To Love What Is Mortal by Astris

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To Love What Is Mortal

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To live in this world:

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

~'In Blackwater Woods' by Mary Oliver

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The winter wind was cold and the air tasted of snow, clean and bright. The sound of the river was muted by the thin layer of ice that had formed over it as the sun set, tinted silver now by the crescent moon above, set amidst jewel-bright stars that seemed magnified by the thin air.

There was a darkness coming to Tol Galen, borne by the wind from the north.

Once, she had worn a winged form in truth, leathery wings and iron claws, clad in shadow and blood. That had been taken from her, and now the breeze blew her wherever she willed, and when her shadow touched the land animals fell silent and fled, and children cried out in their sleep, and grown men shivered without knowing the cause.

She had traveled far, for she was searching for something – someone.

Smoke rose from the chimney of a small house at the edge of the forest, sparks whirling up amid the light grey smoke that stained the night sky. The house was built of hewn logs and clearly fashioned by hand, but sturdy nonetheless. Her nose twitched, dusty-warm woodsmoke mingling with sharp pine sap mingling with something changed... but familiar.

(Starlight reflected in grey eyes and a brilliant invasion of streaming light and the painful-sweet smell of the starlike flowers that had sprung from dark grass so long ago to greet the new light–)

The door opened, just a crack, spilling yellow warmth across the frozen earth, and she flinched away from the light. Footsteps, then a head peering out through the doorway, shadow cutting long and stark across the bare dirt. A voice from within, querying tone clear despite the indistinct words, and the woman in the door turned her head to answer, words lost in the sudden blast of wind from the mountains. Then she was turning and venturing out, feet crackling on the frozen grass.

In the shadows, something shifted. The woman's head turned, body tensing, ready to spring into danger.

"I see you there. Come out."

The words were a command, the tone keen as steel – the same voice the one in the shadows remembered. Before she quite knew what she was doing her feet were moving, stepping out from under the eves of the forest of their own accord, whisper-soft on the carpet of pine needles. The woman's eyes widened at the sight of her, and she wondered if she would be recognized – it had been a long time.

(And how much the other had changed in that time – not visibly, of course, or at least not obviously, but the difference was there, screaming at her.)

"Thuringwethil."

A shiver of something unidentifiable shook her at the sound of that voice saying her name, and she felt a smile twist her lips, baring sharp, gleaming teeth. "Lúthien," she replied coolly, as though she had not whispered that name to herself, alone in the dark, night after night. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Are you – did you follow me here? Have you been searching for me?" Lúthien's hands were open by her side, but Thuringwethil could see the hilt of a knife at her belt, a heartbeat's movement away from being drawn. She was moving closer still, away from the house, towards Thuringwethil.

"Perhaps." But not for the reasons you might think.

"But I... was it because of what I took from you? Your bat-fell – it was lost in Angband, when Beren and I–"

She let out a hiss at the sound of that name – Lúthien's love – and she saw Lúthien draw back, startled, hand fluttering at the hilt of her knife, not quite drawing it. Once, that might have frightened her, but the woman before her now was no longer of the ancient blood, and was perhaps powerless before her.

And perhaps more powerful than you know, for all that she is caught in the doom of the second-born.

"Nay," she laughed, pushing the unexpected onrush of feeling aside. "I care not for my wings – the wind can bear me on its back, and I no longer need to play courier for Morgoth now." She had not, in fact, ventured back to Angband since Lúthien had visited her, trusting in the ineptitude of Morgoth's spies to conceal the fact that she had not perished in giving up her winged form.

(And perhaps part of her feared what would happen if it was discovered she had been willing to aid Lúthien, had allowed her to strip her of her wings, hoping for something beyond what she had always known. There was shame, for wishing that, but shame mingled with desire – for the light, and for Lúthien.)

There was a flash of something, not fear, not quite, only... distrust, perhaps, in Lúthien's eyes, and Thuringwethil shook her head, forestalling the next question. "I have not come to harm you."

