This is something like 91% of the next chapter of Of Ingwë Ingweron. Chapter Seven hopefully will be finished in the next few days and posted to AO3, at which point I’ll remove this post. As I feared, I had to split the chapter into two. Chapter Eight, therefore, is going to be short and more a collection of vignettes. Which I like the idea of anyway. (The dog domestication with tiny Huan and Thingol scene, the Finwë meets Uinen, Elu the protective big brother scene) 

But here’s Of The Great Hunt. Probably good idea if you’ve read the short stories ‘Erikwa’ and ‘Making Friends’. Feedback appreciated:

The Vanyar would later sing of it as the Great Hunt. Their poetry spoke of Cuiviénen as the time of the Awakening, the Great Hunt, the Duel, and then the Great Journey. Elves who had lived before they settled Aman were known not as those that had undertaken the Great Journey, as it was among the Noldor, but those that had partaken in the Great Hunt.

Finwë and Elwë stayed behind in the Minyar village with the children too young and their mothers like nursing Maktâmê. Also appointed to stay behind were Inkundû and Ravennë to fulfill their parents’ roles as leaders while Imin and Iminyë led the hunt. Neither were pleased, though Inkundû’s face displayed his resentment more clearly than his sister as his mother painted a line of red clay across his jaw.

Elwë sat with Maktâmê and the infant Indis, comfortable and accustomed to such young children, whereas Finwë invited himself to the cache of spare spears, javelins, and other weapons stacked in the communal hut between the dueling circle and the chieftain’s house. These were the extraneous or damaged weapons as opposed to personal weapons of each tribe member, and Finwë busied himself by inspecting them. His goal was to identify the craftsman of each weapon if he could and to repair or re-sharpen what his skills could. Halfway through his self-appointed task, Inkundû would come over to loom over Finwë’s shoulder in peevish boredom, blocking the young man’s light. Imin’s son would begin a snide comment disparaging Finwë’s honor and intelligence, Finwë would turn red-faced and enraged to retort, and Elwë with his shadow-soft steps would be there unexpectedly, looming in turn over the shoulder of the Minyar prince with his greater height, interrupting this burgeoning squabble with questions for Finwë about the geologic properties of each stone for tool-making. Deliberately ignoring Inkundû, Finwë would prattle to his best friend about the superior knapping ability of flint as Elwë pretended to attentively listen. This was a game the pair had long played. Not so bemused would be Inkundû, and once more Ravennë would think her older brother deficient and immature.

…

The rest of the village, following the lead of Imin and Iminyë, began the long trek from the shoreline through the surrounding forest out into the grasslands. Before the abductions and deaths from Melkor’s cruel agents, the Minyar hunting parties would have split during the forest trails into groups of three to seven and fanned out into many directions. Wisdom was that the greater the number of hunting attempts, the likelihood of one group succeeding would outweigh the failures of the others. This division of the hunting parties, and that each group returned on their own schedule to the village, exacerbated the disappearances and abductions of the Minyar. The tribe assumed innocent delays until many star rotations passed with none returning.

Such a hunting party would include at least one pair of the first generation, the Unbegotten, with their greater experience in tracking and understanding prey, and a novice hunter to benefit from their knowledge. Another necessity would be a runner who could tire the animal in a long chase if projectile weapons failed, for as a last resort it was discovered that despite the greater swiftness of the beasts, an elf had near-immortal stamina and a will that overrode any weakness of the body. Hunting parties, once established, changed only once the novice hunter desired to allow another youth to replace them, or if some disagreement became too great for the dueling ring to settle. Sometimes two hunting parties would work in tandem or request a supplementary runner. Regardless of a single hunting party’s success on a trip, what could be returned to the village was shared with all, even if the individual allotment of meat, bone, and hide was unequal. This was not to state that fierce competition and jockeying of reputation among the parties and individual members of the tribe was not fierce and rampant.

Great hunts, where there were enough runners and spear-hurlers to corral an entire herd, and enough hands to carry more than one butchered carcass back to village, were rare and momentous. That everyone had this opportunity to hunt with Imin and Iminyë was a boost to everyone’s status, a concept easier to grasp in concrete terms than the heady idea of hunting beside the god of the hunt.

