The Number One Exercise for Relieving Work-Related Stress (Click to Find Out!) by Rocky41_7

The Number One Exercise for Relieving Work-Related Stress (Click to Find Out!)

Fill for this kink meme prompt for the Noldor and their jewelry kink.

There is a poem which to me, so characterizes the shift in Maglor's life attitude between youth in Tirion/the First Age to settling down more in the Third Age:

In youth I knew nothing of the taste of sorrow
I liked to climb high towers,
I liked to climb high towers
To conjure up a bit of sorrow to make new verse.

Now I know only too well the taste of sorrow.
I begin to speak yet pause,
I begin to speak yet pause
And say instead "My, what a cool and lovely autumn."

-- Xin Qiji (1140-1207) translation Eileen Chen-yin Chow

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Maglor tilted her head to the left until the earring nearly lay flat against the side of her neck in the mirror. Then, she tilted her head to the right. Too much? She took the polished wood and rat-bone earrings out, then decided that was not enough, and put them back in. She scrutinized the kohl she had put around her eyes. She squinted at the necklaces layered onto her bare bosom. She felt her foot growing numb under her naked ass.

She pawed through Thranduil’s earrings again, and examined the ones she had already laid out on the vanity as possibilities, humming a little aria to herself. She could only wear so many of them (despite her earlier impulse to call in a jeweler to add a few more piercings to her ears). It was imperative to find the most comely combination possible. Moreover, while Thranduil’s taste was equally in accessories of wood, bone, amber, and other softer materials, Maglor’s preference was for metal and jewels, so it was these she sought above all else in Thranduil’s collection. (However, there was something to be said for bedecking herself specifically in Wood-elf fashion.)

Thranduil had been engaged in negotiations with Dale for the last three weeks. They would come to an agreement, of course, the queen had told her languidly over an evening glass of wine, but the Men were impatient, which made Thranduil annoyed, and so she would let the process drag on by Elvish time. The Men were chewing their fingernails through to be done with what was meant to be a very routine trade treaty renewal and would therefore be willing to make the few concessions Thranduil sought.

But work was work, and with negotiations expected to wrap up shortly—that day, even!—Maglor thought it was past time she alleviated some of Thranduil’s weariness.

When at last she was satisfied with the shape and size and colors and number of adornments she wore, she reached for the jar of blush-pink paste and borrowed a bit to smear on each of her delicate brown cheeks. Then, on further consideration, rubbed a bit onto each nipple as well, pleased with the extra-rosy look it gave them. She sat back on the bench and observed her image in the mirror.

Her hair, which had regained its old glossy sheen in the centuries since she had first arrived in Mirkwood and began a proper diet again, she had woven into a careful updo on the back of her head. It was the custom of the Wood-elves to wear their hair down frequently, which meant that baring the back of the neck could be as risqué for them as a low neckline or tight trousers. For Maglor, who would have sooner perished than leave the house in Tirion with her hair down (at least, not without some effort at artful dishevelment) it was still at times surprising to see the queen greet guests without a single lock pinned up.

Nevertheless, Maglor had adapted quickly, and was keen to take advantage of customs that might hold Thranduil’s attention. However, it was equally important she wore it in a way that Thranduil could quickly and easily take it down. Therefore, Maglor had spent forty minutes twisting it up into something that could be let down with just one movement to remove the lethal hairpin holding everything in place. All the advantage of baring her neck, still with the promise of having her hair pulled.

She pressed her breasts together and let them fall back into place. She mimicked pulling at the necklaces around her throat. She felt a toasty glow in her chest at the feeling of Thranduil’s jewels against the heat of her body. She tilted her head at a coquettish angle and batted her eyelashes at her reflection, and then she heard the front door.

Morgoth’s fires! She had taken too long! Now she had no time to plan how to stretch herself out on the bed in the most appealing way, but there was no time to lament that. Stumbling off the bench, she flung herself at the bed, which was done too aggressively and threw her into the decorative pillows, where she flailed around for a moment trying to catch her bearings.

            “…Maglor?”

            Namo, why! Maglor righted herself on the broad bed and looked up, slightly frazzled (she could feel her hair still in place, thank Ilúvatar), to see her lover in the doorway.

