Scene by Candle-Light by Elleth

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

The candle-flame dimmed into a deep yellow, pink at edge and center, and blue shadows in the white hollow of the wax. Aerin lifted her eyes to Morwen's face, and registered the brief consideration and perhaps even concern as the moment to steel herself - a blink before Morwen dribbled the the molten substance over Aerin's right side, her belly, the jut of her hip, and all the way across her thigh and down the crease where it met her body.

Aerin sucked in a long-drawn, cold breath. Her skin was as icy as the room was frigid; Morwen was cautious with using firewood although by Aerin's grace they currently had no lack of it. The scalding sting of the wax came welcome, intensified by the bruises healing below her skin where she had asked Morwen to pour it.

"Again," she said. "Burn him away," and again while the wax of the candle melted she kept her eyes on the colour of the flame and held on to the carved and painted head-board of the bed in preparation. She'd find some of the flaking gold-leaf under her fingernails afterwards, as always; Morwen would regard it with sorrow that she in her low, steady voice would try and make light of in a few choice words. The emblem set there, the rhombe of Húrin's golden house set around and mingled with the circular design of Morwen's, had been a gift of the Elf-King for their wedding with his blessings for a fruitful union, but perhaps the Elf-King's craftsmen had estimated the time the bed might be used in its appointed function as too short before their work began to break down.

Or worse yet, they had estimated the time perfectly well. Morwen still lay awake hoping for Arroch's footfall, Aerin knew, but among Morwen's people hope for Húrin's return, high and proud on his horse, had long since vanished into pale, unhappy complacency. Aerin could not bring herself to break Morwen's heart even further by telling her more than she must, but sometimes she wondered how Morwen would take it, if she went among the folk of Dor-lómin. Sequestered away into her house with her small daughter, she did not know how low the moods had become. It was something of a mercy.

Aerin cried out. The shock of hot wax splashing across her belly and the largest bruise there threw her out of contemplation, Morwen jolted backward, her fumbling fingers set the candle on the nightstand and threw the blankets back over Aerin's naked body.

"Have a care that you do not call Niënor to us!" Morwen reproached, and looked over her shoulder to the open door, and for the instance she failed to mask the tremor in her voice. They had left the girl playing by herself in the hall below, with a string of elf-gems and shells that Aerin had brought as a protective charm and for Morwen's reputation as an elf-witch. All the doors were open, for Morwen wanted to be certain she could hear and react if anything caused Niënor distress, even if it brought them close to discovery at times: the girl was daring and inquisitive even in face of her mother's commands. Aerin could no longer count how many times she had muffled sounds into the pillows or against Morwen's skin so she'd not alert her, and now bit her lips in face of the failure to quiet herself.

There were curtains around Morwen's bed, fine elf-made fabric with the only use to keep out midges and flies in summer; they were too filmy for warmth or privacy, and through them, Aerin saw Morwen stand, made ghostly by the material, as she regarded Aerin.

Aerin looked away.

"I am sorry," she said, pushing herself up and pulling blankets to her chest. "I was not paying attention to when it came. You did not hurt me more than was intended. We can continue, if you think you can."

Morwen shook her head, and doled out a few clipped, quiet words. "To think that I am hurting you at all, even if it masks the hurt done to you by Brodda and lifts your head a little higher, is hard to find compelling. And to waste one of your candles on it..."

Aerin considered. She had before thought that Morwen hated it, but never had had certainty. "Finally you speak. You know I would not have you beholden to me because I bear alms to you at times. Cecegtai - Lothiel - will be glad to oblige; she has as much reason to hate Brodda as we do and would not mind helping me erase his touch."

"Lothiel?" Morwen refused, on principle, to use the Easterling names, while they slipped past Aerin's lips with indifference by now. Brodda was the exception. She knew it angered him to be referred to in the crude pronunciation of someone who did not speak the Easterling tongue well, instead of the exalted title, Boghda, that he had claimed after the betrayal of Bór and his vault to power. Even Lorgan was chafing at the arrogance of the upstart claiming his title, and tried to whittle it down by turns with gifts and threats.

"Yes, Lothiel," Aerin confirmed. "She baked the bread I brought you, you know." Brodda's second wife, a daughter of Lorgan - Getegürci - had been one such gift. Sent to him when Aerin failed to conceive after a year, she had come to hate the man so much that she'd attempted to run back to her father despite his wolfish treatment of her, and failed in that because she was turned away at any door for shelter, warmth, or help. The few free people left in Hithlum hated her, outlaws hunted her, and her own were forbidden to shelter runaways under pain of death. The Grey-Elves had found her wandering in the wild half-frozen and returned her to Aerin, who took her as a slave to keep her in the house at least, and treated her as an equal when she could. She had warmed to Aerin under her protection since, and many times had made clear that she wished for more than that.

