Archive of Our Own ^beta

On tomorrow’s bright frontiers
I placed the strength and wisdom
of my years.
Not much,
For I am young.
(Was young,
Perhaps it’s better said —
For now I’m dead.)

- Langston Hughes

Elu
Year 503 of the Rising of the Sun
Menegroth, the Thousand Caves of Doriath

With some regret, and altogether too late, Elu realizes that he does not know the name of his killer. 

The honeyed lanterns of the Menelrond grow hazy, the many jeweled leaves and gleaming flowers like stars haloed in strange hues. After ten thousand years and more of life, this instant crystallizes into intolerable slowness, as he stumbles back in the force of the blade in his ribs.

In that moment of clarity, he sees: 

The Silmaril, falling with a pure sound to the floor, ablaze with light amid the golden leaves of Felagund’s necklace. 

A gleam of red on the knife wrenched from his side.

Blue eyes, flashing with realization, in the broad freckled face of the chief jewelsmith of Nogrod, as he steps back from his deadly blow.

As if in libation, hot blood pours onto the stones that had sheltered his people in all the long years since the Lords of the West loosed their Enemy from his shackles. The living years ahead are severed abruptly at the root. And when Elu reaches for the dwarf’s name  — to curse him, to question him, to threaten him away from his prize — he finds he cannot recall it. 

I knew your forefathers, he thinks. They carved the pillars of this hall, laid these stones into the floor.

So brief seemed the years since he had welcomed the ancestors of the Naugrim into his home, taken counsel with them as friends and guests. Vyr, son of Vithi. His daughters Nithi and Nyrath. There were dozens after, generation on generation, the names shifting in sound as their tribes split and frayed between Belegost and Nogrod and smaller settlements besides.

And this one is — this one is —

With a cresting sense of resignation, it escapes him. It’s possible he never learned it; or that it was told to him and forgotten. The jewel-smith is a master, renowned among his people. But there had been so many masons, and so many smiths, and so many griefs to blur the years.

Only now does Elu see, in clarity and color, the stiff-braided beard, the nostrils flared in fear, the faint tremor in the hands wiping a king’s red blood from the belt-knife. The jewelsmith’s face is open and young, his beard not yet streaked with white. He must have been a true talent to reach such prominence at his age. The beauty of what was, perhaps, his finest work is still evident — though it lies now in a spattered heap.

Dimly, as through a mountain’s weight, Elu hears the rallying cry of his guards. Mablung, perhaps, or Nimaras. The company of Naugrim raise their blades for battle — to slaughter their way out, as must now be their fate, or else to be slaughtered. The jewelsmith darts forward and seizes the Silmaril, eyes blazing with sudden resolve.

The Silmaril. 

Even now the thought wrenches at his heart — the jewel she won, the miracle of miracles, at intolerable cost, and the gold-counters of Nogrod will hoard it as a trinket in their treasury — !

But the fleeting sting of madness is ebbing away with each beat of lifeblood that cools upon the earth. He has no strength for fury. When the red-gleaming stone rises to meet him, he does not feel it.

He has seen the beauty of the Trees in full blossom, but Aman’s light was thin and pale compared to that cast by the Silmaril in his daughter’s hand.

You fool, Elu, he thinks. You clung to her jewel because it would stay, and she would not. And now you will not see her again.

In all the long years since Lúthien had claimed her Doom, he had grieved her. And now, while she yet lives on the verdant shores of Tol Galen, he goes to the Halls, and their parting will be irremediable — for she is bound beyond the world, whither the Valar know not, whence she will never return. 

The years do not weigh on him, but the memories are a noose grown ever-tighter around his throat, mired in the depths of his unchanging halls. Here he had watched Lúthien dance as Daeron’s fingers tripped lightly on the harp. Here he had rested Túrin on his knee, here heard the laughter of Dior, bright and carefree as springtime. 

Here he had seen his great-grandsons born. Eluréd and Elurín, named for their forefather and king, Dior said, his eyes bright with pride and fatherly infatuation. You are not alone, my King — we are here with you, to share in all your joys and hardships.

Dior. 

He feels a pang of regret as his eyes drift shut — or his vision, perhaps, fades. 

As short as a breath it seems since the days when Lúthien’s son ran wild and free on the banks of the Adurant, shorter still since he grew to become, like his father, a man of courage and resolve. But this was not how Elu wanted to see his grandson crowned. He would have passed on the throne with an embrace, clasped the Silmaril around Dior’s throat with his own hands.

Now there will be only mourning — too much mourning, in halls already brimming with it. Melian, my love, he thinks. Will you find me again? 

Peredhel
Year 476 of the Rising of the Sun. Summer.
Tol Galen, Isle of the River Adurant in Ossiriand.

It is an evening summer festival on Tol Galen when Dior begins to understand that his mother and father will die. 

The moon is full and the night warm, and he sits nestled in his mother’s lap, drinking water sweetened with honeysuckle from a wooden cup. He is only six years old, and not yet too old for clinging, so he does so with enthusiasm. With less enthusiasm he watches the dancing and tale-telling begin amid the circle of gathered elves, Laegrim hailing from tribes across the riverlands.

As thin notes of harp-song trip into melody, an elf-lass and elf-lad clad in silks and flowers step into the circle to dance. With fingers pinched in vermillion paint, they begin tracing out a story with hands and quick steps. The girl-dancer casts bashful looks at their audience, who let out laughs and sounds of recognition.

Mother leans down and murmurs in his ear. “Do you know this tale?”

“Is it from Beyond-the-Sea? he says, squirming a little.

He loves the acrobatic dances and mummer’s shows that are bright and exciting, the tales of storytellers with fearsome voices for monsters and orc-captains. But the dances are, for the most part, slow and very dull, turning the grown-ups maudlin and wistful by turns. And the tales from Beyond-the-Sea — where, he gathers, a lot of very ill-tempered folk once lived — are the worst of the lot. 

“Can you truly not tell?” She laughs. “Well, I grant your father isn't renowned for his dancing.”

Father, sitting beside them, smiles. “Take pity on me, Tinúviel, and my uncivilized youth. Had I the finest education in the world, I would still fall short as your partner.”

Dior looks between his father — with gray-streaked hair and a kind, weathered face — and the slim Elvish dancer wreathed in silk and flowers and metal bangles, and wrinkles his nose even more, which makes Mother burst into laughter. “It’s papa?” he says, perplexed. 

“And there is your mama,” says Beren, pointing. “See how she dances?”

He regards the Mama-dancer at first with a critical eye. There is a little likeness in her steps, fleet and graceful, dancing with abandon — all the while the comically flower-adorned Papa-dancer follows after in choreographed awe. But he can’t help thinking she ought to be a little more … well, mama. “What are they doing?” 

“They’re telling the story of how your papa won my heart,” whispers Mama. “See, look — that is your grandfather the King, with the ivy crown. He took a great deal of convincing, but your father and I were stubborner yet.”

“Did he really lock you up in a tree?” Dior says dubiously, looking at the dancer as she mournfully combs out her hair. He has seen his mother scale the stickiest of pines with ease; it seems an ill-considered prison. 

“No, love. The tale grows more fantastical in the telling, as most do. He indeed forbade my departure, and had me under guard — but I knew all the winding ways of the Thousand Caves as well as he, or better. I will show them to you if ever we visit.”

As the dance goes on, she murmurs in his ear at times. As king he was called Felagund, but we called him Beloved, and he was dearest to me of all my cousins, she says of one dancer with a headdress of yellow water-lilies blanketing his silver hair. Of the fierce, paint-smeared hunter — whose flashing teeth and red smile Dior had found intriguingly villainous — she says only, He is one of the thrice-doomed sons of Fëanor.

But as the tale goes on she falls silent, hands threading idly through his hair. The dancers whose names she had whispered to him flicker out of the tale one by one — and then the Papa-dancer falls, and goes still, and the Mama-dancer lets out a keening, wordless wail. 

Dior looks up at his mother, wanting her to explain; but her eyes are shining oddly in the lantern-light, and the words don’t quite form. Instead he buries his head in her side, under her dark hair, and waits for the familiar churning sound of her blood and breath to quell the unease in his heart. 

“So the fairest of the Children conquered the shadow of death,” cries the cantor who sings the end of the tale. “So the bravest of the Children moved the lords of the West to pity. And so they walk still, for a time, in the Blessed Isle, until they take the last path of the Secondborn beyond the world.”

