A Singer Doomed by Raiyana

[raiyana]

Prompt: There he wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice.
Format: short story(808 words)
Genre: angst?
Rating: teen
Warning: No Warnings apply
Characters: Uinen, Maglor, Ossë, Ulmo
Pairings: none
Summary: As Maglor fights, Uinen watches
This is connected with Bunn's story for the same prompt, A Little Freedom
Also found at:
archiveofourown.org/works/13848345

“He’s back again,” she frowns, as she always does. Ulmo sighs.

“Just leave it be, dear; we have done more than enough for the Children of late. Manwë is not best pleased with our way of dealing with Melkor’s lingering taint.” Ulmo feels weary; even his strength is not endless, and the War stole much he once held. Truthfully he does not understand her mingled vexation and fascination any better than Ossë’s utter disdain.

“Eternal Darkness, or eternal lamentations - what’s the difference?” Ossë replies, tugging playfully on some of her trailing hair.

Uinen’s teeth are bared, sharp as knives, as she hisses in warning. She’s gone in the next minute, the only evidence of her presence one of the crabs that like to hide in her green locks. It gives them both a baleful look, as only a crab can. Ossë winces, though he tries to hide it.

Ulmo sighs.

“You should not goad her so,” he rebukes, but it’s soft, because he does not truly think Ossë’s feelings unmerited. Neither he nor either of them have forgotten the wailing of the Teleri, or the burning of Losgar.
 

 

---

 

Uinen watches; the small pouch is further down, farther out, than usual. Remaining unseen by the eyes that barely care to glance away from their prize is simple, no more work than the wave of a hand. She could kill him - it would be easy - but her hand never lifts, no matter the roil of anger she still feels, does not crush the air from those lungs, press down on him with all the weight of the water that surrounds him.

It’s the look of his face that stills her fury. Dark hair blows in the small currents, tangling and curling about a pale face, scarred fingers reaching for dark, water-stained leather.

So much emotion; so much pain. Mingling in familiar features like rivers running into the sea.

Revulsion and longing, grief and desire... They’re all there, anger, too, and a yearning so deep she compares it to one of her favourite chasms where no light ever reaches the bottom.

Sometimes, she looks at it; looks at the pouch, she even opened it once, trying to understand what made him keep going. Sometimes, she’s spiteful, reminded of wailing mothers, hiding the pouch behind rocks or beneath plants.

She always puts it back; he can go only so long before whatever it is that makes him need it makes him dive into her waters, ungainly like all the Children; lacking fins or smooth scales, and not so good a swimmer as her favourites by far, but doggedly determined to find, to reach, to hold.

When he clutches his prize, fighting his way back to the surface and the air that beckons him ever closer, Uinen watches, wondering at the loathing twisting into peace and back with each kick of bare feet.

Each time she wonders if he will give up, will choose to end this… torment.

She watches, her eyes no more than the foam of a wave, as he collapses on the beach, the sea lapping at his uncovered feet. He cut one on a sharp shell, the waves washing down red, staining the sand. It goes unnoticed; one more among the scars he already has, and far less painful than the one which is coming.

Almost on cue, the scream rends the air, sorrow and pain made sound.

The weeping is worse, somehow; he would be easier to hate if he was less pitiful, if she did not have the prayers his mother, standing far above where she pounds her waves against the cliffs of Aman, hurls into the wind in her ears.

Uinen watches, pity not enough to move her to offer compassion – sometimes she wonders if she should offer him words, but Manwë’s doom was quite clear, and pity is not enough – bitterness of lives lost having tainted it long before it was ever born in her heart.

The light glimmers from atop a rock, and he does not see her as he gathers foodstuffs; he likes mussels, though he is not so good at finding them. Uinen births a new colony on rocks he may one day discover and tells herself it is not pity that moves her hands, not compassion that leaves tiny bounties of the Sea where this lost soul might find them.

She stays, staring in silence; the music is everchanging, though the theme remains sorrowful.

 

 

In the morning, the finely worked leather pouch drops down through the waves to land in a nest of her hair, almost immediately wrapped in long green strands of tangling seaweed.

 

 

It will be sitting on the clear sandy bottom the next time he gives in to the song, hears the call of the voice that the waves cannot silence.

It is his voice.

Comments

[bunn]

It gives them both a baleful look, as only a crab can.

Oh, I missed the baleful crab when I read it on Tumblr! And Uinen having a favorite chasm.

I am delighted by the whole thing.

[raiyana]

Uinen has all the crabs. (I admit that I am inordinately fond of her crabs - one of them is Sebastian from the Disney Mermaid :D) And why shouldn't she have a favourite chasm... ;)

[kayleearafinwiel]

Donut: *perks up at the mention of Sebastian* MINE! :)

*side-eyes seagull muse* oh well, he's a Finding Nemo seagull, and Scuttle from The Little Mermaid is his uncle, so :)

[independence1776]

I love this! The details-- the crab, eyes as foam of a wave, that the Silmaril is always where Maglor can find it-- are delightful. And the mixed emotions from everyone involved are very understandable.

