Work Text:
Sonnet XVII
(Poem by Pablo Neruda)
***
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you a certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
***
I.
Amidst the Dissonance of Melkor, there was but one voice that did not forget its own thoughts and did not become disturbed by the sudden change in melody brought about by Melkor. The mighty Vala’s discordant tune held a promise between the spacing of its notes as one holds breath in suspense, but that is never realized with the clamor of gongs in harsh marcato. It was of a melody unrealized in its infancy, a rough outline of a symphony: a messy scribble on sheet music. But of its fundamental trill this single voice plucked from the void in the Timeless Halls, and in its genius, saw not the cacophony of one stave, but the endless flow of one after the other- it saw the not the movement on its own, but the entire piece.
As a conductor stands on a daïs to command an orchestra, the voice rose and commanded the Discord of Melkor, and rather than forcing the beat or dismissing instruments of Melkor’s fashion, it harmonized the clamor of chaos until it sounded as one tune- like the sounds of but a single drop of water grating to the ears, but many thousands the wondrous choir of rain. And this voice Melkor took heed of, listened intently for the Lesser Ainur that had recognized from the frayed music His grand vision and had supplemented it with thoughts of its own.
But this voice had taken long for Him to notice its presence, so in-tune was it to His original messy strain, and it was nearly drowned out by the Second Music of Eru, and by the other Lesser Ainur that had joined into Melkor’s Dissonance out of confusion. But this sound was not as timid as the others, nor was it struggling to keep up with the dipping tempo or betraying its own inherent music. Its voice was like the rumble of distant thunder, a friction in the clouds that told a storm was coming; it was the roaring of fire in a forest, untamed; it was of cellos and sitars and harps and a single husky voice, leaden with potent desire to order, and brimming with the dusky surety of its own imaginings and Melkor’s imaginings combined.
So confident in agreement this Little Flame had been with him, that Melkor nearly faltered in His own music just to pause and listen to His own Discord sung from the golden flame of another, for He could see the bright flame was radiant in a mantle of rose gold, embroidered with liquid garnet and studded with polished carnelian. And Melkor’s music was like the piercing of lightning as it cleaved the deep fabric of sky; the violent eruption of molten rock under pressure; or of bass and drums and trumpets and many baritone voices both whispering and loud and brazen.
It was such that, even with the trace of order that this Little Flame had provided, its song was nearly lost amidst the clash of Melkor's Dissonance fighting with the splendorous Second Theme of Eru Ilúvatar because its music was too soft and seductive. So gentle was it that only Melkor and Eru took notice, and Eru’s stern countenance once more was perceived to smile. Yet, before Melkor could hesitate to listen to this Little Flame’s confident agreement, the Halls of Ilúvatar shook and a tremor ran out into the stillness, and Eru raised both hands and stood for the Third and final Theme.
II.
When Melkor descended to Arda and had gazed upon His brethren and the Lesser Ainur they had all claimed, He thought He caught a glimpse of radiant gold in the bold tincture of colour and it made Him forget His anger at having no Maiar as yet to follow Him. All seemed dull compared to it, faded and worn or too gay in their saturated, sickening vibrancy. At the glimpse of this glory of life made tangible that was falling like a comet down from the Timeless Halls, streaking its colour across the black sky of Arda, Melkor thought He could still discern the waves of its Tala music call out to Him, even as He withdrew and departed to other regions and did there what He would.
III.
Many ages passed and blurred by, irrelevant and empty as the forming and shaping of Arda was still young. Melkor rose mountains out of valleys, burrowed deep into the Earth and churned the soil where once there was only dull flatness. The other Valar would have Arda a temperate and sprawling meadow- flat lands in an endless unchanging daytime. But always brooding in His thoughts- in His loud and vain music- He sung into existence such intense cold and boiling heat that the others knew unfriendly to the Children of Ilúvatar. And from only His will came mountain peaks capped in snow, and great trenches that formed canyons and rivers and oceans.
But always in His thoughts He strayed to the single Golden Maia, small and mighty at His side as He had challenged Eru, whose will was above all things. How the spirit had charmed Him with the steady ascending tune of muted brass and Rhaita, how it had not shrunk at the cymbals of His Discord but had been proud to sing in agreement.
For Melkor had long sung alone- melancholic and envious- and as the others listened they had not the epiphany of deeper understanding like they had each with the other: not even His twin, Manwë, could fully comprehend Him and they had been born of the same thought. Because of this, Melkor often found Himself singing to the Void as if it could listen and understand. But the Void only gave Him more thoughts unlike those of His siblings, and had only alienated Him further.
