In Need of a Cold Shower by heget

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Chapter 9

Hiswalagawen decides that she is Y'shtola. Alternatively, one could say that she pulls a Gandalf.

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Seregethion’s hand curled around the shaft of his spear. The gesture was familiar- and pointless. The spear had saved him against the white bear, as it had against the orcs and wolves decades before. The foe before him no single spear could fell.

“A long-worm,” Seregeithon hissed. “It is wingless, else our Doom would be greater still, but we have been given this one mercy.” Elrond was uncertain if the thankfulness of his voice was a truthful sentiment or irony. The older man was fond of his sarcasm.

“And it yet does not see us,” Helcerían added.

“Yet,” Seregeithon echoed, teeth barred in a sneer that was equally fatalist humor as it was anger and disgust.

The wingless dragon was -if Seregeithon’s eye for judging measurement at a distance was accurate- longer than the whale corpse by a third, though that length was mostly tail. The beast was thin and long, weasel-like in body shape, with neck and tail the majority of its substance and a torso barely thicker than the ends. Supine in repose, it did not coil like a resting snake, but the dragon looked more like a snake than any other living creature. The hide of iron-hard dark bronze scales glinted and shimmered in the sun, darkest in color around the head and then dappled and banded with a row of raised lighter bronze scales in a ridge along the spine. A pair of horns rose like antlers from its head. Said skull was vaguely horse-like in shape, long and heavy compared to the narrow lithe body. The creature was beautiful, taken in isolation, but the odor even from this distance was foul, and awake all dragons were both dangerous and cruel. Seregiethon did not forget this, that dragons were the worst of Morgoth’s creations, more vile than orcs or werewolves and more dangerous than balrogs. Nor was the danger limited to the maw of many teeth, taloned feet, and fiery breath. The sleeping dragon blighted the surrounding land. The earth was soft with rot and ash, as if stone and ice were necrotic flesh. Gold was the only substance of Arda that did not physically degrade beneath a dragon and thus why the creatures valued the metal so highly for their nests, though this fact would remain unknown until the wars against the dwarves.

Helcerían’s mystery was solved.

The dragon’s passive despoiling of the land created a faint depression on the flat ice sheet, not deep enough to be a crater but a change in elevation over a great distance that the three elves were looking down upon the beast. The unevenness of the rocks and ice gave them cover to crouch behind, but if the wind shifted then their scent would be carried to the dragon, and on foot their ability to outrun it was in doubt. Seregeithon, Helcerían, and Elrond’s survival depended on the direction of the wind and soundness of the dragon’s sleeping.

“We need to retreat,” Seregeithon said. “We have your answer, Milady. One of the great dragons survived and has learned to swim.”

“But we do not know its lair,” Helcerían hissed. “They do not nest out in the open if they can find another option. And we do not know if there is but one or if others had survived the destruction of Thangorodrim.”

“One is enough,” Seregeithon said, anger and fear dropping octaves in his voice to make it sound un-elven. Helcerían ignored the inappropriate affect that the vocal change gave her. That he belonged in her marriage bed was a worn and familiar thought.

Helcerían’s giant swan companion, who until now had huddled close to the elven woman, struck quickly with her black beak, jabbing Helcerían in the ribs. Helcerían bit off the shout of pain and surprise, fearful of awaking the dragon, but turned to glare most spitefully at her companion. Hiswalagawen hissed, lifting her giant white wings slowly from her back, and jabbed again with her beak, creating another bruise on Helcerían’s upper arm. The command was clear.

The three elves began the awkward yet necessary backwards belly shimmy away from the slumbering dragon, knees and elbows digging into the crust of ice.

The swan did not.

“Hiswalagawen, what are you doing?” Helcerían wheezed. 

The swan’s head oscillated between the dark supine line of the dragon in front of it and the three elves behind, weighing and reweighing two options. Decision chosen, the swan turned once more to look at her companion.

Ósanwë -unnecessarily- clarified Hiswalagawen’s decision. “We are too close to the despoiler. Flee. I will give thee a cushion of safety in which to escape its notice. Beloved children, flee. Debate this not with me, Little Ice-Crowned. Not today. ” A tinge of sorrow colored those words, almost drowned out by amusement and love.

Elrond was the one to pause and Helcerían to curtail his horror-fueled defiance with a sharp and insistent tug at his blue coat. Back over a small crest of rocks she pulled him, the ridge of earth too slight to hide him if he stood upright, but from here the earth began to slant downwards. Eventually the elevation difference would expand to hide them from an earthbound foe in this overcast weather, as long as no errant reflection betrayed them. Seregeithon had no intention of disagreeing with Hiswalagawen’s plan, but he too was sluggish to retreat as he had yet to unhand his iron spear, making his elbow crawl awkward as he carefully reduced the sound of the polearm scraping against the ground. Raising the spear to strap it against his back might create that flash of reflecting metal that they were desperate to avoid. Fear sweat battled with the dragon stench to overwhelm their noses.

Slowly the giant swan unfurled her wings to their full width and held them extended until the three elves were twice again the distance of the shadow clear of those wings.

