They had been ready to go into the dark, to cross the Sea to Middle-Earth.

They hadn't been ready for darkness just yet.

They especially hadn't been ready for a darkness that could be felt, both in the body and the soul, hiding all the stars of Varda.

Or for Melkor coming himself, or for the still-unknown terror with him, or for many other things.  The horrible images kept circling through their minds, almost as if a minstrel were singing of them.  (No one was, yet.  Makalaurë would certainly be making a song, later, but he hadn't breathed a word of it yet.)

For now - they had taken what they could.  What was still there in Formenos.  Everyone had left; no one wanted to stay.  They'd tried to mount their horses, but the horses had reared and cast them to the ground and fled away wild.

So now they walked through the Darkness (the Un-Light, Curufinwë called it, saying it deserved a new name), with mere scattered snatches of song, ever on the alert for some new device of Melkor.

It is Nelyafinwë who senses her first.  She feels like an Elf to his osanwë - not an Ainu or strange terror, and he didn't think Melkor could fake that.

At a time like this he isn't quite reassured; no other Elves had been abroad in the Un-Light, and who knew what had happened in Tirion or Valimar?  But still, signaling his brothers to be ready, he steps forward.  "Welcome, Stranger," he says aloud.

The darkness was enervating and disquieting at the same time; she had rather given up on the idea of hearing anything but the occasional anguished cry of a confused animal, and of course her own breathing and the frantic noise of her horse being given to panic every time a bird cried mournfully in the distance.

Her own startlement, of course, startled her horse again, and she takes a few moments to gently hold the leading-rope and mutter reassurance, eventually laying a hand on her mount's neck once she seemed calm enough to do so.

It's only then that she replies, although presumably her greeter also heard her horse.

"Well met, I hope?"

She wonders if she should have actually introduced herself, but the darkness causes her to prefer caution. If she lets the horse go, the noise will probably cover her swift retreat...

She speaks Quenya with a somewhat Noldorin accent, but it sounds like she's been out of touch with the Tirion Linguistics Guild for an Age or so.  Or else they've made a lot of sound shifts surprisingly quickly amid the Un-Light.

(His father, of course, had arranged messengers to keep up with all the Linguistics Guild's proceedings despite being in Formenos.)

"Hope is scarce these days," he says.  "We come from Formenos; Melkor slew the King and ruined the city.  And you?"

Belatedly, he puts his hand on his sword-hilt just in case.  He might as well train his reflexes.

"Liritë's estate, outskirts of Formenos," she replies, somewhat automatically. "I... needed to know what was going on."

It sounds rather small and petty, now she says it, amongst news that Formenos is - ruined? And - the King is - dead? None of this makes any sense, but she supposes the darkness doesn't either; maybe the King's death has caused it. She knows the old tales of Melkor, of course, but wasn't he - fixed - when the rest of the Valar let him go?

Nelyafinwë hasn't heard of Liritë, but then there're a lot of names he hasn't heard of.

She sounds like a very young Elf, barely an adult, maybe fifty years old.  He replies, trying to be encouraging, "Of course you needed to know.  We all need that.  That's why we're going to Valimar."

While he's saying this, he passes back by osanwë to the rest of the company, "She says she's from Liritë's estate - does anyone know about them?"

Makalaurë replies immediately, "Oh yes, Liritë and Olordo!  I meant to get back to Liritë about her completely incongruous use of pizzicato to represent our fathers' wonder at Cuiviénen, but what would you expect from someone so reclusive..."

A few moments later (he was already nearby), he's approaching with one of their few torches.  Lirtë can now see that both he and Nelyafinwë are stained with soot with tear-stained and work-haggard faces.

That's... not good. Lirtë is sure she doesn't look as put together as her mother would like, her hair has probably gone everywhere again and there's likely mud up her riding trousers, but nothing like... that.

She also has this awkward feeling that she is absolutely expected to recognise these people and know who their father is.

The horse predictably shies from the light; this time she rather welcomes the distraction of getting her under control again.

"May I travel with you, then? I'm afraid Lópa isn't up to being ridden, but once she's had time to settle she'll walk alongside without too much trouble."

"Oh, Lirtë!  It's good to see you again; did you bring your flute?  I was wondering what had become of you and when you'd go see the wider world -"

His brief smile vanishes to a frown.  "Not that any of us can see much of it now.  But yes, please, come with us.  We're going to Valimar first, to see Father and give him the news."

"And see what the Valar are doing," someone else (who looks like them - clearly a relative) adds.

