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godlikecunning · 3 years

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Doriath’s treaties on shapeshifting

My @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @batshape who asked for something with Lúthien and Thuringwethil.

Word count: 2400 words.

Lúthien discovers someone (something?) who might teach her what Melian the Maia will not.

The problem with a half-Maia child –

There are no guards, doors or locks when Lúthien decides to leave – to run, her hollow-boned thrumming to a strange melody she alone hears. Her mother teaches only tricks a girl would benefit from. Sing and dance to dazzle, tie a knot that never will fail for a life that will prevail, coax flowers from hard earth. The rest, she figures out by herself. How to send souls with iron spines to sleep and how to tear through the dark, sleeping forest. Lúthien burns and runs like a shooting star invariably plummeting.

It’s no surprise she walks through the Ered Gorgoroth with her breath held, eyes on the stars that are twice as dim here. Beneath her feet, the soil is cold and lifeless, and Lúthien thinks of flowers but knows none that would daringly bloom here.

(She comes, but not as the nightingale.)

“The Maia Queen’s daughter cometh to me,” the thing in the dark says, voice stretching strangely, vowels damp and odd. Far too gleeful and twisting and else. “Why dost thee walk alone? There would be handsome reward for thy life returned.”

Lúthien scowls, digs her feet in the rocks. “Show yourself.”

One day, this voice might send the King of the World to sleep. It hasn’t yet, it might not, but there is a world where Morgoth will spend the rest of his days wondering and furious at a simple song, a simpler dance. The thing in the dark hisses, a long, slithery sound that makes her ears ring and her skull drum, but it slides from all around her.

It has no shape but three hearts relentlessly beating, cores of molten iron and fire. There are shapes and shadows wrapped around it. Lúthien knows it – her people do not venture here, but they tell tales nonetheless from passing glimpses.

The thing that has no name beats and coils, its lack of a body wrapping up until it passes for a woman, a creature pale like the underbelly of a fish. Grown in the dark, Lúthien thinks, stumbling a step back. White and red-eyed, an albino bat and an elf at once with a snout and a sneer. It laughs, the sound brittle and sharp, a glass shard.

“What is thy name?”

“Maybe,” Lúthien says, languid and deliberate – her mother has taught her how to deal with her kin, if mother even has kin. “Maybe I could give you a name few know, one that was whispered at cradle, for a promise. And you might even give me yours.”

“Thy secrets art not worth my own,” it argues, advancing with joints that move strangely. An unshapely creature who doesn’t understand what it is mimicking.

“Are you even called something?” She challenges.

“Not in any tongue your mouth may form words in without burning.”

(Lie.

Truth: the thing in the dark has no name and didn’t bother to give itself one. It was born with Morgoth’s song deafening and molten in its half-formed core, and the only thing it could mutter was chaos like one mutters for their distant mother. It had a shape that remembered many concepts, many thoughts, but Valarin doesn’t translate well. Once, a Vanya was driven insane trying to make grammar out of feelings.)

Lúthien breaths in the stale, foul air and breaths out. If she ever spins this tale, she’ll remove the fear and focus the eyes on defiance. “I need to call you something.”

It snaps malleable joints, testing its new body. “Call me Horror if thou must.”

Her father has a talent for plucking it out meaning and titles from nothing but speeches and a certain natural creativity. He could weave a name that would echo for centuries, if only because of raw significance and no echoing power of its own. Lúthien has to make do. She will not call anything Horror, not even shapeless creatures digging gnarled roots into land that hates and twists and agonizes. Her idea is uninspired.

“Thuringwethil will have to do.”

From: the women who stalk the halls with blind eyes and soft, amorphous mouths, reaching out for the forests with fingers like poisoned spider-silk. There is already a Thuringwethil, countless of them in her beloved Doriath, a society of its own, but their namesake is going to be more famous – or infamous and terrifying, truly.

“Must I be a woman? Must I be anything at all?” Thuringwethil cocks it head.

Lúthien shrugs. “I had to begin with something.”

“Very well, gray daughter, I suppose I shall hear more.”

It sits, she sits, and they talk.

Or rather, they don’t talk, and Lúthien tries to pry meaning from antiquated language and limbs that twitch like reality bears down too heavily to stand without scratching at the cage. But she is curious, and Thuringwethil even more. There has never been another of mother’s kin, her kin. Not a single another to teach her what Melian will not, thinking it’d be better for her daughter to be a glimmering girl with gentle touch.