"No," Lúthien replied slowly, "no, you didn't hurt me last time either, did you?" The rest of her sentence went unspoken – even though I came to take something from you and gave you nothing in return but a glimpse of the light, and that glimpse enough to haunt your dark dreams for the rest of your immortal life.

There was a silence, broken only by the wind whistling through the branches above them, and it bore to her Lúthien's scent – changed, somehow, in a way she could not quite pin down. The star-bright smell of nimphredil was still there, but it was muted, muffled, as though something was masking it. There was a new smell, somehow fiery, as though Lúthien were burning up from the inside out, bursting with flame and light and energy, too much to be contained, on the verge of exploding outwards.

She wondered if that was the smell of mortality, evidence of Lúthien's irrevocable choice.

You could have been immortal – you were immortal. And you gave that up for... for what? A short time with your doomed lover, then oblivion beyond the seas, sundered from your own kind for the rest of eternity – if you even have eternity afterwards.

Lúthien was regarding her, grey eyes thoughtful, and she wondered what memories her appearance had triggered, what emotions.

"Do you remember?" she found herself asking, and Lúthien nodded.

She remembered everything in stark detail – light blinding her, light as she have never seen in all her years of darkness, and the request.

I need your skin.

And if I refuse?

It is to save the one I love.

Splintering pain as she was torn apart, yet as she parted beneath the hands of Lúthien there was a curious want mingled with the agony – strip me of this darkness, lay bare my soul, remake me – break me – and she had known pain before, had always known pain, but this was new and different and somehow right.

(hurt me, because I deserve it. break me and make me as clean as you.)

She had smelled flowers on Lúthien's skin, and had recoiled from its foreignness, afraid of the way it seemed to cut through the shadows that enveloped her. The light had hurt her everywhere it touched, a clean, sharp pain unlike anything she had ever felt before. It had hurt, but she wanted nothing more than to keep it with her, on her, touching her – she wanted to take it into her, feel it inside of her, burning outwards and cleansing her until there was nothing left but ash and shining brilliance.

You are the light, she wanted to tell Lúthien, but the words seemed clumsy and she was afraid.

"I asked you what love was, when you told me you needed to save someone. Didn't I?" The words came without warning, and she wondered at their source – was this why she had come here?

"You did." Lúthien had relaxed slightly, but she was still eyeing Thuringwethil warily, waiting for her to make any sudden move.

"You said it was something you know inside, like you know that the earth will pull you down if you fall from a high tree branch." She had never climbed a tree, never stood on the wind-swept top and felt it bend about her – but she had flown, and knew what it was to fall. "You said it was when you would give yourself over to the gravest danger for someone else, and know that they would do the same in return."

"I – yes, that's–"

"And you said sometimes people have to do things for love that they couldn't ever do otherwise, things that they maybe should never do."

"Yes."

Thuringwethil stared at Lúthien, wondering. "Then – you did what it was you needed to do?"

"I did." Her voice was stronger now, and her gaze darted back to the house behind her, windowpanes shining with firelight. "There was danger, and darkness – but we succeeded. Yes."

We succeeded. Thuringwethil wondered what it was to be part of something called we, to be connected to someone so tightly. She let the silence fill the space again, watched the moonlight glance off the iced-over river, unable to quite meet Lúthien's eyes.

You have not changed, not really – your eyes still shine.

Lúthien shifted slightly, and Thuringwethil noticed for the first time that she was trembling with cold. She could not help thinking that she would not have felt such things, before.

"Do you... do you want to come inside?" Lúthien asked, gesturing to her house, unsure.

Thuringwethil shivered, thinking of the unbearable light streaming through the windows. It frightened her – and she desired it.

"No," she lied. "I should – I should leave soon." Leave and return to the shadows of the forest she had been sleeping in for the past few days, and wake to continue sojourning the land – or perhaps to stay here, since she had found what she had been searching for. Yet she made no move to flee, and Lúthien's gaze was holding her down, trapping her.

