Down to the River to Pray by annarobots  

“I’m sorry your aunt is sick,” said Eärendil.  “Can’t she come along?  The waters of the River have healed a lot of folk.  My father would help her pray to Ulmo, if she doesn’t know how.”

Elwing shot Eärendil a look.  She did not speak her true thoughts.  She had seen enough weeping by the banks of the river.  She was not interested in prayers.  If the river gave her anything today, it would not be from any divine hands but rather from Elwing’s own, and more importantly, her fishing net.  A speckled trout, perhaps, or a catfish.  No fish could heal Evranin of the shadow in her heart that had followed her since Doriath.  But it might get her up and out of bed long enough to remember that there were stars in the sky, that not everything was foul and broken.  For a little while.

What she said instead was: “She’s not my aunt.”    

They walked to the river, his father and Voronwë in the lead, singing a song of Gondolin lost.  There was much yet that needed doing in this land of their new home—gardens to be tended, roofs to be repaired, roads to be built—and Eärendil’s mother was good at knowing what must be done.  The people who dwelt at the mouths of Sirion before them were clever and resourceful, she said; they did not waste their breath with tales of sad memories. 

But what of their hearts, asked Eärendil’s father?  They, too, needed mending, and for that, they needed the River.

It occurred to Elwing that she had made a mistake, coming along with these strange, fair folk, when Eärendil asked her, in a voice of such heartfelt earnestness that she nearly pushed him down and rubbed his face in the mud, if she wanted to meet Ulmo.

“Er,” she said, instead of enacting violence, “I don’t know.  I’m not wild about strangers.”

Eärendil, who was not so easily dissuaded once he had set his course, did not laugh.  “But he knows you already.  It is only your heart that is estranged.” 

Then he began to speak of a great being who moved in all the deep waters about the Earth, who did not care to walk upon the shores, but who had appeared to his father as a king from the west, clad in mail like mighty fish and a mantle like the mists of the Sea.   

Eärendil’s father stood in the rushing river, where the water came up to his knees.  He had rolled up his trousers and left his boots on the banks.  His once-yellow hair was now nearly white, and his face was gaunter and more lined than it was before.  But his voice remained clear and strong, backed by the great waters heaving round the rocks and the wailing of the sea-gulls.  Eärendil hummed along, and as ever when his father sang this particular song, tears sprang unbidden to his eyes as though called by the horns of Ulmo who rules all waters.

“Listen!” 

The people fell silent.  Elwing rolled her eyes and looked about for a fellow skeptic, to no avail; all were held rapt by Tuor.

“I have asked the River to tell you its name.  Can you hear it whisper?  Sirion, it is called, but also Rivil! And hear it call out also Mindeb and Taeglin, Esgalduin, Aros and distant Celon, and the mighty Narog, which rises from the Pools of Ivrin.  For this river is all rivers, and all seas are the Great Sea, and the Lord Ulmo dwells in all waters of Arda, the deep and the shallow, and it is for him that your heart longs when you are hungry, and of him you drink when you thirst.”

As his father preached on, it was Eärendil, then, who caught Elwing’s eye, and he smiled and stuck out his tongue. He seemed so small, then, this golden boy.  And he hoped so nakedly that she, Elwing, might like him. 

There were few enough children in this place.  She could try, she thought. 

Perhaps, after Tuor quit yapping, she would show Eärendil how to use the net, and they could drink from the running water of the river, and they could fill their bellies with the sweet white flesh of fish.  Perhaps they could be friends, then, and listen together to the calls of the gulls.

Chapter End Notes

This story was inspired by the Flannery O’Connor short story, The River, which I stumbled upon for the first time a few days ago. (Full text link) This fanwork has been adapted from a sequence of drabbles I wrote for the July 2026 Silmarillion Writers' Guild instadrabbling session led by IdleLeaves.

You can find me on Tumblr as AnnaRobots. If you enjoyed the story, please consider reblogging my Tumblr promo post and dropping a kudos or comment. Thank you for reading!

Leave a Comment