[Cuiviénen. Year 1101 of the Trees. Spring]
[Selas POV]
Four years.
Four Years of the Trees, time that would have been decades back on Earth, stretched thin and slow beneath starlight.
Four years of preparation disguised as play. Of training masked as games. Of watching my friends grow and change while I pushed them, gently, carefully, toward strength they didn't know they'd need.
Some had started families already. Novë with Miriël, a Lindar girl whose voice could make stones weep. Denethor courting Silwen with the patience of someone carving wood, slow, deliberate, beautiful.
And me? I carved bows. Built strength. Stockpiled knowledge like I was going to need it to survive.
Because I knew what was coming.
I just didn't know it would come today.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
The horn shattered the morning calm.
Not a horn made by elven hands. This was something else, a sound with weight to it, music you could feel in your bones. A call that resonated in marrow and Light and the space between heartbeats.
I dropped the bow I'd been shaping.
The horn sounded again. Closer.
"Selas!" Eol burst from the trees, chest heaving, soot still dark on his forearms. "The lake! There's… you have to see…"
"I know." I was already moving.
We ran together, joining the stream of elves converging on the lakeshore. Minyar, Tattyar, Nelyar, all three kindreds flowing like water toward whatever had announced itself with that impossible sound.
The crowd parted as we pushed through, and then…
Oh.
He stood at the water's edge like something from a dream. Taller than any elf by half again, clad in living green and silver that shifted like forest shadows. Beside him stood a horse, no, not a horse, horses didn't shine like that, with a coat like captured starlight.
Oromë the Hunter. Vala of the wild places. One of the Powers that shaped this world.
{Image: Oromë arrives at Cuiviénen}
And he was looking at us.
The Light radiating from him was overwhelming. It washed over the crowd in waves, warm and immense, and I watched every elf around me lean forward slightly. Unconsciously. Like flowers turning toward something brighter than they'd ever known.
Something about it made my skin crawl.
I couldn't say what exactly. It wasn't hostile. Wasn't even unpleasant. But there was a pressure behind it, beneath the warmth and the beauty, a gentle current pulling at something inside me. Pulling me toward him. Toward acceptance.
Or maybe I was imagining it. Maybe this was just what it felt like to stand in the presence of a god and my human paranoia was reading threat into wonder.
I clenched my jaw and pulled my Light in anyway. Compressed it tight against my core, shutting it away like closing shutters against a storm.
The pressure, real or imagined, lessened.
I could think again.
"Children of Ilúvatar!" The Vala's voice rolled across the water like thunder made gentle. "Long have I hunted these eastern lands. At last I have found you, the Firstborn, awakened beneath stars that have never seen day!"
Murmurs rippled through the elves. Wonder. Confusion in equal measure.
"I bring word from Aman the Blessed, where the Valar dwell in light beyond your imagining. We have prepared a home for you there, a realm of beauty and peace, where darkness cannot touch you, where you may grow in wisdom under our care."
I watched elves lean forward with each word. Watched faces soften into something that looked like longing, though none of them had ever longed for Aman before this moment.
Maybe that's just how Valar speak. Maybe it's natural. Maybe I'm the one who's wrong.
But I didn't believe it. Not quite.
"I ask that you send emissaries," Oromë continued. "Three, to represent your three kindreds. Let them witness what awaits in Valinor, and return with word of its glory."
Silence fell like snow.
Then movement. Ingwë stepped forward from the Minyar, golden and proud, the tallest of his people. "I will go."
"As will I." Finwë of the Tattyar, dark-haired and strong.
And then…
"I will go as well."
My heart clenched. Elwë. My eldest brother, stepping forward with that natural grace that made others want to follow him anywhere.
Father's face shone with pride. Mother clutched Olwë's arm, torn between joy and terror.
I felt… nothing. Just cold, creeping certainty.
It's happening. Just like the stories. Just like I knew it would.
Oromë smiled, beautiful and terrible, and raised one hand.
Light flared.
The three emissaries vanished.