Ósanwë once more brushed against their minds. “Flee, Children. Whatever occurs, flee. ”

Hiswalagawen shrieked something unfathomable in Valarin, the discordant words as sharp as swords, and in their incomprehensibleness there remained still a glimmer of understandable feeling: the image of a shield and summoned courage, a declaration of protection and a defiant cry against a foe. Of bravado beget by dire necessity. The Maia of Ossë launched herself into the air and flew high into the air, then began to dive towards the dragon. Her cry and rapid descent roused the monster from sleep, but the high angle obscured that Hiswalagawen had companions.

Not that it mattered, for the dragon’s attention fixated upon the swan. The horned head rose, yellow eyes tracking the bright spot of the white swan above it. The dragon crouched low against the tundra, the splay of limbs positioned not for a pounce but protection. Iron-hard the scales were, but the belly was as soft as squid flesh.

Hiswalagawen screamed once more, and nothing would displace her from the dragon’s attention. 

The white of her feathers were so bright it was as if the swan was glowing like a star. 

Elrond had never seen his mother transformed. He imagined how Elwing would have looked when Ulmo uplifted her body from the crashing surf outside the burning refugee camp at the Mouth of Sirion, Silmaril shining against her white gull feathers as she flew to bring Beleriand’s eventual salvation. The fellow survivors on the Isle of Balar and the envoys from the Army of the Valar told him the stories. His mother looked like how Hiswalagawen looked now, Elrond supposed. Both bird and light.

Helcerían bit her lip against the cry of dismay. The three elves watched as the swan bought them safety with her feint.

As Hiswalagawen sped towards the dragon, her shape expanded until the giant swan was of the same wingspan as one of Manwë’s great eagles - and yet she was still dwarfed by the dragon. Now she was upon the monster. Her white wings buffeted at its head, beating against its jaws and pummeling the horned head to and fro. Jaws snapped open and close, fruitlessly swallowing air. Her chance of defeating that array of fang and claw and ink-black scale was nil- but for a second they hoped.

Then the dragon reared back and opened its mouth wide, spewing flames. The air smelled like sulfuric discharge, and the roar of the ignition of the dragon’s breath could be felt from their hiding spot.

Hiswalagawen disappeared.

Immediately Seregeithon lunged for Helcerían and covered her open mouth with his hand, muffling her scream of anguish and pulling her back. The pair scrambled against the cold earth, Seregeithon holding Helcerían in a death hug. “We flee! We flee, Helcerían, now - or make her actions vain!”

Elrond, sobbing in that quiet way he had learned as a young child, turned and crawled and when some sixth sense told him, rose into a crouch and began to run half-bent. As children Elros and him had run thus, more than a century ago, after cutting loose the horses of their kidnappers as a distraction and then fleeing into the forest, wherein Orothaiben and his men had found and rescued them and brought the boys safely to their last remaining kin on the Isle of Balar. His ears waited for the roar of the dragon to grow louder, a sure sign that the monster had spotted them, but the sound only lessened.

Beside him ran Seregeithon and Helcerían. What little wind that there was blew against their backs like a hand shoving them to safety. Fading with every lurching step was the rumble and snap of fire igniting in dry air. Sulfuric ash fell on their clothing. The particles were small, density minimal, just enough that the smell would linger for weeks.

The dragon, preoccupied with worry of another aerial assault, mindful of the vast flock of birds led by Eärendil that had combatted the dragons during the final battle of the War of Wrath, looked only towards the sky, never south towards the sloping plain down which the elves fled.

Only when the sun lowered behind the horizon line to allow all shades of pink to fade and the stars to reveal themselves did the three stop. To the walls of their endurance had they run - and for the peredhel, beyond it. Joints burned like fire, and predators could have tracked them by the clamor of their panting, but nothing had chased them. Midges buzzed around Seregeithon and his two companions, but the insects were their only company. The last of Anor’s light disappeared behind the unseen sea, giving way to the sliver of silver light that was twilight’s illumination. They were not mortals to need the sun to find safe footing, but the temperature had dropped to degrees unsafe when one was as weary as their hours of running had made them.

One more step, Elrond knew, would force him to puke. Then collapse in bone-dead exhaustion onto the permafrost. Then perhaps never wake when the sun next rose. A corpse mummified by the cold, like so many of Helecaraxë’s dead that Helcerían had found and given burials to while surveying the damage left behind by the Noldor's trek to Middle-earth.

Tear tracks had dried on Helcerían’s face, leaving only reddened eyes and a crestfallen brow as signs of her weeping. Elrond’s eyes mirrored hers. Only the tightness of Seregeithon’s jaw and a pallor to his complexion revealed his grief. “I apologize for my rudeness, but it was not safe yet to mourn. The swan’s sacrifice-” he began to say, but Helcerían cut off his apology with a gesture.

“Peace, Seregeithon. It was wise.”

