Fanworks Tagged with Eärendil & Elwing

On Tides of Light, or Aneärcaladalë, begins with Elwing's arrival upon the shores of Eldamar after her flight from the ruins of Sirion. After Eärendil goes alone into Valinor, Elwing is brought to Alqualondë. Rather than hurrying toward the celestial ascent of Vingilot, the core of the narrative is the salt-crusted halls of Alqualondë, where the Falmari must finally confront the devastating history of Beleriand's three kinslayings. She must ask them to bear the Host of the West across the Sea. She's a mother, survivor and also bearer of a Silmaril but saw the First Age converge on her: the weight of its sins, its accumulated grief, and the grace through which salvation may yet enter history.

Author's Note: I’ve dealt with some loss recently, so I returned to Tolkien (as most do) to understand how the Legendarium navigated the amdir and estel in grief. I did find some answers but left mostly unsatisfied. One thing I did find was sometimes only narrative could convey the right critique on the legendarium & society's treatment of societal grief. Tolkien frequently argued that narrative and myth were valid vehicles for high-level spiritual and philosophical critique and I think this makes a case for that.

I wrote On Tides of Light for emotional catharsis using Tolkien’s eucatastrophe closure, tracing the collapse of amdir (hope resting upon visible outcomes) into estel: faithful action without guarantee. This gap fiction tries to provide an spiritual closure to the First Age by validating the grief of an Age. Grief can never be undone; it can become witness, mercy and light enough for another hand to continue.

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It occurred to Elwing that she had made a mistake, coming along with these strange, fair folk, when Eärendil asked her, in a voice of such heartfelt earnestness that she nearly pushed him down and rubbed his face in the mud, if she wanted to meet Ulmo.
“Er,” she said, instead of enacting violence, “I don’t know. I’m not wild about strangers.”
Eärendil, who was not so easily dissuaded once he had set his course, did not laugh. “But he knows you already. It is only your heart that is estranged.”

Elwing, Eärendil, and the gifts of the River.

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Eärendil has found an odd fish. Elwing knows that just because it looks like a fish doesn't mean it is.

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They make mountains upon the beach from sand and pebbles, because all Eärendil’s memories are of cold and pale walls of stone and walking for ever and ever.

When Elwing thinks of home it is dark forests and damp loam beneath her feet and running and stopping and hiding and running again, like rabbits.

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