Enchant

Canon-compliant.  We all know that Thingol fell for Melian at first sight, but what about her?  Quenya names used (Melian = Melyanna, Thingol = Elwë).  I wrote another story similar to this a while back in which I was examining the "dark side" of every character and happened to stumble upon Melian.  For how important she seems to be, she doesn't really have any characterization.  It's like because she's a maia we can never know what goes on in her head.  This is what came of disliking that idea.  Takes place in the Years of the Trees before the Noldor or Tatyar passed over the Belegaer.

Disclaimer: Tolkien owns the Silmarillion

Pairings: Thingol x Melian

Characters: Melian, Thingol (mentions Morgoth, Irmo, Yavanna and Eru (the Father))

Warning: canon-complian, darkish!Melian, possibly dub-con relationship, magic/enchantment, love at first sight

Song: Tragic Love Song Of The Heavens

Words: 883
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enchant (transitive verb): to influence by or as if by charms and incantation: bewitch; to attract and move deeply: rouse to ecstatic admiration
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enchant

When first she heard the footsteps, she hid from sight amongst the shadows, fearing some creature of darkness was coming upon her from behind.

But there came amongst the trees a stranger of the likes she had never known, and he was certainly no twisted servant of Melkor.  He was no ainu either, that she immediately could sense, as he was bound in the fleshy cage or a body, but he was no less beautiful for it.  In fact, his sight and stance stole her breath away--this work of the Father could not be described in mere words, for she had never seen such glory!  No creation, not the towering trees of the Lady Yavanna rustling overhead or the sweet voices of the Nightingales born from Lord Irmo's gardens, could compare with the grace of his measured movements or the brilliance of his broad smile.

Tall and crowned in silver light as a star living and breathing, he passed through the woods like a lantern lighting his own way, humming softly beneath his breath in a baritone that vibrated through her body and did strange things to her mind.  Heat sparked beneath her skin.

It was like an enchantment, watching him, hearing him, though she knew he had no knowledge of such magics and could not have casted a spell over her, ignorant as he was of Words of Power and the language of the Ainur.  He did not even know she was there, hiding herself from his passage through her domain in the twilight.

But she saw him.  She saw him.

If anyone later asked, Melyanna would have said it was then that she discovered the darkness of the world--not within the shadows and gloom creeping down from the North--but within her own heart.

Selfishness was the word created to describe it, and greed.  But when she saw him, so overcome was she with her need to possess him, to have those glowing eyes looking only upon her with such delight and admiration for ever and longer, that she parted her lips and whispered in the tongue of her brethren, whispered for the trees to encircle his passage and lead him astray into her arms and for the Nightingales to lift their voices in song so that they could be heard for miles around and fill his ears with her music.

So enchanted was she with his beauty and spirit that she brought him deeper beneath the boughs of trees until the labyrinth was so great he would never find his way out of the forest, nor would his kin find their way in to save him.

To save him from her.

And then she felt her chest swell and sang all the air from her lungs.

About her, the world took on a sheen of magic, writhing as a tangible creature, swimming through the thick air as water, twining with the trees and shaking the leaves into hushed harmony.

And he heard her, his footsteps pausing midstride in the grass.  His head turned towards her voice, away from the camp of the Tatyar, away from the camp of the Nelyar, pulling him aside as though he were attached to her will by an unbreakable thread, drawn taut so that he might not stray.  And if he would later say his feet carried him without his knowledge, Melyanna would pretend not to hear.

She would pretend that, when he entered the clearing and first beheld her with his eyes wide and his handsome face morphed into shock, it was not silently spoken Words of Power which made his eyes catch upon her face, unable to move, unable to blink.  She pretended that it was purely love at first sight--as he would later claim it to be--which held him immobile for decades stacked upon decades as the trees grew taller and wilder, that kept him gazing only at her beauty and no one and nothing else, just as her yearning heart desired.

She would pretend that it had not filled her with bliss, with a strangely shadowed sort of ecstasy, and with the tinny taste of that power to which all dark maiar were drawn, the power that sucked them in and rotted away their holiness until they were naught but demons, enslaved to their own greedy whims.

Melyanna was not as those demons, but neither was she pure and free of sin.  For it had not been solely riveted desire and longing and love which had cemented Elwë silently before her in the dusk, but also enchantment of the most real and devious nature.

Guilt, she should have felt.  Remorse, she should have quivered with.  Redemption, she should have sought in her prayers to the Father.  But she could not regret and could not be sorry as she should for what she had done in deceit. 

Because even now, thousands of years later, she still gazed upon his face with awe and marveled at his glory.  Selfishly, but with satisfaction.  She was his wife, his love and joy and ecstasy.

And he could not escape the trap in which she had captured his beauty.
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So I find it hard to believe that Melian would have married Thingol (no matter how enamored he was of her) unless she was equally in love with him in return, or in lust or whatever a maia is allowed to be or think they can be.  In any case, she is not quite as innocuous a character as she seems, but at least her attentions could have been worse.  Her enchantment (and it says in the Silmarillion that she put an enchantment over Thingol) was only of love.  Thus I find her both dark and at the same time rather innocent.

Was listening to Tragic Love Song Of The Heavens by TAMUSIC.  Lovely song with piano and violin.  I found it quite enchanting (ignore my horrid attempt at humor) and thought it had a bit of that magic to it, so I used it for this prompt, even though Thingol and Melian don't really have a tragic love.  I mean, he does die eventually, but then Melian goes back over the sea and they end up together at the end of the day anyway, right?  And everyone is happy.

An absolutely gorgeous bit of artwork I found for this pairing: melian's forest by *breathing2004 on dA.  Stunning color and artistry and shape.  I adore it.