Dior does not understand, but he mislikes the queer silence that follows. There is no applause. As the dancers make their bows, many of the elves are weeping openly, and Mama’s eyes are red-rimmed. 

Papa only smiles, a bit melancholy, as he raises a glass of myrtle-wine to the dancers. “A fine tale and well-told,” he says in Sindarin, and then again in slightly less-fluent Silvan, to warm smiles from their hosts. 

Dior’s father does not have the gift of tongues, Mama once said, because he is not one of the Firstborn. The thought troubles him as it had not before. 

There is more dancing after, and more singing, and a great deal more drinking — for as the Laegrim proudly boast, their only craft better-honed than hunting is that of vinting — but Mama and Papa take their leave before sunrise. It is not a long walk back to their little cottage, but Dior tugs on his father’s sleeve mulishly until he sighs and relents, scooping him up with his left arm and settling him on his hip. 

“Has the moon drunk up all your vigor, adaneg?” Papa says, amused. “Day and night you scamper from one end of the isle to the other, and yet you weary of even such a small journey as this. One day you will be too big to be ferried about, and I too frail — will we then need a wheelbarrow to cart you home?”

Dior only presses his face into the familiar folds of his father’s wool cloak, unwilling to raise his head. 

“As I thought, he is overtired,” he hears Papa say to Mama. “I daresay he’ll sleep through sunrise for once.”

“He is as stubborn as his father,” she says with a laugh. “Will you not let me carry him?”

“No, do not trouble. Let us take the even road.”

Then there is no sound but the cicadas and the rhythm of Papa’s boots against the rain-damp earth, the wind in the elm-woods and the wet summer air. Lulled by repetition, Dior feels himself almost nod off more than once — but each time sleep comes to pillow his head, he flinches back to wakefulness in a strange, wordless fear. 

It is almost dawn, and fire catches the horizon in a rosy glow. The stars fade overhead. The isle of Tol Galen is — as it has been in all the years of Dior’s life — sweet with the smell of flowers and damp earth. All things are alive, growing, thriving, as if they had never heard the word winter.

It feels terribly fragile. 

Year 477 of the Rising of the Sun. Summer. Tol Galen.

"Keep the tip up," says Father, tapping the end of Dior's practice baton with his own walking stick. "If it is low, you will not be ready when your opponent strikes.”

The summer rains will not come until afternoon, but the blue sky is swollen with humidity. Dior blinks away sweat as his hair sticks to his face, and his throat feels thick and tight. “It’s heavy.”

“I know it is. But you must find your strength."

It has been some weeks since Dior began to train in the use of a sword. At the start of his seventh summer, Father had led him out into the courtyard of their small home — a square half-shaded by a gnarled tamarind and hemmed in by rough stone walls — and handed him a carved baton with which to practice. 

It is not the first lessoning he has had from his parents, who taught him reading and writing in Sindarin and Taliska and Silvan, as well as scales on the zither and flute. But unlike his other studies, the discipline of battle is imparted solely and systematically by Father. Mother watches their morning practice with a distant expression — and it is strange that father, that most devoted of husbands, persists in the tutelage despite her unease.

Not that Dior had paid it any mind. No, he had only been eager, full of boyish energy and the anticipation of mastery. But when that enthusiasm wears thin against the grindstone of long repetition, sore muscles, and mild but unrelenting corrections in form and footwork — well, he is only a child.

“Why does it matter?” he says, scowling. “It’s not a real sword, anyway.”

“Indeed it is not,” answers Father. “A real sword would be heavier by far. Nor will you be ready to bear a blade until you have learned your basic forms. And have learned —“ Again he taps Dior’s baton with his stick. “— to keep your weapon up.”

His tone is not harsh, only matter-of-fact. But it is too much — all of it is too much. The hot sun and the tiredness of his little arms, the want of water, and the repetition and the bandages wrapped around his fingers.

“I won’t!” he cries in sudden wrath, and flings his baton across the courtyard. “I won’t! I don’t care, I don’t care, I won’t!”

“Dior,” says Father, eyebrows creasing. 

All at once Dior's temper melts into misery. He holds his blistered palm to his chest and sobs in deep, shuddering breaths. 

"Shh. Shh. Little one, shh. You are tired; you are thirsty. Let us rest. There is no need to cry."

No longer a training-master, Father leads Dior over to the old stone bench in the shady side of the courtyard, where the sun is not so stifling, and brings a ladle of well-water. He sits on the bench beside him, until his tears taper off. “There now. That’s not so bad, is it?”

"I h-hate swords,” says Dior, hiccuping. "Can't I shoot a bow instead?"

"You shall learn both, dear heart."

"But I am good with a bow," he protests, looking up. "I shot a mongoose. Almedel says when I am grown I will be strong enough to draw a warrior's bow and hunt antelope and jackals and whatever I like."

 "You shall be a great hunter, I have no doubt. But you shall learn the sword as well."

Dior is a good-natured child, but ill-accustomed to rejection. His lip begins to quaver again. "But why?"

Under the sheltering bower of the old tamarind, Father gazes at a pair of green-feathered parakeets preening each other in the branches. “Tol Galen is a gentle land, but not all the world is so kind. Far from here, in the burning North, there is a Shadow which you have never seen. But I have seen it — it took my mother and father, and many others whom I loved.”

Father’s voice is pitched low, and one hand reaches to touch the iron nail he wears on a pendant around his neck. The northmen wear them to protect from lightning strikes and the wrath of the sky, to give them strength in battle. It is all nonsense and superstition, he says often, but old habits have deep roots. Dior has never seen him without it. 

“Elves do not teach young children to bear arms unless at grave necessity,” Father says now. “But it is different among Men. Our years in the world are short, and our greatest wish is to be outlived by our children. So we impart the knowledge and skill we may, that it may protect them when we cannot — that it will protect you when you are grown.”

"But I’m not!" Dior sits up, reaching out again to seize his father's cloak in his fists. "I’m not grown, not for years and years, and — and I cannot even draw a deer-bow, and —" He bites his lip, then whispers: "And I didn’t really shoot a mongoose. It was only a little red squirrel."

"My brave hunter," Father says. There is a smile on his lips but it is tight at the edges as he smooths a hand over Dior's hair.  “No, not for years and years. But one day. And when that day comes, this is the only gift I can give you as your father. I hope you will accept it."

Say thank you, he remembers his mother telling him, nudging him forward with a hand on his shoulder. You must be gracious when you are given a gift.

He presses his face into his father's shoulder, inhales the smell of leather and wool. He cannot bring himself to say thank you. But he nods, feeling the prick of tears in his eyes. 

Year 478 of the Rising of the Sun. Winter, Tol Galen.

"My vatta would be scandalized at my stitchwork, to be sure," Father says wryly, wrapping the new-stitched cloak around Dior’s shoulders. "But as the winds and the waters bear witness, you look a proper son of Barahir's house."

It is a simple garment of gray wool, adorned around the shoulders and back with madder-red cords in patterns which, Father says, are traditional in the North. The project had been unusually laborious for a one-handed man, but he had not seemed to mind; he had threaded the needle in his mouth and pinched the cloth to make each seam. As the nights grew long and dark, he worked late hours by lamplight until the cloak was done, just in time for Dior’s eighth winter. 

“Do a turn,” Father suggests.

Dior eagerly obliges, spinning on one foot until he grows dizzy and topples into his Father’s arms. Mother laughs as she sets the table with his favorite foods: a platter of fried plantains, morning glory with peppers, tamarind rice, and sweet milk dumplings. 

There is no gift from Mother; Father’s careful observation of dates has always bemused her. She herself lives as one with days uncounted, who need never economize, though each year threads silver in her shining hair. 

But when they have eaten and washed and marked the start of his eighth year under the Sun, she leads him by the hand out to lie on the frost-tipped grass, to trace the path of the stars and name them one by one. 

"The world is boundless in its beauty," she says. “Even when you have learned all the stars by heart, you will never tire of watching them turn.”

She often speaks so: with the certainty that Dior will live in the world until it ends. But tonight it makes him feel cold even through father’s wool cloak. The night sky feels like a ravening void, waiting to swallow him whole. “I don’t want to watch them alone.”

Mother turns her head, silver-dark hair spilling onto the grass. After a moment, she laughs and pokes him in the belly. “Alone? What a thing to say.”

