Fear the Thunder by between_thepages

Fear the Thunder

For the Meet & Greet Challenge, the prompts used are "unusual weather" and "someone got hurt"

Additional warnings for a canonical character death that technically happens off-screen, but affects one of the characters in the story greatly

It was already long past midnight when Anairë jolted up in bed, woken by a deafeningly loud roll of thunder. She sat upright in the darkness, listening to the rain falling on the roof above while her heartbeat slowed down again after the sudden scare.

“‘Nairë?“ Nerdanel murmured beside her, mass of red curls moving to reveal her face in the twilight, hand searching for Anairë‘s beneath the covers.

“Go back to sleep, love,“ Anairë whispered back, taking Nerdanel‘s hand and holding it in hers as she looked into the darkness, wide awake.

A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, making the room bright as day for a second, highlighting the features of Nerdanel‘s face and the worry in her dark eyes. Anairë wanted to say something, hoping at least Nerdanel could get a good night‘s sleep even if Anairë was not able to, but another roll of thunder came from above, drowning out any other noises made in the room.

Then the first burst of pain came, a feeling of blades slicing through her left shoulder that had her involuntarily cry out, despite the impossibility of something being there.

“Are you alright?” Nerdanel asked, concern clear in her voice, hand still gripping Anairë’s.

“Someone...has been injured,” Anairë murmured in answer, unsure of how to explain the situation, and for a fraction of a second an image appeared before her eyes, a scene on a raging battlefield and in the midst of it, a figure with gold pleats in his dark hair.

“Findekáno,” she whispered more to herself than anyone else, desperate to reach out to him, to pull him from the chaos and into the safety of her embrace, but the image was gone before she even had a chance to look more closely.

She leaned against Nerdanel, who immediately put her arms around Anairë and tried to soothe the panic that was blooming in her chest.

All of a sudden, a strange feeling of pain and confusion set in from the back of her head. Just as fast as it had come, it vanished again, leaving behind a deafening silence, an emptiness she had felt twice before. The bond had been severed.

“He is gone,“ she whispered, tears welling in her eyes as she hid her face in Nerdanel‘s red curls, body shaking with noiseless sobs.

Nerdanel held Anairë close as she wept, strong arms cradling her tenderly until finally the shaking subsided and the tears started to dry out. The unsettling silence in her head stayed behind, just as it had the previous two times, but she had a sliver of hope that someday it would be replaced again.