Shadow Child by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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Lúthien was a child of the darkness, born Ages before the Sun and Moon rose in the sky, and taught the ways of Irmo and Yavanna by her mother, who also taught her the value of a gentle touch and soft words, even as her father taught her the value of blazing light. She was a princess of the Eldar beneath the stars, as they flourished in twilit Beleriand while their kin across the Sea built great towers and caught light in colored glass, forgetting the deep quiet of shadows where even starlight did not reach—that Lúthien was taught to weave around herself like a cloak or a blanket, for protection and for peaceful rest.

Melian taught her things that Melkor, who dared to call himself the master of the darkness, never understood.

Then the sun rose, bringing blinding color and a myriad of new plants and flowers to fruition, warm and bright and blotting out all the stars. It heralded the arrival of the Noldor from Aman, and the children of the cousin Lúthien had never met: children of Valina’s noontide, who did not understand the darkness, and feared it as the tool and domain of the Enemy. Artanis may have eventually learned otherwise, in her studies under Melian. Lúthien was not sure her brothers ever did.

The Noldor liked to claim they were stronger, faster, wiser, more powerful than those they called the Moriquendi, because they had been begotten, born, and raised in the Light of the Trees. Most who said this had never met Lúthien.

Lúthien was twilight’s daughter who fell in love with daylight’s son, who loved and laughed and felt angry and lived with the same bright intensity as Anor herself. He made Lúthien want to grasp every moment and savor it, the way she had never done before, thinking she had Forever. But Beren also sometimes just acted, without stopping to think, so when Thingol sent him on that fool’s errand, how could Lúthien not follow?

Lúthien was a child of darkness who faced their master and won, with nothing more than a lullaby and the soft warmth of the darkness she’d loved as a child.

But she did it for Beren’s sake, and for the chance to sing her own Song in the great Music, to go where no Elf had ever gone and would ever go again.

(She caught a glimpse of It—what lay in store for Men, when she sought Beren in the Halls, and not even she could find the words to describe what she saw, except that she felt such a longing for what lay Beyond.)

And if her people would mourn her forever—well, that was their choice. She made hers, and bid farewell without tears to the Circles of the World on a moonless night, with the tree-shadows for her bower, and Beren smiling beside her.