#stormwritten

The gates are open, yet you know you are watched as you walk in.

Surely that is the sound of a bustling marketplace around the bend? But no, you reach the square and its empty of life. The stalls are open, but none sell food.

You take a wooden knickknack from one stall. As you walk away you feel— thiefthiefshameguiltyguiltyTHIEF

You double back and leave a coin. The pressure fades.

On the counter of the inn is a mug of fresh beer, waiting for you. You leave a coin. No, two coins. This was generous.

You sit at an empty table and do not feel alone. You can almost hear the bawdy singing and smell the roasting pork.

The ale tastes like the farm in the dells where you danced with your husband in the wheat fields and kissed him below the endless stars and the bedroom where you promised your eternal soul to his and the floorboards he cut himself that you buried his empty shell under and the green door you closed behind you for the last time as you set out for something new and the eastward breeze that sometimes carries his voice out of the Uttermost West and the answers you’ll never give him

You were never married. You’re not thirsty anymore.

As you lie down in an empty room, nothing wishes you peaceful dreams.

You wake up. The bed is a mound of dirt. The inn is dust. The marketplace is stones and overgrowth. The gate is closed. The walls about it are gone.

In what might have been the rot of the stall you visited, no copper gleams. You take the toy you purchased from your pocket. The paint is still unchipped.

“When we retook what must’ve been Nargothrond—with barely any fuss, mind you; only the dumbest and most desperate orcs wanted to stay near that dragon-stench—the one thing I remember most was the silence. The caverns stretched on and on and on; hall after hall after kitchen after dormitory after garden stretching into the hills. Not a soul in sight but us. Not a ghost but the ones we made up in our heads, to try and give the emptiness reason. Merynn whispered to me, afterwards, that there’d once been a hundred thousand elves living there. I’ve never had a head for numbers, so I can’t say if that’s the truth or not. But looking at that hollow city, and thinking of how few elves there were on Balar before the Host of the West arrived…you can’t help but feel sad. It was never supposed to be so silent. So dead. Wasn’t right.

(It's still Thursday somewhere, right?)

Dialogue-only snippet for today yesterday's @maedhrosmaglorweek prompt, about a post-canon reunion.

“Simply reaching Menegroth was a struggle. Doriath had become a twisting nightmare of overgrowth and rot and mists, as Morgoth’s power warred with the remains of the Girdle and our old songs. Ai, our home, our haven! I know the name of every holly in Region, before the exile. We found deadfalls surrounded by dozens of animals who’d lain down beside the trees and rotted before they died. Blind moose more antler than flesh staggered towards us even after a dozen arrows. Vines covered in dripping thorns reached for our eyes. The cherry trees were overladen with fruits that smelled like gangrene. Deildhod stumbled into a nest of maddened vipers, and only escaped because their tails were all tangled together into a festering mass and could hardly move. We never saw or heard a single bird. I’m amazed we lost no one in that whole push through Region. No, I speak a lie. I know how we passed through with nothing worse than scrapes. Elrond was with us, and the ghost of Melian’s love still recognized her kin.

“Esgalduin had nearly been dammed by one of Hírilorn’s fallen boles, but the bridge still held. We crossed and reached the ruined gates, wrought twice and broken twice. Within there was only darkness to be seen; we knew not what manner of horrors Morgoth had sent to infest the city, but Ingwion was unwilling to leave them at the rear of his forces as he moved north, if it could be helped. Celeborn stood at Elrond’s right and myself at his left. Far less an honor guard than the heir of Elu Thingol and Melian Besain deserved. Yet in those dark days it was all the honor we could muster. King Dior Eluchíl had known thirty-six summers when he was unrighteously slain. Queen Elwing Nimaew thirty-five when despair took her to the sea. Lord Elrond Peredhel beheld the city of Elu for the first and only time in his twenty-ninth summer.

