A/N: This is a follow-up for my other fic Nothing but their own. Thus it supports the same alterations in Tolkien's canon that were explained in that fic. Though, I doubt it distracts you much even had you not read that one.

And thank you, Fortune Zyne, for suggesting I'd write this! :]

Stone in the forest

Silent steps, moving across the floor, stopping by the window. Dark eyes peeking through the doorway. The breathing was slow again and the child was sleeping. Eöl was grateful for that. He returned to his study where he had been sitting before his work had been disturbed by the noise from the bedroom.

Maeglin sometimes talked in his sleep. Often the words were mere mumbles, occasionally some words were to be deciphered. Good thing was, the boy rarely awoke to it. As Eöl sat by his desk again. Examining some metals and drawing sketches for new inventions, he put all his concentration into his work.

ooooooo

The stone was black. Just as black as everything else in the forest. Dark, dusky, shaded by the trees looming over it. And then there was a white diamond in it. And then there was a diamond.

Maeglin laid still in his bed before getting on his feet. Thinking. he dream he had seen that night had begun just as any other dream – with nothing in particular. He had been working with his father, he had played with his toys, he had walked in the forest, presumably chasing after a mole. After jumping over a stream he had fallen, and suddenly he had been lying on a flat, smooth surface. Once again, the stone had appeared into his dream. A big, black stone, shaped like a rectangle set in the ground as if a floor for the forest.

Actually, it had been a beautiful stone, Maeglin thought, still lying beneath his covers. It had been black like galvorn, smooth like marble. But why he dreamt of it so often, he did not know. Maybe living in a black house had something to do with the dark floor. Maybe it was something his father had talked about once. Maybe it was a vision from the past.

ooooooo

Looking out the window, Eöl thought he saw something amidst the trees. He frowned. There was something white in the forest of Nan Elmoth. There wasn't supposed to be. It was probably some animal, some bird or maybe a rabbit. And still it disturbed him. Window shutters made everything better. Shutting out the light, the white, the memories too painful to feel.

His son entered the room, wiping sleep from his eyes. They sat down by the table to have their simple breakfast. Just as they always did. Just the two of them. In the darkness, because neither desired light, the other having barely ever seen it; the other having seen it but lost it. Lost it for forever. His light was now in the sharp eyes of his son.

ooooooo

Dark forest ground. Petals of a tree falling slowly in the still air, moss creeping onto the path. Hand in hand, Maeglin walked with his father. The quiet forest was beautiful, its trees grand and majestic in their grey bark. A still dark stream ran beside the path, and Maeglin took interest in how the stream's lazy ripples fled from the stones he threw amidst them, the way the larva of the moths dived beneath the surface as the blank mirror was broken. Suddenly the boy halted. His father stopped with him.

"What is it, Maeglin?"

"Is there a black stone floor over there?"

His father stood still, not replying for a while. "No," he said at last. "What makes you believe that?"

"Because this place," Maeglin said thoughtfully, looking across the stream, not noticing the way his father's hand had become stiff around his own, "reminds me of my dream in which there is a black stone over there."

"You have dreamt of it?" Eöl asked quietly.

"Yes, father," Maeglin nodded and looked up at Eöl. "It's strange, because it has happened so many times."

Eöl said nothing for a while, but stared across the stream as well. Maeglin looked at his father's face which had become more grave and silent than usually. Eöl looked back at his son, then, quietly whispering he said: "It's not a floor, it's a gravestone."

ooooooo

The black stone was set into the ground while the child was sleeping in the arms of a servant in the house. The boy, then less than a year old, would not have to know, Eöl thought. Too young to understand, maybe he would never have to. Never have to know what had happened to his mother, never know he had had a mother. All Aredhel's belongings were put into the grave, save for one single silver ring. That was a ring Eöl had made himself. It was slightly too small for his own hand, but he could have resized it. But he did not want to and kept it on his little finger. Because what was a marriage if even the wedding ring had been altered?

Each summer small white flowers bloomed on the grave. Come the first frost, they would wane, and the white of their bloom was replaced by the thin layer of snow that slipped down past the treetops. And in spring the only light on the grave would be the white pearl set onto the solid stone. Because it was in springtime that Eöl lost his light. Lost it forever.

ooooooo

"And why did you never tell me?"

"You never asked. And because I though you'd be better off not knowing."

"Knowing? You have never even told me that my mother was dead."

"She was killed."

"Killed... Who was it?"

But Eöl would not reply. There were some things he did not know himself, some things he feared to know.

Including whether it really had been his sword that had pierced the person he had cared about the most in his whole life.

A/N: Okay, even at the risk of giving spoilers for another fic, I just want to make sure that no, I did not write off Eöl as a murderer or as some sort of wife abuser. As previously stated, this is a follow-up for my fic Nothing but their own, in which it is made clear that Aredhel died accidentally as she got involved into a duel.