Cradle of Stars by Dawn Felagund, Elleth

Hungry

The room that had belonged to the Noldorin scribe employed to report on Olwë's court was not hard to find. She'd—I almost smiled when I found a lone formal gown left in the closet—taken her books and left her ledgers behind. I almost smiled again at how Noldorin was the assumption that one's books were included in the order to "travel light," but the realization that the documentation of the history of the Teleri wasn't important enough to take quickly sobered me again.

There was a lantern on the desk with a Fëanorian lamp inside. The lantern had a sliding door that controlled the amount of light released into the room but also star-shaped cutouts along the top that, when opened, threw an array of stars across the ceiling. Winding a small crank caused them to circle slowly as they did in the sky. It was a child's lantern; I'd had one for Findekáno in the timid years of his early youth, when he'd refused to sleep without it if the drapes were shut. In typical Noldorin fashion, the constellations were precisely rendered, pivoting with Telumendil at their center. Findekáno's had been as well.

I found bedclothes in the chest at the foot of the bed and quickly assembled them upon the feather mattress; she'd taken all of her nightdresses, so I stripped to my underclothes and slid into the bed. I stared at the stars slowly careening across the ceiling. My mind ached with all there was yet to do, but the bed was soft—if narrow—and it did not take long for me to sleep.

I dreamed of Eärwen. I dreamed of her as she'd been when I'd come here in my youth, only she stole the Seahawk with me and not Eallindalë, and she was standing at its prow holding a line that ran to the sail. The wind pressed her dress against her body and whipped through her unbraided hair, yet unshorn by grief. I could see the impression of her collarbones, her nipples, the dimple of her navel. The fabric was as thin as water. The boat rocked us in a rhythm like lovemaking.

I awoke pressing my hips into the mattress, hungry in a way that had nothing to do with the meal I'd missed.