Bewitching

Mellow Soulmate AU.  And you thought Maglor's voice was something else.  Or, how Amras meets his One, but that just sounds boring.  I had fun with this.  This pairing came to me like a lightening strike at about 3 AM one night a while back, and it's stuck.  Anyway, Sindarin names used, surprisingly.  One quick note: I go with the Tolkienverse in which Amras dies as Losgar before the First Age.  Not sure how relevant it is to the story; depends on your interpretation.  Takes place in the Third Age in Greenwood (Mirkwood)... Or Cuiviénen if you stretch it.

Disclaimer: Tolkien owns the characters.  But not the ship.

Pairings: Amras x Daeron

Characters: Amras, Daeron (mentions Fëanor and Fëanor's children; valar and maiar mentioned generally)

Warning: extreme AU, nonexplicit slash (pre-slash really), stalking, enchantments, hallucinations, possible insanity

Song: Eternal Love

Words: 1,284
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bewitch (transitive verb): to influence or affect especially injuriously by witchcraft; to cast a spell over
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bewitching

It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

That was saying much, as Amras's elder brother was the most renowned bard amongst his people, known far and wide, with a voice that would make a vala green with envy.  A voice that invoked the glory of the world, that seemed to bend reality, twist it into waking dreams.

But even that deep, rolling baritone paled in comparison.  The voice that rang in Amras's head had no equal.  The tenor was soft, drifting, floating over the land and through the trees, writhing gently through the tangles of the grass, washing across his face as though it were a hand, fingers cold and touch softer than butterfly wings.  Ensnared, the redheaded elf could not force himself to turn away, could do nothing but seek out its source, his heart pounding furiously in the back of his throat.

How he navigated the trees, the ancient elf would never quite recall.  There was darkness and the soft glow of moonbeams through the wild undergrowth of the deep canopies of Greenwood.  But none of that even caught his notice.  The silver morphed, wrenching him away from the known world, blending with the shadows into something new, something unfamiliar.  His eyes focused slowly.

There were only stars and the quiet of endless water, surface unbroken and unchanged, untouched, reflecting the dome of the heavens unto the world.  It was like stepping into another reality altogether, and leaving behind the wildness and wonder of the open land and the connection with the deep, moving earth.

Detached, Amras felt his world bending, coiling towards some inevitable end as he traversed the shores, soundless.  Not a ripple broke the water's surface.

And then light.  Soft at first, but growing.  He finally recognized its source, half-hidden beneath a veil of inky hair.  Skin, pale as newly fallen snow, holding that soul-deep sheen of a powerful spirit, one of the very first to walk the face of the marred earth.

Dark eyes beheld him, captured him and pulled him closer.

The song rose, and Amras thought his toes might no longer be brushing the earth at all, that he might be swimming through the thick air as though it had become liquid water.  Even the movements of the wind seemed to slow, seemed to inhale and exhale with the ebb and swell of the music.

Cherry red lips parted, and Amras knew it was from this bewitching creature that this dream-universe had come.  Or was it a dream?  Was this reality?  Was the other side the dream?  Everything felt so real, so true and pure, so powerful that the temptation to forget everything became unbearably tempting.  Not to just forget the past and revel in the being, but to forget the very existence of the world, to go beyond its edges to somewhere not of the earth.

He sat himself in the grass close to the figure, eyes riveted upon that glorious face, upon those lips as they moved and glistened, upon eyes so old and sad yet so full of life, so full of secrets.  Beautiful.

But soon enough his eyes began to droop helplessly.  With a sigh, he felt himself curl into the soft blades of grass, felt his hair drape across his body in a blanket of silk.  For a moment, he thought he felt a caress against his temple and cheek, through the silken locks over his shoulders and back.  Delighted, he shuddered and purred at the sensation.

Reality had ceased to exist before.  It could cease to exist again, as long as he could stay here forever, filled with a feeling so sweet and light that it was painful, swelling in the back of his throat, tingling through his limbs.

"Sleep, little one..."

How could he not obey that voice?  That voice...

