I couldn't let the people who had waited so patiently for an update go too long without a follow-up. My thanks again for all your support over the last three (!) years.
- Philip
The red light at the mouthpiece flashed insistently. The hiss of static filled the cabin like the bated breath of an audience before a soliloquy, and Oromë's mouth went dry.
"Mayday," he mumbled into the radio. "Mayday," he repeated, forcing some strength into his voice, quelling the riot raging in the pit of his stomach. "This is Oromë, come in, Valinor."
The silence, although it lasted mere seconds, threatened to snap Oromë in half. He was moments from bellowing his request into the mic again before the voice of a middle-aged woman responded.
"Valinor," the respondee confirmed, "Commander, confirm mayday, over" she asked, her voice betraying confusion - and an undercurrent of dread. Oromë let out a long sigh, as though the last of his strength was leaving him.
"Confirm, over," he croaked, rubbing his face with rough, gnarled hands in exhaustion. The radio crackled back to life as he lowered them.
"Do you require extraction? Medical assistance? Over," his contact continued. Silence fell as Oromë lowered his hands. "Commander?"
"Help," Oromë whispered as blood dripped down his palms and clung, hot and wet, to his beard. "Help us."
One week earlier
In the weeks and months following his formal introduction to Ingwë, Oromë had become a fast friend of the chieftain, and of his tribe. They had been happy to share their food with him and dress him in their furs once they had seen him exit Ingwë's hut arm-in-arm their their leader, and Oromë had slowly begun to piece together what life was like for the Eldar.
"The tribe," he spoke into his dictaphone, "call themselves the Minyar. It means the 'first ones'; apparently, they believe they were the first of their kind to come to life. There are two other tribes of Eldar they know of, both divided into dozens of clans of around a hundred each. They call them the Tatyar and Nelyar...no prizes for guessing what that means," he remarked laconically, stooping to pick up a rock from the foreshore where he stood, gazing out over the black, star-speckled waters of the great lake. "They pride themselves on their craftsmanship, and I can't say I blame them," he said, admiring the pauldron on his right shoulder - a gift from Ingwë, crafted from the pelt of the first deer he had killed for the tribe. "They devote themselves to craft, almost single-mindedly, from the moment they rise to the moment they rest."
"They call this place Cuiviénen," he continued, turning the rock over his his hand. "It means 'awakening'; it's believed that this is where their kind first came to life. It's as good a guess as any," Oromë shrugged, flinging the stone out into the water and watching it break the surface with a satisfying plop.
"My studies of their language are going well," he went on. "They call it Quenya - another name for their own kind is 'Quendi', 'the talkers', which is a bloody laugh if I ever heard one. They'll answer questions easily enough, but you have to...word it very specifically. They won't proffer information you don't ask them for. Shrewd people," he added admiringly. "My one disappointment has been their reluctance to let me take any kind of medical readings from them - no blood samples, no scans, not even so much as an eye test. It might just help explain...all of this," he sighed.
"Oromë!" An Eldar youth - distinguishable only from his elders only in the band of leather he wore around his head - called after the Ainu. He pointed nervously towards the camp a half-mile behind them, reticent to address their strange visitor directly. "Ingwë…" he blurted before trailing off. Oromë smiled good-naturedly.
"I'm coming," he replied in Quenya, trudging up the shore to where the callow youth stood. The youngster averted his eyes as Oromë drew next to him. "Do I frighten you?" He asked, concerned.
The young Elda blushed furiously, meeting Oromë's gaze out of shame at the older man's hurt. "No, Sir," he replied. "It's just...strange," he muttered, fiddling with the queue of platinum-blonde hair at the back of his head. Oromë chuckled.
"For me, too," he reassured him, laying a rough hand on his shoulder. "What's your name?"
"Imrin," the boy replied, his eyes flickering downwards in momentary shyness before relaxing.
"Well, Imrin," Oromë said as they began to walk back to the camp together, "I promise you, I was more surprised than you when I first met your tribe. Your existence here...it simply couldn't be. I couldn't accept it."
