Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the high, dark, vaulted halls of a house that had stood long before the Sun and Moon, Thuringwethil hid herself away. Incense wafted up from below; myrrh, the spicy fragrance that mourners set aflame. Above her a million fluttering bats blocked out the spying stars where great crumbling holes opened in the ruined roof. It had never broken, she knew; it had been so from the beginning, ruined even in the hour of its birth. And she was as like to see something Other as the stars if she flew through the thick crowd of wings, but she wouldn't think about that. Instead she flew into the lowest ranks and hovered there, secret and dreaming. For a time that was all she knew, as she tried her best to forget what had brought her there.

Nienna's house was a house of mourning but not one of forgetting, and Thuringwethil found herself shaking as she wept more often than she could bear. Something had shifted, and she could no longer keep to insensate dreams. She was perched on a high roof beam in the shape of a small, elf-like woman; her bat form had grown too wobbly to keep her in the air, and what she felt was too much for that tiny body. Her woman-form was dealing with it little better; it recalled too well the pain of her recent wounds and the fear and utter helplessness as she had died, sensed too strongly a newly torn bond that she did not dare touch, but at least it could weep. She wasn't convinced it was helping. She scrubbed at her face and drew a deep breath. The air held a faint tang of salt beneath the incense and the smell of ancient stone, and she knew it was the salt of tears. The place was soaked with them. The Lady of the place tasted of them too, and her presence permeated the hall.

The scent cast her back in thought, to an unending day lit by the Lamps, when she'd flitted about Almaren doing the bidding of her lord.

*

From the beginning she had followed him; she had, from the moment she remembered being her, hungered to know, and most of all she had hungered for knowledge that lay hidden from others. Melkor, alone of the Valar, held secrets to himself that none else knew, and he alone walked where others feared to tread. Thuringwethil had crept after him at times into the dark and empty places beyond Eru's Halls, and she had taken up the Discord when he sang it, her loyalty already sworn and sealed.

Now she listened on his behalf, keeping to the shadows and her little winged form, or mingling with naive Maiar who didn't yet realize there were two sides, and they had chosen the wrong one. Melkor, preoccupied with building a secret fortress underground and far to the north, hadn't planned on attending these festivities until she'd informed him a certain smith of Aulë's workshops would be there, and suddenly it had become top priority. He was around, slinking on his errand beyond the notice of Tulkas or Oromë. He had insisted he wouldn't need her help, but Thuri kept an eye out in case she had to create a distraction quickly.

Turning most of her attention back to the crowd, she passed her tongue over the sharp-tipped fangs she'd taken to wearing. All sorts of delicious tidbits came streaming from a Maia's mind--and sometimes their mouth too--borne on a little blood, and Thuri found her thoughts drifting to it often of late: the moment of obscene, stolen intimacy, her lips pressed to delicate skin; the power she held as she drained away their strength and captured much of what they knew all at once. The taste, the way they whimpered...!

She shivered in desire. She'd find prey before she left, and something worthwhile to present to her lord if all went well. If he could spare any attention from his talk of red hair and haughty perfection for her news.

Below the tree where she perched, someone stepped softly, not as if she tried to conceal her movement, but as if, Thuri thought strangely, she would offer gentleness even to the earth beneath her feet. Weakness, Thuri insisted to herself, but oh, so pretty. She was clad in grey, an austere sight among the revellers draped in every bright color they could imagine, wrought in feathers and petals and scales and webs of woven fiber. She glanced up, and Thuri flinched, realizing two things at once: it was a Valië's tear-streaked face she gazed upon, and Nienna was looking right back at her. For a long moment their eyes held each other, and Thuri had the uncomfortable feeling that Nienna saw much more of her than she wished.

"Is there room on your branch for another who seeks a little quiet?"

Spending time one-on-one was always a risk; too much chance that any information that reached Melkor's ears would be traced back to her. But Thuri rarely let risk stop her.

"Lady, why do you weep?" She beckoned for Nienna to join her. "Is it not a time for rejoicing?"

