Work Text:
“Much evil must befall a country before it wholly
forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.
...
Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us,
fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone.
They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago.”
—From The Fellowship of the Ring,
Book 2, Ch 3, The Ring Goes South
She awakens with a distant memory that would fade like wisps of leftover dreams in cold mornings. She remembers the foul nights of terror and the spillage of blood like deep scars etched into her soul. But there was also music, songs of brotherhood and camaraderie, of family loyalty, of promises not yet soured by misdeed and remorse.
It must be a long time ago, for she is now only barren land and the crumbling ruins of an age-old fort, torn from battle and tidal waves. She is no longer a home for kings and so, perhaps fittingly, the grand histories that might have been are forgotten.
She is now Ulmo’s, for water surrounds her wholly. But her song does not resonate naturally with the Lord of Waters and his harmonies she must learn from new. She has not always been Ulmo’s; of this, she is certain.
.
A ship arrives shortly after. It is finely crafted; sleekly carved and built with wise, skilful hands. When it docks, two elves disembark. One is a bearded elven lord, ancient but strong. He is a leader of elves and a master of ships. His companion is much younger, a spring in his step betraying that this as his first adventure. He carries parchments and quills; a cartographer.
“What shall be the name of this island?” The young elf asks.
The elven lord thinks for some time. His voice is remorseful when he says: “It was once known to Beleriand as Himring, but as Beleriand is no more, let Himring’s terrible pasts die with it. I shall rename it Tol Himling, and may a new name bring new fortunes.”
The cartographer nods and then he walks her beaches and cliffs. They don’t linger once his swift hand on parchment has done its job.
Himling.
It is a nice name, she thinks.
.
There is a week-long storm that casts her entire world in grey. Himling doesn’t mind it, though the winds that whistle through her fortress ruins sound like weeping and the rain pour as tears do.
When the weather clears and the cloud parts, through the first rays of sunlight emerges a ship. It is the same small ship that returns but it now bears a different passenger. The new elf can’t be much older than the cartographer, but he bears himself as one wisened upon having seen darkness and witnessed war.
He treads in small careful steps towards her peak. It’s not timidness but patience, and perhaps to savour the journey.
He stops just before the ruin of the fort. Its old stone structure is more a shell of what it must once have been. Walls run around the fort shaped as a square, though ruin has broken large sections and left others parts half the height of its former glory. Nature has not been kind - most of the fortress ceiling had collapsed in on itself, large blocks of battlements found scattered on the ground floor in an open sky.
Few towers remain, with thick sturdy walls, that must have once been intended to look far, far into the distance. Now only their base foundation gives any indication of strength.
Nevertheless, he is filled with appreciation and wonder. “Long have I wished to see this. I wonder what it must have been like - when these halls were filled with light, and life.”
He walks through the ruins, a hand tracing the walls, with curiosity and reverence in his touch.
When he leaves, he looks back at Himling as he goes.
.
Eventually, the elf returns. He comes back with a man who shares the same eyes and the same smile, but the man has a beard and his hair short with a golden crown upon it. The man walks with a self-assured confidence, he runs through the castle with less caution but the same appreciation.
The man finds his way to the tallest tower that has survived the ruination, though the roof had long since collapsed. He waves his sword around, toward the sky and then towards the water. His friend - or brother, Himling decides, they must be brothers, however that may be - laughs and joins him at the top.
Their conversation turns to reminiscence, and as one leans his head on the other’s shoulder, Himling does not listen. She does not need to hear, to know their fierce love for one another, and for people they’ve known, loved, and lost.
They stay until the brightest star rises into the sky.
.
The brothers continue to come back - they are the only ones to ever visit. They explore every dirt path and rock pits of Tol Himling.
They don’t do it often and Himling counts the decades by how the man ages between visits, until it seems impossible that once they looked like brothers. The old man likely has great-grandchildren that look the age of the elf.
.
Until the last time, when the elf comes by himself. He climbs to the tallest tower, alone and cloaked in grief.
He stays to watch the brightest star rise into the sky, and then he does not return.
.
Years, millennia, and an age must pass, while Himling rests. She spends her time watching Ulmo’s waves dance at her shores.