            Thranduil was dressed for receiving foreign dignitaries, which meant she was, naturally, resplendent. A crown woven of the forest’s offerings circled her golden head, and the jewels Maglor hadn’t been able to pilfer shone at her ears and her throat and her long-fingered hands, and her robes were a luscious green that seemed almost to shift in shade when she moved. Thranduil tended to a leaner figure than Maglor, slim in the chest, broad in the shoulder, with eyes so green it seemed a part of the forest had crawled into her and become a part thereof. Maglor blushed just to see her, and to know this woman wanted her at any time.

            “Hello,” she said a little breathlessly.

            “Are you well?” Thranduil asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow as Maglor slid into a more flirtatious pose, stretching herself out on the covers, displaying the evidence of her theft.

            “How fare the negotiations?” Maglor asked, ignoring the question and propping her head up with one hand to flutter her dark lashes at Thranduil. She shifted her thighs, pleased to see Thranduil’s eyes flick to the nest of wiry black hair between her legs.

            “Well enough,” Thranduil answered, giving Maglor a look as if she suspected her of shenanigans (a suspicion WHOLLY unjustified in Maglor’s view). The queen reached up and removed her crown, and while Maglor regretted Thranduil’s weariness, there was still something stirred in her heart (and lower, too) at the sight of Thranduil’s regal exhaustion. How endlessly she works for the kingdom, Maglor sighed dreamily. “We have come to agreement; the morrow will be some last entertainment for our guests, and then they will be gone, I believe. Seldom are Men content to be at rest.” She set the crown down on her vanity.

            “I am glad to hear it,” Maglor said, swinging her legs off the bed when Thranduil did not immediately come to her. “You have been tireless at the task; you have long earned rest.”

            “I shan’t refuse it,” Thranduil sighed, and Maglor came nearer and insinuated herself up against Thranduil’s chest, when the queen was not taking enough of a suggestion.

            “Let me help,” she simpered, and while the similarity of their height (and Thranduil was tall among the Sindar!) made it hard to bat her eyes up at Thranduil, she made the effort anyway. “Permit me to alleviate your stress.”

            “I am tired, Maglor,” said Thranduil gently, placing her hands on Maglor’s shoulders.

            “This I know,” said Maglor. “Therefore allow me! You need do nothing at all; I shall care for you.” She pressed her nakedness against Thranduil, curling her hands on Thranduil’s chest, tilting her chin up. “Allow me to take such weights from your mind, my love,” she breathed, breathing in the smell of rain and damp moss that hung around the Elvenqueen.

            Thranduil’s hand went automatically to Maglor’s waist, and Maglor then surged up and pressed her mouth to Thranduil’s, and the queen did not draw away, but allowed Maglor to coax her into the kiss, until Maglor felt she tingled with warmth from head to toe.

            “Are those my earrings?” Thranduil asked when they separated, and Maglor almost melted to the floor in frustration. Certainly, Sindar did not place quite the same cultural importance on jewelry that the Noldor did, but honestly!

            “Indeed,” she said, her voice unsteady only briefly as she quickly switched tracks from utter despair. “Indeed I have many things of yours, my lady.” She took Thranduil’s hands and slid one of the rings from Thranduil’s hand onto her own, smiling, then touched Thranduil’s hands to the earrings she wore. “These.” She pressed Thranduil’s hands to the necklaces at her chest. “These.” Lower, she cupped Thranduil’s hands around her bare breasts and smiled. “These.” She traced Thranduil’s fingers down to the parsley bed below her bellybutton and the corners of her mouth turned up more sharply. “This.”

            Thranduil had that slow, thoughtful look on her face that thrilled Maglor to think she was winning.

            “Let me give what aid I may,” she wheedled, stretching her arms around Thranduil’s neck, leaning the weight of her body against Thranduil. “This I can do for you,” she murmured against Thranduil’s ear. “If this lovesick fool is good for little else, she may do this at the least.”

            The tip of Thranduil’s ear was flushed and Maglor cheered silently. This was often the only signal that she had flustered or aroused her love.

            “Very well,” Thranduil said, as if she were giving in to doing Maglor a favor. “On the bed.” She pointed, and Maglor danced away from her on light feet to fall onto the bed in a tumble of jewels, watching with shining eyes as Thranduil shrugged out of her heavier outer robe, leaving her in the closely-fit inner tunic which cinched so fetchingly against her waist and that first curve of her hips. Heat bubbled in Maglor’s gut and her chest and she sighed with pleasure supreme as Thranduil began to weave her hair back into a simple three-strand braid. She had grown accustomed to this habit of Thranduil’s and was delighted to envision Thranduil preparing to go to work on her.

