starlight and earth (2)

I was thinking about this today, about tauriel’s stiffness and seriousness when kili mentions having something down his trousers, her jittery confusion when kili teases about his “cursed talisman”—and how desperately he says “or not!” when she’s already walking away, how quickly he talks, just to get her back

(awkward darling children, she doesn’t remember how to laugh and he doesn’t know how not to be overlooked they’re so bad at this but then they’re talking about light and memory and moons, and that seems promising, like something that could flower under the warmth of your palm)

I was thinking about how broad kili’s fingers are compared to hers, when he takes the stone back from her, and how cool her hands feel against his fevered skin, and how she and fili keep vigil beside kili’s sickbed, and fili tells all the right stories—the ones only a big brother can tell, like when kili was forty and utterly convinced he was the next great nabla player, so the whole royal line of durin had to go around with cotton stuffed in their ears.

and sometimes kili wakes up and smiles at the both of them—a crooked, contented smile, his eyes half-lidded with sleep, and tauriel is warm, warm, warm.

(when they stand beside one another on the battlefield, and tauriel leans down and murmurs after this—after this we see the stars. promise me. I know you can be reckless.

and kili turns slightly, just enough for his lips to brush her jaw. I promise, he says, though his voice breaks against her skin. I promise. I promise. I promise.)

(it isn’t enough, in the end.)

the first time he lay with arwen, aragorn was a virgin.

oh, there had been offers--innkeepers' daughters (innkeepers' wives), a gondorian noblewoman or two, more than a few of of his brothers on the battlefield, and very notably an umbar princess, who had stayed his execution out of great affection--but for aragorn there had only ever been arwen, the memory of her on the banks of the bruinen, dark as oncoming night and with eyes of the first starlight.

(he learned to keep his own counsel, to leave quietly, to spare heartbreak.)

but it means that when arwen tugs at the stays of his trousers, he is suddenly twenty again, rawboned and helpless, uncertain how to catch the evenstar in his hands. I haven't--he breathes, and arwen goes still. none--none of them were you, I could not...le annon pân veleth nín, nín bereth.

but arwen smiles, tilts her face up to his and kisses the place where his jaw meets his throat. slow, then, that we might have love enough come morning.

it is a fumbling, over-eager thing--every move he makes seems clumsy, inelegant; his knees and elbows make nuisances of themselves; he finishes too quickly--but she is patient, invites him to touch and guides his hands, his mouth--

and when arwen evenstar gasps, nearly wrenching his hair from his head as her thighs press hot against his ears, aragorn thinks he may prove a quick study.

starlight and earth

I think a lot about that scene at the lakeside, when kili says you make me feel alive and amralime, and tauriel gasps, tauriel scrabbles for space, for distance, for some semblance of objectivity, because—someone must, someone must be sensible, she must be sensible—love does not warp the world around it it is an accident of the heart in a world of knives, and she would not see him bloodied to ribbons in her name; she is water, she shapes herself to the stones she flows around, elven-kings and woodland princes and her own exile, only—

only he gives her shape, a promise-stone meant for his mother, he sees her, as she is, calm and clear-eyed and true, and teases her irreverently despite her seriousness, he pins her down, makes her stay, makes her real, and when he says I am not afraid it is because he is not, because she does not give an inch and so he will not either, will not apologize.

past the world's ending

She tries. Elizabeth Turner, nee Swan, tries. Finds a little house to rent, takes in laundry because her hands are already rough, and the smell of lye reminds her of that tall governor’s house, where clothes came white and the silver gleamed. Sometimes she imagines what her father would say, if he could see how far his pirate king laundress of a daughter had fallen, and laughs.

The townsfolk say she spends too much time walking the shore, too much time staring out at the sea. Even for a sailor’s wife, they say.

Yes, Elizabeth Turner agrees. But she is trying.

When she pieces together that she’s pregnant, she stops trying. She goes down to that cove where she kissed Will goodbye and fills a small jar with sand and dirt. She uses the sharp edge of a cockle to cut her finger open, the left one where her wedding ring goes, and bleeds herself from the heart. She seals her jar with wax, kisses the lip. Makes herself a promise.

The next day, Elizabeth Turner is on a ship, where no one questions the urge to stare at the horizon. A week after that, Elizabeth Turner leads a mutiny and readjusts their course, due Shipwreck Island. (Well—with detours. Elizabeth has always wanted to see the Spanish Armada.)

(…on their knees.)

this bird, my soul

The first time they meet, the Steward of Gondor is so stiff, so painstakingly awkwardly formal, that Zinat comes away thinking him cold and haughty—it is only decorum that keeps her smile demure and pleasant, even as the Steward stumbles through the traditional Haradi greetings like they pain him, immediately turning away to speak to his brother.

(He speaks Haradi worse than the tongueless beggars outside the palace, her handmaid says that night, while brushing out Zinat’s hair. Zinat presses her fingers to her lips, but cannot keep the laughter in—she and her maid laugh until Zinat is breathless, giddy. It is the lightest she has felt since she watched Umbar vanish over the waves.)

