Title: Emergence
Fandom: Silmarillion
Challenge: Currents
Other prompt: SWG Block Party image instadrabbles
Rating: G
Length: 300
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zhie, Morgynleri & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Summary: Fëanor Returns


Water tugged, insistent. Air pushed, patted at shape, defining the space he -- he? Yes, he -- made in that air, even as the water continued to tug, inside him now, coursing through the shape, the space, defining form. Where the water went, fire followed, sparks, heat, sensation: notional limbs, the idea of bones and blood, eyes and ears and flesh. And there came material pouring into the mold, new-old hröa with weight and substance, sensation and solidity. A complex, breathing whole, awaiting only him to will his fiery spirit, his tempered fëa join with flesh, to take up life again, Returned.

Back and back the seeming-small cave went, chamber after chamber, passage after low passage, each wall-opening smaller than the last, but never too small. Never quite too tight. Light diffused through the stone, first with a dim silver shine like moonlight, starlight, then the pale glow of sun through alabaster, golden, rose, ocher and oak and autumn leaves. No going back on this path, this tunnel, only through: further down (or was it up? No way to tell, now, was there? No pebble to roll, no level or plumb-weight), farther in. Going on. The stone had stars in it, quartz and gold, copper and sapphire and silver, grown like flowers in a garden wall. Like a map. A somewhere. A somewhere to go.

Now the light was the comfortable red gleam of the forge, of fire and metal and making. Now the way was shaped, with up and down, floor and ceiling. There! An end, door-posts, a doorway, carved and hinged and open. His heart sped, feet sped, hands reached, his breath came quick in unburnt, unfailing lungs, stepping through. Light, heat, sound burst upon him. Aulë and Nerdanel welcomed him back into their arms, back into life, and wept.

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