Posted this a while back to AO3, but wanted to have the full version on my blog as well. ‘The very first elves are sort of creepy and think certain concepts are very creepy’ fic, the ‘if she only has a feminine version of her husband’s name, make the reason slightly unsettling’ fic. Title is Primitive Elvish for “single, alone”

…

Explanation for oswarë and a glimpse into the psychological issues of the Unbegotten and the minds of Imin and Iminyë.

…

Imin awakes loudly, with a great gasp of air as if he had held his breath during sleep, and only upon this cession of sleeping does come up like a diver from the great lake Cuiviénen reaching the surface. It is almost a fearful sound.

His gasp, like the very first gasp of air that the first of all elves ever took, wakes his wife Iminyë from her sleep. She opens her eyes and turns to her husband. Sometimes in these moments she will reach a hand to touch him. She reminds him in these simplest of movements that he did not sleep alone, nor does he wake alone.

He is always the first to wake, and that moment between his gasp with eyelids flying open in alarm and the opening of his wife’s eyes is the shortest of moments – and yet it is the longest and most fearful of times.

It is the great fear of the first generation of elves, spoken lowly amongst themselves. They fear sleep and a return to the oblivion in which they laid before their awakening, before they cried out at the sight of stars above them with the first opening of their eyes. They fear returning to the dumb unknowing unwaking, and it is the closest the Firstborn of Ilúvatar ever come to the mortal fear and understanding of death. They know not what woke them first, so they know not if this awareness will end.

The deep sleep, when eyes are closed and minds are blind, isolates the elves. They learn how to sleep with eyes open and thoughts quiet but still able to sense other minds around them with that feeling which involves neither eyes nor ears. Imin and his people have honed this skill to the point that they can read even the thoughts of other minds, but it was a skill formed out of the need to just reach for the warmth of another consciousness in the coldness of the unknown. Isolation is the fear that drives the first of elves, the fear of reaching out and feeling no echo of other minds, to call out in a voice and have only dumb silence answer. In this twofold fear of the sleep he will not wake from and the fear that only he alone shall wake does Imin, the First of all elves, gasp and turn for Iminyë.

As his wife reaches for him with grateful eyes he hears the flicker of her thoughts return to him. She is relieved that he is here, that he has called her from sleep, that she is not alone.

The consequence of waking separately is this disruption of synchronization between Imin and Iminyë. As their eyes and minds meet to banish the lingering fears of sleep, their heartbeats and the inhaling and exhaling of breath settle into accordance with each other. Their minds echo to each other like the rhythmic two-point pulse of their heartbeats, just as comforting and present. Together as one they blink, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light from the many bonfires and torches that have turned the village into an island of illumination against an endless sea of dark.

Their children are accustomed to light, having entered this world surrounded by elves holding torches and who have encircled their sleeping areas with large fires for warmth and glow. The dark unknown is now an expanse with understandable features, illuminated by fire. The light of the stars above delights the children of elves, but not the same way as the stars did that first moment Imin awoke. Their children open their eyes first in these safe places of the village, already knowing the touch of their mother and father’s hands and the sounds of many voices. Iminyë and Imin think of their son and daughter, each who entered this world single, without knowing who their other half was, yet at the same time connected to others. They were carried for months under the sound of Iminyë’s heartbeat, knowing the presence of mother and father. They do not fear silence as their parents do, treat the stars with the exact same wonder, or understand.

Imin stretches his arms, Iminyë mirroring his movements like a reflection. Together they slide off the large pallet of woven reeds sandwiched with other woven mats and stuffed with the fur scrapped from treated hides, topped by the fur of a giant bear. It is a softer bedding that the clay of the lakeshore they once had. Together they fold the bearskin at the foot of their wide sleeping pallet. A small clay vessel next to it holds fresh water. Someone must have refilled the bowl as they slept. Imin reaches for it and hands it to his wife, who accepts the dish without looking, lifts it to her lips and drinks, and hands it back to Imin’s waiting grasp without checking with her eyes. Their movements nonetheless are perfectly smooth, the water still. There is no hesitation or need to ask. Together they gather their feet under their bodies and push with hands and feet and stand. In one moment they breathe, chests expanding with air; together they exhale. Like perfect reflections they stretch their arms again, unfurling fingers like young ferns, straightening out the left arm on Imin’s side and the right on Iminyë’s. Rotating their heads to pull the stiff muscles of their necks, together they turn their heads. Outside their sleeping hut they can hear one of their people shuffling feet and waiting to speak to their leaders. “Come in,” Imin and Iminyë call as one voice, and the silhouette outside the door of the hut startles. Abashedly Imin and Iminyë look to one another, forgetting they had not delegated which one of them was to speak aloud. Two pairs of eyelids close, and Iminyë breaks the synchronization by the slightest nod of her chin. “Enter,” Imin calls, but it is only Iminyë who bothers to open her eyes and look at the person who enters. It is one of their hunters, one of the fellow first awoken who has pulled aside the hanging hide that functions as a door.

“A hunting party has returned,” Lasrondo says. They can feel worry on the taste of his words, a wrongness. Imin does not remember sending any hunters out, and if he does not, Iminyë does not. There are many in their village when once they were few, and yet Imin and Iminyë know each of their people, had witnessed their first breaths and memorized their manner of walking and the sounds of their laughter, and while their tribe has grown large it is not yet too large to split into more than one village, to separate away from Imin and Iminyë. All should be in the village, and it takes only the slightest of hesitations to reach out with the touch that is mind instead of hands, groping blindly for who is missing. Blindness lies at the root of that hesitation, for there should be no disobedience or oversight. Either would be unwelcome. This feels like secrets.

Imin feels cold; Iminyë wraps the warm felt around her hips to make a long skirt, then pulls the new poncho of soft felt over her head. Now they are warm. But the disquiet does not ease, so they reach for one another, echoing back heartbeats and breaths until the sounds become one, until there is no difference between two bodies in tempo, eyes staring back as two reflections until what division is between them is meaningless.

They have no secrets between them, Imin and Iminyë.

They have nothing between them except for that terrible lonely waking moment.