Retina Burn by annarobots  

At the End, Morgoth, cloaked in doom, came forth through the Door out of the Timeless Night and into the world, and he sought the Sun before aught else.  And in secret, he crept upon the golden galleon with its fruit like quivering flames of amber, and the maidens of that vessel perceived him not, nor his purpose, until at last his shadow overtook them in the fullness of day.  And he swung down his hammer with all his recovered strength, a blow that smote Sun and ship to utter ruin. 

This story isn’t about him.

An eclipse, thought Elwing, on the wing with her flock.  What else could bring nightfall at noon?  The other sea-birds, who were thinking but simple creatures, went quiet and wheeled about like children called in from play.  With wings in perfect unison, a steady rhythm beating above the turbulent sea, they flew home to their nests to tuck in their heads for the last time.

But Elwing, whose eyes were still sharp, who had cast her gaze up to the heavens for ten thousand centuries, now perceived in the great widening darkness overtaking the Sun a tiny spark of pure light.  And that light escaped the grasp of Morgoth’s blackened fingers, and it drifted down, down, down, falling from the sky to the Sea like an ember from a great inferno. 

Or perhaps like a jewel.

Well, Elwing was a sea-bird.  And she could dive as well as fly. 

Drawing near, Elwing saw that the spark of light was in fact a maiden, herself a naked flame, terrible in the fullness of her splendor, plummeting wingless to the embrace of the Sea.

When that glorious flame met the churning surface of the waves, Elwing was so near, drops of boiling water splashed up and stung her feet.  There was a great cloud of white steam.  Within the cloud Elwing could perceive nothing.  She banked sharply, lest her white feathers be scalded clean off.  She circled about the cloud in darkness.

When at last the steam dissipated, Elwing circled closer, and closer.  With each spiral she descended to the sea.  And she saw her there, beneath the light of the stars.

Arien, the Maiden of the Sun.  Her fire put out, she struggled amidst the waves.

Elwing was a sea-bird. 

But actually, she was still a person.  And also, she had a boat.

She kissed her on the deck of the boat.  Did you think she would not?  Arien was so cold.  Her hands, like ice.  Her long legs, limp and useless.  She did not move, not even to shiver.  Her lips were blue, her mouth was shut.  But Elwing was patient.  She could open her.

“Wake up,” she whispered, against the Sun-maiden’s cold cheek. 

Just like that, Arien opened her eyes.  Now, all the songs of old told that the eyes of Arien blazed so bright, even the Eldar could not look upon them.  But Elwing was not an Elda.  And besides, she had known too much embellishment in the retelling of ancient, lost tales than to heed such warnings. 

So she looked.

Indeed!  It did not hurt Elwing to gaze into Arien’s eyes at all.  They shone like globes of fire, glass transfused with gold, in her wan face.  They were the only part of her that yet burned.  Everything else was sodden.

Arien sat up. 

“Are we on a boat?”  The boat swayed and rolled on the waves.  The sail fluttered in the wind.

“Yes, we are on a boat.  We are on the Sea.”

“Oh, I see.”  Arien lay her palms on the smooth wood of the deck.  “This is not my boat.”

“No, it is not your boat.  Your boat is broken.  But you can stay with me.”

“How did I come to be with you?”

What did it matter?  This was the End.  “You fell,” said Elwing.

“Yes, that I remember.  Cast from the heavens.”  Arien began to weep.  Great wet tears refracted the light of her radiant eyes into many colors, as might prismatic shards.  As might jewels.

“Don’t cry,” said Elwing.  She, the daughter of long-dead Dior, had never seen anyone so lovely.  She had never known.  “Don’t cry, you’re so beautiful.”

When Arien’s mouth opened again, to wail or to whimper, Elwing sealed it with her own.

What is it like, to kiss the Sun?  Elwing could not say.  On the deck of Elwing’s little boat, soggy with sea-water and tears, Arien tasted only of woman, like a ripe nectarine.  Her skin was covered in goosebumps.  But when Elwing bore her down and pressed her into the deck, she was warm.

