Stolen Light by Chiaroscuro by Scribe of Mirrormere

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Stolen Light by Chiaroscuro

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The evening proved to be interesting the moment Eöl entered home. He ignored the pain in his back, caused by leaning over his work in the smithy all day, when his ears picked up the sounds of fingers typing fast and loud, the tapping filling their home.

Aredhel sat before her laptop with a great smile of abandon on her face as fingers flew across the keyboard. Opened bottles of wine lined the space not taken up by the poor, abused laptop.

This is what she has chosen over joining me at my smithy today, Eöl thought causally. He was not entirely upset, for he was used to his wife’s fleeting interest in hobbies. The next week she might return, wishing to pick up the project they had begun together in forging a delicate pendant. Today, she dedicated it before the computer, doing Mahal-knew-what. He could not even pretend annoyance at seeing the smile on her face. Whatever it was, it brought her joy.

“My, Aleila!” Eöl said, using her Kinn-lai name. “What could possibly be possessing you to type so animatedly at the laptop this evening?”

Aredhel’s head spun around, her wide eyes as bright as her grin. “Femslash, motherfucker!”

“Aleila! Why do you insinuate such a transgression?”

Aredhel sighed and rolled her eyes. “Samuel L. Jackson impersonation, husband?”

“Oh. I see.” He settled himself beside Aredhel, glancing at the brightly lit screen as Aredhel returned to her work. “If I may ask: what is femslash?”

Aredhel shot him a look, gasping loudly and excitedly. She took his question as invitation to rattle on about the exciting new endeavor she had embarked on the previous evening (and the reason for her canceling coming to the smithy.) In the next ten minutes, Eöl had come to learn new terminology often utilized in online communities, such as “shipping,” “crack,” and “AU,” which he kept stored away in his mind for any future use. She read aloud from the story she had thus far been writing, while Eöl listened attentively and nodded.

“So, you are authoring the tale of two women?” Eöl asked. “Garnet and Pearl.” He nodded to the picture on her desktop’s wallpaper. “Creative choice, though I wonder why you did not opt for the woman Pearl clearly adored in the original tale?”

“Because I ship Garnet and Pearl!” Aredhel said, rather defensively. “You cannot ask why an author chose which pairing, husband! It will make your time as a fanfiction writer miserable! Just ask my cousin Curufin!

“Anyhow, would you like to try it? Writing femslash, I mean?”

“It is a tempting offer, but I would not know what to write about, Aleila.”

“How about starting with your own original character?”

Aredhel pointed to the statue of Galvorn, and Eöl smiled. She had seen him watching the show from his laptop one night while doodling designs of a character he wished to see fighting alongside Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst. He had no idea what Aredhel was planning, only that the very next evening when he returned, Aredhel had finished making a small figurine of his character, Galvorn. She stood proudly, all eight inches of her, clad in glossy black like the malleable metal he enjoyed working with. Since then she’s been joined by Mithril, Aredhel’s own character, who took on more dwarvish characteristics, though that was not the only aspect that was a stark contrast from Galvorn.

“To see her come alive, our dear Galvorn,” Eöl mused. “But what do we write about?”

“Well, what sort of stories do you enjoy? I’ve been writing crack and action-adventure all day! I can help you with this story too.”

Crack and action-adventure are fitting genres for her, Eöl thought, nodding and considering the question carefully. “I have enjoyed the noir-styled films we have been watching recently.”

Aredhel laughed. “Film Noir AU femslash! Oh! Is Galvorn the hero here? Is she trying to save someone? Silmaril, perhaps?”

“Silmaril has gone missing,” Eöl said, nodding.

“Lord Fëanor employs Galvorn to uncover the mystery!” Aredhel said, dissolving into laughter again. “Mithril can solve the mystery alongside Galvorn! They meet Garnet and the others at some point, and…oh! I have to write this down before it slips my mind!”

“Will the romance be between them or between Galvorn and Silmaril?” Eöl asked when Aredhel was done typing. “And is Silmaril a fusion? Do we have a design of how she appears?”

“We’ll decide that as we go along,” Aredhel said. “But this is so exciting! We should call it Stolen Light! Already I envision the first chapter! Now, pardon me, husband!”

And pulling the laptop closer towards her, Aredhel dissolved into a typing frenzy. Eöl read over her shoulder, though his eyebrows were furrowed disapprovingly.

“No, no! Aleila, I am certain that is not how one asks for help from a detective. No, Aleila, that doesn’t sound like something Pearl would say if she were to meet Galvorn—Aleila, that’s a comma splice!”

“You can beta-read and fact-check me after I am done!” Aredhel yelled out, not stopping. Eöl grunted and returned to his spot.

