A Footprint of Snowdrops by Elleth

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Chapter 1

Nellas had heard the stories, of course. Even in the east of Doriath near Aros, where the trees stood crowded and the gentling magic that quieted the forests around Menegroth thinned out, the fame of the king’s daughter spread in the songs of birds and people alike. Her goodness and kindness were unsurpassed, her beauty was like the light of the stars on a night of mist, and niphredil bloomed from the earth where her foot touched.

If not for the birds, who gossipped endlessly but did not lie as people did (at least not when they sung the praises of others - with their own, it depended on the singer), Nellas might have disbelieved the stories, or forgotten them in favour of the forest thriving around her. At her age, she said to her mother, she was no longer a child, and children’s tales were no longer for her. Much rather, she immersed herself in life that she could observe: In spring, the white-starred carpet of wood anemones under the still-leafless beech trees, in summer the army of gold-flecked tadpoles beginning to kick through the water with their newly-grown legs, and the sudden yellow flashes of the beaks of fledgling birds hidden in the underbrush.

In autumn, at the beginning of leaf-turn, the print of a bare foot stopped Nellas on the way to the clearings of the red deer. She’d heard the first clash of antlers through the forest the night before, and left her family’s camp ground at first light to observe the fights. She had not expected to find someone about in the forest before her, and a surge of disappointment gathered into a heavy knot in her stomach. The forest was not hers to own, she knew, and neither were the deer hers only to watch - nor would she want them to be.

But the footprint she had found was wrong. It was autumn, and a cluster of niphredil grew from it; the leaves a shiny dark green, the white heads drooping in the patch of rising sunlight. It was warm still, and Nellas crouched by the flowers, cupping her hands around them, and whispering what she hoped was comfort for the poor things caught outside their season. They thrived in early spring when the air was cool and snow often still lingered. The warmer seasons were their time of rest, and it felt wrong that they should be disturbed from their underground sleep.

Nellas pursed her lips and dragged the sleeve of her shirt over her wet eyes.

“You do not like my flowers?” sounded a voice from the tree behind her. Nellas bounded to her feet and turned to face the speaker, tilting her head up toward a blue-robed figure who was reclining on the broad bough of a silver beech. With her dark hair and clear eyes she was very beautiful, and the nightingale perched in the twigs above her dispersed the last doubt about the encounter.

Lúthien.

Nellas felt her face heat in mingled shame and anger - perhaps even something else underneath them, some strange disappointment when she thought back to the stories she had heard. Almost she resolved to turn and leave then and there, leaving the princess to her own devices, whatever they might be - but the niphredil at least she wanted to try and save, if she might.

“No,” she said, when her thoughts had caught up with her. “They are spring flowers; blooming in autumn will only make them miserable. It is not very kind of you to call them from their sleep. See, they are already drooping.”

“Niphredil are the flowers that came forth to greet my birth, and have ever since, if I tread upon ground that holds them. I do not know every spot they grow in.”

“Then perhaps you don’t deserve to be the princess of this land. If you do not know the ways of its creatures, you ought not be responsible for them.”

In a swift motion, Lúthien slid from the tree and landed smoothly on the ground. Her hair followed like a cloud of shadow, before settling in perfect whorls and waves upon her shoulders. She rose, easily taller than Nellas by a head and a half, and seemed to consider. A frown cast her eyes into shadow.

Then, to Nellas’ astonishment, Lúthien laughed, not unkindly, and said, still with laughter in her voice, “You are very young to speak of respect and responsibility. I cannot remember being lectured by a child before.”

“My name is Nellas, and I am not a child,” Nellas retorted. Lúthien’s mirth only barely fell short of grating on her nerves beyond the bounds of civility.

“My pardon,” said Lúthien, still smiling, and doing so in a way that made Nellas uncertain whether she was humoring her, or meant her apology. “How old are you, then? You look very young.”

“It is no matter,” Nellas evaded. “Will you leave your niphredil to wilt now?”

“You care very much about these flowers,” Lúthien said. Her face sobered from laughter into curiosity. “Why is that?”

“They are part of the forest - why do you not care for them? If they grew to greet you when you were born, they must love you very much, and the least you could do is return that love. How can you not know about the forest? It is said that you have been living in it since the Age of the Stars.”

