Strangers in a Strange Land by starshadeemily  

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Homecoming

Thank you to Erendur and Lee for being my constant cheerleaders while I was working on this <3 And thank you Erendur especially for providing many of the worldbuilding ideas, most notably those about semen retention.

All names of original characters come from Chestnut_pod's name list.

When Nolofinwë walked out of the Halls of Mandos, he lifted the wide collar of the dreadfully plain standard-issue shift given to all those who return, and looking down at his chest saw that he was unblemished. No discoloration, no scars where the boot had crushed him, nay, rather his ribcage, complete and unbroken, rose and fell with his even, regular, healthy breath. It was strange to breathe again, strange and wonderful and miraculous, and he laughed, and rejoiced to hear his own voice—after years uncounted of longing for a body again. But Nolofinwë drew up the sleeves of the robe and saw his arms, not tanned, but pale, not crossed with the ropy scars of war-wounds, but smooth, as a child’s even, excepting the dark hair, and he felt somehow . . . somehow bereft, bereft of something he could not quite name, and did not yet permit himself to name, for it was only by un-naming his discontent that he was judged worthy of standing in the sunlight once more.

To live in a body once more is to be clothed after a long period of nakedness, and a cold nakedness at that. Not that Nolofinwë had hated cold in life, nay he had preferred it, but the frigidity of death is not like the cold of a harsh winter, but a crueller cold, that he had at first resented, and he had resented that he resented it, for he had chosen to die and brought this on himself, had he not? He had known he would not survive a duel with the Dark Foe. But though Nolofinwë had chosen to leave his life, he had not chosen death. He had died because there was naught else he could do, and nowhither else he could go, and no other exit from whence to escape his grief. He had not died because he wanted to lie in prison, naked and alone, for longer than he had been alive. The cold of Mandos did not reward him, he had thought at first. It was not like the cold of the Helcaraxë, his baptism into survival and proof of his resilience, it was not like the cold and foggy land of Hithlum where he had made his home and proven himself hardy, it was not like the cold of the mountain streams where he had bathed, that made his skin numb but his heart thrum with a thrill of vitality. No, Mandos’ chill was numbing—but what did it avail him? What did he prove through his endurance of it?

For long it seemed, nothing, save that by his suffering he paid for his rebellion, and so Mandos’ prophecy was fulfilled, that the Exiles’ houseless souls would long lie in jail. But no chains needed Mandos to punish them, nor rack, nor rods, but the house of the dead itself was penalty enough. 

In time he learned how the coldness could be of any benefit him, for it made him yearn again for life, his natural state, but this too was bitter to yearn for what he could not have. After long years of reliving his death, he wearied of his nakedness, and would fain return, for only thereby could he hope to have happiness again.

But it is not enough to wish for life, nay, for according to the laws of Mandos the re-embodied elf must release all grudges and griefs he held aforetime.

How is this accomplished? To become benevolent, one must first imagine oneself benevolent, Namo instructed him. But all Nolofinwë could imagine was those final hours of his life: the smoke and the reek and the fires devouring yet the charred dead littered o’er the gasping plain. The foul, hot wind that stung his watering eyes. The audacious report of his fists smiting the ghastly brazen doors, and the terrible thunder of his craven foe’s reticent approach from his misshapen throne; the nigrous shadow of Morgoth towering over him, as menacing as the evil tripartite peaks behind them, darker than darkness and fouler than foul. The darting red flames from hammer-rent pits, and Ringil’s flashing, glittering azure light; the crunch of broken black mail and the cleaving of fearsome flesh and the anguish of a wounded god; the pain in his own long legs from leaping, the splintering of his shield. The stricken stones slipping treacherously beneath stumbling feet, and the mountain-heavy foot crushing his every rib—expelling his very breath as the shattered bones punctured his lungs and his own blood drowned him. And that last desperate, breathless stroke with Ringil and the black blood that burned like acid as it filled the desolate pit where he lay dying. These images paraded through his thought in a dolorous, doleful carousel, sometimes sequentially and sometimes all at once, but he had naught to distract him from this nightmare reverie, no food to sup, no converse to hold, no horse to ride nor partners to spar, nor lovers to love, no, for being without a body he had none of those occupations that might take a man sick with leisure away from his cares. Nay, all of Nolofinwë’s bloodless existence was care.

