The dusty silver of the moon scattered on Ešl exposed face, glinted off skin and hair and casts gossamer threads of light into the night.
Quivering with those visits from Irmo, fitful dreams ran tremulous within Ešl's mind manifesting in the agitation of his limbs, wrapped as they were firmly within the thick fur.
The somber heavens loomed over them like a great shroud and only the edge of the crescent moon was visible. As Annatar beheld the high winds on the roofless tower and the unrelenting thick clouds that stormed in the firmament, he heard voices culling wanderers.
Then the body within his arms stilled, and against his chest, the other's heartbeat slowed as if into a drugged sleep. Furrowing his brow, Sauron turned and inspected the sleeping face that hovered, on the edge of two lives, overly vivacious for one or the other. And beneath that haphazard wavering, uneasiness of sleep lay like a pall upon the mist toned features that attempted to avert his feathery touch. The serrations on the forehead and the cheeks had began to heal, light pink lines draped across Ešl's flesh like many little silk strands taking measure of each line and slope of the face.
A world that consisted only of the shape within his arms, of the wonderfully curved mouth, the sculpted nose, and the dark lashes came into view and drifted off again, as sudden as it came, and all the world was dread, frozen as the million tiny icy crystals that echoed the sound of the winds within their clear bodies.
Even as he traced Ešl's face again with his eyes, a shudder in him for each breath, small icy rocks plummeted down, cutting the healing skin. A thin rivulet of blood, black in the silver shadows flowed into the slightly parted mouth.
Annatar looked up, the stones beating down upon his shoulders and face, their sharp, sudden weights ringing through his senses.
Hail.
Clear white and gray, some melting upon contact, leaving droplets of water behind while others crashed and exploded like glass, covered the ground like some arcane and softer snow, smelling faintly of a great weariness- vaguely bitter.
He held the passive figure and moved toward where the granite flagstones were unbroken and the marble pillars raised tall and unblemished. The rafters were done though unfilled, parts of the roof were unadorned while others retained frescoes that saw the weathering of time and the vengeance of Valar's domain.
Sporadically, Ešl would draw a sharp intake of air but otherwise, he slept, dreamt, and what those dreams were Sauron dared not to guess. A brief flash of jagged rocks left a rough horror within his heart and he would not think anymore.
With a quiet strength, suddenly uncanny, he lowered the elf onto the ground. Sauron arranged the cloak better closed and bent his head above Ešl, shielding him, and felt the tiny fists of the ice upon his head and shoulders.
Manwe's powers still do not infringe upon the border of this corner of Bereliand, claimed before time, so Sauron drew the elements around and gathered the fabric of the air into a tighter weave beneath Ešl till it was as stone. Then, he tugged at the tendrils floating ubiquitous in Angband, and broken from their confines, they moved, carrying them along the way toward the empty sky.
Stepping upon invisible steps with an invisible pedestal of air before him, higher and higher, passing the hail and the rain, Sauron felt the ground shrinking beneath them as they entered the clouds, heavy spray that parted at the subtlest touch.
And why
Perhaps he worshipped himÉgestured as an offering to the stars
Upon the rigid surface of the air, images ran in his mind and fonder his heart grew as a silence enclosed them in the air, above all the mortal and immortal cries that haunted his nature no matter where he goes. He heard only Ešl's breath, Ešl's heart, Ešl's voice that whispered jumbled syllables in his dreams.
Surely it was too terrible, this complacency in the frozen sky, and surely too mad. The colors of the clouds swirls frozen, as if they were blind etchings for spectator delight. Blank darkness stared pitiless and Ešl was nestled within, almost entirely still.
They rose higher into the sky, the invisible stairs building, sturdy beneath his form, but there was still no hint of stars visible even as the air cooled.
Frost attached them to Ešl's hair; Annatar brushed them away from his fingers. They gathered on his brow, so his kisses melted them, washing away the blood that had gathered on his face.
The brief moment of horror passed, that terrible foresight of seeing him lying broken and dead alone in the wilderness where none could reach. But there were still no stars, and Ešl's lips had become pale, almost pale as his face. Sauron kissed those lips, and placed his hot tongue inside the unresponsive mouth.
Hands gently rubbed the precious bundle, slipping inside and meeting satin skin. There, they massaged, stroked and caressed, movements rendered half desperate between worry and unstoppable pleasure. In some half-dazed state, the entire mantle fell open and draped across the boundaries of Sauron's magic.
