Sister, Lover, Priestess, Wise-Woman, Queen by oshun

Chapter 1

“In my time, I have been called many things: sister, lover, priestess, wise-woman, queen.^[1]There have even been those who have spoken of me as a goddess or a witch,” Melian said, looking at him with a gaze of mournful, quasi-hostility.  Perhaps not that extreme, he was the one who had intruded upon her solitude. On the other hand, she certainly did not intend to make it easy.

She was beautiful but cold. Her physicality had a shimmering, grayish, insubstantial quality to it. Hard to imagine her sweeping an arrogant full-of-himself leader like Elu Thingol off his feet in a sexual or romantic way. But the Elder Days, as they called them in poems and songs, were filled with stories of people before the occurrence of most of the big, tragic events that washed away their innocence, which made them question everything they thought they knew and understood. But he felt, as old as he came to be considered later, that he had always been part of a younger generation, one that had never thought they understood anything entirely. He had grown up thinking that it was dangerous to let one’s guard down and never assumed that anyone else had everything all figured out either.

Her skin was pale to the point of translucence and her hair was dark and full. Her features resembled those of Arwen, but she had a bloodless look about her that chilled him.  Elrond considered himself tall, but she was taller. He wondered if she had always been that tall. Her unfocused eyes sharpened, as though she had become suddenly aware that she had not answered him. He felt a feather-light touch on his mind which drew back without any attempt to probe.

A hitch upward of her delicate but sharp chin hinted of irritation, almost as though she had been hoping he might go away and had realized he would not.

“But if I had to describe myself,” she said, “failure might be the first word that comes to mind as a fitting descriptive term.”

He was not sure how, but he had broken into her fortified isolation.  For a moment he wanted to indulge in a measure of self-pity that she was not pleased to see him. He ought to stop feeling like a rejected child. Why should she welcome him? She knew nothing about him. He was apparently a surprise and not a happy one.

Yet, she had taken on the form of an Elda out of consideration for him. She was not as withdrawn and opaque as he had been told to expect. Her pewter-colored eyes held a mixture of remorse and possibility. She was, in fact, far from entirely unreachable. Elrond could be mulish himself and that knowledge gave him insight into the effort required to hold oneself aloft and distant. Perhaps she was already softening a little.

 “Do you know who I am, my lady? Do you recognize me? I thought perhaps you might, I would have guessed you to be one who sees things and knows things—the past, the future, outcomes that might have been or could be with some small alteration of will or motivation. I thought you might find me familiar. I am often told I resemble my mother’s kin.”

She startled, her eyes shooting open wide with a surge of emotion coloring her pale wraithlike cheeks. “You are a kinsman? Are you a grandson?” Her flat, cold voice softened from steel into liquid, an aural sense of tears, more as he might have imagined Nienna the Weeper than the famed enchantress Melian the Maia. He’d had his own share of experiences with battered and grief-worn spirits and had learned they could be moved. He smiled to himself, while guarding his outward demeanor of composure, thinking with fondness of Maedhros and Maglor as he had first known them in his youth and how easily they had responded to two lively boys demanding attention and affection. 

“Nearly so,” Elrond responded. “I am your great, great-grandson, a descendant of Lúthien and Beren through their son Dior and his only daughter Elwing. You might be surprised to learn that I am part Noldor also, almost a Fëanorian, certainly a Finwean.” He had learned that the exploitation of curiosity could be a powerful weapon in penetrating an armored soul. He saw her eyes brighten for a moment before she closed up again.

“Why are you here? I have nothing left to offer to you. I can barely hold onto this corporeal form long enough to focus on your voice.”

“Ah, well then,” he stuttered a little. She was prevaricating; he could sense she was more than a little interested. “I should tell you that I expect nothing of you, lady, I sought only to learn a little more about you.”

He couldn’t entirely resist the slight pulling around the corners of his mouth that threatened to break into an outright grin. There was something about Melian that did remind him of a few scattered impressions he retained of his own mother—dramatic, tragic, and perhaps a sense of the deliberately manipulative tempered by a barely suppressed hint of self-awareness. He did not believe that he was merely imagining that he perceived an infusion of warmth, an increasingly substantial physicality quickening in the washed-out woman who stood before him. Female. Almost maternal. He was developing a strong perception of her chosen gender identification now. Perhaps, he ought to try to communicate why he had been so insistent about wanting to meet her.

“I have lost many who have been dear to me,” he continued, with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders, “and, yet, as you can see, I still live and hope. We have endured similar losses. I came to you in search of a part of my family that has been long denied me. I had heard that you have refused to accept any visitors since you left Middle-earth. But I thought, fancifully perhaps, that I might have something to offer you. But if not, I will leave you in peace. The last thing I want is to add to your distress.”

More of the tension drained from her face with color slowly replacing the eerie bloodless look. She actually made eye contact with Elrond.

“You, offshoot of my beloved daughter, surely have heard the most basic details of my history. The Quendi do love their chronicles. And I am not sure I am ready yet to fill in the painful particulars or correct your misconceptions. I might like to hear something about your life and times.” She motioned toward a table and two chairs of ash blond wood, positioned under a venerable Oak that he had not noticed before. “Would you like to sit down?”

They talked for hours. More like he talked and she asked questions, but she felt less insubstantial to him with the passage of each hour. Meanwhile, Elrond grew tired and hoarse. Be careful what you wish for you just might get it, he thought. He felt unbearably sleepy and a little faint from lack of nourishment.

“I truly appreciate the time you have granted me. Nevertheless, I came to learn of you, and yet I’ve done all of the talking.” He sighed heavily—so much effort and so little gained.

He thought he detected a glint of humor in her eyes. In the short time he had spent in Aman, he had found a most frustrating lack of any sense of absurdity among the Ainur. Perhaps this one was different. Talking to his ancestress nonetheless felt like trying to weasel a secret out of his mother-in-law—talk about witchy women with a streak of the contrarian about them as wide as a stripe on the back of skunk.

“But if you, dear lady, truly want all of the details, you might want to visit the halls of Vaire the Weaver.” He could be pigheaded also. “I have heard she has created marvelous tapestries . . .  perhaps you could put in a word for me and bring me along with you?”
             
“Perhaps I shall visit Vaire. She has offered to share her efforts with me. I ignored her, of course. It was not the minutia of historical fact that I wanted today either as much as to discover how you, fair grandson, would tell your story. You not only look like my daughter but share her single-minded persistence!” She snorted and blinked her eyes at him no longer entirely without warmth but still cautious. “All right then. Leave me now. I almost forgot how tired and hungry you creatures get. You surely must need to eat. If you come back another day, I may tell you some of my tale and provide you with refreshments.”

Elrond felt smug and happy as he traveled down the road leading away from the gardens of Lórien in the direction of the villa that he and Celebrían shared. He had hours to go, but his horse at least was well-rested. Servants of Estë had provided him with a satchel filled with fruit, cheese, and some sort of light refreshing rolls—not lembas!—and a flask of water with a mysterious restorative quality. It cleared his head entirely. He could not wait to surprise his wife with the news that her clever spouse had not only made contact with the reclusive Maiarin demi-goddess but had convinced her to accept him as a grandchild.

[1] Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon. For the Nov-Dec 2019 challenge to choose one of the famous first lines from the prompt list and use it to start a story.