Building towards Faith by octopus_fool  

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Building towards Faith

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The island had changed, Glorfindel realized. He craned his neck to see better and subtly flexed his muscles. He needed to make sure he didn't make that a habit. It was just so odd to have muscles again.

"Excuse me, whose palace is that?" Glorfindel asked a Teler who was walking in the opposite direction, past the huge complex with long brick and sandstone buildings, longer ponds and tall towers.

The Teler raised an eyebrow. "Palace? That is no palace, it's a temple, the temple to Nessa, to be precise."

"Oh, is Nessa held in such high esteem here nowadays that she gets an enormous temple? That's lovely."

The Teler stared at him. "There are other temples." Glorfindel could see the realization dawn on the other's face. "Oh. You are reborn, aren't you?"

Glorfindel nodded. "Reborn and having a look around before heading onwards on a mission."

The Teler nodded, and the conversation was over after that. Not that Glorfindel could really blame him.

 

 

There were indeed other temples. More than Glorfindel could count, in fact. He saw great temples to Manwë and Varda, and down by the sea was an enormous one to Ulmo. There were the main temples with their huge complexes dedicated to the Valar, and smaller ones to various Maiar. Even some minor Maiar that Glorfindel had never heard about had temples or at least small stupas. Glorfindel marvelled at the work that must have gone into building these sandstone and brick enormities.

Glorfindel took the time to visit the temple dedicated to Vána. He climbed the countless steep steps up the temple and admired the sandstone reliefs. Some of them showed her dancing over vast stretches of flowers, others showed birds in strange, intricate dances. He also saw countless depictions of Vána watering the two trees.

Glorfindel reached the top of the temple and looked out across the island. The forests stretched before him in the darkest, liveliest of greens, interrupted by the greens and yellows of farmland and the grey and red roofs of small towns. In the distance, he could see the sparkle of the beaches, curving around the island. And in between it all were the countless other temples and stupas.

Glorfindel ducked his head under the lintel, above which was a pediment with an abundance of intertwining flowers. He entered the small chamber at the top and bowed low before the statue of Vána, before placing the wreath of wax flowers in her outstretched hand. Glorfindel blinked as the wax flowers opened and turned into real flowers, their gentle scent wafting through the air. Glorfindel bowed again.

"I will do my best," he whispered, before leaving the chamber and descending the many, many steps of the temple.  He looked back up at the temple and felt small and insignificant.

 

 

"Why the temples, and of such an enormous size?" Glorfindel asked the old fisherman in whose house he was staying on the night before his ship was set to sail. "Many of the houses here are wooden, and yet you have constructed such enormous works of stone and brick. Why?"

They were far into one of the bottles of excellent Tirion red wine that Glorfindel had purchased on his way to Tol Eressëa, and Glorfindel figured that there wouldn't be a better opportunity to ask the question that had been burning on his mind since the first time he had set foot on the island and seen the first temple.

The old fisherman scratched his chin, and looked out at the sea, which his stilted house offered a splendid view of. "Well, that is a complicated story, and I am not sure it is fit for the telling."

He made many sounds of avoidance, and Glorfindel was just about to change the subject when the fisherman refilled his glass and emptied it in one long go.

"You Noldor rebelled against the Valar," he whispered. "You rebelled, and you murdered, and the Valar spoke a terrible doom against you. We didn't want that. We wanted to be safe even in those dark times, so we decided if showing our devotion to the Valar was what it took, so be it. And what better way to show your devotion than to build enormous temples to them?"

"You built these because you were afraid the Valar might turn on you? Did they give you any reason to believe they would, aside from their interactions with the Noldor?"

The fisherman shrugged. "It was a tense time, and rumours ran abound. I tried to keep my head down and stay out of it all, so I don't know what was said or implied. Nobody talks about that time any more."

"But the temples still seem to be in use, don't they?" 

"Well, if you went to the trouble of building such enormous temples, you might as well use them to worship. And they did turn out quite beautiful, didn't they?"

Glorfindel nodded fervently, opening and closing his left hand randomly before he remembered that he wanted to stop revelling in having a body. "They are gorgeous, beyond any buildings I have seen before, and I lived in Gondolin."

The fisherman stared at him blankly. "Gondolin?"

"Have you not heard of Gondolin before?"

"I can't say I have."

"Then I must tell you of Gondolin. But seriously, how have you not heard of Gondolin? The splendour of its white towers, the fountains, the beauty of the songs and art wrought in it… Surely, the re-embodied must have talked about it, even if they did not witness it themselves."

"There aren't exactly a lot of re-embodied yet," the fisherman pointed out.

"There aren't? How many are there so far?"

"I think about a handful. I heard someone say you are the sixth."

"Only the sixth? I imagined there would be far more."

"I heard someone say that you're a special case."

"Yes, they said that, but I still thought there would be more. They said there would be a community of the re-embodied on Tol Eressëa and that I could stay here before I left on my mission."

"Yes, they say that there will be, but the people here are divided on whether they even want that. Some want to help and give the re-embodied a place to stay, others are doing it because the Valar bade them to do so. Some do not think it is a good idea at all."

"And you? Why did you take me in?"

He shrugged. "It brings me favours. And perhaps… perhaps I was hopeful it would be someone else who would be re-embodied."

"Who are you waiting for?"

The fisherman drained his glass again and got up. "I think that has been enough chatter for me for  tonight."

As the ship sailed east, Glorfindel looked back on Tol Eressëa. The green of the island slowly faded to grey, and the glimmer of the shores dimmed. He wondered about this strange place between the worlds, home to the pious and soon to past traitors and heretics. 

The last thing that Glorfindel saw of the island were the towers of the temples, before they too disappeared into the haze.