Stars

Canon-compliant AU.  The Awakening of the first elves in Cuiviénen.  I would have made this longer, but I'm tired and still have crap to get done for tomorrow (technically today as I'm writing this).  Ah well, heavy allusions to sex.  Really, they wake up and meet naked, what can you expect?  It's not like they have perceptions of it being "wrong" or "dirty".  Anyway, otherwise it's just a rambling of sorts.  Takes place in Cuiviénen in the Years of the Trees.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Imin x Iminyë (not going w/ the version where Ingwë is first)

Characters: Imin, Iminyë, trees, wind

Warning: canon-compliant AU, rambling dialogue, vague romance, sexual content (semi-explicit at most)

Song: Rising Dawn

Words: 967
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star (noun): a natural luminous body visible in the sky especially at night; a conventional figure with five or more points that represents a star; something resembling a star
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/star

The first time he opened his eyes, all he saw was darkness.

Saw darkness.  Was embraced by chill.  Felt the touch of softness against his skin.  But against his back the earth was hard and uneven.

And then there was sound.

Above, his eyes drifted.  To the dark limbs stretched overhead, overreaching arms groaning as they moved, a thousand leaves whispering in their tiny, crackling voices.  Wide-eyed, he stared, watching the rustle move from one tree to the next, the tiny green wings dancing and speaking, calling and singing.

Follow... follow...

All around him, the world was a wonder.  The grass was so soft that it tickled the bottom of his feet wherever they wandered, a million tiny fingers caressing. Sensations that left him reeling, curiously reaching down to scrape his fingers against the lush carpet only to find that the tips sank past the layer of green and into the dirt below, damp and musky.

This way... this way...

The rustling, beckoning returned, drew his eyes away from the strangeness of the ground upon which he traversed and back to the towering giants overshadowing his smaller frame.  Carefully, he ran his fingers across their skin, reveling in the rough unevenness with which he touch was met.

Relishing in the shiver of the immobile creature, the purr of its voice against his ears.

Follow...

They led him toward somewhere.  He could not have said where they might take them, nor where he was, nor what he was or what they were.  Only that everything around him existed so frightfully tangibly.  Every thought and feeling something new and foreign.

Even the one in the back of his throat.  Tight and strangely achy.  Uncomfortable.

But he pushed it away, allowed the strange creatures to lead him on.  Until, ahead, his eyes perceived something new.  Something bright.

Until the underbrush parted and the trees opened their arches into the dome of the sky.

He forgot all about the strange carpet below and the whispering voices above.  All about the feeling of roughness and softness.  All about the strange discomfort in his mouth and throat that had itched so vividly but a moment before.

Because there was light.

Splattered across the sky, dappling the darkness into an image that caught his breath and held it prisoner within his chest, expanded to aching and yet he could not bear to breathe it out and break the moment with a sigh.  Could not bear to ruin the silent stillness as he beheld first the pinpricks overhead, watchful and spinning, weaving intricately into one another's paths and glistening.

The grass did not sparkle and the trees did not glimmer.  But the night sky was speckled with light.

And his gaze fell then to the reflection upon the earth.  As a mirror, it stretched on to the edges of his sight, unmoving and unbroken.  Cautiously, entranced beyond thought, he moved toward the smooth ground and let his foot hover over its flat surface.

He made to step upon it and fell through it.

Noise and the thousand broken star-jewels that scattered into the air, sprinkling his body and falling back to the flat surface.  Only no longer was it flat, but rippling outward from where he now stood, each wave cresting upon a flash of brightness nearly blinding his eyes.

Water.  He knew not where the thought came from, instinctive though it was. Drink.

His hands cupped the liquid and lifted, watching it slip between his fingers, still silver-dappled.  And then he raised it to his lips.

Coldness.  Purity.  Like drinking the heavens.

Until he drank his fill and the uncomfortable itch ceased.  He then stood upon the bank, stepping out of the strange not-ground and back to the solidness his feet recognized as stability.  Instead, he gazed back up at the sky, helpless to think of anything else.

Nothing he had yet seen had been so beautiful.

His fingers could not reach them, he soon discovered.  They hovered not midair, but so far away that even upon the tips of his toes he could not feel them or brush them.  Only behold them as they stared down upon the water and spangled their way across reality.

Stars.

They were the most beautiful thing he could imagine.

Until he saw her.

All pale skin, white and glowing.  Silvery hair, molten rays of those tiny lights spun into silk.  Wide eyes, reflecting a million droplets of light.

The newly-woken elf did not understand the need to approach her.  He did not understand the heat that bloomed in his belly.  He did not perceive anything but primal instinct as he wrapped himself around her, as she reciprocated in fascination.  For he was enamored with her brilliance, with the softness of her flesh as he ran his hands across her body.  With the sleekness of her curves and the trilling song of her gasps.

With the warmth of her inner fire.

She was a star.

It was all he knew to compare her to.  All he could think of that could compare with her strangeness and glory and temptation.

Like touching one of those distant lights... Were they all so beautiful...?

Her warmth touched back, fingers sliding and hair tickling.  And he was utterly lost, swallowed up into the starshine of her eyes and heat of her kisses.  Until they came together, perceiving only that they were made as two pieces that fit, that burned to the brightness with which they were so captivated.

With the sky overhead and their tangled forms curled below, at the edge of the waters, the first elves were awakened.  People of the Stars.