Andreth steps outside the door of her nephew’s house, the grand building that had once been home of her brother and her father and their father before them, so lovingly crafted and worn smooth by time and care. Her fingers wish to linger on the door-latch for a moment, but she does not hesitate to walk further into the light. She does not hear the door close behind her, or any sounds from inside the house. It is dawn, and the reddish orange of the sky looks so warm and comforting. She does not understand how it can, because the fiery glow engulfs the entire skyline and casts its hue over everything she sees, and she should be frightened, should be thinking of the flames that destroyed her world only a few days ago, but she doesn’t. She has forgotten the northern fires.

Andreth walks out from the shadow of the eaves, hugging her green cloak around her shoulders, staring out at the field stretched out before the house. From this angle she cannot see the other houses of the village nor the smithy, mill, or any of the barns, not even the fence-lines. Only a field of green grain, waist-high with summer promise, and a figure standing in the field with his back to her. The dawn silhouettes him, and Andreth knows the lines of his shoulders. He is leaning over to run a hand over the barley, and as a breeze lifts at her unbound hair, Andreth begins to smile in recognition and joy. He is not wearing armor, only a soft woven tunic of the very sort of plaid woolen cloth that has come from her looms, and there is no sword or quiver belted at his waist. He is free of tension, at peace, and that alone would make Andreth weep. Sunlight turns the curls of his hair into pure gold. It is still silent. Andreth walks out into the field, the dew soaking through the thin leather of her shoes and collecting on the hem of her green cloak. The man in the field straightens and turns to face her over his shoulder, smiling.

Aegnor speaks to her, and at first Andreth doesn’t understand. Something about a ring, and she looks down at her hand, where a silver band wraps around her finger. An elven proposal of marriage custom, she remembers it being explained to her, silver for intention to wed, but does not recall if it was Finrod or Aegnor himself who had told her, and it does not make sense. He had never proposed to her, no matter how she had dreamed he had. But he is looking at her with such certainty and love, framed by the orange dawn. Andreth stares at the cold circle of silver, and suddenly the light has cooled and she feels cold. She remembers the texture of ash and dirt in her hands, digging through the aftermath of a battlefield. She remembers burials, and wakes.

Andreth is in her ancestral home, but her bed is cold. The fire in the hearth is gone, and as she stretches out her hand, she can feel the piece of metal from her dream. It is a piece of chain-mail from a shattered and burnt suit of elven mail, one of the larger rings that she had dug out from the pile of charred bones. She runs a finger over the metal and wishes she was back in her dream.

~~i am nothing if not predictable and this is the JL trailer Clois scene because OTPs are meant to be combined.~~

Tears

As an apology for the last angst fic, here’s the written out proper version of this headcanon.

…

Still wiping away tears from his eyes, Námo calls to the other side of the enveloping darkness that formed the outermost ring of the Circles of the World, hoping to reach the ear of Ilúvatar or one of his brethren that did not journey into Arda. He knows there is a counterpart of his that must be the one to hold and handle the mortal souls that leave his Halls and enter Beyond (he hopes, in the way the Children have described and defined hope). Finally, someone answers. At first it is hard to separate the tones from the reverb of his call, and there is a terribly annoying static to the vibrations on the upper places of thought. Manwe never has these issues, he thinks, and never has to wait this long. It is a vaguely familiar voice, but one he has not heard in so long he has forgotten the name that their father assigned them. Something that started with a Ha or He sound, he thinks. Or was it Nef?

“Námo!” the voice calls. “You were not supposed to contact us unless it is of great need. What is this request you ask for?” There are undercurrents of peevishness and stress to the voice, a sense that they are distracted and cannot give him their full attention. It could be merely the distortion of communicating across barriers of existence. Námo tries not the feel any personal offense.

“A great boon,” the Judge says, pitching his tones to those of resolve and determination, and as succinctly as possible describes the situation with Melian’s daughter and her mortal lover. “They wish to remain together, and thus Lúthien is willing to join Beren to his mortal fate, to leave the confines of Arda.”

A great sigh echoes through the Outer Void. “Look, Námo, I know you have all your First Children to deal with and they can be a tad unruly, but we are swamped. Do you realize how exponentially greater the number of the Second Children are, and how swiftly it increases? And how fractious they are? I would trade you positions for some peace and quiet, even if it meant having to share a universe with Melkor. And you want to dump an extra soul on my overworked shoulders? Truly?”

