Nothing Here Has Been Allowed To Fall by Ravien_Filque  

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Nothing Here Has Been Allowed to Fall

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The salty air carries mournful notes of a song across the sea. Music swirls over the waves, lifting droplets of water into tiny whirlwinds above the surface. The notes caress my stones and seep into my walls, binding, strengthening, immortalizing. The melody envelops me in a loving embrace and I cherish the sound all the more for it reassures me that he is not far away.

I suppose he feels just as lonely as I do. We are the only ones left. The landscape of our past is gone, swallowed by the earth and sea, and this new world feels distant and strange.

I wonder whether he will ever visit. Oh, how I long to open my gates and welcome him to the halls my stone still remembers. I am waiting.

The sea presses at my foundations from every side, waves crashing against the rocky shore as though they mean to challenge me. Do they not know? They can not break me. I have been challenged plenty.

I hold steady.

I was raised out of strength and stubborn devotion, carved to protect and shelter. To endure. The world collapsed around me yet still I stand unchanged.

But I worry on these days and nights when the storm claws at my walls and the elements dance their manic dance - wind and water colliding with a force that threatens to crumble the very earth beneath me.

I wonder, is he safe? Does he hide from the storms? Or does he let the rain strike his face, the wind seize at his clothes - his cloak streaming restlessly like a last torn banner of a fallen host? He could be safe with me. Yet he doesn't come, and I keep my watch, and I hold steady.

When the Lord of the Waters is gentle, and his touch brings only respite, that is when I hear him sing. His sadness is suffocating. I can feel myself responding; the melodies conjure a thick fog covering the water like a heavy blanket. These days the wind carries his mournful voice instead of a threatening rumble.

I remember times when it was he who had conjured thunder and lightning and ground shaking with the Power of his voice. The Mighty, they called him. He was only ever gentle with me.

Sometimes fishermen and explorers land on my shores. They climb my battlements, searching for treasures they imagine I have hidden. I don't begrudge their curiosity, to me they are like little children with their faces flushed from the lashing wind, sea water, and the thrill of a hunt.

Every time, they leave unsatisfied. Their quests fail not because there is nothing there, only that it is not for them to find it. I draw the fog a little thicker around what must remain hidden and coax their eyes elsewhere. Soon enough they convince themselves there is nothing there to find. So I let them wander about for a while, confident that I will be left alone. Can he see them too?

I hold steady.

The winters here are still harsh, and again worry consumes me for I do not suffer the cold like he does, and he refuses to come and find shelter.

"It's so cold, Nelyo", he would complain, wrapping thick furs around himself. "These stones need more heat to keep the blizzard away". But there would be always a caress in his voice that seeped deep within me - comforting, enchanting, coaxing me to obey. Even now, when winter wind howls across the island, I find myself gathering what warmth remains in my stones, as though still answering a request made long ago.

He is a part of me as well as I am a part of him. We are connected. Although his footsteps can no longer be heard echoing across my halls, I still find myself honoring his wishes. The blizzard comes and I garner warmth in my stones. The storm rises and I hold steady.

Tonight the sky is clear. The stars flicker above me and I watch Tilion's journey with an unexplained trepidation. The water sloshes gently.

I don't like this calm. There is doom in the stillness. The air is buzzing with an unseen charge, and the sea slowly draws back from the shore, exposing seabed sprinkled with trinkets of a past long gone: pieces of jewellery, small blades, broken toys, all glimmering beneath the Moon almost like fallen stars caught in the mud.

 I can hear the sand crunching under his weight, his footsteps are hesitant. So different from the dance-like movements that I remember.

He draws nearer, then he stops. I feel desperate need to guide him closer, to lure him in. I want him safe. I can keep him safe. He is so close…

I remember when he would arrive at my gates, galloping on his horse, hooves thundering over the flagstones, and laugh as he called out: "Nelyo! I am hungry!" There would be hugs and laughter and so much love. That love is in me still. It pulsates deep within my foundations and keeps me alive. The stone is my body; my spirit, a blazing flame. But neither stone nor flame can explain why I weep for shipwrecked sailors, or why I forgive treasure hunters their trespasses. Those things came later. They came with songs, and laughter and gentle hands. They came with him.

I bring my focus back to where I last sensed him only to find nothing there. The muddy seabed bears fading footsteps that lead away along the shoreline. A tiny speck of black and red keeps moving farther away from me.