Her laughter is unexpected. It stings his heart, and he sits up sharply, closing his hands into tight fists. 

"But you’re going to leave me one day." He has never said the word before, but now it rises to his lips like a blasphemy. “You and Father are going to die.”

He says it to hurt her. How could it not, when saying it out loud feels like being cracked in two? But Mother only smiles at him, with the same fond amusement with which she had watched him spin himself dizzy before dinner. 

"Of course we will; but we will not leave you alone, not ever," she says. "How could you ever be so? When you go to live in Doriath you will have family near you always: your ememel and adadar, and your cousins and uncles and aunts, and perhaps little ones of your own when you are grown, if you like. The whole world is waiting to love you and be loved by you.”

“I don’t want them. I only want you and Papa.”

“And so you have us,” she says, “and shall always have us, for what is past is not lost. You will always have this night under the stars, and it will never be taken from you; and even now you have many more blissful nights that lie ahead.”

So saying, she bundles him up in her arms  — as if were a baby of four winters and not almost-a-grown-up of eight  —  and peppers his hair in kisses as he wrinkles his nose. Her laughter is clear as a bell, and her hands smell like the tamarinds she peeled for dinner. 

He tries with all his might to press the shape of the night into his mind, and thinks for a moment that he manages it: a bliss so keen and piercing it will never leave him. 

Elwe
Years of the Trees, Beleriand. 

“It is not far to the Sea.”

Finwë’s tone is idle, as he guides his speckled gelding along the riverbank, but his gaze is not. His gray eyes are too bright, his back too straight, and Elwë can tell at a glance that he is in one of his strange moods. He had seen it days ago, the moment the so-called lord of the Tatyar suggested accompanying him on his journey back from the beechwoods.

And this is quite a mood. Whatever preoccupies his friend, it has been simmering slowly for some time, thickening with intent. Now, after hours of riding in silence, he is at last ready to boil over.

“The land there is no less fertile than here,” Finwë continues lightly, as if he cared little. “And we have begun ship-crafting and preserving the harvest. Some have already sailed West.”

“So I had heard,” says Elwë. “I’m surprised you are not among their number. The forges of Aulë beckon, do they not?”

Only a scant span of decades has passed since Finwë and his flock of masons and metalworkers wrenched themselves with great commotion from the rich veins of ore south of the Blue Mountains. It seemed at first they would settle in the beechwoods, but almost at once they had begun to migrate toward the well-established havens at the Near Shore. Now they and their lord are impatient to be gone — as if, having borne the most painful parting of the journey, the East no longer holds any allure for them. 

“I intend to sail as soon as I may,” Finwë says immediately. “Not all the Tatyar may come in one crossing, nor need they. But I will be the first, with my close kin, and we will depart before the growing season ends.”

“In that case,” says Elwë, “Your time is ill-spent on social visits.”

He intends to be provoking and succeeds: Finwë reins in his horse with a scowl. “I could say the same of you. For what purpose do you still wander these woods — what can they offer that is not found tenfold in Oromë’s realm?”

“Proximity, for one. It may mean little to you in your haste, but it makes rather a great difference to my people that they may get on with harvesting grain and rearing children without needing to cross an ocean for the privilege.” 

“Your people.” Finwë pronounces the word as if it is an absurdity. “What do they know, who have not seen the West for themselves? Who will never see it, at this rate. But hanno, you and I know better. You have beheld the wonders that lie beyond the Sea — you know that all this is but a stone in the road.”

“Don’t call me hanno. You only name me your brother when you want to be overbearing.”

“And you only nitpick when you are determined to be stubborn!” Finwë snaps. “I am not Ingwë — I will not urge my people to follow when they are not ready, blind and heedless. But the time for planning and preparation has come and gone. Now is the hour to act.”

Elwë lets out a long, thin breath, checking his temper before he can retort in like manner and make his friend dig in his heels. It is at times like this that he most misses Ingwë. In his absence, dealing with Finwë can be something of a trial. 

As youths the three had been close as brothers, though in all the shadowed lands around Cuiviénen you would have been hard-pressed to find three less alike in appearance or demeanor: Ingwë, fair and ridiculous; Finwë, clever and bull-headed; Elwë tall and silver-haired — and, in his own estimation, by far the most long-suffering. How many ventures had they begun and forgotten, how many plans made and discarded, by those starlit shores? 

But that was centuries ago. Now the Quendi have scattered, and Ingwë has long since sailed into the West, where he is doubtless now amusing himself at the expense of the Valar. And without him, the friendship of the remaining two fell out of balance.

What would Ingwë say now? He cannot imagine. He was never known for his delicacy, and he does not have Ingwë’s knack for finding entertainment in the absurd. 

Instead, Elwë counts to ten in his head twice over, and says evenly: “The Eldar are not trained birds to fly at one command. We are many, and there is much to be done.”

“But for how much longer, O Lord of the Hindmost?” Before Elwë can cast him a withering glare, Finwë raises a hand and continues in a more conciliatory tone. “Yes, though others have titled you less kindly, I say it to you now in concern. Do you truly not know why I have come? Can you not guess why I wait to make my voyage?”

Would that all the world had the surety of Finwë when his heart bids him to act — as if any path, however treacherous, might be made firm by the extent of his feeling.

When his silence draws on, Finwë presses again: “Say you will cross the Sea with me. You are my brother in spirit, though you scold me for saying the word. Málo, then, I name you — my oldest and dearest comrade. Come with me, Elwë.”

His comrade. His brother. As ever, Finwë cleaves to the use of the possessive, gathering around him the things he treasures like a child afraid to lose them. 

Their horses reach a break in the woods, and they both pause in their converse to gaze across the rolling hills. This far from the Light of the Trees, all the world is cast in muted silver and gray. But Elwë recalls what it was to see the world in color — he can never forget it! 

And as Elwë turns to his comrade and brother under the stars, Finwë’s temper takes on a clearer hue. All at once he knows the reason for that anxious impatience — and the answer is so characteristically Finwë that he can’t smother the fondness that rises in his heart. 

“Is Míriel expecting?”

The question startles, then deflates Finwë. “No. Not yet; that is, we are both eager, and her health is better now. But the journey taxes her. I thought perhaps …”

Perhaps. He doesn’t need to finish the sentence for his thoughts to be clear; he turns unconsciously westward in his saddle, toward both his high-spirited wife and the distant shores beyond the sea. It would be better there, he knows — they both know. The light purer, the air gentler, the food and drink more nourishing. A good land to raise children.

“Then go to her, and sail. We will come in time; or I will, at the least. Unless you think I am in danger of seeking culture among the Laiquendi,” Elwë adds with some irony. “Myriad though the charms of Valariandë are, I am of no mind to dwell in unbroken darkness.”

Finwë exhales. His gray eyes catch the stars in an odd facet, luminous and reflective of a radiance far greater, of which all light in Middle-earth is but a wayward spark. With Ingwë gone, there is no one else among all the Eldar whose eyes mirror his. 

“Can I not persuade you?”

“When have you ever?” says Elwë with a snort. “When you see Ingwë, tell him that he is too impatient by half. As for you and me — let us meet again in a brighter place, hanno.”

Absolved of his last tie to the East, Finwë returns westward with the singular momentum of a loosed arrow, his pretense of escort forgotten. It is just as well, for Elwë is in a mood to be alone with his thoughts.

The woods bleed from beech to holly, and then he reaches the river that marks the west border of the Tatyarin forest. He makes the crossing some miles to the north by a glade of redwoods. When he reaches the far bank, he pauses to water and graze his mare, feeling restless. 

It is seeing Finwë, he thinks. Seeing the light of that gray-eyed gaze, akin to his own, dredges up ancient memories of the journey to Valinórë. Again he feels the call westward. Every step toward the riverlands feels like going uphill, swimming against the current, pulling against gravity. 

He can remember it so clearly. How could he forget?

Light. It was not the starlight beloved by the Eldar, but one in whose image he knew at once the stars had been fashioned. In the blossoming of the Trees, all things spilled over with color, and those beings who in the East had appeared fey and fearsome were known to them as the Lords of the West. 

In that radiance, Finwë’s eye was keen and grave, and Ingwë’s beauty brighter and more noble, and they looked to him not as weary travelers or dear friends, but stern and mighty lords. He thought for a moment he did not know them. And he saw the same wonder in their gazes as they beheld him.

