Houseless Fёar

Raven's POV

Dunland, TA 2906

The day was hot, dry and the air flickered over the long grass of the wide meadow. A few birds sang in the forest surrounding the gently rolling grassland. Towards the west the sky was a hazy white, and the sun looked like a pale reddish pearl through that veil. It felt as if storm was brewing. The heat had grown since midday, and now a soft wind came up, smelling dusty dry and of grass.

The sun had risen a long time ago, and I still sat cross-legged under one of the last trees before the empty stretch of rolling grass began. Insects chirped everywhere.

I had dismissed the wolf, I didn't know why, and everything had come flooding back with the sunlight. No. Without the wolf.

Was anything still worth being graced with any kind of emotion? Right now, everything seemed a worthless masquerade before the nothingness that lay beyond.

The hawk's breast-feathers are white speckled with black. When the first Ashi'kha died and did not know where to go in the spirit world the hawk flew through the space where the night ends, and into the world beyond, carrying the osh'har of the dead with him. Bits of the darkness from the edge of night clung to him though, and there was no wind where he flew then that could have blown them off his feathers.

There is no wind beyond the night, and only the hawk flies there. He leads the dead into a new world, where the wind blows wild and free and where some mountains are so high they can never be scaled.

So said the Ashi'kha, my mother's people.

My father's people said quite differently.

"The Eldar are bound to Arda and to Time. Their fёar would not leave the world, but remain tied to its existence, until the world and time itself would end. The unhoused fёa would be called to Mandos, to remain in the Halls of the Dead until it was released. Some were allowed to return to life. Some were not. They could be reborn into the world, or they could remain in the land beyond the sea. The call to Mandos could be refused. Then the fёa would remain houseless in the world, and hunger for its former body. Refusal was itself a sign of taint, a sign of corruption by the Shadow"

I had never thought like this before. thought of this truly. There had been no need.

And now- Osh'har, or fёa?

Houseless fёa.

What if that was it? If Niy'ashi was not gone.

Father had not intended that. To bring doubt and conflict into the Ashi'kha world. He had not told of his people to spread knowledge of the Valar. He had become Ashi'kha. One of us.

But now we knew, of another way, another belief.

In the beginning of the world, there was no light. Only stars, and wide forests. The first who came into being found themselves by a great water, wide and still.

So far, the legends corresponded, those of the Bright Ones and those of the Ashi'kha. But then they diverged. Elves, the Bright Ones called themselves. Children of the One. Sharing the world with other creatures of this God. Creatures that were not Elves.

Ashi'kha, we were shifters. Furred, unfurred, all in one. Who made us? The legends did not say, did not care.

In the beginning, there was no brightness. There were forests, and mountains, and rivers. There were wolves. Who made them, forests, rivers, wolves? It mattered not, it matters not. They were, and that was that. And they all were part of a One Thing, and equal, and alive. And wherever they went after death, there they also would be One, and equal, and alive.

A black wolf created the world, another tale said. He keeps one eye on it always, and therefore the moon shines.

I rubbed my eyes, which stung from staring into the flickering heat of the day.

It had been a new moon night when Niy'ashi was slain – the wolf did not look here then -

There was no distinction perceived in being, only in appearance and mode. There were wolves, and there were Ashi'kha. One and the same, but different in appearance. Furred, Unfurred.

In the beginning, there was no notion of immortality. Wolves died. Ashi'kha died. Later, when living was not longer only survival, another difference in appearance and mode was perceived. Wolves would die after a time. They aged. Ashi'kha would live and not age, if they were not killed. The Raven was dreaming, and he dreamed the world. Death was only the Raven's dream, born in the starlit dark. But the Hawk had flown with the first light, and wherever furred and unfurred went after death, it would be to the same place. It would be where the hawk flew.

And now? Onakir never said the Gods were wrong. Neither did he say they were right. For Ashi'kha.

I was my mother's son just as much as Kelehan's. Was I Ashi'kha, or was I different?

The wolf cared not – You are furred. Unfurred. You are Ashi'kha -

What if I died? Would the hawk lead me? If so, things were well.

Did Niy'ashi go with the hawk? If so, things were well.

If not -

Could it end like that, a wrench, and then only blackness, and only half a life left?

The human traders said nature was cruel. Hot and dry in summer, cold and wet in winter, full of wild beasts and traps to fall into.

Oh, it was beautiful, but it was also cruel.

No, it was not.

There were no wild beasts. Not for us.

We werewild beasts, maybe.

I stared at the waving grass.

This place had not changed.

Niy'ashi and me had come here often, spent many days here, long summer days.

Like this one.

I missed the grey. And the place had not changed. The grass did not care for anything except the next rain.

