Flames and Moths by HannaGoldworthy

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Thargelion

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As the dust settled near this nameless Mannish settlement in Thargelion, Caranthir took inventory of his losses.  There were few as far as he could see, mostly of horses; his cavalry charge had taken the Enemy’s servants by surprise, as he had hoped.  The Men were not so fortunate; all but the youngest of the males had been slaughtered, and, now that they had the time and energy to devote to grief, the females were wailing aloud.

 

It was not so loud a wail as had been raised in Alqualondë; these people were well acquainted with death.  Still, the smell of the blood and ash, the sound of the weeping, the sheer mess of evidence of this, Morgoth’s greatest outrage against Creation, raised Caranthir’s gorge against his will.  He was, mathematically speaking, excellent at fighting; dealing with the emotion afterward was the hard part.

 

“Go,” he uttered gruffly to his captain, as he watched an old woman beat her wings rapidly in a valiant effort to balance the weight of the armored body of what appeared to be her son.  “Let us help them with this, at least.”

 

Loborgûr followed his gaze, and went to aid the woman immediately.  The rest followed her example swiftly, Caranthir not included.  It seemed as if he was attempting to walk through wax, or to breathe water; he found himself collapsed at the burned side of what had once been a hastily-made house – more of a big lean-to than anything.

 

A great mass of brown hair was directly in front of his vision; for a moment, he thought it a person, albeit one who had not groomed in quite a long time.  Then, his eyes finally began to clear, and he noted that, aside from the color, the mass appeared similar to a spider’s egg sac.  Or, at least, it might have been similar once; when the building had burned, so had the sac, partially.

 

Pushing his illness to the side as much as possible, Caranthir approached with his sword drawn; he had personally dealt with spider infestations in the past, and knew not to trust that all of the eggs had escaped an unmonitored fire.  However, just before he could make an exploratory poke at the least damaged piece of the sac, another sword clashed with his.

 

“How dare you?”  His vision was entirely clouded with red and, for once, it had nothing to do with his temper.  The woman in front of him had not been able to tend to her curly red hair due to battle, and it flew in a wild cloud about her head.  Her face was flushed, with exertion but mostly with anger; he almost felt he was looking in a mirror.  And, most importantly, she had cast her crimson wings out behind her in a violent display of aggression toward him.

 

She was lucky that he was so discombobulated.  Had he been well, he likely might have jumped into a fury of his own.  As it was, he could barely grit out a reply between clenched teeth without wanting to hyperventilate.

 

“My apologies, miss –”

 

“That’s Lady Haleth to you.  And I sincerely doubt that your lord would like to know about you killing a defenseless man while he slept.”

 

He had never directly killed anyone while they slept, but in the first days of the sun Aredhel had taken especial pleasure in describing how she had once lost an entire brigade at rest to the Helcaraxë’s fickle serenity.  His cheeks burned with shame; that happened quite a lot these days.

 

“I am the lord,” he said, quietly, the words falling flat even to his ears.  “I had no idea –”

 

“No idea?!  I and my people may be new to this area, my lord, but we were under the impression that your people had previously encountered ours.  Or did Marach’s men take to hiding their wings since they crossed the mountains?”

 

He had known Men possessed wings, but little else; Finrod had been maddeningly close-lipped with his half-cousins regarding his pets.  Caranthir’s scattered brain was forced to freeze almost entirely, trying to make the connection between the hair sac and the wings.  Painfully, he remembered that Celegorm had kept an insect collection as a child, guarding it more jealously than he did any gem.  Before Curufin’s birth, Caranthir had been Celegorm’s sounding board of choice; there was an indistinct memory involving unorganized yammering about certain life cycles amongst creatures that Caranthir had once indiscriminately described as vermin.

 

Haleth squinted dangerously in his direction, now silent; evidently, he’d grown accustomed to tuning out pointless rants while his brain was at work.  “Hey,” she ventured, the edge beginning to seep out of her voice.  “Are you…all right?  You look like you’re about to puke.”

 

“Or faint,” he murmured, before clearing his throat to start again.  “It’s a cocoon, right?  Not an egg sac.”

 

She lowered her sword for the first time, and her wings fluttered indecisively.  “My people prefer the term ‘chrysalis.’”

 

He decided he could make her that concession, and bowed as deeply as he was able.  “My condolences, then.”

