In Need of a Cold Shower by heget

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Chapter 8

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Seregeithon stood beside the giant swan, Hiswalagawen, as the bird acted as translator for the portly walrus looming before him. That he had dared to think the seals large, a jest now that he faced these creatures. The bull walrus dwarfed the white bear. He wondered what walrus meat tasted like - one carcass could feed a village, Seregeithon wagered. Would the hunt be worth it and how did one plan such a hunt? The whiskered and long-toothed head turned towards him, beady little black eyes staring as if it knew of what Seregeithon had just thought.

“Ask it about dragons,” Seregeithon instructed the swan. Hiswalagawen hissed. With a deliberately long pause to signal her disdain at being commanded by an elf other than Helcerían -for that was how Seregeithon was choosing to interpret that vocalization and silence- the swan honked for two minutes as the walrus grunted back, the bird growing progressively louder and more agitated. 

Helcerían shook her head. “The walruses think that you may be correct, Seregeithon. A foul-smelling beast, large, that stalks both land and water, long like an eel. But why? And how?”

“Some must have survived the fall of the Iron Fortress, and they are no strangers to the bitterest cold. Their breath is poison as well as flame, and it would explain both the sickness and the carcasses.”

Helcerían shivered. “It is a foul thing, but a sound theory.” 

Elrond dug around in his bird-embroidered satchel until he pulled out a half-composed missive and wrote three tehta against the parchment pressed against his trouser leg, struggling to scribble out the thought in this awkward contortion without resorting to unpacking his full kit.

Seregeithon only felt a calm acceptance instead of panic at the support for his suspicion. From curtailed childhood his outlook leaned into fatalism. “Eärendil slew the mightiest of the dragons and most of its kind perished in the war, but no one would be fool enough to believe that all of Glaurung’s spawn were vanquished when Angband was cleared. No more than all of the enemy’s monsters were slain when the first dark stronghold was breached. Something foul always slithers away.”

“Have you fought dragons before?”

The older man pulled at the almost-healed wound on his hand. The itch of healing skin existed only now in his mind, but the gesture had become a tic. “In the Fourth and Fifth. Many times. I was a spearman, not an archer, and not Noldor-born to join one of Prince Fingon’s personal cavalry to attack the Sire of Dragons when the Golden first revealed himself. Later, after the last strongholds on the mainlines were wiped out due to the Kinslayings and Fall of Gondolin, many smaller dragons roamed Beleriand. They avoided the deep forests, and Orothaiben would not waste us trying to fight them. The dragons’ only weaknesses are their bellies, and that is difficult to pierce. Like hunting wild boar. Only worse. Brave and cunning and skilled you need to be to hunt boar, and a hero to go after dragons. Or have a death wish.”

Hiswalagawen honked once more, louder than before, and buffeted her wings. 

“A storm is coming in off the ocean,” Helcerían translated. “We need to move inland.”

 

A basin in the landscape, the center white with unmelted snow and ice, spread temptingly before their feet, the slopes shallow and the center flat, “Another frozen lake?” Elrond asked.

Seregeithon grunted, “Yes.”

“Do you think it safe to traverse?”

Helcerían walked out to the frozen shore edge and tapped her booted foot against the ice. While the earth around the lake was brown, the top of the lake was like a piece of winter dropped by a careless traveler. The surface texture was cracked and flaked like a covered pastry, but the color was still a uniform semi-opaque whitish blue. “Safe,” Helcerían declared. 

Eager to reach the rise of land opposite the frozen lake and the promise of terrain in which to find a windbreak, the three crossed the lake ice, moving carefully to avoid slipping. Hiswalagawen, recently returned from another round trip to Harlindon and Númenor, desired to rest their wings instead of scouting. Helcerían carried the giant swan in her arms, sparing the bird the ice against its feet. A spoiled cat carted around by an indulgent owner was the overall effect, Seregeithon thought ungraciously. 

As they walked, Elrond continued his recitation of the final actions of the Narn i Hîn Húrin, stressing the details of Turin’s hunt and subsequent slaying of Glaurung the Golden. Helcerían allowed him the monologue, considerate not to interrupt nor inform Elrond that she was already well-acquainted with Dírhavel’s masterpiece. The epic, as well as other Edain literature, was wildly popular in Valinor, and one could not escape recitals in Tirion or Tol Eressëa, let alone the full ballet in Valmar. She could not tell if the recitation was Elrond’s method of reassuring himself or an act that only swelled his dread at the possibility of encountering a dragon.

Eyes on the ice for wet patches where the melt had thinned beyond the safe weight threshold or where fissures were waiting to crack, Seregeithon found an unexpected treat. “The ice fire,” he said, interrupting Elrond. “The bubbles of burnable air I told you about.” He pointed to opaque white and cyan blue patches inside the ice revealing where the bubbles were trapped.

Elrond crouched down and swept the dusting of snow off a stretch of lake ice, revealing more round white shapes underneath. They looked like suspended snowballs. “Are you sure?”

Giddily Seregeithon pulled out his icepick and instructed Elrond to get the flint striker ready. “Watch carefully. When I break through, you’ll feel the difference.”

