Swanhaven & the Doom of the Noldoli

by Soledad

Disclaimer: see in the Foreword.

Author’s Notes: The description of the Swanhaven follows closely the one given in “The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1”, with minor additions and modifications.

To Oivárin’s using of names: unlike the Tol Eressëans, he is used to speak in Quenya and uses the Quenya form of the names, rather than the archaic Sindarin version of the Lost Tales.

Acknowledgment: many thanks to Finch for helping me creating the names for Guilin and his sons. Erunyauvë is named after a fellow Silmfic writer, of course.

Warning: this chapter contains some graphic battle scenes.

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19. Swanhaven & the Doom of the Noldoli

After the break – the rest of which Celebrían spent alone, in quiet tears – Oivárin did not re-occupy the Storyteller’s Chair, despite their previous agreement with Meril.

“The part that remains mine from this tale is short,” he explained. “Short enough to tell it standing next to the Chair, so that Lady Meril would not have the inconvenience of switching places after such little time.”

Meril thanked him and arranged herself in the Chair regally, with Oivárin standing on her right. The Telerin lord waited for a moment ‘til everyone settled down and quieted; then he went on with his tale.

“As I already told you, after his argument with King Olwë, Fëanáro went outside the walls of our fair city, and there he brooded bitter thoughts, ‘till his brain grew dazed from the black vapours of his heart,” he continued. “At least that is what I believe must have happened. I cannot explain otherwise how it came to the horrors of the Kinslaying.”

“The Oath,” muttered Ailios. “It had twisted him already at that time; him and his sons, too.”

“Perhaps so,” Oivárin allowed, “but has anyone forced them to take a terrible Oath like that? I think not so. In any case, as many of you might know, Alqualuntë was at that time like a basin of quiet water, save that towards the east and the Sea the ring of rock that enclosed the haven had sank somewhat. There the relentless waves of the Sea had pierced through the rock, forming a mighty arch of living stone. So great was this arch, that – save for the mightiest ships – two would pass through it; one going out perchance, and another one searching inward to the quiet blue waters of the haven. Nor would the mast-tops come even close to grazing the rock.”

“Not much of the light of the Trees could come through, if your city was encircled by the rock wall,” commented Legolas.

“True,” admitted Oivárin, “which is why the harbour was always lit with a ring of lamps of gold; and lanterns were there, to, of many colours, adorning the wharves and landings of the different Houses, for the noblest among us chose to live on the shores, as we had done of old, to remain in touch with the Sea all the time. But through the Great Arch, the pale waters of the Shadowy Seas could distantly be glimpsed, as they were lit faintly by the shining of the Trees.”

“So that you could have both: the stars that you could not forget, and the Light that you yearned for,” Legolas nodded in understanding. “I imagine that the harbour must have been very beautiful to gaze upon.”

“Oh, it was,” Oivárin sighed. “Moreover in the hour of undómië, the evening twilight, when the white fleets came shimmering home and the troubled waters broke the mirrored radiance of the lamps into rippling lights, weaving strange patterns of twinkling lines. And when our people sat on the wide marble steps that led from the houses to the shore, singing and playing on their flutes, pipes and harps, the sound of their music was echoed by the Great Arch itself, filling the entire harbour with eerie, joyous harmonies.”

“I remember,” said Ailios quietly. “Lord Ossë and his following, the Oárni and the Oaritsi and the long-tressed Wingildi, would often visit the haven, playing around the Arch, joining your music. It was the most beautiful thing any of us had ever heard. Alas that it is now lost and would not be heard again ‘til Arda is re-made… perhaps not even then.”

Oivárin nodded. “Well, yea, on that particular day things were different,” he then said. “For a deep gloom was settled over the harbour at the fading of the Trees, so that not even our best mariners dared to brave the Shadowy Seas, and our white ships were lying at the piers, unmoving. The mariners used the break to tend to their ships, and the Harbour Masters were keeping a wary eye on the host of the Noldoli that was gathering around Fëanáro. And he spoke to them in bitter wrath, reminding them that by no means could their host hope to reach the North swiftly along the coast save by the aid of ships. ‘And these, if the shore-Elves would not give us, we must take by force,” he said.”

