Title: Silver Lining
Fandom: Silmarillion
Challenge: Silver Lining
Rating: G
Length: 200
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zhie, Morgynleri & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Summary: Silver linings, literal and metaphorical, a double drabble


A glance said the cloak was lined in cloth-of-silver. At a closer look the supple, shining stuff was not silver (fabulous as that would be) but Dwarf-woven cloth-of-mithril. It was the color of moonlight, without hint or stain of tarnish, though she knew the ensemble to be several Ages old. Fingolfin had been persuaded to take up the High Kingship not long after he returned from Mandos, and this was what he had worn for the ceremony. Chatoyant gems glimmered along seams and edges, sprays and swirls on the night-blue velvet, moonstones and quartz, opals and kyanite and iridescent feldspar, cut in light-filled domes, profligate and amazing. That was Aman for you, she thought, astonished again at how different Aman was from what Middle Earth had become. Beauty mattered more than cost, generosity, skill and effort both. This cloak was of a piece with the gems scattered on the leagues of seashore, sparkling jewelry for the beaches, with the public gardens that were the work of uncounted years of gardeners caring for the plants, persuading them to grow just so. Unconstrained by time, no imposed shortages, no arbitrary rules. And no concept of obsolescence. Old and new in dialogue, coexisting.