"It is so," Imrin rebutted. "This has been our home and our way since we first awoke; we have ever heard the waves of the lake and hunted in the forest."
"Who's your father, Imrin?" Oromë asked. "Your mother?"
"My father is Indi," Imrin replied. "My mother is Idris." Oromë nodded. They weren't Eldar he knew. He was still having trouble, between the similar names and remarkable likenesses, telling one Elda from another.
"Are they still alive?" Oromë asked. Imrin stopped dead, his glassy black eyes locked in fear with Oromë's. "That's not a threat!" Oromë laughed, holding his hands up. "I merely ask the question."
"Of course they are," Imrin hissed, resuming his pace, albeit now at a remove from Oromë. Oromë nodded reassuringly.
"I simply want to learn of your families - all of your tribes'," he clarified. "Where you come from."
"We come from here," Imrin replied. Oromë gave a thin smile of frustration.
"I mean your past, Imrin," he explained. "The Eldar who lived before you."
"None lived before us," Imrin replied peevishly. A note of annoyance had crept into his voice. Oromë sighed silently.
"So I keep hearing," he said, feeling his own patience with the boy wearing thin. "But you must have had…" His Quenya failed him. "Your father's father," he said. "What was his name?"
"He has none," Imrin stated baldly. Oromë felt frustration rise further in him before he remembered that certain cultures on Ain had a tradition of unpersoning the dead; the Eldar, he assumed, were the same.
"I see," Oromë replied diplomatically. The two walked the rest of the way to the camp in silence, save for a courteous farewell. Eldar inclined their heads respectfully as Oromë passed them on his way to Ingwë's test. The guards outside parted the flap of leather which served for a door and Oromë found Ingwë standing, shoulders tense and hands clasped tightly together, and staring out of the window towards the forest.
"Ingwë," Oromë greeted his friend with a bow. "Is something wrong?"
"Messengers from clan Findis of the Tatyar, " Ingwë began, "came today, on horseback. They told us that six of their youths had gone hunting in the forest a day's walk from here, eight days ago. As of today, they have not returned. The messengers had hoped they might be with us."
Oromë frowned. "That's bad news," he replied. "Perhaps they met with an accident?" Ingwë brushed his hand through the air; the Eldar equivalent, Oromë had learned, of shaking the head.
"They sent others to search for them," he explained, "after the third day. All they found was a single arrow, loosed into a tree. But you," he said, rounding on Oromë, "are a mighty hunter. Could you help?"
Oromë nodded. Even without the biological data he'd been pressing the Eldar so hard for, his shuttle was still up to the task. "Happy to help, my friend."
Ingwë smiled widely. "Thank you. The Tatyar are watering their horses for the trip home; we can tell them together."
The Tatyar messengers and their horses reacted with shock at their first sight of Oromë, wild-haired and heavily-bearded as he was, but were quick to give their thanks upon learning of his offer to help. As they sped off into the eternal night, Oromë took his leave of Ingwë and began the long walk back to his shuttle.
He had only been away a few weeks, but Middle Earth had seemed intent on reclaiming his vehicle. Hacking at the vines which choked the hatch with his knife, Oromë succeed in jarring it open enough to slip inside and tore free of the last remaining strands upon takeoff.
As the world below him shrank, Oromë considered the strange double-life he had been living for so long; slumming it with the Minyar, hunting with them and sharing their spoils, learning the beauty of their carving and weaving, hearing them recite poetry by starlight - and now here he was, effortlessly operating technology millions of years ahead of them, seeing their home from a perspective none of them could ever dream of, as though he were a god. For a second the stick felt alien to him, a relic of a past life. All he wanted was to stalk the forests of Arda, knife in hand, forever.
A sharp list to his left brought Oromë's attention back to the real world, and he quickly righted the shuttle. "Computer," he called out, getting to the task at hand at last, "scan for lifesigns."
