Seabirds Winging West by Astris

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Seabirds Winging West

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She kept losing days.

Either that, or time simply did pass that quickly – and one second Beren was there holding their son and laughing, cradling a dark head to his chest, the child so small in his big hands, and the next here was Dior, nearly up to his father's chin, and grey in Beren's hair. And the years between were only flickers at the edges of her memory, wisps of mist that never compared to here and now.

If she concentrated, she could remember the days between – if she tried. But time kept rushing on, and if it was a river then she was an island, standing still as all the rest were swept away.

It is a mistake, her father had said, meeting her eyes over Beren's ruined body. She had lifted her chin and glared at him through the tears blurring her vision, furious and unafraid.

I know.

She hadn't planned for this, though, had never considered mortality burning through the one she loved like flame through paper. (Had thought of it, perhaps, but had chosen to ignore it.)

"Do you ever regret it?" Beren asked her once, running his rough fingers over the back of her hand, grey eyes fixed on the fire in the hearth.

"I would never regret this."

"Even though I am mortal, and you––"

"Beren," she said, and hated the way her voice broke on his name, "if there was any way that I could have spared you mortality––"

Or joined you in death, for that matter. Anything but this, watching you fade away day by day while I remain, frozen in time.

He folded his hands over hers, pressed a kiss to her cheek. "I know," he whispered, breath tickling her skin, "I know, Lúthien."

Years – even the decades they were given were too short. An eyeblink, for an immortal, though Beren called it a lifetime, called it enough, at the last.

She buried him in the dead of winter under a bruised-grey sky. The ground was frozen rock-hard, and she hacked at it mindlessly, the pain of her rising blisters a distant thing, tears coursing unheeded down her cheeks. She didn't notice when Dior appeared at her side, tall and silent, didn't even realize he was there until he was prying her hands away from the rough wooden handle of the spade, bending over the hole scraped in the earth.

"He was happy," Dior said later, clasping her hand over the mounded earth. She nodded, wondering why he thought that would comfort her.

He left her, in time, for Doriath. She refused to accompany him to the kingdom she grew up in, afraid to see it ruined in the wake of her father's death, afraid of the memories.

=====

She considered going after him.

Her mother was one of the Maiar, surely she could show Lúthien the way into Mandos––or else she could find it on her own, rip open the doors to the kingdom of death and demand Beren back. Wrest the one she loved from Námo and return them both to life.

She knew it was impossible, of course, but dreaming was still allowed.

(For some time more, at least.)

===== 

Lúthien took to wandering their old lands, crouching in the shadows of the house they built of hewn wood, her head in her hands. Her hair grew long and tangled, past her shoulders – she had cut it once to escape from captivity, and had kept it short ever since.

Rumors of war reached her even there, carried on the wind by the twittering of birds. She sought refuge wherever she could, curling up like an animal in the doorway of the house. It had fallen into disrepair, the windows cracked by storms, dead leaves accumulating on the sagging roof.

 Silence was best. If she could not stop time and return to when she had been whole, she could at least hide from it.

=====

At some point, Lúthien realized she had a shadow.

It was familiar, the shape that flitted in the corners of her vision whenever she turned, the echoes of footsteps that lingered longer than they should have. Perhaps it was a sign of how lost she was that for so long, she could not remember the name that went with that darkness.

She was in the overgrown garden she had once tended with him, crouched beside a pool choked with pondweed. There was a crunch of gravel behind her, and a pale face swimming beside the reflection of the moon.

And memory trickled back, though the pain was still held at a distance for now.

"Thuringwethil," she said, the syllables slipping from her lips easily. (As though she had not nearly forgotten.) "It's been a long time, no?"

The Maia hissed something under her breath, and Lúthien could not read her expression in the hazy reflection. "Too long, it seems. What have you done to yourself?"

She stood and turned, half expecting Thuringwethil to fade back into the darkness. Their eyes met, and a jolt of something ran through her from head to toe – and it had been so long since she had felt anything that it took her a moment to name it recognition. The last time she had seen her had been in a dark den that smelled of death and decay, a winged creature skittering back from the piercing moonlight and begging––

(Begging for what?)

Lúthien swallowed, throat suddenly heavy. "Why are you here?"