---

Amras jerked upright abruptly, letting out a yelp.  He came up from the earth's embrace, hair tangled in the bushes and full of twigs and leaves, breeches stained with dust and dark soil.  His fingers dug deep into the ground, feeling the coolness of rocks and dirt between his fingers, falling over his callused hands and back to its resting place.

"What happened?" he groaned aloud to himself through the pounding in his skull.

Raising one hand to his temple, the elf shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind.  Everything was very fuzzy.  Looking around, he found that he recognized the clearing but could not recall how he had come to be there.

Except a faint vision, just a flash, of glistening water as far as the eye could see and a dark-haired beauty that outshone the most graceful, bejeweled women of his grandfather's court.  And a voice... a voice like nothing he had ever heard before...

Was any of that real, or was it all a dream?  Could he dream something like that?  Surely that voice could not be dreamt, could not be imagined, could only be experienced.

"What happened to me?"

The forest, of course, held no answers.  The trees were probably laughing at him.

Had it all been a trick?  Perhaps he had been enchanted somehow?  He knew there were such sorcerers wandering the earth, and many of the maiar had such powers.  But why would they bother with him, a wild, mindless creature submerged in the living world and nothing but, who could barely remember his own name on the best of days.

Unbidden, the face of his enchanter arose in his mind's eye.  Glorious to behold, breathtaking and divine.  Maybe it had been a maia?

Did it matter?

Why was he suddenly caring?  Why was he suddenly remembering?  Why was the earth suddenly barren of comfort?

Why could he think of nothing but the voice and its owner?

Of their midnight hair that he wanted so badly to stroke, to braid and twine with the finery of his House.  Of their dark eyes, so blue and stretching on farther than the night sky, speckled through with their own glowing stars.  Of their skin that he suddenly wanted to touch, just to see if it was as soft and flawless as it appeared.  If it was as sweet as he imagined it tasted.

Hunger burned through him, a hunger he had not felt since the days of the darkness before the sun and the moon.  A growing thirst that churned in the pit of his belly.  Lust.  That's what it was.  Lust.

Lust and hunger.

The center of his universe was woven anew around a phantom image beyond his eyes, a dream covered in a veil of haze.

Amras was thoroughly and completely captured, cradled in the delicate fingers of a dark-haired beauty who hid not more than a few yards away amongst the trees, watching his work with regretful eyes, longing but fearful eyes.  A resigned smile came upon cherry red lips.

But a smile of a very different kind twisted across the lips of the awakened Son of Fëanor.  There was nothing more dangerous than a creature of his father's single-minded determination and his mother's redheaded temperament.  There was thirst that could not be quenched by anything but complete satiation, by accomplishment and victory.

By claiming.  By owning.  By satisfying the secret desires hiding in the very darkest corners of his mind.  It was the danger of his House, of their madness.

And there was something he desired.  Someone.

More a long moment, the world stood still around them.  And then Amras breathed deeply of the darkness and opened his fey eyes, unleashing his own Spirit of Fire upon the earth.

Let the hunt begin.
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Wouldn't exactly call this angst.  Not even sure what this is, actually.  Poor Daeron.  You have no idea what you've just gotten yourself into.  Telvo is not one to give up (though I must point out that none of the Sons of Fëanor make good quitters.  Or losers, for that matter). You know what makes me sad, though?  There are like no good pictures of Daeron in existence!  No good stories about him either really.  Well, the Dark Prince universe by Spiced_Wine on LotR fanfiction is wonderful, if you're into the gory details and the sex and the violence (which I am).  *coughs* Anyway, if you're interested, check it out.  But word of warning, it's most definitely slashy.  Some het here and there, but definitely slashy.

Don't even know where this came from, but I now have an idea for a prompt in the very near future.  Which pleases me greatly, of course.  Nevertheless, here is the song I was listening to: Eternal Love by Future World Music.  Amazing song.  I've loved it since the first time I heard it, which was a while ago, actually.  So listen to it if you didn't click on the link above.

Uh yeah... I'll stop ranting now.  Have a theo test to study for anyway >.>.