The moratorium on the coldness of his heart has ceased; his sympathies can no longer be manipulated. Námo steels himself and replies, “My brethren and I wish to grant them some years together here on Arda, then allow them to leave together. I will give you time to prepare, and I am only asking you accept one soul. Not even our most intractable. But I swear by the name of our Father and Creator, I will not suffer a second permanent resident of my Halls declaring to never leave my couch and spend all of eternity bemoaning their lost mortal beloved. I have one already, and Vairë is exhausted already listening to him weep and pout and get accidentally tangled in her skeins as he searches for fresh handkerchiefs and frozen dairy sweets. Aegnor is bad enough. I won’t have twice the misery.”

The humming sound that signaled that the Ainur on the other end was only humoring Námo’s rant without giving it consideration screeched to a halt and the line of communication intensified with sudden loudness and clarity. “What was that name?”

“Melian’s daughter that wishes to have a fate of one of the Second Children?”

“No, no, the other. The one already moping in your personal wing of your Halls. The one that was in love with a mortal- it was mutual, wasn’t it? The name, please!”

“Aegnor,” Námo says slowly. “Ambaráto Aikanáro Arafinwion. And the woman he cries over was of the House of Bëor named-”

“AEGNOR!” the counterpart howls with the chords of extreme vexation that he thought only Melkor’s disharmony could inspire. “OH YES, HIM. We are sick of hearing that name. We know the woman of the Third Song, Andreth Saelind. There is not a soul here that does not, to our sorrow. For more than ten of your years, we have had to listen to her complaints, of her list of grievances of the inequalities and ill-planning of Eru’s Songs, critiques of your jobs and ours and philosophical bitching. Of which we always hear from the newly arrived, mistake me not – but this one! Brother, she has gone to Ilúvatar himself and has not shut up. Your Lúthien at least could sing with incomparable beauty and skill. We got her. If I never have to hear another word about her beautiful block-headed Aegnor, I would take all the First Children into my keeping.”

Námo is aghast at what to possibly respond with.

“Look, I’ll talk to Father but I can guarantee he’ll agree. We’ll swap you Lúthien for Andreth. And it’ll take a while for any of us to interrupt her diatribe to inform her of the deal, which should give your Lúthien and Beren a grace period for a second chance at life together. Oh, Most Joyous of Songs! Peace and Quiet at Last! We can be rid of Saelind! I was almost tempted to pull a Tulukhastaz to get away from her. I have never cried before. What are these things on my face?”

“Tears of joy,” Námo explains dryly.

Andreth steps outside the door of her nephew’s house, the grand building that had once been home of her brother and her father and their father before them, so lovingly crafted and worn smooth by time and care. Her fingers wish to linger on the door-latch for a moment, but she does not hesitate to walk further into the light. She does not hear the door close behind her, or any sounds from inside the house. It is dawn, and the reddish orange of the sky looks so warm and comforting. She does not understand how it can, because the fiery glow engulfs the entire skyline and casts its hue over everything she sees, and she should be frightened, should be thinking of the flames that destroyed her world only a few days ago, but she doesn’t. She has forgotten the northern fires.

Andreth walks out from the shadow of the eaves, hugging her green cloak around her shoulders, staring out at the field stretched out before the house. From this angle she cannot see the other houses of the village nor the smithy, mill, or any of the barns, not even the fence-lines. Only a field of green grain, waist-high with summer promise, and a figure standing in the field with his back to her. The dawn silhouettes him, and Andreth knows the lines of his shoulders. He is leaning over to run a hand over the barley, and as a breeze lifts at her unbound hair, Andreth begins to smile in recognition and joy. He is not wearing armor, only a soft woven tunic of the very sort of plaid woolen cloth that has come from her looms, and there is no sword or quiver belted at his waist. He is free of tension, at peace, and that alone would make Andreth weep. Sunlight turns the curls of his hair into pure gold. It is still silent. Andreth walks out into the field, the dew soaking through the thin leather of her shoes and collecting on the hem of her green cloak. The man in the field straightens and turns to face her over his shoulder, smiling.

Aegnor speaks to her, and at first Andreth doesn’t understand. Something about a ring, and she looks down at her hand, where a silver band wraps around her finger. An elven proposal of marriage custom, she remembers it being explained to her, silver for intention to wed, but does not recall if it was Finrod or Aegnor himself who had told her, and it does not make sense. He had never proposed to her, no matter how she had dreamed he had. But he is looking at her with such certainty and love, framed by the orange dawn. Andreth stares at the cold circle of silver, and suddenly the light has cooled and she feels cold. She remembers the texture of ash and dirt in her hands, digging through the aftermath of a battlefield. She remembers burials, and wakes.

