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i took a little journey to the unknown ,
and i’ve come back changed, i can feel it in my bones
It burns.
His palm and his fingers burn and the blood behind his skin is curdling and Maglor knows if it were able his heart, too, would be aflame.
He closes his hand around it still, the Silmaril; this is what he fought for. He killed for this, his brothers died for this. To his right he hears Maedhros scream.
Maglor turns, lets his eyes and his focus fall on his brother, his last brother, rather than the blackening skin of his hand and the pain so terrible he falls to his knees.
Maedhros does not fall to his knees. He has always been stronger than Maglor. Instead he sings his anger and pain and grief to the wind, and takes shaking, tumbling steps to where the land drops off to a pit of flame.
Too late, Maglor sees what his brother is doing. He holds the Silmaril close and lunges, howls his brother’s name, but there is naught to be done. Maedhros falls, Silmaril still in hand, and Maglor watches as his brother with fire for hair burns and melts and leaves him for the Void.
There had been seven, then four, then two, but never in all the thousands of years Maglor has been alive did he think he would be alone in this world. Seven brothers, and somehow still he is left with none?
Maglor screams his pain until his voice cracks and dies, looks at the Silmaril in his hand and the skin, burned and flaking. He throws his father’s greatest creation into the depths of Ulmo’s sea and prays to whatever kindness the Valar hold still for him that he never sees it again.
I am tired, says Maglor, to no one in particular other than whoever may hear it. Let this be done. Take these wretched jewels, for they are yours now and my family’s no longer.
For all that the Simarils had been his father’s favourite children, it seemed that they belonged to House Fëanor no longer.
Maglor wonders if he should follow the jewel into the sea, after. The pain has not gone away and his hand lies limp and unusable, blackened in the places where there still is skin. Somewhere in the wide, yawning sea before him, the Silmaril rolls in the waves and shines with his father’s brilliance.
He wonders, for not only a moment, whether he should follow it in. Would his father forgive him for his sin, his crime, if Maglor repented for his actions and followed his wrongdoing into the sea?
Weeks later, he does. He wades into the water, whispering to himself of his brothers and sons and cousins, until the seawater fill his mouth and he can no longer speak, nor whisper. His eyes stay open, and it burns, but not nearly worse than how the Silmaril burned his hand— how it still burns his hand. Maglor watches for the white shine he has ached for this past Age, and instead finds eyes blinking back at him.
Ulmo drags him back to shore and spits him out of the sea.
Ulmo does not leave him alone, after. Maglor sings to the waves that lap at the shore, and they dance in ways that water should not. He finds that he does not wholly mind the company.
He makes the mistake once of asking Ulmo about the Silmaril. "Where did it go?" He asks. "Do you have it?"
The waves stop dancing and shrink away, and then they return to lapping at the shore. But they have lost their life and their vigor, and he knows that Ulmo is gone.
The next day, called in to shore by Maglor's fluttering birdsong, the waves splash and dance, and beyond words Maglor is relieved.
His voice leaves him before his mind.
Maglor sings for Ulmo, and the fish that swim close to shore, and at times Ulmo's maiar also, who are drawn in by the song. But he sings too much, he thinks, and tends his body not enough.
I have gone from bird to toad, thinks Maglor in grief. Yet still this is not enough to pull him from his spot on the sand, just past where the waves stop.
Will you leave me now? He asks Ulmo, for the Valar are well versed in mind speech, and his voice still will not return to him, even for this. Will you leave me, now that there is naught for you and all that swims to dance to on these shores?
No, Maglor, says Ulmo, his voice a roaring wave in his mind. It is both as gentle as Maglor himself had once been in the safe haven of Valinor, and as imposing as Maedhros had been in his last years. I would not leave you now, at your weakest. Truly do the Eldar think so little of the Valar now?
Maglor sighs, the sound breathy and thin. No, my lord Ulmo. I think, perhaps, it is just I who thinks so. The waves rise higher up the shore and lap at him where he lies upon the sand. The water soaks his hands and hair and feet, but his clothes are as dry as dragon-scorched land.
I will defend you, Ulmo says. As my father bid of all us Valar to do for the Eldar, and the Edain. You are safe on my shores.
And for the first time in many years, Maglor rests easy, as Ulmo's waves wash reassuringly over his legs.
i fucked with forces that our eyes can't see,
now the darkness got a hold on me