Nienna

For how long have I not been here?, Nienna mused in her long-winded wistfulness whenas she reached the gallery leading to the throne room of Manwë and Varda, the blinding last sunrays and the gusts of winds fresh and lifegiving as Ilúvatar's own breath streaming inwards through the row of huge, arched windows. The Vala slipped the hood off her head and suddenly as though a lily as white as snow bloomed from beneath the folds of grey wool, and she walked slowly forth, her feet brushing the flooring so lightly as if it were merely autumn leaves falling from trees and touching it.

She did not go in anon, yet hid first behind the open wing of the doorway and looked out discreetly, and her soul gasped. Nienna had never thought the time would come when Manwë would be the one reached by a wave of her pity. Manwë - of all creatures! Manwë, the supreme king, the one who of them all was closest to the light of Eru and the boundless bliss of His friendship! And now he was standing by the arcade of the huge windows, alone and without Varda,staring out through them into the distance, where there was nought left but the nonending sky, a white cloud clothing him like a robe. His visible form had changed not a whit, had not been bereaved of one single hair since the day (that day at the dawn of time, so, so long agone that it seemed to Nienna it might never have truly been), and yet he looked old, as old as the world itself... Suddenly Nienna feared the eld - not her own (for the Valar may not know it, may they?) but the world's: mountains that would no longer have the might to stand still, seas weary of their own rough waves, rivers that lacked the power to flow...

She at last stepped out of the gate and walked athwart the whole huge and empty hall to stand behind Manwë.

"My king!" she bowed, her voice light like wind and sad like a mourning song. "Am I disturbing thou?"

Manwë turned and looked at her, and the cloud that shaded his face dissipated and the sun that had alway shone in it returned.

"Nienna?" he spoke gently, astonished. "Thou? Thou of all coming hither?"

"Me." She smiled slightly, sharing his astonishment. "Yet thou have not answered my question, my lord. Thou are troubled, or deep in thought, and I will not to force thy thoughtfulness like a thief."

"My thoughts ought to be nimmed at times, methinks," Manwë said to that, and his words seemed less a jest to Nienna than she supposed he had intended them to be. Her heart burned to ask, nonetheless she decided to leave it.

"I am here owing to my brother," she carefully explained instead. "Mandos has thus far spoken little of it to thee, yet I may see clearly that he is befogged and worried due to that Man who has gained our shores... and, in all honesty, so am I. Who is he, Manwë, more than what thou have told Mandos whilst the council? Why did the tempest he was destined for spare him? Why did he not reached Námo's dwellings like the rest of his fellow crewmen? Is he...? Mandos saw once-"

"We all have the gift of prophecy, thou know that well, Nienna," Manwë interrupted, calmly, yet sternly, and there was some almost imperceptible impatience in his voice, that nonetheless made Nienna's heart anxious and it fluttered like a bird's wings. "Yet prophecies are possibilities whose sack has no bottom. Sometimes probabilities, verily, for we, the wise, see much and have the might to forebode. How oft are we sorely mistaken, however? At times the least likely possibilities ought to come true, for in them the thought of Eru abides, yet which ones are those? Eru alone knows, for He alone wot wholly of the Music. Did we foresee that Arda would become what it now is? That Men would be this way and not the other?"

"Yet fremd things chance in the lands of the Men as well..." Nienna tried. "Have the eagles not reported to thee?"

"Have the oddities not been chancing in the Men's lands for thousands of years? Does Yavanna not weep every now and then whilst councils over the fate of the seasons and the cycles of nature? Nienna!" Manwë grabbed her by the arms, and in his grasp, albeit steady and strong, there was something nearly feverish, seeking... what? He is the king and the greatest of us, what might he get from me that he yet has not or that Eru would not alway and fain give him?, Nienna thought, yet her heart got rathe again to soothe him, though how could she? That was not in her power.

Manwë, meanwhile, went on, "Tell me, yet truthfully and not out of duty that Eru's obedience charges thee: does not the care for the Men yet tire thee? Does it not make thy heart weary and heavy like a stone?"

