Elrond has only snippets of memories of that night: Mama is gone somewhere beneath the waves, and around them the tower burns, and the wind howls like a hunting dog, and a huge white crane soars above the sea. Then around them the tower burns, and the window is broken, and the flower pot that was upon the windowsill is turned upside down, and Elrond wants to pick it up and to sweep up the clumps of dirt that litter the floor because he doesn't like how the roots look exposed to the air like that.

Then Elros is prying their fingers apart, Elros is saying something to him, Elros is pushing him away and going out, out the window after Mama and the sea and the bird, tiny among the white crowns of the waves. Then someone, a woman, picking Elrond up and carrying him down, wailing like the wind, past the fire, and they are on the beach.

Maglor--who is not Maglor yet but a cold wet stranger--is coming out of the sea, and in his arms is a little wet bundle of rags that Elrond does not at first recognize as his brother. He doesn't think to ask, then, if Maglor had dived for Elros or for the gems, and later he will not, because the answer will scare him. Instead he looks at the white clouds in the sky and the seagulls and the little brown pebbles underfoot and coughs because of the taste of ash on his tongue. Will the flowers be alright, he asks, will the flowers on the windowsill die? No, someone says, Maglor or the woman (who had the woman been?), no, they'll be alright. And the tower burns.

Bliss and Beauty Undiminished

Day 3 - Forth Age and Beyond

Maglor recognises Imladris as soon as he stumbles upon her ruins, sees the crumbled bridges and overgrown walls. 

She must have stood abandoned for centuries uncounted – he is not quite certain what Age it is, let alone what year, only that it has been a very long time since he watched the White Ship that bore his son West vanish beyond the horizon.

Still he sees Elrond in each stone of the valley, each tree, in the glint of the river, and amidst their all-encompassing presence he sits in the shade and listens to the valley’s tales of his son.

Thanks for reading ♡

the odyssey except it's maglor trying to sail back to valinor and osse hindering him

Thank you, @wilwarin-wilwa, for nudging me to finally write a little bite-sized Homer-Silm fusion!

>>>> Siren Song (G, 355 words).

1. Маглор над трупами предателей.

Maglor over the corpses of traitors.

Day 7: music and storytelling for @maedhrosmaglorweek

Alienation/isolation for @maedhrosmaglorweek

‘The Golodhrim intend to take the Orc Prince as their leader,’ Cíleth tells him in a whisper.

The Sindar of Mithrim fear Maedhros until they see the person he is in Maglor's presence.

@maedhrosmaglorweek day 2: Trust/Distrust

Battles of Beleriand for @maedhrosmaglorweek

Maedhros & Maglor Week - Day 3

Two drabbles for @maedhrosmaglorweek :

Maedhros struggles with the half-written message beneath his fist. Maglor watches, yet hesitates to offer help. His brother will ask if needed. He rarely does.

“You are very persuasive, Nelyo. Do not fret over each and every word!”

“How do you do it? How do you create beautiful verses that leap from page to one’s heart and mind?”

“I write what I feel,” he answers. “Then out it flows, like the mightiest of rivers.”

Maedhros flinches, his eyes turn dark. “Some feelings have no language and thus can never be spoken,” and he crumples the paper with his one hand.

****

And, because things often get way too depressing for them, a little bit of happiness during more peaceful times:

“I am honored you have invited me to this feast,” Maglor whispers, a smile betraying his latent joy.

“Well Káno, you will not cause any embarrassment. Or start arguments. And your talents are appreciated at such gatherings.”

“Ah yes, I am merely here to sing,” he exhales an exaggerated, playful sigh and Maedhros laughs. That is the best music, he realizes; his brother finally laughing again, the clink of glasses raising hopeful toasts, the strum of his harp.

If only the rest of our brothers were tame enough to join, he thinks. Then everyone would surely be entertained. Or offended.

@maedhrosmaglorweek Day 2

Bonds

…they stood alone against all the world

Bonds for @maedhrosmaglorweek

The Sculpture of Coast

Maglor drifts ashore one mist-dark morning. 

Nerdanel finds him only by accident. Limestone had been her heart’s desire, not a son; she nearly trips on him, nearly goes around the narrow passage of tall rocks. 

The cove is full of little lives, mollusks and sand-ants and meaty sea-urchins; a peaceful place, and good. 

A seastar clings to the tangled tresses of his hair, pulsing gently Her son looks unnervingly well-made to it - a piece of castaway waste amidst the shallow tide-road of a deep pool, limbs rising and swaying with the movement of the water.

She reaches her hand to the glimmering green water and the trailing white foam to reach him, and touches only sun-warm sand.  

He blinks at her with pearlescent eyes, and she sees his hair too is seaweed, and the sea-star part of him - his eyes black and gleaming as worn black conch-shells.

His skin is the water, the sunlit water and the shifting shadows underneath the surface. Storm-tossed, he has made his way back to Western shores, but not to touch them - Nerdanel can see, too, glimpses of charred driftwood bark that were his hands. In this way the songs are true, as she has long suspected.

She thinks, for a moment, that this can be no good way to be, for the sea always bitter, and storms in Aman are fierce. His breathing swells and eases with the current.

His mouth opens, and a sound of the sea speaks - 

Water pushes against her knees, salt sprays the hem of her apron in distress. Small whirlwinds gather around the highest rocks - sargasso and char and shadow shift, fearful, displeased.

No violence at the last - what little satisfaction that is! - but a great strangeness in the mind that spills out, unbound, over the waters and the wind.

She cannot tell if he recognizes her. It does not, all in all, make a great difference. 

‘Never mind,’ Nerdanel says curtly.  ‘Stay as you are, you lost thing. I am on my way only, and you are not what I seek.’ 

Her voice in the wash of the waves is softener than she likes it to be, but she has always known how to quiet her fretting children, in their youth at least. This one, the last, is ancient; it makes little difference.

She touches a tangled curl of damp, purpling sargasso. Only once; briefly.

The narrow path grows narrower still in the gloam. Nerdanel’s feet remain steady, too wise to hurry and dare a fall. By true evening she is back in her tent, making notation of the ancient age of the rocks: their ingrained fossils and coral husks, their dead matter.

Tilion, her old friend, rises to his own work, alights upon her maps generously, sweeps the tide and all its wrecks away.

Perhaps he is there, still, the lost thing - a spirit in the water, or a pile of bones unearthed by the low tide.

Nerdanel does not turn back, and does not return. She has measured all the stone in miles, and found no good place for a quarry.

Maglor's duel with Ulfang the traitor. This episode is so interesting to me bc we don't often see Maglor taking initiative and doing something on his own. He acts very much as one of Maedhros' follower, but I think that this moment and his mercy for elrond and elros are the two defining actions that shape his character in my head.