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Cut off from Aman as the Exiles were, they had less knowledge about certain things than they would have liked. Írissë (called Aredhel by some, though she yet clung to the name of her infancy, unwilling to shed that link between herself and her old home) had never cared about certain facets of the building blocks of the world as had others. She was no great practitioner of magic; she could put power in her voice, but that was a power all the Amanyar were imbued with. Írissë loved the forest and the water, but she did not hear the song of creation echoing out of eternity when she listened to it. She and eternity were not on speaking terms—if she called out to it, she would hear no reply, and be undisturbed. It was hard to be disturbed at the lack of something she had never felt strongly.
The lack of knowledge about certain things was frustrating to her, though. They were fighting a war, combatting Moringotto directly when the Valar had been too interested in sitting in silence while the world withered to do anything at all. Exiled were the Ñoldor (and perhaps the Valar had had a point in exiling them; unease pricked Írissë’s mind to remember, and jabbed harder the more she tried to forget), but some information would have been appreciated.
The sky was dark.
It was mid-morning, and the sky was dark.
Rána’s course across the sky was uneven. A small child could notice that; Írissë certainly had. Where Vása beat a smooth, steady track across the sky, Rána lived up to its name—it wandered.
If I had the sky to explore, all the sky, I would wander, too. Írissë allowed, imagining for a wonderful moment having a sea of stars to explore. She could walk and walk for years and decades and centuries and not see it all. But that was her. She was an Elda. She didn’t have the responsibilities that certain others had.
When one of the orbs that brought light to the world proved itself fickle, Írissë did not find her ignorance comforting. She had felt a sick swoop in her stomach the first time Rána’s glowing silver-white face had grown dark; it took no effort at all to recall that moment of near-nausea to the forefront of memory. Only Findaráto’s determination that Rana was still up in the sky had calmed the panicked Exiles, who had welcomed the illumination to the paths they walked across the Helcaraxë.
And now, it was mid-morning, and the sky was dark.
Írissë sat on a bench in the compound she called home. Spring in Mithrim was chilly, and she’d not liked the cold since before the first time she set foot in Araman, but she wore no cloak. Cold was trivial, unimportant. She stared in silence up at the sky. Shadow wrapped around her mind, kin to the shadow that had paralyzed her when darkness fell over Valinor.
A hand lit on her shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze. “As ever, staring into the face of Vása will do you little good, unless doing harm to your own eyes is your goal.”
“Even as it is now?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Írissë dredged a weak smile as Artanis sat down beside her, pressing close against her side—neither of them were fond of the cold, anymore. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Artanis; I wasn’t looking directly at it.” She sighed, more wistful than she had thought she’d be. “Vása isn’t like Laurelin; you cannot look directly at it. I know that.”
Rána edged ever further across the face of Vása, blocking it ever further from view. The morning grew dimmer and grayer by degrees, the shadows of the palisade and the few trees left standing within the compound growing longer and hungrier.
They were alone outside, the two of them. The rest of their mixed community of Ñoldor and Mithrim, those who lived in this compound, they had fled back indoors. It was fitting, Írissë thought; when the Darkness swept full speed over a land formerly acquainted only with light, few had been willing to brave the dark. Artanis looked… Írissë stared upon her face and felt overwhelmed with something like commingled reassurance and envy. Artanis shared none of Írissë’s crawling fears—at least, if she did, she gave no sign, her face as smooth and her body as forged in steely stillness as it ever was.
Taut, dreadful silence blanketed the compound, and all the surrounding countryside. Írissë heard no noise within the compound, nor any sound coming from outside. Even the wind had fallen silent.
Írissë leaned closer into Artanis’s side. She itched to take her hand into her own, but refrained. Skin-upon-skin contact, the feeling of another’s heartbeat, she feared, might break what composure she had to pieces. “Do you suppose,” she asked softly, “that this is supposed to be some sort of sign from the Valar?”
Artanis laughed bitterly, making Írissë start—in oppressive silence, that noise was jarringly loud. “I don’t think we should look to the Valar for signs any longer, Írissë. They’re done with us; the only sign we can expect from them is the Doomsman consigning us to an eternity in his halls if we die.”
“Then what is this?!” Írissë demanded, gesticulating wildly up at the sky. To speak loudly felt as if to invite far too much scrutiny in the hushed clearing, but her frustration was greater than any fear of being noticed. “Is it supposed to be some sort of bastardization of the Mingling?” The shadows on the ground wobbled and grew by degrees, but it was not the Mingling of the Lights that sprang to mind. The Darkening had not come all at once. Ungweliantë had plunged Aman into a sea of Darkness as thick as tar and as cold as the deadly touch of the Helcaraxë, but to do that, she had needed first to drink the Trees dry, and she could not do that all at once. Telperion and Laurelin were the greatest creations of Yavanna Kementári, mother of all things that grow. Killing them was not the act of a moment.
Shadow had grown by degrees, so slowly that the revelers had not noticed it at first—Írissë had not noticed it at first. It was hardly as though she was unacquainted with shadow, she who had explored the most remote forests of Aman, who had once crossed the Pelóri with one of her cousins to brave Avathar. She who had spent so much time in Alqualondë, where Treelight was but a distant glow, before she had stained its jewel-bright sand with blood. But she noticed, and eventually, the rest did as well. Music and laughter fell away; speech failed and weary silence reigned, as the shadows grew and the world held its breath. Only the wind had any voice, and oh, how it wailed. The echo of Manwë’s voice, lifted in agony.
Then, the Darkness rushed forth to greet them. Írissë’s mother let out a scream that was cut off as they all foundered, blind and deaf, in Darkness so vast that the Void would have quailed and looked away.