Arien lifted a hand, her long fingers pale and shaking, to the heavens.  “Isn’t that your husband?”  

“My what?”  Elwing took the hand by the wrist, sucked two fingers into her mouth.  Then she lowered that hand, glistening, down Arien’s body, over her belly, between her thighs.  “It’s all right.  He won’t know.”  She guided Arien’s fingers inside herself, watching her face light up with pleasure. 

It was true, by the oldest laws, they were yet wed.  The Quendi shall take each one spouse only and have no other in their life, while Arda endures, and they were as Quendi to the judgment of the Valar by the pronouncement of Elwing herself.  That was her doom.  Oh, yes, it would be unjust that the Dead by refusal of life should compel the Living to remain solitary until the End.  And here they were, still Living, Eärendil and Elwing: a husband who had journeyed into the starless voids for ten thousand centuries, a wife who leaped into the white foam and ran towards him.

When had Elwing last soared to him in joy and in duty, to greet the coming of hallowed Vingilot to haven with the sunset?  How long had it been?  How many centuries?  She would not say.  His eyes, bluer than the sapphires of the raiment of Manwë, had swept over her wings, unseeing.  Too long had he been charged to carry the Star upon his brow.  His sight had gone, though he did not know it.

“My lady wife,” he had said, “my silver swan, you are so lovely, you are as ever sweet and faithful.”  He saw what he wished to see, a memory only, the girl he once knew.  Before she chose their Doom.

For ten thousand centuries he had voyaged. 

She was thirty-nine when the Valar, ever generous, gave Eärendil leave to choose his fate, and he, already weary of the world, gave her leave to choose for him.  So weary, at thirty-nine!  The Gift, declined.  How was she to foresee how the centuries would drag on?  They took the only world she had ever known, with flood and with fire.  The ancient beeches were long gone, and the mighty river.  Ice melted and seas rose.  The earth fought back, the earth withstood the long siege, but slowly, inexorably, the years hollowed it out from the inside, until all that was left was the ring of shadow. 

Hollow, too, had become Elwing’s bones.

After, Elwing tucked her face into Arien’s humid armpit, her senses tingling with fresh memory: the ardor of Arien’s breath, the way she writhed like ropes of molten metal when she came, the heart and spirit of fire.  Elwing, sweating, felt her waves of pleasure as radiating heat.  Her fingers burned.

“You aren’t like me.  You’re alive, it makes me so mad,” said Arien, Elwing’s hair upon her face. 

“I am like you.  I’m just like you.”

“What are you, then?”

Three answers came to Elwing’s lips.  She spoke none of them.

“These days,” said Elwing, “I’m mostly a bird.”

“What is a bird to me?  Chirp, chirp.  I steered the Sun for ten thousand centuries.  Don’t cry, little bird.”  Arien’s shoulders were as mighty as the western wind.  When she flipped Elwing onto her belly, she knocked the breath out of her.

The more Arien orgasmed, the hotter the fires inside her burned.  No more blue fish lips.  Her cheeks grew rosy again, her nipples darkened, her eyes brightened.  And she began to glow from deep within.  Elwing shuddered with satisfaction to watch that glow spread across her warm skin, burnishing it to a golden sheen.  It was easy to learn what touch Arien liked best, for her body would light up with sparks of pleasure.  True sparks!  They danced over her limbs, across her belly, out of her mouth, all about her hot, wet cunt.  Elwing had taken many lovers.  Her Eärendil, who was as good and soft and careful and gentle as any righteous man should be, considered sex an act of worship, and Elwing the earthen vessel of divine purpose, a jar of clay.  Then later, among the Teleri, there were those who considered her Mannishness an erotic curiosity; they let her fuck them like a beast, they begged for it, panting.  And later still, among the squawking gulls, who did not care who or what she was at all, as long as she held still long enough for a mate to balance upon her back.

