Hi there! I really enjoyed your fic ‘Brittle Stars’ and was wondering if you could tells me more about what Oren’s parents and sister have been up to Valinor. It must be so horrifying to find out that your young teenage son who you thought must be dead was in fact kept alive tortured, abused, forced to have children and mind wiped into thinking he was chased from his home instead of stolen from it. At what point do you think they found out what Oren was taken for? What will it be like for Lirje (whose name i may be spelling wrong) and her descendants in Valinor to find this out?
Aw, thank you so much! This is a great question, and a topic I really need to explore in more detail, because to be honest I've only thought this through on a surface level so far.
I do think his family would have thought him dead at first, since he was taken early on in Morgoth's attempts at corrupting elves and would have been among the very first to survive the transformation. They would have known he was taken by whatever evil power lurked in the north, but assumed he had been killed. So at that point... they would have mourned the loss of their son and the others who were taken with him. But after a while, their understanding of what happened to those who disappeared would have shifted. Going by what we have in the show, Galadriel mentions stories of elves that were taken by Morgoth and twisted into orcs. And she mentions hearing these stories as a child, which means the stories existed in Valinor, which means they must have been brought over by those who undertook the great journey from Cuiviénen rather than rumours acquired later in Middle-earth.
In the story I have Óren going back to Cuiviénen a few times to capture elves, and I think that during some of these journeys, he and others like him would have been seen. One of the other moriondor could have been killed by elves, and then recognized as someone who had gone missing years earlier. And Óren recalls one of them trying to run back to the elves and then being rejected as a monster. Which may or may not have actually happened, and could be at least a partial false memory, but in this general timeframe there would have been some type of contact between the moriondor and the elves: enough contact for the elves to gain a fairly decent understanding of what actually happened to those who disappeared.
At this point, Óren's family would have started to think that it might have been better if he had died, as they originally assumed. The wounds of their grief would have opened up all over again.
I think at first, Lirjë (you did spell her name correctly!) and Óren's parents would have tried to shield her from this revelation. I imagine she would have still been fairly young when this new knowledge started to circulate, maybe close to the age Óren had been when he was taken. Her parents wouldn't want to subject her to the horror of knowing what really happened to the older brother she never knew, but of course, other people talk. She would have found out. Her family would have been well known in the village, and not in a good way, for their connection to somebody who disappeared. I don't think Óren was ever specifically seen and recognized, and Lirjë never knew with 100% certainty that her brother was one of those dark riders that came down from the north, but still she would have wondered.
I think this would have led her to not being so keen on having children of her own, if there was an ongoing danger of them being taken as Óren had been. She only married much later, and her children were born not long before setting out on the migration to Valinor.
One thing I DID think about while writing the story was whether or not all of his family would have gone to Valinor, or if some would have stayed behind out of hope that they might find him or he'd one day return. I knew for plot purposes I wanted Lirjë to have gone, but I wavered back and forth over the parents. Would they become Noldor, or Tatyarin Avari? Ultimately I decided they would want to stick close by their one remaining child. Cuiviénen no longer felt safe for any of them, and when they had the opportunity to move on to a protected land, urged on by Finwë, they would have been among the first to decide to go. Their Cuiviénen life held too many painful memories to want to stay there.
So they went to Valinor, and given that Lirjë's descendant down the line is a laundress and not a powerful noblewoman, they would have settled into quiet, unremarkable lives there. I see them living as farmers in a small settlement of elves who preferred to continue on in a lifestyle similar to what they knew in Cuiviénen.
Now... in the event that Óren decides to try to find them, what would he find? I think his family would be still living their simple life. They'd have long since given up all hope of ever seeing him again, and wouldn't even think that could ever be a possibility. Not after moving so far away, and absolutely not after the stories of Morgoth's evil in Middle-earth that would have come back with those who returned following the War of Wrath. Ayánë, being related to the royal family of Alqualondë, would have her existence and condition kept largely under wraps. Óren's family of unassuming commoners living somewhere near Tirion wouldn't be aware that any moriondor survived and had been allowed passage to Valinor. His sudden reappearance in their lives would be... a shock.
But at this point, I don't think Óren is quite ready to try to find his family. He still has centuries of negative interactions with elves to work through, and absolutely still believes that most elves would not be accepting of him and would not want to welcome him back among them. Even as recently as his interaction with Galadriel in the Southlands, those beliefs would have been reinforced. He knows elves hate the moriondor as much as he was taught to hate elves. Irrenneth's familial acceptance of him is, in his mind, a complete anomaly. He doesn't believe his parents or sister would want to see him again, knowing what he's become. And he's not really sure he would want them to see him, either.
If/when I get around to writing a sequel, this will for sure be a significant plot arc: Óren working through his trauma over interactions with elves, and deciding whether or not he's in a good enough mental place to want to seek out his family. But it's going to take a lot of work on his part. Definitely something Irenneth can help with and influence, and Pengolodh to a smaller extent, but ultimately, he'll need to make the choice on his own.
Thank you for the ask!