“You have a surprisingly detailed account of this,” said Legolas. “Were you not with the Lindaran in the royal townhouse at this time?”

“I was,” admitted Oivárin, “but my sons were not. They had served as the Harbour Masters of the haven since its building had been finished, and most of all Ainairos, my firstborn, was fiercely protective of the ships that our cunning and long labours had fashioned. There were some that Lord Ossë and his People had made of old on this very island, you must know: wondrous and magic boats… the first that ever were.”

“I remember them,” nodded Ailios. “They were a marvel, truly; more like living things than mere boats. Not even the ships of your own making could come close.”

“Nothing could,” agreed Oivárin. “And thus a great anger enflamed in the hearts of our people when they saw the host of Fëanáro, now assembled in its full numbers, going to the quays and beginning to man the ships that were anchored there, intending to take them away by force,” he gave the audience a wry smile. “I fear that my sons did their best to fuel that anger. ‘Never shall these thieves leave the Haven in our ships!’ my second-born, Nornoros, is said to have called, and he led those who would withstand the Noldoli stoutly and encouraged his peers to cast the intruders into the Sea.”

He sighed again and fell silent, overcome by bitter memories.

“Oh, my,” Ailios murmured. “So that was how everything started!”

“I hope you are not about to say that it was the fault of the Solosimpi!” Legolas said sharply. “They had every right to protect that which was theirs. Besides, no Elf has ever drowned from being thrown into the water, unless there were dangerous maelstroms under the surface; and we have just been told that the waters of the Swanhaven were quiet.”

“They still are,” said Oivárin. “And nay, our people did nothing worse than casting them into the water. It was among the followers of Morifinwë that swords were first drawn; and soon thereafter a bitter fight was fought upon the ships and about the quays and piers of the Haven; and even upon the Great Arch itself, sullying it with the spilt blood of our people and poisoning it with death.”

“’Tis said that your people did not give up easily, though,” said Legolas.

“Nay, we did not,” confessed Oivárin. “When the battle noise reached the houses on the shore, many of us ran out to aid the people of the harbour. Thrice the folk of Fëanáro were driven back, and many were slain on both sides. My son Nornoros died in the first wave, before my very eyes,” he added bitterly, “and unarmed as I was, I could not break through the line of Morofinwë’s guards to aid him. He had nought but a fishing-knife against their swords.”

For a while, there was heavy silence in the Hall of Tales, no-one knowing what to say that would not sound like some heap platitude. Then Oivárin sighed and looked directly at Meril; albeit without accusation.

“Our people were unprepared and mostly unarmed, save for a few axes and slender bows,” he continued. “Yet we had the numbers and the burning desire to protect our ships that were like children from our flesh to us. We might have succeeded, in the end, were to vanguard of the Noldor not succoured by the foremost of Nolofinwë’s host…”

“… led by Findecáno, who pressed on impatiently, anxious to catch up with Maitimo who was like a brother to him; more than Aracáno and Turucáno had ever been,” supplied the Queen bitterly. “Never was there a bond that would hold more tightly than the one between those two cousins, forged in childhood as an aid for the firstborn sons of two mighty and demanding fathers. Thus when Findecáno came up and found a battle going on and his otorno’s kin falling, he rushed in before he would know rightly the cause of the quarrel, and his followers with him. Some thought indeed that the Solosimpi had sought to waylay the march of us at the bidding of the Valar. Or so Lord Cailindo, who rode with my husband in the vanguard of Atar Fingolma’s host, told me afterwards.”

“Cailindo? I cannot remember having heard that name, ever,” said Legolas with a frown.

“You probably know him as Lord Guilin,” Meril smiled. “He was married to the Lady Írimë, Atar Fingolma’s oldest sister; Or Lalwendë, as she was known in Beleriand.”

Legolas nodded. “Those names I know all too well. There are still dirges sung about the death of Lord Guilin in the Dagor Bragollach; about the loss of his son Prince Gelmir, who had been captured and Imprisoned in Angband for twenty years of the Sun; and how the Lady of the Laughter forsook her name and faded from grief over the loss of her husband and her son… although I assume both their sons bore different names in those early times.”

