Just to give you guys some content after two weeks lol. It was refreshing in Europe but I'm back in the US ready to roll! And here's a taste of what I can do when it comes to writing.
I have a variety of fanfics floating around in my head and not enough time to do them, but while I was in Ireland I wrote this - it's part of my favorite fic, a really long Maedhros x OC Ismene (iss-MEN-ee) in which a ton of things happen but right now she's the healer in charge of bringing Mae back from the dead after Thorongorim and here's a convo between her and Fingon (Fingon POV) in a dark room below the palace:
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He beheld her clearly in the dim light and saw she was tired. Worn. The ember glow in her eyes amid the sighing air of beaten joy was awfully familiar. He had seen it in Maedhros. He still saw it in Maedhros. It struck him that she was old, very old, possibly as old as his cousin.
He was not sure whether or not to be afraid. “Lady, would you care to join me tomorrow night at the memory of Valar victory? Please,” oh he was afraid to go on, “sit next to me and share—”
Her back stiffened. “Do not.”
They both stood in shock. She just…said such to a prince…She looked at him, eyes wry, aware of her mistake, almost laughing. “I am drawing thin already and you do this to me? If my health wanes, so does he.”
They stood in silence. The flickering candlelight made worse the shadows under her eyes. They bore into him, blue to Mae’s grey.
“I do think I shall be under all this revelry with the ward,” she sighed. “Are you making advances? In this time of distress?”
He stammered, “Distress should not be treated so purely with anguish, but some levity, Isie! What good things could we cling to if we acknowledge none of them?”
She almost laughed. “Good things to cling to in distress should not be so fragile. Would it be better to find something untouchable by the current situation’s ravages?”
He turned red. “Lady, I will tumble over as stupid, but I cannot escape the pleadings of my heart! I do not want it, I did not ask for it, but I have it now and do not know what to do with it. Except,” his breath shuddered, “advance. If you allow me to.”
Her eyes softened, and he perceived sorrow seep into them. The weariness did not go but with the sorrow filtered in and throughout it, the weathering gained a certain beauty. She was worn and sad. But both of those together brought her a strength.
Her back straightened, and she sighed deeply. Her voice was soft. “Dear laddie, I am old. I have seen more of Valinor than you have and am cut deeper by Alqualonde than you are. Why don’t you find someone more young and cheerful?”
She tried to put it gently, but it hurt. It would have hurt either way. “You are cheerful…?”
Her stature gained a certain quality both gentle and firm, which came also in her voice. “I am neither young nor cheerful. I saw your father carried in Mae’s arms when I was young. I dropped a barrel full of fish when I saw your cousin. I saw him first at Manwe’s feast of victory over Melkor. Everything was changed.”
A shiver ran down Fingon’s spine. “We Noldor call him Morgoth.”
“I am not a Noldo.” She laughed. “I pined after your cousin to my ruin!—I haunted his paths when he barely knew I existed—I gave gifts to him through his sister and did not tell him my name! I had no courage. I chose not to have courage. I followed him to Middle Earth on the ships but after Alqualonde, it was too late. I should have known.”
She breathed deeply, turning again to her work. “Eru allowed this to happen, and now I am here. There is hurt all around me now, I cannot heal it all. What can I do but heal what I can? Good and ill will come to pass with my presence but I thought, let there at least be more good than ill!”
“You bring much good to us all,” Fingon said. “You are bringing Maedhros back from the dead. Your renown is enough that even we have heard of it all the way in Formenos from Doriath. You walk on starlight and sing like the voice of a waterfall.”
She snorted, but it was not out of contempt. “I gave him up. How foolish of me to follow him into doom! I traded good dreams of Valinor for stupid ones on Middle Earth that could never come true. As with everyone on this broken land I bring both good and ill. But let me bring more good than ill.”
The only sound was the thudding of the party preparations above them, the gentle folding of the laundry is Ismene’s hands.
An unasked question, a desperate need for an answer, though it seemed to have been answered already. Did you love him? As though he did not get the answer from the clues! Do you love him still? It would be folly of Fingon to insert himself when he was not wanted. But was he wanted?
“Do you still love him?” he blurted.
Her hands stopped. Both she put on the edges of the table and leaned on them, her elbows locked.
His heart quickened. Was she angry with him—
“I put aside his memory and threw away all that was his,” Ismene said. “There were other girls. There was glory in his position as a prince and I? Nothing. Peasant. Fishmonger like my father before me. Who am I to contend with princes?”
Her breath shuddered. Her back was still turned. They stood, the only sounds the preparation above and her heavy breathing.
“This is far too complicated for so late a night,” she said. “Oh how our hearts are ensnared so bitterly in this fight! Why must the correct path be known in mind but muddied in action?” She whirled on him. He startled. She seized his shoulders, red hair falling on either side of her freckled face. “I do not know. I do not know what is going on, I just wanted him healed. I sense he has a certain feeling but nothing can be done about it until he is better…” her breath caught. “I can feel it in the way he looks. The way he sings softly to himself. The way he does better under my hand than any other ward who has loved me. It was a different love! This will consume us if we are not careful.”
“You do not know if you love him?”
“I am far too tired to make any important decisions now.” She let go and turned back to the laundry. Mae’s laundry. “One thing at a time.”
Fingon stood in the middle of the room like a pillar. “If you have not decided to love him yet, what is your feeling?”
Her voice was soft. “The fate of entire countries is in our hands.”
He softened to see her raise a hand to her eyes.
“One wrong move and all crumbles.” She sobbed. “I am avoiding the choice. I should not avoid it. No matter what I choose there is something dear to me being thrown away.”
Moved by both a seeping sense of dread, and simple pity, Fingon stepped forward on soft feet until he was shoulder to shoulder with her. “All joy is mingled now with sorrow.” Carefully, he put an arm around her shaking shoulders, and shivered with the hot fire in his chest. “You are the lady, and the choice is yours when all is said.”
“When all is said I hurt someone either choice I make.” She haltingly drew her arm across her eyes. “It is too late for such important questions…”
He nodded. Everything in him was both on fire and in anguish. How could he sleep tonight? “Rest. You, too, are deeply tired.”
Her eyes found his in simple gratitude and pity, and relief that the important question had been forcibly postponed. It hurt her, like a tree rotting from the inside for not resolving it now. Hiding from it like a coward. But it would be resolved—they all had no choice.
She took the folded laundry and brushed past him out of the room. He stood in the dim light, unmoving.
Matters of the heart! Oh that they muddy the waters of clear decision in the fate of nations! That people’s lives would be decided on a maiden’s choice that would have otherwise been simple had her suiters not been princes.
