”You said the Vala in black is a mourner?” Maeglin looked up from reading through a handful of Salgant’s harp scores. A conversation from when the Lord of the Harp had first befriended a grieving , freshly orphaned young elf. When Maeglin had first learned more of the Valar than the brief words Aredhel could spare in Eol’s absence.
“Nienna is the Weeper, yes. She comforts those who have died. It is why she was invoked at the funeral.” There were lots of things Maeglin did not know about Noldorin customs, much of which Aredhel had simply neglected to teach him. But Salgant did not ridicule him for his ignorance, instead treating his never ending questions with patience. Even now he stopped his hands to give Maeglin’s question his full attention. “Though she is not the one to call the fëa once it has left the hroa. It is the Doomsman of the Valar who does that. Though there are those who simply refuse the call.” Salgant dropped his attention to the lathe before him, the mask he was shaping. The scent of cut cedar warmed the air. “Those who might not heed the call to Mandos, those who wish to remain Houseless—to say nothing of those who wish not to leave this land for one they’ve never seen.”
A surge of fear had Maeglin’s fingers almost tearing apart the parchment in his hands. He watched the older elf with wide eyes. Might not heed… “Will…will I be able to see Emel after she is reborn?”
But Salgant merely nodded as if there were no question as to Aredhel’s decisions. “I am sure of it. Should you die here—and I pray upon the grace of the Valar that you do not—you would also be called to the Halls of Mandos, where all the dead receive comfort and healing.”
Something tightened in Maeglin’s chest and he once more felt the prickle of tears in his eyes. He whipped his head away, ostensibly to examine the nearby masks Salgant had nearly finished for an upcoming festival, all tassels and gold and richly layered paints. “Is it…peaceful? In the Halls?”
Salgant gently set down the wooden mask he’d been shaping. He looked out the window at the plaza below, but Maeglin felt as if he was looking with those kind eyes at him. “I would imagine it is so. A place where you can lay your burden down. Where all pain and hurt is soothed away. At least, I would hope so.”
Maeglin remembered belatedly that Salgant’s brother died upon the Ice. Perhaps Salgant missed him just as much as Maeglin missed his mother. He dropped his watering gaze to the music scores in his lap.
A hand rested on the top of his head, patting softly. For a heartbreaking moment he could pretend it was Aredhel’s hand stroking his hair, as was her wont. But she was gone. And he wouldn’t see her unless the Ban was lifted and they could sail across to a world he’d never even dreamed of. She was so far away and Maeglin felt every inch of that distance.
So when Salgant pulled him into a hug, he went gratefully.
Snippet from an unpublished fic where Salgant adopts Maeglin
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