Of the Ancestry of High-Leaf and the Doom of Undomion:
And there resided in Valinor the Valar, and below them were their helpers and kindred spirits, the Maiar. Among these were those who tended to the gardens of the Master of Dreams, and it is among those that there was a one named Undómion, a fëantuli with a great love for the stars of Varda and the perfect balance of the night to Arien's beautiful and brutal day. So close to its spirit did it hold affection for this beauty that it shone brightly, a captured night of stars reflected in its eyes for all to see, and crafted magnificent singing and growing things of deep silver and blue within Irmo's gardens that would wither at the coming of day. For it was not Undómion's place to create true things, only to care for that which was already made.
'Undómion named its creations, simply, nairëlen, for their songs-- though full of beauty-- were doomed to silence upon first light, and many who heard the star flowers often wondered at the perfect note of grief they often set upon the spirit because of this. 'This unrests me,' they said, and troubled the oddness to the other fëantulin until it was decided on a remedy.
''If Undómion feels so, there is purpose,' they said to him. 'So go, and find a place upon the earth where you can seed your nairëlen and return freed from this longing.' And so he did, taking upon him the veil of elvenkind and the name Nairion, though his eyes would ever betray him should he be gazed upon in bright light.
And so the creature Nairion walked among the First Children for a little less than an age and found a new affection that stirred his spirit; her name was Alassiel. She was gold of hair and fair of voice, and Nairion returned to Valinor released from his consuming love of the night.
Alassiel remained in the East, for the nairëlen Nairion had sown were within her, and she was with child; that child and the children after it would all fall prey to the doom of longing Undómion had sown within his star-flowers. All would find a love and be unable to attain it, though in the doing so balance a perfect bittersweet grief that was nothing short of artistic. Her child Aravalyaner would carry the doom upon him, and his child Síledis would carry the doom upon her, and her children Silarond and Silaviele would carry the doom upon themselves...
It is unknown if Undómion was aware of what he had done, though Alassiel sailed after him and stands now as his wife in Valinor.'
Of Aravalyaner:
First son of Alassiel and Nairion, wind-singer and husband to his ship Lassemaica, father of Síledis who was mother of Sila-rond and Silaviele, and founder of House High-Leaf of Lindon.
The Doom of Undómion upon him cursed Aravalyaner with a lust for dissatisfaction, and he would ever wander the western coasts of Middle-earth and the eastern shores of Valinor and find happiness only in unhappiness.
For a small time he had rest, time enough to trick him into making a home within the Grey Havens and starting a family. Alas, his true love was a bitter one; in stillness he was unhappy, and so returned to his doomed wander-lust and the sea-skies, and faded from telling before the end of the First Age.
Of Siledis:
Síledis, daughter of Aravalyaner, called dîelei by the Falathrim which means Lady of Dreams, who begat Sila-rond and Silaviele.
Skilled in all workings of the hands, the Lady Síledis fell early to her prodigal blessings and was a rare sight among the elves of Mithlond. For soon after maturing she gathered her favred things and cloistered within the court of House High-Leaf.
Legendary was her beauty, as was the fairness of all things she made be it in cloth and tapestry, metals and silvers, or things of consumption, and she was courted oft and settled easily.
Alas, the Doom upon her soon turned her skill into obsession, as it is said even on her birthing bed she worked as if frantic upon a small bauble and returned to it immediately after naming her children.
Rare enough seen already, she passed out of the light of all telling after Mithlond emptied for its aid to the Alliance, though it was often assumed that her husband who commanded many of the Haven's forces wore her work; for his armors were nearly always with great finery.
Of the Last Alliance and the Surname, Maenpaur:
Many were the things of war that had dulled the spirit of the younger of the twins of House High-Leaf; no one questioned when Sila-rond, long seen as the weaker of heart of the sons of Brilluin, took ease and personal lessons within under their garrison commander's quarters during the March's rest in Imladris. Whatever lessons the Dúnedan man called Ararad gave the elf-youth, they turned the gentle Sila-rond into a stern and cool soldier.
Where once the boy cringed at wounds brought to him for healing, he excelled at acting quickly, and no one questioned how so he became so good at cutting off his mind from what happened under his hands. Where once he offered easy sickness at the notion of violence, he soon became grim and systematic with Ararad's guidance, and no one questioned bychance how he gained such inundation to cruelty.
