WIP (very much no longer) Wednesday

Thank you for the tag @melestasflight! Not tagging anyone else because it's very much no longer Wednesday (my dudes).

Here's some bits from A Million Dead and I?, wherein Finarfin sits in a garden for a few thousand years.

High King Arafinwë of the Noldor returned in triumph to Valinor, with his enemy humbled and cast into nonexistence, with scattered handfuls of the haggard and homeless elves of Beleriand-that-was looking for new homes in the West, with none of the family he thought to save. For many days he mourned with High Admiral Eärwen his wife, together remembering the sunken lands their sons had died for. At last he arose, and went to his councilors, and together finalized the plans he had proposed half a century prior, upon the eve of the long-awaited War. And when all the pronouncements had been published and the criers left their squares, Arafinwë laid the sceptre of his father upon the High Council’s table, placed the crowned helm Celebrimbor had forged for him upon his father’s throne, and departed from Tirion alone.

Arafinwë learns several things in the first few decades of vigil outside the Doors of Mandos. First: one cannot properly cry as a houseless spirit. “Oh Pianyellë, Pianyellë! I’m so sorry, I was so tired, I thought I could just lie down for a moment…” Second: robes which dry quickly are a necessity. “They never came back from a hunt, and I…I just didn’t see a reason to keep walking without them.” Third: the Grinding Ice was not only worse than he imagined, it was worse than he can imagine. “It…there were no Powers. There was no light. No judgement. He was dead, we’d already handed out his furs. I thought, I thought. He wasn’t using the rest anymore either, was he?” Fourth: his would not always be a welcome face. “You LEFT us, uncle. Left us to die, left us to ruin! It should’ve been you, down there, f-forced to watch as we fell. It sh–it shou…I should’ve been there! Atya, atya! If–if I was there, would…?”

I died at Alqualondë. Was trying to herd some Teler children away from the docks, get them somewhere safe. A sailor saw us, thought I was trying to kidnap them, ran me through. Can’t really blame him. I never had the chance to slay anyone, but…I knew I was going back to the docks as soon as the kids were out of the way. It…it took me a long while to grapple with that. I met the sailor, you know, back in there. Cleared the air between us. We looked for the kids, in the Halls and the tapestries. None of ‘em were there; they all lived! That…that felt pretty good, you know? I still did something, still had my little phrase in the Song.

I tried taking on a bear larger than I should have, and that was that. But the other hunters finished it off, and my furs weren’t too rent to still be useful. Sure, my once-betrothed’s been married to another man for two centuries now, but with the way we separated, he probably wouldn’t’ve had me back anyways. So no, I don’t regret it.