Thank you for posting this and welcome to B2MeM! :D

[raiyana]

Thank you very much :)

[kayleearafinwiel]

This is so beautiful and tragic. I think Uinen is very unkind to torment Maglor that way - and I always thought between her and Osse, she was the sensible one! But I can see this, too. You made it very real to me.

[raiyana]

I don't think she's being unkind, really, she doesn't keep him from reclaiming the silmaril (which HE threw away), she even helps him survive...

Den 3. mar. 2018 2.10 AM skrev "kayleearafinwiel - DW Comment" < dw_null@dreamwidth.org>:

[kayleearafinwiel]

I suppose that's true. I just feel like it's a slow kind of torture for him, to keep getting the Silmaril back, keep being burned by it, keep on living - I think in those conditions, perhaps Maglor would rather die. That's what I meant. Sorry, I can't seem to articulate my feelings well, I really do like this story - just pity Maglor a lot.

[raiyana]

Maglor certainly considers it (in Bunn's fic which forms the basis of mine) but eventually decides he can't; the torture is one of his own/the Oath's making, but this is part of Bunn's Return to Aman Verse, so Maglor does end up leaving this shore. I did ask her why she wrote the Silmaril being returned to him(even if Uinen plays a role in it, still it is Maglor who dives in to retrieve it) and she quoted the verse at me:

me:I feel for Maglor with his crisped fingertips :/
Does the Silmaril come back of its own volition or is it Ulmo/Uinen/Ossë saying “We don’t want this, take it back”?

Bunn:

forgotten harper, singer doomed,
who young when Laurelin yet bloomed
to endless lamentation passed
and in the tombless sea was cast.

Maglor would be the first to point out that you can’t cast someone in the tombless sea and doom them to endless lamentation, unless they are going to climb out of the sea again. Or become a sad sealion, I suppose, but he doesn’t have that talent.

He keeps chucking it in the sea and then being driven by his Oath to fish it out again. Uinen, Ossë and Ulmo are involved only in so far as they have not drowned him while doing it. I believe they may have different reasons for this behaviour, but who knows?


The last line is the reason this ficlet even exists :D

[kayleearafinwiel]

Oh I see! That makes sense now.

Donut: sea lion mine?

...Donut now wants Maglor to turn into an actual sea lion. *exasperated look at seagull Muse* but he has no idea how to do it

[raiyana]

... Bunn actally found some Sea-Lion fantasy cast members of the Silm once... and if Elwing can become a white bird, why shouldn't Maglor be transformed into a sea-lion? ;) Perhaps it's Uinen's revenge: maybe she turns him into random sea creatures just for amusement's sake, and Maglor never realises because each day is rather the same... so it doesn't matter if he can't remember the times he spent as animals. That'd be sad, but also might be a reprieve from the torment of the Oath, I suppose... and might even make a lot of sense to the mind of a Maia, whose form is as fluid as Uinen's. Change his form, change his heart - at least for a while.

... I now want to write The Uinen Experiments, in which Maglor is transformed into random animals/creatures/features related to the sea, not remembering the experiences as anything but vivid dreaming(possibly blamed on 'herbs', all because Uinen tries to offer him peace in a way that makes sense to her...

ALL THE PLOT BUNNIES
Thank you :D

Bonus: Elrond comes looking for Maglor, but finds only Uinen, exasperatedly herding a shoal of fish because they all need to be in range of the spell at once, or MAglor will not become Maglor again...

[kayleearafinwiel]

YES PLEASE WRITE THIS
DONUT IS MOST PLEASED

[dawn_felagund]

Beautiful! I love this as a companion piece to Bunn's, giving a perspective that she so deftly hints at in the character of the sea and that you expand here.

It's an interesting approach to omniscience, being able to be more than one place at once (Maglor's laments, Nerdanel's prayers) and seemingly unbound by time, the cries of the Teleri just as heartrending in memory as they were at the kinslaying. You really do a commendable job of assuming the PoV of an Ainu--something I've not been brave enough to try! :D

I like the complexity of her emotions too: her bitterness and even hatred for what he's done tempered by a pity she can't deny because he is still so helpless, so flawed, so human.

And the ending--! That was unexpected but just perfect.

[raiyana]

I think I based her omniscient qualities on the line where the Elves consider seaweed to all be her hair; if every strand is a part of her, clearly she must exist in some way everywhere at once, whether or not her full attention currently occupies that spot. Time is something else that I believe works vastly different to the mind of a maia/ainu (probably comparable to the difference between elf & man, really), living in such intricate connection with Arda and the Music in general.

The ending: (I'm being cheeky) is solely because Bunn made the waves cry out 'Silmaril! Silmaril!' at Maglor, as a temptation, so I propose that it's really his own voice he hears, the Oath given voice, but as he does not wish to accept it as his own yearning, so he hears it as the calling from the Sea...

[ex_mithrial116]

An interesting addition to Bunn's story.
Interesting to see the tale from Uinen's perspective. And to know what she is doing to help him survive.

[hhimring]

That is very well done, very convincing as a matched response to Bunn's fic!
Great characterization of Uinen!