Lúthien dreams of waves and seagulls and children that do not fit her arms comfortably, both dark-haired and gray-eyed and lost. She dreams of kissing a statue on the lips, mistaken for a man she loves and is now given to the land. She dreams of falling on the halls of a palace still building itself anew, a sword stuck in her gut. She dreams of light, mostly – a light that calls to her and shifts beneath her skin, alive alive alive.

Thuringwethil laughs, shrill. It has not remade the bat snout and the fluid spine as it leans into her and twists her face from one side to another. Displeasure does not shine in her expression but leaks into the air. “Thou hast been made too solid.”

Solid?

“What does that even mean?” Lúthien scowls, a whip on herself.

“Once, thou changed at will. Not anymore.”

“Teach me.”

“No,” it says, smiling too wide.

(Too many teeth.)

“Teach me,” Lúthien insists, not for the first – nor for the second or third or fourth. Everywhere in Doriath, her father’s hunters hound her steps, but she comes still.

They wound deeper and deeper into the Ered Gorgoroth. There are no stars, but a fog that’s cold and clammy and hateful. She has learned how to fend off spiders that have poison dripping from their fangs with fire and begged her mother for a cloak of twilight to thread the path as a shade – Melian must know, because Melian knows everything, but she keeps the secret and Lúthien keeps coming. If she discovers a peculiar trick or two by herself, the Queen certainly can’t be blamed for her strangeness.

Tonight, Thuringwethil has a thick, sneering mouth and no bat snout, though its eyes shine golden and still as death. It has skin brown as damp earth and hands that blur, perhaps three or four of them if Lúthien squints. And it is not prone to kindness.

“No, for mine time is a precious gift, and thy self is hard as stone.”

She twists her hands. “Teach me,” Lúthien commands, Compels, beseeches.

Thuringwethil throws its head back, neck almost snapped, and laughs without a single sound. “Clever, clever tricks, though empty as air here. Unveil your eyes.”

Its hands, its many or few hands, snap as spiders, bones popping and remaking themselves – Lúthien watches, watches, watches until there is a buzz in her ears and tears in her eyes. Her palms sweat but do not imitate, can’t imitate. Thuringwethil has needles now, sharp as polished steel and twice as wicked. They pluck from fabric from the rotten, stale air and twist one, two, three times as they measure the length. A cloak, black as Night itself. The buzz is loud, a living creature festering inside her skull.

Lúthien watches.

“The world is Song, Maia daughter,” Thuringwethil intones. “Song is not stone, is not unchanging. The melody shifts, and there’s creation. The melody shifts, and there’s destruction. Thou art not born from earth. Remember this, and maybe I shall teach you.”

“Why must you be so difficult?” She huffs, kicks a pebble in its direction.

“Why must thee think as some pitiful fool that will wilt in a summer?”

It cuts the final thread and slips the cloak over its full, naked shoulders. A mantle like no other, a mantle like a miracle. Lúthien reins herself back in, the buzz subsiding to a hum. Not black as Night but the proper Night, darkness given a solid body where once was nothing but shapeless ideas. Her fingers twitch. Is it soft to the touch? Cold? Could she… Thuringwethil slips on the hood and stares at her golden, unblinking eyes.

Lúthien stands very, very still as its needle-wicked hand brushes her hair back from her eyes. Its touch is icy, too light. “Nightingale, thine eyes are blind.”

“Then I will make them see.”

Thuringwethil smiles, wide and pleased and sharp. “Aye, you shall.”

One day, tales of Lúthien’s stubbornness might rewrite fate itself – fall down towers, challenge the King of the World, work a twist around the Doomsman.

Might.

As for now, she sits down where no other light shines and talks with a being pulled in so many directions her eyes sting if she looks too closely. It reeks of old smoke and cold and laughs strangely and doesn’t even try to be an elf most times.

There are indeed worse people to talk to.

And many more boring.

“Gray daughter,” it says, close enough its talons brush against Lúthien’s back, wickedly sharp. “Why dost thou come to me? Dost thou not fear thy death?”

“Fear my death? Will you kill me?”

“Ah, ‘tis but a way of speaking.”

Lúthien does not believe it’s only a way of speaking, just as she doesn’t believe she’ll be killed. Thuringwethil could’ve killed her already or simply let wander around in the Ered Gorgoroth to her untimely doom. As she yet lives, she hums out a laugh and doesn’t turn back to face it. It has its beauty, those lands forsaken by all goodness.

