Embers by Adlanth

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Written for Elleth's Femslash & Lyrics bingo card, B column specifically!

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Say that the wind won't change on us

Nienor climbs first, bare feet braced against the trunk, swift and bold, and Nellas climbs after her, eyes flitting ever upwards. Soon Nienor sits astride a bough, head drawn back in delight, braided hair gold against the grey sky. Wind blows, and leaves rustle loudly. Nienor draws Nellas to sit close beside her. 
‘You must not forget this,’ says Nellas, leaning into her warmth.
‘O Elves whose memory is ever living!’ says Nienor, laughing. Pressing a kiss to Nellas’s mouth, she says: ‘But I shan’t.’
Perhaps not - and yet her brother did, thinks Nellas; and leaves scatter in the wind.

If I was Atlantis and you were the sea

She loathes it, loves it; then, at sixteen, she sees it for the first time.
It is wide, grey, bleak; some day all Númenor shall be hers, but not this. It comes lapping at her feet, a cold-tongued hound; she yells in affront, rips up a sheaf - sceptre, whip - of marram grass, lashes the sea. ‘Thief!’ Of a father’s presence, a mother’s happiness.
A wave comes, foam-tipped, and enfolds her. It is so cold she cannot breathe, then so warm between her legs she grows weak-kneed. In the water there is a woman’s face, grey-green, hair-wreathed; it laughs at her.

I've left signs but you take no notice

Míriel will not return, will not stand in the flesh before Indis again. Not to shame her, as her son is wont to do, for having taken her place in Finwë’s house; nor to speak her love.
Only the thousand treacheries of thread and fabric remain: a tear in Indis’s favourite gown, and the pricking of her needle against her thumb, the blooming of blood on linen, and a red blotch in the shape of Míriel’s profile; the sudden snagging of a ribbon around Indis’s wrist, tightening to a bond; the soft, caressing tangling of her sheets about her thighs.

When we die we will die with our arms unbound

Another might have listened to the worm’s lies, gone hunting after phantoms.
But she is Húrin’s daughter, axe-wielding, a captain of Nargothrond. She runs back to where captives are being led away. Finduilas is among them, in chains; so she leaps, runs the harder.
They meet in the midst of battle. When they kiss, open-mouthed and harsh, their teeth clash and Nienor tastes blood - Finduilas’s, her own. It makes no difference; the Orcs are too many. Finduilas, now freed, hefts an Orkish spear; Nienor lifts her axe. They shall not live long now - but side by side, at the last.

Now three of us here lie

Summer, then autumn, falling to coldness all of a sudden, to frost upon the leaves and on the grass of a morning. To Aerin it feels too early still to light fires, a waste of wood. Instead the three of them share a bed, under heaps of blankets. They speak little; Morwen is ever more silent, and already Rían’s eyes stray ever northwards.
Still they draw together. Their hands entwine; sometimes their limbs. Morwen’s fingers are firm on Aerin’s wrist as she guides her down; Rían’s breath hot and damp against her neck. Stolen warmth, as an east wind blows.