“Gelmir’s birth-name was Celumírë,” said Meril, “and Gwindor was called Vinyadorë, in the years of his youth, back in the Blessed Realm.”

Despite the seriousness of the tale being told, Legolas could not hold back a wicked grin.

“Small wonder they were so eager to switch to Sindarin names,” he commented. “Who would wish to live with names like those? Those are names for maidens, not for Princes and warriors!”

Meril shrugged. “I understand that Lord Cailindo’s mother was from a noble family of the Solosimpi; those of the Third Clan had tended to use such names in the early times. And I know for a fact that he was a gifted minstrel back in Aman. He never touched his harp after the Kinslaying again, though. ‘Tis said he gifted it upon Findaráto, whose hands, as he had put it, had not been sullied with the blood of his own kin.”

“Becoming a kinslayer is not an easy burden,” said Oivárin quietly. “For as much as we were innocent in starting the slaughter, and a great part of our mariners who dwelt in Alqualondë were wickedly slain – for the Noldoli were become fierce and desperate, and our people had less strength and inferior weapons – we, too, had spilt the blood of our fellow Elves and dealt death to those who were not supposed to die. The Noldoli did more than just murder our loved ones; they made us to murderers, too. And while we may be willing to forgive them the loss of our kin and friends, the marring of our innocence is something that can never be undone.”

“Unless we die and go to Mandos, where we can have that innocence returned to us,” added Ailios soberly. “But that path leads through judgement, and that is not something any of us would undergo out of our own free will.”

“True,” admitted Oivárin with a wry smile. “Though when Nornoros was re-housed and sent back to us, it was heart-rending to watch his happiness after Ainairos, his twin, had suffered from his loss for an Age and a half. Sometimes I am still tempted to deliver him to Lord Námo’s doorstep myself; perhaps there he might find healing, after all this time.”

The mere idea of that, although spoken in jest, made Celebrían shudder.

“Glorfindel says the Lord of Mandos is not fond of those who go to his Halls voluntarily,” she said.

“And he, of all people, ought to know,” Legolas grinned; then he abruptly became sober again. “In any case, Lord Guilin’s sons paid dearly for their part in the Kinslaying. Being forced to toil in Morgoth’s mines for decades would have been punishment enough; but their deaths, especially Prince Gelmir’s, were cruel beyond measure.”

“You knew them?” asked Meril in surprise.

Legolas shook his head. “Not personally, no; but everyone knew they were the cousins of our King. And I saw Prince Gelmir’s horrible death with my own eyes.”

“You fought in the Nirnaeth Arneodiad?” Oivárin realized.

“I led the green-clad archers of the House of the Tree when King Turgon marched against Angband with ten thousand men,” replied Legolas grimly. “This was the greatest campaign the forces of Gondolin had ever been part of; it nearly proved to be our downfall. Prince Gwindor, on the other hand, came with a small company of Elves of Nargothrond, wishing to avenge the loss of his brother. They followed Findecáno.”

“And caused the loss of him, that of the entire battle and, ultimately, of all Elven realms of Beleriand,” added Meril. “If Gelmir’s horrible death was meant as a punishment for his part in the Kinslaying, its consequences certainly hit guilty and innocent alike. Not that any of us would have been fully innocent in what had happened at Alqualuntë,” she allowed sadly.

Legolas looked at her in shock. “But certainly you were not guilty, my Queen! Only the vanguard of Fingolma’s host was involved; not even Fingolma himself!”

“Nay, he was not,” Meril agreed. “He was leading the main host, while his brother Finarphir took the rearguard with Findaráto and their followers. Only Nerwendë rode with us; for Atar Fingolma had ordered us, ellith, to stay in the middle of the host, where we would be best protected.”

“Sounds like a wise precaution to me, even though he could not have counted on a kin-strife just yet,” commented Legolas. Meril nodded.

“As I said, there were not many of us,” she continued, “and the Lady Írimë, who had followed her brother out of love to him, like her husband and their sons, was our caretaker. Nerwendë and Írissë were unhappy with that arrangement; they wanted to ride with the vanguard, as they were both excellent with the sword, having grown up with competitive brothers, both of them.”

That Celebrían could imagine all too well. Her mother had never been one who would suffer being left behind with the other women gladly. She said so, and Meril laughed.

