Work Text:
Turgon was looking at a tapestry. It was being woven before his very eyes, with mostly dark threads of deep blue and black, interrupted only by the shining silver of soldiery, twining themselves around each other in the almost silence of the Halls of Mandos. Almost but for the roar of the distant ocean.
He did not know if the sound of the Sea could be heard everywhere in the halls, but he had not yet found a space without it.
What he did know was, in addition to the constant whisper of water, a sudden, terrible light at his shoulder, the source of a dreadful shadow on the wall.
He did not turn, and it did not move.
Both of them had learned long ago that meeting thus helped the minds of elves and men deny the great dread that always came with settting sight on such light with the naked eye—except only in dreams.
Turgon said, in a voice that felt as distant to him as the Sea, “Love not too well the work of thy hands.”
There was no response, but he had waited longer for one before.
“It was kindly meant,” he continued. “And justly said. But gifts can be cruelly felt.”
The waves overhead keened once, twice, and thrice before Ulmo said at last: “I know.”
Now, Turgon thought, but did not say, for it would have served no purpose but cruelty.
The two lords of mariners fell silent as the last ships of what was once Andor, the Land of Gift, sank further down the depths of the tapestry, to where not even the threads of the Weaver could find them.