the ice in the paragon by queerofthedagger  

Fingon

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.