“Nay, she would rather be the one to leave others behind, in her impatience,” she said. “But Atar Fingolma forbade them to join the vanguard and ordered them to protect the rest of us, should our guards be needed elsewhere. For both Elenwë ad I had small children with us – Itarildë was barely more than a babe, and my son but a toddler – and Eldalótë, who would later wed Angaráto, had come of age only a few days before Samírien.”

“Eldalótë?” repeated Legolas with a frown. “But Prince Angaráto’s wife was Edhellos, the niece of Ecthelion of the Fountain! They were the Lady Anaire’s kin, if I am not mistaken.”

“They are one and the same,” explained Meril. “I keep forgetting that you, who had not known us before our coming to Ennórë, cannot know who we had been back in Aman. Forgive me; the memories of my youth are distracting sometimes.”

Legolas stood and bowed gallantly.

“There is nothing to forgive my Queen,” he said. “’Tis I who must ask your forgiveness; for I interrupted your tale.”

"And grateful I was for that interruption, as I have come to a point where the memories are very painful,” replied Meril. “As I said, we ellith went with the main host; but as we were hurrying to catch up with Fëanáro and his followers, our train broke up. The carts carrying our belongings slowed us down, and when we finally reached the harbour of Alqualuntë, the fighting was almost over.”

“It must have been a terrible sight for you, as you have not known violence before,” said Legolas softly.

Meril nodded. “Oh, yea; it was horrible to look upon. The quays and piers were strewn with dead bodies, and here and there a few Elves were still trying to slay each other with swords, arrows, axes or whatever weapons they could lay their hands on. Our guards, seeing Findecáno and his guards in one of those fights, forgot about us in the heat of a battle and threw themselves into the foray. And that was when he came.”

“Who?” asked Ailios. “Findecáno?”

Meril shook her head, stark white with remembered terror.

“Nay; it was one of the shore-elves, perchance a boat-maker, for he had an axe in his hand, one of those the carpenters use. The blade… the blade was dripping with blood, and his eyes… his eyes were like those of a wild beast. I can only think that he must have gone mad with the horrors he had witnessed… and committed,” she swallowed hard, willing herself not to become sick. The others waited in stunned silence, as this was clearly a tale none of them had heard before.

“We were riding under Atar Fingolma’s banner, so there could be little doubt who we were,” she finally continued. “He screeched something about the evil of the Noldoli that must be eradicated to the very roots – and then he came running at us, at me, with his bloody axe raised above his head. I screamed and tried to shield my son with my body, but I knew I could do nothing to keep him from slaying us both. Only that it never happened.”

“How that?” Oivárin was the first to break the horrified silence. “Did he come to his sense and turn away, after all?”

Meril shook her head again, her face pale, her eyes enormously wide and dark with memories.

“Nay; he was determined to see us dead. Dead as most likely his own lover ones were. But Nerwendë,” she swallowed, giving Celebrían a compassionate glance, “Nerwendë moved faster. She picked up a sword and threw it at him, as she could not hope to get between us in time. The sword,” she swallowed again, fighting nausea while reliving those memories, “the sword hit him in the neck and embedded itself in his throat. The blood,” she closed her eyes for a moment and seemed close to fainting, “the blood shot from a severed blood vessel like a fountain. It was all over me… over my little son. I… I think I fainted then.”

Celebrían felt strangely light-headed. “My mother killed someone? Someone of her mother’s people?” she whispered in shock. No wonder she never spoke about those times!

“She saved me and my child,” Meril corrected. “Whatever grievance that poor ellon had against us – and I have no doubt that it was satisfied – he did intend to slaughter me and my son. Lord Oivárin is right: we all lost our innocence on that fateful day. And the ones who died and went to Mandos to find healing were probably better off than the rest of us who survived and had to live with the guilt and the horrible memories for the following yéni. For I can remember that Gelmir could not stop scrubbing his hands afterwards. He kept doing so for years on the Ice, literally. He kept seeing the blood on them, no matter what.”

“What about you?” asked Vainóni quietly. “It had to be terrible for you, too, being covered with the blood of the one who had tried to slaughter you and your child.”

