and I will love with urgency, but not with haste
Prompt: green and growing wilderness / turning of the seasons for @gatesofsummerexchange
Summary: “I would honor the customs of thy people, Andreth, and marry thee in the manner of thy people,” he said at last.
“And if I did not want to?” she asked, so soft she barely heard her own voice. “If I wished to marry thee in the manner of thy people?” Her voice trembled, but she held his gaze.
Aegnor drew in an uneven breath, swift and sharp. His gaze roved her face, tracing her features. When he spoke, his voice was rough but tender. “I would take thee away, to the south or east, and marry thee under the light of the stars. And there none would speak against our union. And I would be thine and thou would be mine in every way that there is.”
A summer evening spent in a glade near the shores of the Aeluin.
Andreth knelt down and inspected the small cluster of mushrooms, mentally running through the list of features her mother had long ago taught her and Beril to look for. It was edible, she decided, and she cut several mushrooms from the ground and added them to her basket laden with the roots she had dug up earlier. She straightened and shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun that slanted across the hills.
The highland slopes were awash with purple ripples of blooming heather, and bees and butterflies darted among the blooms. Here and there across the shoulders and knees of the hills, thickets of mountain roses tangled among the heather. Summer had come to Dorthonion at last. The rivers that burbled down the slopes were still cold with the snowmelt of a winter that had not easily conceded to the short spring, but cattails grew thick around the riverbanks and bobbed their tufted heads in the light breeze. And in the shade of the copses and forests of pine, spruce, and larch, huckleberries and wild raspberries began to swell and brighten.
It was her favorite time of year, brief though it was in these lands caught in the shadow of Thangorodrim. But she loved the season all the more for its transience.
As she turned to begin her walk home to the halls of her father, a glimmer of gold caught her eye, and as she turned to look, Aegnor, holding the reins of his horse, stepped out from beneath the shadows of a nearby stand of pines. With a cry, Andreth hitched her basket on her arm and clutched her skirts in her other hand, flying to him across the heather.
