Taking Readings I by Himring

Without Forethought She Sang

After it's all over, Indis returns to where their courtship began, on the western slope of Taniquetil.

Teens for hints of dysfunctional family relationships and reference to canonical character deaths (Finwe's implied)

She enters the garden by herself, with faltering steps, like an invalid’s after long sickness. She stands where she once stood, opens her mouth… Her voice sticks in her throat.  Less resolute than she believed, how can she sing, now?

She remembers too well how love coloured the world, once—hopeless, but complete in itself, unflawed. Now, first unexpectedly fulfilled and then shattered, it sits heavy in her bones, leaving her heart frail and empty. Dare she sing again, here where it all started?

A has-been, is she not? No longer a queen, no longer a wife, no longer a...

No, she still retains a tenuous grip on motherhood! But dare she sing again as she sang then, in her simplicity, not knowing the consequences? Now that she knows: how love breaks and law breaks, death and darkness and war. And although this garden seems untouched, high on the mountain, nothing is the same.

Time to stop singing? Here alone in the garden where it all began, all that is left to her is her voice. But is this the time to give in? She stands proud like a queen before an audience of thousands and launches again into song.

Chapter End Notes

The title is a quotation from "Morgoth's Ring", from one of the versions of the story of Finwe and Miriel. It is described there how Indis, an accomplished singer, who has secretly and hopelessly loved Finwe for a long time, sees him approaching and bursts into song. However, their marriage, being Finwe's second marriage, caused dissension and ill feeling among the Elves, which was later exploited by Melkor.
Perhaps unnecessary to say--by the title, I don't mean to imply in the least that Indis could have foreseen how things would eventually play out. But the hindsight must have been rather overwhelming to her.

B2MeM prompts covered: B2MeM 2016 Memories. B2MeM 2012 BINGO. Women of The Silmarillion: (I23) Women of Valinor;
Women of Arda: (N36) Indis; Talents and Skills: (I26) singing; Canon Couples: (B3) Finwë/Indis.

Also written for the Female Protagonist Challenge prompt Elf at Tolkien Weekly.