“Elwë the tarrier, Elwë the wanderer,” he says now to his horse, as though her mild brown eyes might hold an answer. “How long have I been at cross-purposes — that he, of all people, must talk me around to sense?”

She blinks at him, twitching her tail. 

With a sigh, Elwë takes his bow and knife from the saddle-bags, and tightens his cloak around his shoulders. Then he murmurs a few words in the horse-tongue, and the mare obediently begins making her way southward without him. Olwë will not be concerned when she returns without a rider: Although these lands are unmapped, few are the dangers that pose a true threat to a prepared traveler.

And if he will, let him worry, he thinks, a touch uncharitably. At least until his journey’s end, he intends to be Elwë of Cuiviénen, unburdened and beholden to none; neither as an elder brother nor a lord. 

Once he had been nearly as impatient as Finwë; once he had chafed to return to Aman without delay. But the way to the West was treacherous, and Middle-earth around them overflowed with promise. With the teachings of the Valar they fashioned tools and lanterns and harps, and then there were songs to be composed and lands mapped and ores mined — and, of course lovers to be wed and children raised, amid the many dangers ahead.

Even now, they scatter and splinter. Every day more depart in pursuit of their own aims. Perhaps by the time they sail, only a few will be left. Perhaps Finwë is right, and the hour is come for him to go forward with all that will accompany him, as few or as many as there may be. There will be others to shepherd the Eldar.

Perhaps I too can wait no longer.

He turns back to the path, feeling the calm of a mind at ease. Then he pauses. 

The forest is silent. Caught in his reverie, he had not noticed; but now the lack of bird-song troubles him. At times in crossing the Great Forest, there had been similar silences, and the Lord of the Hunt had counseled them to heed the warnings of the beasts and birds. They have wisdom of their own, and they flee the coming of evil things.

Elwë regrets now sending his horse back. He might call to her, and perhaps she would hear him, but so too might other creatures. Instead he draws his bow and rests an arrow loosely across it, then steps slowly back toward the banks of the river.

Then, as he hesitates on the threshold of indecision, he hears it:

Song — the likes of which he had not known even in the springtime of the Trees.

Aranel
Year 479 of the Rising of the Sun. Spring.
Menegroth, the Thousand Caves of Doriath.

Mablung is the broadest elf Dior has ever seen, though not the tallest; he stands rooted like an oak, bearing a sturdy axe at his hip and bronze-worked bracers around his forearms. But his face is lit with warmth and good humor. 

"Camlost," says the March-warden, swinging his arms around Father in an embrace, then drawing back to bow deeply. "My lady Tinúviel. The Thousand Caves resound with joy at your safe return."

The woods of Doriath, too, feel joyful. Dior tugs at his mother's restraining hand, eager to explore the strange tall trees and bright flowers whose names she told him on the ride from Taur-im-Duinath: holly and prickly ash, clematis and camellia and inkberry. The many-layered melody of songbirds is no less deafening here than in Tol Galen — as if, Dior thinks, they hope to frighten away the last of the melting snow with their racket. 

He has heard about Doriath all his life, and imagined it always as a stage upon which were played out grand narratives by a stoic and stately cast. He could not have been further from the mark: Here, even the air brims with laughter. 

Mother skips forward lightly, her feet scarcely touching the grass, and kisses Mablung on his cheek. "Then they echo the gladness in my own heart; I am delighted to see you again." 

Mablung's scarred face breaks into a beaming smile; then, in one lithe motion, he drops into a crouch that brings him eye-to-eye with Dior. "And you, aranel, must be our little prince Eluchíl. I bid you fair welcome to the realm of Doriath — and the first of many glad days to come."

"Right," says Dior, beaming right back — and then, when Mother nudges him, conscientiously adds: "Thank you very much."

But it is hard to pay mind to manners, and becomes harder still when Mablung begins leading them down the hidden pass to Menegroth. It is the first time Dior has been anywhere west of the Gelion. Save for a handful of festivals and Laegrim caravan-trains, most of his nine years under the Sun have been spent in the quiet courtyard under the tamarind, with a population of three. 

But Menegroth is enormous. And, Mablung says with a chuckle, what they can see is nowhere near the extent of it. 

Though the palace lies beneath the earth, it is just as Mother told him: bright as day immortal and night of stars unclouded. Splashing silver fountains and pools are strewn with plum blossoms, and the air is sweet with the smell of jasmine and osmanthus. They take (what Dior will later realize) is a scenic route to the King's Hall. But so entranced is he by the crystal-lit orchards and gardens and gliding staircases over laughing rills that he doesn't at all notice Mother and Father and Mablung — and indeed, many of the unfamiliar elves they pass — watching his delight with soft expressions. 

And there are so many elves, elves upon elves, Sindar with flaxen-silver hair and Nandor with dark brown and amber curls, all clad in fine vestments that ripple and gleam like water. He can understand their speech, which is like Mother's — and that too is strange, for her accent had always been the oddity at home. 

"You will have much time to explore later," Mablung assures him at last, when he pleads for a closer look at the colorful buntings that flit in a grove of walnut-trees. "As much as you like! But the King and Queen await us, aranel." 

Dior's high spirits waver at the reminder, and he draws closer to his Father. "We could meet them later," he suggests hopefully, studying the ground at his feet. "They must be very, very busy with ... with being in charge of everything, and, erm ... with governance. Surely they wouldn't mind."

Mother laughs. "Ah, what nonsense is that? Of course you must meet them. How can a little lad as brave and brazen as you be so shy with your own adadar and ememel?"

"They wish dearly to see you," Father says, more gently. "You would not deny them, would you?"

Dior chews his lip. But even at nine years old, he knows that when both Father and Mother agree on something, there is no hope of overturning their verdict. But what if they don't like me? What if, when you leave, they decide they don't want me? He swallows those thoughts into his stomach and tries to digest them, but feels a little queasy with it.

The way to the Menelrond is much shorter now that they have postponed their sight-seeing, and Dior averts his eyes from the alcoves where stand tall statues of an antler-crowned king and a queen with eyes of gleaming black onyx. Then they are at the mouth of the Great Hall, and he forgets his reluctance to stare, open-mouthed, at the marvel of stone and metal that rises to meet a leaf-limned sky. 

"Mama, look," he says, turning to tug at her sleeve. "Look at it!"

She is smiling at him, a dimple tucked into the corner of her mouth. "I know. Isn't it wonderful?"

"My Lúthien," says a woman's voice, soft and wisping like the wind. "You came home."

Only then does Dior realize that two figures stand within the hall, both so stately that he might have mistaken them for another pair of statues. On the left is a woman shaped more of shadow than substance, tall and rippling. Beside her, a man whose form is clearer — and taller, reaching up, up, up to a head of shining hair that might as well be drifting among the clouds.

"They are your adadar and ememel," Father murmurs, a prompting hand on his back. "Go, greet them. You have met them before — or your adadar, at the least."

Before he can, Mother is dashing across the floor to throw her arms around the shadowy Queen, a collision of a star against the night sky that feels too radiant to look at directly. But the silver-haired lord takes a step closer to Dior and bends over — although bends seems too small a word for a man so tall. It's more like an avalanche, or a massive tree being felled. And then he is crouched down, his eyes on a level with Dior's.

"Indeed, I recall it well," says his grandfather gravely. "You wrought me a fine crown of chrysanthemums. Do you remember?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head.

"No matter. Perhaps we can craft another."

Dior hasn't made flower crowns since last summer — when he was a baby of only eight — and rather suspects he is too old for it now. But the gray eyes are gentle, and very bright, and not at all teasing, and he finds himself nodding. "We could," he says tentatively, "make some with plum blossoms? It is only — I saw some before, in the orchards. And there won't be chrysanthemums till summer."

Far above the glimmering caverns, the snow in the holly-woods of Region is melting, and the Sun is shepherding all living things to springtime; and far below the sprouting earth, Dior's grandfather smiles, and he is not so frightening after all. "That," he says, "is a fine idea."

Greymantle
Year 470 of the Rising of the Sun.
Tol Galen, Ossiriand. Late Autumn. 

Beren and Lúthien walk together under the elm leaves in the woods beside their little stone courtyard by the banks of the Adurant. She rests one hand on the curve of her loose linen dress, and he gazes at her with love brimming over. They are beautiful together, and the sight makes Thingol's heart ache. 