So Gondor makes Harad welcome and Zinat makes stilted, labored conversation with a Lord Steward who so clearly thinks her unworthy of it. They are thrust together at feasts and hunting parties, always beneath the watchful eye of Zinat’s lord brother, or King Elessar. No one so much as whispers the word marriage, but it hangs heavy in the air, a leaden yolk with the weight resting between Zinat’s shoulders.

Sometimes, she looks to the Prince of Ithilien and thinks she sees his shoulders hunched under the same weight.

(He is not…displeasing to look upon, her lady-in-waiting remarks once, as they walk through the white, white halls of the White Tower. You must admit that the lord prince has a fair and noble face.

The face of the mountain is fair and noble too, Zinat replies. She finds herself missing the red sandstone of the palace at Umbar, which was not so smooth and cold beneath her hands. It does not mean I wish to build my home on the rocks.)

Baisemain

Baisemain—a kiss on the hand.

his hands are tar-rough, black beneath the nails and salt at the knuckles; bending to kiss his palms is like diving from the rocks into deep water. you say husband, like that is something other than a shield, a weight, a ghost.

his mouth moves as he speaks of olive trees and marriage beds, but the words sound stilted in his tongue, which you imagine too rimed with salt and blood to find its way to the hearth-fire.

(the courtyard is littered with the corpses of suitors, slaughtered by his hand and your son’s—they lie at your feet now, as they should have from the start; arrogant mouths slack and ravenous eyes unseeing.

you are glad at the sacrifice, made on your altar and not to the other grey-eyed goddess whom he loves.)

wife, he says, and then winces, hearing the hollowness of it. (you never ask their names—you were the one he returned to. all else is but a boast around the feast-table.)

queen, he tries again, kneeling before you in the blood and straw. You feel the weight of it then, those twenty years from girlhood to regnant womanhood—you are suddenly conscious of the grey at your temples, the heavy weight of your breasts. Something of your grief must show on your face, for he tries again:

ithaca, he finally sighs, gathering up fistfuls of your himation as though he is afraid you will vanish from him, pressing his face to your stomach. He clings to you as a man drowning, and there is salt at his knuckles. ithaca, my ithaca.

you surface. I am here, you say. You have come.

but you are not a ruin (remus/tonks)

The bride shows up half an hour late, with electric orange hair and singe marks on her auror robes. We don’t have to do this, Remus says quietly, touching his fingertips to the new bruise on her cheek. You know we don’t have to do this.

There is blood on her trousers from where Leach bled out (hands scrabbling at his throat, his eyes wide and white as he struggled for breath—he’d been a few years ahead of her at Hogwarts and she’d been too busy trying to defend their position to notice when he’d gone still—)

I do, she tells Remus, who has his own fresh scars, deep shadows under his eyes. I want to. I want to.

it’s only few days from the full moon, so you may kiss the bride tastes of wolfsbane potion and his stubble, rough at her lower lip.

She transfigures her wedding band into a bracelet as Remus slips a few galleons to the only magistrate willing to witness to an illegal intermarriage. But Remus’s hand is warm when they step out into the night, and for a little while, she can pretend they are not going to die.

.

a time when Boromir must comfort Zinat instead of the other way around

You sent your women away, Boromir said, shutting the door quietly behind him. She could see him reflected in the curve of the mirror, the careful way he held himself, the sharpness of his gaze. How like her husband, Zinat thought with equal parts fondness and exasperation, to approach as though he were preparing an assault on unfamiliar territory. She was certain if she made too-sudden a movement, he would reach for the sword currently absent from his hip.

(It would be a lie to say she did not toy with the idea, but she was too tired and grieved to do more than that.)

Indrani came to me, Boromir said. She was worried.

I was only tired, Zinat answered, reaching back to unclasp the guluband around her neck. I do not like so many hands touching me, when I am like this. It only serves to foul my temper further.

In the mirror, she could see how Boromir studied her. You are very good at that, my wife, he said. Lying and telling the truth at once. But I am getting better at discerning when you do it. Indrani told me what passed in the hall.

Zinat’s fingers fumbled at the clasp of her necklace, as she stared blindly into the mirror. She could not find the catch, she couldn’t—her chest was tight and it was difficult to breathe, to think—they had said—is that was whispered of her? is that all she would be, in this land? 

Your hands are shaking, Boromir said gently, crossing the chamber to her side. His rough fingers grazed the back of her neck as he unclasped her guluband. She let the necklace slip down to her lap, leaning into Boromir’s hands. Boromir laughed, and teased some of the strands that had come loose of her braid. It eased the ache in her chest, to feel the warmth radiating from him. Zinat…he began quietly.

My mang, she interrupted. In the mirror she could see his expression shift, the worry giving way to a furrowed brow and an expression of confusion.

Your—what?

She touched a finger to the strand of pearls that rested in the parting of her hair, and gave him an expectant look.