Author's Note and Dedication: To the wonderful writers Furius and Noldoris, for their birthdays. Belated, I know.
In his memory, Tol Galen was always filled with flowers. Golden flowers, silver flowers, they were everywhere, oh yes, by the river, littered on soft green grass, and even dangling from trees, hiding among leaves. He remembered his mother holding his small hand in hers, telling him of Elanor and Niphredil. He used to ask her, why are they so pretty? And his father would laugh, and pulling them both into his warm embrace, say, because your mother is.
He remembered the queer sensation of his father's cheek against his, sharp pricks of hair which tickled him so that he would be reduced to helpless giggles, and how his mother would never fail to run her fingers through the short beard, and be amazed.
This is the Land of the Living Dead, mortal and immortal, saturated with pure days and pure nights, existing solely because of light and love. This is Tol Galen, where no hound of cruel ice and cruel fire would ever set a claw upon, and the closest thing to heaven he would ever know. A perfect dwelling place, where even the most wretched case of solitude and silence could be compared to light, tender rain, dusting damp kisses on his forehead when he knelt beneath the vast heavens in spring, thinking, blissfully, about nothing.
-
Dior was very beautiful. In even his merest gestures were remnants of a forgotten age, before any one of his subjects ever was. He was graceful and elegant, noble in face, with large amounts of hair so dark it seemed to swallow up starlight and flickering firelight. Even when he was very young he had enchanted thousands. The twitching of lips struggling not to laugh, or a light wave of the hand, these have caused many an artist to sigh in ecstasy, because of the child who was beyond art. But those that were called the wise because they were wise, saw something else in him, indescribable qualities alien to the immortal. It was not as physical as his ageless enchantment, but a mist that hung upon his innocent smile, and the curve of his frowning brow, that suggested from time to time, a brevity, a cross-section of a radiant bloom, frozen in an instant within a slide of glass. That the years with swiftness so passing altered every minute of this unique stance, and Dior the Beautiful was never the same from one moment to the next, fanciful, subtle changes that could only be noted when one tries not to be aware. It enhanced his beauty, and drew the skeptical, and cynical, those that would not believe. Not even his mother, Luthien the Fair, no, not only the Fair, but the Fairest, had ever been called the Beautiful. Such was the power of Dior.
-
He was sent to Menegroth to dwell among his kinsfolk, soon after he fully learnt how to speak.
It was then and there he first saw Nimloth, a wispy girl-child, young, but not much younger than he was. They told him, "this is your cousin." Dior listened quietly, smiled, then shook his head, and said nothing. He looked at her again and again., letting her image scorch onto his pupils, scorched all the way to his mind. He looked at her until he could see the gentle swaying of her white arms, and then the deep soulful eyes, at last the hidden wildness running along the glow of her hair, without watching her any longer, or even consciously thinking about her.
-
Nimloth, white flower. Part of the eternal, part of the now. Of knowledge that one will never age, in this strange unlight, of stranger tumult that encased her slender bones, almost hollow like those of a bird, although for all her demure manner and quiet words. Her day to day existence had never slipped, a truthful pretence, grown from the earth, and to earth closer, than those of divine lineages, whether in mortal guise, or not.
Only sometimes she was there, by his side. But always, there was this faint fragrance nearly indistinguishable from the taste of Doriath on his tongue, indicating maybe nothing. It was the slightest of queeraties. And not until years later he realized that she was the essence of his mother which he had tasted, remembered, and then lost.
-
Their love was something innate, known between the both of them, known with such perfect clarity that neither of them ever doubted this unpronounced truth. Dior and Nimloth, like all their kindred, were children of fate, perhaps realizing more than the others of where their lives would lead, but all the same, no more or less reluctant than those which had come before.
Their fingers became entwined in court dances. Every time the music faded away, while the other couples let go with unwillingness, he took her hand and kissed her palm, feeling the sensation of smooth milky skin upon his lips, more acutely than he had felt anything before. The slender, wide-eyed girl would then slip from his grasp with a laugh, and hasten away into the swirling crowd, knowing fully that he could sense her wherever she went. Every time they parted, it was for the thrill of the next meeting. They were happy in those days, filled with desperate, teasing pleasure, experienced only when one knows that happiness will never hold, that a sharpened blade is upon your throat, and the fire is already boiling the kettle dry.
One day Dior remarked to Nimloth, with a casual tone as if commenting on the weather, that time is growing scarce, and she nodded.