At first I wait, certain he will come back. I gather every thread of love I have and send them after him but the distance unravels them before they can reach his body, his mind, his soul. This is when I learn fear. I am truly alone now. The longer he's gone the less of myself I can hold. My thoughts slipping away from me like bricks falling from a crumbling wall; my awareness fading away.

A bird. A boat. Storm. Moonlight on water. Footsteps gone.

I hold -

******

This night the Moon is at its fullest. Tilion's light reflects on the waves like a shimmering unsteady path and I can see…

A lone figure is standing on the shore. Beside him a small boat rocks gently with the rhythm of the waves, the water lapping at its wooden sides with a soft and cadenced murmur. Slosh, slosh, slosh. My awareness slowly reawakens and I'm beginning to feel again.

For years unnumbered I could only observe. Body and Spirit fully present, and although my consciousness remained, it was veiled, distant. Like a part of me was sealed behind stone. Not gone. Asleep, perhaps. Hidden? Numb. Abandoned. I did not mourn, for mourning would require feeling; I only endured.

Then the figure bends, his - yes, I am sure it is him - hands firmly gripping the little vessel and he pushes determined to set it afloat. A flash of clarity strikes through me. He has come back.

There are no oars, no sail, and for a moment a freezing panic grips me, for how will he get to the other side? So I throw every ounce of Power that is still sleeping in me in the ship's direction, but it's messy and scattered and I feel it's about to dissolve before it can form a path.

Focus, focus, focus. I command myself, though it is hard after years of barely being. I am no longer only stone, no longer silent witness. He is here, and because he is here I remember how to want.

So I gather myself and harmonize the Power until the fog around me grows thinner and now I can see clearly that the Sea responded to him first. He is humming an old lullaby, one I know perfectly well for he had sung it in the past for me and for his brother - his voice is strong but oh so gentle, and the waters…they don't part, but the boat glides on the surface as if it were being guided. Escorted.

And I hold our connection steady.

My enchantments tell me to shift my focus for a moment, and I turn inwards only to see a red-haired figure materialized in the courtyard, right in the centre where an eight-pointed star mosaic still remains undamaged - like a perfectly shaped statue. The Lord of Himring stands tall.

If stone could scream, mine would - a piercing wail, a gut-wrenching sound of a child reaching out for its parent. My walls tremble with agony, and I want!

My Lord Commander stands still, his eyes closed, a soft smile gracing his beautiful face. His hands are by his sides, palms turned up, arms loosely open, as though he means to embrace whoever comes. His eyes open too and he sees me…Open the Gates! Lord of the Gap has arrived!

The little vessel has reached its destination, the hull scraping on the rocky shore and the sound travels through me like a clang of hammer hitting metal. I know him by the way he sighs and pauses for a moment before he rises, by the careful way he gathers himself as though every move costs him something. Where once he arrived with laughter ringing before him, now he comes to me with silence for his singing has stopped and all is eerily quiet.

His foot touches stone. One step. And another.

Oh.

No crack splits my walls. No salt has eaten through my gate. Nothing here has been allowed to fall.

The whole of me answers. Not with rumble, though I tremble at the sight of him, not with fire, though I remember fire well enough. I answer with warmth rising through the frost-covered stone, with soft moss under his soles, with lanterns that never once went dark. He reaches the main gate.

Lord of the Gap! Lord of my Heart. Lord of Our Hearts. He remains very still, head bowed, one hand pressed against the impenetrable and unbreakable stone-gate.

"Nelyo", he says.

And for a moment I wonder - but no, he can't see that on the other side another hand is pressed in the exact same place, and that the figure it belongs to mirrors his brother's stance - head bowed. He can't see the shaking shoulders, can't hear heart-breaking sobs nor the whisper,

"Káno".

Can he?

For a moment time itself seems to bend, and I don't know whose magic is this, but it is not important. I do what is in my nature.

I hold them.

And when I can no longer hold them together, when My Lord's figure becomes fainter, see-through and mist-like he commands me one last time, Open the Gates, my brother is home.

Wood and metal grind softly against stone, the old mechanism lifts the heavy door like no time has passed, and I reveal myself to the one who had taught me compassion and love, for the first time in countless years. Maglor lifts his face. Moonlight catches the light in his eyes and dances in the strands of his dark hair. He is changed past naming, worn-thin by sea and sorrow, but when he looks upon the open way, the courtyard filled with golden light of torches, and the Star of Feänáro almost glowing in the centre, something painfully young passes across his face. Wonder, perhaps. Or grief remembering how to be hope.

"I came back", he whispers and lays his palm flat against me.

Yes, I tell him with every stone. Yes, come in. Be warm. Be safe. Be home.