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aotearoa20 · 1 year ago

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“What troubles you?”

Elwë stared at the spaces between the stars as he lay in the quiet glade. His love is a shadow, dancing around the ripples of his fëa. He could feel his discomfort running between her fingers.

“I’m so happy” he said, mouth open but without words. It was the truth and made it difficult to discern his discontentment.

“I’m so glad.”

She was tangled in the meadowsweet in his hair and singing of things unthinkable. In her voice he saw impossible themes and colours.

“I… I want to tell someone.”

He thought that he must. He was so full of wonder he though he would break.

“You just did.”

The Maia giggled and the trees about them shiver and shook golden seeds onto the ground. Elwë doesn’t think he’s ever heard so sweet a sound.

Though he still smiled, his brow began to furrow in thought. Melyanna hummed in displeasure bringing a hand into being to smooth down the lines on his face.

“No, someone - ” He grimaced as his tongue became dry and heavy in his mouth, “someone else”

He blinked and tried to sit up. The flowers in his hair and along his arms tugged idly at him but released him nonetheless. Melyanna hummed again, a question in her melody.

Yes. Someone else. That made sense. There were others out there in the world. Others, that weren’t him or his beloved. Elwë shook his head. It wasn’t not a bad thing, for there to be others. So why did it fill him with dread?

“You are upset.”

A breeze, warm enough to feel as arms draped over his shoulders, and a kiss pressed on his cheek and Elwë was lost again in the heady joy of being loved. He fell back and the flowers reached out to soften his fall.

But the thought would not leave him entirely, bubbling forth as he stooped over the stream. This was too much happiness to keep to himself, he longed to tell someone.

He though he caught sight in the water of a reflection not his own. Though silver was its hair, as his, and its eyes were blue, as his, and deep as… water, deep water. But the face was rounder and the turn of his mouth though different, no less joyful. A strange longing tugged at his heart. He leaned down, desperation like he’d never known drawing him closer.

But the vision was gone and the name on his lips turned to smoke before he could call for its return.

A cloud of nightgales dragged from the bank, singing and tugging him playful into a dance. And he tried to follow along with them, with her, as he always had but today he couldn’t concentrate. Something weighed heavy on his mind and the steps seemed far too fast. He stumbled to a halt.

“Elwë?” His lover called.

The voice tugged at the darkness of his thoughts, trying to pull him free of it but in the echo he heard another. He gasped staggering back into the trunk of a tree that bent to hold him in its embrace.

“Elwë?”

He shuddered as he caught sight of a vision. The same ner from the stream. And before him, in between them both, another with hair dark and thick. He couldn’t see the new stranger’s face but he can see the way Olwë shakes his head. The grief that coloured his features.

“No!” Elwë cried, reaching out to his friend with dark hair. Whose laugh didn’t echo with the sound of fallen leaves. Whose questions used to drive him insane and now pulled him to the brink of madness.

A bough bent over. It’s knots were twisted into something resembling a face. His eyes flicked to it unbidden and the vision was gone.

“What’s wrong?”

“I lost something,” he whispered, “I must find him”

“What have you lost my love?”

Elwë feels tears prick in his eyes. The rough bark that holds him doesn’t seem so safe anymore. But his fear seems only to make the branches wrap around him all the tighter

“I have eyes all across this forest, my light,” And for a split second he saw them. Silver eyes cracking open across root and leaf. Upon the wings of the nightingales still singing above him and upon his own being arms and face and his eyes themselves. He choked on a gasp but his lover continued in earnest, “What is it? If it is here I would find it for you.”

He pushed the crawling branches desperate to get away. They part easily under his hands but then grass begins to curl around his feet. He glances around wildly but the river only ever sang Her songs and the stone would grow warm under his touch at Her command.

He runs.

Where? Where can he go. It’s been so long. How long? He can’t remember the way out. The forest reached for him. Roots curled up to trip him. He dodged them deftly it but it slows him down and he’s already so late. Too late. Oh Stars, how long has he been here!?

He is caught under the willow tree.

Too slow. The thin branches entwined themselves and wrapped around his arms. He shouted as he is wrenched for the ground, struggling in the air long after he knew it was hopeless.

“No,” he shouted, “No, let me go! He is gone… Finw��, where is he… I came looking for him… Where… how long have I been here?”

The last words came out in a horrible sob. A hand reached up, and of, the ground to wipe away his tears and smear dirty tracks of earth over his face. It just made him weep all the more.

A low whine trembled all around him. It breaks the heart of all the birds and beasts that hear it. Then it breaks his own without his leave.

“What have you done to me?”

“Nothing…” Her voice was distraught, “I… I don’t understand. Why are you crying?”

“I have to go!”

“No!”

“You are hurting me,” he grimaced as the branches around his wrist tighten and she gasped

“No no no,” she murmured and he is released immediately, earthen arms coming up to soothe the angry red marks. They are healed even as he rubbed of the mud.

“You are so fragile,” the leaves whispered.