Seregeithon pulled Helcerían into an embrace to combat the weary grief in her words, a gloved hand against her soft white hair and his other arm loose against her waist, giving her the option to push him away, still uncertain of the comfort that he might provide to her. Helcerían rubbed her face against the front of his jacket, nose hitting the row of stitches that Elrond repaired, tears returning to the wells of her eyes. Against her shoulder she could feel another head - Elrond leaning against her and embracing them both. She had forgotten how wonderful this felt. Seregeithon muttered wordless sounds as the two snuffled and wept.

“Do we dare a camp or keep running?” Elrond asked in-between snotty sounds. Helcerían was too exhausted to reprimand the young man for wiping his nose against her coat. She prayed that her hair had been spared.

Seregeithon pondered variables, but a shape in the westward sky distracted him. At first he thought it was one of the white owls hunting, and the sign of a normal creature assured him, for only the crows of the enemy flew when dragons were nearby. By the absence of birds was how Orothaiben taught him to track dragons in the forest, when their stench had permeated the territory and tracks were too layered to tell age.

The white bird was diving towards them. Seregithon pulled away from his companions and pointed to the sky. 

“I do not wish to give false hope,” he said hesitantly, but Helcerían gripped his face in excitement and pecked his cheek. 

“That cannot be…” Elrond said in amazement as the white bird descended in a familiar dive to land with a loud buffet of wings and the unmistaken honking of a swan. The landing, as always, was ungraceful on dry land. The swan stood before the trio with no holy light and no sign of injury. Only the unnatural size and intelligence of the eyes betrayed that this was a Maiar of Ossë instead of a common waterfowl. And that articulate words came from its beak instead of a trumpeting cry.

“Aie, that was stupid of me,” the swan said in a gravelly voice. She fluttered her wings awkwardly and dipped a beak to preen the disorderly feathers, radiating self-conscious embarrassment. 

“Hiswalagawen,” Helcerían exhaled, “I am relieved to see you!”

The swan made a dipping motion with its head to approximate a bow. “Don’t tell Little Duck that I did that. I rushed to re-embody and return, and I thank you all for not killing yourselves in my absence. Not that I can lecture any of you for foolishness now without incriminating myself. Hark! I am no warrior, as I just proved. Stupid. Duck will reprimand me for this deed until Arda is Remaded.”

“Who is Duck?” Seregeithon whispered to Helcerían. 

“Her sister. Another of Ossë’s Maiar, currently lives in Alqualondë as a dancer.”

“Wait, she is also a swan?” The Sindarin man pondered the oddities of Falmari theater.

“She used to be a duckling.”

Seregeithon snorted.

Hiswalagawen flapped her wings, buffeting the whispering elves with light gusts and interrupting their discussion. “We should continue to retreat from the range of the dragon. I have informed my superiors, and Lord Oromë and his hunters - proper trained warriors - have chosen ones more suited to the task of removing this blight upon the northern ice than you or I.” Elrond and Helcerían pretended to ignore the speculative interest in Seregeithon’s eyes, preemptively plotting their arguments to convince their companion that there would be no circumstances in which they stayed behind to watch the dispatch of the dragon. Or allowed Seregeithon to join.

“Our part in this task is complete,” Helcerían stated with finality, glaring at Seregeithon. The man sighed.

“I submit my curiosity as folly to your good sense,” he quipped, but Helcerían’s mood was buoyed by Hiswalagawen’s return and ignored his mockery.

“How did you cross the ocean so swiftly and find us?” Elrond asked.

The swan pointed upwards to the stars dotting the purpling sky. “I bartered a ride,” she said, beak towards the brightest of the lights, and then made no other speech except that of birds no matter how she was pressed. Hiswalagawen, like Huan, had a limited allotment of verbal speech, and she had decided to save her remaining words, refusing even ósanwë with Elrond. The swan would not describe the uppermost airs through which the hallowed Vingilot sailed nor what words she might have conveyed to its pilot.

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Chapter End Notes

Yes, that was a reference to Princess Tutu. A fusion fic will happen some day. I almost made it to 30k words without a fight scene or a character death - after this we return to the raunchy romantic comedy as I pull out the relevant LaCE passages for wedding ceremonies.

 And once more to the 'deleted scenes' of negative canon status:

"Why did I feel a strongly if fleeting inappropriate desire towards that dragon?” Helcerían asked.
“Cross contamination with meme of the inspiration canon,” Seregeithon explained dismissively. “Don’t fret over it.”
Helcerían was soothed. “Now what’s next for us?”
Seregeithon pulled out some hastily written nonexistent notes from the fourth wall. “When we get to the final chapter - which should be next but what with how this prose has ballooned out of control I wouldn’t guarantee it- Elrond officiates our wedding, we finally fuck, then make it back to Lindon, and some people receive letters. This fic trails off into epilogues, footnotes, and possibly more chapters.” Helcerían nodded as Seregeithon flipped a nonexistent page. “We have a shit-ton of sex, cameo in future fics as background support NPCs, create at least three children, move to Imladris when Elrond establishes the place, and the author is toying with the idea that I am one of Celebrian’s doomed guards when she is captured by orcs.”
Helcerían frowned. “Veto that last one.”