Title: Sound and Color
Author: Sargent Snarky
Rating: G, I suppose
Genre: General
Summary: "The irony was not lost on him… Here he was, an elf born into the blessed land of Light, and he couldn't see it." A 'what if' story about Maglor.
A/N: I would argue that this isn't really AU, since Tolkien never explicitly stated the elves weren't ever born blind and since he never explicitly stated that Maglor could see. –wink- All right, so this is an AU to an extent, only insomuch as Maglor's blindness affects the normal goings on and him.
This will probably stay a one-shot, but I might add other vignettes or drabbles later. Who knows – it's all up to the plot bunnies, you see. : )
Please do read it and then let me know what you think!
The Story:
The irony was not lost on him. Or perhaps it wasn't irony so much as simply a bitter joke. Maybe not even that. Whatever it was, Kanafinwë didn't miss the strange twisted humor in his situation.
Here he was, an elf born into the blessed land of Light, and he couldn't see it. He could feel it, and he could sense it, or at least its warmth, but he sure as Mandos couldn't see it. Couldn't see anything. Hadn't ever seen anything, truth be told.
He wasn't sure if that made him angry or sad. Wasn't sure if it even made him feel anything at all. Anything except the cruel jest, that is.
How was he to know if sight was all it was cracked up to be? He'd never seen anything and only had everyone else's word to go on. But that was enough, and he desperately wished he could see, wished he knew what color was as well as he knew what notes were, wished he could detect shadows and different shades the way he could detect subtle variations of rhythm and timbre. But if wishes were horses, then he'd have more ponies than he knew what to do with.
So instead, he sang. Because with singing, and with the moving of his calloused fingers across well-worn and familiar strings, he felt he could perhaps give himself a sort of sight, an image of things others told him. This wasn't so, as he had nothing to base his images off of – not even color – but he had a wide imagination, and he could pretend.
He could pretend that red was what he associated it with – heat and fire and his mother's hair and his older brother's and his youngest two brothers', with the slightly rough, wavy texture that he could feel was different from his own smooth, straight hair, which he was told was black, black, black, like his father's.
Black was another color Kanafinwë could pretend. Black was Night, they told him, but he didn't know what Night was. Night was where there wasn't any light by stars. But he didn't know what light or stars were. So he pretended. Black was cold, like it was when there wasn't any light from the Trees – which were warm to the touch and soothing. Black was smooth like his hair. And like father's hair.
Other simple colors he knew likewise. Blue was the wetness of water. Blue was salty. Green was the odd rough but not rough feeling of leaves and grass. Green was the smell of life. Brown was the feel of dirt, of the mud his siblings so often tracked through the house, as they ran outside, then in. And brown was the rough of an oak's bark.
And yes, colors confused him, too, for though he could imagine them, he didn't actually know them, so when his father told him that emeralds – smooth, crystalline emeralds – were green, it didn't make sense. Sapphires were blue, but they weren't damp. They felt like emeralds, too. Rubies and their being red were the same. And yet… perhaps there was something red about rubies, though they were neither warm nor slightly rough and wavy. Perhaps there was something that felt blue about the Sapphires without the wetness, and perhaps there was something green about emeralds, though they had none of the scent of grass and growing things
When he talked about feeling and smelling colors, most of his siblings looked at him strangely and laughed, telling him that colors weren't thinks of touch or scent, but Nelyafinwë seemed to understand and didn't laugh, but smiled (the smile was palpable) and asked about how colors felt and smelled. Indeed, Nelya very much encouraged Kana in his composition of song and poetry – things for which he had an uncanny talent.
While he may've been deprived of sight and so have been unable to take part in a great many of the crafts in which his people delighted, he had been blessed with a keen ear for notes and melody, pitch and meter. Tunes of beauty came to him as naturally as breathing, and as for the words, he listened to the tales and descriptions from those around him and thus formed his own versions of the tales to sing. Unlike most, his songs were less about the seen, however, than about the felt – emotional and physical. But of course, this was unsurprising, for he had no experience with the world as it was seen. Still, it lent a surprising poignancy to the best of his songs.
And thus did he earn his title of "The Mighty Singer," though his brothers would have good-naturedly argued that it simply meant that he could sing loudly – too loudly.
End
Again, please let me know what you think of this idea! Thanks.
Love, Snarky