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elwing. elwing means star spray.
it is right. for she carried the silmaril with her, that gleaming horrible light in her hands. she carries the blood of dior with her, that shining terrible brightness in her eyes. yes, she claims the right to star, and she claims the right to spray, for she walked the sea many a year, waiting for her husband to return to her, waiting for her people to become strong, waiting for her soul to settle beneath her skin but it never does, it never does, it moves and crashes against her like the waves. even earth, even stone, are worn away by the sea. so was her body. no wonder she glows.
then came the kinslayers and elros, elrond, where are you? echoed elladan, elrohir, where are you? echoed eluréd, elurín, where are you? and that was one of those things, wasn’t it. elwing had the blood of men and elves in her, and the skeins of time are woven differently for each. she doesn’t have to conform to one, especially when the present echoes the future echoes the past -
elwing jumps. elwing says, i will not let you take this from me. elwing is luthien and tindomiel and arwen and elwing shines from within, because the silmarils are not of this earth, and neither is she. elwing says, i will not let you take my choice away. elwing jumps.
and elwing is given grace to the sky, wings to the sea - and the thing is, it’s a fluke. it’s a one time thing. it’s pity, it’s mercy, it’s vicious. her life has been full of this. things given to her because what a poor girl. what a tragedy.
elwing likes to bare bloody teeth at those people (the same way elrond and elros will) and let them remember who she is. what she has survived.
she finds the shores of aman with her husband, and she has carried this light for so long. they say your part is played. your job is done. they bow to her. they take the silmaril, but they cannot take her light. she walks away and says i will make my own choice.
because elwing, elwing sees, in a way that she always has, that which does not exist yet. that which has always existed. perhaps she has more eyes than she should, or perhaps it is the light, or perhaps it is the lineage that she lays claim to. elwing sees twin brothers, twin sons, twin grandchildren. she sees a girl with melian’s face, and a girl with melian’s face, and a girl with melian’s face -
she sees her father. he forced himself into a shape that was not his own, much like her grandmother did too. she sees her sons like her father, and she wonders what would her brothers have been, had they the choice?
elwing has the choice. elwing takes all the blood of dior and melian and lúthien that runs through her veins, and she takes hold of this form, these feathers, this freedom, and makes her body remember it. that’s what being a half-elven is, after all. making your own choice. (never, really, having a choice. where do you belong?)
and perhaps she is strange. perhaps she rises into the sky and meets her husband when he returns home. perhaps she has a voice that is harsh, that cuts to the soul and to the bone, if you aren’t careful, because both are a feast. perhaps she has three heads, sometimes, a woman with dark hair and a gull with a mourning song and a shadow that is not the absence of light but rather the wealth of it -
(but eärendil, he with the silmaril on his brow, he would have no other.)
when war comes to beleriand, elwing is there. when her sons kill and then build empires upon empires, she is there. when maedhros and maglor steal the silmarils, those holy lights, she is there. when the land finally gives way to the ocean, she is there.
elwing is proud, and bright, and connected to her kin with blood like fire. (arwen and tindomiel share a dream, centuries apart, of that fall. how it felt not like a fall, but like liberation. like she was always meant to fly.)
elwing means star spray and hunger and making your own choice. elwing is a legend along the seas, the three-headed woman, the queen to a king, a star in the same way eärendil is a comet.
elwing is something else. elrond and elros are like her in a way, but they are more like dior. elrond’s children - those are hers.
elwing swallows her pride. elwing remembers her choice, and her kin. (she is not the only haunting on these shores.)
in middle earth, twins (two after two after two, elwing thinks, dark-haired and many-eyed and sharp-toothed) look each other in the eye. mirror images. past and present.
elladan and elrohir say to eluréd and elurín, it’s time to come home.
in middle earth, elwing forces herself into that first form. dark hair, a woman with few enough eyes to seem normal. she stands by the sea, and he stands by the sea, and perhaps her form reflects his and that desperation to be released. that anguish to be free.
elwing says to maglor, it’s time to come home.