On one occasion, the waves turn hazardous. It is fierce, tumultuous, as if Eru himself is enraged. Himling feels in her very crust the trembling of something terrible. The sky grows dark as howling winds push the water towards wrenching currents. The waves are boiling in rage as it towers over the beaches and floods her coast. She feels the loss of a sibling she has never met and the emptiness in her heart lingers even weeks after the waves calm and the weather clears.
.
She watches the turning of more years, another few millennia and another age.
Her elven visitor comes back and there’s a finality in his visit. His ship is larger, bearing many elves - and some other peculiar beings - but only he steps onto the island. He walks up to the fortress tower slowly, as if to etch every step and movement, every mark of decay on the stone walls, into his memory.
“Goodbye,” he whispers.
She doesn’t know if he means it for her, or for his brother, or those people that they’d known, loved, and lost. Maybe it’s for all of them.
He doesn’t wait to see the brightest star before he boards a ship overflowing with the feelings of homecoming and adventure.
.
It is another few hundred years before Ulmo’s waters carry any other boat to her shores. A few hundred years is nothing to how she has lived over seven millennia - but it is a long wait for someone who should have come much, much sooner.
The elf is old and weary, and though his eyes are bright with the dual lights of ancient days, he is shrouded in pain. He is accompanied by only a well-worn cloak and a lyre crafted of ancient artistry.
From his first step on the island, she trembles with the feeling of familiarity. A tentative warmth of something ancient bubbles within her.
He is the key to an old, dusty chest that had been discarded in the attic. And she is inside that chest, waiting to be unlocked and once more see the sunlight and open air. She has been waiting for years without knowing what she was waiting for; without knowing she was waiting at all.
The elf walks through the island with ease and familiarity, stops only when he reaches the centre of the ruins.
He plucks the antiquated strings of his lyre and it reverberates through the entire island, deep into her rocky centre. This is the harmony to a tune she’d long forgotten, it is all hers the way Ulmo’s music is not.
Where have you been? She would shout, if she had a voice.
Perhaps the old elf could understand, or perhaps it is his nature, but he strums his lyre more purposefully as the notes connected into slow, melancholic phrases and he begins to sing.
He sings of majestic realms and splendid trees to the West, of great wars and enduring hope of the East. He also sings of a time when she was surrounded by land and the image in Himling’s mind forms clear as the water's reflection.
You abandoned me! She would cry, if she was more of a person and less a barren, deserted island.
Then he sings of Elves who only wanted to do good for their family, who wanted to protect and who failed. Elves who loved, but could not turn away from a path of hate and madness.
He sings of regret and sorrow, of grief and guilt.
And Himling, she understands.
She remembers.
She remembers weary, yet excitable elves exploring her hill before she was an island, they bring her to life with their hope, their courage, and their practised skill with the hammer and chisel as they build a great fortress to watch and protect. She’d known them well, their Lord whose fire burned bitter yet everlasting, and his brothers who would come and go. They would fight sometimes, and yell other times, but only because there had been so much passion. So much that they cared for, desired, and loved.
Himling had relished it, had lived vicariously through them.
How could she ever consider herself awake when she couldn’t remember even that?
Only one brother stands before her now. She knew then she wasn’t the only one who’d spent seven millennia alone.
I forgive you , she wills for him to hear, even if she is not the one he seeks forgiveness from.
She yearns to hold him and heal him, but she is only an island.
But that’s not quite true. She was once more than that, and she remembers the deep elves that were his kin. She had felt the rhythm of their tools on her stone walls and then the empty, hollow sadness that spilled from it in the years that follow. She is also the ruins of a fortress - his fortress - and shouldn’t that count for something?
So when the elf sings again, she thinks of the two brothers who had known, loved and lost. She remembers the elven lord who’d been regretful, but not hateful nor rageful. She recalls a ship that would lead to homecoming and a new start.
And when his voice echoes along her ruined halls, her soul and spirit join in the song, as much as it can.
He finishes his song only when his voice is hoarse and his fingers are red. Then he stills, looking back at the fortress, and Himling can only hope that she reached him, somehow.
He lingers on the island, brows furrowed in thought.
It is night when he leaves on his small boat, though Himling doesn’t think he was waiting for any stars as much as he didn’t want to leave. He’s not looking at her, not really, but at what she once was. Himring, the elven lord had once said.
He sails East, but Himling is sure it will only be a matter of time before he’ll find a ship headed for the other way.
.
At the place where Maglor Feanorian had stood, in the midst of ages-old ruins, a small bud sprouts from the earth.