Reverie for a Silver Tree by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Reverie for a Silver Tree

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On star-strewn paths, through midnight skies, Tilion dreams.

Through new moon dark, and full moon bright, Tilion dreams.

As crescent does wax, and gibbous wanes, Tilion dreams.

Of a silver tree, and a garden fair, Tilion dreams...

 

Deep in the garden of Lórien, where Estë bestows rest, Tilion, steersman of the moon, opens his eyes to silver light. Soft and airy, feathery wisps of tree glow alight upon glades of night phlox, bending and curving to caress his creamy-pale skin. Cradled in sweet-scented, soft-stemmed embrace, Tilion unfolds with a contented sigh.

"You return here, yet again." Irmo's amused face peers from a hazel spinney, half-hidden by its florid growth. When one walks, or indeed lays, in the land of dreams, one must be prepared to encounter their author.

"Of course." Tilion smirks through his oft-repeated reply, stretching strong limbs languidly in exaggerated motions of ease. "Where else would I go?"

"Where else, indeed?" Irmo laughs, crouching over the steersman, teasing his huntsman's braids. Carven wooden beads, Rána amid Varda's stars, glide along a thin, flaxen plait, clinking faintly. "You chain yourself to duty, even in dreams."

The architect flicks a glance toward a shimmer in the distance where silver-bright veins coalesce, knitting themselves into platinum lace. Laden with luminescent blooms and shimmering dew, Telperion is a sight to behold, resplendent at the height of her glory.

"Oh no," Tilion corrects, trailing affectionate fingers through plumes of meadow foxtail that sigh and sway at his touch, "I was never chained by duty, but shackled by love."

"Love?" Irmo leans forward, the question bent into the curve of his graceful body.

"Yes. Love." The indolent maia sweeps braids from the vala's playful grip, entwining powerful fingers behind his head. He does not elaborate.

Irmo scoffs. "You were always a dreamer, a hopeless romantic. It is a wonder you were given over to Oromë" —he punctuates each of the next words with a tap on the Maia's forehead —  "and not to me."

Tilion rises, the predator awoken in the dozing lion. He stalks as Irmo retreats, contrariwise around the spinney, stepping lightly over shadow-blanketed earth. Rich loamy notes rise from toe-rents in the damp, nurturing soil.

“Oh? Think you I am not worthy of the great hunt?”

"No dogged venator are you, Tilion. You are but a slave to desire, pursuing light as milk: desperate and grasping, like a man starving," Irmo teases, "I know your heart. I know how you crave it. Oh, how you thirst for its glow, a parched deer in a drought, mind turned always toward measly morsels hidden amid the mud in long dried beds. You slake yourself in memory, but it is a poor substitute; no refreshing miruvórë to set your soul aflame. You will never be sated."

“You are jealous, dream-maker, that I roam Elentári’s vast heavens, that my bow still slings darts that Oromë does honour, hunting dark spirits out of the skies. It is you who craves, who reaches for me, like a man drowning claws desperately for air. The master of souls, fated to languish on the side lines, underwriting the aspirations of elves and men, must live vicariously through the dreams of others. Where is your vivacious life, oh master of fantasy? Mistake not lust for love!"

Irmo darts between springy boughs, fleet and fey, insubstantial as suggestion, slippery as wind. Tilion tracks; keen eyes locked on his quarry, never straying a moment.

"Do you not lust?" the Vala taunts. "Cleave you to that terminal bloom. How you begged! No other would your heart suffer to hold for eternity Telperion's last gift. Is it not an addiction?"

Irmo leaps. Tilion pounces, pinning the vala's shoulders, pushing him down amid sprays of jasmine that twist and twine, tangling in the dream-maker's diaphanous raiment.

"Lust? Addiction? Nay, it is love."

Eyes like star fields, deep with mire of hungry ambition and dark desire, spangled with bright hope and benign fantasy steal the lion’s unblinking gaze. Who is hunter and who the hunted none could say.

"And what is love, steersman?"

"Have you not read it writ betwixt the fibres of your craft?" Tilion leans closer, hair aglow in treelight, spilling forward to frame ardent face. “Love, dream-maker, is the impetus."

Irmo slips nimbly from his grasp, smoke through fingers, twisting an athletic arc 'til he is poised, cat-like over the hunter's shoulder.

"You speak of the heart like it were a science," he whispers. "Force, cause and effect."

Though Tilion does not turn a small smile creeps across his mein. "Mistake me not, it is no question of physics I speak, but music."

"Music, hunter?" Irmo questions, running an index finger along the curve of an ear.

"Music, that great symphony stoked by feeling; that endless call and response of the heart. Love is the beat, the pulse, wrapping one in its strains and bidding them move in time, nudging spirits into harmony. There can be no music without a beat, no harmony without love. We are both caught in its soft net. None can escape it. Nor do I wish to."

"What a grand thing you imagine! But I myself find love a small and selfish thing."

"How could it ever be so?"

Irmo leans in close and lowers his voice. "Whispered adulation, hands held in the dark, a needful cry that bleats 'don't leave me', a single tear rolling down a certain maia's cheek at the sight of a dying tree."

"You err if you think that last self-seeking or small. The heavens may seem of no weight at all, yet own a reach as vast as the oceans and hold up all the stars."
"Unselfish you claim, yet you begged for the silver flower."

This last earns Irmo a sharp glance as Tilion whips around, braids flung in a wide arc about his graceful neck. He is, for a moment, inscrutable, sober gaze casting far off. Yet the voice with which he at last speaks is soft and forbearing.

"And each night I return it to the world its gift. You know not love at all."

“Teach me,” Irmo bids.

A playful twinkle returns swiftly to the hunter’s eye. Irmo runs and Tilion gives chase, flying carefree over silver-glazed fields, vanilla notes careening from bruised petals, the dream-maker a mischievous spirit flying free before the wind, a cascade of laughter trailing behind. Onwards the quarry lopes, tracing his teasing path under willow and yew, past pools with stars caught in their depths. Until they both stand panting, at the very border of the realm, adamantine roots breaking free of midnight earth at their feet. All is bright around them.

"Drink it in, dreamer. Refresh yourself for the long night ahead."

To Tilion's surprise, the vala's countenance is soft, kind, all trace of teasing gone, leaving only affection. So, the erstwhile venator does, breathing deep of the cool air as curtains of silver light caress his face while Irmo takes his hand to share in the act of deep reverence.

"Perhaps you are not so ignorant as I deemed."

"Perhaps not," Irmo agrees. "Never did I truly think your acts small."

Tilion closes his eyes, leaning softly into the vala's shoulder, and sighs deeply, gratefully. They open to an entirely other kind of light, as gold on the horizon spreads its wings.

Over twilit land, and wine dark sea, Tilion gleams.

From set of sun to its morning beams, Tilion gleams.

And when the steersman seeks his rest,

Of a silver tree, and a garden fair, Tilion still dreams.

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Chapter End Notes

Elentári = "Star Queen" - one of Varda's many names
Irmo = "Master of Desire" - Lórien's original name. The poor guy, just like his brother Námo / Mandos, has come to be known simply by the name of his realm.
Rána = "wanderer" - one name for the moon in Quenya
Miruvórë = a mead or nectar made by the Valar

Valar and Ainur are strange. My working theory is that the more abstract the concept that they govern, the stranger they appear to the children of Eru. I hope you have enjoyed this little piece of the surreal!