Notes:
The complete title is: My Dear Weaving Beauty: Punish Me As You Wish. (LOL It is actually not as sarcastic as the title suggests)
Regarding a name used here: I am not versed in Sindarin or Quenya or any other languages of Arda, so my knowledge of names is limited too. I apologise if the name Fíriel here does not sound Maiar-like; and neither is it related to the reborn Míriel Þerendë.
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`Umm… Vairë?`
The Lord of Mandos, whom the Elves had so feared, had always been so unruffled… except for now, as he was standing – fighting not to shift like a naughty Elfling caught red-hand in a mischief – before his spous' wrath. Foolish, foolish, he berated himself. Why had he replaced that thread spool with another colour? But the notion had been so tempting, especially since she had ignored him for nearly an age of the Trees for the sake of her tapestries…
Well, he was paying for the act of impulsive childishness he had committed, anyway. The Weaver of the Stories of Arda was hovering before him in her spiritual form, her indigo aura darkening into almost purple. She looked ugly this way, and… truthfully… frightening too.
`If not for Fíriel's quick reflexes, that particular tapestry would have been ruined!` Vairë shrieked. Námo winced and allowed himself – finally – to shrink away, his light grey aura turning several different shades of colours in his nervousness. `You should have known better not to medal with something which portents a great effect! Would you let me harass those fëar in your care?`
`Hey! Leave them out of this!` Námo struck back automatically in defense of the souls in his halls, becoming angry himself. He realised belatedly that he had been lured into a kind of trap.
`You see? We have our own domains which are important in their own rights and should not be medalled.`
Námo could easily picture his spous narrowing her eyes at him upon hearing the frown in her tone…. Well, and a smug look too.
`Well, it did not happen,` he said at last, a little lamely, having no other things to say to save himself from this predicament he had plunged into unwittingly. `What would you do to me now? There was no problem arising because that beloved Maia of yours had saved the day… perhaps literally… and so—`
`Now is for your punishment,` Vairë pronounced slowly, calmly. A frisson of mixed fear and morbid fascination worked all over Námo's fëa. His spous'… punishments… were often inventive and would make the most recalcitrant Ainu or younger Children bend down on their knees – figuratively or literally. He was often feared for the dooms and prophecies he pronounced and for his dark appearance, but few knew of this… feral… streak of his beloved spous – and those who had known of it usually held her with the same awe, or more, as they did to the Doomsman of Arda.
Secretly, however, even without half his knowledge of it, he liked this 'game' – of angering the Weaver and receiving her punishment. There was always a kind of thrill accompanying such moments, including what he experienced now.
But it did not mean that he liked the punishment delivered to him.
`What?! Woven into your tapestry?!`
`For one week, in my workshop, you are going to be hung in that tapestry,` Vairë reiterated, her aura turning lavender in amusement – bordering in glee. `No one would notice you there unless you spoke to the person.`
One other trait of hers was that she was wont to deliver justice of the poetic kind.
Well, and no one escaped from her grip afterwards.
Still, though, there was no harm in trying – at least it was what was in Námo's mind when he transported himself away to somewhere secluded in Valinor, fleeing her loom and yarns.
It took a day full for Vairë to recapture him. By then they had 'visited' every nook and cranny of the blessed continent and the Valië was greatly irritated… It was not a good sign for the dejected Vala.
`My love…` Námo pleaded meekly as his spous began to work on her loom. He was held by her will, hovvering above the crossbar of the wooden structure as the interwoven multicolour web of threads made their way up as one solid, beautiful piece of cloth. The taut vertical lines of threads, through which the horizontal ones worked their way up, clung to Námo relentlessly, but there was a sense of familiarity in them, somehow…
`What thing are this threads made of, Vairë?` he asked, nervous because of the familiar sense and the cloth forming on the lower part of his fëa. (Truly! It felt like being sipped into a quickmire…)
Vairë did not answer him quickly. When she did – after the tapestry was half-wrought – the awaited words were not direct to the point too: `Can you not guess what part of my incarnate form the yarns remind you of?`
`That is what I was asking,` Námo thought irritatedly to himself. But he could not dwell in it for long. The web of coloured thin strings had reached three-quarter of his fëa. He could not help but whimper in primal horror, the fear of being trapped and could go nowhere. Vairë seemed to soften up for a moment, yet then she finished the tapestry and, as promised, hung the Vala-inserted piece of cloth on a patch of blank wall in her workshop, opposite her desk. (Why she kept a writing desk among the chests of spools and rows of looms, Námo did not know and partly did not want to now.)
The Vala did not spend his days idly. He was forming a plot to retaliate to his spous for this wicked punishment. Unbeknownst to him, he looked and sounded much alike the fallen Melkor at that time. And indeed, the thought about the fallen Vala came to his mind during a particularly boring day in the workshop – while Vairë was chattering happily with her maidens about news from outside world, both significant and trifial. `I wish I knew of this kind of prison before. If so, Melkor would have a much more deserving place to be in and perhaps he would rue himself afterwards.`
He said as much when Vairë at last released him, and what he got was a threat to be imprisoned once more in the tapestry if she heard such thought again from him. She did provide him a reason, though: `The yarns are too special or him or his like. Besides, I do not deign to see his face before me for the duration of the weaving.`
Námo was disappointed. Albeit, Vairë already had a cure for it – and perhaps for his imprisonment and the time they had not spent together too. They cuddled to each other contentedly for many long days of the Trees in a beautiful, romantic nook in the widerlands of Valinor, leaving their respective Maiar to tend to the halls – of the dead – and the workshop – on their own, coming to their rescue only when needed.
It did not mean that Námo had forgotten about his retaliation, nevertheless.
In the end of their 'renewed honeymoon', he set up to task directly – much to his Maiar's amusement. Before the day had ended, there was a lifelike painting of Vairë, in a casual but elegant gown, munching on an apple in a sunlit flower-strewn clearing, seated languidly on a picnic blanket with her back leaning to the trunk of an apple tree and her head wreathed with apple blossoms, hung in the main hall of Mandos for all to see – dead or alive, Ainur or younger Children. The piece was warded so that no one but himself could take it down and no one – even himself – could destroy it.
Vairë's scream, when her eyes landed on it in her visit, rivaled that of the enraged, maddened Melkor.
The dead fëar of the Elves, who had been admiring the painting or ignoring it for a play around the hall with fellow fëar or some willing Maiar, fled. The Maiar followed right afterwards (in fact, many of them helped the souls of the Firstborn to safety), leaving their lord to fend for himself.
And he did, by way of words and quick reflexes of evading her capture, but it came to naught in the end – as he had suspected.
For the next one month of the Trees, the entrance hall of Ilmarin, the mansion of Manwë and Varda, had an additional illumination – and decoration, to an extent. A large crystal lamp hung on the middle of it, suspended on a short metal support carved with intricate designs. The lamp attracted the many visitors to the abode of the Eldar King and the Star Kindler… for some bizarre reasons – or at least it was so for the Firstborn and the few unsuspecting Maiar. It would glow a menacing red when Vairë walked under it, dim – with longing or perhaps petulance – when one of the other Valar walked by, and glare brilliant white – worse than the red, in a way – when one of the visiting Firstborn spoke badly about the Lord of Mandos. Vairë would smiled – outwardly – and laughed gleefully – inwardly – when the lamp blared red on her; her fellow Valar and Valier just shook their heads ever so slightly and smiled in amusement to themselves; while the Children… well, the offending name-callers never mocked the Doomsman of Arda anymore afterwards, by a… strange… coincidence.