No, he would not always have said so. He recalls with clarity his wrath the day the son of Barahir asked for her hand. Brazen and insolent, he had seemed then, his eyes clear with hope. This boy — alive for a bare handful of decades — ignorant of the suffering of centuries. His face weathered and rough, clothing frayed and faded by long wear: an urchin clutching a peerless diamond in his grubby hand with no notion of its worth.

It was fury colored by foreboding, the knowledge that Beren did not know what he was asking for — and if he did know, none had ever sought to do so much harm with so little shame. To abandon all duty and consequence for a moment of fleeting bliss, and to condemn her, ageless and deathless, to the same — ! 

Indeed the son of Barahir had seemed unbeautiful then. 

But now he is cast in a different light, as he had been from the moment he lifted his right hand from the folds of his cloak and showed it empty. Then too had he looked at Thingol without regret, without grievance. And in Lúthien's eyes — in his daughter's eyes — he had seen love unrelenting. 

Perhaps, Thingol thinks, it was he who was unworthy of such a son-in-law. 

Here in Tol Galen, a guest in a humble home, he feels keenly the weight of his past failings. If Beren and Lúthien do not reproach him for it, he reproaches himself all the more harshly. Indeed he does not think he could have faced them if it were not for the message Lúthien had sent north on the eve of midsummer: Ada, your grandchild will be born in autumn. Won't you come? 

In the end he had come only because Melian could not, bound to her keep as she was. She had not begrudged him the chance to see their only grandchild; she said only, he will come to Doriath in time. How she guessed that Lúthien would bear a son was known only to herself. 

So he had departed Doriath. A strange feeling to lay down the mantle of a king and become once again Elu the traveler. Stranger still to be welcomed into the little cottage with flower-tea and fresh fruit by his son and daughter, as if they had long awaited him. 

Dior is born a week later, at the crux of day and night, and the world is painted in crimson. 

Splashes of color run gloriously over the horizon and hills under the setting sun. Blood pools in the sheets as Lúthien strains — as the finest healers of Ossiriand and others come afar from Doriath labor to ease her toils. Beren is at her side, murmuring constant, inaudible words under his breath. Thingol cannot bring himself to do the same. 

Rarely is the act of bringing forth life so difficult for the daughters of the Firstborn, but — as minstrels would sing from now until the world's breaking — she, first and only among her people, had seized the Gift of Ilúvatar for herself.

Now she clutches that gift, cradling her squalling son to her sweaty breast. The worst, the unthinkable, is averted, and fear gives way to joy. Beren weeps. Thingol weeps. Lúthien smiles so brightly in the deepening night that she seems a star unto herself. 

"Dior he will be named," she says to him; meaning successor. "For though your daughter forsook you, Ada, a son still lives of the house of Elu. You will be a comfort to each other — that though he be fatherless and motherless, and you childless, you shall not be bereft of kin."

Thingol had thought, upon seeing his grandson, that nothing in the world could compel him tear his eyes away from that small, pinched face, the tiny fists, the damp skin — but at these words he looks to his daughter. "You speak as one certain," he says. "Will he not share in the birthright of Men?"

"I do not know," she says. "It only came to me now, and perhaps it is only a thought; perhaps more. He will be the fairest of all the children of the world, thrice-blessed; he will be granted every gift save one."

Beren presses a kiss to his wife's brow, looking troubled. "I do not doubt your foresight, my love," he says. "But even the gods cannot see all ends."

Year 474 of the Rising of the Sun. Late summer. Tol Galen.

Dior grows by leaps and bounds, and (Lúthien informs Thingol) swiftly becomes a little terror. He cannot be kept still for long; no sooner can he walk than he can run, and dance, and tumble along the banks of the Adurant with abandon — at which Lúthien laughs, and Beren despairs. Against all odds, he does not break his neck or wash away in the rain-gorged river: He survives to his fourth summer, when Thingol returns to Tol Galen.

Having read and reread every one of his daughter's letters, Thingol is prepared to be greeted by the grandson she has described to him: a half-wild and much-loved child of Ossiriand, with all the energy of an untamed colt. 

So it is with some surprise that he instead finds Dior a quiet boy — half-hidden behind his mother's skirt, watching him timidly with wide eyes. 

"Am I so frightening?" he says, crouching down to the boy's level and extending a coaxing hand. "There is no need to hide; I am your adadar."

"Be careful," says Beren quickly.

But the warning comes too late. Thingol lets out an involuntary cry as the boy chomps down hard on his proffered hand, biting deep enough to draw blood with sharp child's teeth, and refuses to let go. 

"No," says Lúthien, caught between amusement and exasperation. In the motion of someone who has done it a dozen times over, she catches Dior by the collar and gently prizes his little jaws open. "No biting. Biting is for hounds and wild things. You are neither, and must behave yourself."

Dior blinks at her as she taps him on the nose — a scruffed kitten caught in mischief, all innocence again. 

"Sorry," he says at her stern look.

"And?"

"Won't do it again."

He does not sound as repentant as he might, but it is all Thingol can do not to laugh as the boy shuffles his feet. "Very well," he says gravely. "Then I, in turn, give you my word that I will not bite you."

Beren makes a choked noise. Dior scrutinizes Thingol sagely, and then, after a moment of consideration, nods in acceptance of the ceasefire. 

"Can we look for snails?" he says then. 

Dior has his mother and father's gift with wild things. Stray cats trail after him in the little stone courtyard, and when his grandfather follows him obediently into the elm-woods, they are greeted by a herd of deer, who gather around the boy as a long-missed friend. They sniff the newcomer Thingol curiously before darting away in a flash of white tails.

It develops that the requested snails are intended to be dinner for a one-legged thrush Dior is nursing back to health. Thingol cannot recall if he has ever gone snail-hunting, even in his childhood on the banks of Cuiviénen, but — as he dutifully overturns leaves and checks under stones at Dior's instruction — he feels that he has never enjoyed a pastime more thoroughly. 

They have only found a handful when Dior's attention is diverted utterly and immediately by a patch of blooming chrysanthemums. Nothing will do for him then but a crown, made to the most exacting standards — No, like Papa makes them! Like this! — and Thingol finds himself twisting stems and stripping leaves late into the sun-drenched afternoon. 

And you will be a comfort to each other, Lúthien had said. That though he be fatherless and motherless, and you childless, you will not be bereft of kin. 

"Dior," he says, to the boy who lies snuggled against his lap, having long since succumbed to sleepiness in the warmth of summer. "Would you like to come live with me and your ememel in Doriath, one day?"

The boy stirs, upsetting the crown balanced on his dark hair; it falls into his eyes and makes him sneeze. "Mm. Are there flowers there? Can we make more crowns?"

"As many as you like," says Thingol, righting the little circlet. "Dior Eluchíl shall you be named; and one day perhaps I shall even give you my crown, when you are grown enough to carry it."

[[Art by Southaway]]

Eluchíl
Year 503 of the Rising of the Sun. Menegroth. Autumn.

The halls of Menegroth echo with song. It is the tradition of the Iathrim to hold vigil with music after a great loss, and though it has now been weeks since the Menelrond was stained with blood, still the Thousand Caves reverberate with the death of her king. 

“Emig, music!” chirps Eluréd, tugging Nimloth’s sleeve. She hushes him gently, a hand on his curls: I know, love, I hear it.

Elurín is in Dior’s arms, having tired quickly even on the gentle walk from the pass. Perhaps, like his father, he can feel the weight of sorrow in the air, thickening with each step they take below the earth. 

“Eluchíl, my king.”

The look of abject relief Dior receives from the March-warden at the gate is the first blow; the second is the name Eluchíl, which hangs on his shoulders as a too-heavy mantle. He nods, handing Elurín to one of the familiar palace attendants, as Nimloth takes another aside to instruct her on the boys’ naps and Elwing’s feeding, then straightens. “Nimaras. How fares the court?”

"It is … in some disarray,” admits the warden, bowing as he takes the lead down the hall. “Glad indeed are we at your coming.”

He can see that much for himself. The corridors are dark, many of the lamps unlit. They are rationing fuel. The orchards that once grew under sun-crystals are untended and overgrown, and the fountains and pools bereft of their fragrant petals. The courtiers and servants they pass in the hall look to Dior with upturned faces, brimming over with hope.

