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Lihan Taifun
Linhröa walks -- or glides, or bounces, or dances -- along the road leading north from Valimar, the City of the Valar. She has spent a few weeks visiting a friend in the city. The friend is a Maia of Nessa, the Dancer, who helps to keep Nessa and Tulkas' home in the city. But Nessa and Tulkas seldom visit the city, preferring their estates in the wide grasslands of the Blessed Lands. When there is no great Council of Ainur -- that is, most of the time -- the house is quiet, and the staff is only too happy to entertain a Vanya Elf.
Linhröa has been preparing a new dance for the fall competition. The Vanyar take their music, and their festivals, seriously. When you have elves who have been entering the festival for thousands of years, you get very steep competition! So, when Linhröa came to a difficult problem with her choreography, she turned to students of the greatest of all dancers, the Maiar of Nessa. She feels much more confident now, her mind filled with ideas to express in movement what she had imagined in her head.
The road back to the Vanya settlement on the slopes of Mount Taniquetil does not run directly in this direction. Linhröa is taking a bit of a scenic detour, following the bank of a stream. She really is in no big hurry to get home. People might miss her if she were gone a few months later than she had expected, but they would hardly worry. After all, what could go wrong here in the Undying Lands? And it is so much easier to practice dancing alone on the road, instead of at home, where rivals might peek at her new dance.
The path bends around a hillside, following the curve of the stream. Ahead is a dark patch on the hillside. Curious, she comes closer. It is some kind of plant she has never seen before, dark of leaf and dark of flower. Some new experiment of of Lady Yavanna or Lady Vána, perhaps? She giggles at the idea that she might be one of the first to see this new creation. "New" things are rare in this ageless realm.
The fragrance of the flowers is overpowering -- or is there some dark mist brooding over the patch of plants?
Linhröa reaches out her hand toward a flower -- not to pick it, of course, just to feel it, experience it with all her senses. As her fingers brush the tips of the petals, it seems to her that the flower is likewise reaching out toward her. Dreamily, she cups her hand around the flower. Is is really black? Or no, tilting her head, it looks like a dark purple. No, a dark red. Or is that an iridescent sheen?
Without realizing it, she is now kneeling in the patch of dark growth, holding the mysterious dark blossom in both hands. How long has she been here like this? The mist -- or is it a fragrance? -- is inside her head now, blocking out any other thought.
There is a tiny whisper, perhaps from the flower, and Linhröa strains to hear the words. Very faint, but if she listens very hard, she can make out, "I could teach you ...
"I could teach you what I taught Fëanor."
What nonsense is that? Fëanor, the Noldor madman? Linhröa never met Fëanor herself. She was born in what the outside world calls the Second Age of the Sun, thousands of years after his time. But she has heard the stories, and they aren't flattering.
The voice scoffs at her shock. "A Vanya, are you? You think you are so pure, so ethereal, so removed from physical concerns."
No, Linhröa thinks to herself. Dancing is physical. Music is ... is music physical? She might have known the answer once, but it is getting hard to remember.
"Don't worry," the voice whispers. "You won't be needing that physical body any more. I need it now. And I need your spirit, too." The voice is only a fraction louder, but now full of command, "Come!"
Linhröa feels a sudden tug, and a strange tearing sensation. Looking around in startlement, she notices her body laying collapsed beside the dark flower. But if that is her body, then she ...? "Blessed Eru," she says in confusion, "am I dead?"
"Not Eru!" snarls the voice, louder now. "You are mine now!" Unwilling, Linhröa feels her spirit pulled along, into the blossom itself, which is becoming a long, dark tunnel.
The tunnel is suddenly disrupted by a great swirling wind. Linhröa is swept and battered like a leaf. Shapes flash past, but she has no power to grasp at any of them, nor even to orient herself. Everything is tumbling, swirling, rushing past.
Then the wind slows, and deposits her spirit on a paved floor, in a dimly lit stone-pillared hall.
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Linhröa has been preparing a new dance for the fall competition. The Vanyar take their music, and their festivals, seriously. When you have elves who have been entering the festival for thousands of years, you get very steep competition! So, when Linhröa came to a difficult problem with her choreography, she turned to students of the greatest of all dancers, the Maiar of Nessa. She feels much more confident now, her mind filled with ideas to express in movement what she had imagined in her head.
The road back to the Vanya settlement on the slopes of Mount Taniquetil does not run directly in this direction. Linhröa is taking a bit of a scenic detour, following the bank of a stream. She really is in no big hurry to get home. People might miss her if she were gone a few months later than she had expected, but they would hardly worry. After all, what could go wrong here in the Undying Lands? And it is so much easier to practice dancing alone on the road, instead of at home, where rivals might peek at her new dance.
The path bends around a hillside, following the curve of the stream. Ahead is a dark patch on the hillside. Curious, she comes closer. It is some kind of plant she has never seen before, dark of leaf and dark of flower. Some new experiment of of Lady Yavanna or Lady Vána, perhaps? She giggles at the idea that she might be one of the first to see this new creation. "New" things are rare in this ageless realm.
The fragrance of the flowers is overpowering -- or is there some dark mist brooding over the patch of plants?
Linhröa reaches out her hand toward a flower -- not to pick it, of course, just to feel it, experience it with all her senses. As her fingers brush the tips of the petals, it seems to her that the flower is likewise reaching out toward her. Dreamily, she cups her hand around the flower. Is is really black? Or no, tilting her head, it looks like a dark purple. No, a dark red. Or is that an iridescent sheen?
Without realizing it, she is now kneeling in the patch of dark growth, holding the mysterious dark blossom in both hands. How long has she been here like this? The mist -- or is it a fragrance? -- is inside her head now, blocking out any other thought.
There is a tiny whisper, perhaps from the flower, and Linhröa strains to hear the words. Very faint, but if she listens very hard, she can make out, "I could teach you ...
"I could teach you what I taught Fëanor."
What nonsense is that? Fëanor, the Noldor madman? Linhröa never met Fëanor herself. She was born in what the outside world calls the Second Age of the Sun, thousands of years after his time. But she has heard the stories, and they aren't flattering.
The voice scoffs at her shock. "A Vanya, are you? You think you are so pure, so ethereal, so removed from physical concerns."
No, Linhröa thinks to herself. Dancing is physical. Music is ... is music physical? She might have known the answer once, but it is getting hard to remember.
"Don't worry," the voice whispers. "You won't be needing that physical body any more. I need it now. And I need your spirit, too." The voice is only a fraction louder, but now full of command, "Come!"
Linhröa feels a sudden tug, and a strange tearing sensation. Looking around in startlement, she notices her body laying collapsed beside the dark flower. But if that is her body, then she ...? "Blessed Eru," she says in confusion, "am I dead?"
"Not Eru!" snarls the voice, louder now. "You are mine now!" Unwilling, Linhröa feels her spirit pulled along, into the blossom itself, which is becoming a long, dark tunnel.
The tunnel is suddenly disrupted by a great swirling wind. Linhröa is swept and battered like a leaf. Shapes flash past, but she has no power to grasp at any of them, nor even to orient herself. Everything is tumbling, swirling, rushing past.
Then the wind slows, and deposits her spirit on a paved floor, in a dimly lit stone-pillared hall.
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