"If they've finally decided to do anything."

Lirtë absolutely did not bring her flute. Which of her parents' friends was this? She tries to imagine him sat at a dinner table, but it was all a bit incongruous. She vaguely regrets having deliberately not paid attention to anyone her parents tried to introduce her to.

"Yes, I suppose this is a - Valar-scale problem," she replies, for want of anything better to say.

She squints into the dim light, trying to make out how large their party is and what kind of order they were keeping on the road, to work out where she should walk and direct her horse without getting in anyone's way - especially if the torches fail them.

It was so good to see something again, though, even if the light didn't reach as far as it should.

There're only a few dozen of them; most people from Formenos were already at the festival at Valimar.

"Did you see anything?" Nelyafinwë asks.  "Or - well, sense anything strange aside from the Darkness?  We don't know how many terrors Melkor brought..."

"Nothing significant," replies Lirtë. "Lópa keeps acting like there's something, and there are a lot of distressed animal and bird calls, but I've met nothing else on the road."

It would have been getting kind of tedious, really, if it wasn't for the creeping dread and the constant need to settle her horse from the latest anxious bird call. There was something uninviting about the prospect of listening out too closely, also.

They all sigh with relief.

"Good," says Makalaurë.  "We were worried that Melkor had overrun the whole land -"

He breaks into a few lines from one of the very oldest songs, hardly ever sung anymore but still recognizable, about the Hunter who would seize any who wandered too far from Cuiviénen.

As if signaled by the mention of the Hunter, a hound loudly bays from somewhere a little outside the torchlight.

Tyelkormo interrupts.  "But then the Valar came.  We need to find them.  Lirtë, are you missing anything?  Anyone?  Or can we get moving?"

"This is all I came with," she replies, feeling a little foolish to have set out on her own - with little in the way of supplies.

Nelyafinwë smiles, still trying to reassure the young Elf.  "Don't worry.  We'd been preparing for darkness for Years, of course - it wasn't enough, but it was something.  Come walk with us; hopefully the horse will be useful soon."

"You've been preparing - for this?" asks Lirtë, taking up a place in the formation that hopefully won't have anyone tripping over her when the torch goes out.

Tyelkormo shakes his head.  "Of course not.  We never thought Melkor could attack the Valar here - well, I never thought it."  He glares at Nelyafinwë.  "But Middle-Earth is still dark, so our preparations for that were... well, helpful."

Lirtë also glances at Nelyafinwë in case he'd like to defend himself against the implied accusation, but all of them look so worn down it's hard to look at them for long, even though the alternative is mostly just darkness.

"Middle-earth?" she asks. "I've heard the histories, of course, but..." she trails off, not sure exactly what she's uncertain about, feeling like she doesn't know enough to ask sensible questions.

Hopefully they'll start moving again and she'll at least not feel like she's wasting their time.

Only a moment later, Nelyafinwë calls out "Onward!", and they start moving.

A moment after that, Makalaurë blows out the torch, and they're left in the Un-Light.  As if in response, he starts singing a thin song.  It's a Teleri song, about Elves searching for lost Elwë among the beautiful starlit forests of Middle-Earth.

But he breaks it off after a few stanzas, with faintly a ghost of the forests having come to be amid the Un-Light, and says apologetically, "Obviously, our position is different - they're not missing as such - but we have so much more to offer, and we're sure they could use our help.  And - then, of course, Melkor."

She tries not to startle when the light goes out - she's got to avoid upsetting her horse, after all - but does make a soft unhappy noise which she hides by pretending she's soothing the horse.

Some beautiful starlight would really help around now, although she's not sure she likes the imaginary forest - it's hard enough keeping track of the actual path without ghostly song illusions getting in the way.

"Nobody has really explained the pardon of Melkor to me," she says, "except as 'this happened and we can sing about it'. Weren't there - conditions?"

"Not enough conditions.  He promised to help mend all the problems he'd caused."

"Father never trusted he meant it.  Lirtë, I'm almost glad you weren't in Tirion to hear anything he said.  Father never listened to any of his advice, but we all probably took up some of the ideas he'd given other people -"

"I can't prove it, but - I think Melkor started Nolofinwë's fight with Father.  Maybe Nolofinwë will think better of it now."

Oh no, she really ought to know who they are, if they're important enough to have a feud with Nolofinwë, especially one that isn't sufficiently one-sided that he might think better of it.

