Years of Wonder
Year 1379-1387 of the Trees | Year 13214-13294 in the Years of the Sun
In the early years of their children's lives, the city of Eärondë felt as if it had entered a kind of golden dream. The light of the Trees still flowed freely across the lands, but in this city—cradled between sea and mountain, between the stone craft of the Noldor and the sea-song of the Falmari—it felt gentler. There was no shadow on the horizon, no whisper of doom, only the soft rhythms of life: the ring of the forge, the rustle of sails, the laughter of children running barefoot through gardens glazed with starlight.
Alcaron and Nimloth had vowed to raise their children without the pressure of thrones or bloodlines. And so, in those first decades, Elenwëa and Almirion were not prince and princess, but simply children—free to wander, to wonder, to shape their own spirits.
From the moment she could walk, Elenwëa gravitated toward silence. Not out of shyness, but reverence. She would sit beside the rippling pools where silver lilies bloomed under moonlight and whisper to the birds that came to drink. Her voice was like wind over harp strings, and animals responded to her as if they understood.
Nimloth nurtured her daughter's gentle ways, teaching her the sea-songs of the Falmari—melodies that once rose with the tides of Alqualondë. Elenwëa would hum them beneath the boughs of the garden trees, adding her own verses in Quenya.
She had a fascination with names—of stars, of rivers, of forgotten flowers. Her favorite game was asking what everything meant. Not just its word, but its story. "Why is the Silver Tree called Telperion?" she once asked. "Who first named it, and what did they feel when they saw it?"
Elenwëa's days passed in quiet joy, her fingers brushing petals, her mind chasing the shape of thought like wind follows the tide. She reminded Nimloth of starlight on still water—deep, calm, and unknowable.
Almirion, in contrast, was a flame wrapped in flesh.
From his earliest years, he was drawn to motion—running along the marble corridors, clambering up the roots of the white-limbed trees, and always reaching for light and warmth. Fire captivated him. The forges of Eärondë, where metals were shaped with both craft and song, became his second home.
He would sit in Alcaron's lap at the anvil, eyes wide with wonder as golden flame curled around the molten heart of a blade. When he was old enough to hold a hammer, Alcaron guided his hand—gently, with patience, allowing his son to feel the rhythm of metal and music, of shaping something not with brute force, but with listening.
"Fire listens," Alcaron told him once. "It hears your fear. It hears your pride. Speak to it with purpose, and it will answer."
Almirion was bold but not reckless. There was a thoughtful curiosity to him—he would ask how tools worked, not to dismantle them, but to understand. He began carving wooden birds and ships, building small lanterns with rune-scribed bases that flickered with steady, living light.
When he ran, he did not run alone. He was fiercely protective of Elenwëa—though she hardly needed guarding. Still, whenever she wandered too close to the cliff paths or sat too long in a tree's high branches, Almirion was there, frowning like a young guardian.
Though so different in temperament, the twins were deeply entwined. Elenwëa tempered Almirion's wildness with a glance; Almirion roused Elenwëa from her stillness with a laugh. They could speak without words—twinborn, bound not just by blood but by something older, more sacred.
At night, Nimloth would find them curled together beneath the stars, their heads touching as they whispered of dreams and visions. They began inventing stories together, songs that echoed both fire and sea. Once, they composed a lullaby in two parts—one soft and lilting, the other bright and pulsing—and sang it to a dolphin that had wandered too far inland. It left with a flip of its tail, and Elenwëa swore it smiled.
As their children grew, so too did Alcaron's quiet obsession. Not with power or rule, but with runic lore—not merely the writing of letters, but the deep, ancient glyphs that echoed in his dreams like distant voices from before the shaping of the world.
Each night, after his children slept, he withdrew into his chamber of stone and song—a place few entered. There, the walls were inked with symbols not taught in any academy. Some came to him in dreams, others from the teachings of the Valar and some from stones that remembered music from the time of the Two Lamps.
The runes shimmered in gold, silver, and lapis. Some sang softly when he passed. Others pulsed in time with the rhythms of his breath. They were not static things—each rune was alive, shifting with meaning as he came to understand it.
He began carving wards around the nursery and later the children's chambers, binding them with peace and protection. One such rune was woven with threads of both water and flame—his children's essences, entwined. He spoke to the Valar in dream—especially Aulë, who once guided his hands. But it was Oromë and Nienna, too, who sent symbols wrapped in emotion and echo. It was not simply knowledge he sought, but resonance—a way to protect without conquest, to understand without claiming.
He never stopped being a father. He still rose early to take his children sailing, or to walk the stone gardens where the sea-flowers bloomed. But there was always a part of him listening, watching the edge of sleep where runes drifted like stars.
And so, the first decade's passed—not in haste, but in harmony. The city thrived, not from great deeds or wars, but from the growth of two children beneath the light of the Trees. One, a breath of stars; the other, a flame that warmed all around it.
The decades flowed gently in Eärondë, like moonlight on the sea—unhurried, silver-bright, and touched with the rhythms of deep time. While the city grew in grace and song, and Alcaron continued his secretive work with the ancient runes of the Eldar and the Valar, the outside world had not forgotten him or the children born under a double-lighted sky.
And so, one by one, the kin of Alcaron came to visit—not just to witness the quiet marvels of Eärondë, but to meet the children whose names had begun to ripple like small waves through the halls of Tirion.
