In the middle of the room is a table, made of hellwrought iron for its legs and smooth dark granite for its top, upon the table was a box, and in the box were the Silmarils, the greatest treasure the bowels of the earth had ever held or will ever hold at once, save for nothingness itself.
No one can see them. No one can hear them. To touch them would be to die again perhaps. Nonetheless, he did not plan to touch them.
Darkness merged into darkness and deeper dark, the glitter of movement the only light.
Hard edges are nothing in the embracing shadows, and tendrils of cries, perhaps existing only within the undercurrents of a mirror life twisted around his being in a pleasant motion.
Who would question him? Who would dare to?
No master of creatures needs eyes. Sight was too objective, too demanding in a realm where instincts should rule, the compromise of all wills.
As spirit he passed, scarcely seeing, yet knowing, clearly, each shift in tone, each shift in movement of the familiar places of his reign. He wondered that he knew he would never forget this even if all may fade, this simple journey.
Stones and gravel, smooth and rough, mud and stone, he could not feel, not while he travels thus, yet he imagined the grit beneath his boots, his shoes, his feet bare, and knew them to be real.
O the light, he brought them into the sun, which was brighter with Angband's strength and cowardice gone. And from shadows to air, he is gone, invisible.
A faint temptation, or rather, another temptation, molded a hand's form, and with it, he hid the box, the light within it. He is Maia after all, made of Eru's first thought.
The Silmaril's pulse, beat in sync with the pulse of his thoughts.
He wished to open the box.
They told him to. At least, it is what they would want.
He could see the wings that would lift them up in the air.
He could see the burning gathering, growing, until they blazed out of his sight upon a single point in space.
Yet he would not. That was not the purpose, and purpose meant everything. The practical illusion melded into reality, urging mettle for the last trim of threads, the final weaving of a comet's tail.
There was the place where he lay, there were the armies marching forth, and there was the cleared space where he lay in restless dreams. We have seen, the cloud in his works, the stars and sun and dearest memories, his labor betraying his mind, as art must its creator.
When Ešl beheld the Blissed Lights while dreaming on a blanket upon the roof of a tall tower under the twilight sky, he could not move.
Under the gaze of the Silmarils, he was trapped.
--
It was wrong. It should not have happened. He could not even comprehend the impetus- the unnamed wound breathing within desire, a compulsion of a kind that was at once contrary and imperial. Annatar could not see the music, and yet it was there, bearing them all afloat upon it.
The elf's head had turned to its side during sleep, and out of nothing, the light was an impossible flare, too bright against the twilight horizon where he wandered and whiled his days.
The first infinitesimal change in Ešl's blank, dreaming eyes of returning awareness turned his expression unspeakably tragic as the perfection of his form was rendered in a white fire while his face burned into Annatar's mind in one quick, demanding curve of the blade.
"Mandos," Sauron swore, and would shut the box if he were not so besieged with the beauty of the moment. In one world, when the light was not so special he heard the snap of the lock as it closed. Here, he felt the hard distinct emblem on the heavy lid, fanning out in smooth curves and hard edges beneath his fingers.
In the second change, Annatar saw the world crumbling. The black of Ešl's eyes turned to likenesses of shadow, made pale by the fair glimmer within them. The broken wall, the burning roof and tower poured out into Annatar's vision, driving it into itself. Groundless, soundless, pale silhouettes tangled together upon a white bed in a darkened room before a great fire engulfed it in one swallow. An image of blood dewed plants: petals and leaves laden with incarnadine ambushed him in one fearful spectacle. With a cry, he fell back, a blinding pain running from the tip of his finger to the center of his chest.
Before him, before the jewels, which were snug and blustery in their perversity, the elf knew that fate turned its wheel and spun a thread. He saw it clearly as he felt it, the strand entwining with strange others, filigree strings brushing past.
He could not see, and the faint recognizance brought him nothing more than a stronger nostalgia, no more than an absolute vision of bliss, already sharpened by the years, now once more, and infinitely more whetted by the million little bright knives. But Ešl could not discern that he was no longer he had seen it upon Melian's face. That had been a reflection in her eyes and face he saw, but now his eyes and his face were the mirrors and he bore the full brunt of the Blissed light and the artistry of the Quendi. He hurt.
A face looked out at him, but he knew not whether it was his face or someone else's.
"IÉ" Ešl opened his mouth and his throat was so dry, his thoughts so meandering, as if the light was another kind of sun, crueler, desiccating him.
And then it was gone. The light was gentle, a soothing presence that blanketed him even as Annatar's shadow swayed and fell across in breaking opaque.
"I sawÉ" He tried to speak, and his voice startled him. It was too loud, too soft, too low, too high, he could not control it.