If only she hadn't spent most of her life deliberately ignoring everything about any visitor that her parents entertained, especially if they expected her to sing for them.

"It seems that mending the problems he'd caused did not, in fact, rule out him causing additional problems?" she offers.

Makalaurë notices that she's nervous about them, not just about Melkor.  "Don't worry," he says.  "We won't refuse anyone who's willing to join us to come to Middle-Earth and fight Melkor.  Not even Nolofinwë himself, if he comes."

Lirtë just nods at first, then realises nobody can see her do that and feels foolish about it.

"Thank you," she says, which she thinks is at least within the set of answers they might be expecting. She's not actually all that sure that she wants to go to Middle-Earth and fight Melkor, but she's not exactly going to say that to the much more prepared people who are willing to let her tag along for now on the assumption that she's going to do that.

"Um," she says after a few moments, "but isn't Melkor here, and not in Middle-Earth?"

"Even I'm sure the Valar would be doing something if he's still here - and then we'd feel it, just like our fathers felt the rumblings at Cuiviénen the last time they were fighting him.  So he must've fled to Middle-Earth... and yes, Tyelkormo, maybe they're about to go fight him there too, but even so that doesn't change all the other reasons to go."

Lirtë is still less than sure about what all those other reasons are; from what little she does know about history, at least, if not politics, people are not necessarily as interested in welcoming 'we have so much to offer and we're sure you can use our help' as the helpers might anticipate.

But she's not exactly going to say that. Maybe if she just nods and follows along, Makalaurë will start singing again - not that she will admit that she likes the singing, but the picture it was weaving was interesting.

Makalaurë doesn't start singing again.  After a few minutes, he asks her, "How are your parents?"

"They were doing fine when I last saw them." It's an entirely true statement, and she doesn't really feel like explaining that she did not, in fact, check in on them before heading out into the darkness.

"As much as any of us are fine," someone murmurs.

After a little while, a discussion starts up about the best ways to light Middle-Earth, or how much light really should be used there.  If they can't recover the Silmarils at once, would it be better to light a lot of torches, or just depend on stars?  Several people who've spent a lot of time on the coasts with the Teleri are sure that the stars are good enough (once they're out of this Un-Light), but other people are doubting.  After all, the Valar did give more light... and they've got the Treelight still in the Silmarils.

Someone suggests that the Dark Elves are probably used to starlight, but Makalaurë and Nelyafinwë both insist that they'll like the brighter light too, when they see it.  After all, wasn't the original plan to use the Silmarils to light up as much of Middle-Earth as they could?

Lirtë resists the urge to verbally agree with the person who suggests the people they want to help are probably used to starlight, although it's probably fairly apparent that she agrees if anyone's watching her. Mostly she is desperately attempting to put together what, in fact, is a Silmaril, exactly. Which she feels like she very much ought to know, and doesn't want to reveal the abject depths of her ignorance by asking, especially as it seems to be quite a sore topic.

Soon - or perhaps not soon; time is hard to measure in the Un-Light - they can hear the many bells of Valmar tolling out a slow dirge such as had never been heard from those bells before.

The city itself has a few torches burning, but only a few.

Not even the dimmest of dim lights comes from the hill of the Two Trees.

Even though she's never been here before, there is something very wrong about there being no light from that hill; even more wrong than, well, everything else which is wrong.

But every time she starts to get upset about it, her horse starts to shy and she has to calm her down, which helpfully has the effect of calming herself down.

"If you don't mind me asking," she asks softly, "what is the plan?"

"Tell Father the sad news.  And then..."  He pauses.  "Get everything together to leave for Middle-Earth right away."

"Unless the Valar have a better plan."

"Yes, unless they are bestirring themselves to finally do something good now.  Or, I suppose, unless Father has a better idea."

Lirtë nods; hopefully she will finally find out who she has thrown her lot in with, once they find their father.

"Do we have a plan to find him?" she asks; the task of finding anyone in the utter darkness, even though it is punctured here and there with torchlight, seems rather more difficult than it might otherwise be.

"I'm sure people will know where he is, unless..."  His voice chokes.  "Unless Melkor destroyed him too."

Tyelkormo pauses.  "Shall we ask in Valmar?"

Makalaurë shakes his head.  "He wouldn't have gone there.  To the Ring of Doom."

He turns toward the hill of Ezellohar, where the Two Trees should be illuminating all the land... but now it is as dark as anything else in the Un-Light.

