Stone to Pity
The Valar were of stone, or so Nerdanel said - or, worse than stone, when she lay sleepless and weeping in her father’s garden with their statues immovable around her, in coloured rock and paint and eyes of glass that seemed to be watching her. Not even Nienna, wrought in dark grey shot with gold veins like tears over her face (for Nerdanel had once found it fitting, abstract, when her life had been all bliss that she now barely recalled - as though she’d lost the word in the darkness) moved to take pity on her when even stone had yielded under her sculptress hands.
“Child, I know that he is gone. It will be long ere his fire dims enough for him to heal, but that does not mean that he is forever lost.”
“I no longer care!” She did not pause to consider whence the voice came, or the tears dripping onto her face. Her own eyes were dry, and she rose as though compelled to the touch of a hand not her own - dark, warm stone, gold in her fingertips also.
“I do not believe you,” murmured the voice. A weight of warm stone came to rest against her shoulder, and wet patches grew in the fabric, cool and soothing and a counterpoint of the fire that she still felt consuming her, out of that awful dream of a height across the sea. “But I do not mind. I am Weeping, I can weep for one more lie in the world.”
“I am sick of weeping!”
“Then hearken to me, Child.” Hands on her hip pulled Nerdanel into an embrace, and where there should be stone, she found living flesh, wet with tears under her hands, with no raiment to cover her. It was said that Nienna had been the first to descend into Arda and that from her, not Ulmo, had sprung the salt water that had housed the first life on Arda, and Nerdanel felt her mind reeling and unable to hold on to any straight, stable thought that someone so ancient and holy should be with her.
Her lips opened to the taste of salt all the same, and when Nienna laid her down and rained tears upon her as her tongue worked relentlessly on Nerdanel’s body, the ache of fire slowly faded, shifted, and drowned.