Full Moon

Sorry, was busy today.  Blame the physics homework.

Non-canon-compliant AU.  So everyone knows the story of the sun and the moon, right?  Well, the sun and the moon don't bother to correct them anyway.  The "sun" is Arien and the "moon" is Tilion (even though they technically only guide the vessels of the sun and moon, which are the last fruit of Laurelin and the last flower of Telperion.  Technicalities *scoff*).  Basically just a very random thought that I had.  Takes place post-death of the Two Trees.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Tilion x Arien

Characters: Arien, Tilion (mentions Oromë and the Valar in general)

Warning: non-canon compliant AU, tragic love, not much else

Song: Say Something

Words: 1,065
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
full moon (noun): the moon with its whole apparent disk illuminated
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/full%20moon

Such assumptions they seemed to make.  As though they knew everything about every tale by word of mouth.  But they had never asked her.  Only spoken of her as though they knew her.

Always the story went that he loved her so much that he trailed after her erratically, drawn to her brilliance and splendor so greatly that he dared even disobey the strict orders of the Valar and risk something so precious as the last blossom of Telperion if only for a chance to catch her love and keep her close in his arms forever.  And she spurned his advances, scarring and burning the face of his vessel to keep him at bay, for she was distant and fiery, too beautiful and wonderful and powerful for his mere love.

What did they know?

Arien hated that story.  Some tale of her great and terrible beauty, her haughty rejection and callous disregard for affection.

What did they even know about her, shepherdess of the vessel of the sun?

What did they even know about him, shepherd of the vessel of the moon?

She knew of him.  His name was Tilion.  And she remembered him vividly from the times of bliss and security before the destruction of the Two Trees.  A powerful hunter of Oromë, reckless and arrogant and beautiful he had been, a wild and untamed forest creature.  Tall and fine with a silver bow and dark hair and eyes that pierced straight through her body whenever they landed upon her, so keen was their gaze even at great distance.  Helplessly, she had always been impressed by the man, though they had hardly spoken more than a handful of words to one another.

Perhaps equally helplessly, she had been ever so slightly in love with him.

With his moments of stupid sweetness that she wanted terribly to deny--for she was supposed to be greater than he and more powerful than he and independent of his charm and need for his presence.  A woman of strength who did not swoon over perfect musculature beneath her roving hands and a handsome face with dreamy-pale eyes and soft words whispered in the dark against her ear.  A woman who could turn away from such materialism and weakness, becoming great and powerful of her own accord.

That was why she was chosen, so they said.  Because she was strong.

But she had volunteered because she was weak.

"Who better is there to guide the vessel of Anar, my lords and ladies, than I?"

Because she was in love with a man she barely spoke to.  Because she didn't want to be.  Because she wanted desperately to prove she could be without him.  And it was a convenient escape, this important task that would keep her for all eternity.  Keep her aloft in the sky.  Keep her away from his grasp.

Keep her free.  That was what she wanted.

Right?

Yet, when she stepped forward and offered herself, she had seen his face.  For just a moment--a moment she couldn't banish from her thoughts no matter how she might try to blind it from her mind and drive it away with every drop of heat beneath her hands--he had looked... devastated.

Not merely angry.  Not merely saddened.  Not merely shocked.  But all of them at once and more.

He looked upon her as though he would never see her again.  As though he were losing her.  As though the thought were physically painful, wracking him with shudders.

And then...

"Please, let me guide then the vessel of Isil.  Let me be the second, for I can protect the flower of Telperion better than any other."

And then he stepped forward at her side.  His heat bored into her body from the mere feet between them, close enough that she could have taken a step and grasped his hand in her own.  Could have pulled him close and leaned against his shoulder.

Could have felt him, if only once.

And she knew he only stepped forward because she had gone first.  Because he wanted to be as near to her as he could draw.  And so he, too, would be in the vast expanse of the sky.

But they were never destined to come together.  And she despised seeing the proof.  The distant orb floating in the haze of the clouds, sending rays of silver across the forest floors and threading through the ocean waves just as she slipped through the crack of the Door of Night.  It was but a glimpse, so quick and so beautiful and so bitter.

Of the full moon.  Hanging there, so far beyond her reach.

It was the only time she could really see his glory in its entirety.  The silvered gleam of his beauty, the softness and strength that she so desired in the long hours of slipping through the blackness of the Void and pretending to be too brave to need a companion and lover by her side.  In her irises, a purple and splotchy afterimage settled against the black background, burned into place, never going away.

Reminding her always.

That they were wrong.  That she wasn't a strong woman with a callous or cold heart.  That she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.  And that she had been too cowardly to reach out and grasp at that most tantalizing desire.  Out of pride and out of fear and out of foolishness.

Some choices couldn't be unmade.  And there was no way to change her mind now.  Not when she was permanently settled in the blanket of the sky.  Forever until the end of time.

The elves.  The mortals.  The Valar.  What did any of them really know about the sun and the moon?

About the lonely shepherdess of the sun and the heartbroken shepherd of the moon.

Nothing.  Nothing at all.  And she hated that, sometimes, her pride purred in delight for that fact.  That no living creature save she and he knew the truth of this tragic farce.  That her name was spoken in reverence and awe and fear rather than scorn and dismissal as was his.  That it was only the distant silvery disk in the twilight that could ever remind her of her greatest follies.  

Her greatest failures.

Her greatest falsities.