west of the moon, east of the sun

I wanna know, can you show me
I wanna know about these strangers like me
Tell me more, please show me
Something's familiar about these strangers like me
- “Strangers Like Me” - Phil Collins

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“Balrog! A balrog!” The warning echoed across the Gelion. What had been a relatively small skirmish was suddenly something much more serious, but Maedhros found himself twisting around to look for the speaker instead, unable to believe his own ears. That had sounded like—

He saw many figures moving along the eastern riverbank, helping those struggling to get across. Some were on horseback, many on foot. Everything seemed to be moving too slowly, as though time itself had slowed down, that voice still echoing through his ears. One of the horsemen, bow in hand, was just turning away to speak to someone in the river, pointing up the road toward the mountains. His silver hair was bound back out of his face in a long braid, and at a distance it was hard to see but he looked like—he almost seemed—

“Maedhros!” Maglor called out, and Maedhros tore his gaze away. 

As the clouds broke overhead the balrog reared out of the grass, igniting and raising a great mace over its head as it bellowed at them. The orcs retreated back around it, but for a few that tried to creep around to the Elves’ rear. Maedhros nearly missed one that came up behind him—a stupid mistake, borne out of distraction—but he turned to find the orc already falling, an arrow through his throat. When he looked up he saw the silver-haired figure aiming his bow again, shooting arrow after arrow into the fray—which should have been out of range at the distance they were from the western banks of the Gelion, and the archer on the eastern side. There was only one that Maedhros had known who could shoot like that, and—

The Dwarves fell back, and Maedhros shook himself and charged forward, calling out to rally them and his own cavalry. They had faced many balrogs before—they could take this one. Then he would find the silver-haired archer, discover him to be merely a keen-eyed Sinda, and feel very foolish. 

That never happened. Chaos erupted—all of Beleriand west of the Gelion broke apart and sank, and Maedhros only just made it back across the river in time, a step behind Maglor. Into the void rushed the Sea, a great flood of crashing waves and rushing winds. The air was full of salt spray, and under their feet the ground trembled and shook and shattered. There was no room to think of anything except survival for many days, as the mountains crumbled and the sea encroached even further east, opening up a new gulf to replace the old mountain pass. 

When they at last had a moment to catch their breath, Maedhros thought again of the silver-haired archer who sounded so much like his dead brother. Either he had lost his mind at last, or it was some strange trick of sound, mere coincidence. If that had really been Celegorm, he would not have remained on the sidelines. He would have been at the forefront of the charge. If that had really been Celegorm, he would not have been on the eastern banks of the river at all. But it wasn’t Celegorm—Celegorm had died in Menegroth, years ago, his bones now lost beneath stone and seawater alongside Curufin and Caranthir and Amrod and Amras, all of them taking a piece of Maedhros with them when they fell, as though his blood too soaked the stones of Menegroth and sunk into the sands of Sirion, leaving behind nothing more than an empty shell bound to life by the Oath and nothing more, doomed to drag Maglor down with him when death finally caught up.

As Maedhros and Maglor reached the new-broken shores of the new gulf as the upheaval seemed to at last subside, after finally chasing down the balrog in the woods to the south, he glanced east and caught a glimpse of silver hair glinting in the pale sunlight as a trio of figures disappeared around a pile of fallen stones. 

He turned away.