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camille-lachenille · 3 months

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It was a rainy day, when Huan walked out of the Halls of Mandos, soft mud sticking to his paws as he walked toward the woods in the distance. The smells and noises were familiar despite all the time that had passed, and Huan happily sniffed at trees and stones to try catch an interesting trail. The pattering of rain on the dense canopy over him almost covered the twittering of birds but Huan could still catch glimpses of their gossip, and he wagged his tail. It wasn’t much but he had a trail to follow now.

Valinor was unchanged, yet vastly different from what Huan remembered. As he ran across woods and plains, he saw new towns and lush fields where there was only wilderness before. He mourned this loss, but he had a goal to reach so he did not pause except for the briefest rest. Always, he followed the chattering of birds, the whispers of the wind and the thread calling to him.

Huan ran and ran, revelling in the feeling if earth under his paws and wind messing with his fur. He had missed being alive, this abundance of sounds and smells; rustling leaves, foxes calls, thunderstorms and bird songs, deer fleeing in the woods, freshly cooked food, dewy grass in the morning and so much more.

At least, Huan picked up the trail he had been searching for as he followed the birds, this unmistakeable scent that meant friend tough diluted in seawater, kelp and bird, with a hint of sadness. The trail led him to a lone tower at the edge of the world, wrapped in ribbons of mist. Huan ran up to the door and shook his fur from rain and dust before barking happily, his tail wagging faster than ever.

It took some time but, at last, the door opened on a small figure clad in white. Huan immediately flopped down, belly up and tongue lolling out, and looked up at the woman. She stood very still in the doorframe, a hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes very wide, like a rabbit caught. After a long moment she moved, as if in a daze, and presented her open hand to Huan. He sniffled it, revelling in the scent of friend, before licking the woman’s palm. She laughed at that, a small startled giggle, but her stance was now much more relaxed as she knelt beside him.

“So you really are the dog from the tale of Grandmother Lúthien,” she said with wonder in her voice. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Huan. I am Elwing.”

Huan let out a soft boof and licked Elwing’s hand once more. This time, her laughter was just a little louder, and she sank her hands in his fur to rub his belly. He could not speak in this new life, not that he had much to say that could not be expressed with other means, but in this moment Huan wished he was able to tell Elwing he was her friend forever.

Elwing stood up after a while and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Do come in, you must be famished after your journey,” she invited with a small smile. “Truth be told, I expected you to look much more fearsome, not that I complain about your friendliness. But tales tend to make everyone look grander and more awe inspiring than real…” her voice trailed off and there was a feeling of sadness surrounding Elwing. Huan carefully nudged her shoulder with his nose and, when Elwing turned to look at him, licked her face playfully. Her shriek was one he knew well, part surprise, part laughter. Lúthien had reacted the exact same way he had done this trick to her. Tyelkormo would only laugh and muss the fur on his nose, but that was even longer ago.

Elwing’s tower was a nice place to live in. Isolated enough that it was surrounded by wilderness and the inside large enough to accommodate Huan’s size without too many broken vases and chairs. At night he slept on the hearth rug and he would often be joined by Elwing when sleep eluded her. She would tell him tales of her life, in Beleriand and here in Valinor, and what memories she had of her father and brothers, tough only rarely for it made her cry.

“I am glad to have you here with me, my friend,” Elwing whispered in his neck one night. Huan nuzzled her hair in answer as she fell asleep curled against him. I will always be at your side, friend.

#elwing desserves all the love and frirndship ever #also this is a firm headcanon of mine that huan eould seek lúthien’s descendents after being reembodied #maybe he will forgive celegorm for his deed with time #but i can’t see it happening anytime soon #besides celegorm isn’t reebodied yet #so it’s just elwing and husn being besties #and eärendil nearly having a heart attack when he comes home at last to find his wife with a dog taller than her #tolkien #the silmarillion #tolkien fic #huan #elwing

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brazenbells · 7 years

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the unrealized ambitions of the foam

Title from Pablo Neruda’s Water. This assumes the version where Elrond and Elros were given those names when they were found playing in the cave.

TW for depression, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide.

She has loved, and loved, and loved again, but she has never loved anything the way she loves the sweet small bundles of elfling tucked now against her breast. It was a long, difficult labor, but they all came through it together, and it is nearly time to rest; only one thing to do first.

"I want them to be called after my brothers. This one—" she strokes one downy, dark head— "for Elured, and this one—" she kisses a tiny nose— "for Elurin." Eärendil smiles at her and says something gently teasing about telling them apart, but she is already drifting off, and no matter anyway; she could not confuse them even if her ears and eyes were stopped, not even if all she had was the feel of their heartbeats.

She cannot remember a time when their plight has not been desperate; Doriath is nothing but a dim memory of fear and flight. She did much of her coming-of-age on the long weary search for somewhere they might settle afterwards—somewhere beyond the reach of the Great Enemy or the lesser ones, those merciless scions of Finwe's corrupted son. (She still has nightmares of the fair-haired one sometimes, even though she knows he is long-dead, by her father's hand.) This haven is the safest place she has ever lived, but that is a poor measure, because nothing east of the sea is safe any longer.

Their plight is desperate—it has always been desperate—and so she lets Eärendil go when he sails. She hopes he will succeed, but does not hope to see him again. The world will take him from her, as it has taken her parents and grandparents and brothers, as it has taken everyone else she has ever loved, every distant glimpse of happiness that she has ever had the audacity to reach for.