"Why did you come here, Thuringwethil?"

She hesitated, eyes skittering away from the piercing stare of the mortal woman before her. "I – I do not know." Liar. You know – you wanted the light, and thought she knew a way for you to find it.

She brought the light to me, something in her cried. She can give it to me – everything–

Lúthien was regarding her intently now, brows furrowed with confusion. "What are you? Were you once of the light – or born in darkness?"

Thuringwethil started – it was as though Lúthien had reached into her mind, lifted the very words from her. "I do not remember light." Except you.

She imagined Lúthien's face, if she ever spoke the words that hovered on her tongue every time she thought of her – if she would turn away in disgust, leaving her forever, or would take her hand and say, I can make it better, I can show you the light – come and see, it's easy, I won't hurt you.

(I will hurt you, because it is what you deserve, but in the end you will come out clean as I.)

It was impossible.

She wanted to sink to her knees, beg for something she barely even knew how to articulate – take me, purify me, make me a child of the light as you.She wanted Lúthien to hurt her again, burn her clean with nothing more than her bare hands, purify her with the touch of skin on skin, bare and immediate and painfully intimate.

"And after this... where will you go?" As though Lúthien knew why she had come here, as though she knew that Thuringwethil would likely fade into the darkness after this, a forgotten relic of darker times.

"I'll find someplace. Live. Which is one thing you won't be doing for much longer, I suppose." The words came out a little more bitter than she had intended, and the emotions behind it frightened her – what would she do, when Lúthien had died?

"It was my choice," Lúthien replied, voice soft.

"And you gave up eternity for – for–"

"My love."

What is love? "Love of a mortal man, one who could never know the foreverness of you, not as a fellow immortal could–"

Something crossed Lúthien's face and she took a step forward, tilting her head, bird-like, to one side. "What are you saying, Thuringwethil?"

"Only – only... if it was your choice, then there had to have been an alternative." An alternative to an eternity of nothingness, an alternative to this world – and me – losing you.

"There never was. Not for me."

Thuringwethil closed her eyes, feeling Lúthien's words settle into her mind, heavy and final. Coming here had been futile – and she wasn't even sure what else she had expected. The woman before her still held the light, true, but it was a light that would never touch Thuringwethil. Perhaps that was right.

(After all, what is light without darkness?)

No. I cannot – I need–

She opened her eyes, meeting Lúthien's gaze. "Have you ever–" Loved. "–longed for something, knowing that if you ever were to have it in your grasp, it would only lead to your ultimate death?"

A small smile touched Lúthien's lips, and there was something like understanding in her eyes. "Yes," she replied simply, glancing back at the warm, yellow windows of the house behind her. "Yes, I have."

Thuringwethil nodded, suddenly incredibly tired. The other words had fled her, leaving her mute.

"You could stay here, you know," Lúthien said abruptly. "If you ever came back and needed a home–"

She stepped forward, closing the space between them with a single step, and pressed her lips to Lúthien's cheek. The shock of touch startled her – how long had it been? – and some distant part of her realized her lips would feel ice-cold against Lúthien's warm skin. Her face was hot, and there was a tingling on Thuringwethil's lips as she pulled away.

"Thank you," she whispered, and something deep within her shifted, as if this was what she had come to do. Thank you for showing me the light, however brief it was. For giving me something to live for when the darkness finally ends.

(And after? Perhaps what is broken can be remade.)

Lúthien nodded wordlessly. Thuringwethil stepped back again, letting her arms fall to her sides, feeling the breeze pick up around her, whipping away the scraps of shadow that clung to her still. The bright stars above were mirrored in Lúthien's eyes, pinpricks of light. She froze that memory, light in shadow, and carefully tucked it away, something to hold onto in the eternity alone that would follow this.

She spread the wings she no longer had and let the wind take her away.