"Why are you here?" Thuringwethil crossed her arms, black eyes flashing. "Your childhood kingdom lies in ruins, this whole land is on the verge of destruction, and you––" She gestured sharply with one hand, encompassing the weed-choked garden, the half-ruined walls, Lúthien's own disarray. "You sit here and wallow."

Would you not, as well? "And if I do, what business of yours is it?"

Thuringwethil drew back as though surprised, then seemed to check herself. "What does it matter?"

"Last time I checked, you were a servant of evil and hardly given to charity visits––" Her hands curled into fists entirely against her will, something building hot and heavy in her chest. She caught the hint of a smile on Thuringwethil's face. "What? What do you want?"

"You're angry."

"So what if I am?" And she was, there was no denying the heated anger pulsing through her. "Don't I have a right to be?"

"Of course you do." Without seeming to move, Thuringwethil was suddenly inches from Lúthien, one pale hand reaching up to brush her tangled hair back. "You have a right to be afraid and grieved and furious. So start exercising that right again instead of sitting here waiting for the world to end. 

Her throat closed over any words she might have said. She reached out, meaning to catch the other's sleeve, but the Maia drew back in a rush of chill air, swallowed by the darkness. Lúthien was left alone in a ruined garden with the rising wind and a quiet pain in her heart.

=====

Menegroth fell.

Menegroth fell, but she was in the midst of its ruin, crossing swords with a dark-haired kinslayer and avenging the deaths of her son and grandchildren and a long ago betrayal. When her mother's throne went up in flames, she fled with the rest.

No one knew her for who she was – even to Nimloth, who she found wounded near to death beside the body of one of the sons of Fëanor, she was only a soldier of the Doriathrim, loyal to the very last. Her shorn hair helped with that, but she had also learned something of the arts of glamor from Melian.

(She thought the dark-haired son of Fëanor might have recognized her at the last, gasping his last breath into her face, eyes widening as though at the sight of a ghost – and she might very well have been one, for all that the rest took notice of her.)

She stayed long enough to see Nimloth and Elwing to Balar, then disappeared. At some point in her wanderings, she returned to Doriath.

It didn't take long for Thuringwethil to find her there.

The Maia appeared beside her on a hill that had once overlooked Menegroth, one that now was surrounded by fire-blackened tree trunks and silent ruins.

"What do you think?" Lúthien asked, nodding towards all that remained of her home. Thuringwethil considered this.

"Nothing burns cleanly anymore. Your battles have no care for the denizens of this wood – you displaced a colony of bats that had lasted many generations, among quite a few others."

"Is that so? I hadn't thought of you as an animal lover."

To her surprise, a faint blush of color suffused Thuringwethil's cheeks. "Bats make good companions when no one else wishes to speak to you," she replied, almost defensively. "And they are certainly more tolerable than many of you elves."

Lúthien laughed. "I'm curious. Why do you keep following me?"

Thuringwethil shrugged, tapping one long nail against the bark of a nearby tree. "Perhaps I have nothing better to do. Why do you seem so cheerful, standing on the ashes of your former home?"

Home is nothing more than a pile of bones in a cold grave. It was an old thought, and did not bear the sting it once had. Time and battle alike had conspired to heal her despite her best efforts to the contrary.

"There is something to be said for clean slates," she said simply.

Doriath had been dying for a long time, after all. Thingol's death and the ruin of Menegroth had only been the beginning – her son had done much for the broken city, but had not returned it to anything like its former glory even before the Fëanorians attacked. Melian's protection was gone; evil things would begin to creep into the forest before long. Oh, they might avoid the place instinctively for some time more, the memory of the protective girdle still burned into their collective consciousness, but already darkness was filling in the spaces under the trees.

A perfect example of that was sitting right beside her.

"I'll ask you again," she said, looking up at the branches above instead of the Maia beside her, "why do you continue to follow me?"

"You took something of mine."

"Your wings were lost in Angband––"

"I know that. There is still a price, regardless."

"I paid for them," Lúthien whispered, not sure where the conviction had come from, but knowing it to be true. (Shadow and starlight meeting where the light had never shone. Why couldn't she remember?)

Thuringwethil's eyes flashed, hand clenching spasmodically, sending chips of bark flying. "You paid, of course you did, but the matter remains––"

"What do you mean?" she asked, honestly confused.

There was a snarl, half lost in the darkness, and Thuringwethil was gone.