            “Is such theft a courtship ritual among the Noldor?” Thranduil drawled as she toed her shoes off and then approached the bed.

            “No,” Maglor said, shivering, feeling the sharp beat of her heart. “Yet it may…it may gain the attention of one desired. Lovers may share many things, may they not?” Maglor had certainly delighted Noldorin lovers past by bedecking herself in their jewels and presenting herself for a good fucking.

            Thranduil might disagree, but Maglor would forever maintain that her new ruby earrings from Erebor had been what led to the consummation of long-simmering interest between herself and the queen.

            Thranduil shed most of her own jewelry before approaching the bed, and Maglor promptly raised herself up on her knees to capture another kiss from Thranduil when she came within reach. It was several long moments of this before Thranduil could push Maglor down on the mattress and disengage her mouth.

            “Allegedly this is for my benefit,” said Thranduil, “yet it seems you who feels neglected.” Maglor made a little moue unbecoming of a former general.

            “Never did I use the word neglected,” she objected.

            “Yet you cry neglect should I leave the room for five minutes or more.”

            “I do not!” Maglor lied emphatically.

            “You might have chosen a partner with a less bothersome career,” said Thranduil

            “No,” Maglor said, her face softening. “No, I could not have.”

            Thranduil silenced any further romanticizing on Maglor’s part with another kiss, and this time Maglor made no disguise of arching up against her, winding her arms around Thranduil’s neck to pull her down flush against Maglor’s bare body. Thranduil was poised with one foot still on the floor when Maglor pressed her hands greedily against the queen’s breasts through her tunic and stole yet another kiss from her.

            “Was it long you waited for me here?” Thranduil murmured, lowering her mouth to Maglor’s throat; Maglor’s head fell back in prompt and wanton abandon.

            “Terribly long,” Maglor lied breathily, combing her hands through Thranduil’s loose, pale gold hair, warmth spreading throughout her body at Thranduil’s touch. “An eternity.”

            “An eternity, hm?” Thranduil moved further down still, lapped at one of Maglor’s nipples, and then made a repulsed noise and drew back. “Did you put something on your skin?” she asked, and Maglor’s cheeks flushed.

            “Ah, well…only a little. Harmless, really. I sought an effect of color...”

            Thranduil gave her a look clearly torn between being exasperated and deeply entertained, and at last she shook her head. Then she licked her thumb good and moist and wiped the blush away from Maglor’s nipples.

            “Another way I know to achieve that effect,” she murmured, and Maglor yelped and sighed, aching wonderfully as Thranduil nibbled at her breasts.

            “Ah…as always I…ohh…I defer to the wisdom of my…” Maglor’s hand fisted in Thranduil’s hair and she gave up speaking for the time being.

            Thranduil drew back and thrust her fingers into Maglor’s face.

            “Open,” she said, using her queen’s command voice that turned Maglor’s insides to liquid. Maglor’s lips parted and she eagerly took Thranduil’s fingers into her mouth, sucking the fervor, and delighted to see the tips of her lover’s ears glow at her shameless enthusiasm. “Come here.” Eventually she managed to free her fingers from Maglor’s greedy tongue and moved back off the bed, beckoning Maglor to the edge, where she sat and spread her legs without hesitation, desirous that Thranduil should see how wet and ready she was for her.

            Thranduil traced her fingertips lightly down Maglor’s thighs, and Maglor twitched her head to make her earrings rattle.

            “Have I pleased my lady?” she could not help but ask. “With this sight?” She fingered the necklaces at her breast.

            “Always the sight of you pleases me,” Thranduil murmured, as often too sincere for Maglor’s flirtatious banter. “Let me return the favor.”

            “Oh, but you mustn’t think me not just as pleased with the sight of you.” Maglor completed this sentence only with great determination and several octaves higher than it had begun as Thranduil’s fingers brushed through the coarse black hair below her bellybutton and began to tease at the glistening seam of her lips. “You need not even speak and already I—ah. Already I am—at your whim—” Maglor’s determination to keep talking decreased by order of magnitude as Thranduil’s fingers pressed deeper into her, until those same digits slicked with Maglor’s own saliva breached her entrance and Maglor fell back onto the mattress, jewels singing, legs miles apart, breasts quivering with her gasping breaths.