Meril sighed. “As I said, I fainted. I know not how long I was unconscious; it never occurred to me to ask. When I came to, the fighting was over, and Fëanáro’s followers had already begun to draw away the ships from the quays. Not seeing any other way to escape, our people followed suit. They manned the oars as best as they might, and rowed the ships north along the coast.”

“We saw them,” said Oivárin. “We watched them haplessly from the steps of the royal townhouse: how our beloved ships were moving away from the quays – the quays that were strewn with the lifeless bodies of our people. King Olwë called upon Lord Ossë, but he came not. For, as we would learn later, he had been summoned to the Máhanaxar, and it was not permitted by the Valar that the flight of the Noldoli should be hindered by force.”

“Why not?” asked Legolas, clearly not understanding. “I gladly served my King, Noldo though he was, and I would swear fealty to him again if I could, but he and his kin were in the wrong, were they not?”

“We were,” confessed Ailios, “but I assume they still hoped that we would reconsider, turn back and make amends – as Finarphir did, at the end.”

“Lord Ossë came not,” said Meril, “but the Lady Uinen was greatly distraught, and she wept bitterly for the slaughtered mariners of the Solosimpi, many of whom she had known since the Great Journey. And her tears swelled up the Sea so much that it rose in wrath against us; many of the ships were wrecked and those aboard them drowned.”

“It must have been frightening for you, facing the wrath of the Sea like that,” said Oivárin, not unkindly.

“Terrifying would be a more accurate word,” replied Meril with a rueful smile. “I have never been as much as in a fishing boat before. I truly believed that judgement had already come upon us. But the greater part of our host escaped nonetheless, and when the storm was past, we held on our course, some by ship and some by land.”

“It was a long way,” murmured Ailios, “and getting more evil as we went forward.”

“So it was,” Meril agreed. “For with the ships, we also lost much of our supplies and nearly all our horses, and thus what we could rescue from the waves we had to carry on our backs, like the lowliest peasants among the Second-born. After we had marched for a great while in the unmeasured night – for the Trees were gone, and few of us, like Ailios here, could tell the passing of time by watching the stars alone – we came at length to the north of the Guarded Realms? Upon the borders of the empty waste of Araman, which were mountainous and cold.”

“Nothing new for us who had survived the Great Journey,” commented Alagos with a soft smile, “but terrifying for the younger ones who had only ever known the safety and prosperity of Aman.”

“We had been terribly spoiled,” Meril admitted freely, “and by no means prepared for that which was awaiting us in the Outer Lands. Had we had as much as an inkling, Finarphir probably would not have been the only one to turn back. But we were young, ignorant and adventurous, and not even the horrors of the Kinslaying could deter us from our chosen path. Well,” she corrected herself wryly, “not the ellyn, at least. We ellith just did not want to be separated from them. The folly of love, I assume.”

“Not even when Mandos caught up with you?” Legolas asked with an arched eyebrow. “If it was Mandos, that is. I have heard rumours that it was merely a lesser herald of the Elder King.”

“Then you have been listening to fools,” answered Meril, for it was Lord Námo himself indeed, dark and forbidding and larger than the hills, standing upon a high rock that looked down at the shore where we were trudging. There he stood, darker than the night itself; and in a solemn and terrible voice he called to us and bade us to stand and give ear,” she smiled mirthlessly. “You must understand that while we were used to encounter the Powers from time to time, none of us had ever seen the Lord of Mandos face to face. Some of us actually fainted – and I am not speaking about the ellith!”

There was quiet laughter in the audience. The Tol Eressëans rarely had any contact with the Valar at all, but when it did happen, once or twice a yén, the reactions tended to be quite similar. And for some reason, it always hit the ellyn harder. Meril knew this, of course, and winked at them.

“So we held and stood still,” she then continued, becoming sombre again, “and from end to end of our hosts, we could heart the Voice speaking what has become known as the Prophecy oft eh North and the doom of the Noldoli. Many woes it foretold in dark words, which we did not understand – not ‘til the woes indeed befell us, much later.”

“Tears unnumbered ye shall shed,” murmured Ailios, quoting the words of the Doom that had become well-known during the recent Ages. “But if ye go further, be warned that the Valar will fence Valinor against you and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentations shall pass over the mountains.”