Nienna wiped her face and settled beside her. "It is, certainly, and I hope you have cause for joy. And yet...I see not so far as my brother, but I see great sorrows ahead, and some of them sooner than most suspect. Strife and partings between us, the destruction of much that is fair. And the things that may come of that..." She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, then shook her head. "Love it all while you can," Nienna told her, smiling sadly. "It will not last. Nothing will, in the end."

Hesitantly, for it was far beyond propriety, Thuri reached up and pushed a soft strand of damp, mist-silver hair from her cheek. Some of those partings were already underway, her Master's doing, but it couldn't be helped. The magnificent world he would rule would be worth a little pain in the meantime. "Perhaps not, but right now there is music and dancing and beauty all around us. And who knows? Perhaps what is to come will surpass it."

"Even if I knew it were to be so, I would mourn what is lost in its passing. They are dark thoughts for so bright a time, but they are mine, and I cannot leave them."

Despite herself, Thuri was charmed by the Valië and her sorrows, as removed from the oblivious crowd as Thuri herself, if for different reasons. She could not fully comprehend her, and that made her fascinating. And she was going to hate Thuri so much when she realized what part she played as Melkor's future designs came to fruition. That wasn't a worry for now, though. They'd all have to come around eventually, when they saw the true extent of Melkor's superiority.

"If you cannot put them down, let me at least ease the burden for a little while, if I may. Will you dance with me?"

Nienna studied her, and for a moment she looked so girlish and lost that Thuri wanted to wrap her in her wings and keep her. She wondered if she could summon up that same expression again with the right applications of pleasure and pain. "I fear I will only disturb the revels with my presence."

Thuri tilted her head as the pounding dance tune eased and shifted into something gentler and slower, then grinned at her companion. "We need not join the others. We can dance right here."

They slid down from the low branch, and Thuri folded the Valië in her arms, taking the lead. Little by little, Thuri pressed closer, until no distance was left between them, and Nienna's soft, well-rounded body was flush with hers. Thuri breathed her in greedily. All thoughts of work and duties had fled her mind. Nienna's garments were light and thin; Thuri could feel her nipples through them, and the way her breasts yielded invitingly, and all her cunning was bent now towards getting rid of that thin layer and seeing just how far one of the Great Powers might be subjected to her.

In the end, it took little. Thuri stood on her toes and went for a kiss, and Nienna welcomed her, offering her mouth and allowing Thuri's teeth to close on her lip. She welcomed the little trail of heated kisses along her throat, and when Thuri guided her down to the soft bed of moss hidden behind the trees where they lingered, she followed. She clutched Thuri to her as Thuri's fingers stole between her legs, and Thuri straddled her thigh, Nienna's hands tangled in her hair and skimming her back as Thuri sought her own pleasure, sucking marks into her breasts. As Nienna drew near her peak, Thuri sank her teeth in, and blood filled her mouth, salt-tanged, rich and sweet and overwhelming, full of mysteries and sorrow, and nothing she had tasted had ever hurt so much or been as beautiful. Their cries mingled, and Thuri wept as she came.

She had disappeared quickly after, and had not gone near Nienna again. She hadn't dared.

*

Slowly she became aware that the Presence she felt throughout the hall was centered right beside her. Thuri shuddered. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the Lady of Tears sitting on the beam, a sheer black veil covering her face and a silver spindle in her hand. The thread stretched long. Thuri wrinkled her nose; she thought she smelled blood, and the desire it woke in her must not be allowed to show. A single tear rolled down Nienna's face, far enough to show beneath the edge of her veil. The drop was red.

A tiny whimper escaped Thuri's lips. She turned away and wrapped her wings and her arms around herself, as if they could hide her even now. Only the soft whisper of wool being drawn into thread could be heard; and the flutter of bats overhead.

When Thuri could no longer stand the silence, she spoke. "He's dead, isn't He? I can't feel Him in this world anymore."

Nienna answered slowly in her hoarse and weary voice. "He has been cast from this world into the Void, there to stay until Arda is broken. A Vala cannot die, but it is the closest thing that could be devised."