            “Since you have gone through such remarkable effort,” Thranduil was saying then, fingers working with agonizing slowness in and out of Maglor’s cunt, stroking her most obligingly, “I feel I should do the same. What say you? Would you prefer a toy?”

            Maglor’s garbled moan could not have been less coherent. Thranduil had a habit of turning her silver-tongued Noldo into a probable victim of head trauma. Maglor adored it.

            “As you…as you prefer, of course,” she got out at last, squirming on the bed, canting her hips up towards Thranduil’s hand. What she wanted more than anything was to have more, and she did not at all care for the notion of Thranduil leaving her even for a moment.

            “Then a toy it shall be,” said Thranduil, and Maglor could wail at the sudden emptiness and the absence of Thranduil’s reaching fingers. “Go and fetch it.”

            Maglor sat up, dizzy, and thought perhaps she ought to have spent fewer of the last couple decades coaxing Thranduil to be rougher and harsher with her. Thranduil’s objections were two-fold, being for one that she was not naturally inclined to harshness. Sternness perhaps (and how Maglor had thought of that with a hand pressed between her own legs for centuries!), but not mean, and particularly in intimacy inclined to gentleness and generosity. 

The other prong of her resistance was, alas, Maglor’s own doing. Maglor’s psyche had been, to speak obliquely, delicate when first she arrived in Mirkwood just before the turn of the Second Age’s second millennium. She had tried most ardently to convince Thranduil that a bit of roughness in bed would help more than harm, but the many occasions on which she had wept at Thranduil’s simplest touch did not much convince the queen of the therapeutic value of calling her a slut. Still, Maglor was nothing if not determined to get what she wanted.

            Now, though, as she was forced, wet and throbbing, to climb off the bed and go dig up one of Thranduil’s phalluses, she considered that she had empowered this woman far too much.

            “The harness as well,” Thranduil directed.

            “As you wish.” Anything to get Thranduil’s hands back on her!

            She returned to Thranduil as quick as she could with both items, but rather than hand them over, leaned in for a kiss.

            “Distracted?” Thranduil murmured against Maglor’s lips.

            “You are still dressed,” Maglor lamented, one of few things for which she would put off her own satisfaction. “Allow me to assist.” She cast the toy and harness aside on the bed and reached for Thranduil’s tunic clasps. The corners of the queen’s mouth twitched in near a smile and she allowed Maglor to take her time running her hands up and down Thranduil’s lapels before she began to undo the clasps one at a time. Patience was not often something Maglor had in abundance, but let it not be said she could not enjoy the unwrapping of her lover!

            When Maglor cast aside Thranduil’s shift, dropping it into the pile of her other things which they had made nearby, she gestured as if gazing upon a masterpiece for the first time.

            “Your beauty only grows manifold with each time I see you!” she cried, and kissed Thranduil’s breast. Once more her arms went about Thranduil’s neck and she buried her face into the crook of Thranduil’s neck, kissing and sucking at the warm skin. Here, wordlessly, she took one of Thranduil’s broad hands and set it against the back of her head; this signal the queen understood. She tugged at the pin in Maglor’s hair and set those coal black waves tumbling down over Maglor’s shoulders. Thranduil’s hands carded through her hair and Maglor made wordless noises of pleasure, laving her tongue against Thranduil’s collarbone.

With some aid, she wrapped her well-muscled legs around Thranduil’s hips until she was clinging to her like a starfish, wet against Thranduil’s bared stomach, with Thranduil’s hands hooked underneath her. Maglor nuzzled against Thranduil’s neck, into the soft fall of her hair, breathing in the smell of her.

            “If too long I think on this,” she murmured, “still it seems a dream to me, for such happiness cannot be the due of Kanafinwë Makalaurë.” Her grip on Thranduil tightened, though not for fear of falling. One of Thranduil’s hands moved up to her back, stroking soothingly down her spine.

            “’tis all real, this I promise,” Thranduil assured her quietly. “Let me show you.” She managed to untangle Maglor from her, and then tossed her onto the bed as if she were an unruly child.

