The Carriage held but just Ourselves by StarSpray

Melian

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

- Emily Dickinson

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When Elu Thingol was slain in his treasury, the forest outside erupted in a sudden storm, of gale-winds and driving rain, and the land itself shook with Melian's anguish, as she raced to his side. In the distance she was faintly aware of a party of dwarves moving fast through the caves, and then through the wood, but her thoughts were only for Elu, lying in a slowly-spreading pool of blood. It matted dark and sticky in his beautiful silver hair, and was smeared across his robes, the floor, spattered on the walls and on the treasures scattered about during the struggle.

He was still alive, but not for long. Melian wept as she knelt beside him, taking his head into her lap and clasping his hand to her breast, over her own heart that had beat for so long in time to his. It was too late to call for help; it was too late for even her most powerful songs to save him. Her tears fell like raindrops onto Elu's face, leaving pale tracks through the smear of blood on his cheek. "Melian…" he whispered. There was blood on his lips, staining them too-bright red, like the threads she used to weave poppies into her tapestries.

She had known that Doom was coming to Doriath, had tried to warn him, but she had not thought that it would come like this, a crashing discordant note in the song of their lives—a song that should not have had an ending. "Oh Elu, Elu," she cried, as the Light in his eyes dimmed, and his spirit departed his body with one last sigh.

It was as though something had been torn out of her with a violence she had until that moment been unable to comprehend. Melian wailed her grief to the unyielding stone, as outside a storm raged.