Like a vast shadow moved by Quente

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Time in hours, days, years

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Nimloth scratched the back of her calf with her bare toes and observed the proceedings. The workshop of the Queen, in its caverns shaped like tree-filled glades, were busy with many elves, each engaging in their own occupations in the banner- and lantern-festooned nooks that proclaimed their crafts. Nimloth very much did not want to be there, and had been dragged from her daily occupation of foraging to join the rest of the grumbling, conscripted group in the workshop of the Queen.

The rest of the elves with her were similarly garbed -- hunters, all. Nimloth used to be one of their number, but after her first meeting with Dior, she had given it up.

Instead, foraging was Nimloth’s occupation of late. She assisted the healers in the gathering of herbs that could not be coaxed to grow underground, especially those that required interaction with a larger forest to exist -- certain lichens, mistletoe, a variety of herbs that grew only beneath blackberry brambles. Those, she had just discovered in quantity, which explained her current state of unreadiness to wait upon the queen.

However, the feast of the Coming of the Eluchîl was a sennight away after a long, long wait (perhaps not overlong in the lifetime of an elf, but King Thingol acted as if it was so), and all the denizens of Menegroth were laboring industriously on creating, refreshing, and renewing every part of it.

Nimloth wondered why they felt the need; Menegroth was aging, as was its king. No amount of polish could rid the floors of their wear, nor mending could take away the deepest of the hurts of time. And yet, the king desired to make all seem afresh and aglitter as it had endless years before -- perhaps to sooth his vanity, or his worry. And so everyone jumped to their duty.

“There you are,” said Melian briskly, finding Nimloth amid the gathered hunters. This day, Melian’s garment was made of the pounded bark of birch trees, printed with the symbol of her house in berry-dye and silver.

“Nimloth, you are to assist the garment makers this day; they claimed at council that they are behind in embroidery work upon the sleeves and collars of the feast robes.”

Nimloth bit her lip and stood silently, waiting. Melian surveyed her, taking in the tangled hair, the mud-streaked arms, the inherited leather jerkin worn and darned and worn again -- now much stained with blackberry juice.

Melian smiled at Nimloth and drew breath. A gust of wind rose around them, small and contained, and created a tidy whirlwind that encompassed Nimloth only. A moment later, it subsided, and Nimloth looked with dismay upon her newly cleansed raiment.

“I will go,” Nimloth said, sighing.

But instead, Melian pulled her away from the rest of the group with a hand on her arm, eyes piercing into her own. “You desire my grandson’s good opinion,” Melian said. “And yet, part of you does not want to court it. You hesitate between staying and going, like a hawk loath to take the jess.”

“I mislike especially when you walk into my mind unbidden, my queen,” Nimloth said, averting her eyes. “Of course what you say is true. But I did not ask your council.”

“You did not. But time is short, so I will give it,” Melian said. “Let yourself revel in the simple joy of these days. These garments -- these jewels -- the beauty of these halls... It is a phrase in the song so short as to be swiftly forgotten, unless you live each day as if they will soon end. And I shall; ever shall I remember these days, before ... before the Silmaril shall come to us.”

Nimloth looked upon Melian and felt troubled. “But that signifies the death of the lady Lúthien,” Nimloth said. “You forsee it soon, then?”

Melian touched Nimloth’s shoulder, and then gripped it. “Come with me,” Melian said. “I release you from work with the weavers and broiderers. Instead, I shall show you what it is I do in these halls. It shall be Dior and not you who will perform these bindings, for he has my blood. But yet, I shall show you, as I once showed my daughter.”

~

Melian gave a few calm orders to the group of elves, dispersing them to help polish, and mend what was broken, and paint, and gild what was old. Then she turned, walking to a far corridor that led out of her workshop, and Nimloth followed in her wake.

“Heed me, Nimloth. I sing songs of praise for Arda as I walk the halls of my home. I do not do so idly -- our land must know that in these short days while it grows and thrives beneath this sun, we give our love to it.”

And so Nimloth listened, as Melian praised the rock and gems that lined the walls of her home. She praised the elves within it, and the trees with pale roots that descended between the cracks of the ceiling to dangle their white threads. She praised the moles and the beetles, the moss and the water that welled up from springs far below.

But Nimloth heard more than the songs of love and joy. There was a faint note within the music that spoke of loss -- and leaving -- and bidding farewell.

“You will leave these lands,” Nimloth said, stricken again. “Is it -- is it when your daughter takes the path of Men?”

“No!” Melian said, her expression sad. “It is not then. But not long after.”

“How is it that you can see the next years and not strive to change what occurs?”

Melian raised her voice in song, then. She sang the song of Elu Thingol, his beauty, and his pride, and his fierce love for his realm. She sang of their long marriage, and of an enchantment so powerful it bound her to the earth.

“--And when he is gone, so your binding to Arda is dissolved,” Nimloth said, catching a glimpse of something fascinating. Melian’s desire to remain, at war with the desire to spread her invisible wings and leave the bounds of form -- to become herself again.

“And so do you feel for my grandson, the Man,” Melian said. “Bound by the constraints of his body here in Arda. And yet you desire it, even knowing that it will tie you to his fate.”

“I am not yet ready to speak on it,” Nimloth said. “But I comprehend your lesson, my queen.”

And when their eyes met, they met in understanding.

“Time,” Melian said, “think on it. Time is useful to He who Creates because it marks the pauses in the song. But that is all it is -- a way to create the music, the beginning and ending, the rise and fall. But you can live in the spaces between each phrase of the music. You can take those silences and stretch them infinitely.”

Nimloth scrunched her nose. “I have not the power for that, lady.”

“You do.”

And Melian touched her, once, between the eyes -- and for a timeless space Nimloth was set into the darkness surrounding Arda, like a dream, but not at all. She saw the Creator everywhere, His words describing stars, the flat earth in its lovely bubble in the dark, the fruit of the sun tugged past in her chariot, the moon bound to its hunter.

And riding toward them over the flat grass of southeast Beleriand, his spirit like the best of all beings upon Beleriand in its brightness and fragility, Dior.

“Do you see it?” Melian asked, her voice fragmented and slow as time stretched.

Dior would never arrive; Dior would always arrive. Nimloth longed for him every minute -- and would have him -- and would lose him forever.

“I see it,” Nimloth said, anguished, glad, bereft, fulfilled. “I see it.”