The Vala turned his impossible mount. "I will return when they have seen. Then you will choose."
{Image: The Three Emissaries - Ingwë, Finwë, Elwë}
He disappeared like smoke in wind, leaving only hoofprints in the sand and a crowd of stunned, murmuring elves.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same evening. The hidden cove]
Elmo found Selas where he always went when troubled, the flat stone overlooking the deep water, far enough from the settlement that you could almost pretend to be alone.
His youngest brother sat with his half-finished bow across his knees, but he wasn't working. Just staring at stars reflected on black water.
"You're not celebrating," Elmo said, settling beside him.
The settlement was still in uproar. Debates raged around every fire. The Vala came! Our brother was chosen! We might journey to paradise!
Selas didn't look at him. "Nothing to celebrate."
"Elwë will bring back word. Soon we'll know…"
"We'll know what they want us to know." Selas's voice was flat. Empty. "We'll hear what the Valar think we need to hear."
Elmo frowned. "You don't trust them."
"I don't trust anyone offering paradise with strings attached." Now Selas turned, and his eyes caught starlight, bright and hard as steel. "Did you notice? What Oromë said about darkness? About needing protection?"
"Yes, but…"
"Why now?" Selas leaned forward, intensity radiating from him. "We've been here since the Awakening. Generations. Why come for us now? What changed?"
Elmo had no answer.
Selas turned back to the water. "Something's coming. Something the Valar fear. And they want us safely locked away before it arrives."
"You can't know that."
"Can't I?" A bitter smile twisted his face. "Think, Elmo. Really think. Would you uproot everything on a stranger's promise?"
Would he?
Elmo looked back toward the settlement fires. The families. The only life any of them had ever known.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"Neither do they." Selas stood, bow in hand. "But they will. Soon enough."
He walked away, leaving Elmo alone with uncomfortable questions and the distant sound of celebration he couldn't quite join.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Years 1101-1105 of the Trees]
[Cuiviénen. Various locations]
The emissaries did not return.
Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Months became years.
And in that waiting, something shifted.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1102. A forest clearing]
[Selas POV]
The games had grown up with us.
Two teams, ten a side, each defending a pole driven into the ground at opposite ends of a clearing. Touch the other team's pole, your side wins. Anything goes between the poles except weapons and biting.
Anything goes turned out to cover a lot of ground.
"LEFT! Left side, they're flanking!"
Novë's voice cracked across the clearing. He sprinted to intercept two Tattyar boys who'd broken through our line, caught one around the waist and brought him down in a tangle of limbs and profanity. The second dodged past, only to run straight into Celestia, the Nelyar girl our age, who dropped him with a shoulder check that would've made a rugby player proud.
"Out!" I shouted from where I crouched behind our pole. "You're down, stay down!"
The fallen Tattyar groaned and rolled onto his back. "Since when is she allowed to hit like that?"
"Since always," Celestia said, offering him a hand up. The gesture was almost friendly. Almost.
On the far side of the clearing, Eol led a flanking group through the trees. His team's approach was more calculated, using the terrain, staying low, communicating in hand signals that I'd shown them weeks ago and they'd already improved upon.
Denethor guarded the enemy pole with three defenders. Quiet, patient, reading the field. Waiting for the right moment to commit.
Mireth wasn't playing. She sat at the clearing's edge with a pile of clean cloth strips and a pouch of crushed herbs, watching the game with the resigned expression of someone who knew she'd be busy afterward.
She was always busy afterward.
"Your games are getting worse," she'd told me last week, examining a split lip on a young Lindar who'd caught an elbow. "People are getting hurt."
"People are getting stronger."
"Those aren't the same thing."
"They're close enough."
She'd given me a look that suggested she disagreed but wasn't going to argue. Not because she couldn't, but because she'd already figured out that arguing with me was a waste of effort better spent on the next patient.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same period]
Eol fell into step beside me as we trudged back toward the settlement. He was favoring his left leg, though he'd die before admitting it.
"You're pushing them hard," he said.
"Not hard enough."
