Work Text:
A gift can easily become a curse, when both are from God. I think that must have been my music. It was for a holier soul than I have now.
Mother told me I sang almost before I spoke. Maedhros admire my talents more than I did—and I was very proud.
Athair called me a genius. Just once, and as if he scarcely noticed that he spoke the word. But I remembered, and I turned it over and over, less a compliment and more a pearl of great price.
Go out, and sell all your land—
Even if my fingers were not stiff and my harp unbroken, I would not play. There is no song under my skin, no words etched on my heart. I forget who I was. I forget that I set out, grieving a woman—a woman with a name.
I wailed my way west. For this, I am silent, now. They do not think so, my brothers. They hear me speak. Beast-howls that take the form of cunning; they consider it speech. I listen for the same from them.
A gift can easily become a curse, if you lose it. I lost everything, and am surrounded by the rest.
I should have cherished them all, as he did. Would I, then, be less lonely?
I am not lonely, though. This is not loneliness, but the simple existence of being alone. If the mountains have no song in them, when the wind is silent, so there is nothing in me, however much a better man might feel and weep as I used to.
(I have never been better. I only had better.)
This, all this, is written nowhere, spoken nowhere, not even owned by my waking mind. I am half-asleep when I think it; not resting.