“Fine, then. In the meantime I will gather all relevant research information and write up an outline for our use,” he said and pulled out his own laptop, as glossy black as Galvorn’s attire, from under the sofa.

Aredhel did not move from her spot again until she was done. Eöl was notified of this by means of getting an email alert from her; she had sent him her document.

She stretched beside him.

“Time for a break for me!” she sang. “Have fun, husband!”

Behind him, their servants were passing by as they began preparing for dinner. They spoke excitedly amongst one another of the new project the Lord and Lady of Nan Elmoth had begun together.

It appears fanfiction is rather popular among the elves, or at least my people, Eöl thought.

He opened the file, saw it was over twenty thousand words, and prayed the reason half the words had squiggle red lines under them was because they were canon-appropriate new terms unrecognized by his software.

As he had feared, the reason was unfortunately not the latter, but it was not to say he had regretted in agreeing to collaborate on a new project. Aredhel had a talent for the written word, capturing the spirit of the film noir genre with such quick ease that Eöl would have thought she had been binging on the materials right before writing this chapter. Underneath the appalling grammatical and spelling errors, undoubtedly fueled by the speed in which she was typing, her narrative was engaging, pulling him in from the start. Her special brand of wit was strewn across, which he knew some readers would appreciate if they shared in the same sense of humor as her.

But there were some other bumps down the road that he had sniffed out, characterizations he didn’t quite agree with or logistics which bothered him to the point he had to pick away at until he had it fixed. There was a diamond of a story beneath the rough draft he was handed, and his swelling pride for his wife’s skills pushed him to polish it till he was satisfied with the result, no matter how often he needed to consult the long list of resources he kept open on a separate file. He daresay he was even finding this enjoyable.

Other places it seemed Aredhel’s writing dissolved into indiscernibly random smashing of keys, which led Eöl to believe it was her way of telling him to fill in the gaps. That he did to the best of his ability, though he could not emulate her sense of humor. At the very least he managed to capture the characters’ voices and cover the bridge to the next scene where Aredhel’s writing picked up once once.

Dinner was spent discussing the chapter, and then afterwards, going over all corrections and what changes to be made to the outline. Then after sending Aredhel back her copy of the document to look over his edits, Eöl head out to wash the sweat from the day’s work.

“And now for the best part: posting,” Aredhel said when the chapter was at last mercifully completed. “Let’s see…we need an author name. Something that can describe the both of us since this is an author team. Yin and Yang? No…that would appropriating someone’s culture and beliefs.”

“Chiaroscuro?” Eöl offered.

“Ooo! The study of light and dark in art!” Aredhel laughed. “I like that!”

They worked on their new author biography page for a short while, and then Eöl sat back while Aredhel worked out how to use the website to publish their first story together. He had a long day at the forge, and the evening’s events was taking its toll on him. He lazed back as he listened to Aredhel’s excited muttering as she filled in the submission fields before uploading the first chapter of their fanfiction, though he must have dozed off or turned in for the night before the chapter went online.

*

“Husband!”

Eöl jolted awake the next morning at the sound suddenly piercing through his sleep as Aredhel plopped heavily on the large bed. “Husband, awake!”

Thinking there was some emergency, perhaps a few of the kinslayers having gotten past Nan Elmoth’s guards, and thinking of his people in the village most vulnerable to the cruelty of the Noldor, Eöl made to jump out of bed, but Aredhel pushed him back.

“No, no, it’s not an attack!” she said, laughing. “Our story! We’ve received close to fifty instances of Praise! And over two dozen signed reviews!”

Eöl’s head spun before his mind reeled back to last evening, remembering their fanfiction. “We did?”

“Yes!” And grabbing for her laptop, Aredhel excitedly read off names of those who had given Praise to their fanfiction, stopping to scream if she recognized the online handle of one of her or their mutual friends, and read as many of the reviews as she could.

“Oh, they love your story premise and my witty dialogue!” Aredhel laughed. “Oh, this one is angry the entire story is taken up by original characters. Well with an online name like DieMarySuesDie, I don’t suspect they appreciate creative expression.”

“Is that one of the kinslayers, perhaps?” Eöl offered.

“No, I know what Curufin’s username is,” Aredhel said. “And what he writes, although I wish I didn’t: woobification of the worst villains that he happens to relate to, and he tends to go on racist rants and graphically describes deaths of women in his fics. Very problematic.”

“He sounds an absolute charmer, this son of Fëanor,” Eöl said dryly, wishing he did not have that piece of information looming in his head about Nan Elmoth’s unpleasant neighbor.

“Many of these people are requesting a second chapter, husband,” Aredhel said with hope in her eyes.

