Marta's Mathoms - BMEM 2011 by Marta

Seductions (Eol/Aredhel) (Teen)

Warnings for my muses' (and Aredhel's) rather screwed up head-space, and all the domestic bliss one would expect from this couple

Later history will tell how Aredhel arrived in Nan Elmoth, weary and bruised from long years in the Wilds of Beleriand, and how the dark elf Eöl took her into his house gladly. He fed and clothed her when she had no claim on kinship, even instructing his healers to care for her wounds. The minstrels will leave unsaid how she came by those wounds, perhaps, and will dwell instead on their lord's later kindness. They will tell how he took her in and took her to wife and made her his queen and in due time gave her a son, and how Aredhel for her part was not wholly unwilling.

This is of course a lie.

It is a lie, yet it is a seductive lie, one that Aredhel has nearly convinced herself of. What you surrender willingly cannot be taken by force, and she clings to that truth. At times even Aredhel cannot remember – the wrist that Eöl's healers set in a splint as it healed, had she broken the bone in a tryst with Ungoliant's foul brethren or from rough questioning by Eöl's guards? Or even from Eöl himself? She had been proud when she first arrived at Nan Elmoth and had not shared her news willingly, of that much she was certain.

Now she gives her liege-lord as wide a berth as custom allows, often going weeks without seeing him. For this she is grateful. When she looks at the son that she loves, Aredhel accepts Morpheus's gifts gladly and tries to forget how she got him. Those memories of dark nights, where her pleasure was neither expected nor required, will not leave her easily. She paints the dark hair as Turgon's likeness rather than her liege-lord's, in her mind, and tries to forget all else.