Oromë had shifted his appearance to be no taller than Imin and changed his apparel to match the simple leggings and loincloths of the elven hunters. His belt carried no weapons or waterskins, only the gold-capped hunting horn, and his long brown hair was twisted back into a single tight ponytail. The boughs of the evergreen trees swayed with his passage, their limbs creaking like a slow eerie fanfare. Pine needles fell to carpet the forest floor behind his feet.

Before they entered the forest, Oromë had waved Nahar to run on ahead, and the silver horse had galloped away into the surrounding hills. “He searches for the nearest horse herd,” Oromë explained. “If I need him, I shall call, and it will not take him long to reach me.”

Oromë hung back, allowing Imin and the most experienced elven hunters to take the lead in the trek from the village through the great evergreen forests. His face revealed nothing, but a grave suspicion that the Vala was humoring Imin, that patronization of a grown man watching an infant toddle and crawl on village mats, made the chieftain and other Unbegotten elves irritable. Iminyë was the one to voice a sliver of their concern. “You did not wish to show us the proper trail, Great Power Arâmê? And I see you carry no weapon as we do. Is it because our ways are incorrect?”

“I have never seen you hunt,” Oromë replied in an even, conciliatory voice. “I cannot offer you judgement without knowledge.” He laughed, a short self-deprecating little sound. “This shall be a fresh thing for me,” he said, echoing his previous tales of entering Arda.

Iminyë smiled at this, mollified. The same smile appeared on Imin’s lips. “To enter a world where every experience and thing beheld is fresh for you and everyone around you. Yes, we understand.”

Kanatië turned around to address the young man that she still thought of as unspeaking Ûkwendô. “You should do the same, Son of Skarnâ-maktê. Observe how your people hunt.” Behind her, Asmalô whom she had mentored in his first hunting party grimaced. He that would be Ingwë replied not.

Cutting remarks and the wounds upon temperament and mind that they caused were reason to send one to the dueling ring, so that aggression could be matched with aggression and then released. Had he not been the shunned one, such words could have earned Kanatië a swift duel in the ring, and it would have expected. Asmalô, not for the first time, desired to champion the boy he had nursed beside. But he knew if he entered a fight to defend the honor of one who showed no outward sign of concern or regard towards, it would not earn Asmalô any of the gratitude from whom this action would be done in the name of. Asmalô had long missed opportunities to proffer an assisting hand to his once friend, and now any outreaching gesture would be rebuffed. So the cycle was perpetuated, and Asmalô knew himself to be a useless and cowardly man, despite the bragging marks painted on his skin.

Thus Kanatië’s snide dig hung over the hunting party like an unwelcome odor. The man that would be Ingwë slowed his pace to take a rear position along the trail, back where any turn in the trees would hide him from view of the leaders. His tribesmen glanced back, troubled by the lack of anger to be sensed in the undercurrents of his thoughts. Secretly that was what troubled them most about this son of the unfortunate hunters, that his resentment of his tribe clearly remained and yet could no longer be readily sensed. He did not pretend to accept his place, but he hid his thoughts from them, as he hid himself. Imin waited for the nod from one of his most trusted hunters to signal when the young man would peel away from the tribe to hunt alone. The chieftain did not explicitly expect this to happen, but he would not be surprised. The young man’s disobedience and solitary ways would be watched for now.

Lasrondo watched in disappointment.

Ingwë did not speak to the ones he walked beside, but he never slowed his steps to fall to the last position or deviate from their path. His heels tread on fallen pine needles, and the heady scent anointed him. He did not join in with the traveling chants, but Ingwë was with his tribe and participated in the Great Hunt.