They were young, certainly too young, when they were wed. It was in deep winter, and the thick roofs and walls of their halls did nothing to prevent the wind from seeping in from every crack. An eve of doubt among the people, for there had never been a colder winter in Menegroth, even when The Princess first died, and the lands were held chilled in mourning. But Dior and Nimloth were content, their cold fingers clenched together, they pallor no different than the pallor of snow. Dior brushed aside the veil of his child-bride, clinging like strands of spiderweb to the sides of her face, and ran a finger down her cheek, awaking sensations which bloomed from his fingertips, flowed to his heart, and reminded him once more that he is a breathing, living being.
-
Is it not so, that when a monarch dies his heir should ascend his throne, and when a rich man dies his heir should inherit his treasure? Is it not always so?
-
They laid on their sides, listening to the distant rumblings of the earth. They rested, perched on trees like birds. They drifted from the thousand caves to forest to lake and streams. Their passions were dreamlike and bittersweet, consummated under the canopy of stars and wings of leaves. Their children were the scions of earth and air and tree, Elured and Elurin, the silent twin princes, and Elwing, white-browed princess.
Dior looked at them in their cribs of silver wood.
They were strange children, even to the eyes of Dior. For all his efforts he could only half understand them, these of his flesh and blood. Elured and Elurin were like two halves of a full moon, vague, shadowy boys who were expressionless, the orbs of their eyes still and their pupils frozen into countless layers of deep grey ice. Even with their youth they seem wasted and old.
And Elwing surpassed all women in beauty, even when she first tumbled forth from her mother's womb, covered with blood, and brawling like any ordinary babe. Such charms, sighed Dior, she must have taken after me. The newborn child seemed to know the fact well enough, as did everyone in the family.
Before she was born Nimloth often felt her shivering inside, the tears of the unborn child seeping into her blood, torturing her with a choking sweetness in the form of music utterly unheard by others. As she grew she never did learn to laugh, as any child her age should. Tears welled up in her luminous eyes at the most unexpected moments, from a grief of unknown origins. Sorrowful and pale, she was the most beloved of the Doriathrim, her beauty flourishing, unfolding, seemingly without limit, in the weary drooping shadows she loved so to remain in. To prepare herself for the Light, spoke Elured, childish voice heavy with prophecy.
The twins cannot love, they said so themselves, two strings of smooth syllables from two vocal chords fused as one. Therefore they cannot hate. And cannot remember. And cannot feel. And cannot, luckily for Elwing, harbour jealousy in their fragile hearts. It must be a special gift, then, from Iluvatar, that they can know. They never made any effort to learn, because everything had already left its image reflected in the bottom of their mirror-like souls.
Elwing wept in her sleep every night, trembling in the embraces of dreams which she refused to discuss with others. The salt of her tears lay crusted and crystallized on her bedsheets, and no amount of washing can make them clean. Her anxious mother heard half-smothered murmurs of freedom and confusion by her bedside, and bending down to comfort her daughter, found only a blissful smile playing on her dampened lips.
Ancestral echoes, answered the brothers when a tired mother finally turned to her own sons. If the world could be seen in terms of whether one deserves something or not, well, it could be stated that he deserves to have a pupil.
He? Dior asked, not knowing what to think.
This is the way, hissed Elured and Elurin, empty smiles identical on flawless faces.
-
It was night when Elwing took up a harp and absentmindedly plucked a soft tune. All present in the hall instantly, unconsciously fell into uneasy silence, and the daughter of the king continued for a few phrases before stopping, casually brushing her fingertips over the glistening strings.
Her father sat confused among baffled nobles, clawing through pages of memory, trying to find the melody that cannot be tossed aside like any other melody, that called to some part in him he cannot deny.
Pondering, her right hand fondling her raven curls, Elwing raised her head to look straight at Dior, and laughed for the first time, eyes shining.
Father, I understand.
-
It was the evening after Elwing's revelation that the messenger arrived . Dior studied the Noldo with a tinge of numb apprehension. This messenger carried with him withdrawn pride, a streak of worldly weariness, and a impenetrable oblivion deep in his eyes, as well as a letter written by Maedhros, Feanor's Son, of the price of peace.
Words were softly exchanged, because the Sons of Feanor were not so foolish as to threaten the stubborn people of the twilight woods. But they were not so wise as not to "request" at all, Dior thought, as he refused eloquently, and noted with an inner smile the disdain that flashed discreetly under the lashes of his messenger. Only an ignorant Sinda, no?
The child-king dismissed the tolling bell of his doom, who bowed and placed before him a few polite and well chosen words, before turning to go, only to see Dior completely still, the Silmaril on his breast, ironic realization frozen in the depth of his not-quite-grey eyes, in an instant revealed the paradoxical nature of the child-king, white ashes from the first burning which made up his soul, and the beauty that radiated and flowed from him like waves and tides unyielding through the somehow darkened hall.
