50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

Prompt: Meat (Original Character)

Trigger warnings for almost cannibalism? 

Summary: D’râk’târî they call her; the Queen of Wolves.

D’râk’târî they call her; the Queen of Wolves.

They call her the wife of a fallen star; they call her the concubine of the one who would have been as Sauron was had Mairon not gained favour with Melkor first. She has nothing to say, it is not something she can deny. Her husband had been Varda’s up until Melkor seduced him with promises of freedom.

Cannibal they call her and in time they will call her the Grandmother of Werewolves. She has never known the taste of Quendi flesh. They are correct when they speak of the werewolves though.

To correct her detractors: she is the devourer of Maiar flesh, she finds it to be the meat that satisfies her the most. Her first meal was her husband though his spirit had long departed. In the early days when donning raiment, the Maiar discarded their bodies easily as clothing; trying to figure out what suited them best. But the discarded raiment of a Maia still held power and this she discovered to her doom, lost in the wilds of Cuiviénen with the winter coming in sharply and no food to sustain her.

At rest she still dreamt of the golden creature, its inherent glow marring the deep, dark forests that knew no light.

She dreamt of the taste of its flesh. Cuiviénen was going slowly barren and it had been the first meat she had devoured in months. She had fallen upon it, unafraid of any rot and the inherent sickness that lay in eating such flesh.

The creature must have only died minutes earlier though, for the flesh was still clean and sweet; the blood still flowing warm down her chin.

She ate and ate for days and days, caught in a horrible madness that would not leave her. It gripped her in mental shackles until she had reduced the carcass down to what would not be eaten, no matter how hard she tried to stomach it. Then in the darkness she had changed, her limbs twisting and bones breaking. Her skin had split away from her body, leaving her bloody and raw, before sewing itself back to her in a new configuration.

She had roamed the ever-night like that for years in a horrified and confused daze. Then as she wandered wearily, many years later when Cuiviénen was heaving its very last death throws, the light of a camp-fire drew her back, a creature not unlike a wolf but different.

Wolves had neither opposable, dexterous claw, nor her long shaggy coat, and certainly no wolf before her had ever looked at the world with such desperate eyes.

In the light of the fire she met her husband for the first time. His eyes were thoughtful as he surveyed the one who had partaken in the flesh he had once worn.

Silmalyon was the closest she could translate his name from its terrible Valarin.

He was good to her.

She loved him dearly.

They call her Maia; they call her monster though from an Eldar mother and father she came, kicking and screaming into the world.

As for whether she is a monster; she considers that a matter of opinion personally.

Chapter End Notes

This actually spawned into a 5000 word long fic exploring her background, her family and her interractions with those of her family in the first age. But then I realised it had diverged from the prompt and so I snipped this out. The longer version I'll complete one day hopefully.