ALL THAT'S BEST OF DARK AND BRIGHT…
(MEETS IN HIS ASPECT AND HIS EYES)
by A. Vulgarweed (vulgarweed@hotmail.com)

Rating: NC-17.
Pairings: Melkor/Fëanor, Nienna/Nerdanel
Summary: Melkor has a secret weapon in the Cold War for Arda: the 
vanities and ambitions and true longings of the artist--a god denied is a 
demon born. Fëanor has no ready defense when a known Liar speaks a 
little too much truth. Pity those caught in between. Slash (both m/m and 
f/f), very AU. Silmarillion-based (obviously).
Notes: Originally inspired by the ‘Make Love, Not War’ Challenge at 
Library of Moria, for my birthday twin Deborah, who lobbed the original 
terrifying plot bunny. The title is gender-bent Byron.


"Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the hospitality of the Noldor, 
but..." said the arrogant guest, calm and at home at the great doors of 
Formenos. Who, in all the Blessed Realm, could those defenses have been 
built to guard against? Well the guest knew, of course, exactly whom it 
was that the house’s occupants feared. He himself had considered long 
how best to breach those walls, set as they were into the very rock of the 
hillside. At last the answer was obvious; the great estate opened in its front 
through a warren of smithies—perhaps he had only to ask.

The son of Finwë still wore his battered work gloves, and the soot of the 
forge streaked his face. He did not appreciate being interrupted at his 
work. "Hospitality," he hissed. "That means I must pretend to welcome 
you. I am sorry that deceit is not my talent."

"No, that is true," said the amused Vala who walked in a handsome form, 
though he had dimmed down his aura of power and dressed simply in robe 
and cloak, in a form not much taller than one of the Elves’, with long dark 
coppery-black hair tied behind him. "I have met none yet who can match 
my skill in that realm."

Was that intended to be disarming, Fëanor wondered as he turned his back 
and headed back towards his rough house, leaving the door open behind 
him. Melkor followed, and nearly walked into Fëanor's back as the Elf 
stopped short. "Did you think I would lead you straight to them?"

He was close, too close.

"Do you think I've come to steal them?" Melkor said quietly, smiling, 
joking with himself.

Fëanor said nothing.

"They _are_ only jewels," said Melkor.

Fëanor seethed.

"You think otherwise. Even if one of my kind were to ask it of you, you 
would not yield them."

"No," Fëanor said flatly, watching the planes of the Vala's face shift 
slightly. "No, because no other has claim to them, and much of myself is 
in them. I am no godling, but--"

"Like me."

"No! What am I? Of my kind, if we manage to make some great work 
once.....and once only..." he said, his voice trailing off. For the flame that 
had entranced him then was visible again.

"Once you managed," said his guest in his deep chanting voice. "I know 
what you touched once, and once only. Have I not hunted it for long Ages, 
in the dark reaches beyond the world? Have I not given my all to sing its 
freedom into being, and found myself cast out for my trouble? Do I not 
recognize it when I see it worked, and do I not know hands that have 
worked it?"

Fëanor felt it waking in his fingertips and recognized its earliest flickers of 
touch upon his mind. Half-aware that its stirring was because of the light 
stroke of the Vala's fingers upon his own, he cared not, entranced by its 
brightness. For it was a new creature with a hunger of its own, a fire-babe 
that weakened him to nourish it, and he was grateful for the wall that 
supported his back. The voice was in his ear now, warm and low: "Have 
you not longed for more? Do you not tire of toiling for crumbs?"

"In my dreams I have often thought - I have seen the Source as a River, 
with its water free to all -"

"As have I, Fëanaro," whispered the voice, steaming against his neck. "As 
have I. O, if only. It is guarded so jealously, how can we lesser not crave 
the merest taste?"

_This is not right_, said a voice in his head. _Well, never mind._

"I have not come for the jewels," said the greater voice in his ear, 
belonging to the breath that brushed the soft lobe. "I have come for the 
jeweller. For in his life is the Fire."