Lúthien tilted her head, and her dark hair cascaded over her shoulder. “What makes you think I do not love them in turn?” She knelt beside Nellas and ran her finger gently over one of the shining leaves. The little flower bobbed its bell-like head. “Have you never known a love that you would surrender everything for - your joy, your freedom, even your very life? They do. And I do love them, as much as I may, being coddled by my fa- the King, and by others on his behest?”

Nellas shook her head, mutely. Something about Lúthien’s words clung like a piece of honeycomb to the inside of her throat and stifled an answer. Not that Lúthien herself could have experienced a love of that kind, as confined by her father as she said she was, but it sounded as though the thought of one had haunted her for a long time.

“I do not think that sounds very much like something that should be wanted,” Nellas said at last, swallowing the migivings against Thingol. Surely to speak against the King would be treason. “Giving up everything for someone else - I would not want to be loved like that, or love someone in that way,” she added eventually, in her turn crouching down. “There is so much more to life, and if they had the choice... I am sure the flowers would be happier to sleep until spring, until they can fulfill their purpose. They are one of the first plants that bees fly to. They herald spring. Can you not let them sleep again until it is their time?”

Lúthien lowered her eyes and smiled, momentarily touching dark lashes to her cheek.

Nellas’ breath caught.

“Perhaps,” Lúthien said, light and unconcerned, as though she had not noticed Nellas’ flustered behaviour. “I never thought to try. Put your hand here with me; I think your convictions may help this.”

She laid her fingers on the ground where the stems of the niphredil vanished into the earth, and Nellas slipped hers over them. Lúthien closed her eyes entirely. Her lips moved in some murmured incantation that Nellas could not make sense of; indeed it put her in mind of her mother’s steel hunting blade - her most prized possession - grating over a whetstone in a long, unbroken, screeching motion. Her fingers prickled and heated, as though the limb had been asleep and blood was only now returning to it. The sounds of the forest muted; heard from underwater, or far away. Nellas squeezed her eyes shut so tight that lights burst behind her eyelids, and the only constant was Lúthien's hand with hers.

Lúthien’s voice continued whispering in the harsh language, then suddenly quieted. The prickle through Nellas’ fingers faded when the words did.

When Nellas next looked, the flowers had vanished, and Lúthien’s fingers rested on bare earth. Her eyes remained closed, her lips parted as she sucked in air, and there was a fine sheen of sweat pearling on her upper lip, refracting the morning light so that her skin seemed almost translucent, and Nellas found herself - again - transfixed, struggling to speak, not merely for the charge of power she’d felt, but more simply, for Lúthien’s impossible beauty and the easy grace of her understanding.

Almost, Nellas’ words felt uncouth, disruptive.

“What was the language?”

“Ayanumâzân, the tongue my mother taught me. I made a spell of sleep for the flowers - I asked that they sleep until spring,” Lúthien said after the moment’s stillness that it took her to regain her breath. Her voice sounded tired, but there was a content note in it now. “I shall come again at snowmelt to make certain they do not miss their time. Perhaps you can show me, in the meantime, where else they grow, so that I can tread carefully there, and learn more where of my land where I may? Daeron - my guardian, you might say, so he fancies himself - he was very dour that I wanted to sit and speak with my maidens rather than dance for him last night, so I slipped away from them all and ran - he still seeks me nearer to Menegroth, I think. We have time.”

Nellas had not yet taken her hand away, and now Lúthien’s fingers curled around hers; her face lifted in a smile, and she tugged Nellas to her feet without effort.

“I would like that,” said Nellas a little breathlessly as she led Lúthien away through the trees, her smaller hand fitting easily into Lúthien’s cupped palm. “And if he comes seeking you, I can teach you to hide.”

Lúthien laughed. “I like you very much, Nellas, I do.”

Chapter End Notes

Ayanumâzân: A tentative Valarin word, “Ainurin”, composed of ayanû(z), “Ainu”, a supposed plural suffix -umâz and a possible adjectival suffix -ân.

Finally, many thanks to Zeen and Suzelle for their help with this fic.

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