Never before had Elwing experienced anything so close to communion with another soul.  Always had she been a greedy lover—not selfish, not precisely, but greedy, concerned with wrenching pleasure with a gasp from her own body.  Whether by herself or with a partner, she felt little difference; a climax was a climax.  But when Arien came, Elwing felt shockwaves against her own skin, sweltering, so sweet and wonderful, they melted her edges, they molted her wings, until the deck of the little boat was all soft and white, a bed of shed feathers.

The hour grew late.  Elwing, as ever, turned her gaze to the west, where the skies were in utter blackness.

Until—

There!  There!  Look!  Look!

Now, at the End of all things, the star upon Eärendil’s brow grew brighter and it grew larger, as he descended with all the great birds of heaven about his white ship, and together they drew Morgoth from the sky, and they cast him down upon the plain of Valinor where the great hosts in their silver robes awaited, with swords drawn, the last battle.

“I don’t want to look, and you can’t make me.”  Arien crossed her arms over her high, round breasts.

“Then I will tell you!  There is Tulkas!  He stands on the plain of Valinor, laughing, and there is—hmm—Eönwë at his right hand, and oh, who stands at his left?  His bearing is valiant, his hair flows dark beneath his great helm, and his grey eyes so proud!  An Elda?  No, a Man must he be, for a vast darkness lies behind him through which my eyes cannot see.  Oh, I know.  That would be Túrin, son of Morwen, his black sword reforged with pale fire!  They stand ready for open battle!  Surely their hosts stand with them.  This shall be the last of all battles.  And Morgoth stands not alone!  Great armies are coming up out of the earth, which is breaking, oh, such armies as the earth has never seen, and a horned beast like a mighty serpent with seven heads and twelve pairs of leathery wings, and oh, that beast is dancing a jig upon the shoulders of the Pelóri, and ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING?”

“I am meant to fight,” said Arien.  She did not move where she lay, except to shudder beneath Elwing’s touch.

“But how can you?  You’re still injured, see how your belly trembles?  You can hardly move, see how your legs shake?  They cannot make you stand in battle.  You’ll stay with me, here.  If anyone asks, I’ll tell them you’re my thrall.  I am captain of this vessel, and none shall gainsay me but the Dweller of the Deep himself!”  Elwing’s blackening fingertips on Arien’s inner thighs were more convincing than her words.

Arien, between gasps: “You’ll never have me alive, captain.  I am no craven.”

Elwing, swooping down between her legs: “I never dreamed that you would be.  Shall I tie you to the deck?”

If Arien gave answer, or wished to, it was lost beneath her strangled cries of surrender.

As it turned out, they did not need Arien for the battle, after all.

The thunders and lightnings had ended.  The mountains of the Pelóri were no more.  The western skies were black with smoke.  The screaming had ceased.  The Sea was calm.

It was hard to look at Arien, now.  Elwing did not stop.  How could she look away from one such as her?  What if she vanished when Elwing’s back was turned? 

“What happens now?  We’ve won.”

“I don’t know.  Have we?”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know!  Nobody ever told me anything.  My part in the Music is finished.  I never got any letters.  Nobody ever soared to me in joy.  I only know heat and Light.  What else should I know?”

“They say there will be a Second Music,” said Elwing, unhappily.  “Arda Healed, Arda Remade, a new heaven and a new earth.  And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the old order of things will pass away.”

“Who says?”

Elwing named some names.

Arien laughed against Elwing’s belly, then lower.  The feeling of her tongue was glorious, like a branding iron against her softest parts.  “They don’t know!  They don’t know.”

How far would her doom carry her?  Elwing wondered, now, here at the end of all things.  The Eldar saw not what lay beyond the end of the Music, and so it was held by many that they, too, must end with the world in fading shadow.  Now, if Elwing was so bound to the life of Arda, as would be an Elda, then would she, too, be at last ended when the world was Unmade?

