Mirdania Week! This will be cross-posted here soon
Day 2: Silver
@mirdania
Celebrimbor frowned as he entered the forge, eyes that had been hazed with thought sharpening as he was torn from the revered world of ideas where he had abided all morning. He came to a sudden halt, stiffening—the expectation of his surroundings did not match up with their true existence, and though he could not quite pinpoint what exactly was amiss, the mysterious obstruction was as large as a boulder in his path, blocking access to the sapphire-encrusted headpiece he had been turning over in his mind.
A sudden fury seized him—as ferocious and as harsh as the rise of a red sun against a white sky before he remembered the temperance in his heart. Shaking himself, he set forth into the room, taking time to carefully examine every inch of the forge with the same neurotic precision he put towards his craft. He began at the heart of the room, feeling across the hearth's smooth surface to ensure the smith's aides had not left behind a single speck of ash or the barest hint of a water mark after they had wiped it down, then scrutinised the bellows that fed the flames and the large black anvils with a similar process. When he was satisfied they met his standards, he began picking apart his workstation, spreading the tools across a clean canvas he'd placed on the floor to inspect them individually.
Nothing had been taken, or misplaced—his chisels remained sharp, his tongs were freshly polished, his sledges were all in order, organised from smallest to largest, and… oh.
Realisation struck him like a blow. He darted across the room to the adjoining study, eyes passing straight over the scattered concept sketches on his desk as he neared the display cases. Dozens of ornaments lined the glass cabinets, each one worth more than the last—an intricate bronze cuff engraved with a language known only by the wild Avari clans in the east, circlets that draped with chains and beaded droplets of amber and citrine, a ring set with a pearl as large as a dove's egg and carved in the shape of a swan, earrings whose designs were reminiscent of styles from great kingdoms lost to the ages, like the flat discs that had been so popular in Tar-Meneldur's rule, or the criss-crossed necklaces so heavily weighed down by jewels that one felt weary at the mere sight of them… he paid them little mind, for there was something far more precious to him just ahead.
The stand where he had set Fëanor's hammer stood empty.
For a moment, Celebrimbor forgot how to breathe. The black rage that had domineered him mere moments past before paled in comparison to the horror and panic that overwhelmed him now. What manner of person would commit such a treachery? Certainly not any of his Gwaith-í-Mírdain, who he had vetted and were bound by friendship. And what thief would covet such an artefact, bound with dark histories and the looming threat of the accursed oath as it was?
A small scuffling noise brought him back to reality. Thinking another mouse must have slipped in during the night to shelter in the forge's warm cradle, Celebrimbor approached his desk, bending over to look for the poor creature.
Wide, owlish eyes stared back at him. An elfling was huddled there, a girl with a long curtain of molten gold hair hanging loose over a stricken face.
"Why, hello there…" Celebrimbor murmured. "Why do you cower like a frightened doe, child? Come out and let me have a look at you."
She evidently did not want to, but crawled obediently to her feet. She worried her lip between her teeth, body bent at a strange angle as she tried to conceal something under the folds of her skirt.
"You need not be so afraid," he said, though his words were stern. "Curiosity is a not a fault, though there is no virtue in shying away from the consequences of open deception. Show me what you have hidden."
She gave him a guilty look. A flash of silver caught the light as she revealed the stolen hammer, tiny hands cradling it with a care that held less of the wariness the artefact usually inspired and more a quiet reverence he was accustomed to seeing reflected in his eyes alone. "A thief," he said, amused, "but an honest one."
"I only wanted to hold it," the girl said quickly. "I would not have abducted it from its rightful place, my lord, I swear it!"
The sudden fierceness in her voice lifted a veil behind his eyes, dislodging a memory that had faded with the slow passing of time. His mind traversed that forgotten road, taking him to another kingdom, another century, another life. He saw a woman with strong arms and an easy smile, grounded to such an extreme that it seemed every object that passed beneath her sharp eyes was being picked apart with surgical precision, peeling back the layers of their tangible forms to reveal the possibility of beauty at their uttermost centres.