"Nay, my lord!" Nienna whispered her answer, her eyes suddenly wide and her heart frightened. "I do love Men dearly, and my love is soothfast!"

Manwë smiled, a smile that Nienna loved not. "Therefor thou are verily a better creature than I, and Eru has erred, and it is thy compassion and not my wisdom that should rule, and it is thou who should perchance sit on my throne in my stead."

Nienna's eyes widened even more. "What are thou saying, my lord? If you jest, you ought not to. We both know that Eru is never wrong and thou only is our best king."

"I tell thee now in all honesty what I have not yet told anyone, not even Varda, what... I tell thee the black secret of my heart, which I am afeard to reveal even to myself. Nienna!" he first spoke feverishly, yet then halted abruptly. He stared at Nienna for a while longer, the blueness of his eyes deeper than the deepest sea, then shifted his gaze again to the sky, as clear as Eru's thought, wide as boundless freedom.

"What troubles thy heart, my lord?" Nienna urged, and Manwë answered at last, his voice scant more than a whisper, a hushed and soft gust of wind, yet the answer itself stung her very soul like a dagger, "He speaks to me no more. I plead Him, but He stays silent, unwrung at my pleas. Whilst I tell Him: Lord, I am weary, show me thy will, I beg, for thy will is behind a mist, show me the way in the sun, for I walk in the shadowed land. Yet He is silent."

Nienna knew not what to say to that, and merely stood and watched as Manwë looked back at her. She then thought that perhaps weary was he truly, yet the weariness sharpened his face, so that it was now so stern and steadfast and somehow more kingly than ever, and this selcouth, hitherto unknown to her side of his kingliness suddenly gasted Nienna even more. He is forlorn and his soul weeps, and that makes him impatient. And impatient a king ought to never be...

"Thou stay silent also," Manwë said at last, sighing. "Thou tell me that thou love the Men, and I tell thee: ill though it may be, I am weary of them. I understand Men not and it may be that I never did. Methinks sometimes," he moved his gaze back to look through the window, now where on the balcony's balustrade a swallow perched and awhile, ere taking flight again, plucked with its beak its wing, glittering dark blue in the evenfall's light, "that my brother alway understood the Men better. Their queer, hasty desires. The greed and hunger for each thing and while. The lust for catching time and taking delight in moulding matter after their own likenesses."

Melkor!, Nienna got astonished, the name dancing in her mind like a long-forgotten memory, an erstwhile ill dream that suddenly returns, and eftsoons the old words of her own brother rang in her thoughts as a bell at the top of the tower: "When the world is old and the Powers grow weary..."

The night spread its broad and murk like Mandos' halls arms over the Blessed Realm, and the moon - its king shone in the sky like the luminously pale eye of the One, watchful and all-seeing, good and tender, tender beyond measure... "He speaks to me no more. I plead Him, but He stays silent, unwrung at my pleas", Nienna remembered Manwë's words, and her whole being trembled again.

She put on her hood and dived down from the mountain cliffs into the black abyss of the valley, and rushed as a gale over the mountainous forests, between the ridges and the walls of rocks towering on either side of her as though reaching the sky itself, her figure lighter than the littlest bird, cutting the air as effortlessly as a sunray. At last she beheld what she had sought: a black cloud moving swiftly, rustling with the flapping of webbed wings.

Nienna rushed towards this swarm of bats and caught one of the creatures deftly, yet as gently and carefully as though the bat was as easy to crush as dandelion seed. As she moved the creature, trapped now in the cage of her palm, to her face, she whispered softly into its bat ear, "Go now, my dear child of night, and find Olórin and be brisk as light, and bid him to come to me! Or best: bid him to find on the coastland near Avallónë the Elda who erstwhile in the East was called Beleg and whom many still call so in Aman, and bid Olórin to come to his dwelling."

"There he shall meet me," she said to herself, once she had let the bat free and, halting in the air, she accompanied the creature away with her eyes till its black shape hid below, behind the tree crowns.

Ty for reading :) Next POV: probably Maeglin, or Nienor (not yet decided as to the order)