Mellow Soulmate AU. Mithrellas slowly draws closer to her companion, and slowly begins to let go of the past. Related very closely to "Untouchable", "Isolation", "Winter", "Color", "Scowl" and "Spring" as well as the Cleansed Arc. Basically, this is just a filler sort of piece, but it builds off an idea previously visited. In any case, Elrohir's name... the etymology can be interpreted as elf-knight or as star-knight, and I prefer the second. The "el" prefix is plainly used in the names of every general (except the first two) descended from Elu Thingol and in every case it means "star". Considering that the elves named their race after the star, however, it could be argued that the two meanings have become synonymous. As I'm a linguistic freak, I felt the need to bring this up. Takes place near Lothórien during the early Fourth Age.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Unfinished Tales or the Lord of the Rings
Pairings: Elrohir x Mithrellas, past Imrazôr x Mithrellas
Characters: Mithrellas, Elrohir, Imrazôr
Warning: non-canon compliant, rarepair, elf-mortal relationships and their dynamics, lore and etymology, kissing and touching but nothing terribly sexual
Song: Dark Waltz
Words: 1,175
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starlight (noun): the light given by the stars
Out of any form of light gifted unto their
sight, the elves that had never set foot upon the golden shores of the Undying
Lands loved most the light of the stars. Their eternal companions.
Their guidance in a dangerous world of creeping shadow and endless night.
The rising of Anar and Isil had not
changed that reverence. Still hot did it run through their blood, that
fascination and adoration.
Still hot did it run through the blood of
this man, this man who had been born in the fading light of the world, in the
dawning of an age where starlight was usurped by the brilliance of the sun.
She could see it in his eyes. Feel
in in the pound of his heart.
"Did you know that your inner glow,
it so resembles starlight?" he whispered against her ear.
Warm hands touched her cheek, hardly more
than a brush upon her white flesh, as though he feared she might shatter
beneath any roughness or hardness, as though she were formed of ice and might
melt should his heat remain for too long and take away her chill. So
careful. So tender.
And he gazed upon her with that reverence,
with that burning love.
She knew her hair was silvery and shone
bright even when the moon was new. She knew her skin was pale and her
lashes and brows darkened and graceful cutting across its pallor. She
knew that her eyes glimmered with tears that reflected as pinpricks of faraway
light.
Beautiful, he called her, and was so enamored.
Like another she recalled with pain in her heart.
"You remind me of the stars. Of
their unreachable, untouchable and cold beauty."
The man was uncouth, not beautiful by the
standards of her people at all. Dark hair and gray eyes like a deep elf
out of the far west, and tall as well. Broad of shoulder, heavy of muscle
and powerful in bone, strong in the chin and arched in the nose with a beard
and a mustache across his upper lip. Nothing about him was elegant or
graceful or gentle. Nothing about him was reverent or smooth or soft.
And he was not enamored with nature, but with the buildings wrought of
white stone and callused hands.
No, he was no elven beauty. He had
none of their brilliance and preternatural glow. More so, she thought,
was his beauty an evanescent sort. Fleeting, barely captured within her
fingers before it was blown away.
"You say that often, Imrazôr."
"Often do you deserve to hear it said."
He pressed his lips to her skin, and they were not soft,
but chapped and roughened as though the wind had torn away their outer layers
and left them raw. Yet, she found that she did not mind their touch so
much, for it left a pleasant tingle upon the end of her nerves.
Carefully, she let her eyes cross over his face. When
first she had seen him, he had been very young and very strong, his hair like
the night and his eyes a storm upon the sea. Now, frost had crept into
his locks and the wild ravages of youth had mellowed into something content and
gentle. Carefully, she watched how he smiled that familiar smile, how the
creases of his cheeks and the corners of his eyes wrinkled.
Mithrellas knew her husband was aging.
But she had not expected it to happen so fast.
"You remind me of the stars that fall
from the heavens," she whispered as she brushed her fingers through the
waves of his hair and traced them down to the fullness of his beard. "You
burn so very bright, and you disappear so very quickly."
"I could never compare to you."
But he was wrong. That was all she
could think. He was beautiful. He was made of divine light.
But not of her light. Not cold and distant hanging in
the heavens. Not cemented forever in position in the pinnacle of the sky.
When he died, she would depart. And
she would not look back. For she was a star destined to be alone forever
when her partner--her mate and best friend and lover--fell down to earth in a
fiery blaze and burned into ashes.
Beautiful, he called her. Starlight,
he named her.
Now, Mithrellas looked upon him--upon
Elrohir. Star knight was his name, and within the deep wells of his eyes
she could see not only the wild passion and the shadow of despair and grief,
but light that fought its way through all the darkness.
Often enough, she had connected with him
through mutual pain and understanding of suffering. Something in both of
their souls ached and groaned and called to the other so potently, in the most
primal way, that ever had she felt a bond with this much younger elf.
Loss was a heavy burden to bear, and it had left its mark upon both of
them until they were too scarred and too cold to move past their memories and
their nightmares.
But they were cold together. And his
light was every bit as unreachable, as untouchable, as her own.
As she once remembered touching her
husband, so too did she touch the lover of her heart, stroking through hair
that would never be laced with the gray of old age and tracing down a cheek
that would never have the roughness of stubble and finding at last the upper
lip that would never carry a well-groomed mustache that tickled when they
kissed. Forever would Elrohir be just the same.
Forged of the same starlight. The
same ancient bliss.
"Did you know," she murmured as
her eyes met the twilight gray of his gaze, "that so, too, does your
own?"
Widened were those eyes and parted were
those lips, and his surprise was endearing to her. Mithrellas laughed
softly, thawed for but a moment in time as they interwove and twined together,
as she came close enough to feel the burn of his heat sinking into her flesh
once more.
As she came close enough to brush her lips
across his--soft of plush--and breathe in his beauty.
Never had she expected to find another.
Never had she expected to allow herself the heartache.
But he was no falling star that would slip
between her desperate fingers. And Mithrellas found that, for all her
distant coldness and loneliness, she longed for the comfort of his touch.
She longed for the sigh of his breath upon her cheek and the brush of his
fingers against her skin. She longed, even, for the feeling of heat and
forgiveness and forgetfulness that never had she allowed herself to embrace.
Maybe it would not be so terrible to love
this man of the stars. Maybe they would hang together in the sky forever,
bathed each in the other's fair light.
That, she thought, would bring her
happiness. That, she thought, would bring her contentment.
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