And well, she does favor testing out Thuringwethil’s strange temper.

“Why did you not kill me?” She challenges, imperial.

Thuringwethil hesitates for a suspended moment before her clawed hands rise to rest at the base of Lúthien throat. “I do not desire the Maia Queen’s wrath.”

“Is that all?”

“No.” And nothing else.

Orcs’ flaming shit. Lúthien turns around sharply and goes up, up, up to kiss Thuringwethil on its almost-mouth (not-mouth?). She’s kissed people for less.

It is not bad, but its mouth is spongy and too still, a pale imitation of her own.

She doubts it has ever done so and takes an odd pride at that.

“What hast thou done?” It asks, vexed, lying still as a pray animal caught in the sharp gaze of a hunter. Lúthien smiles – beams up, disproportionately satisfied.

“Kissed you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Thuringwethil doesn’t even blink, a statue save in the way her flesh seems to move out of her control. Lúthien refuses to her smile waver. “Teach me.”

“No,” it answers, but it is unmoored, curious, lingering.

Lúthien’s mouth tingles.

It’d not be so terrible, she thinks, unbidden, to kiss once more.

The second time Lúthien kisses Thuringwethil, she’s fluid as water under her wandering hands. She takes a disproportionate pride in making it forget a body entirely, even if she comes back drenched and miserably cold through a forest which shades grow both sharper and darker as the things outside push and hiss and sing in odd tunes.

It becomes a game.

“Close thine eyes,” Thuringwethil says, eyes wide and still and fever bright. She deems it a victory, that twisting madness. “Oh, gray girl, close thine eyes.”

They only kiss when she can’t see it.

A precaution.

Thuringwethil turns from too thin flesh to hard, boiling scales that send Lúthien scrambling back, her hands and her mouth searing with pain and bubbling. I’m not afraid, she tells herself, as the skin peels. I’m not afraid, she swears, oath-solemn in her determination even as there are soft, fine feathers poking at her face and a wiry, sharp fur that reminds her the countless spiders weaving their webs in this dubious peace. It becomes a game to herself, a trick she alone can uncover – how many times more may she kiss it to learn how to trade this elf for something else? She’s is half Maia.

(Underneath it all: how many times more may they kiss without feeling?)

“Dost thou know fear at all?” Thuringwethil asks, curious like an owl, all bizarrely exaggerated expression and gestures. Too thick, too ached eyebrows and mechanic, histrionic confusion. Lúthien wonders from who it is learning its tricks and shows.

“None,” she lies. But does it count as fear if not a single soul can tell?

It laughs, thick and treacherous as the chilly wind blowing through her hair, freezing her skin. “Then close thine eyes, and for I have something else to show thee.”

In Doriath, whispers run with the wind, as they are prone to do when an uneasy peace lingers – the princess has gone mad, has gone savage, has gone strange.

(Truth be told, only madness may be a recent development.)

Elu Thingol’s hunters return empty-handed, as do his spies.

As for Queen Malia, she remains tight-lipped.

Lúthien lingers where the shadows are too thick and undisturbed, quiet as the tombs. She lies down under starless sky, hard rock on her back and the screech of things unnamable in her eyes. She keeps kissing Thuringwethil – for the hell of it, because it is a surprisingly good kisser with a bit of practice, to discover how to change.

Underneath her hands, there is metal, cold and unfeeling, but the mouth remains warm as embers. Sometimes, there is barely anything, and Lúthien reaches out for air and little else. She doesn’t mind it terribly, even if the scars of the second kiss remain.

And Lúthien is clever.

Thuringwethil, equally.

“Thou knowest how to change thy shape, and yet thou linger and dost not make an escape,” it says, habitual and grotesque confusion twisting its expression into what might pass as those clay masks actors wear. “Thou art a fool, gray daughter.”

“Ah, but do I?” Lúthien grins.

Thuringwethil’s soundless laughter echoes in her chest, warm.