“I don’t know,” repeated Arien, when Elwing, relentless in her questions, asked again.  “He never told us about the Second Music.  Or what comes after.” 

“Still.  I don’t think the Quendi are meant to be part of Arda Remade,” said Elwing.

“Well, good thing you aren’t, really.  Hey—ow!”

There was a great crack.  The earth rumbled.  Elwing’s palm smarted.  The skin of Arien’s face burned her.  She took that face between her hands and kissed her quiet, then loud again.

The rumbling did not cease.  The sea began to rage.  A terrible turning, a cataclysm, the earth in some far away country ripped open, a great canyon like a wound.  As though Aulë himself had split apart the crust and cloven the mantle, and held the hollow earth spread open with iron tongs.  The collapse hastened. 

“I wish I had met you before,” said Arien.

“No, you don’t.  I’m actually a very unlikeable person.  That’s why I’m usually a bird.”

“But if, after the Second Music, you’re taken from me—”

“I don’t know that for sure.  I don’t know anything about it.”  Eärendil knew.  He had the luxury of faith bound about his brow so tightly, there was no margin for doubt.

The sound of waves lapping over the side of the little boat. 

“I don’t think I want to be a part of Arda Remade without you.  It isn’t fair.  It isn’t fair.”

Of course, Elwing thought of her sons.  How could she not?  Even birds had mothers.

She knew what she was supposed to believe.  She had been told, many times, over sacramental wine, on the deck of Vingilot, gazing down upon the living.  She hearkened to the doctrine and the Word. 

Think of it, my love, my swan, Eärendil would say.  His voyages gave him insight into the will of God.  When the Second Music is sung, and the themes of Ilúvatar played aright, Arda will be made anew, and all kindreds shall be a part of its chorus, understanding fully the secret fire at last.  Ainur, Eldar and Men, the Peredhil, all the Children shall unite in worship of the glory and the majesty of Creation.  Our fathers shall walk again!  And there shall be Elros, and there shall be all his children, and his children’s children, and all of us as a bride to God, for He will be with us, and need no other Light, for the exaltation of God will shine within us all.  Won’t that be wonderful, Elwing?  Can’t you just see it?  A perfect vision of a perfect world, as it should ever have been, all misery erased and misdeeds forgotten.

It had been a thousand centuries since Eärendil’s eyes saw anything at all.

Elwing tried to see it, she tried to see the perfect vision of Arda Remade.  She tried to see in it her brothers, who were sundered from her for ever.

It was a thought too blinding and bright to even contemplate.  It was cruelty of the highest dimension.  It was madness.

“I’m hungry.”  Elwing thought of diving for fish, but she did not wish to leave the boat.  Not yet.  Would there be fish in Arda Remade?  Did the fish know the themes?  When all the kindreds of Creation would sing together the Second Music under God, why shouldn’t the fish be part of the choir?

Elwing kept no food on board.  So Arien fed her honey from her fingers, and she was full.

Her insides felt swollen, yet the satisfaction was mixed with dread.  She tried to calm the storm that raged within her heart by forcing it out in the shape of words.  “What I can’t bear is the thought that all this was merely practice.  A simulation, the work of a first draft.  To be written over is as good as erased.  Ten thousand centuries!  And you, only now, here, the hour so late—”  Elwing’s voice broke.  Even now, she could not speak of the depths of her longing.  But if not now, when? 

She could not put it into words, but she could tell Arien with her lips, her hips, the tips of her stripped wings with their edges turned to crisps.

They were so far from any coastline Elwing had ever known. 

And then, another vessel passed. 

Its pointed bow broke through the thickening ice that had formed a blue-white layer on top of the Sea.  An anchor was lowered, or perhaps it was a diving bell.  Arien did not know the words for these things.  She told Elwing what she could see.  The line must have been longer than the longest chain ever forged, perhaps woven from the endless hair of Uinen in the Sea. 

After a time, they pulled up the line, and at its end was now a star whose light made a thousand broken rainbows where it reflected upon the shattered ice.

