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In later days, after all has come to pass, Daeron will think it an omen.
Maglor the singer wears white. White loose-fitting robes, draped pleasantly over his sharp, tall figure, drawing the eye to the line of his perfectly cut calves. White pearls on his ankles and his wrists. Shining white opal, slightly iridescent, on his low neckline and his silver circlet.
It contrasts sharply, unnaturally, against the dark hair that falls in loose ringlets down his back. It draws the eye to the splashes freckles over his cheeks, to his reddened knuckles. His pink mouth is brought into sharp focus by the ring of silver and pearl that pieces his lower lip. It all makes him too-vivid, too-real.
None stare how Daeron is staring. All around them Noldor elves pass by, casting the singer quick, throwaway glances. A few look over the jewelry, the arrangement — one asks something or other about the acoustics of the hall— but none linger. None seem to think this odd.
To the Sindar white is the color of death.
Of the death of all things green and growing, buried under snow; of the high peaks where the servants of the darkness make their home; of bone, bared bone, flesh pulled away by scavengers and rain.
And so it is also the color of funerals. Mourning robes are plain and white; they must cover the hair and arms down to the wrists. They are worn with no jewelry, save betrothal-rings and locks of hair cut from the deceased and woven into chains.
At times his people wear pearl and opal on gold, or sewn onto bright fabric; they do not shy away from strips of white surrounded by other color, or in detailing. But white dirties easily, and draws unneeded attention in the dark; there is no use for it, except to show the deepest of sorrow.
But this!
This.
Later Daeron will see a truth in it. A warning, which he ought not have been foolish enough to ignore, that at their first meeting Maglor had dressed himself so. It is obscene, this strange imposition of beauty onto sorrow, the way the white falls about his body and draws Daeron’s eyes to his calves, his chest, his perfectly-sculpted wrists and long fingers. He should not wish so badly to touch it.
Maglor bends down to pick up his drums, and the loose-fitting robe sags off his shoulder. His nipple, Daeron sees with some mix of horror and delight, is pierced through with pearl.
Maglor straightens, looks up, and finally notices his observer. They lock eyes.
Later Daeron will have a thousand words for the color of Maglor’s eyes. Gray-blue, he will say, as the edge of the cloud where it meets the sky. Blue-gray, he will say, as reflection of a cliff face in the lake. The color of moonlight upon steel. The color of starlight trapped in ice.
But now, caught in the rays of the rising sun, they look nearly white. Unearthly they are, both in their strangeness and their beauty, silver light yet bright in them.
Later Daeron will never be sure if something did whisper to him then, some sliver of foresight. Run, it might have said, for there goes your heart, and what to sort of keeper?
But now he steps forward, and takes the hand of Maglor in greeting, surprised despite himself at skin warm and living, at the dimples of Maglor’s smile, the pure-white shine of his too-sharp teeth. Now he follows Maglor to the feast and sings with him, learning quick the notes of the songs of his people. Now he laughs when Maglor plays the part of the virgin in their duet, jesting and utterly irreverent — for to the Noldor white means purity and sanctity, and Maglor is known for neither.
Now he goes afterwards into Maglor’s rooms, and plucks one by one the opals out of his hair — now he runs his tongue over the pink nubs of his nipples and the little pearls that adorn them, now he loses himself in Maglor’s fair, breathy moans and finds himself, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words.
“I thought you a ghost,” he says, “dressed so all in white.”
And that isn’t quite it, but now he does not search for other words, for Maglor laughs and winds his hair about his fingers, saying something or other about spirits, and the scattering of freckles just above his hip looks to Daeron as a constellation of stars.