Too much back and forth dialogue, not enough of that distanced academic narrator. And the inconsistency problem I created for myself with primitive and normalized versions of Quenya names gets worse.

But it’s harder to get more Tolkien than name etymologies.

…

Now it was accounted in various manners and places of the Vala Oromë and his first meeting among the elves. Knowledge he shared and lasting friendship, the names of creation and the one whom had created, new skills with which to enrich the lives of the elves, and most precious to the three that had discovered him, the perpetrator and motives behind the Dark Hunters that had so plagued their villages. The Vala could easily answer his own question of who the three elves were, that they were the long foretold and eagerly awaited Children of Ilúvatar, the second melody of the design for creation that had been Sung into being. Who Oromë was, and what, could be answered by the titles of ‘Hunter’ and ‘Lord of the Forest’, though to explain in words everything that those simple titles encompassed was harder. That there was a One responsible for the planning of the universe and its creation, from every grain of sand to the bright stars to the passage of time to the world itself was not a difficult concept to grasp, for the vastness of such a thought matched the vastness of Ilúvatar itself. Eä was fitting, the three elves thought, for the very first of the Kwendî to awake had been Imin, and he awoke with the cry of Ele! It was a cry to behold the world in either case. What Finwë found incredulous was that Ilúvatar, and beings such as Oromë before him, had created the world and everything vast or minute in it through singing.

“You mean if you wanted a clay jar you could just sing a tune and -elâ!- a pot appears in your hand?” Finwë questioned, a skeptical look on his face as his calloused potter’s hands mimicked a fire sparking to life or a solid object needing several hours worth of labor poofing into existence like smoke.

“Not I,” said Oromë. “I am no craftsman, creator of tools from the earth and stone. For that song you would want the one more powerful than me who is skilled with his hands, a most creative mind, whose delight and domain is the rock behind our feet.” The eldest of the three elves felt the faint pressure against his mind while Oromë paused, brushing against their thoughts like a cool breeze for more words the elves could understand. “Mbartanô perhaps would be the name you would call him, the World-Artificer. His are the plates of stone upon which everything rests, and his hammer makes the mountains and valleys.”

“Must be a large hammer,” Finwë jested.

“He has many hammers,” the Vala corrected, “and some are hammers and some are ideas one uses like a hammer. His works can be small objects as well, not only the mountains. The stone axes you knap into useful shapes, that is him.”

“Aulë,” said Ingwë.

“Yes,” replied the Vala gravely, “the Inventor. And in our own language, if we did not desire to sing the full extent of his name, the shortened form would sound aloud similar to that.”

“Your own language?” Finwë questioned. Elwë shoved him with a half-exasperated grin.

The Vala opened his mouth to speak, and strange syllables, harsh as breaking rocks and logs popping in bonfires layered over the cries and roars of animals and the crashing waterfall, poured out. The creature behind them that looked like a tall horse with a coat as silver as Elwë’s long hair flicked its ears and snapped its tail against its flanks. Elwë and Finwë winced, and the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron wondered why he could not discern the meaning of any word. He felt that if he but listened long enough he could have.

When the three asked the Vala his name, Oromë sighed like the wind through dense leaves. “If I were to describe my name…the sound of horns,” he said and hefted a white object from his belt that none remembered being there. In his hands was the horn of a large auroch capped with rims of gold and he brought the object to his lips and blew softly through the narrow end.

“The sound we heard,” Elwë said with soft wonder. “Arâmê.”

Elwë’s word closely matched the sound the horn had made, which was richer than the reed flutes of the Nelyar. The Vala smiled and nodded. “Arâmê you may call me. And what may I address the three of you as?” he asked in polite formality.

“Elwê, for the stars,” answered the tall and silver-haired Elwë.

“Phinwê,” said his friend. “And it is the same ending as Elwê; don’t listen to them if they tease otherwise. Phin is like the sound we use for a tress of hair, but I do not know if my parents named me for anything, hair or otherwise. It is not remarkable, the color very common in both my tribe and in the third tribe from which Elwê comes from, not like his silver color or Mahtân, who has hair like a fox pelt.”

“Might it be you were born with a lot of hair on your head already?” teased Elwë. “My brother was born with very little, but his good friend entered the world with a full thatch of hair atop his head.”

The Vala turned to face the last of the companions.

“My friends address me as Kwendê,” he said.

The Vala laughed. “How appropriate, for you were first I heard to speak.”

Again there was that feeling of another mind, no more invasive than the sensation meeting another person’s eyes squarely. Your name is Ingwë, the voice that was not spoken words said.

Yes, Ingwë thought.

But if it the other name you wish to be spoken aloud, I shall, if I am accounted a friend.

Ingwë could not help the smile that spread across his face. Aloud he spoke, “We know you are not one of the Dark Hunters, for all that you are a Power and no elf and that you perch atop a horse as it runs.”

“Riding,” Oromë corrected. “When Næchærra grants me, for his speed is greater than my own, and together we can outrun and catch the monsters we hunt.” His hand motioned to the silver horse behind him. “But it is the name of the Dark Hunters you want, the ones who have taken forms in mockery of me as to hurt the Children of Ilúvatar and undoubtedly blame me for it.”

“Yes,” Elwë hissed.

Oromë’s face grew dark, as if thunderstorms covered what should have been the bright lightning of his eyes. “Mailikô,” he said in a voice with no less venom than Elwë’s, “the Greedy One. He was one of us, in some ways the greatest and most powerful. The brother of my leader. But he rebelled against the One, jealous and hateful of the world Ilúvatar bade us create and protect, and he has sought ever since his first rebellion to destroy or maim to his own purpose all that we hold dear.