            “Such displays of affection!” Maglor cried in faux outrage from where she’d sunk into the mattress. “My reward for declarations of love and loyalty!” She let her voice quaver melodramatically as if on the verge of tears.

            “If such things stir you not, you must be already in the waking world,” Thranduil pointed out and Maglor could see the glint of amusement in her eyes.

            “How I should have listened to the tales of the cruelty of the terrible Elvenqueen!” Maglor wailed.

            “Tsk. Does my jabbering jay wish for her pleasure or not? If so, she would do best hand over the object of it.” Maglor slid the toy into the harness and rose once more from the bed to help Thranduil step into it. The queen was more than capable of doing it herself, and Maglor often liked to watch, but she took pleasure too in the intimacy of installing the device which was to take her apart, nestling it with great care against the moss bed of Thranduil’s sex.

            When it was settled, Maglor gave the toy a few teasing strokes with her hand before returning unbidden to the bed. She settled back against the pillows and spread her legs in welcome, adjusting her necklaces and earrings to make sure they were all pleasingly arranged.

            “How do you think it suits me, your jewelry?” Since Thranduil had not taken enough notice of this, Maglor was forced to use more direct and less coy means. It was not ideal, but she was still convinced she could bring Thranduil around to the notion of wearing another’s jewels as a form of intimacy. “I chose very carefully,” she added, dragging a thumb over her lower lip.

            “My vanity appears thoroughly ravished,” Thranduil agreed, glancing back at it, drawing a pout from Maglor at even this brief lapse in her direct attention.

            “How she comments more readily on the furniture than on myself, when I have put such effort into appearing fair and comely for her!” Maglor cried. A smile quirked the corner of Thranduil’s mouth as she turned, sobering slightly, back to Maglor.

            “When one feels a thing but lightly, is it not easier of which to speak?” she said.

            “So I hear from others,” Maglor admitted. She herself had never been one to shy from sharing her feelings; indeed, as a youth, she had languished in them. How many tragedies and troubles had she dreamed up for herself in Tirion so that she could sit on some high window sill above the yellowing trees and write lengthy and florid laments about her woes? But now…

            Now Maglor spent those fall mornings laying on a cushion on the balcony with Thranduil, listening to her remark on the color of the leaves, and holding a cup of tea to her chest, and she thought there was no higher expenditure of time on Arda. What worth was there in fantastical tragedies when Maglor cupped such joy in her hands?

            “Yet it is your thoughts I crave above all others,” Maglor said.

            “As ever, I have not your gift for words of praise,” said Thranduil, coming nearer, kneeling on the bed and moving towards Maglor. “Yet I believe the fashion of this kingdom looks well on you, and to my eye there is no fairer Elf in all the realm.” This was patently biased, as Maglor was far from the fairest of Mirkwood—nay, she had been not even the fairest of her family—but she was quite content for Thranduil to be so biased.

            Thranduil’s fingers swept up Maglor’s thighs and she lowered her head to kiss against the plump flesh. In Mirkwood, Maglor was fitter and more well-fed than she had been since she commanded the troops of the Gap, and had been training regularly for war. Something skeletal and wasted she had been when she arrived, but she had filled out to full health since then, and Thranduil seemed to take particular pleasure in Maglor’s strong, firm thighs. Often Maglor left the royal apartment with the evidence of Thranduil’s appreciation bruising the soft inner skin.

            “Then I wonder that you have not glanced upon a mirror, my love!” Maglor smiled as she spoke, for it buoyed something in her chest she had long believed sunken and drowned to banter words so playfully with another, particularly with this other.

            “And what game of yours, to beg sweet words off me and then refuse them?” Thranduil asked, giving Maglor’s thigh a pinch and making her gasp.

            “Sweet words I said, not untruths,” Maglor teased.

            “I give you my truths; if you recognize them not, I believe this to be no fault of mine.”

            Maglor wanted to have a snappy reply to this as well, but as happened so often with her anymore—how her youthful self would have wailed and torn her hair and covered her eyes to see it!—she was simply overwhelmed at the notion of being loved and desired, and so she kissed Thranduil instead, drawing her near until the queen’s breasts brushed against her own.