But she has never loved anyone the way she loves the grey-eyed boys taking their first steps across the wide white tiles, not even Eärendil, and if he succeeds they may grow up in a world where safety is a truth instead of an idea. She lets him go, because even if he is lost to her forever, beyond the ending of the world—that would be worth it.

She dreams of drowning; slipping down slowly beneath the water, silent, weightless. The sun is all around her, the bright blue glow of the ocean, the fat buoyant bubbles of her last breath lifting up and away until they disappear in the brightness. Her dress corrodes away from the salt, leaving her only in her skin, and she floats light and lifeless and completely untethered in the tide.

She wishes, when she wakes, that she could hold on to the solace the dream brings.

Without Eärendil, so many things fall to her. She has no real judiciary power—neither did he, when it came to it—but still, he had become a leader to the people by virtue of his nature. In his absence, they ask her advice as they would have asked his. She doesn't have his background, though; Eärendil was born to lead, but nurtured to it too. He'd been raised by his parents, a princess and a king's protégé, however deposed. She was raised by a nurse, her own royal parents dead and gone and unable to pass on any useful knowledge of diplomacy or civic management through the blood.

She does her best. Too often, her best is not good enough.

Elured and Elurin are the bright spots of her life. They are walking now, climbing everything, talking in giddy syllables that are sometimes even true words. She never confuses them, though their faces and forms are identical; Elured likes to hide behind things and under them, to pop out and surprise his brother, making them both fall about giggling; Elurin whispers baby-babble stories to ladybirds he finds on the floor, and carries about a poppet one of the ladies made him out of river-rushes and scrap cloth.

Sometimes she takes out her grandmother's stone and lets them play with it. They are entranced with the way it glitters, and the way it throws spangles of light onto every surface. Their eyes shine with wonder, and for a little while her heart is lighter.

She tells herself: this is what my parents died for. I must protect it, or they died in vain.

But were it not for the light in those four small grey eyes, she would cast it into the sea without a second thought, and that's the truth of it.

Sometimes she dreams even awake.

The water is always closing over her head. It's no longer reassuring; it's no longer anything, just an absence of feeling. It gets harder and harder to swim to the surface, and sometimes she forgets why she should.

Then Elurin pats her cheek, saying, "Good Nana!" and Elured gives her a slobbery, sticky toddler kiss, and she finds herself gasping, filling her lungs with air again. There is no water.

There is a woman who comes sometimes, a refugee from Gondolin who served the princess. She rarely speaks, but she always seems to know when the water rises the highest. She sweeps the floors, or brings clean laundry, or simply leaves breakfast when it's late in the morning and no smoke has risen from their chimney.

She doesn't know her name. She doesn't know how to repay these small kindnesses. When she feels anything, she feels wretched for taking advantage so without even knowing the woman's name, but she also feels the deep relief of being clean and fed when she cannot make these things happen of her own volition.

Sometimes the woman smiles, and gathers up the boys, and kindly nudges her out the door. She goes down to the beach and sits on the rocks, soaking in the freezing spray, imagining what it would be like to be swept away.

When she comes home in the dark, dress dripping and her lips cracked dry with caked salt, the woman has a dry dress waiting and no judgment in her eyes. She knows. There is supper on the table, and they eat it together, quiet save for the boys' chatter; then the woman leaves.

She wonders, if she were not able to go sometimes, if she could not leave her precious boys in safety and dream of drowning, how she would ever go on. She thinks the woman knows that too.

When the attackers come, she does not immediately know.

The roar of the ocean drowns out any number of sounds, hides all manner of sins. When she hears, she feels the first thing she has felt in a long time—and for a brief adrenaline-fueled moment, even terror is wonderful, because it is not nothing.

The strange, painful pleasure fades when she realizes it is not herself she needs to be terrified for. She has never run so fast in her life as when she imagines what the blood-haired monster will do to her boys, never felt so dangerous. She will gut them with her teeth before they harm her sons, disembowel them with her fingernails, she will—

The house is empty. There is no woman, no Elured, no Elurin—the door swings open on its hinges, and there are things knocked over and scattered about, careless. She knows, instinctively, what has happened, but still she searches, opening doors, peering beneath beds and into all of Elured's hidey-holes, her hands shaking as she throws open cupboard doors and clothes-chests.

Her voice is her mother's voice, rising, hysterical, screaming the same words her mother screamed before she died.

Elurin! Elured!

She named them after her brothers, her lost brothers, oh foolish foolish girl, whatever did she expect, that she could keep them this time? That she could love anything, anything, and the world would leave it untouched?

She pulls open a drawer so hard it comes free of the chest and clatters to the floor. Her sons are not hiding in it, of course; they are too big to fit now, but her frantic mind cannot help remembering the tiny precious bundles they once were. There is a less precious bundle in the drawer that brings her up short, though, glittering mockingly as she unwraps it.

She has always wanted to cast it into the sea.

She has always wanted to cast herself into the sea.

Her sons are gone, her brothers, her parents, her husband; even the nameless woman who, after all, was a sort of friend. The water has risen, and risen, filled her nose and mouth and eyes until she is all the way under.

Let this be the end of it.

The sea has always been coming for her; now, at last, it is time to stop swimming.

#my fic #elwing defense squad 2k17 #sometimes i cheer myself up by writing really sad things

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