 

The girl blinked indelicately, and spun on her heels to study the chrysalis herself.  When she reached the same conclusion he had – the man inside was certainly dead of suffocation at least – she fell to her knees in grief, her wings falling behind her in a dejected, impromptu cloak.  Unbidden, she reminded him of his mother, weeping there in the mud, covered in blood, ash, and dirt; he had not seen his mother since before Alqualondë, but the memory tainted everything he could recall about his former home, and he knew his mother had wept.  Cautiously, almost unthinkingly, he approached, making sure that Haleth knew he was knelt beside her before tentatively placing a hand on her shoulder.

 

“I had been so sure orcs would not notice them,” she sobbed.  “That we would have at least a few men left.  I hadn’t counted on the fires.”

 

“…Are there special circumstances in disposing of a body in this state?”  Caranthir bit his tongue as soon as the words left it.  He was always too analytical when attempting to be helpful.

 

Oddly enough, she smiled tearfully at him.  “Not really, but thank you for asking.  Can you help me take him to the square, with the others?  He is rather tall for me to carry alone.”

 

“Very well.”  He took care to only cut the chrysalis from the wall, leaving most of it wrapped around what remained of the body to serve as an impromptu shroud.  A bit of wing poked out of the wrappings; emerald green and pocketed with char marks.  Swallowing his gorge down again, Caranthir wordlessly followed Haleth to the square, hoping to not make himself an even greater disgrace before he got there.

 

***

 

The morning following the burial was a dismal affair, and once again, Caranthir found himself taking inventory.  The old ones were mostly gone save for that one indomitable woman whom he gathered was Haleth’s grandmother; her parents, twin brother, and sister-in-law had not survived, leaving only one child, Haleth’s nephew, who had scarcely learned to walk.  All male warriors had been killed, even some too young to be due to grow their wings.  Many female warriors were dead, and most of the surviving ones were already growing their hair out for their own chrysali; ready or not, they would sleep at the summer’s highest heat, only to return in autumn.  They would not be able to rely on the male warriors coming out of their chrysali after their early summer transformation, for none of those had survived.  The defense force would consist of a scant few already-winged women, and children too small to hold a knife, or hunt or forage unaided.

 

It was already a lean year, even for his people.  But, if he wanted to avoid having yet another memory to regret, there really was nothing for it.

 

“Our fortress can support your people for the summer months, if you are willing.”

 

Haleth glared.  “We did not come this far to subsist on charity.”

 

With the dead buried, he was not as unwell as he had been, and glared right back at her.  “You neglected to ask permission to settle here; I’d have been well within my rights to drive you and yours back over the mountains from whence you came.  It was my charity that allowed you to stay.  Certainly you can impose on me a little longer, if I am willing?”

 

She looked about to argue, when her grandmother smacked her upside the head with one sapphire wing.  “We would be honored to accept your invitation, your grace,” the old woman snarled.

 

Haleth glowered helplessly.  “Honored,” she bit out, scowling as he smirked in mirthless triumph.

 

***

 

She did not glare when he found her before the sturdiest oak tree in his garden a month later, hugging her knees and staring blankly at the chrysali of her kinswomen.  After a few scant weeks in her company, he knew enough of her mind to know that she heard when he carefully sat down beside her, though she made no sound to greet her.

 

For a few minutes, they sat in silence, though it was hardly companionable.  Not for the first time, Caranthir wished she had encountered any other of his kin rather than him.  It seemed that every other brother or cousin would have either been fierce enough to defend her tribe more quickly, wise enough to know what to say to comfort her, or frightening enough that no orc would have dared attack so openly on their land.  But he was none of these things, and so his tongue was tied; yet, he stayed with her, for it seemed cruel to leave her alone in this state.

 

“My betrothed was in one of those chrysali,” she said at last, startling him out of the self-defeating spiral where his thoughts seemed to stray more and more.

 

There was a sharp pause as he collected his thoughts, far too long a pause before he managed a small, “I’m sorry.”

 

She shrugged.  Her eyes were tearless; he found he recognized her expression as being too exhausted to weep.  After far too long a pause, wherein he thought the conversation finished, she broke the silence again.

