Tears of the Angels

by: Mooselk

There are many things that the peoples of the Eldar disagreed about but everyone who had seen Nerdanel's statues claimed that they were almost alive, breathing, frozen for just a second to examine the butterfly on their fingertips, to listen to the bird song or to a joke that another statue had just made, grinning at his own wit. Nerdanel had never been one for such dreams. She carved each one of her statues out of stone and stone did not breathe. Nor did it laugh.

When it happened the first time, when the marble twins sitting together under a tree disappeared from their place and were found peering into a fountain on the other side of the garden, Nerdanel barely noticed. There were many statues of the twins in the garden. The Ambarussa loved it outside, always climbing the trees to see who could get closer to the sky. She would not place them elsewhere. It must have been a different pair of statues that now stood examining themselves in the water.

She found the door to Macalaurë's music room slightly open when she walked down the hallway on the second floor of her empty house. Frowning, she decided that she must have bumped the door knob on a previous trip and closed the door. Had she looked inside, she would have seen her second son caressing an old hand-held harp with smooth, cold fingers.

And the dance began. She wandered in the vast pavilions surrounding her house, the air prickling with the presence of many others. Sometimes, something would move in the corner of her eye, flitting past so quickly she thought she had imagined it. And always the statues would linger around her, in places they had no business being, behind trees, on the roof, leaning against the walls in the hallway by her bedroom door, looking up at her with smiles frozen on their faces, eyes screaming 'Amil, Amil!'. Cold. Stone. Completely un-alive. And yet…

She dreamed of them, of her seven little angels, of their smiles and laughter, of unruly red hair and flashing eyes beneath heavy brows. And it seemed that her dreams followed her into reality. Song disappearing the moment she stopped to listen, burning gazes freezing into cool marble as soon as she turned to look.

One morning, while making her way to the kitchen to fix herself something, Nerdanel stopped to examine a tapestry-Míriel's work, showing the light of the stars on the water in Cuivienén- hanging on the wall. She was sure she had stored this particular tapestry in the attic; it had been-it was!- Fëanáro's favourite. It took her a moment to realize that though she was not moving, the footsteps echoing around the walls had not ceased.

Her eyes stayed firmly glued to the tapestry as the air around her shifted. Nerdanel drew a shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and felt a pair of arms embrace her from behind. Without opening her eyes, she reached up with trembling hands to grasp the fingers that were twisted into her hair. At her touch, they retreated. She opened her eyes and turned around, coming face to face with a statue of her eldest. There was a smile on Maitimo's stone face and his hands were upraised as if in memory of an embrace.

Slowly and deliberately, Nerdanel blinked. When she looked again, a single, perfect marble tear glittered on a perfect marble cheek. With a sob, she flung her arms around him, scrunching her eyes shut, and felt the stone shift to embrace her.

Every morning, the table is occupied by eight figures, seven of them still as death. They shift as she eats and if she imagines the sound, her sons may as well have come back to her. Out in the garden, another seven wait for her to come and join them for a quiet walk through the wood.

They hide from visitors, placing themselves in random corners and covering their eyes. Indis asks her why all her statues weep into their hands. After thinking about it, Nerdanel replies that they do not want to look at what they can never have.

There are seven angels all around her, in her house, in her gardens, everywhere she goes they follow her, always out of sight. And while they are a poor replacement for her loud, shining sons, she does not mind the silence now and then. These are, in a way, her sons as well, these poor, weeping angels.

A/n: And then she made an army and took over the world/shot.

Thank you for reading! Drop a review, maybe?

~Mooselk