"We could name him Star-foam," her husband suggested, one ear happily pressed against her giant belly, as if he could discern something of import in the rumbly infant hiccoughs and occasional bulge of fist against her skin. Miriel laughed out loud, snorting bit on the end.
"Star-foam? Really? Why don't you just damn him to a childhood of heckling now?" she chortled. Finwe's head popped up, flashing a moue of injured pride.
"No one would dare heckle the son of Finwe!" he pronounced.
Miriel gurgled, scrunched forward -- which was far from easy, given her whale-like size at the moment -- and dropped a patient kiss on the tip of his nose.
"They will if you persist in referring to yourself in third person," she said. She'd long ago recognized Finwe as a force of nature, wild and wonderous as the air itself, and sometimes it was all she could manage to tether his restless feet to the ground. Lately she'd settled for tethering him to her instead, and to this life they'd created together. And it was working. For once, the whirlwind had paused.
Finwe frowned fiercely for a moment, and one impossibly long finger swirled intricate designs over their unborn child. Then his expression shifted again, lightning-fast, and he met her gaze above the swell.
"Light-bringer, then! How does that sound?"
"Pompous," Miriel retorted. "But I will consider it."
And she clutched that moment bright in memory, hoarded it hard, to salve her into the long bleak years ahead. For though she grinned now and laid her hand along his cheek, patting him affectionately, Finwe's wife knew that this child would be the end of her.
'Spirit of fire,' she thought to the babe. 'You must be his tether. Else I could not bear to leave him.'