Work Text:
The first thing Pengolodh notices are the birds.
The seagulls fly past the window in a great rush, the shadows of wings falling across the manuscript they’ve been copying. They pause and look up at the bright blue sky, at the clear air of the sea, broken up with a faint grey banner of smoke. It makes Pengolodh think of lunch. They stretch their fingers and tip their head side to side. They should take a break soon, but not yet. This page is almost finished. Somewhere downstairs a door slams, and it makes little ripples in the inkpot. Pengolodh grimaces and returns to their work.
They aren’t expected to be in the archive today, no one is. This is precisely why they’d come in. Pengolodh has a mountain of copying to do and they’ll get more of it done without clerks flitting in and out of their field of vision.
Another door slams, this time shaking their whole table.
Pengolodh puts their pen down and stands. It seems darker than it had before, as if a cloud has passed in front of the sun. Then the winds shift and the smoke clears for a moment, sun shining bright and merciless on the scene beyond the window.
The Havens are burning, flames wan and pale in the sun. There is a crowd in the courtyard, writhing like a flame itself, and Pengolodh needs to go down there, right now, needs to help put out the fire. The settlement is made of wood and thatch, and the whole thing will go up if they let it. Then he sees the rider, red crest on his helm, red star on his breast, red blood on his spear. Pengolodh watches their neighbors cover their ears and fall before him and they try not to look too closely, to believe that everyone who has fallen will stand up again, any minute. If they cannot believe that, they may as well fall, as well.
They must have made a sound, because the rider looks up, his eyes burning like flames.
Pengolodh stumbles back from the window, eyes burning from the smoke, knuckles digging into their lips. They look around wildly at the shelves, the scrolls, every volume of history that had been salvaged from Gondolin and Doriath. Saved beyond all hope, and brought here and painstakingly preserved and copied, and all for what? For the privilege of being burned by those oath-cursed fiends?
They start with their current work, a translation of a Hwenti epic. Then they grab the Haladin genealogies, then a collection of plays from Gondolin. They keep going until their arms are full, until they can barely hold anything else. One more, just one more…
The room is getting hot, or perhaps it’s just their exertion. No, they blink away smoke and cough. They’ve lingered too long already. Just one more. Pengolodh grabs another volume, and then looks at it.
The Noldolantë.
They drop it. Let it burn.
Pengolodh turns toward the door, feet unsteady, near blind with smoke, and they are not alone.
He’s tall the way they all are, hair red as flames, eyes even brighter, and scarred, ancient burns running down the side of his face and up into his hairline. His lips are moving, face twisted with anger, and Pengolodh can usually understand everyone, but they are panicking and they can barely see, and they do not know this man, haven’t yet learned to accommodate for the way his scars hold the corner of his mouth too still, how his father’s accents still shape his words.
He shouts again, and Pengolodh shakes their head.
“I can’t hear you. Please – ” they babble, “please let me live, let me tell this story.”
He holds a sword in his right hand, a torch in his left, and Pengolodh sees the moment he takes in the archives, and his eyes glow with the inferno it will make. He lifts his sword and steps toward Pengolodh.
“No –”
They fall, scrolls spilling from their hands, and they hit the floor hard, bleeding all over Rumil’s treatise on Oromëan linguistics. It hurts, oh it hurts, but they lie still and pray that they aren’t making any noise while the son of Feanor stalks to the door, takes another look around and throws the torch onto the pile of scrolls that Pengolodh had been planning to shelve. They lie still as he leaves, as the light in the room changes and the heat behind them grows. They lie still until the risk of death in the fire is greater than the risk of death at the hands of the arsonist, and when they have already waited too long, they drag themself across the floor, and down the stairs, now burning around them.
They don’t know who finds them, blind with smoke and rage, but whoever it is wraps a blanket around their shoulders and pours cool water over their burns.
Pengolodh looks up as a shadow passes over: a flock of gulls flying west, swift and free.