#tss2020 #tolkien #silmarilliion #tolkien fic #silm fic #writing #my writing #fanfiction #lúthien #thuringwethil #lúthien x thuringwethil #gen #body horror tw #taking just for safety as there are some descriptions of maia being weird #but nothing gory or freaky or horror #but again safety

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mythopoeticreality · 4 years

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The Road Goes Ever On- Chapter 1

Ao3 Link: The Road Goes Ever On

Eeeee! Here it is! I have wanted a meeting like this for so long. So, Right then! John Uskglass and Fëanor! Ohhhh, I have such plans for this! It’s going to be awesome! But for now: Chapter 1! Hope y’all enjoy!^^

Chapter 1

He was awoken...not by any sound he could place, no touch that he could feel, no change of light or sudden brightness. No. Through the silver wash of Telperion’s light the shadow of some creeping forest beast or another would slip by, padding across the undergrowth before vanishing once more amongst it’s darkling kin. A branch would bob, here or there, in the passing breeze while the leaves in the canopy above hissed and whispered softly against one another. And there was the breathing of his sons, a steady in-and out, just barely audible.

Fëanáro shut his eyes. Pressed out a breath of his own, long and low, a faint mist that curled, slowly drifting upon the air for a passing moment. It must have been that which pulled him from his sleep. That was it, and that had to be all, the elf decided as he pulled both cloak and blanket more tightly around both he and his wife, drawing in closer to Nerdanel. Only the cold, perhaps the rough bark of the tree he leaned against digging into his back as well. He turned aside, but after a moment gave it up for done. Beside him Nerdanel stirred, her brow crinkling, unseeing eyes beginning to blink to life.

“Hush now,” He murmured, leaning down, brushing his lips against her temple, “I will return.”

With those words he slipped his arms from around her waist, taking care as he stood to ensure she was well wrapped in their blanket, and began to walk into the night.

He was awake now, and there was nothing to be done for it, so he picked his way towards the edge of the glade, taking care as he stepped around Curvo and young Tyelpë curled upon his chest. He needed to be up. Needed to be moving, rather than waiting silent and still.

The air felt...there was something on it. Something Fëanáro could not quite describe. He was so strangely aware of the blood flowing through his veins, however, and his heart beating in his chest, and the air seemed somehow to be singing in reply. Singing, huh! There was no sound, merely a subtle vibration, a tension, as if he stood on the edge of a precipice, as if the entire forest around him were waiting…

And then…

And then something in the shadows moved. There, where the slim shadow of a birch cut a gouge through the soft, silver light, falling into the silhouette of a hawthorn tree. A figure emerged, striding out amidst the trees and hanging drifts of moss. It held no bestial shape, but rather stood as an elf would, and paused for a moment, glancing about at its surroundings and nodding, almost...satisfied, to itself, as though gathering it’s bearings in no way Fëanáro had ever seen an animal act.

Ai! But he must have been going mad, this strange excitement he had woken to driving his mind to who knew what kind of wild, paranoid fancies. Others may not have often traveled out this far, but there was nothing to stop them from doing so. And even had he not seen anyone come from that direction to emerge into the light on the opposite side of the hawthorn tree, who was to say it was not some Maia, some follower of Oromë’s or Nessa’s cloaking themselves in physical form?

No, it was nothing. Simply the rarely seen sights of the forest at night, Fëanáro assured himself.

And yet, there they still remained. The questions niggling at the back of his mind as he watched the figure move off into the forest, as if it were no different than a loping wolf, a running stag. Where did you come from and what is your purpose here?

And perhaps it was merely that the being had just appeared. Oh, to hear about the Ainur doing such was one thing, but to actually see it? Nothing, mere empty space in one moment, and then the next…

Fëanáro shook himself. Slid a glance back over his shoulder to his wife and his sons still fast asleep.

“Void have me!” he muttered to himself.

And with that curse spoken, little more than a breath on the wind, he was gone, turning on his heel and slipping away after the figure. He would have no peace otherwise, and he knew it. He had to go and at least try to understand.

He padded softly through the spaces between the trees, moving as he remembered moving with Turko as a child, stalking along after some roving deer or unknowing bear in order to observe and satisfy the boy’s curiosity. Perhaps he was no huntsman, as his son had grown to be, but his step was as sure and silent out here in these far wildernesses as it was upon Tirion’s diamond-dusted streets. Surer, even, perhaps.

It did not take Fëanáro long to note the same ease in the Stranger’s own stride. He moved as though he belonged in this place. More evidence towards his simply being some servant of Oromë’s?

Perhaps, but a strange one this figure would be. The shadowy aspect that lay about him diminished not at all as Fëanáro grew nearer, and instead the Prince of the Noldor found himself stalking after a young man dressed completely, from cloak to boots in black. He might have almost believed this stranger had meant to go skulking about, were it not for the fact that the cut --though strange to Fëanáro’s eyes -- was so fine. To look at the snaking silver knots embroidered along the hem of the cloak and the wide sleeves of his robes was to see that this was not the clothing of a simple traveler or a mere hunter, yet odder still, his hair --long and dark as any Noldo’s -- was left to hang loose and drift about in the wind, neither in a hunter’s braid meant to keep it out of the way, nor in any of the formal, complex styles meant for court functions.

