other metaphorically and literally, in horror of the grief Aegnor must feel at the love he couldn’t have, at their brother having lost something so dear.

They talk about how fortunate they were to find each other young and to have been together since then. Angrod says to Edhellos, 'Even if Morgoth should break the siege tomorrow and slay us, we have had centuries to love each other. Aegnor didn't get a single moment of love unsullied by heartbreak.'

And that is an important bridge to the next scene, the last scene of the fic, because that’s where Morgoth begins Dagor Bragollach.