The clouds thinned, the reddish shade of Helluin adding to the hard glitter of the moon, fell across their faces. Shifting until he lay on his side, yet still pressing Ešl's body close, Annatar murmurred into a delicate ear. Presently, the light of the imminent Calarcirya reflected in the black eyes.
"Do you see? Do you see? You wished for this..."
The flesh under his fingers was beautiful to touch, its utter reality ravishment in itself. Abruptly, Ešl's eyes met his after a while: familiar spirit, dissimilar gaze.
"I wished," He paused, his voice barely audible, "Would I have everything I wish?
How do you ask me this, Annatar thought, as his palm drifted down the naked form, the muscles tightening and loosening under every touch, when you lie within my arms?
"Yes." He answered. In the lofty air, our phantasmagoric imagery sublime...
Ešl laughed, softly, in his own way, though his present companion had never heard it before, therefore unable to detect the weary edge, "Why am I here?"
An errant wisp of hair flew down to his eyes, but the wind lifted it, and another hand came to tuck it behind his ear, and then stroking the skin from the point to the tender joint between shoulder and neck.
"For being an artist, for being Mordhel, for being a manner of unnatural perfection." A smile curved Sauron's mouth, "For having an eternally kissable mouth, for your dark locks and dark eyes, still unspoiled and untainted. So young, dear Ešl..." He had lain on top of Ešl, one of his knees nudging the other's legs open, and kneeling, pulled the elf to sit upright against his chest, glad to hear the rhythmic beat of the heart against his own.
"You know, seeing stars is different from being able to think that you can snare one." Ešl said, almost fey with joy at seeing them, gently, insistently moving away. But he clutched tightly at Annatar's form when he realized where they were.
"Do you want one?" Annatar asked, leaned forward, and kissed the tender skin above the collarbone, one palm splayed against the naked back lest the elf should tumble down, disappearing into Angband beneath, and the other stroking the smooth chest, moving down.
"I want," Ešl swallowed, "To see the light of the stars whenever I wish." He bit his lip to stifle a groan and a bitterness broken forth from his still tender lip.
"As you wish." Sauron replied at length, fascinated with the enraptured expression of the other as it cried upwards to Varda's canvas.
Blood dripped through the clouds from the abrasions from the ice and they hovered in the air as frozen crystals, faceted pink diamonds.
Below, Gothmog saw the unnatural dews, the brief flashes of wind-swept bodies, and for one sudden absurd moment, he wished his wings were more than shadow.
--
The casing stars twinkled with mischievous fierceness, throwing sharp rays through the abjuring clouds. He opened his mouth and closed his eyes, wishing to swallow the moment even if it may taste of cold bitter air. Failing that, in the imprint of the night behind his eyelids he could fancy thin needles of light striking his skin, for which's nakedness he was inexplicably glad.
Gasping once, ever so softly, amidst the revelry of being bathed in that flood of thoughts and sensations mingled into one, he felt the touch of a fingertip on his arm, then an entire hand. A hot breath on his neck drew him back. Sauron trailed the finger up the arm to rest on the cusp of his ear, brushing away a flake of ice. Ešl shuddered as it slid down his shoulders down his back followed by a hand that smoothed its path until it reached his waist.
It was warmer now, the elf realized, he had been so cold, and so oddly formless that he felt he would fall apart if not for the tiny hairs that pricked his skin, but now his neck hurt from staring up for so long. If he just looked ahead, he could pretend that he was alone, merely sitting on a treetop and gazing outward into the distant night.
There was a particular tree he loved, he sat there at times, wondering what was out of Doriath, whether any of the stories he heard in the squares were true. The noon sun hurts his eyes but upon the daybreak he would be there, letting the dew damp his garments as he climbed the thick boughs. And how he loved mists, he could pretend he sat in the sky, with stars almost near enough to touch.
The memory pulled at the strings around his heart. It was not merely home he longed for now, and it hurts that he did not know what.
"Stop." He whispered, but a poor tear spilled over and hung precariously at the edge of one eye.
Annatar considered himself kind, never cruel, those were other people's words. Ešl had lowered his head, a mass of shadowy hair falling and hiding his face.
"Lie down." Annatar soothed, warring with a terrible desire that welled up within the depth of his being at seeing the elf so grieved.