…

The hunting plains of the Minyar had only starlight to illuminate its features and no large body of water to reflect back the light. In this star-dark only the keen elven sight could distinguish the individual herds that grazed among the ferns and grasses. Bereft of the shielding trees, the wind was free to press against their faces and sing loud against their ears. Such a place frightened the other Kwendî, but to the Minyar this place was more home than the shores of Cuiviénen. Here there were no false star reflections in the water, no distant roar of the waterfall or the constant lapping of tiny waves. Here the only fire was what they brought with them. This was the job of those without the greatest skill in aiming and throwing spears or possessing exceptional speed or stamina. They were the fire bearers, and in Valinor they would become the core of the devotees to Varda, but during the Great Hunt, these young men and women unrolled the long leather rolls to pull out bundles of fat-soaked reeds, dried moss, and their precious flint stones. Carefully they lit the tallow sticks and held these rudimentary candles aloft, freehands cupped to shield the pinpricks of light from the wind. Tallow reed lights held aloft, the hunters inspected the lashings of their spears one last time, gazed analytically out onto the grasslands for the locations and relative positions of landmarks and animals, and waited for their chieftain.

In the primitive mind-speech created by the Unbegotten, Imin began to chant a song of limited words and well-known emotions, a pattern ingrained into the tribe. It was the most common -and most generic- hunting chant.

Illuminated by the stars far overhead and their tiny handheld imitations, the Minyar fanned out and began to sing.

Find me prey, the chant said. My belly aches, the chant said, but I have strength to chase after something that shall fill it. I am cunning; I shall find a way to catch it. Find me prey.

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Imin pointed to the lead runners to go ahead, sprinting after the chosen animal. The deer broke into a bouncing run, quickly outpacing the elven pursuers. Half of the hunting party followed the buck, lobbing spears, while the rest worked to further divide the herd, looking for other animals that were falling behind their fellows or panicking in the wrong direction.

A quick chorus of triumph called out for the first animal hit, a clean chest strike that instantly felled the animal, but the Minyar hunters had only begun. They had not come to these plains for just one buck.

With a crow of delight and full body shudder that seemed to vibrate the very fabric of perceived reality, Oromë lept into the air and transformed at the apex of his leap into a four-legged beast, a great stag with ruddy coat and many-branching antlers. He cavorted up to the fleeing herd, looming over them with his greater height and rack of impossibly complex antlers, then when he reached the lead animal, Oromë shifted his physical form once more. This time he chose the body of a great black bull with horns as wide and curved as the rib bones of a giant. He lowered those horns into the path of the fleeing deer and bellowed. Even then the sound had no anger.

The lead deer stumbled as if poleaxed by the bellow of Oromë.

Spears flew through the air, some wobbling as they spun, and two landed with wet thuds in the bodies of the startled fleeing deer.

Imin running beside his wife turned to face her with a silent question, and Iminyë nodded. “More spears!” she hollered to her hunters. “Fetch the fallen! Runners after those two! Knives to the one we have. A full fist before we return! And watch for tracks and signs of another herd!”

Around the black bull that was Oromë the deer herd split and tried to flee, the two injured members falling behind, closely pursued by hunting groups. The man that would be Ingwë hesitated between which group to follow or if to stay behind with Asmalô’s group who had encircled the first slain deer and were beginning the slow but familiar process of butchering it. They sang as they pulled out their knives.

Fortunately the great Minyar hunting party had not widely dispersed in pursuit of prey before the following happened.

Oromë as a bull lifted his dark head, the giant white horns curving up to cup the star-speckled sky between its points. His nostrils widened, and ears flicked with sharp intent. A hoof lifted from the ground; shoulder muscle tensed. The elven hunters turned towards the direction of his glare.

On a distant ridge they could see moving silhouettes of wolves. These onlookers were positioned so that the majority of the elves were between them and Oromë. They were obviously interested in the dead buck that the elves were beginning to skin and quarter. This occurred commonly on the plains. A particular pack liked to follow the Minyar hunters and were well-known and not feared. Sometimes the hunters even left scraps for that wolf pack, back before meat was scarce and hunting limited by fear of the Dark Hunters.

Yet these shapes were not true wolves, and certainly not their friends. Though the lead shape was a pale blue in this perpetual midnight of Arda before the creation of sun and moon, the forms that followed the lead of the pale hunched wolf-figure were made of light-devouring voids. Even at this distance, the elves could judge the size of those distant shapes as unnaturally large. The uncanny matte quality coupled with the wrongness of their silhouettes made it obvious that they were the Dark Hunters.