If I got up now and walked away, this place would remain the same, would feel the same if I returned.

Nature was not cruel, it was indifferent.

Nature was not human hearted. They could not understand, humans, they saw even less than the Bright Ones.

Wolves did not mourn, but I was no wolf right now.

What you wanted, you had to take. You needed the strength to take it, it would not be given.

The Ashi'kha knew that.

You needed strength to dream, if dreams it should be, and not nightmares.

Those were the only things you were given, the only things it took strength to keep at bay.

And they were following me, nagging at my heels, feeling so solid sometimes, that they seemed to touch me like wind.

I reached for the emptiness, called the pain up, and found only the empty echo of – nothing. Nothing acquired a whole new meaning when it became solid, a thing of itself, sitting where something else should be.

Father had spoken of fёa, of Mandos, of refusing the call.

Would Ashi'kha be called as well?

Was I doubting the truth of my people's belief?

Could we refuse the call?

And if, what had Niy'ashi done?

Could I do the same?

Hawk and a new world, or Mandos and what seemed like everlasting disembodied existence in a dark place?

Sometimes when I reached for the old bond I thought I could find a true echo still.

Maybe I was going mad.

The sun went west slowly, the sky became hazy.

Nothing changed.

Once, Niy'ashi had called the Valar unfair.

To curse a whole race for the pride of one. To be offended by pride at all-.

Some had gone with him out of love. And they were cursed as well.

Neither me nor Niy'ashi had found the notion of the Blessed Realm enticing. The eastern mountains were no paradise. But the wolves were free. And the Ashi'kha as well.

If there is no hawk for us - were there wolves in Aman?

I got up, and crossed the plain. The long grass brushed against my legs and the insects flitted away from the disturbance. Outside the tree shadow the air was almost palpable. Heat brooded over the land. The sky looked like the inside of a whitish globe.

There is no infinity by looking up, so the humans said also. The sky is a roof.

Today, I could at least understand that.

Across the plain. On the other side trees again. The forest smelled cool. Through the middle of it a small brook trickled, thin in the summer.

They lived in cities, Kelehan had said. Great white cities. But there was no wilderness. Where would those fit into things, who went furred often as not? Across the brook, and the wet cool ground of its borders.

The ground rose from the plain here, the trees stood closer. The ground was covered in their leaves. I followed a thin trail, unused in years by two-legs.

Traders sometimes crossed here, but they avoided the end of the path. There an old oak stood, gnarled, dark and low. The humans called it the blood tree. Blood-trials had been held here before, so they said. People were killed here for what they had done. Crimes considered severe enough to be punished by death. The humans that had lived here were gone now, only a few ruins of their houses still stood in the forests around the plain.

And the old oak.

The traders sometimes visited it, for what I had never found out.

Neither Niy'ashi for that matter, and he had always been good with humans.

They were close-mouthed about the blood tree, looking fearful and ashamed. I did not give a damn for what had happened or not happened here. The tree was shunned and I would be left alone here.

There was something faintly different about this one, maybe. But there were also trees like this in the eastern mountains. It was nothing worth troubling about. The shadow had woken the trees, twisted them. So the humans said, so the Bright Ones thought. The Ashi'kha did not know, or care much.

The trees were just there, as we were just there.

At least, people had stopped coming to the eastern mountains.

And the trees did not care much about blood. The oak didn't.

Whose blood, why.

The tree did not care.

The bark always felt cool and moist, even in the summer, even on a day like this.

I touched the rough bark, strangely surprised that I could still feel something.

I was not of the Bright Ones to speak to trees, but usually I could feel enough to make a tree aware of me. They must know a lot, trees, of much that passed under the ground, on the ground, in the air.

I looked for the lowest branches. One of those Niy'ashi and me had used as handhold to climb up was broken away now, dried. So I swung up to another and climbed to the place where the stem divided into four main branches. There I wedged myself into a comfortable position that would not let me fall off if I drifted far enough to loose my balance.

Blood tree.

Houseless fёar.

Maybe the two hung together. I sat for a long while, still caught in a debate to call on Onakir.

I could go back, to the Ashi'kha.

If I wanted someone to walk the shadow paths Onakir was the one.

The shadow paths might lead you for a time to where only the hawk can fly.

Maybe the shadow paths would give me an idea what Niy'ashi had done.

But Onakir was miles and uncounted miles away, in the eastern mountains.

I could not muster the courage to return to the clan. Not now, not yet.

It was not right.

They would understand, yes. - That was tempting.

They could help, maybe. - But that was frightening.

And what was the point? I wanted no help, I wanted Niy'ashi.

Never coming back. Not even fёa.