Namo would come to him where he languished and tell him to create dreams of reconciling with Fëanaro. He never permitted him to speak to Fëanaro, however, and Nolofinwë struggled to reconcile with one who existed only in memory. It was, he was certain, the most difficult, humiliating, and painful thing he had ever undertaken, and for long he resisted it. To excise his resentment would be as destructive as removing his limbs: it had become a part of him, and their rivalry had made him the man that he was. If he did not hate Fëanaro as much as he loved him, who would he be? He would not be Nolofinwë. He would not be Fingolfin, whose very name was an affront to his brother. He had been, from birth, positioned in opposition to him, born on the condition that Fëanaro’s mother remain deceased, born to a woman Fëanaro could have never come to love. On his account had Fëanaro lost his first ataressë, and to him had been given the prefix that Fëanaro so coveted. And it was Fingolfin that had so angered Fëanaro as to steal the ships, Fingolfin who relinquished not his kingship, who had knowingly inspired his own betrayal, Fingolfin who in his pride and hatred crossed regions impassible to reach Fëanaro. It was in pursuit of the Spirit of Fire that he had made himself the man that he was, and now he was being made to unmake himself, or else remain forever in the solitary dark.

And so perforce under such duress he began. He created visions of himself shaking Fëanaro’s hand as they had done before the throne of Manwë, but sincerely this time, with no double-meanings and no politics masking the dubious honesty of their words, and he repeated this over and over again, over and over and over and over until it became true.

When they finally met once more before the throne of Mandos, and he looked into those gray eyes, bright as they had ever been in life though the treelight was now departed from them forever, Nolofinwë did not regret that he had delayed his reembodiment until Fëanaro should be permitted to return to Arda. Manwë had come to him aforetime and offered him a body once again after centuries of punitive imprisonment (for being both a primary leader in the Exile and a suicide, Nolofinwë received a long sentence as punishment for his crimes,) followed by those afore-detailed years uncounted of gradual, protracted, but haply fruitful “correction,” and yet Nolofinwë had steadfastly refused this offer, for what did this generosity signify other than that Fëanaro had surpassed him once again? Fëanaro, marred and fallen, who must pay unprecedented penance for his blasphemy, was accounted as having committed a greater sin, for he had brought his whole people down with him into darkness and hateful rebellion. Though it clung to him threadbare and ragged, the last vestigial scraps of Nolofinwë’s storied pride would not permit him to accept that Fëanaro was in any way being credited for his own rebellion—nay, nay, his fall was his own and no other’s. If he should delay his return, it seemed to him, then he would finally, after a race he had run for his whole life and now his whole death, catch up to Fëanaro. This was the one singular act of pride Namo permitted of Nolofinwë, for it could possibly be read by the benevolent eye as the compassion of a brother who wished to share his kinsman’s sentence, and because, naturally, Namo would never deny an elf the opportunity to attribute more fault to himself.

The long-awaited reunion was brief and laconic, and when their children, but not their wives, met them at the dark doors of the dread halls, the sons of Finwë parted ways. They said little, for there was little to say. What is there to discuss with one who has seen and done nothing for thousands of years? What use to dredge up memories they were supposed to have made peace with? What could they say, who had ever spoken to one another in barbs and veiled insults, what could they possibly say if there was nothing to insult? And so they parted ways, and by differing courses made their way back to Tirion.

❖❖❖

His homecoming brought Nolofinwë no joy. He stood aneath the white tree Galathilion, unchanged though all the world had been altered, and he cast his gaze up to the Mindon and its blazing light, perfect as it had ever been, and the memories came back to him of a childhood playing in this very square paved with white unblemished marble. He stood in the shoes of a man twice dead, for Nolofinwë Aracano, Prince of Tirion, had perished on the Ice, and Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor, had been slain, but he, whatever new creature he was now, stood where Nolofinwë First had stood, and saw what Nolofinwë First had seen, and his white slippers glittered with the dust of diamonds, and he felt for the first time terribly, terribly small.

Nolofinwë followed his children as if he himself was the child, followed them down the side street beneath the grandiflora magnolias he had once planted, followed them to the golden gate of the mansion where he had dwelt, followed them along the crushed quartz pathway past the hydrangeas and dogwood trees, followed them around the great silver fountain and up to the stately stairs. The porch of the house was upheld with caryatids whose eyes were precious stones, whose robes were the same blue and silver polychrome as always, and in the shadow of their beauty stood magnificent doors, engraven with many patterns and blazoned with multitudinous stars of gold. The great hinges opened silently with a touch from Findecano, and they entered the opulent atrium, all frescoed walls and mosaic floors and crystal chandeliers and high, high windows that let in the westering Sun to bathe the ancient house in lavish gold. 

