Many Journeys by Elleth

Resteth Not Here

For the prompts:

Book Titles: Spring Fire, The Paying Guests
Clichés: Slow Dancing, Forehead Touching
Story Elements: Autumn Light
(Also Fíriel on the Women of Númenor because I was stumped for a character.)

The prayer that Fíriel sings is from her appearance in The Lost Road, but I updated Herendil's name to Isildur as Elendil's son to make this a little less bewildering.

Fíriel sang again from the window, and her voice rang sweet and sad into the evening. She’d done so every day since early summer, when the lavaralda hedges at the lower end of the garden had begun their blooming, and always the same song that echoed in now-familiar verses, even now that the year was rolling on to autumn and its swifter sunsets, and Orontor, her father, had still not returned. “Lovely is Númenor. But my heart resteth not here for ever; for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading…”

Isildur stood in the garden below, with his head tipped back to look at her, until the song ceased. Fíriel smiled sadly at him and waved goodnight before she went into her room to shut the curtains behind her, and he turned to disappear behind the hedge where the cliff dropped into the sea. He had wanted to swim before night fell.

Merilin went into the house and took the steps to Fíriel’s room two at once. Unhappy jealousy was churning in her stomach, but her resolve to speak her mind evaporated suddenly when she found the door to Fíriel’s room unlocked, and before her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, heard her weeping.

“Fíriel? Fíriel.”

The weeping ceased. A breath hitched in the darkness; Fíriel’s dark head lifted from her bed.

“Merilin?”

“You are weeping.”

She felt like a fool, but could speak no further before Fíriel stumbled across the room toward her; the waves of her thick hair, scented with rose oil, brushed over her face, and Fíriel leaned in to rest her forehead against Merilin’s. They were of a height, Fíriel perhaps a little taller. She was still breathing heavily. “I know why you came. I saw you in the garden, but please, let me speak —”

Merilin shifted, pressing their lips together first, until Fíriel pulled away with an unsteady laugh.

“ — the Lord Elendil - he had a letter from my father that he was asked to show me when the seasons turned and he hadn’t come back, and he… he hasn’t. Perhaps the King’s Men took him, over the sea. It’s said that they’re swarming like locusts there, that there’s no escaping them,” she said.

“And he wants to see me provided for, and safe - don’t you see — we’re both only guests here, not even paying guests, with no payment asked of us, and that is owed to Elendil’s graciousness alone, and his love for my father. And now - his grace grew even greater and I’m to be married to Isildur, and you to Anárion. I heard it from your mother, and I couldn’t say how I love you; they would not understand.” Fíriel’s hand closed around Merilin’s with painful strength, and the other found the back of her neck and pulled her into another kiss that Merilin refused to break until Fíriel, again, was the one who pulled away. “And I saw you in the autumn light below when you were reading in the garden this afternoon, and I don’t want you as my sister by marriage, I want you for myself.”

“But we’re Faithful - Elendil’s house is safer for us than other places, but only as far as the King finds a reason to send his Men against him. He’s the leader of the Elf-friends, sooner or later they’ll seize all of us, if we marry into this family! Your father was mistaken!”

A petulant note crept into Fíriel’s sadness. “And so are you - about Isildur and me! He is teaching me to sail as a gift to me - if I catch Ilmalómë’s heart for him. He doesn’t want me either, and he’ll aid me - us - with our escape. But we’re not sailing for the colonies. We’re sailing for the north where the Elf-King lives, before the King starts the spring fires in the temple.”

“I - will you sing?” Merilin blurted out from the jumble of thoughts, astonished. “Not - not that awful prayer you sing every night. Something sweeter.”

“I will,” Fíriel said. “If you promise to run with me.”

“Then sing.”

Fíriel twined her fingers through Merilin’s, and lifted their linked hands into the darkness above their heads in the manner of an Emerië folk-dance of young lovers, one that had been danced at the wedding of Tar-Ancalimë’s serving women. Fíriel was skilled in song, and lifted her voice only a little, pressing their foreheads together while they slowly turned circles, and Fíriel sang.

“Lovely is Númenor. But my heart resteth not here forever, for it resteth with you forever, and there will be no end and no Fading, for love is not counted, and may not be numbered at last, and yet will be not enough, not enough…”