To Aman from Ard-Galen by Lferion  

Calm before the Storm (Ard-Galen | Anfauglith)

O Green were the grasses, bright was the sky

On wide Ard-Galen, before flames did fly

On Ard-Galen rich, where princes did chase

Fell foes and friendship, ere fire did race

Mourn Ard-Galen, now ashes and dust

Mourn broken leaguer, in which we did trust

Mourn fallen kinsfolk, gold turned to rust

After the firestorm, friends were no more

Fallen to dragon-fire, foes by the score

Burnt were the grasses, the meres and the meads

No more would princes ride forth on swift steeds

Watch smiths preparing, scouring rust

Watch war-folk gather, reforging trust

Watch close Anfauglith, ashes and dust

Working together of Necessity (Mithrim)

Strife did not always mark Mithrim's settlements. The Northern Sindar that lived there got along very well in their various domiciles, with the exiled Noldor, with Cirdan's Falathrim. If they were cool to the (exceedingly rare) messangers from Thingol, they had reason, but did not take it out on individual Doriathrim. Nor did the long and bitter fight against Angband count as strife, for Noldor and Sindar alike -- that required everyone to work together for the survival of all. The early years of the Noldorin fortress-towns had seen strife, but even that had been settled with sacrifice and valiant alliance.

A Productive Alliance (Hithlum)

Hithlum remembers. Remembers sheltering Elves of many kindreds, some going West, some deciding to stay rather than leave, then those who returned from the West, those who sailed, those who traversed the Ice. Remembers Men of several tribes, villages springing up, and children, always children. Elven children also, but far fewer. Elves, Men, Dwarves on occasion, sometimes spirits of stream and tree, rock and kelvar-kind, working together, fighting the creatures of the Black Foe side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They did not often live together, but near enough for common defence, shared labor, celebration, grief. Stronger together than apart.

Something has been forgotten (Losgar)

Once, Losgar had been only a storm-battered beach, rocks pummeled by waves under distant stars, before sea-harried ships landed, unloaded, unsteady on the sand, and conflagration had turned them to ash and smoke and a beacon of desperate measures. The songs do not sing of arrival, of the relief of land, steady underfoot. No, they sing of wind and wave, smoke-dimmed stars, rage and flame and destruction. Yet the stones remember, that bore witness. The land does not forget, though it be rent asunder, drowned, bent and formed anew, and those who know to listen may yet hear the whole.

The Rising of the Sun (Lammoth)

The stones of Lammoth remember battle and the tread of weary, ice-bitten feet, the slide of runners and then the rumble of wheels. The thud and trample of the creatures of the Foe. (Few indeed are the places in Ennor that have not known those feet, just as few have not been watered with black blood and red.) But Lammoth also holds the memory of the first Moonrise, silvery and cool, followed by the glory of the sun, rising first in the West, a wheel, a chariot, a fiery blaze, limning everything in light, sending the foe-creatures fleeing in fear.

Setting out on a Journey (Helcaraxë)

The Ice was a journey, a travail of endurance, often bleak, sometimes astonishingly beautiful. Ice-pellet wisps like snow, scurrying over polished, glassy shapes, black mirrors reflecting Varda's stars; cold overhead, frozen underfoot. One foot after another, testing, trying, finally settling firm, pulling the sledges, scouting the way. Hair braided over ears, anchoring head-wraps, breathing into one's face-wrap, conserving warmth, out through the mouth, in through the nose. Careful. Care-full. Watching out for each other, for the Ice will not have a care for you, not like ... other waters, other places, other journeys. An alchemy of sublimation, transformation, an unknown destination.

What happens after one dies (Mandos)

The Halls do not remember --

Notional stone, conceptional clay

The thought of rooms, of doors, floors, ceilings

Hold fëar

The fëa remembers, not the walls

Oh, Doomsman, Weaver,

Lady of Sorrow, the Lord of Dreams

Hold perception, memory, knowing,

Future, past, the myriad present

Outside the ken of Speaking Peoples

Fëa are memory, experience, thought, emotion

Unmediated by hröa, untethered, unbodied

No hands to Make

Only will to grieve, introspect, repent, heal

In company, alone

No prison, though holding fast

To wait in liminal domain, unphysical

Pitiless surcease

Remembered screams are no less real

The Halls are silent, not unkind

Dream of a far away place (Aman)

What should those Returned, waking in Aman now dream but of far Ennor, Beleriand, the land of sunrise, the world of Men and Dwarves, Ents and Periannath. Mayhap they dream of sailing beneath the waves, above the clouds, pushing at the edges, pent again, once more over-watched -- or so it feels, for some, standing small in the shadow of the impossible Pelori, at the edge of Ekkaia, Belegaer, impossibly wide, no other land to find, unless the Gates of Morning or the Doors of Night are places one might go. What next? Where now? How long?

Until the Second Music.

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