Work Text:
The Falathrim were too familiar with Ossë to find Melian excessively strange, and so her entrance into the industrious workshop caused barely a moment’s hush. Círdan brushed wood shavings off his apron as he greeted her, inquiring immediately after Elwë as if he could not fathom her visiting of her own accord.
“Elwë is renewing suspended acquaintances; I am forming new ones,” she said. “Will you show me about your operation?”
Melian had not yet held a conversation free from dignified formalities with Círdan, the elf who had given up Valinor for Elwë yet still longed for the sea. He would be reminded of his sacrifice with every breath of salty air – would he be content to stay as long as he must? She did not know him well enough to say.
Ships were not a concept she had devoted any thought to before, but under Círdan’s guidance she warmed to the subject. He grew increasingly animated as they moved through the shipyards, demonstrating how this and that were made and where they fitted together, explaining their experiments with sails and introducing her to the elf woman setting shells into the final decorations.
“Though I am mainly occupied overseeing the process, I like to carve the prow myself,” Círdan said, indicating his latest efforts as they passed a vessel close to completion. “It is only recently that we have begun to ornament our ships in this fashion.”
“Why? Had you not previously possessed the skills to do so?” Melian asked, trailing a hand over the smooth wood. She was beginning to understand Ossë’s love for these people – her people, now, and yet intriguingly unlike the Teleri who kept to the forests.
“We lacked the inclination,” he said. “There were other priorities at Cuiviénen. But now we have the luxury to apply our skills for less practical reasons. Come, I will show you our finest example.”
He led her out onto the stony shore, where they picked their way through the lines of runners stretching from the sheds to the water. A cluster of ships bobbed gently in their rows, silhouetted against the silver-shot sea.
“Your harbour will be full before long,” she remarked.
“We are intending to build another town on the mouth of the river north of here,” he said. “This is to remain the centre of our ship-building, but the ships will be kept there.”
They wandered further around the curving beach, the clatter of the shipyards fading away. Melian’s first instinct was to fill any silence with song, but the waves and Círdan’s easy company soothed any agitation she might have felt. They halted on the promontory between their bay and the next; from there the ships appeared in profile, their sleek form softened by the perpetual darkness.
“What is Valinor like?” he asked quietly. She glanced at him, realising that his gaze had slipped away from the little fleet, drawn instead towards the horizon.
“Bright,” she said. “You cannot see the stars in their full splendour, for there is dusk but no night.”
“Once Elwë sought nothing but that light, always striving to return so he might look on it once again.”
“He found it,” she said sharply, misunderstanding.
“But it is beyond my reach,” he said.
“The peoples of Middle-Earth will have great need of you,” she said. “I am glad - for Elwë’s sake, and my own, that you are here.”
“It was not my choice,” he said, “but it is my doom and I will not fight it.”
“Is that a hardship?” she asked.
“I still have the sea to explore – and to cross, when the time comes. I have a king to serve, towns to raise, a people to lead. I have a ship to build, the greatest that shall ever come of my hands. In the meantime, however, that is what I wished to show you.”
He pointed to one with a figurehead in the form of a bird, its wings swept back as if it were in mid-flight.
“She is named The Nightingale.”
Melian smiled, delighted. “When you sail her out onto the open sea for the first time, I shall come to sing you from the shore,” she promised.
“I would be honoured, my queen.”