the ice in the paragon by queerofthedagger  

They reach the Ice at the end of a long day. This cannot be real, is the first thing Findekáno thinks; it cannot.

He has been thinking some variation or other of it, ever since flames painted the horizon red like his lover’s hair at the mingling.

Former lover. It still tastes ashen in the back of his throat.

Beside him, Írissë tilts her face into the biting wind, expression impassive. “What do you think?” she asks, rhetorical question.

Findekáno looks at his family, his people. Looks at the distance, and what waits beyond.

Unwavering, he says, “We go on.”

In some ways, the sheer absence is the worst part. The endless, endless white. The mercilessness of it, how it will hide any progress, any momentum. Any death. As if nothing leaves a mark.

They walk. They sleep. They die. They walk.

Findekáno’s people avoid him—the red on his clothes. On his hands, when he prepares the meat they all eat, but do not touch; on his face, when he gives his scarf to Idril because she lost hers.

Some nights, Findaráto will find him, gold-spun hair against Findekáno’s crimson-stained hands. It is almost enough to feel like penitence.

At the first glimpse of green, of land, of salvation, Findekáno staggers, at last.

Setting foot on it, the rage reignites, a blaze barely contained inside the cage of his ribs.

Silver rises above them, flowers open beneath their feet. There is relief on his people’s faces—at last, a time for weeping. For becoming.

Findekáno casts his gaze across the strange land, and cannot wait to map every part of it, to replace the ice within his bones with its song.

At last, a time for recompense. At last, the time for retribution.

At last, something real, real, real.

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It is his children who urge the leaving. It is Nolofinwë who makes the choice. Who sets foot on the Ice, the smoke of his brother’s betrayal still hanging in the air, and leads his people into ruin.

It is his children who urge to follow, but it is Nolofinwë who leads. It is no selfless act; not once does he try to turn it into such a bold-faced claim.

His brothers have abandoned him once more. Once more, Nolofinwë plunges after Fëanáro, hand to open flame, rather than turn home, turn to peace, turn back, turn back, turn back.

Surrounded by freezing white, Nolofinwë learns of regret. Of patience, and humility, of what it means to bear the crown.

His people die, and suffer, and curse his brother’s name. Nolofinwë did this. No father, no brother, no children; just me.

Those who survive do so by cutting parts of themselves off; their innocence, sacrificed to the altar of devouring hunger. Their faith, drowned alongside their children. Their fingers, toes, limbs, coin the Ice demands in exchange for passage.

Those who survive do so in despite; they do not know yet that that will be true, for centuries to come.

The Ice has been a patient teacher—of despair. Of wrath. Of how little room there is for error.

And yet, with solid ground beneath his feet once more, Nolofinwë cannot help the relief. The wonder, at this new land. The terrible, treacherous hope. For should there not be reward, after endurance, at the end of it all? For should there not be an end?

Oh, how Nolofinwë learns that there is not. The blood of his youngest child still dries on his hands when Makalaurë stares at him, eyes hollow. Says, dead; he is dead, dead, dead and gone.

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The White Lady of the Noldor, they call her. It should be no surprise, then, that she is among the first to set foot onto colourless Ice.

The cold wraps around her like a friend, and oh, she is not fool enough to trust it, knows what recompense it will demand. Knows what scriptures it will corrode. The freedom of it, Tirion’s constraints abandoned, at last.

It is not as simple as that, of course. But Írissë knows how to mark prey; how to follow it to its collapse.

To wait for her chance, and then to take it, too.

Betrayal is no such different thing to hunger; each begs for retribution. Each will see you commit unspeakable things.

Each will swallow you whole if you let it. Never, Oromë used to say, let your heart aim your spear.

She kneels beside her brother as they strip the meat of those who turned to prey. The White Lady of the Noldor they call her, but she flinches not from the red, as Findekáno does.

We do what we must, she says once, her voice curt. He looks at her; looks East; understands better than most, and still not at all.

It is not that she mourns the Ice. She does not, the horror of it impossible to wash off.

It is just—she knows what awaits; a fight for survival, exchanged for another cage. One she would not leave with the door open, because what is freedom, if it means abandonment?

And oh, how Írissë knows of abandonment; of smoke in the back of her throat, of knowing, knowing that there had been no hesitation.

So, she cannot leave. And yet, a cage is still a cage, even if of your own making. Even as it is warm once more.

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Ever Turukáno has been restless—a strange, bristling unease, an impatience for change.

In truth, Turukáno is eager to leave Tirion. Had joined his brother in his urging, and found the ever-same readiness on Elenwë’s face.

The ice seems a canvas. Seems a threat, and Turukáno thrills at it, sees it mirrored in the brimming line of his daughter’s shoulders.

“She is strong,” Elenwë says, smiling, that last night. “Even if we shall not make it, she would.”

“Do not talk so,” Turukáno laughs, kisses her. All will be well, he thinks. All will be well, and new, and marvellous.

The day Elenwë falls through the ice is a day like any other.

The day the world breaks is a day like any other.

The day Turukáno learns of stillness—

They let her sink. It is a kindness, he knows, and yet he fights Findekáno’s hold on him with all his might, fights to hurt, until his daughter’s screams freeze him solid.