Carefully, as if to a fragile wood, Annatar pressed a finger upon the lips and shushed Ešl.
Perhaps he expected to meet glass instead of the softness he found, perhaps he expected burning heat instead of the gentle warmth, and perhaps he expected nothing at all. Annatar splayed his hand upon the firm flesh and bone, cupping Ešl's face and saw the shadows of indentation on the skin. Moving to one sharp cheekbone, leaving his blood in its gentle wake, his fingers traced the features anew.
Ešl's appearance was greatly altered. How, Annatar could not tell, could not describe in words, would not described in words as he furrowed his brow, matching line to line, point to point, to images engrafted in existence, this tableau of the familiar stranger, forehead to chin, dabbed with spots of pink, which were brilliant red before meeting the elf's fair, fair, skin.
What divine tragedy turned his expression so inconceivably subtle, impossibly hale? Irony could also be beautiful.
"Do you drop out of the sky?" Annatar asked, entranced within the shadowy eyes that though sharper, would never pierce him, "Do you appear beside the waters as a flash of thought, or were you there always, and He merely tore the film from our eyes?
The elf smiled, though a bit confused, and he was of faint gold.
Dawn was here.
Ešl drew a long breath as Arien finally matched that light, still a covering warmth around his body. Now the world was in comfort, the Silmaril's too; they saw kinship in the sun, and sighed blissfully, their rhythm relaxed.
Annatar bent down and kissed Ešl. All amazement, all wonder, awe, and anguish: regret curdled pungent in the maia's mind as he tasted those lips, too surprisingly naturally sweet.
"Am I myself?" Ešl asked him before Annatar seemed to vanish again into his own reflections, "I cannot think, that I am different. Yet I am, from the core of my fea, I sense it." He sat up, and stood, legs only slightly unsteady at first.
They were standing now, looking out into the field of rolling clouds, and Ešl discovered that he could see further, clearer, it was if glass made every single color, curve and movement. Each line was startling in their precision, and nothing blurred together.
"There are words for what I feel, I don't know them. Every one of my senses perceive meaning, I want to know it," He said, speech becoming easier by the moment, "Those jewels, that light, within that box," He looked at the trunk on the ground lying quite brilliantly alone as an incomprehensible puzzle, "Did their owner live here once upon a time? Is it your emblem?
"No," Sauron paused, their shoulders touching "Though I suppose, I wish it was.
"He made them did he not?
"Yes, and more besides.
"Strange, when the light dimmed and yet did not, I thought I knew him." Ešl's fingers drummed against the battlements, wondering. The stones scratched his fingertips, and he could feel it breaking into smaller pieces with each tap on the surface.
"Really, and how?
"It was as if life, unbroken, flowed ceaselessly through me, and in things they were in a pervasive plan. I knew that it was there. That all things have their places, and I would know of them. A foreknowledge for all time, because I think," The elf bit his lower lip, "At all time's end, it will be as if an infinity of dreams came together and realized.
Sauron thought of the tragedy in the air, born out of Ešl's expression as he beheld them, without choice, in a plan.
"They are in my keeping, those jewels." He said.
Ešl heard him, but it hardly seems important how that treasure was obtained. They existed, and in that lay the importance.
"What is your name?" He caught Sauron's elbow as it moved away and held, tried to hold.
The firmness of cloth reassured him. He did not wish to think of what he knew, that Annatar was Maia, only a spirit and of unearthly mettle. Ešl had never felt so bound as he did in that moment, so helpless enamored. The fear that resided deep in the recess of his heart had magnified, now it crawled into the spaces beside of his heart and made it twinge and throb with each breath.
"I cannot tell you." Annatar replied, knowing what he asked.
"You have forgotten it," Ešl said sadly, and softer, "I do not wish to forget mine, nor anything else at all.
Annatar vanished within his grasp, turning insubstantial for a moment, but the same hand appeared soon again on the elf's shoulder, "I am sorry.
"I am sorry too." Ešl said, the twinge more intense, more painful than ever.
"And what would you do?
Ešl turned to look at Annatar. "What can I do?" He asked earnestly, voice full of dawning hope. His chest had constricted and now he felt nothing.
"Why, free yourself." The maia answered.
"But I cannot be myself when I am so changed. Where would I go?
"Did you not want to go home?
The elf lowered his head and considered the words.
"You would let me leave?
Annatar laughed, and threaded a hand into Ešl's hair.
"Would you have my permission?
The words disturbed him, as did his movement, leaning forward to rest his chin upon the other's shoulders, feeling warm arms encircling him.
"I would have you come with me.
"Wherefore?
Because in all this dance of light and dark upon my being, I know no one but you, Ešl wanted to say. He pressed himself closer into the embrace and closed his eyes, because I am afraid of all those things that changed without me knowing them.
--