Many Journeys by Elleth

A Thread of Red and Silver String

I would seek Queen Míriel and pay my respects, for she was dear to me. Indis braves the borders of Lórien to seek her heart's desire.

It was fair to say, Indis thought, that a ribbon out of her dreams had led her here, flowing down this very path, to this very point.

Tirion had long since been lost to the distant haze of Laurelin's light, but it seemed not to touch the bank of mist ahead. The path vanished into it, but despite the apprehension prickling at her skin, despite the way her feet dragged, Indis continued walking. The confines of the gardens of Lórien were said to be a stranger place than even the gardens themselves, for where the living land and the borders of the dream-lord met, phantoms were said to walk, strayed out of the imaginings between sleep and waking, and a magic that defied logic as much as dreams themselves might.

Indis pressed onward until the mist closed about her. On either side of the path poppies glowed, a deep red of rubies in treelight like drops of blood, a colour that no living flower had a right to bear. She shook a pebble from her sandal, and it skittered away across the path, suddenly no longer a stone, but a beetle that scurried into the long grass of the field.

Indis rubbed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose before telling herself to stop fighting. This was what she wanted, and already it was beginning. She was close.

Although she could have slept under the open sky the past night, Indis had felt the dust of travel heavy on her skin, and had asked for bath and bed in a village of farmers further to the north at the borders of Yavanna's pastures. Hearing her errand – I would seek Queen Míriel and pay my respects, for she was dear to me – her hosts insisted that when she were to go on, she must not rest upon the borders, for all the tiredness and drowsiness that would fall on her, and there was no saying where she might stray in sleep. In the morning they had brewed her a bottle of tisane to keep her waking, lest, the overseer's wife had claimed, she'd see her heart's desire in the mist and might never emerge again.

Indis had thanked them, and taken the drink, carrying it in her pack until the houses had dropped out of sight behind a fold in the land. Then she had poured it away. If anything meant to take her she was unafraid of it, for it would be one of only a few things: she wished for no evil, and lately all her dreams had been similar, imaginings that left her wishing she could have them in waking life, not confined to startling awake sweat-soaked and with her throat dry from gasping, and warmth coursing all through her.

A swirl of skirts in red and silver. A beckoning, ringed hand waving Indis away into a private place, and sometimes a second pair of arms waiting to receive her, a second pair of lips, Finwë's chuckle sending shivers through her while Míriel laughed against her skin and kissed her until Indis squirmed and mewled. Or more often Míriel alone, and they would dance while Indis sang and Míriel laughed. Here, she was not the wan, tired wraith who had been bled dry of life and fire, sitting brittle-haired and pale without the strength to rise – not that Míriel who now lay dead, not the one she had wept over in secret for days on end.

Rather, a skirt that glowed and billowed like the poppies, and a laugh that wrapped around her like the mist, and a fire in her dark eyes like Laurelin at greatest light.

At the edge of Indis' sight, between the poppies, caught in the tall grass, waved the thread of red and silver string, spun impossibly by invisible fingers into a beckoning hand, a dancing figure, and a laugh she knew that wafted through the trees on the far side of the field.

The flowers parted for her, and Indis followed.

She would find her way out when it was time, and either emerge again or else join Míriel in the Halls - and grieve for neither.

Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to Elvie for her beta!