Please note, the computer replied lyrically, range is reduced to one kilometre due to sensor malfunction. Oromë swore; after a century of his own jury-rigged repairs, his faithful steed was starting to fall apart. Banking hard and descending, Oromë began his search of the mighty forest. Laying a simple grid pattern into the autopilot, he abandoned the pilot's seat and took up the position at navigation, waiting for signs of life.
For hours, Oromë pored over the bright red dots that grew and shrank on the navigation display, scrutinising them for anything that would betray them as Eldar; sudden bursts of speed, movement in formation, but he found nothing. As he reached the end of his search pattern, he ripped off his pilot's headset and threw it across the cabin in frustration. Ingwë's resistance to allowing Oromë to conduct even a cursory medical examination of any of his people had irritated him before this, but now it felt like the chieftain's stubbornness had prevented him from finding six lost children. It was a conversation, Oromë resolved, he would resume upon his return.
Connecting…, Varda's computer screen flashed slowly. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose; this was the eighth time she had tried to get through, and her respondent was now an hour late for their check-in. It wasn't irritation, though, that motivated her - it was concern.
It was to her great surprise when Ulmo suddenly appeared, draped in a shawl, on the other end of the line. "Ulmo!" She greeted him, organising her materials and trying to look like she was on top of things. "Thank you for replying - eventually…"
Ulmo gave a murmur of assent and nodded slowly, a single grey dreadlock falling across his face. "Sometimes, it takes me...time," he said with the lilting cadence of a man on the verge of sleep. Varda nodded sympathetically.
"I understand," she said softly. It tore her apart to see her lifelong friend in such discomfort. "It's just that this is the longest it's ever taken for you to recover from an episode." Hurricane Ulmo - as some of the crueller Maiar had named it - was still a topic of conversation in Valinor months later, and even threatened to overtake the Eldar as the Ainur's favourite subject at points. The western sea had been whipped up into a fury none of them had ever thought possible, and most of it had been thrown at Valinor's doorstep, forming indescribable patinas and curlicues of electrical discharge along the forcefield that protected the edge of the city. Some had said that it had beaten out the Trees for beauty that night; some others had said, much more quietly, that it felt as though Valinor were not simply in the way of the hurricane, but its target. The faraway, almost guilty, look in Manwë's eyes in the days following the storm had not gone unnoticed.
Ulmo sighed and stared off-camera. "I never recover," he retorted. "It gets worse every time. And I never find myself at the level where I was before, like I've...slipped down a rung. Like each one takes something away from me, forever."
Varda tightened her lips to maintain her composure. "Well," she replied, forcing some optimism into her voice, "I think you'll be happy with the news I've got for you. Those extra carrier waves Nessa implemented into the projection matrix took perfectly, so we've managed to free up two whole satellites. If we arrange those in concert with the satellite we've already dedicated to your avatar, I think the triangulation of the pattern should give you significantly enhanced stability."
Ulmo's dark eyes bore deep into the camera. "How enhanced?" He asked.
"Well, it will certainly stop the episodes from getting any worse or more frequent," Varda explained. "I'm estimating a 400% increase in signal strength and a 75% drop in degradation, but," she stressed as Ulmo's tired eyes widened slightly, "these are only estimates. It's going to be slow going until we work out exactly how much of you we can…" She trailed off.
"How much of me you can get back," Ulmo finished for her with the grim resignation of a dying man.
"Y-yes," Varda confirmed, her voice betraying her to a whisper. "But we should see, at the very least, an immediate improvement in your-in your condition," she continued as Ulmo weathered the news as though it were an unfunny joke he'd already heard.
"When can you get it done?" Ulmo asked, impatiently. Varda smiled.
"The satellites are already in position," she replied. "I just need your consent."
Ulmo spread his hands wide. "Ready as I'll ever be," he said, settling himself into his chair.
Varda's fingers skittered frantically over her keyboard as she linked the three in concern, amplifying the signal they carried to multiple times its original strength. "Stand by," she muttered as the levels slowly increased until they reached critical mass. "Okay, Ulmo, I want you to brace yourself," she said, heart in her mouth. "This might not be pleasant."
