Through Sorrow to Find Joy by Dawn Felagund

Seasons

Tyelkormo's first winter outside of Valinor draws him to ponder the circle of the seasons and their meaning to one immortal. A series of four drabbles.

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Tyelkormo plunged his hands against the door so hard that his bones hummed. High in the trees the last of the streamers from the Gates of Summer were swiped by a breeze and disappeared against the bold light of Laurelin.

Yes, it was Valinor; yes, it was perpetual summer here, but Tyelkormo felt a vestigial leap in his blood at the change-of-season, as though his marrow would surge unto bursting its bone-lock and scatter him upon the breeze. He turned and turned and turned upon green grass, swathed in golden light, palms upturned, embracing the sky. He wished for it.

---

The leaves fell in Formenos and the festivals took their old shapes but the lanternlight, the leaping shadows of the dancers, the jolt of cold air on wine-fevered flesh would not rouse Tyelkormo.

The leaves fell and made a sharp-scented bed amid the oaks and he spread himself thin upon it. "You will not pass like them," Nelyo reassured him, thinking he feared their deaths. "You are bound forever to this form."

The leaves fell and cloaked him in rainbow hues: scarlet and gold and purple for kings.

"That is it," he wept to the silver sky. "That is it."

---

Winter would be hard, they said, but life in Valinor had not prepared him for the brutality of the cold in the north. An ice storm had passed the night before, and in Telperion's zenith, the trees might have been wrought of silver, not of wood and flesh, like him.

He imagined Vána of the Springtide dancing among them. She exhaled a song, and the ice poured away.

He paused, took a twig upon his palm. Exhaled upon it.

A drop of water shivered at its tip, and his breathe steamed heavenward, dissipating, until all that was left were stars.

---

His sorrow should have lifted with the coming of spring, but it did not. He heard Nelyo whisper such to his mother as he passed, an inappropriately thin cloak upon his shoulders, out-of-doors.

Only silence hung amid the trees. Is this my fate, to persist while all else dies and lays sodden, barren? He returned to the oaks and lay upon the leaves there, soaked and shivering. He listened for the workings of the world but heard nothing.

Yet there was a tiny leaf, puckered shut like a fist, arisen from last year's leaves. Without a sound it sprang open.

The Swift Flame

Aegnor sees Andreth for the first time on the Summer Solstice. A double drabble.

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The Swift Flame

It is said that Mortals arose at the Sun's first rising, that which is now the longest day of the year. It is said that Ilúvatar molded them of leaves and earth and ignited the life within them with the first rays of Arien's light, before the journey wearied her, when yet the Sun stood for endurance and hope.

When first he saw her, Aegnor was arriving in Dorthonion at the Sun's rising on the longest day of the year. Yet a maiden, Andreth stood on tiptoe, stretching to discern the first scrim of fire upon the eastern hills. She was laughing, lifting her arms, beckoning Arien forth.

If the life of the Eldar courses alike to the waters beside which they awoke, then so the life of the Edain is a flush and a fervor and, at the last, a flash upon the horizon.

Do not hasten! came Aegnor's sudden thought, for he felt how Time clutched him, saw how the Sun flung across the sky again and again and again, how the laughing maiden withered. Would he heave back upon the reins of Time, to linger forever here

Then slow descending darkness.

with the flash of first fire.

---

Chapter End Notes

Both the history (in italics) and the accompanying story are perfect drabbles, intertwined to form a double drabble. The story of the love between Andreth and Aegnor is found in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth in HoMe volume 10.

White Nights

Maedhros prepares for the Fifth Battle.

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White Nights

It inspired a sort of madness, a relentlessness not permitted in the months when the days were shorter and darkness compelled him to sleep. Not since his youth in Valinor, not since the time when he had yet to become disillusioned, when the Treelight granted all activities at all hours, had he worked so hard.

His brother urged him to sleep. Drew the drapes. Tacked them shut. It made no difference.

He could sense Arien's nearness to the north of him. As the light never fully faded from the horizon, the commotion never fully quieted in his mind. Before a half-hour was gone, trying to sleep, he had risen again to his work, to his table strewn with papers and maps, to his inkwell running dry and the growing pile of unsent letters.

In the utter stillness of mid-night, there was no one to argue, no one to declare folly or irrationality. There will be an alliance. No one to express doubt. An alliance of all the forces of good in Beleriand. No foresight troubled him. He threw open the drapes, sent Macalaurë's tacks scattering across the floor. There was light ever on the horizon.

At last, we will prevail.

---

Chapter End Notes

Last year, my husband and I flew from the eastern U.S. to Ireland shortly after Summer Solstice. I didn't sleep on the plane because I stayed up all night to watch the sun that never fully set in the north. Luckily, I didn't start any battles ...

The Turning

Nerdanel remembers joy. A drabble.

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The Turning

Nerdanel the wise had known that it would end in grief. Mayhap not so badly--her husband exiled, her sons murderers--but grief all the same. But she had seized her joy. She had thought of neither eventuality nor inevitability.

It came nonetheless.

Winters are harsh in Formenos, even more so now without the Trees. Yet on this day--the longest day of the year--winter is unthinkable. The city is arrayed for festival for the first time since the Darkening, and none think of winter.

Nor does Nerdanel. She will have her joy. But she feels the year turning.

Speak Faster

Nerdanel meets Ælfwine on Tol Eressëa. A double drabble.

I blame Oshun for this one, as her comment on my Nerdanel ficlet The Pendant in the Stream sent my mind spinning off in all sorts of weird directions and gave me this ficlet.

2011 MEFA nominee--thank you, Elleth! :)

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When he sees me crest the hill, he rises to meet me, offers me a hand to help me down stone stairs I can navigate perfectly well on my own.

"Lady Nerdanel." He fumbles a little, knowing enough of my story to be uncertain as to how to respectfully acknowledge my role in the turbid history of the Noldor that he desires to understand.

He leans forward, elbows upon knees, as I speak. His fingers meet and bridge and contract in and out, in and out, like some quick-breathing creature. He does not interrupt, but I can sense the questions on his tongue, waiting to leap out at me. I can sense the urgency in him, too. Every thump of his heart is one less moment he has to know, to understand.

Would I have known the tenure of my own happiness, would I have done differently? Would I have been quicker to act and longer to linger? Would I have cared less for silence? For the work of my hands? Would I have drunk deeper of joy when it was mine to have?

Not for the first time, I envy the certainty of mortality. In empathy, I speak faster.