“Boys,” Helcerían scorned. She waited while the two elves broke the trapped bubble and lit the flame- the first fire almost invisible except for how the edges of the hole melted, the second bubble turning into a torch that belonged in a glassblower’s forge. Seregeithon and Elrond hollered with excitement. Helcerían sighed. “How long shall this burn?” The flame roared up for half a foot in front of her, seemingly conjured by nothing and widening the hole in the ice.

Seregeithon pondered. “Several minutes. Not long enough to cook something, though my old patrols would use this trick to heat stew. You are unfamiliar with this?”

“It is a thing of lakes and rivers, not sea ice,” Helcerían said. “I think. I do not know. Few wander into the Grinding Ice besides myself.”

“The smell is odd,” Elrond said. “Not sulfuric or rotting. Almost nothing.”

“Not like dragonfire,” Seregeithon said. “That you will smell, for leagues. And you will not wash the stench away.”

<hr>

The colder temperature forced the reconfiguration of their tents into one larger shelter reinforced with a windbreak of snow blocks and a ring of stones. The shelter was not tall enough to stand fully except at the center, but they could fit all of their gear and party. Wind pawed at the hide flap of the tent’s door, but the storm demurred from breaking. Inside, via lantern-light, Elrond reexamined Seregeithon’s wounds from the white bear. The peredhel removed the final stitch and peered at the skin. Without the fear of infection that could turn minor cuts dangerous, Seregeithon found Elrond’s worry excessive and a byproduct of his mortal lineage. The kneeling elf suffered the younger man’s ministrations with his characteristic lack of grace. “See, healing well. You irrational worrywort. Now leave me be and let us sleep. What little we shall - you sprawl in your sleep and hog the bedrolls.”

Elrond flung Seregeithon’s shirt at the other man’s head, the bundled garment bouncing off of the side of Seregeithon’s face. Before Seregithon could snatch the shirt and shrug it back on, a beak pulled it out of his reach. Hiswalagawen’s neck retreated, the shirt in her stolen grasp, and the swan pushed the garment under its body, adding another layer to the impromptu nest that it had created out of Seregeithon and Elrond’s fur-lined hats, a spare blanket, and other items piled in the corner of the tent. Small black eyes glared a challenge as the swan settled into a comfortable position, the shirt hidden beneath thick white feathers.

The only circumstance in which Seregeithon would have attempted to reclaim his shirt from that giant swan involved a hypothetical and impressive amount of consumed alcohol. Soberly he resigned his former shirt to its fate as Hiswalagawen’s nest for the night.

“Leave it be,” Seregeithon said both to the swan with his purloined shirt and to Elrond with the roll of bandages and sharp-smelling salve. Helcerían, humming the last bars of the song to re-enforce heat retention of the shelter against the night’s cold, nudged her avian companion with a foot. Hiswalagawen tucked her head beneath a wing and nestled deeper into the pile of clothing and hats. As Helcerían unsuccessfully prodded her stubborn swan, Elrond rerolled the excess bandages. “If they do not bother you,” he prompted, leading into a question that Seregeithon curtailed.

“No pain. No tightness. You did well, Boy.”

Elrond beamed. “These should not leave deep scars, as long as I do not deplete my supply of the poultice herbs. The wounds are healing clean, and I did not misjudge the recipe,” Elrond said smugly. “Skimp not the fresh application with each rewrapping of the bandages, and rub the poultice around the skin.”

“I will,” Helcerían interrupted, sliding between Seregeithon and Elrond and sinking to her knees above the older elf, straddling his legs between her knees. She placed one hand on Seregeithon’s bare shoulder and challenged him with a pale stare. The slight difference in angle forced Seregeithon to raise his chin, and Helcerían’s eyes dipped from his face to the exposed tendons of his neck. Shirtless, Seregeithon knew the blush blossoming across his face and upper torso was unmistakable. His skin grew hot, feverishly flushed if he had been mortal. Helcerían’s fingers remained cool - but the corners of her lips curved up. Oh how he had longed for the return of her queenly smile. Seregeithon flushed a deeper shade of pink as Helcerían smirked and placed her second hand not on the tingling skin around the healing claw marks on his belly but up on the curve of his pectoral. She cupped the muscle in her palm, long cold fingers brushing against his nipple. Stunned and aroused, Seregeithon did not think to raise his own hands and mirror the gesture. Thinking was not a task that he was capable of at this moment. That one of his first thoughts upon meeting Helcerían was the desire to cup her breasts only made this lapse in gumption all the more tragic. Mute and frozen, Seregeithon stared at her. “My fool,” Helcerían murmured, moving her hands slowly to caress his body, “you have enough scars.” Her fingers played across his upper chest, running along the ridgelines of old scars and around the areola. 

“Milady needs to pick another name for me,” Seregeithon replied.