"We had few contingencies for such a loss," Nimaras continues. His voice is low, conscious of their audience straining to overhear. "For now the authority of the marchwardens rests with me, and the affairs of Menegroth chiefly with the lord of Arthórien. But direction is sorely needed."

"None could have foreseen it," Dior says. "Save the Queen, and perhaps even she could not have prevented it. But we will do all we can."

Nimloth walks at his side, meeting the eyes of all they pass with confidence and a queenly smile. Dior knows he should do the same; he tries, but his heart is not in it. 

When they step into the Menelrond he cannot help but halt — the lords and ladies of the court and the marchwardens are there assembled, and they fall silent at his arrival. Hungry eyes fix on him, like vultures, and his foot drags. The distance to the great throne seems to stretch on and on. Branches bare of nightingales hang over the seat like a stormcloud. 

"Hail Eluchíl, King of Doriath," Nimaras is saying, covering for his hesitation. As the lords rise and murmur, he casts a sharp-eyed look back and spreads a hand. “Hail Nimloth the Queen!”

The name pulls him forward, a recalcitrant horse dragged by the reins. He settles on the throne.

There is no time for a formal coronation, no store of joy with which to lay a feast. They are in mourning. They need a leader. He accepts the king's mantle numbly, hears the lords call his name, echoing in the empty hall, as the music of mourning continues unbroken. When he draws the gray cloak around him, it feels not at all warm. 

"How stand our defenses?"

"The girdle has fallen, and the march-wardens are overrun on many fronts," Nimaras says crisply. "The remnants of the Halethrim report ever-greater incursions into Brethil, and our messengers do not return. Those in Arthórien, as you know, have retreated to Menegroth. We can expect no aid from the south; the road has not been safe since Nargothrond fell.”

"Nor can we expect aid on any front," comments Ealgas, lord of Arthórien, an uncle of Nimloth. "Círdan minds now his own borders in the Falas — and if no roads reach the south, still less do they reach the High King of the Exiles. He heeds no plea from outsiders."

"And yet allies remain in the East," says Nimaras, leaning forward with one hand on the haft of his axe — casting a half-apologetic glance toward Dior. "There is still strength among the Golodhrim, and a great force of defenders."

"Defenders of their own lands only! Or have you forgotten who usurped the throne of Nargothrond, and whose treachery cost the victory at the Unnumbered Tears?"

"Nay, do not preach to me of losses — for who witnessed them? Brave Mablung and Cúthalion, both lost in service to the Crown — while all here cowered in the Queen's girdle!"

“Mablung, perhaps, but Beleg — “

"The son of Lúthien will not yield his kingship to the usurpers from the West —"

"Círdan may yet —"

"If Nargothrond yet stood, but we cannot rely on —"

"— who save Felagund has been faithful — "

"— if we but sent word to the lady Galadriel —"

"We are alone," says Dior. 

The room falls silent. 

"We are alone," he repeats, an anchor they all must accept. "In these dark days even the bonds of friendship are sorely tested, and we cannot alleviate our danger by wishing the world otherwise. We must rely on ourselves, and our allies in Ossiriand. We cannot act in anticipation of further aid."

He takes a breath. They watch him, a room of grave eyes in the faces of lords who have dwelt here for millennia. "We must prepare for siege, for we cannot hope that the Enemy's assault will long be deterred. The lands we once defended cannot be held by our current strength, and some will be overrun. But Menegroth will not fall as long as its people remain."

"Indeed," says Ealgas, standing. He is the tallest elf in the room, and all eyes turn to him as he crosses the hall. When he reaches the throne he kneels, takes Dior's hand in his, and kisses the knuckle. "Here the hope of Doriath lives on. As I swore fealty to your forefather, so too I give you my oath to defend these lands from outsiders unto the direst end."

Dior regards him without energy. Scarcely an hour in Doriath and already he is weary of politicking. But he knows his duty — as indeed he must know it, from now until death finds him, and perhaps after. 

“Great is your oath, O Lord of Arthórien; and much need shall we have of you and yours ere long,” he says. “But for now, we must prepare. Nimloth will undertake the command of Menegroth; and Ealgas shall counsel her; the leadership of the marchwardens I entrust to Nimaras.”

He divides, and delegates, and he hopes it is a substitute for the wisdom of a king. He does his duty, as best he can. He fears it isn’t enough. 

Year 503 of the Rising of the Sun. Menegroth. Winter.

"Sire, a messenger from the East."

It is Almedel, one of the swiftest hunters from the Gelion-tribe of the Laegrim, who had taught him the bow in his youth. As Dior walks into the room, the dark-haired elf is draining a goblet of water in a single breath, flanks heaving like a horse, tunic soaked through with sweat. He must have ridden through the day without pause to arrive before dusk.

When he sees Dior, he falls to his knees. “My king.”

"My friend, there's no need. Please, sit; you are weary.” Hurriedly he takes Almedel by the elbow and steers him to one of the council seats. Waving an attendant over, he offers wine, fruit — but Almedel will take neither. "What message brings you to Doriath in such a state?"

"The most sorrowful I have ever been tasked to bear.”

Beneath his cloak he draws out a small bundle of cloth, no larger than Dior's hand, bound and wrapped tightly. 

Even before Dior reaches out to take it, he knows. Dark spots form on the fabric as he gazes down, and then more, as his tears fall freely. His hands falter, unwilling to obey. As long as the bundle remains only a bundle, he can remain a son.

"Sire," says Almedel, very gentle. "Dior, lad."

No. Dior, lad was the boy who ran amok beside the Adurant. Dior, lad was the son of Beren Camlost and Tinúviel the Nightingale. Dior, lad will die today. 

But if even a trace of his parents survives in him — a drop of his father's endurance, a spark of his mother's courage — he will master himself. He will be equal to this grief. He must. He is Elu’s heir. 

Dior looses the ties with one pull and blinks through swimming vision at the dazzling, pure, faultless light of the Silmaril. 

"There was no vision more beautiful than Tinúviel so adorned," says Almedel, low and reverent. "Even in their passing their bliss was bright enough to move the gods — too bright for this marred world. She belonged to the last theme of the Allfather, and not our flawed melody."

And now her song will not be heard again.

He shall have every gift save one, Lúthien had foretold at his birth. It is the only gift I can give, Beren had told him under the bower of the old courtyard. Their last gift shines strangely in his hand, a shard of the light of things beautiful and lost. 

Is this what the strength of his forefathers is reduced to? All that Barahir the Bold and Emeldir Manhearted fought for and suffered; all that Melian and Elu Thingol created and achieved; the single tear’s worth of pity that his mother and father wrenched from the immovable hearts of the gods? 

One orphaned king and one peerless jewel.

He should speak to Almedel. Should thank him. Should acknowledge their shared grief. But he cannot look at him — cannot bear to see a beloved face that conjures memories of verdant days on the Gelion, of arming for battle, of summer festivals, of stringing bows, of the little stone-wrought courtyard.

Menegroth sways around Dior as he paces through her halls, and then breaks into a run, racing full-force until his chest aches for air, and bursts into a candlelit chamber where — he realizes a moment too late — Nimloth has just finished coaxing the children to sleep. 

Elwing begins to cry, and then Eluréd and Elurín are both rubbing their eyes, and Nimloth turns to him with a look of true exasperation (for she has slept as little of late as he) and sees him there, disheveled and sweaty, eyes swollen, face wet, with a Silmaril in his hand. Realization kindles to grief.

“Lúthien,” she says, or tries; but her voice does not reach the end of the word. It turns to a whisper and then a sharp inhale, and then another, and becomes a wracking sob. Lúthien had been her family too.

But Eluréd and Elurín are awake enough to be alarmed at their mother’s weeping, and the air fills with a shrill harmony of wailing children. Nimloth bundles up her eldest, pressing kisses into the curly crown of Eluréd’s hair, and she falls to the floor where she can more easily pull Elurín into her lap. Dior has Elwing in his arms, her little face scrunched and dark with the effort of crying. The Silmaril pillows her head and shines through her dark cloud of baby-fine hair. He hadn’t had time to put it down. 

The thought strikes him as absurd, almost laughable. Where would he put it, his mother and father’s tombstone — in Elwing’s cradle? On Nimloth’s dressing-table? 