How long would a fёa retain its character, its personality after the body died?

Could I contact Onakir?

Probably not.

Not, and still have the power to follow the shaman on the shadow paths over this distance.

I shivered involuntarily. Only once, and a short trip, following Onakir.

The shaman had sensed my terror and returned, laughing at the look on my face.

No, I was not for that. Not yet.

But to call on the dead was folly, they said.

"Unhoused, the fёa may refuse the call to Mandos but not have the strength to resist a counter-summons by the Shadow"

To try calling on the houseless ones or to seek the shadow paths – neither seemed worse than not knowing.

The obstacle lay in myself. The shadow paths required a full trance.

Onakir was shaman, he spent more time on those paths than in this real world, his mate mocked sometimes.

But Onakir knew how to get there, how to walk there. And most important, how to return. He knew how to read the signs, how not to get lost in the shadows and echoes and how to follow the true path. He knew how and where the Hawk flew. How to fly with him.

Onakir might be able to tell me if it was Niy'ashi…

No. The shaman was far away.

I would find out.

Now.

I could not face a daylong trip into Ashi'kha territory, and then coming – alone.

I could do it alone then, anyway.

If I found what he sought – well, then my next road was clear as well.

If not-

It still remained the same road. Shin'a'sha.

I closed my eyes tightly and curled into a ball. I had to draw back into myself for a full trance, and for a long time I teetered on the edge of that.

To draw inside meant to acknowledge what had happened.

Meant to face the pain, the void.

If I did not get there, I could not find the shadow paths.

Another reason I was not suitable as a shaman. Always at peace with oneself, that was frightening. Always aware of what was wrong, and always obliged to make it right in order to be what one was.

No.

I plunged right into the horror of Niy'ashi's death.

For a long while, I remembered nothing. Then I became aware that I had managed a trance. Before I could jerk away from the disconsolate feeling I plunged deeper and further away from conscious awareness.

Let the tree watch for me.

The shadow paths.

Right now, it was only darkness and silence. So savage a silence it assailed me like a thunderblast.

Could the paths change? Could their whole nature change?

I was nowhere, and nothing real.

There was no one else there, nothing else.

I screamed Niy'ashi's name into this void, followed deeper into nothingness, spreading my awareness ever thinner and thinner.

A long while nothing happened.

Then I felt something.

But it was not Niy'ashi.

I could not even say if it was Ashi'kha or elven.

It was foreign, and dark, and threatening.

I waited, undecided.

Listening into the endless night inside.

Had Onakir ever mentioned something like this?

Would a fёa feel like that? A dark elven fёa that refused Mandos?

I was dark elf myself, wasn't I? I should be able to recognize it then...

Could my brother's fёa feel like that?

Whatever it was came closer, brushed against my awareness, tugged at me.

That was a horrible feeling.

I tried to swat it away with a mental brush, and realized this did not work in a full trance.

My mind was not my own, I was part of the shadow paths.

If these were the shadow paths at all.

The connection to the living lands around me was gone. No, not gone but too far away.

There was only night. But no, that was in life, night. The night was alive. Not this lightless, echoing void, this was not night.

Niy'ashi was not here. Nothing about this thing near me recalled Niy'ashi even remotely

I would recognize my soulmate's fea, would I not?

I felt the wolf, suddenly.

Still part of me, even here.

No wolf in that thing I sensed.

This was wrong.

Jerking everything back and curling it inside myself I retreated and blasted the trance. The thing vanished.

I came to gasping, almost losing my place in the tree.

Dusk.

Balmy, misty evening.

Birds singing, loudly now.

Niy'ashi.

Gone.

I pushed myself up hastily and began to climb down the tree, not waiting for my vision to clear. I slipped and lost my hold, crashing through the thinner branches and landing with a loud thud on the forest floor.

For a moment, I remained crouched, paralyzed by the shock of falling. At least the surge of panic blew the remaining shreds of dizziness away very effectively. I dug my fingers into the ground in silent fury, and slowly got to my feet.

Wherever Niy'ashi had gone, he was no longer here. No longer near.

I called the wolf back and started running, away from the plain.

For the wolf, it was easy to leave sorrow and horror behind. I gratefully relinquished every part of unfurred's awareness to the nighthunter.

Chapter Notes:

Cursive passage in quotation marks paraphrased from Morgoth's Ring, "Of death and the severance of fea and hrondo"

"Nature is not human-hearted": quoted from Lao Tsu

Fёa(r): Quenya for 'soul(s)'

osh'har: Ashi'kha term for fea, meaning 'swift wind'

shin'a'sha/ shina'sha: lit. "thunder-road", "shadow-path", an Ashi'kha ritual of both mourning and living

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