He didn’t answer, The willow branches are draped around, anchored in the ground around him like a cage. He couldn’t run, so he just remained kneeling as he was. Quivering in unison with the leaves.

“I love you,” The ground is damp. She sounded so sad, “Why are you running from me? Why are you afraid?”

How he wished he could see her face. If he could perhaps he could know if she was genuine. But the last time he did he could not look away until his eyes burnt like glass. She had hidden such thoughts, for they hurt him. She had not shown herself since they were released. Now he could not say for sure he knew what she looked like at all.

“You know me,” she insisted, “I love you!”

And the words echoed around his head until he’s dizzy. I love you. I love you. I love you. He could drown in that love and a part of him wants to. But he can’t.

“Why? I know you love me also. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen your fëa. Why do you want to leave me?”

“I love you.” he whispers the words, as they become truth in the air between them. “But it’s not in my nature to love only one thing. I have brothers whom I love, they were given to me I need them. And people also who followed me. I abandoned them, how could I do that?”

“You are beautiful.”

He looks up sharply at the silver eyes in the willow bark.

“I can’t give you what you want,” he said

“You do not know what I want.”

He pressed his lips together. He speaks as she does. As she had taught him, with feelings and visions he shows her a creature with his face. Lying in bed of poppy and meadowsweet. So full of someone else’s affection with he was barely a person anymore.

The ground rumbled beneath him in irritation but he wasn’t afraid. When she speaks she does so with words. The words of his own people, he’d long forgotten to use. The sound clunky in his ears but he listens.

“You came to me and loved me. I only ever took what you gave me and you gave me everything. I thought that was how your people loved so I did the same.”

“It isn’t.” He replied, he tries to cast his mind back to that day. Melyanna gave him back what he asks for even though the memory makes him flinch, “You… you are not of my people, you deserved more, I tried to give you more but…” he hung his head with a shame she could not fathom, “it is too much. I can’t give you all the love you deserve, I can’t give you everything. Love already I have given to others and that I abandoned them does me shame.”

“Don’t be angry”

“I am not angry at you.”

“There’s no one else here,” she said with genuine confusion.

He lookec up at her, an impossible smile on his face. She is strange. So strange and why should she not be. A being of such power and wisdom and beauty. Who is he that she should try to love him.

“I can’t give you what you want,” he said again.

“You do not know what I want.”

“Then tell me, my Lady. What do you want?”

For a moment there is absolute silence.

“Whatever you are willing to give me,” she said with a certainty he couldn’t help dismissing, “Whatever is good and natural for you to give. I want nothing more. Only… only do not leave me entirely.”

“Lady…”

“You don’t believe me.”

He could not speak, not to lie to her.

She hummed once more and the branches pick up and reach for him. He closed his eyes as they brushed over, little green leave tracing ever part of him. He was not scared anymore.

There is an almighty crash. Lighting, bright enough to flash behind his eyes crackled against the willow tree, leaving the tangy scent of wood smoke.

He stumbled back from where the trunk of the tree has split in half. What he doesn’t expect is the head of a woman to peer over the splintered wood.

She is tall and stepped unsteady over the burnt branches. Her hair flowed about her head as though she was walking through water and stars are entangled in it. Her eyes were as stars also, almost to bright to look upon. Almost.

She glanced down, spinning in a slow circle. Satisfied with her work she nods and turns back to him.

“What have you done?” he asked his heart full of both terror and awe.

“I want you to be able to look at me.” Melyanna smiled, blood rushing to her face and tinting her cheeks gold. “I want you to look me in the eye before you tell me no.”

Blinking he looked her over. His lover, elven in form. He can almost recognise her and he shook his head, angry again.

“You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldnt have lessened yourself, not for anyone. Least of all me.”

“Say not lessened,” she frown and Stars have mercy, it was a delightful look upon her new face, “Say changed for I have changed for you. As you have for me”

He shook his head.

He didnt see how he had grown. He didnt notice yet the pale spiderthread marks her vines had left on his dark skin. He didnt realise how his eyes saw song the way none of his kindred ever had or ever would. How his hair shone with a light unlike the stars, a shimmering silver mantle.

But he would. When he was back among his own people. Then he would understand.

“Trust me,” she whispered ,just until then, she took a tentative step towards him.

He looks at her as if seeing her anew. And falling for her all over but it’s different this time.

“Take me with you?” she asked

And he saw the question for what it always was. A question and not an order. She would not force him to stay, she did not want to.

“Why?”

“I love you.”

And suddenly it doesn’t sound like a threat. He dares to step closer. She reaches up with fingers They sparked as they brush against the side of his cheek. He would not have been able to bear it before but now he rests against her touch.

He looks up fully into her face, leaning in ever so gently before pressing his lips onto hers. He had never done so before. And neither had she but they fit together so perfectly. Only once does he pull away

“Come home with me,” he breathed.

She smiled triumphant and leans back into his embrace.

#something I posted on ao3 a while ago #but I liked it #so putting it up here as well #my writing #elwe #elu thingol #melian #thingol and melian #early days #some of my favourite weirdos #tolkien #silmarillion

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