Torchsong by Dawn Felagund, Elleth

Reaction: Lasbaneth

Maglor's wife reacts to his song. 

Lasbaneth finds the room and the Noldor assembled there stifling and exhausting.

She has claimed a goblet of watered-down wine for herself rather than indulging and has found a spot by an open window away from the crowd that allows her to gaze out past the stone battlements into the open land. She wishes she were there, riding with the wind in her hair, but at least, glancing back, Maglor seems as ill-at-ease as she feels. Her husband asked her to attend, after all, saying that he wished to share what he had learned from her.

He calls his song Noldolantë, which, in combination with the presumptuous Quenya (although she is no friend of Thingol's decree, finding it ridiculous as they have all but adopted Sindarin as their daily tongue), makes her roll her eyes at the arrogant fool, believing himself capable of hindsight already when not so long ago, she left him to wallow in misery because he could not look beyond the horizon of his own woe. She loves him deeply, and that has always been the constant of their marriage more than the political dictum laid down by Fëanor and her father, but he is a fool. Her fool.

But he surprises her.

As the song winds on, scathing words that shadow the Noldor from Tirion to Alqualondë, across the sea and the Ice, she hears Sindarin chords scatter into the Noldorin themes, at first unobtrusive, then stronger and louder, and the discomfort of the assembled Noldor becomes thick enough to cut with a knife. Almost, she is minded to fetch her drum and accompany him, but instead, wine and night air forgotten, she sits and listens, rapt and smiling. He actually learned to listen.