Lavish was his children’s affection for him, and they would keep him with them for the evening for supper and fellowship, but Nolofinwë was weary from the long journey made in a body ill-used to moving at all, and his mind, equally ill-used to converse and the company of others, grew faint, and he announced that he would retire for the evening. The memory of the house returned to him with every halting step, and he found his rooms with little issue. 

The bedchamber was for the most part how he had left it. Anairë’s things were all gone, but the bed was still perfectly made and its quilts, which she his wife had stitched, were the same spiral patchwork of blue and gold, and its curtains the same star-spangled sapphire. The walls were still wall-papered with velvet, and the floor richly-carpeted with intricate rugs of diverse colors, the furniture still as it was, with the dark finish unchipped. In the adjacent dressing room remained all the clothes he had left behind, perfect and intact, touched by neither moths nor rot nor the afflictions of wear and decay that he had become accustomed to in Beleriand. It felt like he had stepped into a dream, an artificial sort of state where nothing changes, and there is neither time nor space but only memory. He handled the old garments he had left behind, most of which were either ugly things he had little loved, casual summer clothes, or richly-beaded robes only suitable for balls and banquets: all attire unsuitable for a journey into dark and danger and Doom. Each perfect sleeve he touched elicited a memory. A day in the garden. A child on his knee. Teatime shared with his wife. A ball where he danced with her. A half-brother’s hand and darkness over the land and screams in the night. Staggering back against the wall from the force of the sudden remembrance, he let the ornate cloth-of-gold slip from clumsy fingers and he gasped for air, struggling to remember how to control his lungs. His body was still like a puppet to him, each step like the movement of a marionette, and though his spirit was clothed in it, he did not yet have the mastery of it. Like a toddler he stumbled thence to the bed and furled himself in the uterine embrace of the heavy quilts, but no sleep came to him, nor did slumber soothe his troubled mind, but in a state of dumb confusion he lay awake until the morrow came. He was unable to remember anything from the past few days, but he slipped back into the ocean stream of flotsam visions in which he had daily floundered and drowned for ages and ages: fire and smoke and black burning blood.

The Sun spurred him to rise, reaching her red-carnation fingertips through windows that faced the once-dark East, and stroked his furrowed brow, and smoothed his tousled hair with the rubescent rays of morning. Yea, verily Arien rose over the margins of the world and so he too must rise and pick up the strings of his articulated joints one by one to stand, to step, to step again, to go to the washbasin, filled, it seemed, in anticipation of his return, and rinse a face stiff and sore from a weariness he could not cure.

It was thereafter time for attiring, and out of what remained to him, he found a suitable tunic, green taffeta with blue and white paisley, and black hose that had always been a bit too tight for him, and beaded shoes. His jewelry box was well-nigh empty, for he had taken his most beloved treasures into exile, but there remained to him a golden torc, although it was not the favorite one he had worn aforetime as he had hearkened to the fell words of the Doomsman, who still held in dreadful death the father who had bestowed his second son with a mighty neckpiece as a signifier of his high estate. But nay, this other torc was thinner and somewhat easier to get around his neck, and though such a collar is hardly comfortable to wear nor is it kind upon the throat of the one who wears it, he felt somewhat more like himself. And yet, he was not wholly himself, for the pierced holes in his ears and nose had been closed, nay it was as if they had never existed, and the skin was marked by no indent nor scar, and he could not adorn himself at all with most of the remaining jewels in the box except a few unremarkable rings. What he could still make full use of was his old cosmetics, and as he lined his eyes in black he began to recognize the man looking back at him in the mirror.

But what small pleasure and pride he took in his attiring was his alone and was shared by no others, for when he admitted early-rising Aracano into his rooms, his son beheld his calf-length dagged hems, the low neck that revealed Nolofinwë’s clavicles, the torc and the heavy eyeliner, and he laughed gayly.

“Father, thou art arrayed in the antique manner of old! Such fashions have not been seen in Valinor since the years before my own return to the world of the living. Verily thy aspect is like one of the ancient kings of old.”