Surprised, he said, "but you are Glóriel's daughter, are you not?"
The girl's face fell, and Celebrimbor winced at his own tactlessness. Glóriel had died in the Great War, leaving her only surviving heir to the custody of her sister, who served as the city's chief artificer. He felt his lordly disapproval slide away like frost in a hearth and knelt to her level. "There are not many who would look kindly upon such a tool."
She huffed. "Well, that is nonsense. My uncle is a baker, and he does not begrudge the oven when he steps away too long and his bread has burned. A tool is just a tool."
"Clever girl," Celebrimbor laughed, though a little startled. She all but preened at the praise.
He surveyed her thoughtfully, then reached over her head to pluck a paper atop the pile on his desk. Her large eyes followed the movement and she shuffled closer at his beckon—it was a series of drafts for the sapphire circlet he had been deliberating over all week, the earliest cut in neat lines that grew more jutted and untidy as his frustration grew. Her finger traced the design. "It is beautiful," she told him, open wonder shining on her face.
"It could be," he allowed. "The dimensions of the stone burdens the proportions, but to thicken the band would give it an unseemly flamboyance."
"You cannot size it down?" she asked.
"Oh, perish the thought!" He nearly choked. This sapphire had been salvaged from the ruins of Nargothrond, brought all the way from Tirion upon Túna by Finrod Felagund through frostbite and misfortune—it shone with the brilliance of the Two Trees! He shook himself, making an effort to soften his tone. "To cut such a stone would… dishonour it."
The girl paused thoughtfully. "May I see it?"
Celebrimbor rose and crossed into the forge, the girl hot on his heels and as persistent as a shadow. He opened a carved wooden box and carefully placed the sapphire into her awaiting hands. He could not discern whether the glow on her face came from the way the gem caught the sunlight or from within herself; her eyes shined with awe.
She passed it back to him and darted again to his desk, seizing a fresh parchment and some charcoal. Celebrimbor returned the sapphire to its proper place and rose slowly. By the time he approached, her sketch had begun to take form, and a rather impressive one at that, especially for an elfling of her age. Neat lines depicted a small-bodied bird with a long, thin beak. He watched as she added wings that tucked into its body and coiled safely around the glittering sapphire set at its breast, then engraved contours across these that he knew represented oxidising—making a relief in the metal so it would appear as a black background engraved with intricate silver designs. These were curved vines, thorned and dotted with tiny blossoms.
"Very good," he said, thoroughly impressed.
She beamed in response. "The eyes could be set with citrine," she said. "Or some other yellow gem, to better represent the bird's natural colouring."
"I doubt there is a single elf living in Eregion who would not recognise the bird for what it is," he chuckled, "but it is a sound idea."
He took the parchment and examined it closely, mind already mapping out the process with no small amount of eagerness, though he knew it would not be just to appropriate the incomparable joys of creation from its true maker. Celebrimbor sized her up with a fondness that dislodged something in his chest. "What is your name, child?"
"Well…" she looked suddenly bashful. "My father named me for the loyalty with which the moon follows the sun, but my aunt has always called me Mirdania."
Well, Celebrimbor thought with a smile. Well.
***
"Have you ever seen orcs in the heat of battle?" Sauron asked. Though knowing it was the benefit of hindsight and loss that bared the truth of him, unburdened and untwisted by his proud ambition, Celebrimbor could not fathom how he had been so blind to to his cold personage—a snake hiding in the grass. "A frenzy comes over them. A bloodlust."
How crazed he must have appeared in his desperation. Which was the heavier blow? The judgement in the eyes of the people he had sworn to protect, or the disbelief that he had been brought so low?
"When Gondolin fell, they say it went on, and on, for weeks." There was neither delight nor malice in Sauron's eyes as he caressed the arrow lodged in Celebrimbor's breast. Only emptiness. "Tell me where you have hidden the rings, and I will end your suffering now."
