Disclaimer: No matter how many times I wish that I own it, I still don't. Fail.
For thousands of years, through days uncounted, nearly two whole Ages of the world, the elf had wandered, desolate, along the seashore. Clutching his burnt hand, he had spent the first few years just weeping and moaning and sometimes screaming his pain to the cloudy gray sky. But no one answered, and nothing changed.
Decades passed, and he turned to the one thing he hoped would bring him peace: music. The elf sang at first, his voice thin and broken with stress and the strain of living. Soon he set his long, nimble fingers to the making of instruments: panpipes, flutes, once a simple harp. He would play for hours, even days at a time, just sitting on a boulder or a large piece of driftwood and staring out across the sea. Tears streaming down his cheeks, the elf played and played until he lost his voice and his fingers bled. No matter how long he played, though, he could never fend off the pain and loneliness and guilt. Always, always, it came crashing back down.
Then he would stumble, nearly senseless, along the seashore for however many weeks or months or years it took for the pain to abate. His clothes, once the finest that could be gotten in Beleriand for love or money, grew more and more ragged. Somehow, they never fully disintegrated. His shoes were long gone. The elf had left them in a cave further south with some of his instruments. He had many such caves along the coast, from Lindon in the North to the mouth of the Anduin and Lebennin in the South, although he did not call those places by their names. Time and location meant nothing to the elf. He dwelt rarely in the immediate now and mostly in the long ago.
They said elves could die of grief, just waste away from sorrow and despair. The musician wished he could. His regret burned within him, fierce and unquenchable. After trying to drown it in cold seawater, he had passed out and woken to find himself safely on the shore out of reach of the waves. It would appear someone – or something – wanted him to stay alive. Shaking his fist at the sea, the elf cursed his supposed savior.
When will this end? he thought in one of his more lucid moments, tightening the strings on a new harp. How long do you have to suffer before you can be redeemed? How much pain must you endure before you are forgiven?
The elf took his thoughts and made them into a melody so sad that even the seagulls seemed to weep. Then he stood up and continued his wanderings.
Millennia passed, and still he roved alone on the shore. Sailors heard his music from time to time. Muttering darkly about spirits and elvish wights, they turned their ships away. Occasionally a curious child would be drawn to the strange, haunting music. They crept close to listen but fled once they saw the demented musician, his clothes rags, his body emaciated to the point of being skeletal. The elf never even noticed their presence.
Once he had been a history story, his decisions debated and mourned by the Wise. Now he was nothing but a legend, a myth that faded more and more with every passing day. The musician felt it and put that into his music, too.
One day he came to himself, more clear-headed than he'd been in centuries. The elf stared at his body in disgust, the remnants of a long-forgotten pride rising in his heart. He remembered his name, his heritage, even his shoes, but abandoned the last as a lost cause.
The elf gazed out across the water. Then in a gesture of loathing and denial, he turned his back on the ocean and walked away.
Completely caught unawares, the local Maiar watched him go. Recovering, it sent its swiftest messengers to tell Ulmo, lord of the waters, that Maglor, last of the cursed sons of Fëanor, had left the seashore at last.
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