A shadow flickered over his merry face as soon as the jest winged carelessly from his smiling lips, for he recognized that the man before him was, in sooth, one of the ancient kings of old, come out of the pages of history and yet thrust into his own past. And Nolofinwë then recognized what he had not marked before, that his son was attired in strange (as it seemed to him) raiment: a voluminous-sleeved garment that was cinched in tight at the waist and had a high collar and a short hem that scarcely covered his loins.

“How many years, then, have passed since thy return?” Nolofinwë ventured quietly, dreading now to know the answer.

“Ah, I have not kept close tally, but more than six thousand years by the count of Anar have elapsed since my reembodiment, I ween.”

Nolofinwë nodded, but a freezing dread came over him like a surge of ice water into his lungs. By Varda’s lights, my son is older than me, he wondered. His heart beat faster and a darkness came over his eyes, but Aracano gave his father no time to digest this new realization, for he hastily took him by the hand for to introduce him to the wife and young child Nolofinwë had not yet met, nor known existed.

 

The little girl’s name was Alassiel and she looked at Nolofinwë with dumb wonder as if he had stepped out of an illustration in a history book, verily as if she had seen old Tata himself walk into the parlor where she played with her dolls on the floor, but when she came to understand that Nolofinwë was her grandfather, just as her mother’s father was her grandfather, she laughed with delight and hugged his knees. The mother, Helenis, apologized for the child’s excess and courteously introduced herself before kindly ushering everyone into the dining room, where Findecano, Turucano, and Irissë met them for a breakfast of ham biscuits, eggs, and grits accompanied by milk to drink. An energetic lady of the house with a sunny disposition and an inexhaustible devotion to the holy practice of hospitality, Helenis was very concerned with ensuring that Nolofinwë was comfortable, and asked him again and again if the food was to his liking, if he had enough to drink, if there was anything else she could do for him, and it irked him horribly, for though she meant well, her concern reduced him, a man and a king, to the level of a child, helpless and dependent on grown-ups for sustenance, and moreover she spoke to him as if he was a guest, yea verily as he were a guest in his own ancient house. And yet it was not his house. It was Aracano’s house that he shared with Irissë, Aracano’s house where he and his wife raised their daughter, Aracano’s house where few of the original servants remained. Unmanned and alienated, he chewed his biscuit in silence as the servingwoman topped off his milk. He remembered that he didn’t like milk.

 

The day passed in a blur of conversation as his children told him tales of everything that had transpired in his absence: of Turgon’s new city, of Aredhel’s new beau, of Fingon’s recent adventures, and naturally of all world events and world wars that occurred during the ages of their respective imprisonment. Nolofinwë had seen them all in Mandos; when each child had perished they had found him first, and their spirits had wept in their father’s arms in a bittersweet reunion. But as they had done in life, yet again they drifted away in death, on account of the solitary nature of the Halls, where seldom do the spirits of the dead commune, and in the end they were alone. First Aracano, then Irissë, then Turucano, then Findecano returned to life. He could have searched for tidings of them, as did many of the dead for their living kin, but he did not. He could have, and he believed he should have and sorely he regretted it, but he had not. And so it was now that he held converse with them for the first time in many centuries.

While Nolofinwë’s freshly-embodied and sleep-deprived mind was yet too porous to retain the exact specifics of all of this novel knowledge, even like snow the realization settled and dissolved into him that the world had been remade, and he had been remade, and there was no going back.

❖❖❖

The last of the many meetings of the day was with Arafinwë, who invited his returned brothers to sup with him in the King’s palace. The meeting with his blood-brother was happy, and Arafinwë kissed Nolofinwë’s cheeks and clapped his back in a warm welcome. They sat in the family dining room, not the great hall, but at the very table where they had all been wont to dine privately with Finwë, but Arafinwë, the youngest son who was as golden as his mother’s kin, now assumed their father’s golden seat, and at his left was Eärwen, and at her left Anairë. The sisters Findis and Lalwendë were not present, nor was Nerdanel, who dwelt now with Indis, who had declined to meet her eldest son. 

Meeting Anairë’s sky-blue eyes where she sat across from him, Nolofinwë saw therein the filiform trace of their marriage bond, but he did not see his wife. She had ceased to be his wife when he had parted from her, leaving her on the beaches of Alqualondë, shivering in the dark with the blood of her dear friend’s fallen kinsmen staining the trailing, muddy hems of her white gown. He had spoken her cruelly in a final row that was the culmination of years of unlove betwixt them, and she had, in turn, proclaimed his parting to be happy. He had come to understand during his death how he had mistreated her during those final years with the spurning of her counsels and the demands he made upon her, even commanding her to yield her body to him, but he gave her no apologies, and she seemed to expect none, but she smiled at him uncomfortably, unsure of what to say to him at all.

