FlameAndSong

In the hush between death and memory, Míriel sits at her loom in Mandos, the weft a shimmer of stars, the warp a trembling of long-forgotten names. Silver threads glisten like tears never shed, and her shuttle hums with the sorrow of ages, each motion a hymn to what was lost— a mother's fingers unmaking fate to reweave it. A fire begins somewhere far beyond the walls, a blaze with no fuel but wrath and brilliance. She feels it— the burning scream of Fëanor, her son, as Gothmog strikes and the flame devours. Ash spills into her tapestry unbidden. Smoke coils like serpents through her loom. She closes her eyes and tastes the cinders on her tongue. Then light again, sudden and terrible— a phoenix in the shape of her child, his wings forged of language never spoken aloud, his feathers caked in soot and memory. He does not bow, but hovers above the tapestry she’s still weaving. “I will not return,” he says, “Not till the Dagor Dagorath shakes the bones of the world.” She does not cry—she