Violent, ugly sobs wracked Thuringwethil's body at the confirmation. A soft pair of arms pulled her to the other woman's breast, and Thuri went easily, no more resistance in her. She allowed herself to be held, and she felt a gentle kiss pressed to the top of her head, and Nienna was sobbing too, and they cried together for a time.

"How dare you weep?" Thuri demanded as her senses began to return. "You hated Him like they all did."

"I hate no one. I weep for his pain, and I weep for yours, and for his cruel fate, and I weep for all that was lost to his deeds, and all that is wounded in the world even now at his hand."

A twist of discomfort stirred in her briefly, but Thuri reminded herself that Melkor was rightfully king, and the others had rejected him. "What good has that ever done?"

"Little enough, and yet I think not nothing."

"If you had not invented grief in the very middle of the Song, none of this would have hurt."

"Do you think that is so?" Nienna's plaintive voice ached with tears both shed and unshed. "Or do you think perhaps all that loss would still with be you, vast and unmoving, with no way to speak it or release your pain?"

Thuri scoffed, but she had no answer.

Nienna twirled her spindle and resumed the slow drafting of thread. Little by little it accumulated, a slow swell upon the spindle that never looked any different between each winding-on.

"I died, you know," Thuri said when Nienna showed no signs of leaving her alone. "Do you have any idea what it's like to have your whole existence ripped from you? I couldn't breathe; I thought I was drowning, and every gasp made the searing pain in my chest worse. And then my murderer flayed my skin from me and wore it herself, so I couldn't heal my body. You can't imagine the agony." If she focused on her own words instead of the nightmarish memories, Thuri thought it sounded rather glamorous. It would have been, if only it hadn't driven her so utterly from herself that the intervening years were simply blank.

"Oh, dear one." Nienna pressed her close again. "I assumed that's why you had come here, though why you chose my home over any secret, shadowed place in Middle-earth I do not know."

"I--" Thuri paused, her usual confident certainty abandoning her. "I thought I might go unseen here, I suppose." She swallowed. "Are you going to hand me over to the others?"

"Are you going to hurt my people?"

Thuri curled her lip. "What would be the point."

"Then you are welcome to abide here with me as long as you choose. This is a place of sanctuary, and I turn no one away."

To her horror, tears began to well again, and she could not restrain them. "Where else would I even go? I want my best friend back. He--Mairon may be dead too, for all I know. I want my Lord back, like He was in the old days. I want to go home."

"Home lies most often behind us, dear heart. I'm sorry."

Thuri wailed at that. A gentle hand was in her hair, and the soft grey wool against her face, sweet with incense, grew wet with her tears.

"So many homes lost. So many being built, only to perish soon," Nienna was saying to herself overhead. "So many left with nothing and no one, and I cannot reach them." Her voice broke on the last words, and though Thuri heard them distantly through her own pain, something within her wanted to reach up and comfort the Valië, as she had tried all those ages ago.

Eventually Thuri's sobs dwindled again, and she could do more than gasp for breath in between. She was lying in Nienna's lap, and Nienna stroked her folded wings. It was a pleasant sensation, and if she hadn't been so weary and thoroughly wrung out, it might have stirred other feelings.

"You kissed me once, in the dawn of time," she murmured. She hadn't been the only woman, she recalled, to take a turn with the lonesome Valië. They had recked little of it in those days, a simple pastime. None of them had stayed after. Nienna might not even remember the hours of silver-gold light she had passed with a flighty little Úmaia.

"Rather more than that, did we not?"

So much for that.

"It was a beautiful time," Nienna continued. "But I would shelter you whether we had or no."

Thuri shook her head. Despite all her years among folk that expected any favor to be recompensed, she knew Nienna would seek nothing. "I only meant--I miss those days too."

Nienna nodded, as if it made perfect sense where it didn't, even to Thuri. "Stay," she murmured quietly. "You don't have to do anything or be anyone. Just stay."

"For now," Thuri whispered. Her eyes were drifting shut with exhaustion, and Nienna's body was warm.