But Anairë had less to say to Fëanaro and hardly looked at him, who was seated beside Nolofinwë and was arrayed in Curufin’s raiment, black and red and so wretchedly fashionable and fitted and high-collared, a reminder, though unintentional, that he would ever leave Nolofinwë behind.

Nolofinwë felt again that terrible sense of unbelonging, that he was in truth an island, and the others all peninsulas of the main, and naught could he do to build a bridge to them who watched him from afar, able to observe but unable to touch even the tip of a finger. And thus, the only course was to call out to those distant posts, and the only hope at a remedy was speech, and so in search of belonging he began the conversation.

“Arafinwë-brother,” Nolofinwë addressed him, “I regret the absence of our fair sisters, and I miss their company. Pray tell, when shall the Finwieli grace us once more?” And forsooth the absence of Lalwendë and Findis troubled him.

“Dwelleth Findis with our mother, and abideth Lalwendë upon Tol Eressëa, for there are the returned Exiles reserved to make their home. Those who dwell in Aman may sail thither, and soon enough may ye go to her. She was near to thine heart, and she shall rejoice to see thee, but she cannot herself journey hither, but only we to her.”

A spark of resentment fluttered in Nolofinwë’s heart, but he averted his inward gaze from it, and durst not to name it, for it was of the species that he had been made to forswear. 

“The promise of reunion with Lalwen gladdeneth mine heart,” Nolofinwë said, and though he felt Anairë’s eyes upon him, he could not look at her, for another memory arose, a precious artifact floating to the surface but that must needs be forsaken in the stream, for this memory recounted one of the many misdeeds that Mandos had read aloud to him at his judgement. How humiliating it had been, to stand naked before the god and hear the full tale of his wrongs, his rebellion, his disobedience, his hatred, his love. At least sweet Lalwen had not been made to endure such a thing, but he feared what evils she may have endured in the long centuries of war since his passing.

Fëanaro’s eyes were upon him, two blades of quicksilver that cut the dermis of Nolofinwë’s mind, uncovering some sanguine mangled something the others could not see. Fëanaro’s mastery over himself had always been great, but his sentiments had ever been made apparent on his face like so much heraldry, and now thusly-returned what control of his minute muscles was yet deficient, and therefore, willing not that Nolofinwë should perceive that he perceived, Fëanaro lowered his lashes and directed his gaze instead to the feast before them. Arafinwë had spared no expense on rare game for the return of his brothers, and the table was piled with delicacies, followed by desserts yet more extravagant. Fëanaro, ever a lover of meats and indifferent to sweets, ate more of the former and less of the latter. He was still learning how his body reacted to food, how much it would take to fill him, and which foods settled better in his digestive tract, and he found that his eyes had been bigger than his stomach. Careless, he chided himself. And yet I learn from this. My memory tells me mine appetite was once greater than this; mayhap it is stunted by the newness of this body, and shall wax to the erstwhile size thereof in time. I shall observe myself closely.

There was, forsooth, much to observe in the world of the living. It had changed so little in many ways, but the observant eye would note that it was wholly other than the world he had left behind. Arafinwë he studied, and Eärwen, and Anairë, the way the women’s hands brushed as they dipped their plates, the lack of eye-contact between the Teleri woman and her lord, Anairë’s aquamarine dress and the seaglass beads in her elaborately coiffured hair. Arafinwë was clad all in white and gold and crowned not with their father’s crown, taken down amid fire and death into dark Beleriand, but one wrought in the likeness of the high crown belonging to Ingwë, that king of kings. Between him and the women, Fëanaro could not help but feel that this was not a table of the Noldor, but a board of the other kindreds. It would have incensed him once upon a time to see their royal house so diluted, but he had changed, and to be wroth would serve him not, nor could he find it in him to be wroth, and yet he was . . . uneasy. Yea, ill at ease he was. 

But while Fëanaro silently analyzed the import of an un-Noldorin Noldoran, Arafinwë cheerfully spoke to Nolofinwë about nothing and naught, for there really is very little to discuss with someone who has seen and done naught, nor really been a person at all, for well-nigh one hundred centuries, and it is likewise rather rude and impolite to inquire a man regarding his experience with death and his time being deceased, no matter how curious one might be regarding what it is like to be departed, but were it not so, such an inquiry would be moreover vain, for those who are returned remember little of their long abiding save the overall unpleasantness thereof, and already the memory was slipping from Nolofinwë’s clouded mind. 