Perfect silence. Írissë had had no name for it, then, but as an Exile who had crossed the Helcaraxë, she knew it for what it was—the silence of the grave.
There were so many barriers, earthworks and stoneworks and mountains high as Taniquetil, that kept those images and sensations amorphous and unforged, free of the terrible finality of words. It was an old trick of Írissë’s—keep something as an idea in your mind, or better yet, the germ of an idea, not fully sprouted, and it could just… be whatever you wished it to be. Words would dim it, limit it, or taint it. Words would grow it, strengthen it, make it too large to bear.
She gave no voice to her thoughts, but there was no need. Artanis had always been the most discerning of all of them, blessed with the greatest gifts a child of the Eldar could possess. If your mind was full of disorder, you did not need to voice them for her to hear it.
Artanis grasped her hand tightly. The pressure of skin on skin was like being burned with a brand; Írissë’s first impulse was to scream, the signal coming from her mind telling her to jerk her hand away, but she was still and silent, her hand limp in Artanis’s grasp. Mortification swelled hot and hard in Írissë’s stomach as tears sprang to her eyes.
Artanis’s brow furrowed. “Írissë?” she murmured, her voice creaking with uncertainty.
“Sorry,” Írissë let out, trying and failing to force her voice to sound at all normal. She blinked her tears away furiously, sucked in a steadying breath. “I was… overcome.”
A small smile appeared on Artanis’s lips, like a watery gleam of winter sunlight, come to melt away the snow. She leaned closer to Írissë, reached out with her free hand and stroked her cheek with the back of her forefinger. Her skin had been roughened by a life of harder labor in Mithrim than either of them had experienced in Aman—warmth and a gentle touch made that immaterial.
Shadows lapped at their feet like the waters of Alatairë, hungry for the blood of those who had spilled the blood of the Falmari, and they drew away from each other again.
“You were about to tell me off for letting my mind spiral in hopeless circles, I believe,” Írissë said dryly. She kept her eyes trained on Artanis’s face, but there were shadows dancing there, as well.
“Nothing so drastic,” Artanis said to her. “Your fear is that when Rána passes completely over Vása’s face, it will be the end.” She peered closely at Írissë’s face. “Am I wrong?”
“…Yes.” Írissë huffed, a bitter laugh playing at escaping her mouth. “I considered the idea that they might both fall out of the sky and crush us, but I must draw the line somewhere.” She sighed heavily. “No more light, maybe. I do fear that.”
The shadows flickered, but Artanis was still as Nerdanel’s statues, lovely and lifelike and unmoving. “You had similar fears the first time Rána grew dark over the Helcaraxë.” ‘You feared never seeing light again in Aman,’ she did not say. They had not been close, then; the affection between them had bloomed on the Helcaraxë, the warmest thing Írissë had ever found in the icy wastes. Then, they had cleaved to their own immediate family. Artanis had taken counsel with her brothers; somehow—Írissë still wasn’t sure how—it had fallen to her to comfort her mother, whose horror of the dark had been greater than nearly anyone’s. And even then, she’d had little luck; it was Eärwen who had calmed Anairë’s fears, had brought her back to calmness.
“We all did. You did.” Artanis’s eyes narrowed slightly, as much of an admission as Írissë suspected she would ever hear from her. “Rána found its light again, eventually, and I’ve grown used to its being fickle. But this?” Írissë gestured at the sky, more calmly this time. Only a thin little crescent of Vása’s was visible any longer—the dark face of Rána obscured it nearly completely. “This is unlike anything we’ve seen. We can’t know what’s going to happen when Rána covers the face of Vása completely.”
Silence answered her, and Írissë wondered if this was the thing that had finally confounded her. The one thing Artanis had been confronted with, and yet couldn’t reason out a solution. Finally, Artanis said, very quietly, “Suppose that this is the end of light in Endóre. Suppose that when Rána overlaps Vása completely, there will be darkness everlasting. What, then.”
It wasn’t a question. It was… Írissë supposed it was a prompt, though whether Artanis hadn’t divined her thoughts on the matter or whether she had, and simply wished for Írissë to say it aloud. Írissë bit back a smile, if a hard-edged one. Rarely was anything ever truly simple with Artanis. “We live as the Tatyar did by the waters of Cuiviénen, when the world was younger.”
She had asked her grandparents about it, when she was a child. Írissë had been the only granddaughter in those days, fussed over by her kin, and Finwë was happy to tell her stories. These stories were heavily sanitized. Indis had corrected Írissë’s misapprehensions when she was a bit older, and Eärwen, born by the shores of Endóre, had added to them. Between the three of them, Írissë had heard enough to glean an accurate picture of what life had been like for the Eldar living under starlight this side of the Sea.
“We will hunt, and watch, and go on with our lives,” Írissë said.
“And live in horror of what moves, unseen, in the dark,” Artanis murmured, her eyes downcast.
“And yet live.”
They looked at one another in silence, each poring over the other’s face. Írissë could well imagine how she looked to Artanis. Artanis herself looked… Tired wasn’t quite the right word for it. Apprehensive wasn’t the right word, either. She was tense with an anticipation she could not seem to voice, her shoulders stiff, her teeth clenched behind her closed mouth. Her old stillness no longer spoke of calm. It was the paralysis of a woman who had no idea of what to do to put the world to rights.
The sky grew dark. Rána’s face was black, and a ring of fire smoldered at its edges. Perhaps Rána would keep moving, Vása would be unveiled, and life would continue on as it had been. Perhaps those flames would burn themselves out, and they would be left with nothing but darkness everlasting.
Artanis ran her thumb slowly over Írissë’s knuckles. Their minds shrouded with shadow, they waited to see if the world would change.