For Varaen(thefallen), Merry Christmas!
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It was a peculiar feeling, to feel again. To feel, to see, to smell, to taste –
– the light of Vása in her eyes was blinding as it had been on the day she had first seen it rise; for a split second it takes her back to the bleak, unwelcoming lands they had come to make theirs, so far away now, so long ago –
– but she was here now, and the blaze, however brighter in the Undying Lands, here was the Fire-golden, not the Consumer, and brought about wonder, not waning.
Lírinellë raised a hand to shield her eyes.
Her life – her previous life – her real life – her lost life – such an absurd idea it seemed, at times, that she could not return to it, could not awaken at Makalaurë's side, be it in their own chamber in the Gap or in the chilly fortress of Himring – her life had ended – her life was now here, once again.
Her renewed body felt alien and ill-fitting; her hands tracing the patterns of now-invisible scars on her flesh were smoother, and Lírinellë wondered idly if a harp's strings would hurt them, and then, if her fingers would know the moves.
Yet more than anything, it was her voice that sounded unfamiliar, false to her own ears.
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Her voice.
It had always resounded from deep within her, singsong and silvery, whether in speech or in song, with an ever-present undertone of vibrant cheer trickling through her words, erupting in cascades of laughter; and she laughed readily and often, in the days of her youth under the Trees.
And Makalaurë with her.
Makalaurë's voice she admired without envy, as a gift of unparalleled beauty, and never more than when he wove his songs before her, of winds and lights and rains and of love, of love.
She sang with him, and loved him.
It appeared so easy, then.
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She was the first nissi to wed a son of Fëanáro; the words rang out with bold certainty as she spoke them for all the court to hear.
A son of Fëanáro.
(Makalaurë.)
(It was Makalaurë she was marrying.)
'I welcome you gladly, daughter,' Fëanáro spoke, placing a diadem with his Star upon Lírinellë's bowed head; and as he did, she felt a surge of protest rise inside of her that she was being claimed already, swallowed into something beyond her, before she was even joined with her husband; and she stifled it as unreasonable.
She would be the wife of Makalaurë; she would be of Fëanáro's House, and bear his sigil with pride.
(When they were alone, the first thing she asked of him was to unbound her hair, comb through her dark, silvery locks with his fingers until they fell smoothly onto her back.)
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Makalaurë found her in the dark and clutched her hands, eyes ablaze, searching.
'Lírinellë,' he asked, 'will you come?' – and what surprised her was not even the startlingly simple phrasing of his question, but the very fact that he thought it needed to be asked; and for a moment she envisioned herself tearing her hand free and turning away, leaving him to go without her, never to hear from him again – and for the briefest moment she saw herself alone in their chambers, alone in the deserted city, alone, singing to the empty walls, without the one who shared her soul.
But she was of House Fëanáro, as he was, and infused with the flame; and she loved him.
'I will,' she replied, just as simply, clearly, surely.
(Then he returned to her covered in blood, and for the first time her voice quivered and broke.)
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In stark lands shrouded in darkness she stood by him as Queen of the Noldor, with her head raised high and her heart heavy.
Lírinellë had never expected to be Queen; and had she envisioned a scenario dark enough for her husband to take the crown, it would have been no match for reality.
Finwë she had respected, Fëanáro she had admired, Maitimo she had loved as a brother; Makalaurë, whose despair she could clearly detect underneath his kingly exterior, she could not reach.
Thus she stood by him, tall and unbending, and her voice hardened into steel, cold, unrelenting.
(After Maitimo was returned to them, she wept by his bedside; he did not wake.)
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Songs were not quick to return to her in the windswept lands of the Gap, and never the same; but eventually Lírinellë sang again, in a voice lower and softer, and sombre as it had never been; silvery gave way to mellifluous, softly sounding out her heart.
And Makalaurë sang with her.
There was a new note between them, too – an echo of division and muteness they wished not to hear again; the bitter echo of uncertainty she tried to drown out in songs of love, to no avail.
Even so, they managed to salvage a life and a semblance of happiness, there in the fortress on the edge of the Enemy's lands.
(And then she was killed; beneath a clouded sky Lírinellë gave a shrill cry and fell silent.)
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And now she was back under the Sun, with a hröa that had no memory of his touch even as the bond tugged at her fëa, stretched painfully across the Sundering Sea, across the border between worlds; and her voice was dead within her, flat and foreign in speech, false and fell in song.
She walked the same paths she had once known and found them unchanged but for a different light and a different view; she could not decide which life seemed more akin to a dream.
She passed people, familiar and strange; some treated her coldly, some kindly; most with reserve ; some told her stories.
(Often times, Lírinellë dreamt.)
(She did not know if she had anything to wait; still, she waited.)
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One day she wandered to the shores.
In part, it had been the stories that led her there; in part, it had been dreams.
The Sea murmured incessantly; in the whispers of waves Lírinellë could almost hear words, cries, songs, wails from long ago, mashed and mixed into the ruthless call; or perhaps it was not the waves, it was her memory.
She felt emotion rising in her chest, unstoppable, overwhelming; she choked, silently, breathlessly, and the feeling spilled into song, at first tremulous and shaky, yet growing stronger, deeper, ragged edges smoothing into a wistful, melodious call from the depths of her fëa.
Lírinellë sang.
(And somewhere, on the other side of Sea, Makalaurë sang with her.)
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