The stars were torn from Ešl sight, melting into patches of color as he was pushed back into the fur again with Annatar's cool shirt pressed closely above. The clasps dug into his skin while the studs of the buttons at the collar seemed wanting to pierce it.
He lay very still, very confused, and a bit afraid. Then the weight was gone. The warmth at his side and across his chest told him that he was embraced, rather tightly against Annatar's body.
Turning his head, he saw a gleam in the other's eye before feeling a heat flaring running down his side after a caressing hand.
"There we go again," Ešl thought, a bit sulkily, the mood manifesting in a pout that disappeared under moist, supple lips covering his mouth without a sound, tugging all the air out of his lungs.
But it was wonderful to be kissed like this, when did not need to think and the other clearly enjoyed it. Sauron gloated for a while afterwards as the elf gasped happily for air, watching the flushed cheeks and the swollen lips, the fresh cut opened and bleeding oozing a horrible attraction. Half lidded dark eyes beneath the thick lashes seemed so passionately oblivious that he averted his eyes to roam across the graceful planes that were Ešl's flesh. Pure and untouched by any other being, the muscles were slight and shapely beneath his hand and yet they yielded so easily.
Scarcely a hair's breadth away from being able to touch it with the lines of his lips, he fancied he could taste the delicacy of Ešl's loveliness in the heat exuding from the fair skin. Smiling, he dipped a tongue into the hollow the elf's throat and proceeded to cover the graceful neck with darting kisses, each pulse of blood precious beneath.
Clothing were discarded and thrown down the sky in a swirling path. The velvet cloak fluttered as they hovered entwined high in the air, concealed by the heavy clouds that hung dark and foreboding from a distance.
Ešl hands touched the golden head that careened down his chest in the company of lips and tongue, sending edges of pleasure glimmering through his quickening blood.
"Comely like a star," Annatar said, caressing and stroking the top of Ešl's thighs until they parted of their own accord, quivering slightly, "How kind of him to make you immortal..
His mouth traveled down Ešl's loins and rested against the smooth skin between his legs, kissing and nipping until bruises began to bloom on the tender surface. The slightest touch of tongue against the soft tissue between his thighs provoked a moan and a tremor that ran down the length of the elf's body. Another, and Ešl was arching up desperately, the taut muscles of the torso fiercely visible, straining against the hands around his slender hips.
Planting a series of careful kisses across the lean stomach, Annatar trailed them up to the perfect expanse of the chest, and swiped his tongue across the rims of muscle while incoherent words and sounds babbled forth.
Smitten with the heated flesh, the almost passionate embrace as Ešl's hands ran down his back, his own fingers exploring each line of the delectable body he made possible. And tasting it, biting one shoulder, his teeth broke through in the moment alongside a keening cry. He pulled himself up against the beguiling throat, dizzy with the soft scents in the other's hair, clean and cool, whispered an apology before nibbling on the lobe of one ear. He traced the tapering delicate edge with his face and felt the soft pointed end against his cheek as his hands danced and stroked across the collarbone, lips following to the juncture of the neck and shoulder and sketching upwards to the awaiting lips.
The dark eyes, darker than the night, were wide and looked at him with inky fire, made elaborate by the starlight's reflection, and Annatar was struck suddenly by Ešl's beauty, how fragile it was though he knew it would never fade. The air sank beneath their weight, made malleable by his will.
Ešl remembered they were in the sky as he peered into the riddling eyes of Annatar. The long hairs of their fur-covered bed were tangled within his fingers as his veins tinged with the tides that threatened to engulf and drown him in yawning pleasure.
Darkness had fallen even deeper, like an elegant dream that coils forever in his mind, and the gleaming stars were fading before his sight.
Intolerable touches painted him all over with small aches and fires. The light brushes, the sweet promises of lingering kisses pulled at him as if he were being taken to even smaller pieces. In the vagaries of his wondering mind, he did not he exist, so featherlike the caresses were.
"Do you love me?" He asked, eyes shut, the mutiny of colors far from reassuring as Annatar bent and caressed one tender eyelid, his dark hand stark contrast to the exquisite pallor, as if the elf had never seen the sun.
"What?
Distracted, all movements ceased and the night stretched around them. The paleness of a finger, resting on his white wrist, the soft corner of a smiling mouth became uncomfortable, heartbreakingly poignant.
"I am not going to be turned into an orc. I am to have everything I want
His voice pared into a groan. He wanted a name for it.
