Where the Lilies Grow by Elleth

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Chapter 1

Unadulterated femslash fluff with some AU facets thrown in to facilitate it. 

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There was a corner in the gardens of Nargothrond where wild lilies, white and pink and a soft yellow at the center, grew in abundance. Finduilas laughed softly when Niënor brought her there, her hands uncertain and fluttery and curling in Finduilas' palm, and her face alive with joy.

"Well?" Finduilas asked when they stood, looking at the lilies nodding in a breath of wind from the air shafts to the surface.

"Well?" Niënor echoed. A fierce flush spread over her cheeks the moment she looked at Finduilas, and then hastily averted her eyes. Her smile was gone; a flicker of bewilderment had taken its place. "Well what? I hoped you would like them." She bit her lips, her teeth a gleam against the pink of her lips, and Finduilas found her eyes drawn to it, lingering.

"Well," she said, clearing her throat and averting her gaze at last. "I do; they are lovely - as flowers are, and they must have come in with the soil to grow wild - but I am wondering - was there a reason other than the flowers that you brought me here to see? My father asked for my presence during the council, and I ought to heed his wishes even though I would sooner indulge my own pleasure."

Her cheeks heated, and for all her smooth speech, Finduilas found it hard to let deeds follow her words, even ones that ought to be as simple as turning to leave.

Niënor gave her a look, sidelong and fleeting, followed by a nod that was barely there at all. Her face spelled out disappointment now, but then she reached out, her fingers stretching toward the unruly tumble of hair that fell over Finduilas' shoulder, a braid that'd come undone under her nervous fingers, while Niënor herself kept her hair straight, pristine, and bound back high around her head like a garland.

When her fingertips brushed a curl, she pulled her hand back as though burned.

"I apologize for wasting - how much time is there until the council?" she asked instead, cradling one hand in the other. "Just so that I have not brought you here in vain and took from the time you might have made yourself presentable in - would you have me do your hair?"

Finduilas drew in a breath in wonderment, fighting down the hopes she should not harbour. Niënor rarely was so forward. She spoke little even to Morwen, and Finduilas surmised that after all their time spent together, most there was to say between them had been said - and she knew that growing up, although Niënor had chafed at her restraints, she had understood that there was little use to voicing desires when they had no means to fulfil all but the simplest ones.

The lilies were one such thing, Finduilas realized. After all of Morwen and Niënor's disappointed hopes seeking her brother - finding only long-cold tales out of Doriath and a trail of unfounded rumors that led them to Nargothrond - Túrin had never been to the city in any guise Finduilas knew - the lilies must mean much to her, and thinking she might have made light of something she did not understand, Finduilas felt a sharp pang of guilt and shame. Her father was honouring the pledge to the House of Bëor that Finrod had made, and offered them friendship, harbour and welcome, and advised the population of Nargothrond to do the same.

In making light of the lilies, Finduilas had done anything but. No wonder that Niënor seemed upset, even if Finduilas' behaviour had arisen out of what had meant no more to her than a gentle jest and the awkwardness of having Niënor so close so suddenly, when Finduilas had sought to keep her distance and found that gradually dwindling as first threads of friendship spun between them.

For it was not friendship that she sought, but she dared not voice her own desire.

Instead, giving Niënor an apologetic smile for her silence, she sat in the grass. "I would love for you to braid my hair. I - I have my ribbon here," she said, pulling the yellow silk band from the satchel on her belt. "Is there aught you need - a brush, a comb, pins? I would like for you to - to do my hair up the way you wear it. I find it lovely."

Niënor came to sit behind her, folding her legs comfortably under her, and Finduilas could not help steal a glance at the pale skin of her knees where the hem of Niënor's dress had slipped upward, wetting her lips with her tongue, her mouth suddenly gone dry.

Niënor seemed not to have noticed. "I have a comb here - I'll just wear mine down, and one of your maids - or, you yourself could bring the pins back after your council, -" and with the sentence lingering, perhaps itself in some hope, she began to pick them from her hair until her braid fell down long and golden. Finduilas could smell the soap she must have used on her hair - chamomile and something sweeter - jasmine that came with traders far out of the east - and that alone was enough to drive the heat back into her cheeks at the unexpected intimacy.

