And She Forgave His Betraying Word by polutropos

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Chapter 1

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There Dairon grieving often stood
in sorrow for the captive of the wood,
and melodies made upon his flute
leaning against a grey tree-root.
Lúthien would from her windows stare
and see him far under piping there,
and she forgave his betraying word
for the music and the grief she heard,
and only Dairon would she let
across her threshold foot to set.

Lay of Leithian, lines 1398-1407

The small loom sat in a corner of Lúthien's room – or rather, as she had taken to calling it, her nest, built as it was among the branches at the crown of Hírilorn. When Daeron came carrying the loom through the little hole in her floor, his gaze had wandered over the odd assemblage of things there: a bowl of Esgalduin's waters, a jar of wine, a spinning-wheel. No thread, his thought touched hers, and she watched as his questioning eyes came to understand, if not all there was to know, that he had come to say farewell.

It was not the first loom he had made for her. There was another in her room in Menegroth, much larger, on which she had woven together countless threads while he sat by. Sometimes they would weave their music into the cloth, fashioning trailing scarves that awoke plants from sleep, tapestries that shifted and changed with the viewer’s mood, and cloaks that made the wearer disappear. More often, she wove ordinary cloth and he helped her pass the time with songs and stories.

The songs she cherished most were those meant for her alone, when he would put into rhyme private jests that only they two could have understood. She would laugh and laugh so that she tangled her threads, only to laugh harder still at her marred work until her stomach cramped and she could no longer see through eyes brimming with joyful tears. Then he would pull her up from her stool and toss her onto the bed, tickling at her ribs until she begged him to relent.

At other times, he bent over the crisp pages of a blank book, lips pressed together or muttering to himself, intently copying from a disordered pile of scrolls. When she was not looking, he tore off corners and wrote her notes, tucking them under lamps, inside drawers, and behind tapestries where she would find them only much later and smile. ‘The flowers that bloom under your feet may be beautiful, but your compassion is your greatest gift to Doriath,’ or, ‘Remember when you climbed so high up our elm that you could not get back down?’ or, ‘Tinúviel, you are not in fact a bird. Do not eat the moths.’ She kept them all.

After the first night she spent with Beren, she returned in the morning and found one lying on her pillow: ‘I would do anything to keep you from harm.’ She did not seek him out all that day, but later she turned the parchment over and wrote across the back, ‘As would I,’ before she slipped it under his door. It was why she could not find the courage to tell him she had fallen in love until it was too late.

“Would you have understood, had I told you sooner?” She looked up from where she lay, nestled against his chest.

“I do not know,” he said, sighing and pulling her closer. “Can we talk of something else?”

“Of course,” she said, and searched her memories for something glad. “Do you remember the treehouse we built over Aelin Uial? I much preferred it to this one.”

He shook with a quiet laugh. “The one from which you aimed an arrow at Beleg as he was crossing the marshes? An attempt to impress him, if I recall.”

She kicked at his calf and groaned. “Please do not remind me of that.”

“The only marchwarden with no interest whatsoever and yet you pursued him.” She heard Daeron’s sharp inhalation and knew he had broken into a grin. “Then you threw yourself down onto Mablung’s raft like a swooping hawk.”

“The Captain reacted too strongly,” she said, remembering how he staggered back and cast his oar into the water.

“I think you do not fully understand how fearsome you can be. Even Finrod gaped when you sang those spiders to their deaths. Must you have caused blood to spill from their eyes?”

Lúthien rolled back her head and laughed. “Of course! I would not have him thinking of me as a helpless maiden.”

“No,” Daeron said. “And he certainly did not after that. I think he was rather taken with you, if briefly.”

“Oh, he was,” she said. “Fortunately, it was brief. I was worried my father might try to see us wed.”

“I do not think Thingol would have thought even the King of Nargothrond worthy,” Daeron said. “Certainly not if it meant taking you out of Doriath." He stroked her hair. "He has only tolerated you and me because I was not born as… a threat.”

Lúthien became aware of her hand resting on his chest, flattened beneath his tunic by a long band of linen that she herself had woven and embroidered with vines of green and silver thread. She was one of very few he trusted to touch him this way, and one of even fewer who had seen who he was beneath. But to her, he had only ever been Daeron, who had played on his pipes and held her at her birth, who had visited every glade and climbed to the tops of all the tallest trees to find the very best places to dance beneath the stars. It was he she had sought to show her first, with kindness and trust, what pleasures she could find in a body so like his own.

Daeron hummed uncertainly into the silence. “He misses you.”

“My father?” Lúthien spun to prop herself up over him, fixing him with her eyes. “Well, you may tell him he is welcome to let me down from this tree at any time.”

“He is only doing what he thinks is best to keep you from–”

“From harm. I know,” Lúthien said, unable to conceal her irritation, and she lifted herself from the bedroll, strewn with pillows, to lean upon the window sill. An owl swooped silently between trees and a cluster of fireflies flitted below. The stars were as bright as that night when…

“Play me that song," she said. "The one I was singing when Beren first saw us.”

She heard him shuffling and moving pillows aside and she turned to watch as he stretched to pick up his flute. He held it to his lips, but he stared at her without sounding a note. His mind was dark and it unsettled her.

“Are you sure…” she began.

He lowered the flute. “Sure of what?”

“That you will go on if… without me.”

“Tinúviel…”

“Come with me,” she said, suddenly urgent and kneeling before him, taking his face between her hands. She softly kissed his mouth. “Please.”

His long silver lashes curtained his eyes and he kept them downcast a long while. When he lifted them again, they shone with tears, saying only, I cannot. This time, gazing into his eyes, dark as twilight, she thought she finally understood why, though in all the languages he had taught her, she could find no words for the love he felt for her. Nor, it seemed, could he.

Slowly, he lifted the flute back to his lips and she released him. With the first note, his mind was open to her again, and there was no envy there, no desire – only the grief of loss.

“I am sorry I doubted you,” she said. He did not reply, for he had already folded himself into the music, and she turned back to the window, letting her song carry through the gentle breeze.

Ir Ithil ammen Eruchín
menel-vîr síla díriel
si loth a galadh lasto dîn!
A Hîr Annûn gilthoniel,
le linnon im Tinúviel!*

He stayed with her all that night and they sang their most beloved songs together as he intricately braided her thick, black hair. One last time, she thought, and wondered if he could hear.

Then they held each other, listening for the melodies of each bird greeting the dawn and calling them by their names, for they could distinguish the voice of every one. She did not let herself ask if the birdsong would cease again when she left. If he, too, would fall silent.

When she bid him farewell with a final kiss, all the memories they had of each other ran between their minds like a rushing stream. If she never saw him again, at the least he would be able to return to her in thought and bring forth whatever love they shared in song.

‘O Lúthien, O Lúthien,
What wilt thou weave, what wilt thou spin?’
‘A marvellous thread, and wind therein
a potent magic, and a spell
I will weave within my web that hell
nor all the powers of Dread shall break.’
Then Dairon wondered, but he spake
no word to Thingol, though his heart
feared the dark purpose of her art.

Lay of Leithian, lines 1467-1475

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Chapter End Notes

* this Sindarin song, written by Tolkien, is from Lay of Leithian Recommenced, lines 99-103. He did not provide a translation, but see Notes Towards a Translation of "Lúthien’s Song"

Originally written for Aspec Arda Week 2022. 

Thanks to cuarthol for the beta read.