"Chance'd be a fine thing," Ulmo growled, biting into one of his dreadlocks and gripping the arms of his seat. "Ready," he mumbled through a mouthful of hair.
"Initialising in three," Varda counted down, "two, one." No sooner had Varda pressed the button to activate all three satellites together than Ulmo had arched back in his seat, screaming against his makeshift gag, his slender, strong fingers threatening to rip the arms straight off his seat. "Ulmo!" Varda called out. "Ulmo, do you need me to stop? Is something wrong? Ulmo!"
"No!" Ulmo shouted, spitting the hair from his mouth as he twisted in his seat like a fighter pilot doing barrel rolls. An aura of static flashed and flickered over his body, and great explosions of light sent him tossing this way and that like a boxer being helplessly pummelled. "I…can...do this!" He grunted, bending almost double and tensing his muscles. Varda's breaths ran ragged and shallow, and her hand hovered over the key that would abort the process. One final flash of light sent Ulmo sprawling in his seat, his spasms finally eased.
"Ulmo?" Varda asked quietly. "Ulmo, honey, talk to me."
"Oh," Ulmo groaned, "Gods of the SUN!" Varda laughed in sheer relief.
"You're alive," she babbled, wiping away an errant tear.
"Wish I fucking wasn't," Ulmo replied, pushing himself up in his seat painfully.
"How does it feel? Better or worse?"
"Give me a moment," he sighed, catching his breath and rubbing his eyes. After some minutes of silence Ulmo took a deep breath and threw his head back, his metre-long dreadlocks arcing through the air like flying fish. Varda was entranced to see how he seemed to be looking at everything around his station like it was the first time he'd ever seen it.
"Better," he said, at length. "Much...much better." He smiled for what seemed the first time in years. Varda laughed in joy as she ran diagnostics on the satellites.
"Everything's within expected parameters," she said, "I'm reading a 402% increase in signal and only 12% degradation - this is fantastic!"
"Well, let's hope it lasts," Ulmo replied, staring at his hands in wonderment like a man with new spectacles. Varda smiled and got back to fine-tuning the satellite outputs, leaving several minutes of silence to stretch out comfortably between the two. "How is...everyone?" Ulmo said at length, almost sheepishly. Varda paused, unsure how to respond.
"They're...fine," she replied, nonplussed. Ulmo cleared his throat.
"It's just," he said, "I realise I've slightly neglected my friendships for the last couple of...centuries," he muttered. Varda let out a burst of laughter. Ulmo's dry wit returning was the best sign she could have had that he had recovered much of his former self.
"Well, things here on the mainland have really picked up lately," she said, "what with Oromë's discovery."
"Something new to talk about at last?" Ulmo replied pithily.
"Pretty much," Varda said. "But, it's more than that; it's really made everyone come together again, for the first time since...since the accident," she said as gently as she could, not wanting to cause Ulmo any undue pain. Her friend, however, took it philosophically.
"Nothing like having a child to save a failing marriage," he muttered sardonically. Varda smiled thinly at his dark humour.
"Everyone's working again, not just leaving it to the computers," she said. "We were only able to try this because Nessa worked out the carrier wave solution - it had been staring us in the face for centuries, but only now did we even see it."
"Well, good for Oromë, then," Ulmo replied. "How's," he began, pausing at the last moment. "How's Manwë?"
Varda swallowed. She knew he was only asking to be polite. "He's...got a lot on his mind at the moment," she said, evasively. "He's taking the news about Oromë's tribe very seriously, he doesn't seem to be quite as...excited as the rest of us." Ulmo nodded slowly and edged closer to the camera.
"You know, the thing about having a child to save a failing marriage is, it doesn't work," he said. "Maybe, he just knows it."