"Parents are complaining. Say you're making their children too aggressive. Too martial."
I barked a laugh. "Aggressive. We're playing games and they call it aggressive." I shook my head. "Let them complain."
Silence for a few steps. Then Eol said carefully, "What if they're right? The Valar. What if Aman really is paradise?"
I stopped walking. Turned to face him fully.
"Would you go? If it came to it?"
Eol considered, gaze distant. Something complicated moved behind his eyes.
"The forge is here," he said slowly. "My work. Everything I know." He paused. "But the Tattyar who went… if Aman is what they say… the things they could teach me there. Metals I've never seen, techniques beyond anything I could figure out in a lifetime of guessing…"
He trailed off, and I saw the hunger in him. Not greed. Something purer than that. The yearning of a craftsman who'd spent years solving problems with inadequate tools and suddenly been told there was a place where every tool existed, where masters could teach him everything he'd been clawing toward on his own.
"You want to go," I said quietly.
Eol looked at me. Held my gaze. "I don't know what I want. But I know what I have."
"So stop worrying about me and worry about the twenty families who haven't decided yet."
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1103. The lakeshore. Evening]
"What do you think about the Valar's offer, Selas?"
Novë's question cut through the comfortable evening stillness. The group had gathered by the water after a long day, ostensibly to swim and relax, but everyone knew they really came to talk. To process.
I paused in my work, still trying to perfect that damned longbow, and looked around the circle.
Novë and Olwë carved small boats from pine. Elmo tended their fire. Eol sharpened stone arrowheads while Denethor bound them to shafts with practiced precision. Mireth sorted herbs into small pouches, labeling each one with a system only she understood.
Every ear perked up at Novë's question. Even my brothers leaned in.
I set down my bow.
"I think it's not random," I said. "Something happened. Something that made the Valar suddenly decide we need to be relocated."
"Protected," Denethor corrected. "Oromë said protected."
"Relocated," I repeated. "Protected sounds nicer. Means the same thing."
"Does it, though?" Novë set down his carving. "Protection isn't the same as imprisonment."
"It is when you don't get to choose the terms."
"But we do get to choose," Denethor said, his voice patient, methodical. "That's what the emissaries are for. We hear what Aman offers, and we decide."
"After they've been there for years," I said. "Surrounded by Valar. Bathed in their Light. You think they'll come back and give us an unbiased report?"
Silence. I watched it land differently on each face. Novë looked troubled. Denethor thoughtful. Eol's jaw tightened.
"That's not fair," Olwë said quietly from the fire. "You're saying they'll be… changed?"
"I'm saying they'll be impressed. And impressed people aren't objective."
"But what if he's right?" Denethor leaned forward. "Oromë. What if real danger is coming? Are we supposed to just sit here and wait for it?"
"We face it." My voice was firmer than I intended. "Here. In our home."
"With what?" Celestia cut in, not looking up from her knife. "Stone spears and games of capture-the-pole? Against whatever Oromë thinks is scary enough to warn gods about?"
That stung because she was right.
"We get stronger," I said. "We learn. We prepare."
"For what?" Novë pressed. "You keep saying prepare, but you never say what for. It's always some vague danger, some future threat. What if there is no threat? What if Aman really is just… better?"
"Then those who go will be happy." I met his eyes. "And I'll be wrong. And that would be fine, Novë. I'd rather be wrong and free than right and someone's pet."
"Nobody's talking about pets…"
"Aren't they?" I stood, unable to sit still any longer. "A realm of beauty and peace, where you may grow in wisdom under our care." I quoted Oromë's words exactly, the way elven memory allowed. "Under our care. Not alongside us. Not with us. Under."
Ilvëa spoke for the first time. "You're reading too much into one word."
"Maybe." I looked at her. "Or maybe that one word is the only honest thing he said."
Quiet fell. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the settlement, a singer's voice drifted across the water, wordless and achingly beautiful.
"I was born here," I said, quieter now. "This is my home. The birthplace of all our people. I don't want to leave it because a stranger told me to be afraid."