-
The first Noldorin soldier appeared on the horizon like a scene in a terribly cliché novel, the rising sun dancing surreal on his copper braids. Dior received that news without reacting much, and neither did his people. Not even the silent children did halt their games in the glorious empty halls. It was something expected after all. The limited armies of Doriath dutifully took up arms. Dior brooded on his throne as usual. Nimloth swiftly equipped the minstrels and the artisans, the housewives and the young. No one protested, for if there was anything they could do, it was this.
The queen strapped two curved blades to her newly acquired sword-belt, tenderly, as if nursing her young, and paced out to the balcony to stand beside Dior, who blinked and wrapped an arm around her waist. They stood in their own bubble of silence for a while, quietly observing the flashes of sword and screams of pain, their lashes dark and fluttering in the still air. Then he kissed her palm, his lips colder than ice, his eyes lingering on her face, and whispered, so this is war.
-
The hall was a sea of grayish-reddish waves, the hue of stone and the shades of split blood whirled together in a giddying nightmare. It was no more war than massacre. It overwhelmed every soldier, sending crazed elves lapping up blood like hungry wolves, and inhuman wails echoed through the caves, senseless, these writhing ghosts of once sane elves.
Dior lost sight of Nimloth in the first surge of dizziness. He turned and she was swept away by raving, slashing elves. Elwing the Fair he saw no more, except for a fleeting glimpse of white hands clasped serenely over a gem, dimmed for once, upon blue-clothed laps. He knew she will never die, remembering her breath of foam and sea and sky, and the fate that waited dormant beneath her long fingers. His sons slipped away unnoticed through the labyrinth of thousand caves, without looking back.
The hilt of his sword was unfamiliar on his hand, and it was heavy, its weight pulling his arm to the floor. Suddenly he felt a sharp prick on his left wrist, so seized with sudden unbearable fury he turned with his sword arm cruelly outstretched and sent an elf with so very childish eyes to his death. With this first killing he joined the ranks of the mad, one who didn't care, running on a power not his own, trying to battle an evil without form. He roamed the hall without really seeing, bones cracking underneath his soles, and the squish of flabby flesh¡Xnow merely meat. His heels were sloppily held by half congealed blood, with a life of their own, a mixed life with no individual identity after they brought life out of their original awareness. Death was so easy to take or dwelt out in those splats of eternity, or worse, entirely out of time, and in history there was none who could wholly write about the wordless terror so intense that none caught can sense it. Only a name, a term, a phrase.
They prodded on, in this eerie dance of the dead and the dying, hapless, thoughtless. Their arms raised themselves in strike and parry, but Dior held out longer than most, because of the blinded eyes, and the growing fatigue in a form still withholding its god-given grace. His opponents could not help but cringe at his glance which now, unconsciously composed with all the sorrows of his line, before and after him, and his own which had never seen light. Mesmerized, they could only fall into their graves soundlessly, without even a cry.
Suddenly, as he spun into half-forgotten steps, a hand brushed against his, tensed, and pulled him into a stop. There, standing before him, was his messenger, still proud, still unrepentant, sword and armour slick with the blood of maidens. They stared at each other for a while, then Dior let his lips relax in a smile of sorts. His messenger let go of him, and with a ceremonial flourish of cloak, kneeled before the king, head held high, desire naked and fearless in his arch of brow and colour of eye. Dior placed his hand on the top of the Noldo's head, and ran it down the dark hair, feeling slowly the matted locks, then rested his fingers on the broad chest. He sensed the quickened breathing on his skin, and they looked at each other, sharing in that glance things that may be worth more than the whole world, or no more than a stray particle of dust. Noldorin eyes, strangely dark, they burned with a fire that cannot be rested, a spirit that cannot be unmade, that no oath of doom or eternal darkness can ever dim.
Dior leaned closer until his face was no more than an inch from the soot-darkened face of the messenger's, who pulled him closer still. A stabbing pain manifested in his stomach, and spread quickly, up to his chest, pausing at his ribs before flooding inwards. The cool, hostile steel was causing his body to protest, his flesh turning and his insides twisting in its wake. Still smiling, he raised his own blade and brought it down on his messenger's head, leaving the kiss of death brutal on his brow, the mark of crimson lips spilling all over his hair and the bridge of his nose and his white neck. Involuntarily shaking, Dior sank to his knees himself, and collapsed in the arms of an exiled prince, whose fea had fled leaving a flicker of final satisfaction on his useless hroa. But the last breath of Dior floated above the colourless lips of Nimloth, and disintegrated into eager molecules, chasing the breath of this decreased woman, rejoicing that they never have to fade again while this wretched monster of name Time endures.