Ingwë's reaction to Oromë's failure had been, in the Ainu's opinion, excessive. It was beyond his ability to understand, the chieftain kept repeating, how such a great and powerful hunter could have failed to spot six young Eldar. The entire rant had the unmistakable ring of I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. His unsuccessful return had only been compounded by the presence of messengers from not only clan Findis, but of a clan of the Nelyar, who had also lost members of their tribe, and come to the Minyar on the Tatyar's recommendation. The messengers stood in the shadows of Ingwë's tent, glancing down uncomfortably as the two friends argued ferociously.
"I tried to tell you earlier," Oromë argued, keeping his voice low only with great effort, "that had you consented to my examinations, I might have been able to find them. I didn't know what I was looking for."
"You are a hunter!" Ingwë retorted. "You have eyes, ears, nostrils! What else does a hunter require?"
Oromë sighed deeply and rubbed his tired eyes. "I have...tools," he said, slowly, bending his Quenya into shape, "made by my people, which can find prey without using eyes or ears. I used those tools, because to search the forest with only my senses would have taken too long. I...I'm just not as quick as you," he chuckled, somewhat abashed. "But my tools need information. Information...from you," he finished, unsatisfied with his butchery of their tongue. There was so much, he realised, they simply couldn't comprehend.
"What tools?" Ingwë asked, eyes narrow, like an investigator peeling back the layers of an alibi.
"Please," Oromë said softly, "it's difficult for me to explain. You don't have words for them. You don't even have words for what they're used for," he blustered. Ingwë's eyes narrowed even further, his lip drawing up into a snarl.
"I see," he hissed, closing the gap between them, wounded pride inflating his bravery. "The Ainur are so very mighty, and the Eldar so puny, so like children!"
"That...that's not what I meant," Oromë sighed, shamefaced, but he knew it was exactly what he had meant. "I have insulted you," he said, bowing his head. "I apologise." Ingwë drew in a deep breath, letting it go slowly. He nodded quickly and laid his hand upon Oromë's shoulder. "I will show you these...tools," Oromë said, "if that is what you wish."
Ingwë nodded slowly. "I do wish that," he replied quietly.
"Tell the messengers to remain," Oromë advised his friend. "I'll return in an hour with all the answers you want."
As Oromë trudged back towards his shuttle, a part of him worried he was making a mistake. Everything he had done thus far was with the aim of limiting the Eldar's exposure to Ainur technology, preserving their - as Oromë reasoned it - innocence. He was an observer, and nothing more; and yet, here he was, about to open their eyes to worlds they never thought possible.
Ingwë and the messengers sat in awkward silence in his tent. The mallornwood stick, used ubiquitously among the Eldar to measure time, had smouldered down to the next notch. Ingwë seethed quietly. Could it be that his strange friend had fled, ashamed of his failure?
A strange noise caught his attention. Ingwë's eyes were drawn to the firestick, suddenly shuddering in its pot, clicking and clacking like a child's rattle. The chieftain and messengers took to their feet as they felt the earth beneath them begin to hum, growing deeper and more profound until the pot shattered.
"Earthquake!" Ingwë cried out, fleeing from his tent, followed by his guests. "Everybody outside!" He commanded his tribe, but they had already taken the initiative and flown, pouring out of the small village of tents into open ground. Ingwë sprinted to the head of the group, counting heads, when blinding lights above them forced the Eldar to their knees, screaming in terror, shielding their sensitive eyes. Through their hands, they could make out a huge and terrible shape, wings spread like an eagle but more vast than any they had ever seen, bearing down on them.
"Arrows!" Ingwë ordered. "Take it down!" Bolts were loosed from across the group, but with their archers blinded, hardly any hit their mark. A mighty wind blew across the faces of the group, who began to stagger back to their tents in panic, even as the rumbling of the earth grew louder and more intense.
Ingwë stood his ground. "Knives!" He shouted, drawing his own weapon - a long, straight blade of volcanic glass - and preparing to take down their foe head-on. The shape took to ground with a thump that sent the chieftain to his backside, and the lights and noises stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The panic of the Eldar gradually subsided as the spots cleared from their eyes, replaced by wonder and a mild sense of trepidation; the source of their fears sat squat and immobile before them, a long, grey mass with slender arms jutting outwards near the back, balanced on three flat feet. Slowly, Ingwë approached the strange creature, knuckles white around his knife, crouching into a defensive stance as a gaping hole appeared in its side with a hiss. Ingwë's legs almost failed him as he saw his friend Oromë hop out of the hole and down to the ground, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"Oromë," he whispered, his heart racing so hard he feared he would faint, "what is the meaning of this?"