Yet this Little Flame had understood perhaps more than any other, and had ironed His music of the confusing muddle and had created something that was at once the same, but completely different: like two parts of a whole. The Little Flame had not only understood Him, Melkor came to realize, but had answered Him, and had attempted to stand up with Him and at once soothe Him, its ostinato rhythm at once aggressive and vicious, and uncanny in the way it sounded like a lullaby.
And so Melkor decided, brooding on His own, that He would search for this cunning flame that had so enraptured Him.
IV.
When Melkor once more returned to the other Valar, He saw that they no longer appeared as their natural shape and had clad themselves in new ones, ones the were lovely and glorious to see and mimicked the vague visions they had seen of the Children in the Third Theme. And Melkor stood agape as their original vapour was sealed willingly in the prison of flesh and bone and pondered why their true forms were not enough. Why should the Ainur- the true Firstborn- why should they always be pushed aside by Eru in favor of a false Firstborn- for were they not Eru’s Children as well? Were they not deserving of all the majesty of Arda on their own?
But Melkor saw these new forms, and in His envy He also fashioned His own Fána that was but a thin covering for the shadows and malice of His soul, like a brittle layer of ice afore the plunge into a freezing lake. And He desired only to stay in Almarin to seek the Golden Maia who had sung His song and had transformed it.
And as He appeared in the sky afore the Valar and Maiar, they sensed a great foreboding at His mighty form, terrible and dark to behold. Black as the velvet shade of the Void and as light as an unflinching aster in the nighttime He was. Yet, out of all the Ainur, there was but one who gazed up not out of fear or awe, but of yearning and curiosity which it did not understand, for it had forgotten the time before it was made manifest in flesh, and it forgot the glory of its song that was also Melkor’s song.
V.
And when Melkor was forced back into the distant recesses of Arda, when the other Valar discovered His mission to corrupt, and when His search turned up naught but that the Golden Maia had been claimed by Aulë, the flame itself grew in form and solidified. It was a he, and he was christened Mairon, for he was admirable in the strange Eastern beauty of his Fána and in the mastery of his craft, which was the fashioning of all things. But though he was Master- Highsmith of all the Maiar, under Aulë himself- and though he rose quickly and was fair and skilled, the others saw that he was foreign somehow: strange and distant.
Mairon himself felt this rift, as if his Fëa was long sundered from his kin and had forgotten them, and was now only numb to his return. He delighted not in the company of others, but prefered instead the solitude and silence, or the steady beat of his own hammer as it shaped metal or the Raga beat that was uniquely his own. He was excessively shy and looked critically inwards on himself, and often too harshly. This self-hostility showed by the obsession he had in his craft, seeking perfection and order. Often he neglected his own Fána in favor of the long undefined hours until Aulë and Yavanna both worried.
Many a time he would be left alone in the forges at night, when the light of the Two Lamps waned slightly upon their pillars with Mairon deep in the recesses of the earth, backlit and hemmed with the red fury of fire. There he would work without faltering on some newly-discovered element, a crown worthy of a Vala, or to construct bits of Arda which he knew not of, until rest forced itself on him, and he would slumber in fits.
And in these fits, Mairon often had dreams that were so uncommon amongst other Maiar, and he felt deep inside him that he was discontent, even with all of his skills and his beauty, and he too, felt the rift between his brethren tear them further asunder. Sometimes, Mairon would gaze at the entrancing flames that were contained in the womb of a smelter and felt that he himself should be re-made, melted down to his ore in a forge and poured into a happier mould.
VI.
Such was as he was discovered by Melkor, hunched over a new mineral he had carefully forged and was now engraving with branching ivy and acanthus leaves. And Melkor dissolved His Fána in His excitement, and drifted into a large nebulous shade to settle about in the corner and watch the Maia, and perhaps hear the sounds of the Maia’s harmonized Discord once more. But the sounds that came from him were not the same as before.
They were buried under layers of self-doubt and a soprano that was, Melkor knew, called fear. He knew not that anyone but Himself had felt such things as fear, for He had sung of fear to Manwë and the other Ainur in the Beginning, but none had understood. It seemed to Melkor that this Little Flame was kindred to Him, like he was an afterthought of Eru about Him, and had come into existence from a piece of Melkor’s Fëa.