The more he saw, the more questions the elf inevitably had.

And all paled to what was to follow.

A Look, that was all. The Stranger did not even pause in his stride as his gaze slid from straight ahead, back towards the line of tall, silvery birches that stood between he and Fëanáro. Their eyes met just briefly, shining sword steel and night dark, before the Stranger reached out his hand towards the elf.

And he was bound. This creeping stillness had stolen over Fëanáro completely, washing over him from the tips of his ears to the soles of his feet. Not a inch could he move, down to the smallest finger on his hand. His eyes couldn’t widen. He could not even scream, standing there, silenced.

Move...Move! He commanded himself, muscles straining, his will pounding against the invisible binds holding him as though he were some wild beast trapped within a cage He wanted to claw at his own throat, Wanted to turn upon the Stranger and--

The ground began to shake with the familiar sound of it. Horses’s hooves pounding across the earth.

They broke through the wood a moment later. His own horse, Nárcolindo, was as sleek and fleet-footed a beast as could be found in Valinor, yet compared to the creatures ridden by these hunters, that courser of his looked no better than a knock-kneed donkey. Their fur was a gleaming velvet black, manes whipping out behind them, while darting at their hooves ran hounds so white they nearly glowed.

As for the riders themselves? If you had told him that they had broken free from a painter’s canvas or an illumination in a book he would not have been surprised. They were...stylized, idealized, those were the only words that seemed suited for it. Something about them looked unreal, but what he could not name.

A shout rose amongst their company as they approached. “Aha! And there he is! Hail, Starling and well met!”

A thousand thoughts swirled through his mind in that moment, ranging from the fact that these riders knew this man -- were expecting him -- to noting the subtle twitch of the Stranger’s lips, the brief moment where the bones of his hands stood out, stark and white through his flesh as his hands clenched, and then let go. He saw it because he recognized it, had felt it, that flash of irritation whenever one of his half-bothers had entered a room.

But beyond all of that and erasing all thought of everything else? It was the very words they spoke, the language. How was it that Rúmil had described it once? “Great and stern, and yet also swift and subtle in movement, making sounds that we find hard to counterfeit; and their words are mostly long and rapid, like the glitter of swords, like the rush of leaves in a great wind or the fall of stones in the mountains." Yes, this speech was Valarin! Yet...no…as much as he had studied the language himself this sounded like no dialect of it he had ever come across before. Was it possible? Perhaps, how much of the Ainur was truly known? But to hide an entirely different branch of the language? To conceal it’s speakers from knowledge--

The Stranger was speaking.

“Well met indeed. You heard then, of my arrival?”

“But of course!” So spoke the presumed leader of the Hunt, a man whose shaggy mane --the exact shade of fox’s fur -- caught like embers in the lamplight carried by his company. “I have my friends here, and do you not think they would tell me of the arrival of a stranger in my realm? But come, I am nothing if not hospitable and you shall not remain a stranger for long! Allow me to welcome you properly! We hunt now, but I have heard you enjoy such pleasures, and afterwards, why! We shall have nothing less than a feast worthy of a guest of your esteem!”

It was a speech that had Fëanáro wishing that he could roll his eyes. The stranger as well, seemed hardly impressed. There was little he could see of the man’s face, but the tone in his voice suggested something of a raised brow. “You hunt tonight? In this land?”

“Oh! You are surprised? Or is it that you fear the wrath of the Powers that inhabit this realm?” The tone in the Huntsman’s voice might have been teasing, his manner perfectly easy, for all of his own words.To tempt the wrath of the Valar, in their own realm? What were these beings about to do? Some vauge memories, Tales of the Black Rider rose up in the back of Fëanáro’s mind, but he quickly quashed them down. For all he might say of the the Valar would never be fool enough to allow such a thing to happen upon their own doorstep!

Then again, even now Melkor roamed freely in Valinor...

Meanwhile, in answer to the insult to his pride The Stranger tilted his chin just upwards, his shoulders set back straighter. The matter-of-fact murmur in his voice never changed, though. “It is not fear, merely courtesy. Where I am from Kings are not known to appreciate…” here Fëanáro struggled with the translation, the word itself meant something along the lines of theft, though what there was to steal in a wilderness owned by no man was beyond Fëanáro, “in their forests.”