"You wanted to see my tools," Oromë replied, smiling. "Here they are."
Ingwë spent the majority of Oromë's brief tour of his shuttle looking like he'd had a religious experience; his friend had been correct when he'd said the Eldar didn't even have words in their language to describe the wonders his people had accomplished.
"What I said before, in anger," Ingwë muttered as he sat in the co-pilot's seat and looked out over his tiny, ramshackle camp, "I say again, in truth; the Ainur are mighty, and the Eldar truly are like children."
"Ingwë," Oromë replied gently, "these are only tools. Creations. They serve the same purpose as a knife, or a fish-hook. They require skill to craft, yes, but it is the same skill that allows an Elda to make a bow, or a hut, or a boat. My people have existed for longer - far, far longer - than yours, and I am sure you would make tools such as these had you existed for as long as we have."
"This...flying house," Ingwë babbled, gesturing around him. "Can it take us to your people?"
Oromë's heart leapt in excitement. "Yes," he replied, "yes, it absolutely can. Is that something you would like?"
Ingwë stared in wonderment at the array of displays and consoles around the co-pilot's seat. "To walk with gods...such a thing is the dream of a lifetime."
The pair exited the shuttle to find the rest of the Minyar crowded around it and adoring it as though it were a holy icon. Muddy handprints and crude depictions of animals, specifically eagles, adorned its fuselage, like the ancient paintings that had been found in caves back on Ain. "I'll have to get permission from my...my chieftain," Oromë said. "It may take some time."
"Of course," Ingwë replied, smiling affectionately as the tribe's children ran under and around the shuttle. "What should I tell the messengers?"
Oromë shrugged. "Tell them all I told you," he told him. "My people's friendship is with all Eldar, not just the Minyar." Ingwë bowed his head graciously and gestured the messengers to join him in his tent as Oromë re-entered the shuttle - shooing away a pair of over-curious kids - to send a broadcast to Valinor.
A flashing red light on the navigation console diverted his attention away from the radio. "Computer, what's the problem?" He asked.
Buildup of isoquantum radiation detected, the computer replied calmly. Oromë blinked in surprise.
"Source?" He asked, sitting in the co-pilot's seat to review the navigation screens.
Multiple sources.
"Display on screen," Oromë ordered. His brow furrowed in confusion as his navigation screen showed an irregular patchwork of red that covered the surrounding area, shifting and changing like a lava lamp, but mostly confined to the limits of the Minyar camp. A huge swath of red, however, covered most of the great lake, just a few hundred yards to the west.
"Computer," Oromë mused, running his finger over the red patch on the water, "isolate and enhance this section."
Maximum enhancement not possible due to sensor malfunction.
"Just give me what you can," Oromë replied impatiently. The map zoomed out to show the lake in all its huge, hundred-kilometre-long glory, marred by an angry, ragged red spot near its centre like a bee sting. Oromë stared at the image, lost in thought. "Computer, define isoquantum radiation."
Isoquantum radiation is a non-naturally occurring form of high-intensity radiation formed as a byproduct of certain means of energy production, such as-
"Computer," Oromë interrupted, the germ of a mad idea taking root and flourishing. "Could you create a representation of all sources of isoquantum radiation, on the scale of one centimetre?"
A slight pause from the computer made Oromë's heart skip a beat. Manual scan required due to sensor malfunction, it responded at length. Oromë nodded.
"Computer," he asked thoughtfully, gazing outwards to the lake. "Are we waterproof?"
