Many Journeys by Elleth

For Fear and Love of Her

This started with a suggestion for Lúthien as a dark queen by Orvandill on tumblr, and continued through a set of graphics. Asking me to resist drabbling in the same universe was practically pointless.

Three loosely connected ficlets, some grisly images.

Lúthien has bested Gorthaur. Lúthien has sung Morgoth asleep, and those in Angband that will her harm, that lust after her only for her beauty’s sake and do not know her as a kindred spirit, sleep.

(Beren, too, slept, until she roused him.)

And in the secret shadows beyond the throne a spirit stirs, unclad, timid at first knowing that to love whom Morgoth desired and Gorthaur loathed will cost her more than raiment, will cost her more than the punishment for her failure already cost her.

(If it was failure.)

Beren stands enraptured of the light - smiling and blinded, no doubt, to aught else but the stone in his hand, that piece of rock - but Lúthien ascends the throne with easy steps and sheds the winged raiment that she wore.

"You served me well," she says to the shadow, cowering beneath the beauty and the terror of her eyes. Lúthien's voice softens, feeling a quaver in the dark, a bat's thin shriek, the shade retreating. "And I am minded to reward you. Come now. Your servitude is ended." And she offers a hand to kiss, and with the other, the shadow’s wings, and softly laughs.

"Let the mortal stand there enspelled until he dies, let Morgoth lie until his form has withered, let Gorthaur kneel before us. Come."

The shadow comes, draping her form over herself, unfurling the left wing, then the right, and fangs graze Lúthien's knuckles – in a kiss, and nothing more.

And now that Lúthien is queen, they have no more need for Silmarils or starlight, for her eyes shine brighter.

* * *

The Sons of Fëanor listen to the tales in shock and awe, and some (the most fervid but least kind, the most cunning but least wise) laugh, both for their own reasons – a mere maiden on the throne of Angband - they had had her hand in marriage, or nearly so, flitting like a shade from tree to tree, flitting like a shadow from their cells, and such a one would bear the Iron Crown and hold her head aloft?

But they only know the weight of light, not the weightlessness of gentle darkness. And Angband, Angband made anew, still is full of shadows. Lúthien casts more than one, and she needs no rock-studded crown to bow her neck. She holds her head aloft all on its own, and laughs easier for it than those poor, light-burdened Children.
 
* * *

Maedhros knows that weight best as of yet - it pulled on his wrist for years. Maglor will learn in years to come, perhaps most of all, with the Silmaril’s high arc into the waves that leaves his shoulder sore to cast, the feet that drag and drag through centuries. The middle brothers learn it in Doriath, in their the blood that insists to succumb to gravity and sink into the pores of Doriath’s floors. Ambarussa know it by fire and by salt.

Or rather, they would know, were it permitted to them.

There have been losses already, certainly – Thuringwethil recovers, one day, a ragged right hand, bespelled to preserve it as a tool of torment for Maedhros, and Lúthien unsings the ties on it. They watch as it falls to dust and bone, and send a former captive to deliver it (she begs her way out the gate, her tears pool not for want of freedom but for grief of it), ensuring for the moment gratitude and peace. To Hithlum and the High King they send Grond, its spells unbound, and bid him forge armour imperishable, if he wishes, that he may never meet his father’s fate.

The Silmarils they keep - not as spoils of war, but as seeds of it, forever beyond reach. And should they try besiege her - she rained sleep upon the greatest of the Ainur. An army is no hardship, especially not since there is one to give her wings.