“Well, I cannot speak for the others,” commented Legolas dryly, “but for me, such threats would have been a greater than ever motivation to continue my journey. For all the reassurances that you were not the thralls of the Valar, they seem to have treated you very much as if you had been, after all.”

“You were not there,” Meril hugged herself, her eyes haunted. “You cannot understand what that meant to us.”

“You are right; I cannot,” returned Legolas. “I am just a Green-Elf whose ancestors wisely refused to enter that gilded cage to begin with. Which is why I shan’t set foot in Aman, save the one time when my wife will finally be re-housed, to bring her home. So, why did you not turn all back when Finarphir did? It would have been safer for you.”

“Fear and foolish pride, I would say,” admitted Meril wearily.

“And, for those among us old enough to remember the lands of our birth, also an overwhelming sense of homesickness,” supplied Ailios. “For as happy and safe as we were in Aman, we could not forget our origins and felt… misplaced somehow. Despite all the evil I saw in Ennórë, I never regretted going back. We should not have left in the first place.”

“Do you still miss it?” asked Oivárin.

“Do you not?” Alagos asked back. The Telerin lord shook his silver head thoughtfully.

“Nay, I do not. What I miss is Alqualondë of old: what it had been life, before the Great Arch was poisoned by the spilt blood of our people. Before Lord Ossë would break it in his grief and rage with a single blow of his huge fist.”[1]

“He did?” asked someone from the audience. “Tell us about it!”

Oivárin shook his head. “That is another tale, for another time. We should allow Queen Merilindë to finish her tale first.”

“No Queen I am, my lord, not anymore, even though Lord Legolas likes to call me that, out of love for his late King,” said Meril. “Nor do I still bear the name that belongs to older, happier times. I am just Meril now, and being Meril is enough for me. But I can tell my tale to the end if that is what you would like me to do.”

The audience signalled their agreement, and she leaned back in the Chair, collecting her thoughts.

“Thus the Valar laid their doom upon the House of Fëanáro, warning us through Lord Námo that all who would follow them should come unto the doom, too,” she began anew. “Their Oath should drive them, the Lord of Mandos prophesied, and yet betray them, even snatch away the treasures they had sworn to pursue. To evil end should all things turn that they would begin well; and by the treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, should this come to pass. And he named them the Dispossessed, for ever.”

“Now, that is a bit harsh, is it not?” asked Legolas, seeming agitated for the first time since the storytelling had begun. “Tarning the innocent with the same brush as the guilty. There were many among you that simply wanted to return to the lands of their origins, after all.”

“True,” said Meril. “But even of those who swore no Oath, many have spilled the blood of our kindred unrighteously – or, like me, were the case of this happening. We have stained the land of Aman; because of us, it will never be the same.”

“We paid for it dearly, though,” commented Ailios. “Blood have we rendered for blood, and dwelt in death’s shadow in the Outer Lands, as Mandos had foretold. Ilúvatar had appointed into our kind to not die, and no sickness assailed us, though we could be slain. And slain we were in the yéni of our exile: by weapons and by torment and by grief; and the houseless spirits of the slain went to Mandos, and many of them still abide there.”

“A pity that Fëanáro was beyond reason by then,” added Oivárin grimly. “Much grief could still have been spared the Exiles – and other people, back in the Outer Lands, who got caught up in his doom – had he reconsidered. I still wonder, though, that so few quailed in the face of the Lord of Mandos himself.”

“Many quailed,” Meril corrected, “for a terrible thing it was, hearing the prophecy straight from the mouth of Lord Námo. But Fëanáro hardened his heart, saying they had not sworn their Oath lightly, and that they would keep it. For he deemed cowardice and the fear of cowardice a greater evil than all the evils we had been threatened with, including treason; and he prophesied that the deeds we would do would be the matter of song ‘til the last days of Arda.”

“Well, he was right with that, at the very least,” said Legolas.

“For all the good that did us,” replied Meril with a sigh. “At least Finarphir kept is sanity and forsook the march and turned back, being filled with grief and bitterness against the House of Fëanáro, because of his kinship with the Lindaran. And many of his people went with him, retracing their steps in sorrow.”