=====

The West came to wage war on darkness, and Lúthien did not find a place in the last march of her kin against Morgoth, preferring to watch from afar as wave after wave of glittering armor and sunlit banners surged against the dark fortress. She might have told them about how she opened those doors with nothing more than a song and a shadow-pelt, if she could have relied on her memory to carry the tale truthfully.

(The people sang of her and Beren, sometimes, and of their escape from imprisonment and darkness and death itself. She never lingered long by those campfires.)

Years passed, and while the assault on Angband continued there was an uneasy quiet in Beleriand. The sounds of the conflict to the north were audible for leagues, and the flashes that lit the sky at night were visible from nearly anywhere, but there were still days that Lúthien could forget that there was battle at all.

She spent her time practicing her mother's craft, mostly, reawakening the spark of Maiarin blood that still flowed in her veins. It was enough to change her face, her form, even the world around her – into moonlit forest that was so perfectly familiar that she half expected one of the dead to step out from behind a tree.

Her arms sprouted feathers and she flew without the aid of another, on wings crafted by her own hands. A nightingale caught her eye and twittered an old song, one Melian had taught them – what are you doing, Lúthien? Where are you going?

She had all of eternity to figure that out, it seemed.

=====

Morgoth was defeated, but evil still prowled the sinking land. Desperate Orcs harassed refugees fleeing eastwards (what few refugees remained to flee at all), parentless dragons haunted the old mountains. Her song had grown powerful; her enemies had grown weak. It was only natural that she address the attacks herself, when no one else seemed willing to help.

Then again, she mused, shifting her grip on her sword, it does get harder when the odds are twelve to one and there is no chance to sing a sleepsong.

This particular set of Orcs had her backed against a canyon wall, the leader menacing her with a rough iron spear. All of them – a marauding band, perhaps – looked underfed and exhausted. (Like everyone else in this land, then.) The family of five that they had been threatening had scurried away the second Lúthien appeared, taking advantage of the Orc's surprise but leaving their savior to face them alone.

She shifted position, making sure to keep an eye on the shorter one in the back, the one with the bow. As she moved, she caught the flicker of the lead Orc's ragged fingers – a signal.

They surged forward as a single unit, moving with a determined ferocity that made her reconsider her earlier assessment – perhaps these were deserters from Morgoth's army, with discipline like that. She swung the sword in a low arc, cutting the feet out from under the first one, then ducked low to avoid the leader's spear.

It went surprisingly well – four down in a matter of seconds – until Lúthien's foot slipped on rock slicked black with Orc blood, throwing her off balance for a brief second. The leader snarled and pounced, spear clanging off Lúthien's sword and thudding into her shoulder, punching through patched chainmail.

She wavered, the pain washing through her, and that couldn't be good, having a spear sticking out of her shoulder––

The Orc wrenched it free and she stumbled, a distant part of her noting with alarm that there was something warm flooding down her front, and that said something was likely her blood. The others were closing in, like vultures scenting their prey, and she had just enough left in her to drag her sword across the leader's throat, soaking both of in black blood.

She opened her mouth, grasping for a melody, something to put them to sleep, but there was a thud as something slammed into her stomach like an armored fist, sharp pain blooming around the black-fletched arrow buried in her.

Her mouth filled with the iron tang of blood, the salty stink of it overwhelming.

Is it over? The ground was unsteady, unless that was her own body swaying like a falling tree. She leaned against the canyon wall, then slid down it as her knees gave out, leaving a red streak on the rock.

There had to be something. Had to be––

It hurt. 

As her eyes drifted shut, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of movement overhead.

=====

When she came back, everything was silent. A dark figure stood over her, too out of focus for her to be able to tell who it was. Mandos, perhaps?

"You truly are a fool, Lúthien."

Hm. No, that wasn't the Doomsman.

Hands lifting her, cradling her as though she weighed nothing. The movement jostled her wounds and she lost the voice in the white haze of pain.

=====

The next time she surfaced, she found herself in a large, well-lit cave, wrapped in several blankets and bedded down next to an ash-filled firepit. She lay still for a minute or so, assessing – bandages wrapped around her right shoulder, her stomach, her arm. Pain, held off at a distance by the way the world still seemed a bit fuzzy – drugs, perhaps?

She ventured movement next, craning her neck a little to see what was visible outside the cave opening – a forest, was the impression she got before a twinge of pain forced her to lower her head again.