A hundred skirmishes on the Long March; their faces haunt him, seeming to glow in intent to burn themselves into his memory. He sees them every night. He never wanted this, never wanted to be good at what his brother had excelled at; it was often that the soldiers took to calling him 'Maenpaur', 'clever-hands'. It filled his soul with disgust, and it was not long before the stains on his hands began to taint his spirit.
Sila-rond never surpassed his brother Silaviele's skill with the blade, however, and one wonders if perhaps Silaviele would be still living if he had followed his brother's example and taken advantage of the commander's exclusive counsul.
No one questioned.
Verse of the Vanimelda:
'And for the ruler of his dead heart he forged a hundred thousand captured souls, shining like stars, to tie in her hair to match her pale skin, and twined garland-curls of jade-lined mithril upon the crown of her head to keep them there; even the moon paled in envy of her beauty. He kept her hidden from the sun's rays under leaves of forest and glade, for when day broke she shone even more radiant than he and he was a vain being even in love. The greatest of his works he kept for himself, the star-song crystals set into shining moulds upon his brow, and it was their song alone that kept her entranced with him. For even his kindness held cruelty, and his love was cold, and she coveted the painful beauty of all he made.
'But her burning passions ran cold quickly, and her beauty became as a mirror to his; distant and perfect stone, untouchable and maskful of the tumult beneath, her lips gifted only rarely with smiles now. 'Ai!' She laments. Undying was her hate for him and it was ever at odds with her, for as ever she denied it to her ears even the breeze held his name and the beat of her heart sang in time to his songs.' 'I will destroy him, for he has destroyed me,' she thinks, she tells herself. 'Yet I cannot, lest my heart waver and stay my hand and will, while I am near him.'
'So she fled from him through the Blue Mountains and the dales and over the dead red plains of the northern earth and beneath the highest hills and glades of Beriand in the south, knowing all the while he could find her at a moment's thought, and that should she hesitate in her distance that a touch would fell her morale once more.
'But at last the time came that he tired of the hart-hunt as her eyes opened to the truth of him, and withdrew all kindnesses from her presence and ended all farces of affection; and although there was a twisted kind of it in his heart, his love was an exhausting and confusing thing for him, and he soon returned to his other-ways.
'Though deny it he may and despise it she might, the Weaver would time and again set them upon each other in path and choice. Wounds between them were crossed never to heal, for time was not long enough between their desired absences from each other's company and would leave her reeling from whispers of harp-song on the wind bearing his name while he suffered the struggle of his dying soul trying to kindle to life at glimpses and rumors.'
'At last-long he found no color left in the world, and all his work was as ash in his hands. Passionless and dissatisfied he fled out of time and telling for many seasons until his exhausted spirit found new life and new flower. She, freed for this while, carried on in ever-waiting, unwilling to anguish and unhappy at her lack of control over her spirit that cried for him.'
'Return to being he did so come after it had passed enough in days for his soul to renew itself in distant places of silver and glass, and drawn he was to his favored plaything to once again begin anew his hart-hunt. For the doom of his bloodline was heavy upon him, and had twisted his love into shadow, and all his beauty to pain.'
'Finally after many moons had waxed and waned, the ruler of his heart found she remembered the away-times with more fondness; and thus she strove to wrest her heart free from its entrenched adoration of him. 'It is him no longer,' she lies to her spirit. 'Gone is he who stole my breath, whom you pine for! Desist!' Long enough she tells herself thus, and begins to believe it so, and he who was keeper of the un-light star found that at last his favored hart beat no more to the sound of his songs.'
Of He-Who-Shines in the Golden Woods in the Third Age:
Sylrond and his company rest after a few days of hard moving of his posessions up into their new home in Talan Brethil, over-looking the Great River on one side and Gerlidor on the other.
And the beautiful Eldar walked freely among those who called him friend, and thus a shadow fell before him and would ever-after, for the shining power in that place was fading, and his light was a hungry one though he knew it not. The sunlight painted his hair as gold as the leaves upon the trees, and his skin glowed as if from within in the moonlit nights, but it was in his spirit that the darkness had hold and there no purifying light could be found.