Tulkas yawned loudly, shaking his head violently to force himself awake. Around the long table in Surveillance, the other Valar made similar attempts to rouse themselves; being forced into a top-level meeting at two in the morning was something they had all hoped they'd left behind. The smell of fresh coffee suffused the room as the irritated officers swigged it by the flaskful, trying to stave off the fog that surrounded them all. "Gods above, he'd better have a bloody good reason for this," he growled, bleary-eyed. Immortal beings composed of light as they were, it seemed even they needed their eight hours.
"He wouldn't have called us all if it wasn't," Vana replied, practically on the edge of her seat by contrast. It was perhaps predictable, but she seemed the only of the Valar who had their wits about them at all.
"Quite," Manwë added, wearing his exhaustion like a grudge. "Varda...do the honours," he grunted, sitting upright in his seat and straightening his tunic. Oromë's face appeared on their viewscreens, as red-eyed as themselves but galvanised with nervous energy.
"So, Commander, are you going to explain why you've dragged all your friends out of bed at this unwelcome hour?" Manwë asked sardonically. Oromë smiled.
"Apologies, Commander," he replied, "but I thought you should know - I'm coming home."
A outburst of relief and surprise rose from the Valar. Tulkas clapped his mighty hands together, and Vana let out a sob of joy. "Well, that's great, Oromë," Manwë replied, "really great. I'm glad. But couldn't this have waited until morning?" Oromë's smile faded slowly, like a child forced to reveal a lie.
"No," he replied softly. "No, Sir, it couldn't." Manwë's faced hardened. His former adjutant's tone worried him. "I'm bringing some of the Eldar with me. I want Irmo and Estë to look them over."
All eyes in the room widened and turned to Manwë, staring with grim fascination at their commander's inevitable reaction. Manwë's chest swelled as though he might rip his tunic in half, before collapsing into quiet, exhausted laughter. His high-pitched chuckle echoed disturbingly throughout the meeting room, putting everyone on edge. "No, you're not," he replied at last. "You're just not."
"You're going to have to explain that order, Commander," Oromë said, darkly.
"No, I don't," Manwë replied with a dismissive smirk. "Not now, and not ever. It's a good thing that you're coming home, seeing as you seem to have forgotten how the chain of command works."
Oromë's tired, craggy eyes blazed with quiet fury. In the furrowing of his brow, Manwë recognised the old soldier that had whipped the fear into Melkor's rebels single-handed. "I think you ought to know, Commander," he continued, more quietly, "that I haven't made this decision lightly."
"Lord Commander," Manwë corrected him, ignoring the frowns of the Valar and a poisonous look from his wife. "Forgive me if I'm having some trouble believing that, Oromë; what's that on your shoulder?" Oromë's eyes swivelled down to his deer-pelt pauldron. "Were you any other man, I'd say you've gone native."
"I have reason to believe, Sir," Oromë spat, "that we are directly responsible for the existence of the Eldar."
Manwë's lip twitched. "That's quite a statement," he said. "Continue."
Oromë recounted the story of his futile search for the Tatyar youths, the Eldar's awe, and his discovery. The scientists among them shook their heads more and more forcefully as he went on.
"Oromë, it's just not possible," Aulë interrupted him at last, having taken all he could bear. "You simply couldn't have been picking up isoquantum radiation, not in those quantities, and certainly not in that part of the world. If you've been anywhere near the Trees, maybe, but…" He trailed off, shaking his head.
"I'm sorry, Oromë," Yavanna added, sympathetically, "but Aulë is right. How old is that shuttle now? How long has it gone without a proper service? The sensors have to be wrong." Oromë lapsed into silence, bowing his head.
"Wrong," he whispered. "The sensors have to be wrong. I see. Then explain this," he shot back, punching at his console emphatically. The map of radiation sources dominated the Valar's screens, a lattice of red dots with an outline of the great lake superimposed on top. "What does that look like to you?"
The Valar fell silent as they absorbed the information on the scan. The red dots clustered in a perfectly straight line, a few tens of metres across, running over half a kilometre under the lake bed, bisected at three regular intervals by parallel lines. It looked like a cattle brand, burned into the very earth, quenched beneath endless water.
