Bouquet, for Femslash Bingo 2016 by Urloth

22nd July – N21 Thistle: Nobility. Varda/Nienna.

There is a crown of fire about the head of Míriel’s fëa, it is sharp and painful to approach, lashing out with sharp spikes of heat whenever anyone draws too close to her. It can not be extinguished. Whatever broke her fëa the first time and was deemed unfixable, has created this vicious royal statement and even Namo finds it burns him to approach.

Like a thistle, the former Queen surrounds herself with sharpness that no one dares approach, not just the radiant crown of fire that is never extinguished but never chars her work, but the lilac cloth of her dress, sewn with embroidery that appeals to the eyes but cuts the hands to touch.

“Does it suit?” unlike the fire, the Þerindë’s voice is chilled till it emerges as frost on the balmy air. Varda runs her hands over the tapestry that she commissioned from Nienna’s halls.

Nienna sighs sadly behind her and holds her as revulsion ripples through Varda’s form.

Varda wished a tapestry to celebrate the final defeat of Melkor and his reimprisonment.

Míriel has done so but there is no missing the destroyed land this scene is set in, or the thousands of elven bodies not just beneath Melkor’s feet but also the feet of Eonwë and Arafinwë as they hold his chains. The bloodied and ripped standard of Finwë hangs like discarded rubbish over one arm of the throne Manwë has been sat upon, and Varda herself has bloodstains on the sleeves of her garment. The rest of her cohort have received the same noble depiction with unsubtle commentary laced around them that switches the narrative.

“You know this does not suit,” Varda murmurs, feeling the stars in the sky dim with her own dismay. At the same time Nienna reprimands Míriel for her lack of noble conduct. Nienna's voice rattles the windows and creates a iron laced wind that tugs at all their dresses.

Míriel sneers, unmoved. The fire about her head flares brighter, hotter, sharper and she flicks her hair, “I can do no better.”

She is dismissed.

As she passes an ornamental pot of geraniums, they wither and in their place springs a knotted ball of needle thorned briars. Thistles grow from the grouting of the tiling under her feet. The trees beyond the windows loose their leaves. The sky darkens with the onset of a hailstorm.

Varda sags with sadness a wretched burden to be left with when she had been filled with excitement for the morning.

“Perhaps I was too heavy handed when I told her she would have to be the one to weave but you wished for the best,” Nienna presses apologetic kisses to Varda’s mouth and takes the tapestry. It is so fearfully beautiful; so startling in its detail and colour.  “She loses more of her nobility and good spirit the longer she remains in my halls.”

“This is outright rebellion,” Varda turns her head away from the mocking treasure.

Nienna kisses away the tears that fall and ushers her away to a brighter room with no tapestry within it. They sit with sunlight falling where Laurelin would have once been reflected in the fountain’s mirrors.

“What shall I do now?” Nienna rests her head upon Varda’s shoulder, twining power around hers in an intimate caress.

“I suppose smile and thank her for her hard work,” Varda sinks into the touch, wondering if enough dignity and compassion exists when Míriel becomes, year by year, less a woman and more a knife between the ribs of Aman; more of a Power that Melkor would have happily used against them all, “she did fulfil every requirement of the brief.”