The Rise of Tilion {Balar, Winter 538 F.A.} [Mithiel]

“Omentielm’ alassea ná...I like the storms upon the water, they are powerful, beautiful. Angry, like how I feel inside.” She spoke clearly in Quenyan. Not the sound of that of the far country; but of the exiles. Ruivo had muttered his relief when she had first wakened from her faint, in the distant language of Tirion, and she had responded thus.

The blade had not cut deep enough to taint her voice; though he could see it had her spirit. He nodded to her, for he too was glad to see her, and he too was angry.

He noticed not her bare feet, nor her windswept hair. So familiar was the sight of elleth and ellon alike on the sea shores of Alqualondë; their feet bare and their garments dripping as in and out of the waters. Ilsë, his sister, would lead him along the slippery rocks of the shore when he was a young elfling, and her own hair would blow in the sea winds.

Ruivo wished to close his eyes, and block Ilsë from his sight; though through the years he knew better; to close his eyes or to seek dreams would only make the dreadful visions of her greater; the curse. He hated the visions and memories. They had been worse these past weeks. It was the sight of Celevondir's smirk, the silver of his blade. The same blade the white haired elf hand been using upon Mithiel's neck; though this time slowly.

Ruivo had seen him from afar; had known it was him in an instant. The last he had lain eyes upon him was some years earlier in Nargothrond when he had still been following Celegorm. Yet he had seen Celevondir take her in hand and drop her to the earth. He had seen, and fought his way through others to get to her. Corrupted was Celevondir's bloodlust, but her life had been spared for his desire to torment and mutilate.

His eyes could not help but drift to the red fabric at her throat, contrasted against pale skin. It had been white she had worn before. Ruivo need not ask how she was healing, for he had already asked the healers after her day by day. The would was mending, better than he had hoped. Celevondir had not stolen her breath of life, the way he had taken that of his mother's. Ilsë's.

Quiet for at time, Ruivo stared out at the waters crashing against the rocks; the rain falling, heavily pockmarking the smooth spaces between waves.

“Ossë is having his vengeance, though this time there are no ships for him to sink,” Ruivo stated; his voice placid through guilt. It was after the first Kinslaying that the Ainu would create great storms upon the sea. Ruivo had been wounded; unconscious through most of the sailing, though when had wakened many ships were gone, for Ossë was violent and wild, and had loved the Teleri.

“I too am angry... I apologize… I did not...” he paused, looking back toward Mithiel. “I am sorry I did not reach you more swiftly. And your parents.” He had been thinking it for weeks, and it was time to make it known. Another mar to his mind. Something he should have done differently. More loss he could have prevented had he been stronger. Swifter. Had he and the others not helped the Fëanorians at the first massacre; they never would have made it thus far. Never to paint red Menegroth nor the Havens of Sirion.

“He could sink the lands.”

It was truth; Ossë could sink the very lands they stood upon if he had wished. If Uinen would not hold him back from his destruction. “Uinien will calm her husband's waves,” he answered. Then to her other question. “No… the pain does not depart. It will sink deeper through the years.”

It would never depart; not entirely. Sometimes for Ruivo a day would pass, or two, without so much thought. Such were some of his days taking residence in Nargothrond, and even the days in Sirion, when he could devote hours to his craft and think of nothing else. Yet it always trickled back; the pain. Sometimes as a bubbling stream, and other times as a waterfall.

“Thank you, It was not your duty, to...do so. But I thank you, I would have been lost without you. It is strange to spend this day without them. You are valint for having saved me...Soon will be the rising.”

She had changed the subject upon him, and Ruivo's heart wrenched. It was too soon to speak on it; her grief was near and raw. It may be that it was always too soon to speak on it. Ruivo still could not speak upon what had transpired over five hundred years ago.

It was his duty though. Inwardly he knew, it had been. His duty to anyone in Sirion; yet most of all to she. He could not explain it.

He breathed out, watching her in silence for a moment and then looking back to the sky. He clasped his hands together, behind his back. The clouds were thinning. Indeed soon the moon would rise over the waters; and bring a semblance of peace. The light which it held; one could gaze upon in a way one could not look upon Arien, the sun, without blinding their eyes.

"I am connected to the Moon." She spoke again, though there had been some time beteen the passing of words.

“Istan,” Ruivo answered. I know. “I glimpse the flower of Silpion in your eyes.” Yet he could see by looking upon her that she was Calaquendi. Never had Mithiel rested eyes upon Telperion and Laurelin, nor seen their true light, nor their glistening drops of dew. Though there were many here who had; the number was growing fewer, year by year; from war with Morgoth; from the corruption of the kinslayings.