 

When they rose from the table at the close of the meal, Anairë signalled to Nolofinwë with the slightest nod of her chin, and he followed her without and silently they made their way to a small courtyard where stood a silver birdbath, and a marble bench in the shape of two clasped hands beneath a redbud tree; yea to this selfsame place had he led her in their youth and on that bench professed his love for her, and beneath the light of Telperion he had looked into her eyes that reflected the dim stars and known that he could not wish for a fairer betrothed. 

And so here they stood again, her lips painted the same dark-cherry red, the same strands of pink pearls heaped lavishly on her neck, and once again they were betrothed but not wedded, for marriage is accomplished by the body, and the body Nolofinwë now wore had not as yet known the flesh of a woman, and though he saw plainly their marriage bond made manifest in her eyes, they were yet sundered.

This sundering yawned cold and vacuous betwixt them when he kissed her hand in greeting and the fair lady shuddered. He stepped closer to her on his puppet legs, closer than he had intended, and the tips of their poulaine shoes touched. So close were they, that aforetime their minds would have brushed together as are wonted the minds of those closely joined in marriage, whose thought is like the warm and cool waters of northern and southern seas, which are distinct and yet flow into one another, but no longer was there any affinity betwixt them, and her mind was as remote to him as the sundered sunken lands of Endor. What effort might bear him across so wide a sea? If he reached out to her he would find her mind closed off to him, and to attempt osanwë would be an affront to her, like caressing the cheek of a stranger who might rightly balk at such a presumptuous touch. A stranger, yea that was the proper word for their condition, and strange indeed had they become to one another. But suchwise had she named him before even he marched from Tirion, before even the Darkening, and in her bower she had named him ambitious, and cruel, and she had despaired that their designs were no longer in accord.

Nolofinwë knew wherefore Anairë had arranged this meeting, but he said naught. He had ever been a smooth talker, gallant in his manners and proper in all his usages, winning the hearts of all the lords of the court, but here his words failed him. She looked at him timorously, Helluin above reflected in eyes the color of a cloudless vernal sky, and those blue irises shivered in reddened orbs. Did she fear one returned from the dead? Nay, for she had not looked at him with such affright during the meal, nay, but Nolofinwë saw her right hand clasped folded at her breast, and he saw that the wedding rings were gone from it, and he understood what it was she feared.

“Where dwellest thou, lady?” he began. “For in thy widowhood thou art departed from our house.” The word our stuck like a fish bone in his throat, sharp and suffocating like a falsehood, like a pretention, but false too would it be to call it otherwise.

“I dwell with Eärwen my friend. Abide we in Alqualondë among her kin for the warmer seasons, and winter we in Tirion, that Eärwen may join for a season her lord husband. I stay here in the King’s palace for the present time, but in three weeks we ladies shall depart hence and return to our house by the sea, for cometh the Spring swiftly, and much labor awaiteth me in our gardens.”

We ladies shall depart. There was no ambiguity there, nay there was only fact, and unmovable fact at that, and naught would sway Anairë from her plans. Never had she erstwhile suffered aught to delay her schedule, but she had conducted all her business, even her relationship with her lord, according to a perfectly planned timetable. Anairë would be going, and the return of Nolofinwë had no bearing on it.

Nolofinwë looked in her eyes still, gazed upon the windows that opened into a house closed off from him, a soul that had been freed of all tethers for ten thousand years only to find its gilded bonds returned unexpectedly, yea Nolofinwë peered into those crystal portals and saw what she was and what she was not. Anairë had suffered grief from the loss of her family: father, mother, husband, sons and daughter, and this grief pooled in her heart like a deep well whose bottom has never been reached, whose waters could never be wholly emptied even though her lost ones had returned for her, for though death may be repaired it can not be made to have never been. 