"I would like that, it is the least that I could do in return for your - "

A shiver went through her when Niënor reached for her hair and began to pull the braid apart. She ceased at once, and although she did not take her hands away, gave Finduilas a quizzical glance. "Is all well? Did I hurt you?"

"No. Quite the contrary," she breathed. "It feels - good. My hair has been in such disarray." Even to her own ears, it sounded insincere, when Niënor's touch was had elicited the sensation, and they both knew that it was so.

Niënor murmured something in response that Finduilas' ears did not catch, and set to work again. She worked with care and in silence, and when Finduilas' hair hung open down her back, curling all the way into Niënor's lap, there were, quite suddenly, Niënor's fingers brushing aside the lace over her shoulder, and then her lips warm and uncertain over Finduilas' skin.

Niënor looked at her, her eyes bright and steely - a challenge, a hope past taking-back.

Her breath caught, and she turned her head away, and her words came jittery, uncertain, anything but what she wanted them to be - all for a mortal girl who had stolen, it seemed, both her heart and her common sense. "Niënor, what are you doing?"

It seemed her question had broken a barrier, for Niënor's words rushed out with uncharacteristic decision. "Can you not tell? I am tired of hiding what I feel. Nothing good will come if I push my feelings down as my mother does - it is not in my nature as it in hers, she says I am my father's daughter much more than I am hers - I do not know how true that is, but in this - I have been wishing that you would heed me almost since the day we came to Nargothrond and you stood there like a sun-gleam. And I am no blushing innocent, Finduilas, I know that there are ways for women to be with one another, I know that my mother took comfort with -- someone - and I have seen you watch me. I would have had to be blind to miss you having your eyes on me for almost as long."

Finduilas could protest and speak past the heart racing in her chest like a bird on wing.

Instead she turned her head, first a fraction and, when Niënor failed to waver or pull back, further. And then Niënor came forward and kissed her.

Sweet, chaste, courtly, the way Finduilas had kissed Gwindor before he was lost, was not how Niënor kissed. There was an almost desperate hunger to the way she pressed her lips to Finduilas', the pressure and urgency intoxicating, and there was laughter, too in that kiss, perhaps over her own inexperience, for it was clear that Niënor had never kissed another person before, or perhaps out of wonder, or both - and when Finduilas drew back to breathe, Niënor's eyes were wide open and on her, and her lips reddened from the kiss, and her hands still in Finduilas' hair, where they had come to rest.

Finduilas could make out a lingering taste on her lips, faint honey-balm, and, smiling, shook her head. "I should have kissed you sooner - and I will do so again once there is more time. I would have all that you are willing to give - when I must not rush from you for a council."

Niënor's face clouded, but Finduilas could not help another smile. "I promise that I shall kiss you thoroughly, and more." She reached out, and drew a finger down the neckline of Niënor's dress, lingering at its lowest point where the crease between her breasts began.

Niënor's breath hitched.

Finduilas continued, undeterred, wondering absently where her sudden courage came from. "I would discover all of you, and have you discover all of me - but slowly, and not now - if I am not at the council, they may come search for me, and then what shall they say finding the daughter of the King and one of the King's guests with one another?"

"They would be so enthralled they would leave us alone and let us play at discovery." Niënor grinned. "But go if you must, if you promise me that you shall return soon. I will wait right here for you." She unwound one of her hands from Finduilas' hair and reached for the lilies, plucking a single large bloom from its stalk. "I shall have no time to fix your hair now. But take this."

She tucked the flower behind Finduilas' ear and fixed it into her hair with a pin. "As a reminder."

Finduilas' heart stuttered at the touch of warm fingers to her ear, and more laughter bubbled up between her lips. "Now how could I forget?"

She rose to drop a kiss onto Niënor's hair, but lingered for another when Niënor tilted her beaming face up. "I shall be late, Niënor - I shall be late, I must go," she murmured, but by then Niënor's hands were on her hips pulling her down into the grass again, and Finduilas found herself unwilling to resist any longer. "Menace," she said, and, "Come, if I must be late indeed, then at least kiss me again."

Niënor was all too happy to oblige.