The Smell of Raindrops and Lightning by heget

Chapter 1

Elu stretched out on the damp soil, his back resting on the folded gray cloak he had been wearing earlier, looking up at the trees. Melian, his wife, rested on the ground next to him, her shining eyes closed as she hummed a counterpoint to the rain. A storm was passing through the pine woods, and they had found shelter under the largest tree with the densest branches, waiting for the falling rain to end. Most had fallen, and now there was only in comparison a few drops to shake the pine needles and shimmer to the ground, making a soft yet constant melody. When the storm would finally end, the birds would return and burst into song, but for now the only voices against the rain were of Elu Thingol and Melian.

There was a profound sense of peacefulness, Thingol thought, to listen to the voices of the rain, unbothered by anyone else but his wife.

Gently he clasped one of her hands and kissed it, which made her eyes open and her lips bow into a gentle smile.

They returned to listening and watching the rain, the damp air making their garments cling to their skin.

"The winds of the Aran Einior carrying the moisture from Ulu’s seas," Melian explained, watching the rain fall through the canopy of the trees.

She had given the same lecture to the children of Mithrim earlier that day, while Elu was conferring with the lord of that land, the son of Eredhon who was the brother of Elu's brother Elmo’s wife. A nephew by marriage only, but Elu trusted the man and counted him among dear kin. He was a good steward for the people that chose to make the northern plains their home, herding great numbers of deer and horses across the rich plains. The people of Mithrim and Lothlann traveled year-round, moving the herds from pasture to pasture, but at this time of year they were always near the pine forests near the white peak of Foen, and that is where Elu and Melian would meet them. Elu would listen to any cases or concerns the lord needed his king to hear, and Melian would gather all the women and children to a circle around her in the center of the tents, holding her own court. There, kneeling down to accept flower crowns and hugs from the youngest children, Melian would laugh and bless each child, ask after the mothers and young women, and dispense her wisdom. She would give lessons to those that gathered near on how to grow the necessary herbs, mix poultices and remedies for any ailments, bake a bread that would sustain them on their long journeys, and sing the greater knowledge of the workings of the world she learned from the One. Melian delighted in sharing her knowledge with their people, of finding new ways to bring not just needed advice but ways to add beauty. There was not a gray cloak among the people of the northern plains that Melian had not eventually stitched at least one border of tiny flowers or galloping horses, and she would mend button holes as well as gift tapestries and blankets to grace their homes. The size of the task had no bearing on the brightness of her smile, and Thingol thought it typical that for each journey they made, Melian would instruct her maidens to fill her packs with clothes and bolts of fabric and needles - and that by the end of their visits, only the king’s travel bags were even halfway full.

Melian continued her recitation of this morning’s lecture, but Thingol tuned out the words, listening only to the song-like cadence of her voice. His eyes lingered on a droplet, following its path as it slid down a pine needle, falling and then rolling off another, until finally the drop of water escaped down to the earth and sunk into the rich loam of the forest floor.

The soil was damp and smelled strongly of dirt and growth. Elu found he loved the smells of each region of his home, from the marsh reeds and salt of Nevrast to the heather carpeting the northern hills to the various forests of the land of rivers: willow, beech, and pine. Each was enticing, but more so with Melian as his companion.

His wife murmured of the rain shadows of the mountains to the east, of heavy clouds laden with tiny droplets of water too burdensome to carry over tall peaks. Of water falling down the western side of the slopes, running together into seven rivers that fed and nourished a great forest.

"It is a gentle rainstorm," Elu observed, listening to the slow patter, the splashes as the raindrops found the puddles forming between the ground sheltered by the pine boughs. "No lightning," he said, thinking back to how the sky had raged with blinding networks of burning light back in Cuiviénen, before he had gone with the Balan Araw, back when the Belain had waged war to imprison their fallen brother. Then it had looked as if a hammer was being taken to the sky, and the lightning was the great spidering cracks as the star-knit heavens were about to crumble into great jagged pieces. Fear, Elu remembered, holding his younger brothers to his body tightly as they tried to shelter in their roundhouse near the lake.

"Energy," Melian said with a faint smile, a soothing hand running across her husband’s forehead, "built up in the clouds, the friction rubbing against another like when you rub your palms together swiftly. Elbereth releases the energy across the clouds or into the earth safely, drawing down to the ground from into the sky like two points meeting, and the lightning is the outline of her path. But not today’s storm; there is no lightning."

"Is that why it goes after the tallest trees and peaks," Elu asked, "because the Kindler does not wish to waste too much light drawing the pathways?"

Melian laughed quietly at this and rolled over to hug him. “Exactly,” she whispered, staring into his gray eyes, the loose dark tresses hanging down from either side of her face to curtain his. The feeling that the world was only the two of them once more, that an eternity could pass while staring into each other’s eyes, came over them, and Melian leaned down to touch his lips.

Before they kissed, a stray thought came to him, and Elu, smiling in amusement, said, “It is good there is no lightning, for as the tallest of us all, the lightning would hit me first before anyone else.”

Melian leaned back, her face suddenly dark and stern. “No lightning would ever hit you, my love. I will never allow the Lady of the Stars to make that mistake.” The glittering light of her eyes has sharpened into a fierceness Thingol rarely saw in her. “No lightning will strike anyone,” she proclaimed, and he could see into her thoughts, that vast current of a Maia who sang her spirit along pathways an elven one could not journey. Of how the purely academic knowledge of lightning, static electricity discharging during storms suddenly became reevaluated, reclassified as dangerous, as a threat to her people. Visions of lightning striking the tent poles of the Mithrim camps, of flash fires that burned across the plains and threatened their herds, trees stuck and crashing and falling on her people, all came to Melian. She locked her elbows as she pushed up from the ground, any calmness of her expression gone as she stared up at the sky with a deeply furrowed brow. “I must find ways to keep the lightning from striking where we wish it not. The next storms may carry some, and nothing must be hurt.”

"We cannot protect everyone from everything," Thingol told her, but he could still see the yearning of her eyes, the calculations and vows to do just that. Melian believed it was her sacred duty to safeguard all his people, and he did not know how much of that drive came from being one of the Servants of the One who entered the world to shape and protect it, and how much came from his desires.

He gathered her in his arms and kissed soothingly at her brow, smelling the faint perfume of flowers that clung to her skin and hair. “Be at peace, Beloved. We shall address that problem for another time, but for now let us watch the rain. When it ends, we will have to go back to the camp. For now, stay with me, and don’t be troubled.”

Chapter End Notes

All terms for the Valar are in Sindarin -

Aran Einior : "King of the Ainur" Manwë
Ulu : Ulmo
Balan : Vala
Belain : the Valar (plural)
Araw : Oromë
Elbereth : Varda

Foen is the peak of Dorthonion; Thingol and Melian visited the region at least once, for it is noted in teh published Silm. that the lake, Aeluin, famous as the camp of Barahir and his outlaws as well as where Aegnor saw a star reflected in Andreth's hair, was hallowed by Melian. The names of geopraghical regions before the Noldor came and renamed them are not recorded, so I left them the same. 

Elmo is the younger brother of Elu and Olwë, grandfather of Celeborn. Eredhon is an OC, the brother of Elmo's (unnamed in canon) wife, and grandfather to the mothers of both Finduilas and Gil-galad.