"I wouldn't try moving yet, if I were you."

Lúthien frowned. She knew that voice, though it took her a moment to place it. "Thuringwethil?"

"Ah, so you recognize your savior?" The Maia moved into her field of vision from somewhere further back in the cave. She held a wooden bowl in her hands, filled with water. "Here. Drink."

Lúthien took a cautious sip, then an eager one as her parched tongue remembered that she was terribly thirsty. Thuringwethil seemed to hesitate, then pulled away abruptly, slopping a bit over the side and onto Lúthien.

"Not too fast," she muttered.

Lúthien swiped her tongue across her lips, catching the last drops. "You were the one who rescued me." It wasn't a question.

Thuringwethil inclined her head jerkily.

"Why?"

A flicker of wariness crossed her face as she offered the bowl again. "I daresay it is none of your business."

"Of course not." Lúthien narrowed her eyes. "I was just – curious, perhaps, about why a someone such as you would decide out of the goodness of her heart to assist an elf in a battle against those she once fought alongside."

A mocking smile crossed Thuringwethil's face. "I was never as the Orcs are, you forget. My choices have always been my own." She paused, tapping a finger against the bowl. "If I chose to wreak a little havoc on some displaced servants, then that is my right."

"Which does not explain why you saved me."

"Perhaps."

"It's a little too convenient," she noted, pushing herself up onto her uninjured arm to stare up at Thuringwethil. "That you keep appearing – and I doubt that it's because you enjoy my company."

"Three times in a century hardly counts––"

"Three times that culminate in saving my life," Lúthien interrupted.

Thuringwethil stiffened. "It is not saved yet. Your wounds––"

"You would let me die now, after all the effort on your part to keep me alive?" She laughed. Thuringwethil jerked back, setting the bowl down with a sharp movement. Lúthien felt the smile slip from her face as the Maia moved to the cave entrance, back turned to her.

Perhaps it would be wise to avoid the appearance of mocking her – at least while she's helping you heal.

(Something just out of reach, about starlight and deadly fascination––)

That was churlish of you, still.

She took a breath, then quietly said, "Thank you." Thuringwethil stiffened minutely, shoulders tensing. "For – for saving my life, I suppose. Regardless of the reason."

After a moment, Thuringwethil returned and offered the bowl again wordlessly. Lúthien drank again, then lay back and slipped into a dreamless sleep.

=====

Time passed, and her wounds healed. Thuringwethil was – if not always pleasant company, then at least entertaining. When the pain kept Lúthien awake at night, she would tell tales as though to empty air (never once acknowledging Lúthien's quiet attentiveness). They were stories of the darkness before, of what crawled in the shadows of Middle-earth before even the stars.

They were not comforting tales.

Thuringwethil had a sharp mind, Lúthien realized, and a set of defensive walls that only came down in the middle of the night, when she spoke of her old world. There had been other renegade Maiar, but all the rest had fallen under thrall of Morgoth, to be corrupted and twisted into strange things. All save Thuringwethil, who kept her freedom by keeping her distance.

To her surprise, Lúthien was glad that Thuringwethil was with her. It was not a friendship she would have ever considered possible before, but it was strangely... right. She enjoyed her companionship, the sharpness of her tongue, the brief smiles that flitted across her pale face like flashes of sunlight on shadowed water.

"Beleriand is nearly gone," Thuringwethil told her one day, cupping a leather-winged bat in her hands, peering down at its needle-sharp fangs. Lúthien nodded from where she had propped herself against the entrance, back to the rough rock.

"Well, the Valar did a wonderful job of destroying everything in their path when they went to their war," she said, aiming for lightness and falling a bit short – she couldn't quite erase the thought of her mother's gardens in Doriath flooded with salt water.

The bat gobbled up an offered cricket and took off, a fluttering scrap of darkness against the dusk sky. Thuringwethil watched it go. "Angband has been washed clean at last." She turned to regard Lúthien thoughtfully. "I am glad, I think. It was – a place I admired once, but––" She left the rest unsaid, but Lúthien thought she could guess it, and was surprised yet gratified at the rare glimpse into the Maia's mind.

"The world is changing."

"The world is always changing." Thuringwethil shook her head.

Lúthien shrugged. "You may think it strange, perhaps, but I cannot seem to recall an instance of change this large within my lifetime."

