Winterlights by Elleth

A Warm and Flickering Light

For prompt #23: Candles. Nerdanel makes a candle for Anairë.

"One, two, three…" Nerdanel counts under her breath, dripping ginger oil and cinnamon into beeswax, and soon shapes the still-pliant candle with her hands, though her palms redden. Heat and fire do not frighten her, too intimately familiar from her forge and once-husband.

She knows it still: the body taking shape beneath her hands is Anairë’s, also of fire, a warm and flickering light. Her sister once, by circumstance not blood, and Nerdanel smiles, smoothes a thumb over each breast and imagines her arching back and parting lips - and her smile when the door claps at her coming home.