Eöl smiled. “I have much work to do in my smithy. If you wish for me to look over your work later, I can do so when I return, unless you wish to join me in the smithy today.”

But Aredhel’s heart was still on the story, and when Eöl left her, she was cheerily humming as she read over his outline.

Their story continued to soar in popularity. All of the servants chattered away excitedly as they bustled about, and Eöl was even surprised to find a number of his colleagues in the smithy mention it.

“Galvorn! Of course, it had to be you!” Forgamdir said as he and Hargamdir grinned widely at Eöl’s expression.

“And is it true you came up with the character?” Hargamdir asked.

“Yes,” Eöl said. “And I am rather fond of her, as much as my wife is fond of Mithril.”

The greatest difficulty was always fixing up Aredhel’s mistakes, though Eöl supposed he had to be thankful Aredhel did not allow anything like a typo or the need to go back and edit a badly-phrased line deter her from going forward with telling the story. But it also sometimes (usually) meant having to open a word document full of red squiggles.

One evening the sight alone nearly made him weep right there. It didn’t help that his back ached from the day at the forge to the point that his arms didn’t want to move.

“Are you in pain, love?” Rôg cooed from the Skype video chat window open on Eöl’s screen.

“I am a blacksmith by day, co-writer and editor by night,” Eöl said. “We’re already at chapter thirty and there is no end in sight—Aredhel, what did I tell you about proper dialogue tags!”

“Kiss my grits! You almost made me lose my train of thought!” came Aredhel’s yell from the other room.

Rôg leaned closer towards the camera as he began unbuttoning his top. “Oh, love, I know what will make you feel better.”

Eöl glanced up and blanched. “By Mahal! Rôg, I am a married man, as art thou! Put your clothes back on! All of them!”

“Fine then!” Rôg hissed, moving back, then belatedly realized his wife Meleth was standing right behind him and giving him a deadly glare.

“How much longer must I suffer?” Eöl muttered to himself as the argument between Rôg and Meleth carried on through the Skype screen.

*

“Eöl?” Aredhel looked up when Eöl came home the following day. He was surprised not to hear any tapping of the keyboard greet him that evening.

“I’ve been watching this all day,” Aredhel said, motioning to her laptop. “I didn’t feel like writing much today.”

Thou hast blessed me, Mahal.

“A break every now and again is no bad thing,” Eöl said.

“I only wrote ten thousand words.”

Mahal, strike me now.

“Oh.”

The sight that greeted Eöl upon opening the document was enough to make him finally break. He smashed his face against his pillow and wept for an hour.

*

But other days came with its benefits.

“Husband!” Aredhel said one day over dinner. “Our readers are hoping to see Galvorn and Silmaril consummate their passion, in as many lovingly graphic detail as I can make it—smut! They are asking me to add in some smut!”

Eöl swallowed thickly. “Are we allowed to publicly share such lewd moments?”

“It’s not lewd! It’s love! Passion! And it’s all over the internet!” Aredhel said.

Eöl nodded slowly, noting the shifting tension in the air between them. “Then I will leave that entire chapter at your discretion. You…ah, have always been the more imaginative one in and out of the bedroom.”

Aredhel’s eyes gleamed with her grin.

And Eöl was right, he learned when he had received the chapter. By the time he returned the chapter, Aredhel was eyeing him with a mischievous smirk, perhaps noting how much he quite enjoyed revising this particular chapter.

“It was very enjoyable, yes,” Eöl said when Aredhel asked. “And if you do not mind, I believe now is a good time to retire to our bedroom now…where you are most welcome to join me, if you wish…”

Aredhel snickered behind her laptop.

*

“And your stats are amazing!” Mormeril said excitedly while her sister Môriol worked her enchantment on Aredhel’s hands. All of Aredhel’s time before her laptop had finally caught up to her, and she sat now in the main room suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. It was excuse enough to hold a sort of celebration for the fanfiction as all of the adoring readers gathered around in the Lord and Lady of Nan Elmoth’s house.

Eöl did not think there was anyone left in Nan Elmoth or Doriath who had not read it. The biggest shock yet had been knowing that his own friends among the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost were among the adoring fans.

“That’s being too humble,” Mablung said when Eöl his youngest brother mentioned that to him. He poured Eöl another glass of Doriathian wine. “There does not seem to be anyone left in all of Arda who has not read it.”

“That is utterly humiliating,” Eöl said, who would much prefer being left alone than ever be the center of attention. If all the credit could go to Aredhel, then so be it.

Beleg laughed. “It is an honor,” he corrected. “Though you do have the jealous type regularly trying to sabotage your story.”

“Our dear drunken loon of a neighbor, Lord Curufin!” Míriedir said, laughing. “He has created an entire GreaseyWarg script called Anti-Praise just because of you.”