Thuringwethil inclined her head as though to say, true enough.

"Isn't it odd, that of everyone from before, it's – it's you and I who ended up here?" She didn't quite say together, though she considered it, and maybe Thuringwethil heard the minute hesitation because she half twisted away, the defensive light that Lúthien had come to know so well flaring in her eyes.

"Tis a strange twist of fate, no more."

Every time she brought this up, Thuringwethil retreated. Lúthien was tired to dancing around it, tired of wondering what she had done to earn this – this fascination, this wariness.

"I wouldn't call it fate, you appearing over and over only to save me." Thuringwethil made as if to turn away, but Lúthien's hand flashed out, fastening around her wrist. "No. Listen to me. I don't harbor any misconceptions about you – you're hardly the kind of person who goes about dispensing charity. There's a reason you saved me, and there's a reason you're still here waiting for me to heal, and I want to know what it is."

She had levered herself to her feet while speaking, and now she and Thuringwethil were at eye level.

"Why should it matter?" Thuringwethil didn't quite meet her eyes.

"It matters because I owe you my life." Because there's something I can't remember, but it involves you, and – and I can't quite––

"You––" Thuringwethil seemed to choke for an instant. "You were always a creature of the light, and I––" She made a sharp, mocking gesture. "You can see well enough what I am. So why waste your debts on me? I absolve you. It matters not."

Thuringwethil had come when Lúthien was alone, when the whole world seemed choked in grey fog, and dragged her back into life – once in spirit, and once quite literally.

"I took something of yours," she said slowly, grasping for an old memory. When Thuringwethil narrowed her eyes, Lúthien nodded. "You told me so, in Doriath. What did I do?"

"What did you do?" There was a sudden flare of fury in Thuringwethil's dark eyes, her hands curling into fists. "My world was peaceful before you came, daughter of Melian, and brought your starlight and song. I was content."

"And now you are not." Lúthien considered this, aware of the building tension in the Maia, struggling to keep her own thoughts calm. "What changed?"

"Nothing has changed," Thuringwethil snarled. "I am what I am."

"You're not a what," Lúthien said sharply, taking an involuntary step forwards. "You're not – I do not want you to think of yourself that way."

They were so close, she realized abruptly, close enough that she could see the minute widening of Thuringwethil's eyes, feel the crackle of energy between them that she so often had felt humming under her mother's fingers – a bygone relic of an older time, a reminder of the spirit burning underneath that was far more ancient than anything else in Arda.

"Something changed," she pressed. The look on Thuringwethil's face flickered from disdain to anger in the space of a heartbeat.

"You changed it," she hissed, clamping her hands down in Lúthien's shoulders and digging her fingers in. "You wandered in and demanded that I strip myself bare for you, and you had no idea – and then you left, and what was I to do, pretend you had never come?"

"I'm sorry."

"You don't understand what you're even apologizing for."

Lúthien closed the distance between them with an abrupt movement, not thinking it through too much. Their lips collided, and she could taste a strange memory of darkness in Thuringwethil's mouth.

When she pulled away, she half expected Thuringwethil to relax against her, do something besides stand there like she had been turned to stone, lips parted and an emptiness in her eyes.

"Did I do that – before?" she whispered, touching Thuringwethil's cheek hesitantly. The Maia jerked her chin in the shadow of a nod. "If – if your world was somehow altered because of me––"

"Oh, yes, this is the part where you tell me it doesn't matter," Thuringwethil snapped, pulling away. "That I've only been chasing a shadow all this time, and you don't – never cared. Well, I told you, it matters n––"

She kissed her again, partly to shut her up, mostly to taste that strange electric energy again. Thuringwethil's hands dug into her shoulders, and she made a sound low in her throat that sent a thrill of warmth through Lúthien.

"When did I ever say that it did not matter?" she whispered, withdrawing.

Thuringwethil shook her head, stubborn. (Stubborn but blushing slightly in the dim light, Lúthien noted.) "I don't expect you to stay because of some... some debt you think you owe me."

"I do not stay because of any debt. Do you understand that?"

"I understand enough to profess it beyond belief that someone like you would bother with – something like me."

"Not something." She pressed a kiss to the corner of Thuringwethil's lips. "And we can work on the belief part, if you'll allow it."

=====

It took time. All good things did.

Still, they had eternity.

(And it didn't take quite that long.)