He circled the room with a swirl of black opal and so intent on his work and so well hidden was His mighty form, that the spirit never realized His presence, and Melkor was able to lay eyes upon the fair visage of his will made manifest. He watched him in his deep concentration as he bent with a lithe flex of muscle to switch out an engraving tool for a smaller one. And Melkor thought him fairer than the visions of Arda in its zenith, even more enchanting than the Great Music.
He was a flame incarnated into a shroud of flesh and bone, his features as from the clay of the earth, smoothed and sharpened and delicate, but hidden within itself the secret golden flame as do sepals hide the petals of a bud. And his warm brown skin was speckled with aurorean freckles like the light of Ormal the High-Gold on the browning leaves of trees at the dawn of Melkor’s winter. His hair curled around him like living flame, and it seemed at once that copper was interwoven in the strands or that it was tempered with heat into those wondrous colours of flame.
And though Mairon attempted to perfect all of his craft, Melkor thought that it was his Fána that was the most near to perfection, in the noble features of his pointed nose, his slanted, lidless eyes. He was the colour of the earth’s crust rent and bleeding with magma in a glorious spurt of fulvous; the colour of fertile soil, or amber gushing from bark; or the heady, burning red that rolled thickly under the earth, the clinohumite and pale yellow of flame.
Long He stood there in shadow, watching this Little Flame that He now coveted as much as He coveted dominion over Arda, domination over those false Firstborn Children. Even when Mairon left the forge late that night at the behest of Aulë, who chastised him for overworking, Melkor still sat hidden and watched the embers in his furnace shriek as they died in mockery of the glory of the Master that had stoked them. And He resolved this creature would be His, this creature whose eyes were forever enwreathed in flame and were forever seared into His soul.
VII.
When He finally stepped from the shadows that always cloaked His being, Mairon did not at first notice Him, notice the nearness of the Discord that echoed his own and did not mock it. What he first noticed was a sudden draught in the smithy, which brought with it the fragrance of orris root and rain freshly spilled on the earth. A coolness made the smothering room breathable and a sudden shadow poured like sable sea into the far corners of the forge so that he seemed suspended in a sky untouched by Varda.
His hair was so raven-black and liquid-like in glossy tyrion sheen that save for the glints of violet and sapphire it twisted and blended like tendrils in the inky shadow of His Fëa. And His skin was deathly pale ivory, hewn from carrara or moonstone and veined with thin lines of blue rivers like those of Arda mapped under His flesh. It seemed to Mairon in wonder that fractals of ice crystallized onto Him so that their patterns crowned His temple in chalcedony stars and hung about His broad shoulders and veiled His legs with a skirted haze of thin opalescence.
And though His form was so striking and dissimilar to Mairon’s- His chiseled milk quartz strongly shaped and Mairon’s form sharp but delicately and subtly sculpted earthenware- even with their contrasting Fána Melkor was so intensely cold that He burned, and Mairon found that to not be so different from his own inferno, which burned so hotly it felt frigid. It seemed to Mairon that His form was magnificent in its unique and faultlessly shaped constitution-- perfect.
At once he knew this shade to be the dreaded outcast: the brother of His Lord Manwë. But he did not feel the fear and apprehension that the others had said they felt if they happened upon a glance of Him sneaking into Almarin. Mairon instead felt steady and utterly and completely calm, and (not knowing quite what to do), he turned from the figure shyly with a flash of imperial topaz.
“What dost thou wish, Forbidden Spirit?” Mairon questioned, and to Melkor his accustomed voice was unchanged, that same lilt that had sung eons ago, and once more He was caught in the syllables of that husky, languorous voice, of reverberations low and sensual and naught but a slow and punctual whisper spilled from the fullness of cherry lips.
And so near to him now, Melkor could smell the conflagration of spices that enticed him, and their underlying sweetness tinged with the smokiness of ash and burning wood. But He did not lean closer to inhale his redolence, as one savors the richness of a wine. Melkor could not afford Himself the possibility of scaring the Maia away from Him forever, and instead He replied in a whisper to match the Maia’s own, and it was like the singing of many a choir at once:
“I came only to admire, for art thou not the admirable that Aulë hast sung praises of?”
A rose tincture stained his sinopia flesh, and, unable to restrain the blush he turned away again to catch his bearings, for though he was skilled, his obsession restrained any haughtiness that should have come with his momentous success.
“It is true that I am called the admirable, but of Aulë’s praises I wilt not attest to.”
“Then thou do thyself a disservice, Little Flame--” said Melkor, His clawed fingers tracing the engraving on a hilt of an expertly balanced Talwar sword, on the carving of one of Yavanna’s kelvar, and on the embroidery of a silken inlay for a mithril gauntlet “--For thou seem to me most worthy of the name.”