This time Oromë’s exclamation bloomed from a deep-seated rage. The giant bull shifted back into the red deer with many-branching antlers, and the scream that came from that throat was a clarion piercing note, a sound that seemed to physically manifest as an explosion of light. With that cry, Oromë leapt in direction of the Dark Hunters. It was a leap that said physics were not concrete law but merely the outlines for a player to improvise as one did playing variations on a melody. The pack of not-wolves began to scatter, disappearing into the darkness. The pale blue lead figure paused before fleeing from Oromë, though if the pause was a challenge to the Vala or the freezing of terror, no elf could say.

A second cry and flash of bright white, and Nahar galloped into view, white mane and tail streaming behind him. His path was on an intersect with Oromë, passing by the elves who were butchering the first kill. Asmalô dove to the ground in fear of collision with the galloping horse.

As Nahar leapt towards the fleeing not-wolves, his hooves slammed against the hard earth, cratering it with the ferocious impact of a meteor strike and sending chunks of dirt and stone flying through the air to land dangerously close to the astonished elves. This time Lasrondo was the one to dive to the ground, covering his head with both arms, and Asmalô to pull his fellow hunter back into an upright position and convince him of their safety.

Nahar’s landing at the end of his great physic-affronting leap was no less destructive, and though he did not vocalize, there was a song in the undercurrents of his thoughts, a complex rhythm that evoked the sensation of overpowering rage.

When Oromë and Nahar were abreast, the deer-form flowed back into his original man-shape, and with a leap almost too quick and graceful for the onlooker to comprehend, he vaunted onto Nahar’s back. Astride Nahar, Oromë sat up and pulled a shape into being in his hands. He was too far aways and too swift-moving for the elves to see the objects that he held. Later Oromë would display them for the elves: his great hunting bow and arrows.

The muscles of his back bunched and strained as he pulled back an arm, then let loose the arrow as that arm flung up with the graceful curve of a hunting cat’s tail.

The arrow arced like a comet over the plains. Wind screamed in agony in its passage, shrill and short, and air rippled out like water from the impact. Earth liquefied under the arrowhead, and the impaled shadow-shape writhed like a spineless deep-sea creature brought to the surface before it dissolved into the ground. Faint wisps of steam rose from the crater around the embedded arrow. A tuft of matte-black fur lingered around the arrowhead before disappearing with a foul odor, though no elf was close enough to behold this.

With perfect balance Oromë rode astride the galloping Nahar as the titanic horse quickly crested the hill and pivoted on his hind legs, shining silver hooves raised as if to strike. Oromë pulled another arrow into existence from a quiver of song and released it into the darkness. A split of air, a scream of pain, and the Lord of the Hunt smiled to see another servant of Melkor vanquished.

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“What of the mâmâ*? They are smaller than the auroch or wisent, and some have thick long hair on their hides that would easier to make felt, perhaps even weave as we do the stems of plants. Despite the large horns on the males, they are not near as dangerous.”

Every elf present turned to stare at the eighth-born child of the Minyar. Asmalô was the one to voice what they were all thinking. “That was the most words you have addressed to your tribe since we were children.” Swallowing his shock and remarking from a position of more than a little jealousy, Asmalô added, “Is it that you speak only in the presence of others and not your people that the Tatyar and Nelyar boy call you Kwendë?”

The young man that would become Ingwë Ingweron was not yet accustomed to the attention of all elves present to be focused intently on him and his words, but even in his discomfort the young man found his reply falling easily from his lips. “I speak when I have words worthy of being heard.”

Imin’s face was a thunderclast. “Or to those deemed worthy of hearing your voice? By choosing never to speak to your tribe, your actions were a choice to state that we were undeserving of your voice?”

“You made it clear it was I, and my parents, unworthy of bother to the tribe,” Ingwë countered.

“All voices are allotted the respect to listen to them,” Oromë interrupted, “at least for that initial hearing. Eru Ilúvatar allowed my king’s brother to sing with us, even after he disrupted the song.” A sarcastic lit of mouth. “Twice. It was his will to drown out the other voices that displeased my Father.”

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* Primitive Elvish = sheep