“I remember their arrival,” said Oivárin. “They came on foot, ragged and exhausted and on the verge of Death itself. And Arafinwë sought out the Lindaran at once, without rest or as much as a drink of water first, to make amends. He fell on his knees in the middle of the courtyard, before the eyes of all that had survived, and begged for our forgiveness.”

“That must have been quite a shock for everyone,” commented Legolas.

“Many of us, still too ravaged with grief about their loved ones, raised their voices, demanding that the Noldoli should be denied any help, forgiveness before everything else,” Oivárin smiled ruefully. “I fear that my son was one of those. But Olwë, in his wisdom, could separate the guilty from the innocent and refused to do so. He helped Arafinwë to his feet again, giving him a kinsman’s kiss and his forgiveness, saying that he had already been punished enough for joining Fëanáro’s madness. For what could have been harder than losing one’s children, all of them on the same day?”

Meril nodded. “That is very true. None of his sons turned back with him, for they would not forsake the sons of Atar Fingolma; and even less so would do Nerwendë. All of Fingolma’s folks chose to go forwards till, too, feeling the constraint of their kinship and the will of Fëanáro; and fearing to face the doom of the Valar, since many of them were not without guilt in the Kinslaying. Many had joined the fighting heedlessly, and had now the blood of their kinfolk on their hands. My own husband above all, as he had been the one to lead his guards into the fight.”

“Moreover,” supplied Ailios, “Findecáno and Turucáno were bold and fiery at heart and loath to abandon any task to which they had put their hands until the bitter end, if bitter it must be. So the main host held on, and swiftly the evil that was forespoken began its work.”

“You mean the burning of our ships and the crossing of the Ice?” asked Oivárin. Ailios nodded.

“That is another long and dreadful tale, for another day,” he said. “I deem we should end the storytelling here. The following events are well-known to most, and they no longer have anything to do with the Feast of Samírien. Besides, the Feast is almost over – we should spend the rest of it in merriment, as it is supposed to be spent.”

“Truer words have never been spoken!” a voice like the sound of many silver bells said; then there was a brief shimmering of multicoloured light, like a rainbow touching the ground, and in the next moment someone looking like an elleth stood in the middle of the Hall of Tales.

She was tall and willowy, with a pale, freckled face, copper hair that was braided and wreathed around her head and solemn grey eyes that were nonetheless full of some deep, profound joy. Her long gown was shadow-grey, and over it she wore a moss-green kirtle of the finest wool, clinched with a silver chain at the waist and with a dark gold border along the hem, and the neckline; small opals and pearls were sewn along that border. And while she had the leaf-shaped ears of the Firstborn peeking out between the loose copper strands of her hair that had escaped from the braid, it was fairly clear that she was something else… something more.

All stared at her in bewilderment – with the exception of Meril, who seemed pleasantly surprised.

“Erunyauvë!” she exclaimed. “It has been a long time.”

“Too long,” the newcomer laughed, and it sounded like a multitude of silver bells again.

Meril rose from the Chair and went to hug her. “What brings you to us?” she asked. “Not that I would not be pleased to see you, mind you, but you have not graced us with a visit since… well, it has to be yéni, actually!”

“My lady wants to remind you that, no matter what Fëanáro might have said in his grief, this is still a feast of double mirth, not one of double sorrow,” the Maia, for what else could she have been, replied. “Enough of dreadful tales of sorrow and doom. Rejoice rather in the mercy of Ilúvatar that had brought some good out of that sorrow, in the end, and be merry and celebrate.”

“I wonder what good did come out of all that horror, after all,” muttered Celebrían, more to herself, but the Maia heard it nonetheless.

“Why, you, for one thing, of course,” she said. “Your coming here had a deeper purpose than just healing your hurts – not that that would not be important.”

“What purpose?” asked Celebrían doubtfully. She never felt terribly useful outside of her home, truth be told, not even while visiting her parents, and he had felt almost entirely without any substance since she had come to Tol Eressëa.”

“Too early to speak about that just yet,” Erunyauvë grinned at her. “Come now, let us find a quiet place while the others do the singing and dancing and tell me about your home – and about my brother Olórin. How is he doing, after all these yéni in the Outer Lands?”

~TBC~