"I don't know what you want me to see, Oromë," Aulë chuckled. "All I know is that it can't possibly be isoquantum."
"Don't know what I want you to see?" Oromë repeated, incredulously. "Aulë - you built it!" Oromë punched at more keys and the representation shifted, turning on its axis to present a side view of the image. The straight lines of the lattice revealed themselves to be ever so slightly curved, bowed out like the hull of an enormous ship. "Familiar now?"
Aulë stared in silent disbelief at the image, as though faced with a ghost. "No," he said at length, shaking his head. "No, that's...that's not possible."
"Aulë," Manwë addressed the engineer quietly, "what is he talking about?" Aulë fixed the Commander with a look that bordered on contrition.
"Computer," Aulë said shakily, "bring up the schematics for Light and Metaphysical Power Station South - Singularity Section." With an obedient bleep, the computer displayed the huge, spherical expanse of steel ribbing that had topped Illuin and contained the raging artificial star that had helped to power Almaren before Melkor had seen to its destruction. Aulë swiped through page after page of blueprints until he came to the one he was looking for.
"We assumed the entire tower had been vaporised," Aulë said, his voice beginning to break. "But there's no doubt about it...that's part of Illuin." The Valar's eyes flickered between the two images - Oromë's map and the blueprint of one solitary slice of the singularity section - and tensions in the room, already at breaking point due to several pints of coffee all hitting the system at once, managed to ratchet up another notch. "It must have been blasted loose before the singularity imploded."
"Bit of a coincidence," Tulkas grunted, "that it landed smack bang in the middle of a lake."
Nessa turned slowly to her partner, a look of unrestrained disgust on her face. "The lake formed on top of it," she hissed. "Idiot."
"Great Gods," Námo breathed. "How much radiation has that thing been pumping out?"
"It...it doesn't bear thinking about," Aulë stammered, his ruddy face draining of colour. "Irmo, what, erm," he stuttered, "how-how dangerous...?"
Irmo cleared his throat. "No studies have ever been carried out," he mumbled, clearly aghast at the implications. "Isoquantum's too...obscure, too rare, to have ever been subjected that level of testing. But...I can't imagine it having any effect on DNA but an extremely profound one."
Oromë scoffed. "You could say that," he replied, bringing up another image - his scan of the Minyar camp. "These people are riddled with isoquantum radiation." Aulë cradled his head in his hands in grief as the scale of the exposure dawned on him, and the other Valar groaned with shock.
"Gods above, Oromë," Vana whispered, "what effect has this had on you? Are you...alright?"
"I don't feel like I'm going the way of Ulmo, if that's what you mean," Oromë said brusquely. "But I'm sure Irmo and Estë can give me a look-over while they're examining the Eldar." The ill-tempered silence between Commander and Lord Commander weighed upon the room like a ton of bricks. "Like it or not, Commander," Oromë finally said, "we are responsible for these people." Manwë seethed.
"You can have one day," he acquiesced. "One." Oromë nodded and ended the connection without another word.
"With all due respect, Commander, one day probably won't-"
Irmo's words were cut off abruptly as Manwë immediately took to his feet, his chair clattering to the ground as he stormed out of the meeting room without another word. Varda said a hurried farewell to her colleagues before charging out after him.
"What the hell was that?" She barked down the corridor as Manwë stalked away, briefly stopping with his shoulders hunched and fists clenched.
"It's an obsession," Manwë hissed through gritted teeth. "It knows no bounds. He's fixated on these...these creatures of his!"
"Those creatures," Varda rebuked him, "exist because of us! They never asked to be born!" Manwë growled and shook his head, striding down the corridor without another word to his wife. "What's your problem with them?" Varda shouted after him as the other Valar slowly began to exit the room behind her, trying to slink away without causing too much awkwardness.
"Well, I think that's enough excitement for one night," Tulkas quipped, yawning, as Nessa reached up to clip his ear.
Something told Varda she wouldn't be sleeping at all.