Sylrond, now that he has made and settled on what he believes to be his Last Journey, has very close to too much time on his hands. He spends in in deep thought for hours on end, often with his harp close-by, or offering small bits of aid to those in need.
He hears of dire need at the borders of Lorinad, where a skirmish has near claimed the lives of some elves. He rushes to their aid, hoping to put his considerable skills in healing to use. Meanwhile Lamaenon, an ever-weather friend and exiled Galadhel that balances a dangerously selfless care for the weary prince of High-Leaf, learns that the Orcs have come down from the mountains, and for the first time in three hundred years the fringes of Lorien are being harried.
It was only natural that the Lady of the Golden Woods was aware of the Shadow lurking at both places near and far, for her eyes were things that could see more than what was in front of her; Galadriel, called the White Lady, was not unskilled in seeing through the strangnesses of time itself. To an old soldier she brings her concerns, in private and in the hidden ways of night, for he has appeared not once.. not twice.. but many times in many possibilities in the ways of future she had seen.
'And he held within dark eyes the entire night sky, filled with stars,' she explained. 'And upon his brow shone another that rung with crystal-song as was reminiscent of things no longer in the world, and so inspiring was his presence in later days that the blackest of hours were turned to day from such a great and fearful beauty as was his.
'But as every great light he cast a terrible shadow; should he fall to dispair there rose in him a terrible love of all things cruel and mischievous, and his voice with a word would turn to withering the spirits of any who dared raise his ire!
'Ai!' would come the cry of those who knew the burn of his presence. 'Here to us hastens Sila-rond, Alb-scion, he whose heart is black as the deep places and yet walks with the sun between his eyes! Flee, he brings only doom with him, and rejoices in the sowing of pain in everything around him.'
So it came to pass a time when Galadriel could bear their presence so near her heart a moment not longer, informing with no small force her desire for Sila-rond and his company-- of the time the Galadhel Lamaenon and the Greenwood-elf Rivondir-- to depart Lothlorien in all haste. This he did with great fear, for there is nothing in the world more fearsome than a Lady's wrath-- and the Lady of the Golden Woods was a woman above all other women and thusly great and terrible when she wished to be.
The company then retreated back into the mountains, for the Lorien-born Lamaenon was an outcast there before he had returned, and he had found no friends among his kin, and Sila-rond's love of the deep and the dark places had become infectious to him as all unclean diseases infect things around them are wont to do.
Of the Un-light Crystal:
An exile out of the Golden Woods, it was only a small striving to find a whisper of the same beauty above, below. It is in the underneaths that he makes his home now. In the deep. In the dark. In the hidden places.
For a small time, the exiled Galadhel Lamaenon spends moments with the introverted prince after a passing apart from each other; the former left to seek himself, while the latter delved deep into the earth to be lost in himself.
A happening passing of a deeper cave leaves questions in the xenophobic Eldar's mind; from where do these strange growths come from? For he has found odd croppings of glowing rocks that seem to echo the things around them. They are only plentiful, it seems, in the dark wet places where the disgusting and fungus-infested orcs called the Globsnaga reside however. So he seeks information and learning, and is told of a deep shaft in Moria that lays out to a pool deeper in the Mines than even the Endless Stair could touch.
Though the elves warn Sila-rond of such a venture, he seems intent on making it.
The mine shaft is treacherous, they say. It is full of rock-spikes and deadly croppings that could rend his body in two if he hits it badly on the way down.
But he is unfazed. The Eldar seems single-minded in his reasons to dive as far as he can into Moria, and they do agree that this place may very well be the foundation of all the stone around them.
He has found.
The shaft was almost invisible to the casual eye, but he had been told where to look and he had had it marked upon his map. Even his elf-eyes could not see the bottom, but the jagged spikes of rock thrusting along the sides of the narrow space were plain that he did not even need his lantern to see them.
Some are larger around than he is thrice-tall, and it is these that he scrambles and desperately slides downwards along in the hopes that he does not mis-step and end impaled upon the deadly ones from a horrible fall.
The sickly-green glow greets him after what seems like hours of dirty scrambling and sliding in the dark.
He has found.
...but not what he knows he was looking for. The stones, where were the singing stones? The water is a strange luminescent color, glowing around his feet where he disturbs it from the hundred-thousand tiny living things within it.
