#for the purposes of this prompt i went with the arien-melkor relationship in the published silm;

[hirazuki]

Mairon and Arien + 30 👉👈

…as comfort | Mairon & Arien

•────────────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅────────────────────•

He holds her face firmly between his palms -- the skin she has hidden herself away in is darker, a perfect contrast to his pallor, yet runs just as hot as his own -- and presses a rough kiss to her eyes, even as she pushes at him, attempting to tear away from his grasp.

"Stay away! Did you not hear me?" Arien cries, voice crackling like the flames when they lick at wood. "I will only burn you, too!"

"How absurd," Mairon says -- not relinquishing his grip on her -- in a manner he means to be comforting.

Most, he knows, do not understand it as such.

She is not most, however -- she never has been; his sister-spirit, his twin ember, the only other one like him left in this place -- and so he has never needed to cut off the surrounding air to temper his aura lest it be too caustic, to tuck away his edges until he is easy and palatable and unsharp. Not with her; never with her.

And he is determined that she treat with him in kind.

And so he pulls her back into his arms and keeps her there, a spark flashing wild and bright, and drops his face into the soft halo of curls that crowns her head.

"I am also made of fire."

The reminder is all it takes for her to break, and she sweeps over him like ashfall or a blaze of light, wrapping herself around him and clinging to his front, leaving him to piece together the details of what happened from the roaring fragments that flare across his mind and the strain of sobs, twisting and snapping, beneath his chin.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ☽༓☾. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Later, when limbs are tangled and words have fled and she has spent herself with grief, tears falling hot and gold until she gives into slumber, he kisses them again -- gently, this time, so as not to rouse her.

The room is dark, now, the light from the hearth and the lamps having burned low in response to her quietude.

His face, as he pulls away to study hers, is darker.

She is wasted on them, who fear her; who would seek to contain her, to control her, to dampen her fire to fit neatly within their limited notions until she is nothing more than a pretty lantern, politely lighting the paved streets of their cities.

Mairon despises waste.

He lifts a finger and softly traces her brow-bone to her cheek-line and all the way down to her lips, where his attention hovers, for a moment, before he leans in to rest his forehead against hers.

There is one, he thinks, and the very thought splits him like the fiercest bolt, leaving him cloven in half and bleeding Song, for it is something that will never be. One under whose command she would flourish.

He would let her run like wildfire in dry fields, clothe herself in the molten heat under the mountains and dance with all abandon on flaming feet upon the unmelting ice; scorch the entire sky, if she so wished. Mairon knows, because he has seen it for himself: he has visited the great forges beneath the earth and the sharp mountainsides that tumble into the pines and the grinding ice with its vast dark fogs, shrieking in its song; and he has left his heart there.

She would never agree, and he knows this as well; it is the reason he has not spoken to her of the wonders he has seen in the wilderness of the far north, new and marvelous and terrible, no matter how he burns to share it with her.

No; Arien will remain here, eclipsed by treelight, safely contained in her fana like candle-flame kept tame behind panes of glass.

And he will leave, one day. Soon.

Until then, he will stay quiet -- for her sake, more than his; close as they are, ignorance will, doubtless, be difficult enough to affirm for the last spirit of their kind remaining unallied with Melkor. He will let her find rest in her unknowing and take joy in what precious little time she is unaware is trickling out, and he will hold her, close and tight and often -- for Mairon does not plan to take anything with him when he goes, save the blinding memory of her brightness and her sweet, stinging scent and the weight of her, cradled in his arms.

These, he will carry with him across the water, to warm himself by in the coming days, in times of uncertainty, in the cold places of the world, when all other fires may prove to die out.