He thought of wide blue eyes looking up at him in the dark, more precious than any star-wrought silver or glittering gem. "It must be nearly noontide," he said. "One used to hear the kingfishers, flying to the river. It is a pity how you have silenced them."
Happy Mirdania Week! Starting off strong with my favourite niche pairing in the Halls of Mandos 💪
This fic will be cross-posted to my ao3 soon.
Day 1: Gold
@mirdania
The fall of Nargothrond began as slowly as the scattering of pebbles down the face of a mountain, heralding the inevitable plummet of an avalanche. It began like the groaning of a tree before its felling, the swoon before the faint, the gasp before the shattering of glass—or so sang the minstrels. There were some that might deem it natural to seek to embellish such miseries, just as there were others who were just as like to protest softening the blow of real misfortunes. But it is not the sentimentalisation of tragedies in song that doom people to repeat their histories. What child learns blindly to be wary of fire at a parent's behest, and not in the precise moment they reach out and grasp the flame with both hands?
It was these same children—tall though they may be, aged though they may appear—that were quickest to name the elves wise, though they knew not the depth of the damage they caused in the fires of their own youths, or that anyone in Arda might be deemed wise, had their souls been set inside them with a hardiness to endure those first trials and a longevity to survive the thousand that followed.
Mirdania felt her surroundings bleed away in the same instant she recognised them for what they were—the kiss of cool limestone against sun-warmed flesh, the impossible vastness of fertile earth dotted with bushels of wild holly, the brilliant stretch of sky canvased with a golden dawn, the sweet rushing of the river Glanduin, glittering like a chest of sapphires… then the world shattered like glass, cutting her into ribbons of flesh and memory.
Slowly, slowly, awareness clothed the nakedness of her soul. She was alone and dwarfed by the scale of an ever-expanding darkness. The air here was hot and dry, and somewhere in the distance a ticking sounded out at a pace she perceived slightly quicker than it ought to be. Ivory vines materialised from the void to cage that noise, then muscles corded around them—strong limbs, long and tough from years of hard labour, and joints that met the back of her shoulder, faintly dotted with sunmarks like a deer's hide. The ground beneath her tilted, then steadied.
A vast hallway lay in front of her, dim and shadowy—and empty, save for her, though she was not quite herself yet. The walls were panelled with red mahogany and adorned with exquisite tapestries that seemed to shift in her mind's eye if she did not turn her focus to them. A thought came to her that she might have been able to recognise the scenes they depicted once.
To her left, a woman of mighty disposition crowned in a golden garland raced along a road of sand, pursuing a foul silhouette with eyes like caverns of flame, pitiless and eternal. Further ahead was a gleaming pool circled by trees, threaded with rich blues and laced silvers; inside, two magnificent swans writhed in pain beneath the tortured gaze of an elderly prince. The black swan had a human head, and its companion was without wings, and in its attempt at flight had drowned. The next tapestry showed her a city in ruin—a great white seabird wrestling a mole with a greedy, gaping mouth, and a noble lady whose body was pierced with thorns, yet did not bleed.
The images lifted a veil from Mirdania's eyes, and suddenly she knew these stories for what they were. Her hands trembled as she reached out to touch the first tapestry, fingers tracing its silhouette. It came toward me, breathing, reeking of death…
Whatever state of unawareness she had woken from, she wished to return to it.
Gathering her skirts, Mirdania turned and ran. The tapestries seemed to stretch on for miles as she crossed the stretch of the room, weaving through the nonsensical pattern of sudden turns and corridors. They were occasionally interspersed by doors set at regular intervals on either side of the hall, each one closed with a latch left unlocked. She ignored them all, though as soon as she took note of them, her thoughts seemed to sharpen and memories rushed towards her unbidden—the stench of rot and gore permeating the air of her fair city, the masses of orcs bloating the empty riverbed. Her mentor's face, once proud and kind, twisted in desperation as he reached for her—a push or a pull? Each memory was piercing.
