A collab with art by @corbie-quaesitum and fic by @unnamedelement for @tolkienrsb. You can find the art and story in the TRSB 2021 collection on AO3 HERE. (See A/N for more information and additional warnings.) A “soundtrack” for the fic can be found here.
Info from the images as text beneath the cut!
Fic details:
The fic is rated M and is slightly over 15k. It features Maeglin, Aredhel, and Eol. Warnings include implied rape, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, ethnocentricism, and character death.
Summary:
Chroniclers will claim–above all else–that Maeglin left Nan Elmoth for desire of lordship alone. While we all know how the story ends, before that there was more: a mother and her son and a dark dark wood; three lives and three deaths, and the dazzling sunlight in between. This story is a portrait of the why behind the flight: family violence and a woman under siege, a child grown to adulthood in lonely darkness, learning to fight with only the tools provided him. It is a tale of childhood nightmares maturing into something more–manipulated by heart-darkened fathers and gently used by desperate mothers–until living becomes surviving and reality is a dream…
Excerpt:
“Put out your arms as if you could fly,” she whispered.
But he stretched them wide before bringing them in above his head as if he could—instead— dive , and he leant so far forward that the sun kissed his shade-pale face, and he sighed.
She held him there for hours, and he leaned like a sapling too crowded by its older brethren; as the sun crossed the sky, his young face followed it like a flower.
