The Loneliness of the Fishermouse (4/5): Coracle

[clodia_metelli]

Title: The Loneliness of the Fishermouse (4/5): Coracle
Author: clodia_metelli
Characters: Erestor, Galadriel, Celeborn, Glorfindel, Arwen; in previous chapters: Elrond, Lindir, Celebrían, OC.
Rating: PG-13 (off-screen character death, non-graphic violence and gore).
Book/Source: Silmarillion, LOTR Appendices.
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no

Comments

Where do they go from here?

[auroramama]

Even beings that love to teach have some things they keep private, which is my in-universe reason that we're never clear on just what happens to elves when they go West. Of course, they may not know themselves.

Elves are bound to Arda, human beings are not -- but then why put them in the same world? Why make them "no different flesh," or enough so to have children? Their spirits are bound for different destinations. Isn't that even more profound a difference than species?

Why do even the Vanyar need an occasional breeze from the ocean that leads to Middle-Earth?

Galadriel went east to find wide open spaces (where, as the song goes, she would have room to make the big mistakes). Arwen is Middle-Earth born. She is the product of every people of the Eldar and the Edain, and something more; but even Melian chose an ME idyll for a while. Erestor and Melinna seem to have wished to follow after their own thinking and their own desires, and each other's.

So there are many, many reasons to stay Out East. And there is that permanent uncertainty about what it would mean to go West.

So much room for story! But we care about Erestor and Melinna's fate in a way that the canon protects us from, keeps us detached from, for most elves.