There are guards at the door to check on the disturbance, and attendants wavering with wide eyes on the threshold, unsure if they are wanted. Because he is not a mourning son, nor a weary father only, but the king of Doriath. He breathes deeply, masters his voice. 

“It is well. Only —“ Another breath, another attempt. "It is well. Thank you; you all may go.”

The attendants bow, and he does not watch them go — does not want to see what expressions they wear. The guards too salute and scatter. Before the last can depart, however, Dior calls out to him. 

“Sire?” says the head of his guard. His voice too is rough; he too had known Lúthien, and (by transitive property) had loved her. 

Elwing is warm in his arms, her face pressed into his shoulder and a dribble of drool soaking into his cloak. Even now he looks at her and remembers the night she was born, when starlight danced in the Lanthir Lamath, the mingling of water and air. 

“My children,” he says. “My children. They must live.” 

“It is my honor and duty to protect them, sire.” 

“No,” he says, brushing a thumb over Elwing’s face as she whimpers. “Your duty is to Doriath. But they are Doriath. Should the realm fall, the caves burn, the Shadow devour us all — it matters not. They must live. They must. Promise me."

The Hidden King
Year 499 of the Rising of the Sun. Menegroth. Summer.
Four years after the fall of Nargothrond.

“You must eat," says Melian.

She can say it, Thingol knows, only because she does not need to eat. She is no less afflicted than he by the grief that hangs heavy in the halls, although — he thinks now — she must have foreseen it. She must have known that from the moment their son left Menegroth, there would be no returning for him or any who went with him. What sorrows does she foresee even now? He does not dare ask.

Morwen, he thinks. Húrin. I tried to protect him. 

Túrin, who had looked so like Lúthien he might have been her brother by birth: his dark hair falling in loose curls, his eyes bright and face clear. Only the set of their shoulders had been different, for Lúthien walked as though weightless, and Túrin had marched as though bearing a mountain on his back and refusing to drop even a pebble. He had been stubborn, angry, compassionate and proud. 

It feels as though Thingol could find him again, if he could but reach back into the folds of his memory. 

"You must rest, my king," says Mablung, face creased in worry; and when he blinks it seems as though much time has passed. 

Once he had lost himself in that way to love: The stars had turned above in bright pinwheels and he recked it not, so consumed was he in bliss. He had forgotten Ingwë and Finwë awaiting him in Valinor; had forgotten Olwë expecting him at home, and Elmo who — he ought to have known even then — would forsake the West to find him.

Now he is mired in weariness. He finds himself sitting in the silent Menelrond, where the lamps are dim and no nightingales sing. The Silmaril is in his hands. When had that happened? Its touch on his skin warms him, eases him. It feels as though he can escape to a happier time, when he was young and walked beneath the Trees with his brothers-in-spirit — all of them little more than overgrown children.

When he presses the jewel to his lips he feels Lúthien's soft hair under his kiss. When he rests with it in his lap he feels at ease, as he once did when Daeron played soft flute melodies to lull him to sleep. It is as bright as Melian's gaze; it casts the world in the colors of gentler days.

"Adadar," says Dior. "You look tired."

Thingol startles, his hand curling on reflex around the stone, and looks up. 

As ever when he looks at Dior, it is as though seeing a series of images superimposed in his mind: Dior at four, round-cheeked; Dior at eight, dark-eyed and watchful; Dior at fifteen, coltish and confident; Dior as he was last in Menegroth as a young man of twenty-five, shoulders grown broad and steady as he took the hand of Nimloth with Thingol's blessing. 

Now Dior is — he cannot remember for a moment — he is —

"You have grown. How old are you now?"

"Twenty-nine, adadar." Dior steps forward and cups his hands around Thingol's own, which still hold the Silmaril in loose fingers. For a moment he feels a pang of distress at the idea that it might be taken from him — but that is foolish. This is Dior. His hands alone are warmer than any stone.

"You have come into your adulthood so soon." As quickly as Túrin, as quickly as your father. As quickly as Lúthien has come into old age. "Some days I look at you and fear ..."

"I am here; do not worry," says Dior, pressing his hands more tightly. "Nimloth and I are come from Tol Galen to offer what comfort we may. I am only sorry that Mother and Father could not join me; Father lacks the strength for long travel in winter."

"Winter," he echoes. Túrin had died at the end of summer. But was it this summer or last? Felagund had … no, that was many years ago, when Lúthien was still young. When he had believed she would never grow old. How long has it been since Nargothrond fell? 

Beleriand was once peaceful. He remembers still the long years when the Enemy was yet chained in Mandos, when all the dangers they needed fear were wild beasts and the petty sorcery of the lordless Sauron. Now death awaits them at every end — from foul dragons and balrogs and orcs, from deceptions and treachery of Men and Elves — and what hope is there of outlasting?

Dior seems to know that his thoughts are wandering. "You must be weary too," he says. "Take comfort. You know Nimloth is practiced in managing palace affairs; and although I know little it will be enough to get by. In the meanwhile, you must rest. Won’t you come with me into the garden?"

It feels an overwhelming effort to stand at his grandson's beckoning. As if he must summon his spirit back into his body, where it has long been absent, and relearn the muscles and sinews before they consent to shift at his will. He breathes, and his lungs taste clean air. "The garden," he says. "Yes. I think ... I would like to see the Sun."

The Sun, for all its marvels, is not so beautiful as the Silmaril. That cannot be helped; for while Arien's flame is a peerless fruit of Laurelin, the light it casts is no more or less than sunlight, and cannot be compared to the luminescence of the flowering Trees. 

But it is warm, and steady, and it has been perhaps too long since he admired it. 

Time, so long contracted, begins to dilate once more: Weeks turn to days turn to hours, and in slow steps Thingol returns to himself, putting together the scattered fragments of his mind. It had yielded to the weight of grief — too many griefs — all reaching the same shatterpoint at once. Now he allows himself to feel the heartbreak that threatened to swallow him whole, and finds himself bearing the unbearable.

Dior is the cane upon which he leans in his frailty. In council-meetings Thingol sits and listens to his grandson and granddaughter discussing reports from Mablung, making polite overtures to Nimloth’s kin in Arthórien, at times dancing in the Menelrond as music creeps back into the hollowed bones of the palace.

Watching them, he feels — as he did when Beren and Lúthien walked under the elms — a doom that cannot be withstood. No more than one can withstand the turning of the years, or catch winter before it becomes spring.

Dior knows little of governance or politics, but the surety with which he approaches the task does much to endear him to the courtiers. Nimloth, whose belly rounds more with child by the day, is every inch a queen, fluent in the language of the court after centuries serving as Melian’s handmaiden. 

Snow lies heavy over the silent hills when his first grandchild is born.

Children, rather — two boys, dark-eyed and curly-haired even as newborns, so small Thingol could cradle them in one hand, if he dared. Eluréd and Elurín, for their forefather and king, Dior told him, and he had wept for the first time since news came of Túrin’s death.

“Ememel told me there would be twins, but I didn’t dare believe her,” says Dior, beaming widely enough to break his jaw. “Twins, adadar! They will be the brightest stars in the sky of Doriath. Eluréd will be a musician, I think — listen to him cry, such lungs!”

Words fail in Thingol’s throat. No healing will he find in this world for the loss of his daughter. But he feels as keenly, as surely, that there is no sacrifice too great for the soft, gurgling, precious lives that his grandson brought into the world. 

“When you were born, I visited Tol Galen,” he says to Dior softly. “Did you know?”

“I had heard it, I think. I’m sorry, I cannot remember.”

“I wanted nothing more to hold you in my arms. Day and night, I would have lain awake to hold you and sing to you — if your mother would have let me. ‘Ada,’ she said, ‘You may sing him to sleep until the world’s breaking, if you like, but let Beren have a turn to hold him.’ I was perhaps overbearing,” he admits. “As you shall soon learn, I fear.”

Nimloth laughs. “Then we are lucky indeed that we are blessed with twins — I do not doubt we shall want for extra hands.”

“Fear not, Adadar,” Dior adds. “Nimloth and I shall conspire to have as many as we can manage, until Doriath is full of running noses and pattering feet and sleepless nursemaids — and no kingdom in Middle-earth shall be happier.”

Thingol settles into the thought like a dream so lovely he wants to grasp it anew, letting the image play in his mind until it feels real enough to touch. Yes, let that be the future of Doriath. Let winter end; let us have spring.