"Do you want me to love you?" Annatar asked, knowing that his answer could be snatched by the wind. Yet the heights had fallen silent, waiting.
Ešl tucked the temptation into the depth of his mind.
"No.
Annatar winced.
"Well then." He commented.
"But can we go north? I want to." Ešl insisted, and leaned forward and bestowed a kiss on the side of Sauron's mouth.
Annatar withdrew slightly and shied away from another. Seeing the hope in the elf's face, his muscles was suffused with a mysterious pain that had nothing to do with his body's waning passion, he was far too unused to fana perhaps.
"Home." He said, and rolled onto his back, holding one of the Ešl hands against his chest.
"Home." The elf agreed, and Annatar could not bear to hear it anymore. Something was going to break.
"Pity Manwe does not love you then.
He felt the hand clench in his palm, the knuckles smooth and standing in sharp relief against gentle furrows. Tentatively, he traced them and in idle thought, learned that Ešl would never be able to hold a fist easily, so slender and long the fingers were. There had been a sharp intake of breath, but now all was silence. From the corner of his eyes, he could see the movement of the elf's breathing.
The night had quieted around them and his words rang incongruously clear as he continued softly.
"We would not be welcomed. Not this way, not that far. No one enters the high air of Arda without the permission of the Valar. No one confronts an Ainu in their own demesne, the Music had laid down borders for such things before time.
And you will not let me die, knowing that that the temptation to live is too great that we could not turn away from what is in our nature, Ešl thought.
I cannot go back.
"And this is not Arda." He said, each word sharpening focus until he fancied that he could see into the morning sun at a coming time.
"This is a dream.
Of course, a dream, and he could see everything so clearly, himself in the naked embrace of a Maia, in the heavens of Angband beyond the rules of the Music. Ešl opened his mouth to laugh, but found that no sound came, so he said instead: "And no one leaves a dream unchanged.
A long caress drifted down his person, glancing wisps, tracing the contours of his body with tantalizing haziness. Tendrils of dark hair, russet blonde in the day trailed down his collarbone pursued by soft kisses that tickled all the same. Ešl's cooling skin warmed quickly as the firm and unnatural mass of the Maia rested briefly, always only briefly upon his bare breast. In that passing moment, he struggled, awkwardly shoving and twisting until a cautious kiss quieted him, his neck cradled helplessly arching back.
The fey gales, growing loud to his heedless ears, pushed and shifted, and in a blur of motions, air rushed beside him and out of him. As incendiary fingertips ran down the length of his thighs, circling inward and leaving merging blazes in its wake, Ešl rolled out of Annatar's embrace with a strangled gasp, snatched out of the comforting cradle.
It did not hurt when he fell, indeed, his descent slowed as the clouds began to thicken but an icicle broke against his neck, and there was a sudden streak of pain, vanishing even as it came yet the arrest of movement sent him into shock. Immersed in a shallow blanket of spray, the unforgiving pools of water gathered in the valley of his back. Ešl stared downwards, and saw the pitch beneath the graying clouds, the illusory of Arda, he thought distractedly, shaky from the chill.
Two strong hands turned Ešl around, and an embrace in the eddying air thawed the winter that had culled around him.
"I wish to see your face." Annatar explained, sliding his hand in the starlit hair and rubbing down Ešl's back as they pressed close together, "We would see the dawn here." He dipped his head to blow warm breaths at the tapering ear, drawing the ends into his mouth, provoking an unsteady rhythm of moans until he trembled silently, his face turned into Ešl's neck and all too sensible of the downy skin there that stretched marvelously across the pale pulsating throat.
He lapped at the blood on the fresh wound, its iron tang desperately fine. Reckless, Sauron moved toward the supple lips before slipping his hand down to the tumescence between Ešl's opening legs. Mouths yielding against the other, Ešl felt the thrum of pleasure as the other's body became impassioned, meeting his own, their smooth skins sliding against the other in an increasingly frenzied rhythm, close and clinging tightly.
In the end, the lone impulse of delight, seeing the elf flushed satisfied, breathing deeply and reclining suspended in the sky beside him with eyes only for the violent stars, made Annatar vaguely uneasy. It was entirely too appropriate somehow, and he had not had the feeling in a long time, and knowing it, he chuckled deep within himself.