It was nearly time, then.

Elwing had never known an earth before the Sun.  She had been told, by those who surely knew and would never lie about such matters, of the hallowed Light that had come before: the Two Trees upon the green mound just outside the city of many bells, their light spilling gold and silver like liquid flame, their beauty unparalleled. 

And then the great darkness.  The malice that cloaked the old world in shadow. 

The silence, but for the wailing in lamentation.

The bitter refusal to break the jewels that housed the last remnants of the Light.

Elwing’s tears had run dry.  She had never known a time before the Sun.  To her, it was nothing extraordinary.

“Don’t say that,” said Arien, turning her face away.

“I’m sorry,” said Elwing.  “It was very beautiful, it is true.  But not nearly as beautiful as you.”

“Don’t say that!”

They floated on their backs in the Sea.  Neither of them had any hair left on their heads.  Arien had orgasmed with such violence the sail caught fire.  Then the boat burned down.  They floated on the waves on a pile of wreckage that grew smaller and smaller with each swell. 

Arien sang to her.  Not a true song of power, but a lullaby with no words.

And yet it had strength, and Elwing grew weary.  As when she was very small, in her mother’s arms, and she could not hold open her eyes.  It was dark either way.  She was warm where she lay against Arien’s pulsing body, and cold everywhere else.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Arien stopped her song.  “Hear what?”

“Listen.”

Arien listened.  “It’s just the Music of the Water.”

“Hmm.”

Eärendil had said that in the Second Music, all the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Ilúvatar would join in song, and play the themes aright, understanding at last the intent of God, who would kindle within each heart the flame imperishable, the light of lights.

And then? 

“I have an idea,” said Arien, somewhere at her side.  “If he won’t let you stay, after the Second Music.  If you are counted among the Eldar, and if you aren’t meant for Arda Remade.”  Her voice lowered to a whisper, which Elwing could hardly hear above the rising clamor of the world breaking.  “I have a very bad idea.”

“Maybe I don’t want to stay.  My wings are weary.”  Most of her feathers had molted away, and those that remained had burned, and they hurt her.  At last she surrendered and let them, too, fall into the sea.  “Don’t you wish for rest?”

“Don’t you wish to hear my bad idea?”  Arien did not wait for her answer.  She told her the idea. 

It was a good one.

“Well.”  Elwing found it more and more difficult to speak with her mouth.  She tasted ozone.  “We can try it, I suppose.  But not until the very End.  I’m not yet ready.”

“Of course, my love.”

The sound had grown so thunderous Elwing could feel it in her hollow bones.

“I know that isn’t the Music of the Water,” said Elwing.  “Do you think I’m stupid?  I’m a sea-bird.” 

“You’re right,” admitted Arien.  “I’m sorry.  I was lying.  I shouldn’t have.”

“What is it?”

“Darling, it’s the end.  Can’t you perceive it?  The light is so, so bright, so beautiful, the perfect glory of the Trees restored.  Even more luminous than ever it was before.  I am weeping.  The Light is all around us.  I wish you could see.”  Arien squeezed her hand.

“But I can see the Light,” said Elwing, and she did not lie.

She felt her heartbeat slow, a shift in tempo in the moment between the end of the world and its remaking.

“That’s our cue,” said Arien.  “It’s almost time to sing.  Come with me, I’ll bring you along.”  And in that last moment before she sang, Arien split open, and Elwing crawled inside, where all was warm and bright and safe, and in the embrace of the spirit of fire who loved her, she made ready to meet the new world.

Chapter End Notes

Title lovingly stolen from a West Wing fic I remember reading a long, long time ago.

If you enjoyed Arien/Elwing, I highly recommend starlightwalking's the end of what you know.

I took the inspiration for blind Eärendil from HolyMarmalade's wonderful On an Early Spring Day, You Meet Your Murderer's Mother.

Endless thanks to feyandferal for supporting the work, and to Corvid for the beta read.

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