On Tides of Light by potorov  

MITTARË

Rest to them; and let light not go out.

Now Eärendil had bidden Elwing await him upon the strand of Eldamar, for he would take the peril of that errand upon himself alone; and she obeyed him, though her heart misgave her. He went up alone into the land, and she stood in the surf until the last sight of him was gone. But Eärendil had reckoned without the gulls.

The white birds of that coast are birds of Ossë, and talkers. All morning they went crying north above the foam, and their gossip came at last into the Swanhaven, where the people of the quays kept the old habit of listening. Before noon three swan-boats came south under sail, low and swift upon the water, their white prows carved as swans, with long necks, beaks of gold, and eyes of gold and jet. Elwing, seeing them, knew their shape at once, though never in her life had she seen one whole. Her people had kept drawings of such ships. In every drawing they were burning.

The mariners came ashore and looked at her, but did not speak. She had nothing to show them. The Silmaril was gone from her breast and bound upon her husband's brow; and she stood upon the sand of the Blessed Realm in a salt-stiff cloak with nothing at all in her hands. She had only her voice, and her face. One hand remained hidden in the fold of her cloak until they were near. Four small crescents reddened its palm where her nails had held it closed. Then she opened it and made it still.

Her face was enough. An old shipwright named Astoron went down slowly upon his knees in the wet sand, and the others after him; for in the turn of her head and the set of her mouth they had seen Elwë Singollo, whom they had followed to the Sea and left upon the far shore, and whom they had mourned for an Age of the world without ever once being told how his story ended.

"Lady," said Astoron, "whose child are you?"

"I am Elwing," she said, "daughter of Dior, son of Lúthien, daughter of Elu Thingol, who was Elwë your king. I bring you the tidings for which you have waited. You will not thank me for them."

They brought her north in the middle ship. When she stepped aboard, the hull settled by a finger's breadth beneath her, and only then did the strand begin to fall behind. The mariners asked her nothing upon the way. They were afraid of the answers, and they wished their king to hear them first.

Alqualondë is built beneath a vast arch of living rock, hollowed by the Sea, and the lamp suspended beneath it has never gone out. Elwing passed under it at evening. Beyond, the Swanhaven rose in pale terraces, with the mansions of the Falmari and the palace of Olwë faced in sea-pearl against the cliffs. Gold and silver lamps hung above the quays; diamonds and pale opals, old gifts of the Noldor, caught the starlight in the pavements. Children ran along the sea-wall to see the incoming ship. Then Elwing saw places where the jewelled pavement had been scrubbed and was still a different colour from the stone about it. She understood what had happened there, and was silent.

Olwë came down to the water himself. He was very old, as the Eldar of Aman reckon age, and grief had made him patient rather than gentle. Time, which is said to mend all wounds, had not passed beneath those weary eyes; so healing had not followed it. He looked long at her.

"You have my brother's face," he said.

"I have."

"Then he was slain."

"He was slain."

Olwë stood still for a while. Then he said: "Come up into the hall. Speak, and do not soften it. I have waited an Age for tidings, and I will not have them made kind."

She spoke for seven nights. Afterwards the loremasters of the Falmari did not count those nights as seven. They counted them as waves, because that was how they came in: each gathering far out in dark recesses, each taking longer to arrive than the last, each washing further up the shores of the soul.