The fall that had wracked the air from her lungs. Her vision blurred. A sneering face looming over her, the glint of metal, a dull throbbing in her abdomen she scarcely felt.
The hem of her dress caught in her foot, and she fell forwards with a cry, catching herself against the wall. The ticking in her chest stuttered as she pressed her open palm against the surface of the wood—this door felt older and rougher than the rest, and seemed to thrum in response to her touch. Without understanding that she had made the decision to open it, Mirdania stepped through.
It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the rush of brightness that assailed them. She had appeared in the midst of a forest—tall birch trees surrounded her, their trunks seeming to bend towards one another as if cowering from some unseen threat. Bodies littered the ground. For a moment she seemed to recognise their faces—the smiths she had spent centuries beside, the elfling girl who had lived in the dwelling beside hers, and Malendol, his kind eyes still and unseeing—but in a heartbeat their features had slanted into strangers'.
Mirdania glanced behind her but could not see the door she had come through, nor any sign to show the strange halls had been anything more than a dream.
The wind carried a gentle song from somewhere in the near distance, where the woods opened up into a clearing. Entranced, she set towards it, though the clearer it became the less she seemed to understand its words—she caught whispers of a great kingdom under a mountain, a betrothed who had returned half-whole. Soon she discovered its source to be a lady clad in a beautiful dress as gold as the long locks of hair she wore unbound around her shoulders. She was sitting in the grass by the shore of a small river.
The golden lady did not stir when Mirdania approached, settling on the grass beside her.
Man táre antáva nin Ilúvatar, Ilúvatar
enyáre tar i tyel, íre Anarinya qeluva?
"Did my singing wake you?" She asked.
Mirdania shook her head slowly, a little taken aback at being spoken to. Somehow, she felt less real than the remnants and wraiths she perceived around her. "No, my lady. I believe it drew me here, though from where I came I cannot say."
"You were asleep," the lady said. Her voice was thin as gossamer, gentle as silk. "Or dreaming. You may ask the silent watchers when you leave this place, but I do not believe they know the difference. There is so much they cannot understand, three for everything they do. You will see."
Mirdania's fingers twisted in the blades of grass beneath her, seeking an anchor. Something about her made her heart seize painfully in her chest. "How long have you been here? Can you… is someone keeping you here?"
The lady's smile was sad. "You need not worry of a jailer. I was enthralled by one, long ago—a man with eyes so dark you could fall into them and re-emerge on the other side of eternity. But by then, everything else had fallen away."
"I was enthralled by such a thing, too," Mirdania said softly.
Her head tilted a little, in the manner of a curious cat. Mirdania found that words came to her easier now, and stung less under the weight of the lady's lack of judgement. She remembered her life in the same instant that its fragments spilled from her tongue—the kingfishers that heralded noon had come to her city, her Eregion… late nights sketching concepts for ornaments and jewels, the gratifying blisters on her hands after hours of toil above the flames of the forge. The faint scent of yellow pansies and cornflowers they planted in spring, the laughter of her people reverberating from the courtyard. The pitiless stare, endless caverns of flame.
In return, the lady spoke of her home—aching memories of an underground fortress delved into the banks of an ancient river, which traced a sloping path to the glistening springs for which she had been named. She spoke of the royal gardens she used to tend, the white blossoms that grew no more after the sinking of Beleriand, the ease in which smiles curved at the corners of her father's mouth. She spoke of the slow creeping doom that she had been blind to, captivated as she was by the accursed mortal whose ill fortune seized her by the throat. When she recounted the feeling of a spear piercing her chest, Mirdania's hand subconsciously drifted over the echo of her own fatal wounds.
The two sat together in silence. Somewhere in the distance, a songbird took to flight.
"I will stay for a while," Mirdania promised. "And then we will leave this place—together."