 

“We grew up together, though he was younger than me.  When I came out of my chrysalis, I found him settled there with his sword.  He had only slept or eaten when his family prevailed upon him, so keen he was on protecting me.  I promised to do the same when his time came.  I failed him.”

 

What was he supposed to say?  That she had failed no one?  That she could hardly have known about orcs and their fell fire which water could not quench?  That her betrothed would likely never blame her, any more than her people did?  Those were all pathetic nothings, something that only Turgon or Finrod could make wise, and then only tenuously.  Caranthir had no wisdom, only knowledge, and even there he could see how woefully behind he was becoming, day by painful day.

 

“I was betrothed once,” his mouth said, unbidden.

 

The woman beside huffed incredulously in the time it took him to bite his disobedient tongue.  “Let me guess,” she said, her sardonic tone practically enough to tan a hide.  “I remind you of her.”

 

He snorted.  “Hardly.  She was quiet and disliked conflict.  You remind me more of my younger brother.”  Specifically, she was the surviving redheaded twin who had looked to him for comfort and found nothing; but his purpose was to give comfort, not seek it, so he left that tale alone.  “My point is that I lost her to an accident, and…well, I know how you feel.”

 

The comment felt inadequate, but she seemed to take it for what it was worth.  “Does it ever hurt any less?”

 

“…No.  Not that I’ve ever noticed.”

 

Haleth smiled sadly at him, and nodded, turning back to the oak to begin her vigil again.  The conversation was truly over, it seemed, though the silence this time was certainly easier to bear.

 

***

 

It was during one of these night watches, a week later, when he saw the moon gleam through her wings as she paced up and down, rocking her orphaned nephew to sleep.  The light glimmered against the grass, deep red interspersed with black, as though through stained glass.

 

He looked up at Haleth, and an indescribable feeling came over him at the sight of her.  Once, he had wanted a sister, when his brothers had paired amongst themselves and he had been left solitary, as usual.  In his daydreams, he had imagined such a girl would have resembled Haleth; impetuous but gentle, strong but kind, red in hair and in face.  Looking at Haleth brought that old longing back, of someone he could simply be with and nurture, care for and protect…love, with the simple, marrow-deep instinct with which he loved all his brothers.

 

But Haleth was not as small as she had been.  She had grown, somehow, without him noting it until now; he could see it in the set of her broad shoulders, the almost casual beauty of her face, the resigned calm of her expression as she looked upon her nephew.  She was a lady, in war and in peace, and in the face of her strength his fretful tongue once again leapt ahead of his brain before he could stop it.

 

“I’m proud of you.”

 

She stopped and frowned quizzically at him, and he blushed and wished the ground would swallow him.

 

“I mean, I’m proud to have known you.  Honored.”

 

Haleth smiled, and it took his breath away before he could dig his grave any further.  “I’m proud of you too, Caranthir.  Honored”

 

***

 

“You’re sure you want to leave?”

 

Haleth nodded, though her eyes were fixed upon her people as they gathered up what remained of their possessions.  The young women had emerged a week before, and he saw her concern for them and their fragile wings; he also saw her concern for the lateness of the year with every glance she threw toward the sky.  “We did not ask your permission to settle because it was never our intention to stay.  We only stopped when our young men could not hold off their change any longer.”

 

It was odd, how natural it felt to tilt her chin up toward him, so that she could see the sincerity in his eyes as he said, “You don’t have to leave.  I could easily give you land here…not where you were, of course, but good land.”

 

She smiled ruefully, taking his hand from her cheek and holding it in both of hers.  “I know, and I am grateful.  But, aside from your kindness, Thargelion remains an evil memory for my people.  And, if we are to get anywhere more suitable in time to be ready for winter, we must leave as soon as possible.”

 

The lives of Men were fleeting, he knew, but he had not expected to lose her so quickly.  Even still, she was her own woman, and if she would not stay, he would not force her.  Trusting not his voice – for, fickle thing, it stuck in his throat and would not be removed without tears – he kissed her hand, and released her.

 

An hour later, she would turn back toward him – he knew because he knew how her wings fluttered when she looked over her shoulder, even though she was miles away.  But she only looked back once, and only for a moment; for that moment, his heart was in his throat, hopeful that she had changed her mind.  Then, she turned back, her heading fixed upon the great dark expanse of Doriath, and he found he could not be happier for the resolute power of her will.