on my watch you'll be able to fly by kimaracretak

Chapter 1

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It is winter when Melian agrees to teach her.

The clouds hang low in Doriath, drifting through the trees' dead limbs as if they wish to kiss the mist crawling over the ground. Galadriel is restless in the cold and the white, and Melian is unsure she wants answers to the questions aching at the back of her tongue.

And so: a distraction.

The wind twists the long fall of Galadriel's hair into intricate shapes across her back. Melian follows the lines with her fingertips, smiles as her student shivers under her touch.

"Patience," she whispers. "The year is long."

 

**

 

It is spring in Doriath and Galadriel is vibrating with the promise of life. Her attention is hot and demanding and Melian finds she does not wish to resist. She lets herself be pulled along paths and over streams until the rocks change to grass under her feet.

"Here," Galadriel says, and from under the earth she plucks flowers, blue-black blooms shivering open before their time. "I've practised, you see."

Her magic is wild and overeager, the blooms not long for the world, but Galadriel weaves them tight together, crowns Melian with joy, and this, too, Melian cannot deny her.

 

**

 

Summer descends hot and quiet, and Galadriel dives deep into shimmering lakes, surfaces with laughter to find Melian's birds overhead.

"Come to greet the morning with me?" she asks.

If their song in reply is words, she does not understand, but she knows enough to follow as she is led to the shore where Melian lies waiting, naked skin gleaming in the sun.

She's warm to the touch when Galadriel curls into her side, doesn't complain as the lake-water runs cool over her skin as Galadriel kisses her good morning.

Galadriel's kisses follow the water, and the day is long.

 

**

 

Melian's connection to her realm is true in the depths of autumn in a way Galadriel aches for. Melian leans against the vast trunks of her trees, robed in a red as deep as that of the leaves above, and Galadriel sits at her feet with Melian's hands in her hair.

"Will you teach me this, too?" She asks with undisguised eagerness. "How to bend the land and be one with it?"

"Perhaps," Melian says, and Galadriel knows by now she means yes. "But there is so much to learn first."

In Doriath, in the fall, they have the time.