            “Tell me not that my little minstrel is out of words?” Thranduil never missed an opportunity to tease Maglor for such responses, but it thrilled her to hear, and such terms as ‘my little minstrel’ were equally a delight, more so because Maglor could imagine some trace of possessiveness behind it, even if Thranduil appeared to be the least possessive person Maglor had ever encountered (at times, to her frustration!)

            “Out of words, Maglor? Never!” boasted she. “Very fine ones I have, ones just for you. Lean closer, and I shall whisper them to you.” Thranduil obeyed, and Maglor smoothed the hair away from Thranduil’s ear and drew in her breath and put her mouth just beside it to whisper: “I want your cock.”  

            Thranduil snorted and dropped her head at once before raising her face to look at Maglor, her lips pressed thin in amusement. She traced her fingers over the necklaces laying askew across Maglor’s breast, lingering, Maglor thought, with some appreciation.

            “Far be it from my place to deny such eloquence,” she replied dryly, and Maglor gave an anticipatory wriggle on the bed. Thranduil took a moment to thumb at Maglor’s clit until she was mewling before using her fingers to part Maglor’s lips and ease in the tip of the toy.

            Learning one another had been, thus far, an experience for the pair, neither of whom believed they would ever have a lover again. Thranduil was centuries into grieving her lost wife—who had sired their only daughter, Legolas—when first Maglor had arrived, and Maglor, for obvious reasons, simply assumed no one would ever wish to touch her or look on her with love or desire again. While the sheer headiness of her early encounters with Thranduil were not something she would ever trade, there was, she found, a domestic kind of bliss in having settled into something more regular, more comfortable, and less likely to leave her bawling at a simple touch or an innocuous compliment. It helped that she’d had centuries of serving Thranduil as one of her subjects and gaining, if Maglor could venture to say, some measure of her respect before either of them had even hinted at breaching a romance.

            It was, therefore, Maglor’s utmost pleasure to be taken into Thranduil’s arms and thoroughly loved (though truthfully, with how she had worked herself up and Thranduil’s fingers earlier, she did not last terribly long). The toy stretched her beautifully (though not as much as some of the others she might have chosen) and the strain of it thrilled her with a liquid heat that bubbled up in her gut and flowed outward. Maglor, ever a connoisseur of sound, focused to shivering delight on the wet sound of Thranduil’s toy thrusting in and out of her; the shifting of the bed beneath them; the rattle of her many jewels; and her own needy grunting and moaning as she rolled her hips up, trying to drive the toy deeper.

            When her climax burst and spread in tingling waves throughout her, Maglor groaned on the tail end of one last Oh, Thranduil, I’m so close! Thranduil did not remove the toy until Maglor stilled entirely, which she must have learned Maglor preferred—indeed, Maglor often pleaded to be fucked through her orgasm, relishing the sense of overstimulation.

            “Does your mind rest easier now?” Thranduil asked, drawing back.

            “Your mind…” Maglor said incoherently, making an equally senseless gesture with one hand above her head.

            “Mhm.” Thranduil slid off the bed and busied herself shimmying out of the harness. Pushing through her post-coital fog, Maglor lunged upright, Thranduil’s jewels jangling, and scrambled to the edge of the bed to throw her arms around Thranduil’s waist and pull the queen back against her.

            “Say not it is time for your departure,” she pleaded. “I have not yet done as I said, I have given you no pleasure yet.”

            “How can that be?” Thranduil said, twisting in her arms. “When you have just sung so prettily for me?”

            Maglor flushed, pleased, and stroked Thranduil’s pale belly.

            “Yet I would give you more,” she insisted. Thranduil touched Maglor’s cheek gently and then leaned in to kiss her.

            “I am tired, and tonight I would demand too great an effort for too little a reward,” she said. “I am content with your pleasure.” She detached herself from Maglor to toss the used toy into the laundry pile to be washed later, but to Maglor’s relief returned not to work, but to the bed.

            “Are you sure?” Maglor fretted, scooting back to make room for Thranduil.

            “Will you not remove some of that silly costume?” Thranduil asked instead, gesturing at the chest worth of jewels Maglor wore.

            “Silly!” Maglor cried. “’tis a display most sensuous by my reckoning!”

            “You may not lay against me in so many jewels; neither have I a wish to caress a porcupine.”

