This was one of the thoughts that came to Beren in his insurmountable grief as he cradled the cooling corpse of beloved Finrod, king and friend, blind hand feeling in the dark at the gaping wounds on Finrod’s chest where the wolf had scored with venomed fangs, fingers dipping into the blood that has overwhelmed all his senses. Strange that the blood slides and sticks across his fingers like that which leaks from mortal things, that the scent is over-familiar.
He had been here before, Barahir’s son. On the shores of Aeluin, rushing alone and wild with grief and rage into the orcs’ camp to slay that one holding aloft a dismembered hand, he knew this. For two years he had know this numbness.
He has carried dead men’s names, the names of comrades that have left him behind. He alone had been there to pick up those burdens. He lived then, even though he had not desired to. He should have joined them, the names he carried in a solo dirge. A choir they had once been. Now his was the only voice that remained to speak those names, to sing their deeds against the great foe and preserve their glory, to recall their joys and sorrows, and to carry on their defiance against the enemy and all his monsters and orcs. For two years Beren had carried the weight of twelve dead men, of doughty Dagnir and Ragnor, Radhruin, Dairuin and Gildor, Gorlim and Urthel, Arthad and Hathaldir, his cousins Belegund and Baragund, and his father Barahir. Kin and comrades, and all died, leaving but Beren to survive.
Another twelve now, and this time, waiting for the last wolf to come, Beren knew he would not linger on alone. Pulling back the hand covered in Finrod’s blood, Beren waited and began to compose his song. A new list of names, ones just as dear, and like before only Beren left behind to recall their names. Of doughty Arodreth and Ethirdir, Aglar, Consael and Heledir, Tacholdir and
Bân, Gadwar and Fân, Edrahil, and his king Felagund.
This time there would be no empty years afterward, alone but for the trees and the shy creatures of feather and fur that aided him in a long and fruitless fight against the enemy. No long years with words worn away until he forgot the names and remembered only the grief and vengeance call they burdened him with. No stumbling numb and dumb and mad into a starlight glen where a wondrous vision sang and danced and for a while lifted the burden of grief and rage.
He had joined his voice in a duet, that fey and joyous summer, he that had lost his voice.
To think of Lúthien hurt more than the rest of his sorrows. There his thoughts could not dwell, for he knew this time would not have reprieve.
He had done this before and knew what should happen next, what were his next steps, the next lines to sing.
This time he shall join the names of his dead, such was the thought of Beren.
The kindly-faced man sits on a corner of the streets in Valmar, appearing to do nothing at all except bask in the warm golden light and listen to the clarion bells. Sometimes pigeons bob at his feet, or a wandering cat or dog curls their heads on his lap. His eyes are a brilliant blue, when they are not lidded in the peaceful countenance of a man who delights in a warm day and the pleasing tones of the city’s many bells.
“You are one of the Maiar,” says a pedestrian with tightly coiled golden hair, standing just so their shadow does not block the light upon the bald man with stunningly clear blue eyes. “I can feel the difference in the souls, between Eldar and Ainur. I apologize that I do not recognize you, though I believe you must be one of the minor servants, for you do not blaze in my senses like many I have met. Is there something you need? You appear tired.”
The man sitting on the corner of the street smiles. “A little weary, perhaps. The war has been long, my task longer. But the sound of the bells helps to soothe, and the warm air rising up from the stones, and the kind offers from strangers.” He laughs, the creases around his brilliant blue eyes folding up to cover their brightness, the sound of his laugh as pure and light as the smallest chimes. “Air has a great weight. You don’t feel it, as it is always pressing in from every direction. You don’t see how much it weighs.”
Messing around with some designs for Manwë and Varda. I like the idea of their outfits having sort of Slavic influences, somehow it makes them feel more majestic.
Elenwë recognizes the other student when he enters the library and makes a beeline to the books for engineering, pulling out several on applying geometry to the construction of buildings. It is hard not to, when he is someone she has known all her life. The boy, for all he is taller than any man Elenwë is familiar with, struggles to lift a tome of mathematics for use in masonry from a shelf without bringing the entire row down with him, too tightly packed are the books. It is a new author than the book from yesterday, Elenwë observes. For the last few days she has watched him come to this corner of the library, hunting answers to his latest project.
Elenwë studies the use of numbers, the new calculations and new symbols created by Rúmil and the monks outside Valmar who have devoted themselves to Vairë. She enjoys mathematics free of examples involving the measure and weight of loads or accounting, the beauty of how seamlessly they fit without a stonemason in sight. There is a purity in numbers that is closer to the Songs of the Valar than any elven voice. Her family approves of her interest in mathematics once she expressed it as her exploration of art and truth, and has pooled money to support her ability to study under the best lore-masters in Tirion. Next season, her father promises, she can go to the monastery of the recording of history and learn beauty and knowledge from the source. Her family disapproves of spending all their time in Tirion, least they forget what it is to be of the Vanyar. The Noldor value that which they can physically sense, to claim knowledge and beauty by using it to create something which they can show off as fruit of their labor and genius. Elenwë tires of this.