But Anairë had never known war. Nolofinwë would never be so callous as to say that Anairë was craven, nay in sooth she was brave, and her last stalwart words to him had been proud, audacious even coming from a woman, but Anairë was soft. She had not known the torment and travail of the Grinding Ice, nor the terror of fell beasts and foes on the field of battle, nor the bite of the sword nor the pain of the barbèd arrow; she had never known hunger nor thirst nor the proximity of black, grasping death; she had not known what it was to wage ceaseless war against the Foe and to live in anticipation of a prophesied destruction that had come all too soon. And importantly, Anairë had never known death. No matter how much they might have been affine as youths, Nolofinwë had ceased to be a creature of Valinor. He had become a creature of war. Even if she endeavored to do so, Anairë, who had never hungered for even a day, who had never suffered more injury than the prick of a sewing needle, could never again comprehend Nolofinwë’s heart. The chasm yawned betwixt them.

Anairë spoke.

“Nolofinwë Aracano, Finwion.” His full name she called him and paused a moment ere she continued. “It is the law that those who return from death must take up again the affairs of their previous life, and resume all ties of love and kinship they had cherished aforetime. It is said that those who are given life anew shall desire the company of their rightful spouse, and when they meet once more shall like to wed them as they did in the courtship of their youth.”

It was not phrased as a question, but Nolofinwë knew what she asked. He had been promised such a meeting as she described by the Doomsman, who before he had released him had verified that Nolofinwë was willing to be united with Anairë again, and though he had wronged her aforetime Nolofinwë had expected that he would live his second life as a married man. Though she might not forget those final years of unlove between them, he had thought she may in time forgive him, and come to love him again, for had they not vowed before Eru to love one another to the end of Arda? But it seemed to him that their oath had been made void, for in gazing upon her he did not wish for partnership with her, nay, for how could he, when they were more alien to one another than strangers? Like the chasm betwixt them, a pit yawned in Nolofinwë’s heart, the destruction and annihilation of a promise, the shipwreck splintered into oblivion of a future that he should have known could never be. An itch crawled at the back of his head, hot and stinging when he recalled what Manwë and Mandos had told unto him, but he turned his thought away from the sensation. A reformed elf knows no discontent.

“I will ask of thee naught that is in opposition to thy will, nor will I make myself to act against mine own. I release thee, Anairë Helimmirë. Ill it is that spouses should part thus, but the Marring is found not in Middle-earth alone but in the Undying Lands also, brought by those faithful who have journeyed hither from without. And though this hröa is of Aman, my fëa is of Beleriand.”

She sighed. “I am pleased our wills align in this—” her tongue hovered, about to spill out more honest confessions, but she restrained herself. “And I am pleased to see thee well and hale again.”

“And I am pleased to see thee well likewise.” 

❖❖❖

Little wellness Nolofinwë found when he lay in his bed. To have reunited with Anairë in matrimony would have necessitated that they lie together once more, here in this bed, and by the joining of their bodies be wedded anew. But only his dry hand sheathed his bare manhood, grown erect at the memory of the hours of love he had spent with her on this selfsame mattress, beneath the selfsame canopy, furled in the selfsame quilts.

He remembered the tears of joy in her eyes when he brought her to her first climax, and how soft her body had been around him. How warm. How tight. How her purple eyeshadow had run in rivulets dark down her flushed cheeks as she had cried his name, an image of pure maidenhood and nobility made lewd in his arms. The selfsame color had she worn today beneath her comely patrician brows.

He tugged his foreskin away from his swelling tip and a thin bead of fluid emerged as he visualized the swell of her breasts, but he quickly took his hand away. He would not waste his seed on a memory, not when his full vitality was yet to return to him. He turned to his pillow and tried for sleep, but there was little rest to be found, and his dreams were of dark chasms and smoking pits, and upon his spirit fell a shadow as pregnant with emptiness as the Void.

Chapter End Notes

Laws and Customs among the Eldar says that long stays in the Halls of Mandos are a punitive measure, and that committing suicide “is held as a fault” resulting in a longer stay. Yikes Jirt!!

Laws and customs also says this, which is batshit and horrifying to me: “Nonetheless, since marriage is also of the body and one body has perished, they must be married again, if they will. For they have returned, as it were, to that state in their former life when by the motions of their fëar they desired to be married. There will be no question of desiring this or not desiring it. [...] none of the Dead will be permitted by Mandos to be reborn, until and unless they desire to take up life again in continuity with their past.” so basically it is in the text that Mandos expects spouses to remarry as a condition for reembodiment, and that this is accomplished, as was their first marriage, by fucking again.

in Emily-world the Noldor believe that the semen contains a man’s vital essence, and to spill can weaken him, so he must be wise about when and wherefore he cums. 

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