Chapter Text
For though Eru had wrought the Children of Men, and unto them had He granted the gift of mortality, whilst the Eldar were bound unto the agelessness of their kind, lo! There stood Argon the Bold, son of the stars, whose heart was as the mountains, steadfast and eternal, and Maya the Flameborn, the first of the Secondborn to grace the world of the Eldar. She, of mortal flesh and fleeting days, and whose spirit burned with a light the Elves had ne'er known.
And so it was that Maya, the Flameborn, passed from her world into Arda, eyes bathed in the first light of the distant suns of Beleriand. And heralding the rise of the Secondborn, she came as the first stirrings of dawn awoke in the hearts of Men, for their awakening had but begun, and the Eldar, ageless and wise, knew not yet of the Children of the Sun, who in spirit burned with the fierce will of those unbound by the ages of Arda. The Atani, they would later be called, whose hearts, bright and brief as the flames, would burn with a brilliance unknown to the Elves.
Thus did their fates become entwined, not by the hands of their kin, but by hearts that did defy the very design of the world. For though Argon, of the House of Fingolfin, bore the wisdom and pride of his kindred, was drawn to her fire as one is drawn to the dawn, for it spoke to him of courage untempered and of defiance to death that no Elf could know. And Maya, in turn, beheld in Argon the stillness of starlit heavens, that had never known the fading of day, a strength born of eternity and untouched by the fleeting shadows that defined her own kind.
—The Silmarillion, Of the Children of the Sun and the Twilight of the Eldar
As chronicled by Pengolodh, the Loremaster of Gondolin