Though she does admit, as the boy brings over his book and a pad of parchment scribbled dark with calculations for the best angles for a new buttress, there is a benefit to practical needs of numbers.
The boy is the second son of Prince Nolofinwë, who is married to the daughter of her father’s employer. Elenwë is only a year older than Prince Turukáno, and they grew up together and thus are comfortable around each other. The prince is very amicable, delighting in meeting new friends and skilled in giving them ease. When Elenwë waited in the scriptorium as her parents worked on the page illuminations and bond the books for the numerous Noldor nobles of Tirion, Turukáno was the one to gleefully approach the golden-haired scribes and question them about their craft and their accents. He brought Elenwë sweets as they watched her cousins stretch the vellum on framework and mix ink for letters. Elenwë’s family has been in partnership with the family of the princess, Anairë, since before the Teleri arrived, and so are often teased that they are more Noldor than Vanyar, if not for their hair. Turukáno liked to learn from the Vanyar scribes, more so than Elenwë who found the work tedious and the smells irritating, so this interest in masonry takes her by surprise. He was the only one of his siblings to visit the workshop, to question the Vanyar about their work and desire to understand why certain words and concepts were held as beautiful, why an illustration was added to a certain page, and why they only stayed a few decades before they transferred back home claiming to miss the mountains. Elenwë knows that confused the boy most, for Tirion was in a valley of the Pelóri, surrounded by mountains. The air was wrong, they told him, so Turukáno declared they should move the workshops to the top of a tower.
“You like the air here?” he says to her, and Elenwë, eyes lingering over a funicular polygon, belatedly realizes this is a question. When she looks up to meet his eyes, she realizes what his true and pure question is.
…
This started off as head-canons about anairë and elenwë here and turgon here (and kazaera’s delightful mathematician Elenwë – sorry I can’t give you any actual numbers as I never got beyond introductory trig and mostly focused on physics) and became a Turgon proposes indirectly to Elenwë fic.
“How is it an insult when your brother calls me your pearl?”
Eärwen pauses her fingers in Finarfin’s hair, the discarded silver comb at her feet and her lover’s head in her lap. “Because pearls start off as irritants inside the shells, and they must be coated smooth. Eventually the oyster turns the evasive grain of sand into a beautiful part of itself.”
“So I am the annoying Noldo grain of sand who you have softened with prettier words and manners until I fit in Alqualondë?”
Eärwen giggles. “And you might dissolve if dunked in vinegar.”
Finarfin twists his neck so he can look up her. “Where would I be immersed in vinegar?”
She runs a hand over his brow, pushing aside the almost iridescent golden hair. “Tirion is full of sour, quarrelsome people who make you unhappy to be around. It is better for you in Alqualondë. You should stay here. You are beautiful here.”
“Because I am with you, and you are more beautiful than any pearl.”
Barahir falls in love with her when they are both ten, and she shows up for beginning lessons on how to hold a shield in a tunic that is too small over a pair of too-big trousers stuffed into the tops of her boots and rolled thrice at the waist as to not fall off her skinny hips. She brings her own shield, painted bright green. Lessons on holding sticks are saved until next month’s instruction, and they must train for at least one full planting season before sticks are exchanged for dull pieces of metal. Barahir doesn’t realize what he feels for Emeldir is love until years later as she holds a green shield above his body to protect him from arrows, his own shield shattered at their feet. “We were taught to use our shield to protect our heart,” she tells him later. “That is exactly what I was doing.”
Barahir sulks off into the woods to find a moss-covered stone to sit on and attempt to compose heartfelt love songs to match the suave poetry of how Emeldir declared her feelings. Eventually he gives up and trudges back to her house, feeling as if he had returned to the awkward days when his beard first grew in. She meets his eyes with the same cool aplomb he envies and admires, and for a second Barahir worries he misunderstood her declaration. “Dagnir is leading a party down into the plains to hunt for enemy spies. You are the first warrior I want by my side,” he tells her. Emeldir nods. Then, before his courage deserts him, Barahir blurts out. “I want to fight by your side.”
Emeldir blinks slowly. “You said that.”
“I mean it! I mean, what I also meant was I want to be by your side. Always. I love you. I think I always have.”
Emeldir thinks he is ridiculous, and stubborn, and oblivious, and beloved.
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