As if at his words, however, a wind sprang up; from the hill, and down into the valley where they stood, it chased away the Unlight. The Hill was still an awful darkness, a nothingness where there should be dazzling light, but the heavy, unnatural shadows were banished away, and the lights of Varda were revealed in the sky.

With the wind, but travelling swiftly away to the north, was a thunder that shook the ground; the thunder of hooves, as the Vala of the Hunt gave chase.

All of this, of course, excited Lópa no end, and although it was with less distress that she tried to tug away, she still took some considerable attention to settle.

Tyelkormo throws his head back, breathing deeply the free air and gazing up at the star-spangled skies.  "Ah Varda Light-Bringer -" he cries.  And then - "Upward!  We bring dreadful news but no longer hopeless!"

The seven sons of Fëanor - scarcely caring who's behind them - hasten up the hill where they can now see the ghastly corpses of the Two Trees in front of them, such corpses as had never been before in Aman, where even the body of Miriel had lain incorrupt in the gardens of Lorien.

But around the dead Trees are gathered the Valar, clad in bodies like the Elves as in raiment; but an odor and sense and light of power shows around and through their bodies, like an Elf's flesh might show through an inexpertly-woven robe.  In the darkness, only with effort could one move one's eyes to look at anyone else.  Many are sitting on the ground still, for their thrones had been defiled, but Mandos is standing in front of - someone - as if he had just spoken.  Nienna is standing by the corpse of the Silver Tree and singing slowly a song of mourning, both in spoken words and in wordless osanwë.

That... is a rather stunning scene. She expected Lópa to startle again, but in fact her horse is - trying to lie down, and neighing softly along with the song?

She supposes Lópa is probably due a rest, and doesn't stop her. She distracts herself by counting off the Valar from the poetic descriptions she has heard of them; while it is true that everything is broken and terrible, she doesn't really think internalising this completely is going to help just now.

Nelyafinwë, with a mere glance at the Valar, throws up his empty hands and strides into the circle. "Blood and darkness in the North!  For Finwë the King is slain, and the Silmarils are gone!"

(There is a wordless cry in an Elven voice from someone next to the Valar, but no one heeds it.)

Manwë raises slowly his head.  "Alas!  How came this?"

Only then does Nelyafinwë bow before Manwë.

"My lord, it was the day of festival, but the king was heavy with grief; a foreboding was on him.  He would not go from the house.  But we went riding toward the Green Hills.  And suddenly, we were aware that all was growing dim.  The Light was failing.  In dread, we turned and rode back in haste, seeing great shadows rise up before us.  But even as we drew near to Formenos, the Un-Light came upon us.

"We heard the sound of great blows struck.  Out of the cloud we saw a sudden flame of fire.  And then there was one piercing cry.  But when we urged on our horses they reared and cast us to the ground and fled away wild.  We lay upon our faces without strength, for suddenly the cloud came on, and for a while we were blind.  But it passed us by and moved away north at great speed.  Melkor was there, we do not doubt.  But not he alone!  Some other power was with him, some great evil.

"Darkness and blood!  When we could move again, we came to the house.  There we found -"

His voice chokes, but he continues.  "- We found the King slain at the door.  His head was crushed as with a great mace of iron, his sword lying beside him twisted and untempered as if by lightning-stroke.  We found none other; all had fled, and he had stood alone defiant."

"Naught is left.  The chamber of iron is torn apart.  The Silmarils are taken."

Lirtë pats Lópa reassuringly. She kind of expects that her horse would have also considered her to be too dangerously insane to accompany if she'd attempted to ride her towards Melkor, let alone with 'some other great evil'.

Now if only she had the first idea what a Silmaril was, and why it was worth mentioning in the same breath as the King. She'd certainly heard the word before somewhere, but it was the kind of thing she'd been deliberately ignoring. For which she was now kicking herself, as it appeared 'run off into the woods once people wouldn't just immediately return her to her parents' was no longer the viable plan it might once have been.

...a creeping suspicion was beginning to set in, though. They'd been expected to be in the house with the King. They knew him well enough to know what mood had taken him. A song about gems blessed with Varda's light...

Then suddenly, the Elf standing in front of Mandos rises.  He doesn't bother looking at them, but anguish and anger are leaking through his osanwë - as if he's beyond caring about the impoliteness.

He lifts up his hand before Manwë and declaims:  "Cursed be Melkor in his coming and his going, in all his lies and his deceits, in every word that he speaks, which are all lies.  May he never find anyone to be tricked into friendship - may all know him as Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of All - may the Everlasting Darkness come upon him!  Witness this, all you Valar!

