#and elu has to get lúthien to bed

[ladysternchen]

Posting this again as a link rather than the entire fic here on Tumblr, I think that might be easier to read. (Plus I edited the typos and spellos out. Those that I could gind at least)

[ladysternchen]

Fairy Lights

The woods are silent. It is as if the snow has spread a blanket over the forest beyond the tent’s walls. It is dark and as bitterly cold within the tent as it is outside it, yet mercifully dry, and Melian is well protected under furs and blankets anyway. Also, she has recently come to realise, there is nothing like a nursing baby to keep one warm. 

Lúthien still drinks with passion, though not as hungrily as she has done before. The rhythmic sound of her swallowing and her snuffling is very soothing, and Melian finds sleep harder and harder to resist, and she is on the point of nodded off as Elu enters their makeshift tent. She smiles at her husband, and he answers her smile, kneeling down by the bed and reaching for her hand.

“Is she asleep?”

Melian manages to suppress a snort, but with difficulty. Elu laughs. Lúthien has never been one for peacefully going to sleep when tired.

“Then, dearest lady, may I ask you to come outside with me? I want to show you something.”

A tiny part of Melian wants to deny his request, warm and comfortable as she has made herself while feeding Lúthien, but she gets out of bed in the end anyway, and pulls her clothes back on over her linen underdress. Elu meanwhile tucks Lúthien in a blanket.

“No need to dress her now. I’ll keep her under my mantle.”

Melian’s heart swells at the sight of Lúthien safely in her father’s arms, looking brightly out from under his cloak. Soon now, she will not be content with being carried. When the snow melts, Melian knows, Lúthien will walk and dance without their helping hands.

They step outside. All is white, clouds shrouding the stars, and still there is a haze of tiny ice-crystals in the freezing air. And then, as by a silent command, lights flare within the snow, shimmering in many colours, within the trees, along the paths made by their people on the ground, and amongst bushes, where they are illuminated by hidden hands. 

Melian gasps, her breath taken by the beauty of it all. Now there is laughter and singing again within their camp, and she knows that she is not the only one who rejoices in the sudden eruption of colours all around them. Lúthien is making little squeaky noises of mirth, and stretches out her hands towards the lights. Elu complies, walking over to the closest one, and Melian realises that these are lanterns made of ice, ice that has been coloured. Likely, she muses, with her dye. She finds that she could not care less.

“Oh, they’re so, so beautiful.”

She knows not where the tears come from that sting her eyes now, why coloured lights should make her so emotional.

“Is that your doing?” She sniffs, leaning against her husband.

“Partly, yes. We made lanterns out of the ice of the lake as well, bacon Cuiviénen, and I longed to do that again. I got scolded, of course, by our dear sister-in-law, for having the dye wasted on those lamps, but what am I king for, if I cannot do something at times that serves no other purpose than make my people happy. And above all, make my Queen happy.”

“It does. It looks like Lórien, or like Lórien would look in the snow. There were colourful lights there, too.”

The realisation just how much she misses Aman and being among her own kin hits her only as she says it.

“That I know.” Elu answers simply, but to her, he says so much more. 

He knows, he alone knows, because he alone of their people has seen those lights with his own eyes. He knows her heart, knows her pain, shares her longing. And yet for him, she would abandon Lórien all over again, and then again, and again, and she senses that he feels the same even as he stands beside her, their child still on his arm.

The snow crunches a softly under her feet as steps even closer to Elu, and kisses him tenderly, and he answers the kiss with enough enthusiasm to make the trees erupt in giggles. It matters not. Only when Lúthien starts to wriggle, likely because she does not approve of being squeezed between them, they break apart. 

“Only I like this better even than Lórien.” she whispers, her breath taken away by the beauty of the moment, and their shared kiss. Elu is no less breathless.

“How so?”

He knows the answer, for even if no smile graces his lips, she can still feel his mirth, can feel his spirit laughing. And she laughs, too, taking his hand and pulling him further down the path, dancing amidst the glittering colours.

“Because it’s home.”