Fëanor arrived as he always did: like a storm trailing sunlight. His presence sparked awe in the smiths of Eärondë, who knew his legend as the brightest flame of their people. With him came his seven sons—each different as facets of a blade, each bearing the intensity of their father in varying degrees.
Elenwëa greeted them shyly at first, her sea-colored eyes wide as she observed the cousins who were, by comparison, in age closer to her parents then to her—tall and brilliant and filled with tales of battles fought in training rings and creations forged in secret.
But it was Maglor, with his quiet eyes and lingering melancholy, who sat down beside her beneath the garden arbor. He carried with him an old harp, the strings worn and shining.
"This harp once sang to the Trees," he said. "Would you like to hear it?"
Elenwëa nodded, rapt. As his fingers danced across the strings, she began to hum with him—slowly at first, then weaving her own melody into the spaces between his chords. She did not know the words, but the sea gave her rhythm, and memory gave her tone. Maglor paused in wonder.
"You hear things others don't," he told her. "Sing with me again."
They spent hours there, the music of the Trees blending with the lull of the waves. From that day, Maglor began teaching her the older songs—ballads not sung in court, but in solitude beneath the stars.
Almirion, meanwhile, was thunderstruck by Curufin and Celegorm—bold, brash, and gleaming in finely wrought armor. Curufin showed him the mechanisms of a locking dagger, the kind that snapped open with a whisper. Celegorm taught him the calls of beasts and how to track a bird in flight.
But Alcaron watched with quiet concern.
One evening, as the forge fires dimmed, he brought Almirion aside. "Your uncles are mighty," he said. "Their crafts are admirable, their spirits sharp. But fire must know its bounds, else it burns the wrong hands."
He turned Almirion gently toward Maedhros, who stood apart, silent but steady.
"He knows both fire and protection," Alcaron said. "Watch how he listens for his family before he speaks."
And Almirion did. He learned from Maedhros how to temper steel—not just in heat, but with time. How to think before leaping. It stayed with him more than any shining blade.
Fëanor, ever passionate, took Alcaron aside after dinner one night.
"Your son will change the world," he said. "He burns with purpose."
Alcaron nodded but replied softly, "Let him shape the world with care, not claim it. That is the better fire."
The arrival of Fingolfin and his sons was more subdued but deeply heartfelt. Where Fëanor's family came like a forgefire, Fingolfin brought the hush of mountains and deep lakes.
Fingon, full of laughter and mischief, found a fast friend in Almirion. Though Fingon was older by centuries, their shared love of challenge and motion bound them swiftly. One morning, they dared each other to race up the cliffs of Eärondë, slippery with salt and moss.
They climbed recklessly, shouting taunts, until both slipped and tumbled—arms flailing—into the sea below. Nimloth gasped from the balcony, but the splash was followed by howling laughter. The two boys emerged grinning, soaked and triumphant, like twin sea-wolves.
Turgon, more reserved, wandered the libraries and spires of Eärondë with Elenwëa. They studied architecture and lore, sitting for hours amidst scrolls that spoke of the old and forgotten settlements that their kin had in Cuvien. Turgon aked often why nobody had build something perfect there, — a city that could endure, untouched by shadow, without the need to flee to Valinor, for that is what he thought of his grandfather's journey. Elenwëa smiled and said, "A city must also breathe, that wasn't possible there."
They debated softly, like wind and stone, pushing each other's thoughts to richer places.
Fingolfin, walking with Alcaron through the moonlit gardens, spoke of unity and the deep fractures in their house.
"You built something here that we could not," he said.
Alcaron, ever gentle, only replied, "Perhaps it was not built by one hand alone."
Finarfin's visit came later, like a whispered breeze on a summer evening. He arrived with no trumpets, bringing gifts from Aman and a scroll of ancient songs for Nimloth.
He spent time not in halls of gold, but with the children in the shade of the pearl trees. He taught Elenwëa the lament of Telperion—a song that sounded like dew. She wept the first time she heard it. Finarfin kissed her brow and said, "Not all tears are sorrow."
With Almirion, he spoke not of war, but of beauty in utility. He showed him how to forge hinges that never rusted, blades that harvested grain without dulling. He encouraged the boy's inventiveness but urged peace in its purpose.
To Alcaron, his second oldest brother, he said only this: "You were always quiet. Now I see why. You were listening to things the rest of us did not hear."
And though the cousins were, by Elenwëa and Almirion's measure, ancient—nearly all over a hundred years of the trees older or more—there was a bond that formed. Not as siblings, not even equals, but as kin. The older cousins saw in the twins not just innocence, but possibility. Something unshaped and therefore still hopeful.
Alcaron and Nimloth watched this quietly, side by side on the palace balcony as their children laughed in the courtyards with their cousins.
"We were not close to our kin like this," Nimloth whispered. "Not truly."
"No," Alcaron replied. "Perhaps we had too much pride, or distance. But the children… they carry none of that."
He looked down at Almirion forging a toy shield for Fingon, and Elenwëa singing beside Maglor and Turgon under the trees.
"They are bridges," he said. "Not banners."
And so the years passed—not without shadows, but filled with bonds that shimmered like silver thread between sea and stone, between flame and wind, between kin once sundered, now gently mended.