“Well, I am heartened to know I have inspired something in him,” Eöl said. Several of the dwarves laughed.

“He tried to get others to use it,” Telchar said. “Let’s just say it has backfired and now several of his own trash are proud displayers of hundreds of Anti-Praises.”

“At least we all know it works as well as it is advertised,” Delunis, Telchar’s wife, added.

“Serves him right,” Môriol sniffled, “after writing that one story about our Kinn-lai men enjoying disemboweling their women. What a sick mind.”

“But it is art, my lady!” Mormeril said in her best impression of the Noldo that roused more laughter. “And you cannot deny there is something…savage…about those Avari!”

“Well, he’s got us to thank for all the attention his stories now get,” Aredhel said.

“I wonder how he is handling the fame,” Eöl said.

“Probably throwing every laptop and vase he could find against a wall.”

“I want to see that!” Bó, the eldest of the dwarves present, screamed. Her drunken laughter full of mirth, she chugged down an entire flask of ale.

*

“Look at it! People are reccing this stupid story everywhere!” Curufin said, seething. “They’ve even drawn fanart! Made fan trailers! Recipes inspired by the story! Cosplay! Fan-films! Fanfiction based on their fanfiction! Glowing reviews leaking out of everyone’s ass the moment a new chapter goes up! I mean…an entire bunch of bards have each recorded a song in honor of this stupid overhyped for a fic soundtrack. A fic soundtrack!

“Meanwhile, what do I get? I get bullied!”

“Well, Curvo, if you didn’t write about killing everyone who just mildly annoyed you, perhaps you would have more friends!” Maglor offered kindly, looking up from his laptop. “You are not the easiest to like, dear brother.”

“Neither is Eöl Stick-Up-My-Ass-The-Length-Of-Nan-Elmoth!”

“He at least keeps his opinions to himself. In all the years I’ve been here, I have never felt threatened by him, Avar though he may be.”

“I don’t believe it!” Curufin nearly shrieked. “You’re siding with him?”

Maglor rolled his eyes and returned to his work. “Curvo, please! We’ve argued over this before, and I grow weary from it! There are far more important things for me to tend to! I must not lose my status as the model gift exchange participant. I have a pinch hit deadline looming, and three treats I wish to complete by the end of the week, and I know how much my recipients love my poetry and my voice so I must need all the quiet time to record myself!

“Oh, and I was among the bards who recorded a song to Stolen Light’s official fan soundtrack.”

Curufin, who had sat down to listen to his brother ramble about his “important work,” was watching him with one eyebrow cocked up. “Why?”

Maglor shrugged with a smile. “Keeps up appearances.” Seeing Curufin’s face slowly turn red again, he hastily added. “Anyhow, I must also post my ‘dear author’ letter soon for an upcoming gift exchange and make certain I do not get matched with my ex-husband ever again.”

“Why not?”

Maglor’s forced smile was almost terrifying to behold. “It took him nearly two months to comment on the gift I so painstakingly put together for him, that ungrateful, lumpy giant maggot!”

“Do you not think it had something to do with you ordering an army of yours to ransack the same Sinda village Gildor happened to be taking care of at the time?”

“Do not question me, Curvo, brother dearest!”

Curufin shot up to his feet, bowed, and left. “Father must have dropped us all on our heads over his anvil when we were born,” he muttered under his breath.

*

At long last, after months of painstaking collaboration, tears, emptied wine bottles, more tears, and carpal tunnel syndrome flareups, the final chapter of Stolen Light was posted.

Aredhel and Eöl spent the following evening together reading all of the comments and reactions, sharing a smile at their accomplishment. Their writing room, as it had become known, was filled with crafts, fan tapestries, and other gifts their adoring readers had sent them.

“This was the best thing I have ever done in my life,” Aredhel said, whose face looked like it would crack from how much she was grinning.

“I am so glad we’ve achieved our goal in completing the story,” Eöl said, though he had to admit he was also relieved he didn’t have to beta-read another twenty-thousand worded chapter were half the document was in red.

They sat in silence for a little bit before remembering a movie they had wanted to see but had put aside until they were done with their story. Eöl brought it up on his laptop, and Aredhel huddled next to him, resting her head against his shoulder.

They watched in comfortable silence for about half the movie before neither one could deny the lingering sadness and emptiness that was settling in. A few minutes later, their eyes met, and Aredhel smiled in relief when she realized Eöl had the same thought as her. Ignoring the movie, she pulled back out her own laptop, and Eöl watched as she started up Scrivener and opened a new project document.

“Sequel?” she said.

Eöl smiled and gave a curt nod. “Sequel.”