Dior
Year 506 of the Rising of the Sun. Menegroth. Autumn.
The Sack of Doriath.

The setting sun is a rotting flower, dropping its petals on the burnished autumn woods of Doriath. Behind Dior, the halls of the Thousand Caves spill over with blood; like rabbits routed from a warren, some slain by the weasel and others scattered by the dogs to be feasted upon by birds. 

Dior wrenches his blade from the throat of Celegorm and, in almost the same movement, collapses. 

Nimloth. She lies there still — too still — and though he knows it is too late he tries in vain to claw his way to her side. He had seen her fall with an arrow through her heart, had seen the axe fall from her hand, felt her spirit tremble, like a leaf in the wind, and then fade.

There is no sound in all the Thousand Caves. 

There had been music, once, and joy — scarred Mablung ruffling his hair, Mother dancing, courtiers chuckling, all ensconced in the Song of Melian, in her halls of silver beeches where opaline leaves lay strewn. In all Beleriand this place had been safe and hallowed ere ever the Sun and Moon rose.

And in three short years it had fallen at the feet of Dior Eluchíl, heir to the king. 

He has no strength to rise. There is no one to whom he can turn, his guard slaughtered in his defense. No one whom he can ask, are my children safe? When the horns began blowing at the gates, he was with Elwing — she was sitting on his knee, playing irregular, plunking notes on her older brother’s lute.

Perhaps it was the Mannish blood in him that instilled in him a natural expectation of the End, but when he felt the fall of Doriath arrive, it was not a surprise. Some part of him had long expected it. Nimloth shared his fear, but not his foreboding — she had grown up in the Thousand Caves since childhood; they were to her a hallowed sanctuary. 

But Dior had felt it, the tide drawing to its zenith. 

I will not live to see this kingdom die, he had vowed, as the Men of his father’s house once made oaths on the spirits of their ancestors. He had felt his shoulders straighten and his body fill with fierce strength — he had always been more of a warrior than a king. He would defend Doriath for Mother, for Father, gone now from the world. For the grandfather whose hand, at the end, had felt thin and faded as he rested it on Dior’s shoulder.

He had wrapped his cloak around Elwing and tied it close at the neck, hiding the light of the Jewel, and bid her flee. Nimloth he had begged, pleaded, ordered to go with her — but she had refused with a flash in her eyes, resting a hand on the axe at her hip. “I am not your subject, but your Queen,” she said. “And when Doriath falls, so too shall I.”

And so she had.

But the children — the children were safe. They had to be safe. They were safe. 

He gazes with wavering vision at the corpse of Celegorm. Even as a man grown Dior hears the name and thinks first of the summer pantomimes he watched as a child: The dancer playing the fair-haired son of Fëanor wore always a mantle of furs and fangs, his eyes smeared with dark paint that made the whites of his eyes flash in the moonlight. 

It was only natural for the tale's villain to look the part. How else could one know him as Celegorm the Cruel, who had usurped the throne of Felagund and imprisoned Tinúviel the Nightingale, driven to murderous rage by his lust and greed for power? 

But the elf who had killed Dior's wife wore only practical armor and a wool cloak, his hair braided back tightly under a steel helm. He had died on his knees, grinning with a mouthful of blood as he dug a knife between Dior's ribs, and in his pale eyes there had shone the Light of the West.

Celegorm had died with his brother's body cooling at his back. 

What did we know of one another, thinks Dior, that we have brought each other to ruin?

He feels his strength leaving him and falls to his knees. Too late, he tries to crawl to Nimloth's side, to cradle her body in his arms and rest together. But in this, too, he fails — and only a moment later, there is darkness. 

The whole world is waiting to love and be loved by you, he hears Mother telling him. You will never be alone, not ever. 

For a breathless moment he wishes. Not to return to the West. Not to heed the gentle call. But to be extinguished utterly — to leave the world entire — and feel her hand in his hair one more time. Surely it cannot be right. He cannot be meant to live longer. How could anyone bear that burden? He is only thirty-six and already he feels he feels far too old.

He wavers. His fëa, unbreakable and undying, grows fragile — as torn between two opposing and inexorable gravities — as a mist that might vanish in the morning light. 

You are a husband now, and will soon have children of your own, Father's voice returns to him, as he spoke when he pressed Dior and Nimloth's joined hands in his own. Now you will understand what it is to protect and cherish — and to be a father not as I have been to you, but in the manner of Elves, who need never fear true parting.

He had planned to sew red-corded cloaks for Eluréd and Elurín when they reached their eighth winter. Now he wishes he had done it sooner. Red for protection. Nothing more than an old wives' tale from the north. He thinks of them, thinks of Elwing, of Nimloth, of Mablung and Almedel; of Ememel and Adadar; and feels all at once the opposing calls resolve into one. 

There in a timeless breath he feels a sensation like flickering candleflame, but without heat. It feels also, curiously, like the touch of warm hands. 

"Father?" 

"Dior," says a voice not his father’s. It is soundless, but sings with the most wrenching music he has ever heard: untroubled and clear, ancient and young, and so painfully familiar he turns toward it without thinking. 

"Adadar.”

If his grandfather had been tall for an elf, his fëa cannot be compared. It is an ocean of warmth and music and thought. It envelops him in something like an embrace. 

"I failed," is the first thing that he finds himself saying, and another part of him is saying it over and over and over in a thousandfold harmony: I failed, I failed, I failed. Failed as a king, as a father, as a grandson. "Doriath is fallen. My children — my babies — I failed you."

"Never,” says his grandfather. “Never.”

Epilogue: Successor
Aman. The Third Age.

Elwing's tower is far to the north, the Lindar tell him, where she might await the coming and going of her husband the Morning Star. It is by the sea, they tell him, for she is beloved of the Lord of the Waters. She dwells there alone, they tell him, and don't say why; only he can guess by the troubled glances they share between them. 

She carries many burdens, had said Eärwen, but if any can understand them, cousin, it is you. 

Elwing is a mother. Dior is a grandfather. His eldest grandson, who might have sat on his lap and called him adadar, who might have woven him chrysanthemum crowns and gone snail-hunting, is dead. He died hundreds of years ago. He was a young king, a great king, a brave king — and now a dead king. 

Elrond lives still, it is said, Eärwen had told him, as if it might be a comfort. 

Perhaps it is. Perhaps if he drew out the genealogy, charted the line of his loves, he could capture every trace of Mother and Father that still shines in Arda, refracted into his far-away grandson and far-away great-grandsons and great-granddaughter, into a thousand and more sons and daughters of Men. Perhaps then he might grasp peace. 

As he approaches the tower he sees first the flocks of seagulls, white and so plentiful the sloped dunes look blanketed in snow. They see him too, and take to the air in a deafening racket. A-ran, a-ran! sings one to the other in a discordant tenor, and his fellow replies: A-king, a-king! 

There too are sandpipers, egrets, herons and terns, and many more intriguingly strange compositions of feather and wing he has never seen. He does not know whether they dwell in Valinor merely because it is a land where all manner of creatures thrive (save one); or because the Lady of the Wilds has contrived more to fill the passing millennia. He watches with interest as they flutter their wings and skitter around him in broad, offended arcs. 

The tower is quite small, only a little larger than a lighthouse; an osprey's nest perched atop a lonely dead tree. He knocks on the door.

Elwing answers. She answers; but she is not his Elwing. 

A tall woman stands on the threshold, barefoot, in a loose linen dress that must be far too cold on the north-facing coast. She looks not very much like him, and not at all like Nimloth, and strikingly, unnervingly like Mother. She does not speak, but neither does she appear surprised.

She carries many burdens, Eärwen said. 

The woman on the threshold is old, although she does not look it. She is lifetimes older than he has ever been. And he knows in that moment that his daughter, his star-spray, the three-year-old Elwing who drooled into his shoulder and sang lisping nonsense songs about geese and bats, did not survive the fall of Doriath.

"I'm sorry," he says. “I didn’t mean to — to disturb you.”

She looks at him, closely and searchingly: studying, memorizing details, discovering symmetries. (The same way, he suspects, he has been studying her.) At length she turns and says, “Come in.”

“Elwing, I —“

“Come in,” she says, more firmly, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder. “Do not ask for my reproach, Ada; nor my forgiveness. If this tower had space for such things, it would overflow with them. Come in. Come in. We have lost enough years between us. Come in.”

He goes.