Music

Canon-compliant AU.  The discovery of one's calling in life is a momentous occasion.  Sometimes you just need a push in the right direction.  Quenya names used (Maglor = Makalaurë and Maedhros = Nelyafinwë).  I refer to a specific vala in this story (and hint at his identity several times).  His appearance is non-canonical; I made it up based off of many other stories that I've read in which he appears.  Takes place in Valinor in the Years of the Trees.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: none (platonic relationship)

Characters: Maglor (mentions Maedhros, Fëanor, Nerdanel, Finwë, and the Valar)

Warning: canon-compliant AU, slight religious context, slightly dysfunctional family, politics, references to music in an almost sexual context

Song: Sun

Words: 1,951
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music (noun): the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity; vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/music

The universe had been created from three great themes of music.  Or so the story went.

And thus it came to be that the Eldar held the sweet tones of raised voices in song amongst their most sacred of acts and most reverent of worships.  Thousands of years later, the same ancient hymns to the stars were chorused in the towering temples erected within the confines of Valimar and at the foot of Taniquetil, and for miles and miles around once could hear them whispered upon the breaths of thousands of sweeter-than-honey voices.  Mixing together into something heavenly, beyond the scope of understanding past the subconscious bliss that they rained upon their listeners.

It was first that array of song which had enchanted the young prince.  The secondborn son of a craftsman and an artist, incredibly intelligent in all areas of academia, learning faster than even his older brother, but who had little interest in the world of the material and physical.  Long and dexterous fingers could craft wonders and sculpt likenesses with ease, but no passion echoed through his work, and he coveted nothing that he crafted or fashioned.

He had only passion for the voices.  Not only the voices of the Eldar.  But the voices of the land.  The voices of the streets.  The voices of everyone and everything.

At first it was only in the quiet.  In his free time, he would wander into the forest glades, simply listening to the rhythm of the world's deep and steady breaths.  The buzz of insects in the summer heat and the ruffling of the leaves by the breeze's gentle caress.  The rumbling of thunder and the pounding fists of a million raindrops falling to earth when the sky turned gray and the clouds poured down their tears.

Eventually, he began to hear it everywhere.

Not merely in the movement of nature, but in the sound of hundreds of footsteps upon cobble.  In the echo of conversational voices echoing down the streets.  In the calls of sellers in the marketplace and the laughter of friends and lovers huddled close.  In the din and racket of the city, there too were the deep and even breaths shuddering beneath his feet, vibrating heavily in the air to a dissonant and chaotic harmony.  But a harmony no less it was.

To Makalaurë, it could not have been more evident.

But, of course, it was a passion he alone possessed.  Though his father echoed with a faint melody--something wild and vivid, sharp with the barest undertone of a smolder--the man heard the word "music" and scoffed before returning to his forge and his smoke and his metal, disregarding what he considered to be a waste of time equivalent to watercolor painting.  Equally, his mother sang a silent song of gentleness with an underlying frame of iron--ornamented with motifs resonating with the shadow of sadness--but she could not hear it or comprehend it.  To her, the world was a tactile thing, to be touched and brushed and felt.  And Nelyafinwë barely had time to sleep; the study of politics and the written word consumed his hours with greedy lust, and he gave little thought to music he heard only in the halls of the Vanyar with their sweet words and pious tranquility.

Thus it came to be that the second son wandered away from the home where his dreams were slowly and cruelly crushed.  Instead spent weeks on end in Valimar, pretending at scholarly research to appease his family whilst for hours upon hours he sat and listened.  Bathed himself in the harmony and melody, the consonance of their dichotomy rising and rising to the cusp of bliss, washing over him in waves of brilliance and revelation.

They sang of the ancient stars glimmering out of the darkness, guiding their ways.  The spread of those silvered gems across the sky and reflected by the still and silent waters below.

And he could see it.  Knew with visceral certainty that, even without realizing what it was they passed unto their avid and quiet listener, they wove the melody of the stars again and again through their choruses.  The melody that had birthed the stars at the beginning of time.  Just as song had birthed the Two Trees and the grass and the sky and the sea.

But ever did he remain quiet.  Makalaurë knew not the art of song or instrument.  And though his hands sometimes itched to strum across the strings of a lyre or his lips plead silently to part and release his voice unto the heavens, he resisted.

Perhaps out of fear.  Or perhaps out of uncertainty.  No vanya was he, dark-haired and gray-eyed, and it was not in the nature of a noldo to revel in poetry and song over academia and craftsmanship.

And yet he was drawn.  Helplessly.

Until the day he stumbled upon that stranger.  That stranger with a voice, deep and rich, that sent shivers down his body and broke chills across his skin merely from its soft canting melody half-hummed into the afternoon heat.

Makalaurë had half-expected to find some golden-haired Vanyarin bard had wandered farther than intended.  Perhaps he would sneak as close as he could get without being seen and rest a while with his back to a tree and his face tilted up toward Laurelin's golden rays, simply listening to whatever tiny but glorious slice of the Ainulindalë his unknowing companion deemed fit to grace him.  It was with that in mind that he crept closer and received his first glimpse of the stranger.