“Why is it your countenance speaks of moonlight?” he wondered, his mind flashing back to the unforgettable gems he had once seen forged in Tirion under the light of the trees. Perhaps it was that she had seen or touched the Silmarils; the true lights. It was said that one at least had been in Menegroth, and he knew also that Sirion must have borne one as well, else the Fëanorians would have never come in the way they had.

He watched her; with one eye did he watch her fingers move upon the stonework, and Ruivo swallowed. What graceful healing had come of her her in these past weeks, he could hardly fathom; it was fate that had not taken all her life blood from her in those moments.

“Perhaps to feel pain. To be in a place of turmoil and emotional hurt is better than feeling not at all, to be numb inside to all emotion. At least with pain one can feel, and allow for other emotion to come.”

“I prefer to be numb,” Ruivo answered her, though gave no further explanation. To feel emotion was to feel pain. Relentless pain, with nothing better to follow it; only that which would seep in. Day by day. Year by year. Numbness was better. To feel nothing was to have some semblance of peace. Ruivo missed the north lands, where he would have the cold and ice to himself; never worrying or fearing for what was to come; simply pushing back and away all memory.

The mist was beginning to rise, as Ruivo had expected, and the storm moved further from them over land. Ruivo's feet did not move from their place as Mithiel stepped forward to seat herself upon the stone steps. The heavy rain was stilling itself to gentle misty drizzle, and he saw the gems begin to land upon her skin; paint her hair with gleams of light as dew drops. She glanced behind for a moment, and her face seemed lighter; though he knew not why. Then, she spoke of the moon. The great sight upon the eyes of a newborn babe, and the great mourning which came now.

“I mourn for all of our losses. I mourn for my Lady and Lord more than myself, for they must be strong for all those beneath.”

“They too have taken loss, yet theirs is no greater than yours,” Ruivo reminded. The loss of many beneath them was true. The Lady Galadriel had lost her brothers; all of them; though her father had not taken heed of Feanor's call. He had set aside his pride; paid his restitution to the Valar and stayed in the blessed realm. Her parents yet waited for her; which was more than what Mithiel had been left with. She, like he, was alone. He knew not the fate of his father, for it was the one thing which he had not seen repeated in vision for hundreds of years, but he could guess. It had been his last arrow.

“Do not touch it,” he instructed, as his eye came back into focus from his thoughts; seeing Mithiel's fingers move to her neck. “It is one irritation at least which will fade in time.” His hand brushed knowingly his own cheek, scarred, though painless. Sometimes he wished for the pains to return, to distract him; to feel the throb of it. He watched Mithiel's fingers move away from the wrap upon her neck.

“Do you favor Tilion or Arien?”

“Tilion,” he answered briskly, with no hesitation. “It is the Long Night which I always knew before the day. The stars shining with him in the sky. In the Great Square of Tirion, Galathilion stood; I would see it every day, in blossom and in beauty. Made in the likeness of Telperion, our moon tree.” His voice held a whimsy, and a longing for those days; a deep sadness.

He breathed in, and stepped forward slowly, pausing at the top of the steps, then moving to seat himself too upon the damp stone; leaving some space between them. Ruivo's blind eye faced Mithiel, and he needed turn his full face to look upon her while he spoke. The mists were casting their droplets upon her. Speckled in as starlight above breaking through the clouds. Blessed flowers of Silpion; Ruivo felt a stirring in his chest which had been long diminished; over five hundred years diminished, and he drew in a breath and then looked back to waters; barring her from his eye, again moving to roll the white pearl in his fingertips while he sat and busied himself in the rhythm of it.

“The world was cast in darkness during the Long Night. On the first night of the rising. Something woke within me at the silvery beams were cast down. Long had I mourned the loss of the light of the trees; to have it gleam silvery overhead again...” Ruivo swallowed, losing his words. It was in part the reason he had ended in Arda at all; the true light which had lived within the Silmarils even after the trees were laid to waste; a light which all of Aman should have; to think that the gems had been lost in the same breath that the trees were, all that was fair and beautiful gone.

“So fair...” he whispered. “This silver beams over Ard-galen. The grasses seemed white and glistening beneath it, the orb in the sky, as nothing I have ever seen; either here nor there. Perhaps it was the loss that made the return all the greater. Set as a jewel upon the sky; in silver fittings, for all to see.” The light had even shone upon Morgoth; though he wanted it not.

Ruivo then pinched the pearl between his fingertips and held it star ward in the breeze, as if to set it above in the firmament. A gleam of silver light was on the horizon, the moment approaching. “The moon is memory,” he breathed, and bringing the pearl back down he let it roll onto his palm and held it out to Mithiel without another word. He was speaking too much. Words were drawn from him in a way they had not been for many long years, and he swallowed the rest, keeping his eye removed from her sight.