Andreth is in her ancestral home, but her bed is cold. The fire in the hearth is gone, and as she stretches out her hand, she can feel the piece of metal from her dream. It is a piece of chain-mail from a shattered and burnt suit of elven mail, one of the larger rings that she had dug out from the pile of charred bones. She runs a finger over the metal and wishes she was back in her dream.

~~i am nothing if not predictable and this is the JL trailer Clois scene because OTPs are meant to be combined.~~

melianinarda:

Aegnor and Andreth. Someday… by elena kukanova

“Someday in Arda Remade. Inspired by the last words of “Atrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”:

“…But you are not for Arda. Whither you go may you find light.
Await us there, my brother – and me.”

assorted first draft snippets for Meng Jiangnu of Dorthonion

I swear it’ll be written one of these days.

Baragund once thought his great-aunt the strongest woman he would ever meet, and he still wished to believe so. Yet the flames that died in the wake of the Battle of Sudden Flame were limited not to those purely physical, and to look into his great-aunt Andreth’s eyes was to see a flame extinguished. There was a frailness to his great-aunt that not even her immense age had afflicted upon her. She stood, disdaining still to lean on the cane that their father had gifted her last Midsummer, and argued with Uncle Barahir and Aunt Emeldir over the proper course of action now that the flames had devoured most of Dorthonion. Her voice was as loud and clear as it had been when Baragund had been a boy, but there was a new brittleness to its timbre and a weariness to the set of her shoulders. Uncle Barahir wished to stay and fight, to try to rebuild. Great-Aunt Andreth, a bony arm splayed out to point to the ash-fields that remained of their homes and the oily black clouds that still billowed from the castle to the west, called that hope foolishness. As Wise-woman and eldest kin, Great-aunt Andreth had dispensed advice for the chieftains of Bëor, starting with her father, then brother, and lastly her nephew.

In some ways, his people said, it was Andreth who ruled the People of Bëor, and they nodded at the righteousness of that, for she was wise and firm-willed. Uncle Barahir looked pained to be publicly disagreeing with her.

When the Great Fever swept through Dorthonion, killing many including Chief Boromir and Baragund’s mother, Great-aunt Andreth had been the one to take in Baragund and his brother while their father recovered from the illness and buried their mother. She had been the one to lead her brother, Bregor, through that terrible summer of his first days as chief, to give him strength and hope. She promised the plague would pass, lives be rebuilt, and that Bregor would carry his people successfully through the harvest and winter. Now, her words speak of defeat. In the ashes of the Dagor Bragollach, there was no hope of surviving the coming winter.

A tree, hallowed out by disease and rot, still upright until a high wind would come to topple it, that was Great-Aunt Andreth.

—

“We should not leave before recovering the bones,” Great-Aunt Andreth said in her new brittle voice. “They should be buried, your father’s bones. And theirs, our lords.” Her breath hitched, and if their had been an emptiness where light once shone in her grey eyes, now there was the gaping darkness that the elves spoke of when describing the great monster Ungoliant. “We cannot leave their bones to be gnawed on by the Enemy’s wolves.”

—

His brother, Belegund, cupped his wife and daughter’s cheeks with both hands, one after another, to kiss their foreheads and promise to return.

Rían, almost too heavy to be held in her mother’s arms, reached tearfully for her father. Belegund held her crying cheeks, thumbs rubbing away the tears, and kissed her forehead a second time. Baragund mimicked the gesture with his own daughter. Morwen grimaced and rubbed at her brow after he kissed it, scowling up at him.

“Worry not for me,” she told him in her most serious voice, desperate to sound like the grown woman she thought she must be. Fourteen years old and stubborn.

When he first held her in his arms, Baragund had wished with all his heart that his tiny Morwen would grow to become like the woman he most admired. He stared at her and wondered if she too would become hollowed out by grief as Great-aunt Andreth has.

—

The crows and other scavengers had picked the charred flesh off of the bones, and what remained were cracked, fire-darkened armor, charcoal and ash, some bones that still vaguely resembled the outlines of the bodies that had once been, and the smell.

It was impossible to tell which body was his father, or the elven lords. “He was my father,” Baragund cried, “How can I not tell where he lies, which body is his? How will we bury him with honor?”

“You will,” Andreth assured him.

—

“The vows,” Great-Aunt Andreth was whispering to herself, staring forlornly at the bones. “Flesh become one, my heart be yours, your blood be mine. The old wedding vows.” In her grief she had bitten her bottom lip enough to draw blood, and she wiped it with the back of a bony hand. It stood bright red against the pale flesh and gray ash as she sifted through the rubble, gingerly searching for discernible pieces of skeletons. Belegund brought her helmets, searching for one with a familiar crest.

“I was not yours; you were not mine.”