Turukáno does not thaw again. Learns of hollowness, then, of how to sink. Of how to hold Itarillë to his chest, without any other urge encroaching on their two-ness.

Turukáno learns of absence, and does not surface again.

Where things used to split into movement and stillness, into plans and idleness, they now split into safe and unsafe.

They leave the Ice behind, and yet, ever it follows; it morphs; it manifests in mountains and raging seas, in fell beasts and ruinous battles.

Itarillë chafes against his hold, and deep down, in some drowned and buried part of himself, Turukáno knows that she cannot breathe.

So, he moves. So, he builds. So, they step onto new land, and he refuses to let them, too, turn into a relic, fossilized in burial mounds until the breaking of the world.

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No matter her parents' claims, Itarillë knows what the looming whiteness holds.

She may not be grown yet, but she is a child no longer. She has seen the darkness rush across the land; has seen the blood on Alqualondë’s shores, the leaping flames in the distance.

This, she thinks, this mordant cold, is only an inevitable step further. Is only an in-between, yet another certainty eroded as they are left with no choice.

The North is impassable, she was taught. The Valar will protect us, she was taught.

Mandos’ Doom echoes in her ears, its finality swallowed like light.

In truth, Itarillë cannot say which is worse; to watch her mother sink into the black and not come out again, or to witness what becomes of her father, after.

In truth, she believes that they both died, that day, stars shining high above. She still hears it; her mother’s gasp, as she slipped; the terrible silence, a single beat of it, that followed; her father’s scream, cutting the air, as Itarillë tried to follow.

In truth, she does not think that she can forgive him for pulling her out. In truth, she does not think he forgives her, either.

It feels almost wrong, to step off the Ice.

People died not in Aman, as a general rule. People died each day, on the Ice, with nought to mark their passing. Now, to move beyond it; it sits like water within her bones.

Her father carries her, as he has, ever since. She has no strength, now, to protest. Has not eaten since—cannot stomach the thought, no matter that she watched her mother sink.

The new land sprawls before them, and Itarillë thinks of staying. Of sinking, of decaying roots, and what it means to be unmoored, now, forevermore.

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Arakáno knows they are doomed long before Námo’s voice echoes across the barren plains. Knows that nothing good can come of it—no way forward, no way back.

And yet, he is as eager as his siblings to leave, to push on, to meet their fate with eyes wide open. He makes it a point to keep threading them together—his now quiet father, his grim-faced sister; Findekáno with his determined guilt, and Turukáno with his restlessness.

Never underestimate the power of a kind hand, his mother used to say; in the face of looming darkness, Arakáno keeps her close.

No way forward, no way back. And yet they keep walking; keep reaching for each other, despite the ice doing its best to draw lines between them.

Arakáno refuses to let it. Rises early with Findekáno and Írissë to help prepare the food; sits late with his father to keep watch.

“You need to rest,” his father tells him, each night. Each night, Arakáno smiles, and leans against him.

“I am resting,” he says. Says not how the fire of youth burns within him; how he is itching, always, to push on, to find what is waiting for them beyond.

At the sight of land, of Telperion’s light reborn, Arakáno cannot help but laugh.

Doomed they may be, all their dreams brittle before they can form, but there is yet joy to be stolen like forbidden fruit, even in the face of such ruin.

At the head of their train, Arakáno is one of the first to see the host of Orcs. He plunges ahead, still laughing; thinks, what can Doom bring, in the face of this? What in the face of such perseverance?

Arakáno plunges. His father screams. On swift feet, well-worn Doom curls its fingers around his throat.

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The most ready to leave, Fingon had been. Had urged, together with Turgon, eagerness for wide lands and for revenge against the dark enemy hot in their blood.

And then, bloodshed; and then, abandonment.

And so abandoned, they had crossed the Ice. Had committed acts none speak of now, to see the other side of it, and told themselves that regret had no place in the measure of survival.

Oh, how Findekáno learns of regret. The Ice has been a patient teacher, fine-boned fingers sliding beneath his skin; ever does it make sure, after, that he does not forget it.

Arakáno dies underneath the first return of Telperion’s light, his blood on Findekáno’s hands making his stomach turn, at last.

Írissë and Turukáno slip away quietly, their silence a harsher condemnation than any fight could have been.

Findekáno learns of his sister’s death weeks after the fact. He thinks of her unflinching tenacity, how it kept them all alive, and cannot shake the cold, settling back into his bones.

His father dies in despair. His father dies, and leaves Findekáno king.

His father leaves; Findekáno learns what it means to move beyond the cold. What it means to die there.

Findekáno dies in flames.

A fitting end, he thinks, almost idly, as whips of fire render him immovable; ever, after all, has it been fire bringing him ruin.

Now, too, Maedhros is not here. Not on purpose, Findekáno knows—never is it so. It does not change the fact that he is not here. Had not changed the fact back then, either, when Findekáno let the fire on the horizon freeze him solid.

Findekáno knows that no one will come for him.

The axe hurls towards him, and Findekáno dreams of going under, ice burning like home within his bones.

Chapter End Notes

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