“Elrond stood before his inheritance and Sang. He sang a lament, for the lost endless years of joy and peace, for deep halls lit by birdsong and echoing with wisdom, for the Forsaken People who awoke the forest and earth with many voices, for the works of beauty never to be seen again on this side of the sea. He sang a promise, that the glory of Menegroth will be remembered in the songs of Middle-Earth for as long as its children endure. He sang thanks, for the protection the halls granted us until it could shelter us no more. As his song at last ceased, I thought I heard nightingales answering him.

“Stars shone on his brow, and his hair glistened as the vault of night, and the memories of our once-eternal bliss in the woods of Thingol’s realm under Elbereth’s gifts arose in my mind. Let Oropher dream of a deep hall for his own; let Celeborn reign where he will at his wife’s side! I knew in my heart, as the echo of nightingale songs faded, that there was no lord or king I would ever stand beside save Elrond Elwingion.

That should not have surprised her, the War was—well, she’d seen enough of it herself. But if he was changed more like the Lindar who could no longer bear torches or crowds, or the once-chained who crowded under Lorien’s trees hoping to relearn peace, or her far-niece soaring the salt breeze more often than she walked the land (birds cry only to clean their eyes, Elwing once confided), or their Returned eldest son only half at home in his skin; that she could understand.

YOU'RE NOW LISTENING TO

*boat incineration sound*

87.3

*huan barking*

AMON EREB ROCK FM

*kinslaying*

WHERE WE PLAY NOTHIN BUT OATHS, OATHS, AND MORE OATHS

*opening chord of nodolantë*

*eternal wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Everlasting Darkness*

THIS AIN'T YOUR DARK ELF'S STATION

They don’t drift apart so much as never coagulate again.

Celegorm vanishes into the deep woods as hastily as he can manage, before the shock of his Return (“Him first? Of all of them!?”) fully ebbs; if the hounds of Oromë howl in strange voices, they have always been a little wild.

Caranthir builds a house on a quiet hillside, and counts naught but the stitches in his tapestries; he has not ceased to weave since with the first thread he closed his harsh mouth for ever.

Curufin lifts a hammer once—and sees only shattered fingers upon the anvil.

Maedhros lies at the feet of Mercy Undeserved until he remembers how to cry again, then dons a dark veil of his own, padding through the halls of Fui to lend what tears he may, unnumbered as they are.

Ambarussa are never seen again—not directly; a lick of flame, trembling leaves, a fox’s scream; at the edge of perception, copper entwines with fate, glimmering beyond reach.

Maglor returns with pride tempered but unquenched, with a tongue tired of laments, with many deeds of selfless kindness ready for praise, with expectations—and finds ashes, and a land long moved on.

“The worst thing I saw during the War? Ancalagon of course, but you won’t find anyone who won’t mention him. Second worst thing? It was a few months later, once Morgoth had been de-footed and dragged out by the stumps, and we were cleansing Angband. We knew we had limited time; the continent was barely holding itself together before a certain dragon collapsed Thangorodrim in its death throes. Delving into the iron hells, with practically every maia of Ulmo, Aulë, Yavanna, and Tulkas singing continuously to keep it from collapsing utterly and taking the entire north with it, just having seen what they brought out of the upper levels, was a rather daunting task. Still had a curiously large number of volunteers, since within you couldn’t hear Morgoth laughing and screaming in his cage.

“So we went fast, killing orcs, experimental monsters, the occasional Umaia. Glad to say I missed the Balrog in the forges; it killed two score before Meril finally took it down. All distractions, regardless. The pits were the real goal.

“How do I even describe them? There were, as best I could divine, about three tiers of thrall quarters. The cells, for prisoners Morgoth and his lords deemed important, general quarters for most thralls, and the pits. The Valar said that he could no longer twist elves into orcs even by the time of his first imprisonment, but from the conditions there, from the bodies we pulled out…I don’t think he cared. Every torture, every debasement, every abomination against the Eruchîn that could be imagined. For each we thought might survive if we got them to the surface, there were five who wouldn’t, and ten corpses. And in the deepest, blackest pit of them all…