Many Journeys by Elleth

Golden Hour

Elenwë and Írissë share a private moment. Written for Anna for Fandom Stocking 2013.

"You have been watching me over dinner," says Elenwë the moment the door claps shut behind the rest of their families filing out of the glass salon, and she wisely turns the key behind them. Her voice could not be any more salacious before it spills over into golden laughter that, Írissë imagines, flits like sparks of Laurelin around the room and warms her from the inside.

But she isn't one to budge from a challenge. "So, what if I did?" she asks, lifting her chin to look Elenwë in the eye. There is a gleam of light on her golden lashes, and a single eyelash fallen on her cheek, and that is all it takes for the mood to turn, for Elenwë to quiet beneath Írissë's focused gaze.

"Hold still," Írissë breathes, open-mouthed, and takes it off Elenwë's cheek with a single finger, holding it aloft among some powder-dust like the smallest of treasures. To her it might well be, all of a sudden, as she hovers that finger before Elenwë's lips. "Breathe," she says then. "Make a wish."

It doesn't matter that this is only the third time they'd met, the first at a ball in Tirion that sent them swirling alongside one another in the dances and, the second by accident in Tirion's main market, where Elenwë's star-like radiance also caught Turukáno's eye, and kept it since. As of now they are friends, all three, and Elenwë is visiting for both of them, but perhaps more for Írissë, the way she favours her company, the lingering touches, laughter, glances... so Írissë hopes, at least.

Elenwë breathes and the tiny hair swirls away, catches a beam of light, and vanishes.

"Did you?" asks Írissë, and her tone is still the same, hushed-breathless and inexplicably awed.

"I did," Elenwë breathes. "But don't they say it must be kept a secret to come true?"

"Hmm-mmh." Still Írissë cannot bear to look away, not even when Elenwë's fingers thread through her own with gentle pressure, much warmer and firmer and less ephemereal than she expected. "But regardless," she says and she lifts Elenwë's hand to her lips, "I hope that it entailed what I think it did – after all, you noticed my watching you, and why would you tease me so if it were not..."

"... reciprocated? Why, y-"

Then the moment shatters like glass around them: the locked door rattles, and there's Turukáno's voice outside. "Elenwë, Írissë? Are you not coming to sit with us?"

They look at each other and burst into giggles, and Turukáno without is startled into silence. As much love as they both bear him, this is their own moment, and they flee laughing from the back door into the garden. There, with the view slanting westward down the city and out into the plain, they still again, standing hand in hand together in the light.