"And cursed be everything that aids him in his dark schemes - and connives at his lies - your festival, your summons - the Darkness take it - or I might have been there to save my father --"

With a wordless cry, he throws up his hands (Lirtë gets one glimpse of his face) and runs off into the darkness.

Nelyafinwë also gasps in dismayed shock.  "Alas -" and runs into the darkness after him.

Tyelkormo stares at the Valar, a new dismay leaking through his own osanwë.  "Surely you have a plan - but have you any plan for Father, now?"

...'alas', indeed.

Okay, the whole Valar thing is interesting, but Probably Her King Now has just run off into the darkness and she has a horse.

The terrible crushing unlight has subsided, so she is slightly less careful at rousing Lópa than she'd otherwise have been, although the rage and shock and sorrow that are resounding together throughout the area are not exactly helpful.

But Lópa gets up, and she leaps silently aside her, and they are away after the fleeing pair.

In the starlit dark, Fëanáro's anguished osanwë is like a beacon.  She catches up before anyone else - and might've ridden him down, if Lópa had been less attentive.

He gives her a brief dismissive glance, but doesn't say anything.

"Would you like a ride to wherever you are going?" she offers, as the first thing she thinks of which might be positively received. She wants to ask questions, but this doesn't exactly seem to be the moment.

He cries, "Can a horse gallop across the Sea?"

"Not right at this moment, to my knowledge," she replies, as calmly as possible, "but we could convey you to Formenos, or to the scene of the crime?"

As long as you know the way, she doesn't add. She can probably manage Formenos, now there is starlight.

"Formenos?  Formenos is no more.  Just ruins and a corpse.  What is the use?  Better to go to Mandos -"  He laughs, hollowly.  "- But that is no use either; the dead do not speak to the living, as I know full well."

"Do you have a plan, then?" she asks, hoping she doesn't sound too presumptuous, but not wanting to let him declaim his sorrow into the night without end. "For if you do not - your family do, and would appreciate your aid in carrying it out."

"Their plan?  Yes, what is their plan?  Vain tears before the dead husks of the Trees?"

"I know not their means," she admitted, "but they had come to collect you from the Valar, to venture to Middle-Earth with all haste and fight Mel...Morgoth." She remembers just in time that he had encouraged the use of a specific name.

He looks at her for the first time.  "And you?  Are you with them - with me?"

"Yes," she says, almost impatiently, because what else is she going to say?

She considers elaborating - 'you are my king' is there in her mind, but it actually seems like an irrelevance - she's not really there because he is probably her king, she's there because his family let her join them on the road and because this is the most interesting thing that has ever happened to her.

"Good."

He nods, taking that as settled, and looks over her shoulder.  "Come over; no need to lurk in the dar-" he pauses a moment.  "- starlight."

"Father."

Nelyafinwë comes over and puts his hand on Fëanáro's shoulder.

"We did not know you were there, or we would have spoken differently."

"I did not know Morgoth would be there, or I would have done much differently."

He sighs.

Oh good, not only did she avoid entirely screwing up the negotiation, now his son is here to take over. She'd been wondering where he'd got to.

She does regard them with a little worry, however - she was fairly sure Lópa was up to the task of carrying one more, be he ever so heavy, but the two of them are both rather towering and she's not sure all three are going to be a workable prospect.

A minute (and perhaps some private osanwë) later, Fëanáro looks sharply at Lirtë. "So, what brings you here?  Are you tired of my half-brother's kingship?  Excited to go to Middle-Earth?  Or just wanting to see whether the Valar would finally do something about this darkness?"

"I was abroad during the Unlight, and your kin welcomed me on the road." She isn't certain about any of the rest, so she might as well just tell the truth.

She feels the urge to justify herself further or sound more proactive, but she finds that she wants to see if he is satisfied by her first answer.

"And that's it?  You're happy to go home to Tirion and sit in the dark waiting for the Valar?"

"Obviously not, or I would not be out here in the dark seeking to reunite you with your kin - whose plan involves nothing of the sort."

"And for yourself?  Why didn't we meet you before?"

She hesitates for a moment, trying to work out how to put this. She doesn't want to denigrate her parents to the Prince, especially because she's trying to remind him of the virtues of family loyalty...

"I was - taken up with a project of my parents' - their estate is some way outside the city..."

She realises she's said 'their estate' instead of 'our estate' and that might, in context, be quite telling.