"Even if the fear is real?" Denethor asked.
"Especially if the fear is real. You don't abandon your home at the first sign of danger. You stand and fight."
"That's brave," Mireth said, not looking up from her herbs. Her voice was neutral. Clinical. "It's also how people die."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
She'd never said anything like that before. Mireth, who barely spoke in group conversations, who communicated in bandages and quiet competence rather than words.
"Some things are worth dying for," I managed.
"I agree." She finally looked up. Her eyes were calm and utterly serious. "I just want to make sure we're choosing the right things."
I didn't have an answer to that.
The group sat in thoughtful silence. No one agreed with me entirely. No one disagreed entirely either.
That was honest, at least. More honest than a room full of nodding heads would have been.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same period. The settlement]
In the years of waiting, I watched.
A Lindar couple sitting by their door, arguing in low voices about whether their grandchildren deserved to see the Two Trees. The woman wanted to go. The man kept looking at the lake.
A group of Minyar children playing in the shallows, oblivious to everything. Their parents watching from the shore with eyes full of a terrible tenderness, the look of people who'd already decided to go and were memorizing what they'd leave behind.
Two Nelyar hunters debating by a cookfire, voices rising, hands gesturing, neither one convincing the other but both trying. Both afraid. Both honest.
The settlement was splitting. Not violently, not yet, but the cracks were forming, quiet and deep, running through families and friendships like fissures in ice.
I could feel it. Everyone could.
The Sundering hadn't happened yet. But it was already underway.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1104. Evening]
[Ilvëa]
She found him at the hidden cove.
Ilvëa had discovered this place months ago, following him one evening when he'd slipped away from the settlement. She'd watched from the shadows as he practiced that strange technique, pulling his Light inward, compressing it, holding it inside instead of letting it radiate naturally.
He'd caught her watching, eventually. Hard to hide from someone who expected to be alone. She'd braced for anger, but instead he'd sat her down on the rocks and taught her. Patiently, carefully, guiding her through the breathing and the focus until her own glow dimmed for the first time.
"This stays between us," he'd said afterward. His voice was light, but his eyes weren't. "Don't show anyone. Don't tell anyone. Not yet."
She'd kept that promise. Some secrets were meant to be kept.
Now he sat on the rocks with his head in his hands, shoulders tight with tension that sang through every line of his body.
"Selas?"
He jerked upright, startled. Then his face softened fractionally. "Ilvëa. I thought I was…"
"Alone?" She settled beside him, close enough to feel his warmth. "You're never as alone as you think you are."
A weak smile. "Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"Maybe." She studied his profile, the set of his jaw, the tightness around his eyes. "You meant what you said. About staying."
"Every word."
"Even if everyone you love leaves?"
His jaw clenched. "Even then."
"Why?"
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. Then, quietly: "In my… before I…" He stopped. Started again. "I knew someone once. Who ran from every hard thing. Every challenge. And it broke them. Made them less than they should have been."
He looked at her, and his eyes were old. Too old for his face.
"I won't be that," he said. "I won't run just because something's difficult."
"This is more than difficult." Ilvëa said softly. "This is choosing between family and principle."
"I know."
"And you've already decided."
"I have."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was being stubborn and foolish and that principle was a cold thing to hold onto when your family was walking away.
But she couldn't. Because part of her, the part she kept buried beneath obedience and good sense and everything her parents expected of her, understood exactly what he meant.
She'd felt it too. That pull toward something that wasn't Aman. Toward a choice that was hers and no one else's.
She just wasn't brave enough to make it.
She reached out, hesitant, uncertain, and took his hand. His fingers were rough with calluses, so different from other elves their age. Different from her.
"I think you're very brave," she said. "And probably a little foolish. But brave."
He squeezed her hand, and she felt him tremble slightly. "Thank you."
They sat in silence, watching stars paint themselves across dark water. In the distance, the settlement glowed with firelight and the sounds of endless debate.
But here, there was only quiet, and starlight, and the warmth of his hand in hers.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[End of Chapter 2.1]