The wax was hardening on Aerin's skin while some speech-less time passed between them. Morwen stood at the room's door, drawn the green shawl - itself a gift from Aerin that she was reluctant to remove - tighter around her shoulders over her worn black dress and waited whether Niënor was coming, then when all stayed quiet, walked back on soundless steps to the bed, standing again behind the gauze and looking down to Aerin in the sheets. There was a light in her eyes, but not what had earned her her moniker; it was a painful light, the mirrored uncertainty of the candle-flame about to gutter out in its own pool of wax.

"I do not want you to go to Lothiel with your needs." Morwen's lips shaped around soundless words after that, but it was hard to begrudge her her reluctance. Morwen had never been forthcoming with feelings even before the Unnumbered Tears and in Húrin's presence - not even before Urwen's death - so much that some called her cold-hearted, not made for great love or passion, and perhaps she was not, not in ways that would be accounted ordinary by the folk of Hithlum, but anyone who had passed through Morwen's terrible griefs would be as guarded, she thought. Many of the people who had followed Morwen from Brethil into Hithlum, an orphan, refugee and leader all at once at age thirteen, were careful in their own ways, and more so after tragedy had struck their new homeland, also.

There was no blame to be found, unless it were with the Foe in the north and his allies.

"I know that face," Morwen said at last, and Aerin did not even try to school her expression into impassivity, whatever it had told Morwen. "Do not absolve me; I am selfish and inconsistent to not want you to take your comforts with another, and yet be reluctant to grant them by my own hand." She sat, and the mattress barely dipped beneath her weight, although it shifted when Morwen grasped the blankets to pull them away and reveal Aerin again, and sat looking, before sweeping a hand over the wax on her skin.

Aerin's skin rose in the new exposure to the freezing air, rather than Morwen's cool, calloused touch. Some of the wax was flaking under her fingers, peeling like a scab in the crease where her navel lay, and a drop had caught in the line of downy red-gold hair trawling faintly upward. Morwen's fingers lingered there, rather than over the thicker spatter down her side, where the wax close to her skin still was soft and faintly warm.

"There is nothing to absolve you from. Not all my coming here is wholly selfless," Aerin said. "You love me in your own way, this I know, and there is no shame in that - and less shame by far than giving victory to what ails and troubles us when we together have found a way to keep the dark and cold of these times at bay a little - but I will try and see that I will not come to you with hurts to be comforted, if I can."

"No, come when you must, when you can. Worse than seeing you hurt is not seeing you at all. You are my only likely hope left here." Morwen closed her eyes, and the twin reflection of the candle in them was shut out. Her face looked wretched, so much that Aerin's stomach twisted when instead she should have kissed Morwen and thanked her for her honesty, should have apologized for fixing them both in a circle of hurt that she had yet to find a way to escape. She could not find the words, and said nothing else.

"Again?" Morwen asked quietly, and stretched her hand out for the candle, only barely still burning. If she could tell any of Aerin's thoughts, she said nothing more of it.

"No," Aerin said, reaching for the only comfort she could think of, the only simple, momentary escape. "Come, let us get warm together."

Morwen hesitated, but then slipped next to her and pulled the covers close around them, dressed as she was, melting against Aerin and breathing warm against her throat. Behind her the candle was extinguished at last, leaving the room in the half-dark of the winter day outside the windows.

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Chapter End Notes

Some linguistic notes: For ease of transliteration, I've used Mongolian as the Easterling language.

Lorgan is frequently referenced to as a hunter and a tracker in the text, so I decided to use that as his "true" Easterling name, Getegürci. His daughter Cecegtai (flowery, blooming) I translated as Lothiel, an approximate Sindarin equivalent.

Brodda's name/title, Boghda historically was a title given to a khan, king or emperor, meaning "golden, exalted, holy, sacred", and it sounded alike enough to the name we're given for me to adopt it. There also is an idea here that did not make it into the story in much detail but might crop up in a future one; Lorgan's name might similarly mean "golden commander" in a variant of Elvish (perhaps imperfectly adapted from Quenya Laurekáno by some Hadorian scribe?), so be similar in meaning - and as the chief of the Easterlings he'd be the much more likely candidate for the title, hence the hint toward Brodda's arrogance and the idea of strife between them.

Many thanks to my darling Zeen for the beta! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.