Light blots out the Sky by starshadeemily  

Light blots out the Sky

This is written in first person from Eol's point of view.

Silver dapples the forest floor, and where the limpid light falls, the shadows around it are deeper, darker than before. I go to the glade where the star fell, where the ground is bare and no things grow, and beside the crater, where every blackened stone and crack in the earth is cast into sharp detail, I look to the sky, to see wherefrom this new light comes. 

There is a round vessel there, hanging in the heavens, just south of the zenith, and his light is so great it blots out the stars about him. I marvel at this new thing, and I dread it, for it was no more looked for than the darkling fogs that issue now in thick, reeking profusion from the North. The light that turns the ground to silver is like unto the light of Melian’s eyes, and I know now whence it comes. 

She is not of our kindred and yet she rules over us. She is not of our kindred and yet she builds walls around us, and divides up the free lands. Ever her kind would make walls, for the Lords of the West have the great sea between their lands and ours, and the Lord of the North, who sends his orcs to harry us, has iron hills aplenty to guard him.

But the Moon, as I later learn it is called, is but a pale and wan prelude to the Sun. 

She rises in the West, golden and terrible, and cruelly she blots out all the stars, and I can not look at her but I am blinded. She exerts her dominion over the earth, and she penetrates even where the Moon did not reach, as if she would demand that all things worship her. And she is hot, oh so terribly hot, and for the first time without exercising I sweat.

Thereat I sing to the trees, my companions, I sing unto the oaks and beeches, pines and hickories, to grow tall and dark, that their branches might blot out the sky, and their writhen boughs seal out the terrible light. I sing unto the thorns to rise up, and the moss to gather thicker on the branches above, and once more the woods are dim. 

So. This is how it shall be, as I understand it; the Powers that abandoned the earth would govern it still from their palaces in the West. They who loosed the Dark Lord into the world again would make war with him from afar. His creatures scatter, fearing the light, hating it as do I, and they flee into my woods, and find shelter in the shadows of Nan Elmoth. For by making light, the Powers have made also darkness; whatever their light may hurt the dark one, it does naught but injury to myself.

My strength is spent in battle, and with a few servants only I defend our home against the Glamhoth, who rattle their spears amid the trees and make a most terrible din, and spreading their reek, they foul the waters. Anguirel drinks gladly their blood, and as it runs down his blade in black rivulets, he thrums with delight, and begs me to find more monsters to slay. And no shortage of those is there.

It seems there will never be an end to this light, and I begin to execrate it, and those who sent it, for they took not the counsel of any elves ere sending this curse upon our dwellingplace. I remember the innumerable stars, and bitterly I grieve that I may see them never again.

But my fears are assuaged, and my grief lessened, and at last the scorching Sun sinks into the West and the earth is cool again, and though the Moon rises but shortly after in the East, the stars blink awake, white points of light amid the velvet shadows on the firmament. And I find gladness in this, but my heart forebodes that these lights but herald the doom of the Elves, and I dread whatever new and unexpected thing may come next.

Chapter End Notes

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