“How different we are.”

Ruivo turned to look upon her face. “Nár naitie,” he answered softly. Yes, indeed. More different than she could imagine. One innocent, faultless, virtuous. The other stained, immoral, impure. Blood upon his hands. Though at times he had washed his skin long enough, rough enough, to redden and chap his hands; to see his own blood leak through torn skin. Even his own blood would not wash away that which had been spilled.

How different they were. Yes. What had they in common? Loss, grief… scars.

“And what of you my lord? You mourn for a loss as do we?”

“I mourn many,” Ruivo answered, his voice level. He tried not to picture their faces this very moment; tried to push off the memory of his family. His sister, mother, grandfather. The way his father had last looked upon him. The horror and anger in the eyes of his grandmother and his mother's brother as they sailed. The blood upon white stone. He sighed, swallowing his thoughts. She asked of the telling of the great cities of Aman. Tirion; and Alqualondë he knew. There was one he would speak of, and one he would forego.

“The great hill of Túna rises up in the center of the cleft, and therupon it the harbells grow; blue as the sea on a bright day. There is Tirion, rising up, and upon the peak, above the crystal staircases, there is the great tower; the lamp of Mindon Eldaliéva. Like a needle spiring into the vaults of the sky, it shines silver light fairer than any here. Only Tilion rivals such light. Oft in the distance were seen the great trees. Blessed trees.”

His voice was lost. Even if she were to see the far country; would the Valar allow such an innocent to return; she would not see the trees, for gone they were. They had been destroyed. In the march south from Formenos, they had seen the mountain where they stood silhouetted in only starlight, and no light shone. Though the march had been in blackness, and though they had known, Ruivo had cried on that day. Such grief and anger had been within him on that day. No light was left, save within the Silmarils, and they too had been stolen. Ruivo felt his throat constrict, though never did he shed tear now. He felt the mist upon his cheeks. Cold. He ached for the colds of the north.

Mithiel though; he looked to her, and her own face still seemed content. Perhaps she liked to hear of the trees. Of the far country. Thoughtful, she was, and her face was glistening.

“You and I must be the only two on this isle that chooses to sit out in the wet to watch Tilion.”

“I have never worried for the wet,” he answered her. “Tilion is more beautiful for the mists.” The others did not know what they were missing, though Ruivo minded not that they were alone. He preferred to be alone with the world; with his thoughts. Alone was a place he could not harm another.

“Quite symmetrical and pulchritudinous. Enchanting would this be, set on a fitting of Tilion’s silver.”

Ruivo's breath was stolen by moment when Mithiel plucked the pearl from his hand; soft fingertips brushing against his own rough palm which bore seven hundred years the work of his craft; the hammers and the files. The chisels and the tongs. And seven hundred years the hilt of sword.

A captivation, a silken thread; he could feel her energy radiating from her hand, glistening in the mist. Silver strings tried to envelope his fingers, and he pulled his own hand away as soon as she did, trying to forget; let that feeling slide away.

It was the same wispy binding thread which he had felt as they traveled across the raging sea on Círdan's ship. There he had given in and let the bindings take him. The moment the healer had finished tending her, Ruivo had sat with her beneath the decks. She was still in faint for loss of blood and what fears had taken her, her neck braced. But Ruivo had cradled safely against him. He told himself; he told the healer; that it was for the swaying of the ship. He wished not to have her roll from the makeshift cot against a wave, and tear the delicate stitches, yet it had been more than that. He knew it then, for he had felt the wrappings of silver mist; and again now.

She spoke of Thingol's fondness for the bead, and Ruivo said nothing, for his mind was elsewhere; being forced to return by sheer will.

“Then you must save it for me, for now. And when I have again come by the tools of the craft, I shall enchant it with silver fitting for you,” Ruivo answered. Something he could do. Yes, of all things he could make the craft of his hands; the only beauty he could yet offer the world.

“This one is the perfect breadth, I will set it within a silver flower, and it will seem as a dewdrop within the blossom of Silpion. Then will you be able to look upon the likeness of Tilion, while Arien still rises in the sky.”

Pearls were his first craft; which he had learned in his youth; when he had still been but an elfling, at his father's side, they would work the pearls. Drilling them, carving them, setting them into fine necklaces, gems, encapsulating them with silver and gold. Alqualondë had no shortage of pearls; they lined the streets and the walls. Shining under starlight. He could speak upon pearls. Upon his craft.

Nay, Alqualondë. The name could not pass his lips, for he could not bring himself to describe the city to her; how glorious it was, and how bloodstained it had been upon his last sight. The city, precious though it was, could not pass by his lips.