Title: A Banner Before
Fandom: The Silmarillion and other Histories of Middle Earth
Rating: T
Length: 116
Content notes: Refers to major character death, violence.
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking.
This is in some part ArrogantEmu's fault for These Gifts That You Have Given Me, but really its Tolkien's, for Celebrimbor's really horrible fate. (The details are not in the Silmarillion, but in The History of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales,"The History of Galadriel and Celeborn," p238. In black anger [Sauron] turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor's body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.) Celebrimbor's name means 'Silver hand-closed-as-to-grasp/hold' — as in using a tool.
Summary: Celebrimbor as both warning and inspiration



A banner before their hosts he was
A doom, a dread, a bitter, awful sign
To make defenders quail, lose heart, despair
A gift of cruel cause

No more in middle earth that hand outstretched
To grasp, Or focus living light in form
But though cast down, the work they wrought once was
A gift in wonder etched

Yet having been, called forth by heart and mind
No soul but grieved to see that standard there
Advance against all he would hold of worth
A gift to rend and bind

Instead that desecration did ignite
The will, that sacrifice be not in vain
That horror, terror, hatred would not win
That gift would serve the light


(So, yeah, stuck on a pole, dangling broken from it. The only silver lining (aside from the meaning of his name and calling as a master of metal-craft) is that the horror of what Sauron had done only made the people fighting under Elrond and Celeborn fight all the hards, and the Dwarves came up from behind Sauron, and tipped the balance. I'm sorry.)