Over the last season, Coruhuron had submerged himself in the softness of Imladris. The most powerful thing about being in Imladris to him was to see his kindred again. He took a keen observation of those he admired, those he was indifferent to, and even those he disliked. Each quality of the individual seemed in itself a work of art, and here he was during these months, Coruhuron the admirer. The appreciator. The Still.
Mornaewen’s sorrow, the shadow of her smile and the haunt of her songs.
Faelial - her afflictions and follies, how shelter had harmed her spirit in more ways than one despite her youth.
Illuvarion and his wry humour - so set into ancient ways, that even with the light and more pervasive darkness about the ellon, it seemed natural, belonging.
Aecthel and how fae-like she was, youthful whimsy and spry reactivity. There was ever a clumsiness about her that went hand in hand with grace, like a newborn fawn.
Dulingurel and her pristine sophistication, hollow words woven into extraordinarily colourful tapestries while managing to mean nothing at all.
Hravanis, then.
Hravanis, a harsh texture to her spirit, and an ugliness about her. Not a slovenly or revolting thing, but much as a rock-slide is ugly. Ugly, heavy and devastating, deliberate. Inevitable - without wasting a shred of energy on lightness or artful grace. Yet there was a grace, also, to inevitability.
Hravanis did possess a beauty, in his eyes. For all the wrath he might feel - dark embers spat from an inferno within him, biding their time for what she had done - Coruhuron felt drawn to Úveluie with a strange and poignant appreciation.
Compelling was she. One of such ancient, shuddering change and wont should by all rights, be compelling; and if she were the ugly land-slide shifting the rock and re-shaping foundations beneath her feet in thunderous wrath, he was the wildfire. Even nigh burnt to embers, as he felt during those peaceful months, the flares were volatile, flame-ready and equally as ferocious, perhaps to greater writhing passion than Úveluie had left, her motion of spirit more a force like a boot slamming down in simplicity, when she should otherwise be still.
The inferno was faster to change, faster to react and to change course - for he was “Huron” after all, swift to action - and Fire leapt ever to the same without leash or inhibition.
Yet unlike the rock-slide which took the mere skip of a pebble cast the wrong way to cleave mountains, Fire was as still as breath from a corpse, without a great jarring spark to ignite it. And what a terrible grace it then became, anything but ugly, to one who had an eye for the light and the awe that preceded the wake of it. Writhing, dancing. Inevitable.
It was far easier to consider himself, when in the context of considering Hravanis. Something he did more oft than would be considered usual or appropriate by most, if they knew, especially given his conflicting fascination and hatred for her.
He was certainly no First Elf, and a rare - almost mythical, debatable and striking creature was Hravanis for being so.
But he was ancient bred - of the Noldor, an extreme rare, eerie sight in Middle Earth, now. Over seven feet tall, pride and splendour of the Eldar of the First Age and formidable, with an air about him of lightning finesse and strength fitting to a master warrior of old. Corded musculature and signless movements befitted the silent dance of a honed predator.
Though this intimidating stature, he knew well enough to keep low-key, mitigated in Imladris. Shifts of body language, ways he would angle or hold himself to make that height less noticeable. A lineage he had no desire to draw attention to, his pride strong, like all the Noldor, but without place for making his heritage immediate known.
More noticeable about Coruhuron by others at first was a weighted gravity to him. An aura ever drawing in from the earth at his feet or the breeze on his skin. There was a stillness to his posture when idle, so very still that it shamed the foundations of land about him, most of it in its current form, younger than he. Changes and formations he had observed with his very own eyes in close, solitary proximity as the centuries had passed.
The stillness of Coruhuron was so remarkable and familiar that it oft seemed he was no elf at all, but carven of ancient stone, lacking of breath entirely, though the steel-grey eyes were too full of a life long-lived. Reined wrath ever in him, passion. Loss. Love, murder, gentleness, patience, volatility, even play - and all that came between.
This myriad formed that gravity about the ellon, in some forms invisibly subtle and others, crushing in extremity. All built within his massive stillness, impenetrable. Leaden with the weight of what this son of Gondolin was, had been, had felt.
For all his Fire, within him was not a youthful recklessness.
“Huron”, a brand of his spirit as it had always been. Fire was in his heart and in his blood; but it was not the brash, unwise fire of a young ellon wishing to go forth to ill-spent bravery and great deeds; rather it was the long kindling, fierce burnt source suffering and relishing where flame was no longer a visitor but within its own element. An ancient entity, now, never controlled by anything but itself. The ‘Flame’ of him was ingrained and ever writhing in a long practiced dance where, too, there was unfaltering certainty; pride.
- No, he was long past youthful follies and bare remembered many of them. Instead, now, the fire and swift-actions of Coruhuron were hemmed in by power and will - by the countless centuries where recklessness had tolled him and taught him, even when he had nothing left to give, and fewer reasons to learn.
For he was ‘Coru’, also. Cunning among soldiers otherwise fit only for obedience without question or rebellion. And for all the deaths his heart had died, his mind ticked still - as sharp and far keener still than it once had within the ambitious young soldier six thousand years before, now long spent into a being far more ancient and painted with colours of solitude and death’s dealings.
The rock-slide and the wildfire. Two faces of wrath and destruction.
Some may have said also, ‘chaos’. Ill-omen, terrifying forces. Both ugly, in their way.
The rock-slide in the harsh, tearing simplicity and magnitude of its wreaking, though the landing ever brought solidity and silence.
The fire when its furious grace in bright wrath had ended to leave behind smoldering blackness and ruin, the stuff of nightmares when all was said and done, though of beauty the flames may have been.
... Yet he, and he knew she, also, would say that while both were of ‘ugliness’ to many, they were, too, qualities of the Eldar, now so oft forgotten:
Inevitability.
Unbridled passion.
Splendour.
Strength.