--
The next time Ešl left with his consciousness from the wandering paths, the soft pink pillows delicately cushioned his face and the sheets were a tender presence upon his naked skin. Then he discovered that everything was not all right after a night's sleep. He turned onto his back, his muscles riddled with small agonies, sore with loneliness perhaps. From the arcs in his feet to the arcs within his ears, a curious sensation resonated within him as if he was hollow.
The world was full and he was hollow, and the knowledge was suddenly bright and clear. The silence around him told him so and he wanted it gone as he stared at the ceiling of the smoothest and mind numbing white. He wondered how it would look for anyone who would chance to see him lying there while the wide shafts of the light struck bars of shadows on the carved bedposts. But there, his train of thoughts stopped: of course, no one ever sees, other than Annatar, who would sometime pretend that he did not see and at other times look at him with such an intensity that he found his eyes burning as he met the gaze. The sun would rise, and he would lose that mad game, closing his eyes and watching the dance of bright dots behind the fallen darkness instead.
The red curtains of the bed fluttered easily in the wind that even now, smelled of a sunlit ground. Ešl breathed. A whiff of that and he imagined himself as hard as impervious glass. Less, he would collapse from the silence.
In memory's haunting, the ghostly scenes and people flashed before him, their voices echoless silvery bells.
Yet, the old nights had mingled with newer ones, for the stars had moved. He dreamt of Annatar, his face and his voice and his hands.
Too fascinated and horrified not to remember- the brush of words against his face and the brush of lips against his neck- Ešl existed because of them, and it was terrifying. He could be transparent, formless, gone for all the others but not to the Maia who would perhaps love him if he wished.
He was very aware. Each shade of color, every curve and angle of the disarrayed bedclothes, and every sound, except there were none save his own breathing and beat, beckoned and tempted, crying with the comfort of dreams.
And such a dream... Dreams, he learnt while a small child, were what the world should be. The glance at the setting sun caused his stomach to contract until it hurt, and the bright orange creeping ever closer on the bed made him shudder. This was not how it should be, surely. The sun does not change its path but it was already hopelessly entangled in the memories the first time he found himself within the black gates. And what did he see there? Ešl closed his eyes and buried himself deeper into the blankets. Beautiful beatific past no longer just his own, and the thought filled him with a loathing he never imagined possible.
Even loathing was pointless.
Furious, he threw back the covers that had been previously tucked under his chin. Parts of it pooled on the floor but he paid them no attention as he pulled on clothes that he had to learn to wear: tunics with ornate clasps, low collared shirts with no fastening at all, belts made of links of silver and gold, and thin light shoes that turned at the ankle. He felt formless in the loose clothing, walking felt like parading.
There was no past. He wandered the halls. There were no mirrors, so he could not even trace his features to the faces in his memory. When Ešl looked into pools of water, the spray of the fountains disturbed the image.
It bothered him that he never realized it before. He had no mementos. As he passed the workshops, he cursed Annatar for being the sole reminder. Ešl, he called him, the Sinda of dark eyes and dark hair, who was not yet full grown as the Light Elves would count it
"I am here. I am flesh," He repeated to himself, but found that he could not say his name in the litany, "I have father and mother, I am a son. I have friendsÉ" His voice trailed off, then a little while later, he whispered in little voice, afraid, "They still know me," half a query.
Water within basins of marble does not answer. It bubbled on merrily.
Mindless, he headed for the stairways he saw in a turn of a dream in which he fell down again when reaching the last step, the stages smoothing over.
He found them, as he saw, and it was different. Ešl leapt over the fallen stones nimbly, climbing when needed, and quite determinedly, quite, only slightly in trepidation, stepped onto the last stair, and with a burgeoning relief, found it sturdy beneath his weight.
Out from under the bartizan, it was the sun, and it was the currents of air. He could not breathe, his heart having stopped his throat. So close to the sky, he wanted nothing of it, except perhaps for Anar to reach down and catch him as he stood in the middle of the dilapidated field of stone.
Walking precariously along the edge of the unfinished battlements, his shirt flapping in the wind, Ešl attempted to look down upon Angband, the sun beating warmth down his shoulders. Standing taller than all the others, the roofs of the watchtowers, he fancied he could also see the red points of the spears. But beyond that, merely clouds. The grounds were invisible. Extending his sight into the distance, rapt, he saw a small shining glare coming close, a cluster of stars moving across the land.
And out of the corner of his vision, something caught his eye. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, Ešl picked it up and beheld a piece of tracery- a dazzling vibrancy of colors that mimickedÉ light?
--