The darkness was fitting by Aprilertuile

The darkness was fitting

Netyalindë was walking home slowly, after the Valar announced the horror that had taken place in Alqualondë, promising it would be the last time such a deed is seen in their lands.

Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness around her she thought. Or perhaps it was that she knew those streets like the back of her hand-stitched pocket that currently held in secret the brooch that Fëanáro had made for her for her wedding to his second-born son.

A pretty piece with sharp edge that she held in a tense hand. She knew the sharp edges had cut her skin.

She didn’t care much currently.

Everyone around her had once promised that marriage was a good thing. That having a partner for life, a sacred bound to a loved one that nothing could ever break was a joy…

And yet, Netyalindë, alone in Tirion again, couldn’t help but disagree.

She loved Makalaurë.

They hadn’t been married long. And in her few years of marriage, she had been abandoned by her husband not once but twice for the sake of her father-in-law.

She had thought that nothing would ever be worst than choosing to remain behind in Tirion when her husband, Makalaurë, chose to go with his rage-fueled father into exile in Formenos. She truly believed then that she and Makalaurë would have time to reconnect and reconcile… That he’d soon see that she had been right and Fëanáro was so far out of what is reasonable that the Valar were right to intervene before worst could happen…

But now Finwë was dead and Fëanáro was their king and he had called the Noldor to leave Valinor. To abandon the safety of the Valar’s protection, the safety of a land without dark creatures… To go back to Far Shores.

The mad elf wanted to go after the Power that killed his father and stole his life-work.

She had refused to go. It was madness…

When she made her decision clear, Makalaurë had said nothing… And just left without a word. That was the last time she saw him…

Etched in her memories was the sight of his back fading into the new darkness, and the feeling of wrongness that gripped her heart and stopped her from calling him back.

But now blood was staining the hands of her husband. Blood was on her married name.

The marriage that once brought her pride now gave her only shame for her husband’s deeds. For her husband’s family’s deeds.

And who, she thought, would avenge the wrongful dead of Alqualondë now? Who else would need to die so that Fëanáro, mad, fell, fey Fëanáro, her own father-in-law, could feel better about himself?

How far would her husband fall on the wake of his father, how far would she be ashamed of her husband before the end?

Makalaurë was exiled, never to return.

She was a wife without a husband, alone, in a land where people weren’t supposed to be alone.

And he was a husband without a wife, alone, leaving their fair land for a land of danger far away.

He was forbidden to come back. Exiled from Valinor. Long would be the years ere the end, and yet their marriage bound was supposed to be as immortal as their fëar were.

If loneliness takes her, shall she do as Finwë did and seek the Valar’s approval to remarry?

A mad laughter escaped her. She was so tired already. She had seen the looks people threw at her when the news of her husband’s deeds in Alqualondë fell.

Her heart bled for Nerdanel. Herself had ‘only’ lost a husband. Her mother-in-law had lost her husband and all her sons.

But no, she only contemplated the question out of anger and tiredness.

What would be the point of seeking such an agreement from the Valar? She had chosen already, her heart was gone… Along with her hopes for the future. She wasn’t Finwë. Her heart wasn’t fickle. She knew it. She knew herself.

She turned her eyes to the sky above.

The darkness was fitting to her husband’s deeds and to her mood. The stars were barely enough to see her path. She couldn’t imagine getting used to live in the darkness, without Telperion and Laurelin to light the world. But perhaps they’d need to now…

She sighed. Her thoughts were all over the place.

She could only hope now that she could live even with the shadow of her husband’s deed to darken her path and that people would remain fair to her.

She couldn’t even ask her own parents’ advice. They left with the mad king… In a sense perhaps they were more loyal than she was to the family of her own husband… What did that make of her really?