“I told you many times to use my name,” Helcerían said in the same low and teasing tone, sinking fully into his lap and feeling the heat of his body press delightfully against the muscles of her inner thighs. The hand at Seregeithon’s shoulder now wrapped around his neck, thumb on one side and fingers below the other earlobe. Not with squeezing pressure, but the placement did have interesting effects on Seregeithon’s eyes. His pupils blew wide, swallowing the irises. Black as the night sky above the sacred island of Tol Eressëa, Helcerian thought. His mouth hung open. The expression was an intense repeat of when he finally confessed his feelings, and that face made Helcerían desire to shove Seregeithon supine onto the floor of the tent and strip his remaining garments from his flushed and overheated skin to feel the rest of him. That which she could currently see and touch enticed her in a way that she found unfathomable. The blood-flushed skin hot against her fingers. The pale scars. The soft nearly invisible hairs on his chest and arms. The curve of his muscles, perfect under her palm. His long white hair sticking with sweat to his forehead. The strain of his tendons and the fast flutter of shallow breath under her hand encircling his throat. Eyes black and glassy and unfocused. The black of the ocean far from the lights of the harbor. She needed all of him.

“I am still here,” Elrond snapped. Helcerían pushed herself off of Seregeithon, sliding off his lap with a startled squeak that made Seregeithon laugh despite himself. “And I thought the two of you had planned to wait until after the expedition to address,” Elrond paused, uncertain of the words to express the overwhelming cloud of lust that his two companions exuded. “Well… wrap the injuries first,” he switched focus and tossed Helcerían the roll of bandages. “And refrain from strenuous ...kissing while I am present.” 

“We were not kissing,” Seregeithon grumbled.

Helcerían reached for the jar of salve. “I said that I would apply the herbs.”

“I do not trust you,” Elrond grumbled. He turned to the giant swan nestled on the pile of purloined garments and furs. “Can you not stop them?”

Hiswalagawen created a hissing sound that sounded suspiciously like a human snore.

 

The tent was as dark as the interior of the cave system beneath Hithlum. Detecting that Helcerian was both awake and turned towards him was impossible via sight, but Seregeithon was certain of it. Within that awareness was the knowledge of their physical closeness and that Helcerían was only inches away in this darkness. The tent was silent, the muffled quiet that Seregeithon remembered of his childhood, back before there was a moon in the sky and his parents and younger brother were alive. Peaceful, safe. To break that silence seemed almost sacrilegious. The tent felt as if under a spell, enchantments sung in a dark forest to settle overhead like owls and nightingales perching on the high branches, waiting for time to restart.

Sleep’s exhaustion had not released him, and his limbs were unwilling to answer eagerly to desire. 

Not unable.

Seregeithon slid a hand across the blankets and furs until he felt Helcerían’s hair fanned out around her pillow. Greedily he sank his fingertips into the hair, tangling and twisting. Helcerían sighed in pleasure. Encouraged, Seregeithon shifted his body, praying not to wake the other occupants of the tent, until he was close enough to kiss Helcerían. Without illumination his lips ghosted across her face until they found her parted lips. They kissed slowly. The languid pace added to the dreamlike quality. Chaste, in comparison to all of his fantasies.

Helcerían kicked a heavy fur blanket down to free her arms to pull at Seregeithon, sighing softly as he angled more of his body to overlap atop hers. While not intentionally pressing down against her, his weight was a heavy pressure against her upper chest, and his arms circled protectively around her head, pulling at her hair. His motions were gentle. Reverent. She stilled, moving nothing more than her mouth and closing her eyes once more, focusing on Seregeithon. He had her pinned beneath him; his scent flooded her senses. However, his hands never moved from where they were entangled in her loose hair and his kisses remained slow and persistent, nibbling at her lower lip but never biting. 

Helcerían allowed him to dictate this, unwilling to demand more, submitting to his tender attention. Overwhelming passion she still desired, but there was a peaceful security in how Seregeithon only kissed her mouth in the pitch black silence.

“If that cock leaves the trousers, then Hiswagalawen and I are going to crawl out of this tent,” Elrond threatened dryly in the darkness, and Seregeithon ceased movement.

“You’ll freeze at this time of night,” came Helcerían’s sensible counter. A melodic but emphatic hoot expressed the swan’s disdain for that threat.

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Chapter End Notes

Methane bubbles in frozen lake ice - and people lighting the gas on fire- is a real phenomenon.

 

And now in scenes of dubious canonicity, the start of several conversations that our couple need to have before their relationship progresses further:
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“You said that hunting dragons was only for if one had a death wish, Seregeithon, and in the same conversation admitted to hunting many.” Helcerían’s tone was solemn.
Seregeithon lifted his head from where it was nestled in her lap. Words hesitated to leave his reddened lips. “I sought vengeance, not mine own death. But I did not treat my life cautiously. Slaying others - be they beasts or orcs- consumed me. I learned nothing else, trained for nothing else, desired nothing else. Have...nothing else.”
Helcerían sat frozen.
“Does that repulse you?” Seregeithon asked haltingly.
“Saddens me,” the Amanyar woman admitted. “I understand how you could have grown into a man of such singular violence. And that your fate you wish on no others. I only wish that it had spared you as well.” Her hand fell to his forehead and brushed at his bangs. The gesture of a goddess granting absolution.
“Let us change the topic. We need a safeword. And what is your opinion on collars?”