There are no fish in this dark, still lake. There are only the orc-things, and their strange fungus-things around the lake's edges. It occurs to the Eldar that the place is much larger than he can see, though, and so he begins to set up a camp to base out upon so he may make circuits of this final, colossal cavern.
'Endless!' He cries when he sees it on one of his nightly passes in exploring the depths. 'I prove them wrong!'
A huge thing, a twisting spiral screw that rises high past the cavern's ceiling far above him; the Endless Staircase. He knew that once, long ago, it was one of the primary means to move through Khazad-dum, though he can easily see that it has fallen into disrepair. The fungus has made its mark, whole chunks of its stairway missing from where he can see.
The creation is, nonetheless, breathtaking.
It is many days and many nights that pass before the wandering Eldar finds what he knew must be waiting to be found. The singing stones. He hears them in the far northern space one circit, calling to him as the desert calls to the rainclouds. At another source of alien green water, he finds the grove.
Fungus-trees and a ground more soft than stone, the beautiful minstrel walks among the sick and corruption as if it means nothing. He has brought his tools, and begins the painstakingly delicate process of removing some of them.
Every tap of his hammer leaves the strange stones singing painfully, and he must wait until their shriek dies before tapping it again. Each time they scream, the living stone around him makes wet sounds as the fungus shudders.
It is many many hours before the largest one cracks, and breaks away from its brethren. The Eldar clutches his prize to his chest like an addicted thing, looking around as if just now realizing the noise could bring orcs upon his head. He steals away, back into the dark along paths he now knows, even as the singing stone glows brightly through his bags.
Of the Repentance and the Forays into Mirkwood:
But then a call came from the Galadhrim for their wayward brother Lamaenon, and the one called Silarond would come with him. From the mountain they came, out of that deep darkness and into the golden light of the woods of Lorien, to see what for the tree-elves could possibly want with their spurned bretheren.
And again, the feasinger's spirit was moved with the magic of the place as are most that come to pass through Lothlorien, His heart was full of great regrets for his swift parting with the singing mallorn trees, and he begs his company to make amends in his name so he might not leave again.
Too many times did he peer at them, the dead orcs that the wardens had yet to clear away. His obsidian eyes looked for similarities; the pointed ears, the scarred flesh and discoloration of their skin, the rippling muscles unnatural. The searching was almost a needy thing, a desire to find differences, to assure himself that name-calling or not, he was not of the same thing that lay before him with tree-elf arrows through its chest.
Lamaenon bids the minstrel prince, unwilling to leave the boughs of Lothlorien after regaining his hard-missed welcome, a goodbye for a time; the Galadhel is needed across the Anduin, in Mirkwood; the true reasons for Lamaenon's summoning becomes clear.
And of course, it inevitably follows that the Eldar hears bad news of it all. He dons his old armor and blades, knowing by rumor of great fightings happening, and rushes after what he is sure to be a doomed Lamaenon.
The minstrel prince was a soldier once, though the battles he fought in took much from his life to leave him little more than a shadow of himself. It is these memories he fights through for much of his short time just across the Anduin, and it hurt him enough that he avowed never to cross the river again.
The eldar prefers peace, and will keep it to the point of selfishness; there are few things more dangerous than inaction, and he quickly began to fade, simply by means of his own facination with stillness. He who was Sila-rond became more and less of himself quickly after the catastrophe across the Anduin, and faded from telling soon after.
Of the Fourth Age and Beyond:
And it is said that even after the one who became Ivernum had succumbed to darkness there could be light found upon the bladed strings of his great and terrible harp, Nairë, to which Ivernum brought to bear his wicked powers over the enthralled spirits that forever flung themselves to the Un-light star upon his brow with beautiful and lamenting songs. And so it became that while he dwelt in light there was still shadow within him, and when the time came that Ivernum wrapped himself in shadow there was still light upon the things he created.
And eventually those that loved the fëantulin would follow him, much as the unliving spirits did though they so in unwillingness drawn to the un-light star so oft upon his brow, though not for many days and nights and many seasons of the years. Not so distant was he in their hearts, and even less so for the Gondolin elf who treasured him dearly; for between them was an enslaving bond of more than flesh.
