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After, Maglor stands with blackened hands amidst a night like stone. The sea sizzles as it accepts his gift, the silmaril sinks and sinks until he can see only its dim light beneath the iridescent shine of scales. His whole body trembles, shakes with the power of a thousand strong winds. The night air smells like salt and despair, with a soft tinge of smoke—the unwelcome stench of his burning flesh, fingers crooked and palms flayed open like the bones within crawling out. (Not that he blamed them, of course. He would give anything to leave this moment. To rise above the tide and stare down at this trembling stranger with an eye of pity, and nothing more).
“Atya,” Maglor cries out. His voice a shred of the night, eagerly encompassed by Ulmo’s vicious sea. Beneath his chest his heart aches with the pound of a forge hammer—beating and beating and beating. His voice turns to blubbers, scrambled sobs and sounds like a child’s murmurs. The air eats them up like a hound.
And on the wind that flutters through his very skin is the distinct scent of Tirion. Before the turmoil, when the days bled only of play and family—where everywhere he found solace and nowhere did he find anything akin to sorrow.
There’s a part, no matter how small, that still thinks he’s home. Awash in the light of two trees, visions of his mother's red hair and the sharp string of a harp at his beckoning. Fingers black from holding his father’s—always full of soot and the stain of molten silver. Always holding his.
Maglor closes his eyes. “Yes,” he says though his body still shakes. “Yes,” he says though the silmaril has settled in the belly of the sea. “Yes. I am home,” he says, though he knows he’s not, and never will be.