In truth, the Maia was flattered and his soul thrummed with such genuine praise, for it quelled some of the waves of doubt that plagued him. And even if such praise was from the Vala that had piqued his curiosity long ago, it did not stop him from remembering his place, and the Maia turned this time to face Him.
“Come hither thou to spin words of honeyed praise so that I might stray like a crow to carnage? Get thee gone, afore Master Aulë cometh to His halls and finds them burgled.”
And Melkor was struck by the boldness of these words such that He could not respond, and the sudden iron that sturdied them recalled His Dissonance where before the Little Flame was flushed and timid. Though to any other His temper would have loosed, Melkor admired the Maia’s sudden brazenness, and respected his bidding to be left alone, and departed knowing His seduction would prove to be a more difficult feat.
VIII.
But the Dissonance lived on inside of Mairon like a throbbing of metal on anvil, haltingly beautiful chanting, and the thrumming of a sarangi and dilruba. He did not comprehend it yet, but it yearned to break free and let its sultry hymn let loose from his breast. It was lodged, stuck in his throat and caged in his ribs, attempting to boil out of his soul.
And though Melkor left when Mairon asked Him to, He kept returning to the forges day after day when the light of the Two Lamps waned the most, risking the wrath of the Valar at His secret visits to the secluded Maia of Aulë’s Halls. Mairon found he could not tell of their meetings alone when the workbenches were empty save their two voices and the slow coaxing of the Discord within them, of the harmony of their chaos. And he stopped making Him leave many a decade ago.
It seemed to Mairon that he caught glimpses of the Beginning when he was first formed, when the Great Music was sung and the Vala’s pall had burst forth from the Void a glorious cacophony that was begging to be ordered, to be under direction of a conductor. For in these notes he saw himself reflected in their pitch, and he beheld their beauty and adored it. Soon, Mairon began not only to listen to the Mightiest of the Vala, who now only struck him as forlorn and angry, tireless and fearful, anxious and envious- but of all those things, came an understanding of Eä more alike to a physical being than a Vala.
When the shadows surrounded him, he did not reject them, and forgot the warnings of his Master Aulë and instead became soothed of his previously unnamed fears, nurtured by the cold flakes of snow that never strayed too far from their maker. And on the pool of jet that were His eyes, they reflected his own, and Mairon found only companionship that he never knew he was looking for, felt the joy that could come from being with another and not alone.
Yet ever further apart he became from the others as his own theme was remembered and their collective forgotten. His music developed again with Rhaita, nay flute and sarod, brass and sultry chanting and ever he grew happier despite being shier and more distant, and even more sombre to the other blacksmiths of Aulë’s Halls.
And Melkor, despite having originally set out to seduce and entrap, found only Himself more entangled and found Himself uncaring that the time He spent with the Maia gave the other Valar more time to develop Arda in the way that they wished without Him raising mountains and carving valleys. No longer did He linger on thoughts of His visits being a seduction so much as a recalling of a bond that had tied them together in the Beginning, so much as it was the fate that Eru had written.
IX.
When at last Mairon fell to his knees afore Melkor in the deeps of Utumno, fled from Almarin and forsaking Aulë and the other Valar, Melkor had realized He had not seduced at all, not really. And Marion had come of his own volition, and had crept away, the first of the Maiar spirits to cross, and the mightiest of them all was he.
And Melkor let the mantle of His terrible Fána fall like an unwanted garment, and let Mairon see the shade that composed His Fëa, the flecks of labradorite ice and torrent of smoke like favril, like the light of Illuin through stained glass. And Mairon swore to serve Him with his dying breath or for eternity, and swore a fealty to Him like none other before- one of flesh and one of soul and one of joined intellect and passionate cadence at once- one that severed him from all others save Melkor.
And Melkor showed him pleasure unlike any before, Fëa and Fána, gold and sable. And their music was a harmonized Discord and from the strength of Melkor’s turbulent song and Mairon’s Carnatic Raga they melted into one another, half-formed and raw, the music ascending and climbing higher and higher with such velocity and intensity, the rhythm breaking to staccato and clamoring around them, uninterrupted and savagely beautiful and all crashing in a climax of azure and ruby, obsidian and onyx and copper rust. And two voices in tenor and baritone, trembling.
X.
Lying there, spent, their breaths mingling and creating steam from the polar extremes of their Fëa, Mairon knew it wasn’t just him swearing an oath beyond the ends of time.