            “My efforts are wholly unappreciated!” Maglor removed herself from the bed and as quickly as she might removed all but one of the necklaces—a solid, simple ruby in silver which rested quite fetchingly against her chest, just above the space between her breasts and complemented the tone of her skin quite well—and all of the earrings but a pair of golden cuffs. Then she returned and snuggled into Thranduil’s waiting arms, something deep in her chest letting out a relieved sigh to be clasped so near and so lovingly. Still it seemed to her a thing new and wonderous, relative to the interminable stretch of numbing isolation and deprivation which had characterized her life after the end of the First Age.

            She pressed kisses to Thranduil’s shoulder and collar and then propped herself up to look down into those mossy green eyes. So long a study had she made of Thranduil’s eyes in the years of her time in Mirkwood that she felt confident it was not her imagination that she could see just a slight difference between Thranduil’s natural eye and the blind one she covered with a glamor spell (Elvish healing both natural and assisted might erase scars of most sources, but dragon fire was beyond even their ken).

            “Your thoughts seem very loud,” said Thranduil after some moments of silence, reaching up to brush her fingers over Maglor’s cheek.

            “Still I wonder that such bounty is mine,” Maglor confessed, tracing a finger over the elegant curve of Thranduil’s lower lip. “To live so long in yearning and disbelief…makes a dream of a reality so long desired.” She lowered her head and pressed a tender kiss to Thranduil’s lips.

            “Should you require more proof, there is the bath there,” Thranduil offered, and Maglor huffed. Would she ever forgive Thranduil for the instance of throwing Maglor, naked and helpless, into the icy water of Thranduil’s spring-water bath for a laugh? Perhaps eventually. Perhaps when Galadriel admitted to a mistake.

            But then Maglor’s face sobered.

            “I am speaking truly, though,” she said. She stroked the familiar, beloved lines of Thranduil’s face. “You saved me,” she said softly. “’tis a debt I shall never repay.”

            “I—”

            “You did,” Maglor insisted. And Maglor would never be convinced otherwise. When first she had wandered inland, seeking she did not know what, she had not meant to step into the realm of a former Doriathrim. Of course Thranduil had captured her eventually; Maglor knew nothing of the forest, not this one nor any other, and the light in her eyes gave her away for what she was, even if she had sought to disguise it. It mattered little to her—by then she had glimpsed at a distance the queen abroad in the woods and her heart was set on her, or so it seemed to Maglor. It was after Thranduil showed her mercy, in the form of a probationary period rather than an immediate kiss from Thranduil’s blade, that Maglor knew she was in love.

            “When one has seen oneself a given way for so long, it becomes immutable, or so it seems,” Maglor went on. “You cannot know what a gift it is for another to suggest you might be otherwise.” Thranduil did not object this time, and Maglor drew her thumb gently along Thranduil’s cheekbone, over the soft skin under her eye. “That person I was before, I would not be her again, not if it were a choice betwixt her and death. But ‘twas you that showed me she was not all that was left to me.”

            Initially, Thranduil’s long silences had troubled Maglor, often making her fear the queen was displeased. Now, and at this moment in particular, she appreciated that Thranduil was giving her words the consideration it seemed they were due.

            At length she said: “Then I am glad.” Her fingers lingered on Maglor’s face, and after a pause, she added: “I know this path has not always been smooth. Yet you have persisted. It is…reassuring, perhaps, to know that such change is possible, and there are those willing to make the effort.”

            “And I shall keep trying,” Maglor declared, feeling that rush of determined protectiveness which had become the way she characterized her duty to Thranduil, a feeling like nothing she had experienced since she had last been entrusted with something, with the defense of the Gap. In the long centuries since then, she had come to believe she simply was not capable of being trusted with keeping anything safe, but she had now new things to guard: Thranduil, and Thranduil’s home, and Thranduil’s happiness, and it seemed to her there was no nobler cause to which to dedicate what remained of her life in Middle-earth.

            Thranduil said nothing more on it, but leaned up and kissed her, and Maglor sank back down into her arms, and felt again that at last—at long, long last after endless wanderings abroad, alone, wind-burned and sunbaked and hoary with regret, Maglor had come to a place she believed she would never reach again: home.

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Chapter End Notes

If you wonder about this ship I must direct you to my wonderful and talented partner in crime, am_fae, and her STUNNING fic Less Wise which details more how Thranduil and Maglor became a couple!

Thanks for reading! (oﾟvﾟ)ノ

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