“Hrmm? Well perhaps that is so, yet we have no lack of game, here. Hart and Hind, Buck and Doe, Fox, Boar and Hare, we are free to hunt all -- even if other quarries must be sought elsewhere.”

The Stranger only nodded, “Then I wish you good hunting. My journey has been long, and I wish to acquaint myself with my surroundings. I will gladly accept your hospitality once you have returned, however.”

For what seemed a long while, the Huntsman looked down at the stranger from up above, upon his horse, almost as though he were searching for something within the words. Finding nothing he could take offense to however, he merely shrugged, smiling a fox’s smile. “As you wish, young Starling.” he said, “You will find the path to my home easily enough, and a warm welcome once you meet it’s end. Until my return…” The Huntsman bowed his head, and with those words was off again, kneeing his horse on, and leading the others off in a thunderous dust-cloud, kicking up dirt and undergrowth as they dove deeper into the trees.

The sound faded off into the distance. One moment, then another passed. And then finally the Stranger too began moving off again. Once more Fëanáro was left only to uselessly pound iron will against frozen body. He would not be left like this, he could not-

The world lurched forward, feet running over the earth as though he’d just crashed through a barricaded door. He only caught himself last minute, panting as he drew himself upright, eyes wide, and scanning the woodland about himself.

When his eyes fell onto the Stranger again, his gaze was turning ahead, and his hand was falling back to his side. It was then that Fëanáro realized that amending his situation -- the one this man had put him in -- was entirely an afterthought.

It had become too much, and after all that had just passed…

Fëanáro wanted an explanation.

“Is that all then?” He demanded, calling after the other, “And you think now you will simply walk away? After...after doing...what did you do to me?”

The chirping of crickets and frogs hung on the air between them. There was a moment…

And then the pause. A Stillness that fell over the Stranger as realization struck him.

Slowly the Stranger turned around, head canted just to the side. His eyes were narrowed as he looked upon Fëanáro and his gaze raked him up and down.

“You speak this tongue?”

Fëanáro’s brows shot up, “Why should I not?” he asked. Admittedly, it was a language few amongst the Eldar had learned, or even truly wished to. The sounds were difficult for elvish tongue to form, and were unpleasant to most ears regardless. But that was entirely beside the point.

“I have met few who do. That is, few who are not amongst the Daione Sidhe.” Said with little more than a shrug as the Stranger edged a step or two nearer. Fëanáro would give him this much: he recovered quickly.

“Dee-na Shee?” Fëanáro repeated, as though feeling out the shape of the words on his tongue, again they were unfamiliar and untranslatable. “That is what your kin call themselves?”

That was answered with little more than a sharp snort. (Fëanáro shot the man a hard glace) “Do you ask nothing but questions?” Fëanáro thought he might have seen the faintest ghost of a smirk flicker over the man’s features then, but he was already shaking his head and turning away once more, quickly and suddenly.

What? Had the man grown bored?

Fëanáro’s tongue clicked, sharp and irritated against his own teeth. He would not beg for his answers. Not go chasing after this man . He had his pride, after all, and if the man were to be this way, there were other ways to --

“Are you coming?” The man had paused, was casting a glance back over his shoulder at the elf, a brow half-quirked.

“What?”

“You might prove useful. As a guide.”

Silence. A flat look. That was all Fëanáro could return with in answer. Did he honestly think...after...after binding him as he had, did this man seriously think… “You are absolutely mad, aren't you?”

And there it was again, not hidden now. The barest flicker of a smirk, an ironic twist curling at the man’s lips. He simply shrugged, turning asside and once more begining to stride off.

“Answer my questions, and perhaps I shall answer yours.” Was all the stranger said.

He was being toyed with. This man thought himself clever with these games. He should have turned about then and there and returned to his family. He had no reason even to trust him!

And yet, and yet….

And yet, what was he out there for if not to explore the unknown? If not to discover and learn? And if such a discovery should just fall directly into his lap, would he not be a fool to turn it away?

Void take him, and Void take this stranger as well.

“If I answer your questions, you will answer mine.” Fëanáro said, falling into step beside this stranger.

#Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell #JSMN #Silmarillion #Feanor #john uskglass #fic #In which we learn that the Noldor have no concept of Forest Law #And also that Sidhe and Valarin are related languages

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