This set received second place in MEFA 2010 (Times: First Age and Prior: Mixed Drabbles).

There had been a time...

... when twilight stretched endless, stars spattered in milky array across an eternal night. He remembered the brilliance of Wilwarin's wings and Menelmacar's belt shining and Valacirca swinging sickle-edged, a northern warning. White in the grass beneath Eglador's grey branches bloomed the night-flower niphredil, springing up under Lúthien's feet.

Fishing for starlight in the Esgalduin's shimmering depths. He remembered that too.

And now –

– the stars faded nightly into glimmering pinpricks, extinguished by day –

Below rushed the Bruinen, foam-flecked in the summer sun. "I preferred twilight," admitted Erestor. "Melinna laughs at me. But now everything is illuminated."

"Those hairpins? The Dwarves made them for us long ago."

... before Doriath's fall or Thingol's death, before the Sun's flaming birth and the fiery day, before the sculpting of Menegroth's stone forests beyond the Esgalduin. An island washed by warm, shallow waters had harboured the ships of the Falathrim. They had chased starlight through the glassy waves and dried themselves, salt-glittering and singing, on twilit beaches. Returning to the Sindar, they carried with them Círdan's gift, a treasure-chest to pay for Thingol's subterranean city. Their own pockets had been crammed with pearls, a wealth of beauty stolen from the sea.

"Once we went north, chasing the swing of the Sickle of the Valar..."

North into a desolate and broken land. The tale still lingered that once the earth had groaned and fires raged in the distant heavens. They came light-foot from the Falathrim with the sea-song in their ears and passed out of Eglador through Ered Gorgoroth and pine-clad Dorthonion. Ard-galen's plain stretched dusk-grey before them. Onwards they wandered. Twilight deepened to midnight and the shadows darkened dangerously; alight in the gloom shone seven white lamps.

Beyond Ard-galen, Udûn and Angband, frost crisping black and jagged ruins like Valacirca's dust.

"A bird that renews itself through conflagration?" said Erestor. "It's an interesting thought. But I don't know where the story came from. I think someone once claimed to have seen one flying over Dorthonion before the first dawn..."

... fleeing the frost-crisped ruins of Angband and midnight Udûn, a slew of teeth and poison claws snatching at their cloaks. Behind them ominous Valacirca and Ard-galen endless before them, sea-shadowy with the wind rippling waves through long grass. Far ahead loomed the mountains, jagged beneath the stars.

A comet blazed white across twilit heavens, trailing a tail like a bird on fire.

... silver spilling over green leather, coins from a dozen mints and more in shining disarray...

... he had seen coins first in Nogrod and Belegost, when the Dwarves went from trading ingots to metal discs stamped with their king's mark. Bewildering to Elves accustomed to bartering skins and silver songs: what was silver but an ornament? In Eglador, the Queen amid nightingales and niphredil had counted out throne-stamped silver admiringly. What a clever idea. But the coins were scattered among Eglador's children and lost like marbles in countless childish games...

Elrond's daughter plucked another coin. "And this one? Where's it from?"

Arwen's departure left Erestor's desk still coin-strewn. Kings, so many silver kings...

... all these new kingdoms sprung up like mushrooms, their Dúnedain masters claiming a title an Elf who never minted coins had worn...

... he remembered Elu Thingol, walking Maia-bright beneath shadowed boughs. The sylvan court first found in Eglador, a shimmering realm of starlit woods, Thingol and his Queen ruling through those twilight years of youth and innocence. Age after age his command increasing, owned from Círdan's mariners to the mountains of Erestor's birth. Wherever they wandered, seeking every far side of the world, they had carried Thingol's fame.

Vellum everywhere, unscrolled in red and black and gold and blue and green. "I can't believe you don't have any maps," said Glorfindel again, awash with imagined worlds.

"Why?" said Erestor. "Maps only show roads."

"That's not –"

– true. Perhaps. But all the outlined rivers and mountains scrawled roads across the unmarked page. You shall walk here, maps said; and: this is the shape the world should be. Stay on the path.

Erestor remembered a world without paths. And watching Dwarves with maps carving the first road beneath Mount Dolmed's shoulders, bewildered. How could anyone see the stars and be lost?

The Dwarves had spoken of paths sleeping throughout Beleriand and Eriador.

They should be found, they said, these paths. Trodden. Awoken. They should be mapped and dug out and paved with stone brushed grey by twilight. Signposts should be raised and waystations established and inns built for weary travellers. No town or village or hamlet or city deep-delved beneath ancient forests should be left to slumber. The paths dreamed of being free.

Dwarves had strange ideas. They had spoken of stone and of bones beneath earth, and Erestor had saved his laughter for the wind flying pathless among the peaks.

The tentative title was Noble Houses of the Noldor. Noble houses... that metaphor must have come from Aman. Or the Dúnedain. Those cities piled on Númenor's fragrant slopes...

... what would it have been in Doriath? Thingol's 'noble cavern'?

Deep in memory delved Menegroth with its golden lanterns and gilded branches, a host of jewelled birds peeping between verdigris leaves. Tapestries woven by the Queen and her ladies softening every sculpted cave. A splash of light tossed up by silver fountains bubbling in marble basins, the image so clear...

... he would suggest a different title. Noldorin Genealogies. Nothing metaphorical in that.

The light. It was the light that blazed brightest in Erestor's memories of returning to Eglador.

Ablaze as a beacon amid shifting shadows: gold lanterns spilling light through the grey gloaming, the Esgalduin foaming silver, an enchanted mirror of broken starlight. In a hueless world, Eglador had been vivid: the richness of the tapestries, of butterfly-bright garments, of the sculpted city's jewels and the woods in their splendour. Of those who welcomed them back, time after time.

Daeron's nightingale harp sang beneath Erestor's hands. Tell everything! and Tinfang's laughter. Ivaeron asking, How dark is the darkness at the world's end?

At world's end, it's so dark fire won't burn... we saw a bird flying flaming over Dorthonion... the Dwarves gave us these, they call them 'coins'... oh, the sea, water forever without a far shore, we went diving for pearls...

... their audience enthralled, instruments quietened, drinking in every word. Erestor saw them so clearly. Daeron's dreaminess, fitting their tales into lyrics; Ivaeron, full of questions; Tinfang Gelion's hands lying still on his harp. Nightingales fluttered around them...

... he opened his eyes to sunlight sparkling on the Bruinen.

"Ask your father," he said. "He heard Maglor's songs about that world's end."