No golden hair.  Rather, it was white-washed pale.  But rather than the blue he would have expected, pale and tinted in ocean green, from a Telerin elf, they were golden.  A color he had never seen upon an elf before.

The realization struck a moment too late.

"You needn't hide from me, pitya.  I would not be adverse to some company."

This was no elf.

This was one of the Ainur.

And Makalaurë could only gulp nervously and shuffle out into the open light of the clearing.  Into the sight of eyes that reflected as mirrors of the soul, ringed with pale lashes.  Both at once was the ainu handsome, exotic and strange.  But welcoming in his gesture for the secondborn to come and sit beside him in the grass. "Come now, the grass is a pleasant enough cushion this day."

Hesitantly, he lowered himself into the verdant ocean, taking note of the tingle of blades upon his palms as they pressed flat to the ground. "Forgive me for intruding."

"There is nothing to forgive, pitya." That smile relieved the nervous tension, and that voice rippled with power that the young elf could scarcely comprehend. "It is the music that drew you here, is it not?  Do you want to try?"

Toward the lyre he motioned, but Makalaurë shook his head. "I know not how."

Something like to the amusement of an adult observing a puppy or a kitten flashed though those eyes, paternal and indulging. "Are you quite sure?"

Of course, he wasn't.

Because Makalaurë's fingertips itched as strongly and eagerly as ever to feel the bite of cool metal upon their calluses.  To hear the ring of their labors around and through his body, sliding in a wave of expression over the surroundings and blanketing them with a little dose of their truest meaning, their silent story creeping upon any unwary ears and unfocused eyes.  Of their own accord, they crept toward the lyre.  Toward the offer sitting so temptingly before them with no obstacle to bar their path to the prize.

Until they carefully trailed over each string, one-by-one, vibrating with each pitch that sang into the open air.  And Makalaurë's breath caught, for with ease they darted forth and teased at a melody.  At something cloudy and floating and pale that reminded him so of the man before him.

The man who watched with eyes vaguely amused, gold half-hooded and smile broadening.  Observing as the second son's fingers began to dance, somehow so instinctively knowing where to go and how to twirl and flip and twist to extract that sound which was caught in the back of Makalaurë's mind.  Unfurling now into something real.  Something as tangible as any sculpture or piece of bejeweled finery.

"Will you not sing for me, pitya?"

Sing?  He had never dared before.  No one in his family possessed the ability to sing worth mention.  Nelyafinwë was hopelessly off-key, though the warm and mellow tone of his lullabies more than made up for his inability to match pitch.  And their mother was worse still, for she had none of that tenderness or flowing lenitive rhythm that possessed the older brother.

Makalaurë could not imagine his father ever having sung a word in his life.

And yet, even before the eyes of this stranger, Makalaurë felt his lips parting almost of their own will and desperation.  Closing his eyes, letting his fingers dance, he allowed it to spill forth.

Deep and low and echoing.  Rolling over the ground like ocean waves, beating steadily against everything in its path and entwining with the lyre's dulcet tones like two lovers beneath the bedsheets.  So perfectly in harmonious tension, tangling and coming together as though they were made for one another.

And all the while his heart came unto his throat and tears unto his eyes.  For never had Makalaurë felt anything so glorious--so freeing--as breathing out all the longing syllables for so many years kept silent.  His body swayed and his brow dampened with sweat as he threw back his head to the sky.  As that mysterious and yet so familiar theme came forth from his lungs and graced the open air.

He blinked his eyes open.  Only to find the stranger gone.  And his hands empty.

Blinking again, he saw that Laurelin's rays crept away, replaced by Telperion's silvery hues.  It was growing late.  And all the while he had been resting against this tree.

But it had seemed so real...

"It was real, pitya."

That voice.  It shuddered through him again, and Makalaurë doubted not its truth.  Saw the reflection of his face in those knowing golden eyes.  Eyes that seemed to be aware of every intimate part of his being, even those Makalaurë knew nothing of himself.  They bored him open and spilled his innards out in a tide of passion.

And the itch was ever-present.  Only Makalaurë did not hesitate this time to part his lips and lift his head up toward the sky.

To look at the silver and the stars and murmur their melody upon his breath.  Their music unto his ears reflecting their celestial otherworldly beauty.  Resonating down to his bones, Makalaurë could feel it as he could feel the grass pressed to his palms and the cooling night air to his face.

This was what he was meant to be.  This was his gift.

And no matter what his father and mother and brother said or did or thought, he knew he could not release it a second time.  He stood from the grass and began the trek home, humming all the while, fingers plucking away at imaginary strings, hearing their vibrations ringing against his ears.  Thinking of that stranger with the pale hair again, that theme returned.

A theme of dreams and flowers and the softness of golden rays upon the grass.

Thank you...