Enchantment by Anérea

Lómelindi Lúcë

Stars wheeled above the great wood while the Telerin lord's eyes lingered in the enchanting gaze of Melian the fey, and long years were measured before they spoke any word one to another. Though Middle-earth lay for the most part in the Sleep of Yavanna, under the power of Melian there was life and the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark about them. So still were they as each beheld the other, she with the light of Aman in her face, he with it in his eyes, that warbling nightingales alighted upon their shoulders while small woodland beasts foraged about their feet.

Their glade was open to the stars and the fall of rain came not upon them in all that time. Yet everchanging mists wreathed about it in a slow rise and fall as if it were the very breath of the trees, inbreathing from the damp loam, outbreathing through their crowns, allowing the passage of neither sight nor sound. Thus it was that Elwë’s folk who sought him found him not, though they fared nearby.

Then on a time a great storm rode up out of the west; thunder echoed between tree and cloud while lightning glittered in the shadowy glade. The first drops of fine silver rain began to fall, and the lovers stirred from their enchantment.

Chapter End Notes

The chapter title is my Quenya approximation of The Enchantment Of The Nightingale.

I have unashamedly pilfered phrases from various parts of the Silmarillion and melded them into my piece.

Written for the Tolkien Short Fanworks April prompt "a sudden change of the weather" and formal challenge "a fixed-length piece of 222 words".