Disclaimer: All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.
Prompted by a line in the Narn i Hîn Húrin, which seemed to me to have something about it that did not quite fit with the rest of the narrative, for some reason. Mostly I wondered: how did he know?
Make-believe
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"But Nellas of Doriath never saw him again, and his shadow passed from her."
--Narn i Hîn Húrin
"...the Narn i Hîn Húrin was the work of a Mannish poet, Dírhavel, who lived at the Havens of Sirion in the days of Eärendil, and there gathered all the tidings that he could of the House of Hador, whether among Men or Elves, remnants and fugitives of Dor-lómin, of Nargothrond, of Gondolin, or of Doriath."
--Notes to the Narn i Hîn Húrin
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When was the first time he chanted the lay? The wedding of Eärendil and Elwing? No, a wedding required something more joyful, songs of hope and happiness in these dark days. It was another time. Earlier. Later. In the evening, with the twilight just starting to fall. On Sirion's bank, with the sea in the distance.
She lived alone, same as she had in Doriath, coming rarely into the city, so he was surprised to see that this time she came. There, at the very back of the audience. She seemed uncomfortable to be among the crowd. Grey eyes. Sometimes, he thought he had come to known those eyes well, and sometimes, not at all. All the times they talked, all the things she told (names, words, carefully collected bits and pieces of a Man's childhood in the guarded forest)--she had always looked at him in that quiet way of hers, just like this, like now. He could never quite describe it though he knew many tongues.
The narn began. He could see her grey gaze fixed intently upon him, far in the back, half-obscured by rapt faces. The young son of the lord of Dor-lómin, who would by rights have been his lord, too. He had been no more than a youth, himself, when he left the north. A battlefield littered with the dead--the glimmer of tears in many of his listeners' eyes. The King and Queen in Menegroth. Now tears in other eyes.
She had been so homesick.
And his shadow passed from her.
He did not know this, for it was not true. But maybe he could make it true, if he but put it in the poem. Make-believe, and the other man's shadow--the great Man's shadow--would pass from her.
The Dragon-helm, Mormengil. Accursed by Fate, beloved of Fate. Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. The words came out slowly now. Túrin. Turambar. Dagnir. Glaurunga.
"Blind, blind, groping since childhood in a dark mist of Morgoth!"
He himself was merely a poet.
As he finished, there was a long moment of silence. Then applause, cries of acclamation, the listeners surging forward. The night was deep now. Scanning the back of the crowd, he found that she had already slipped away.