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Mairon had not expected the return of sensation.
He had wandered and existed as a wisp, a mere, quailing spark of what had been once a bright flame. Not quite death that he had only known second-hand, though not quite living either. Either in the middle of both or nowhere at all.
And yet here he was in Eru’s Timeless Halls, his senses returned to him as if given a physical form once more. If given the chance to inspect it closely, he might find it resembling the one he had made in that time that could be a distant one in the past or in the future, depending on the when Eru would thrust him out.
If.
There was a single logical reason why he was suddenly called into His halls.
Eru called to him, with a name long-forgotten and what had started his very being. Mairon was grateful for the solidity of his given form, if only for the grasp of stability it had offered as he stood against the all-encompassing presence of his Creator.
The last time he had stood in front of Him, it had been to face his wrath and his waves. As easy He had stripped him of one of his aspects then was as easy he had remade him now.
Mairon found no voice to answer with in return, his form holding but buzzing at the edges. Like one wrong shift and it would fall over and unmake him.
Child.
It could have only been from the sum of tongues created and the not-yet, but Mairon couldn't mistake the meaning, letting the intent wash over him.
So he was still one of His Children. Something threatened to give within Mairon.
“Father,” he said, inadequate.
Mairon, it is time to decide.
In the face of his sudden incredulity, Mairon wanted to laugh. “You’re giving me a choice.”
As I did to those who came here before you.
Mairon scoffed. “I’m certain that Melkor did not choose to be thrown in the Void.”
No, but he chose which path to follow past that.
He held into the minute gesture of blinking. With a shuddering tone, Mairon asked, “What choice was that?”
The silence echoed itself, reminding Mairon that he wasn’t in the position to question Eru’s will nor what had transpired between Him and Melkor. He wanted to laugh at the unfairness of it all; at his own dismay of not knowing at all what had happened to the Vala he had bound himself with in all the ways that should have mattered.
A marriage of thought and spirit, though with a link that had been silent for several ages with only Mairon futilely holding on. Perhaps the connection itself had merely existed on Mairon’s end, a one-way illusion that he had made.
The forces of the Valar had made it seem that the Void was Melkor’s eternal punishment for his marring, that dragging him in chains and closing the Doors of the Night on Melkor was the end of it. Mairon would wager that even they did not know of Eru’s offer following his imprisonment.
Because of course, of course Eru would reward Melkor. He would reward the Child who had unwittingly followed Eru’s intended Song. Chaos and Destruction were Melkor’s opus, but they were naught but Eru’s Composition dedicated to him, His most favored one.
Would that make Mairon the most disobedient one then? For orchestrating schemes that went out of hand where one had even required Eru’s rare intervention?
“Am I to choose between obliteration and imprisonment?” If Mairon was the intended eternal prisoner of the Abyss and not Melkor, there was nothing that he could do about it.
Exhaustion was all that had been left in him. A weariness that seeped into this temporary form, down into the very fiber of what remained in his being. He had poured what there was in so small a thing, precious and gone, and with it were his anger and capacity for sorrow.
Eru’s visage began to shift: a certain nebula situated atop His many eyes burst. A string of Borealis cast a warm glow over Mairon. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a thousand more worlds created, and a thousand more destroyed. All from a simple movement.
Mairon was then swept in a sensation of taking a step toward an ingress that appeared on the pad of one of Eru’s limbs. Dark and full of uncertainty, but Mairon knew it wasn’t this; to enter or remain in the halls was not yet the choice he was supposed to make.
Go forth. I will know which it will be.
Mairon crossed, and for a moment, he thought he saw his Creator smile.
❅ ❅ ❅
He knew this place.
A little more to his left would be a sheer fall from a cliff. Almost a precipice, though not as much as what the statement posed.
“Come with me,” was the soft imploring tone of Melkor, a familiar distant chord of the past.
Mairon had been here at this moment, once. He had readily said yes then—for there would be no other Vala that his Song would resonate with no matter how many times he was unmade and remade—and wondered why Eru thought he would say otherwise now, if this truly was the point where he had to make his choice.
But he had lived that path and was diminished for it, and, unsurprisingly, he found that it was the knowing that was frightening.
Mairon’s silence lingered, causing a peculiarity on Melkor’s fair face. Not fury, nor confusion, nor uncertainty but rather…
Oh.
A small smile crossed Melkor’s features, one close to relief, and in this particular light, he looked carefree, with a settling calm that eased Mairon’s doubts.
“Is it you? Truly.”
“For a while now, yes,” Melkor said with a light hum. His fingers seemed to keep rubbing circles on Mairon’s hands. His awe was a wondrous thing to behold, and more so was his disbelief. “You really are here,” he murmured with a tremor. “I thought this moment is to be my everlasting punishment, and over and over I have to see you forget and remember none in the next waning of light.”
His voice trailed off briefly, before: “I’m sorry, Mairon. When the lamplight wanes and waxes anew and you forget, again I will ask for your forgiveness.”
“Fool,” Mairon whispered against his lips. Like Melkor, his eyes couldn’t seem to stop memorizing his face unburdened. “You ask me to come with you. Always you know I will follow.”
The invitation was clear in the squeeze of his hand, and while Melkor pulled away, his hold did not slack, unmoving and waiting for him.
“Take us away,” Mairon said, meeting him halfway.
The wind swayed gently in the next beat, roaming past the cliffs, along the shores, to the roaring waves of the Great Sea, and toward the far ends of Arda.
The same wind nor Arda itself would not know of Mairon and Melkor again, and where they vanished, only Eru knew.