Work Text:
Day 1: Vocal chords
His voice is one of Feanor’s greatest tools.
Not the greatest, of course – those were his hands. Finely-boned yet strong they were, callused and scarred with long years of work at the forge. But his voice was his when the works of his hands did not suffice, and with his voice he found allies, those of like-mind among the den of vipers that Valinor had turned out to be.
It has deserted him now.
The darkness that surrounds him is thick like no darkness he’d ever experienced before. He is perhaps more used to darkness than most elves – the far reaches of Valinor are dim, shadowy, on the farthest reaches of the light of the Trees. That darkness was soft, a gentle blanket of relief from the light of Laurelin. This darkness smothers. It is thicker than that of his father Finwe’s stories. He stumbles into it blind, little more than a helpless child in the face of it.
It whispers.
It speaks.
It reminds him of another time, in another life, when he was small and kneeling in a garden by a figure that did not move, would never move again. Miriel had lain there, her silver hair gleaming in the soft light of the Gardens, and then he had felt the darkness encroaching. He had known, even though Finwe would never have let anyone say it to his face directly, that it was his fault, that everything was his fault, that it was all, always, forever, his fault -
- the noise that escapes his throat isn’t the noise an Elf would make. It isn’t a wild, despairing howl. It’s a choke, like a thing drowning. Makalaure has spoken to him before of the way instruments strain against the music, the way they have their own voice that calls out against yours, the moment in music where the song breaks against a feeling too large for it to contain. If his voice is his instrument, this is the moment. The moment where it breaks in the swell as the dark water rises over his head, the darkness surrounding him and pouring into him with its songs – such sweet, awful songs!
There is water on his face. It takes a while for him to notice.
In another world, he would be ashamed of the noises he is making. Soon, the fire will rekindle. If it is not the fire it was before, if it is at once brighter and more terrible and so, so awfully fragile, a fire burning nothing, a body eating itself, then at least there will be no sign of this, what he is now, a broken, crawling thing, gasping, pleading in desperate sobs with a world whose one rule has always been the same – he is not enough.
Fin.