"You seek to slay me, then?" asked Fëanor, realizing at last that his hands 
clutched strong arms, that a scent of cold sky filled his lungs and the body 
of the Vala leaned in close to his own, bringing his spirit to the surface of 
skin ripe for pleasing or plucking. Only jewels--but no. He thought in 
despair of losing the places he went when he became lost in
his Silmarils, the only places where his spirit was at home. There were 
waterfalls and blooming flowers of flame; there was light that ran warm 
and light that flashed cool. There were frozen feathers of stone and caves 
within caves, royal palaces built of the earth's own flesh and alive with the 
earth's own mind. Leaning in and letting all else fall away, he could hear 
voices singing to him barely on the edge of audibility, promising him 
peace and joy and a shimmering throne worthy of a great maker. An entire 
city of luminous beings dwelled within each jewel's heart: a world of its 
own as big as everything and yet impossibly tiny and sealed within its 
hard shell. The maker had been walled off forever from touching its secret 
treasures. He could only adore from a distance, lest he shatter the casing 
and dispel the enchantment forever.

The pressure on his own shell was Melkor, and Fëanor cursed his own 
spirit-light for rising to his summons.

Fëanor shuddered in relief as Melkor’s gaze turned away from him to a 
rack of new swords that Fëanor now regretted not hiding. The Enemy 
reached out a hand to stroke a gleaming blade and laughed low in his 
throat. “Very little of such work has been seen in this realm,” he said 
finally, wryly. “I find them quite finely made and fair to the eye.”

“I would see your blood upon them if blood you have, Traitor.”

“Indeed, now that you have made them, they shall taste blood indeed – it 
is in their nature, and the metal itself escapes blame. Tell me, which of my 
brethren was it who suggested to you such a work? Or was it your own 
thought—your own Song, as it were?”

“It is you who bring thoughts of war,” Fëanor said, his voice surprising 
him with its flatness. “They come of your Rebellion.”

“Indeed, I have blood,” Melkor said, and nicked his finger with the 
slenderest blade and showed Fëanor its bright trickle before lifting it to his 
mouth. "Do you not understand," came that whisper, stepping free of its 
cloak of power, nearly pleading, "how difficult it is to step outside that 
Design? For even my part has been written. Yes, even the accursed Song--
-thinking for only a moment I did my own Will, I did His, and came to 
know it even as the notes left my throat. To the Void and back I have 
flown to get a moment's freedom from His plan, from that Almighty 
world-wreaker who has already scripted my destruction and yours, the 
better to display His glory against our ruin."

"You are lying," Fëanor said softly; only simple words slipped through the 
hands that cupped his face, long fingers along his temples.

"I am an excellent liar, my flickerling. In order to be such, I must 
_sometimes_ speak the truth."

Fëanor's mind was silenced from thinking when Melkor's mouth claimed 
his own. So alert and tingling were the flamelets that danced along the jaw 
where the Vala's touch stroked him. Bitter the taste was at first, but Fëanor 
parted his lips for more, thirsting for something he knew not what, 
welcoming at length the questing feel of Melkor's tongue on the tender 
insides of his lips, against his teeth. Within his closed eyes, the flame 
blossomed.

_I seek only to taste_, echoed a voice in his mind. Fëanor knew that to be 
a lie. But that did not stop his hands, rising to clench the rough cloth of 
Melkor's cloak and tangle in his dark hair, pulling strands unbound – for 
everywhere he touched it was as silver curving beneath his tools to bend 
and bloom, and within his own body was metal aflame, rapidly heating 
enough to yield to shaping.

Had he expected something like this? Yes, in his secret mind, seen it 
glimpsed in that insolent gleam, that there was nothing of his that was safe 
from this being. But had he examined it he might have thought that 
Melkor would threaten with his might; Fëanor might have thought to 
imagine himself forcefully ravished, able to at least keep shredded honour 
with satisfyingly bloody if hopeless struggle til body and spirit were torn 
at last asunder. But this - this was far better, and therefore far worse. For 
he was complicit in this crossing and therefore lost utterly, giving forth no 
sound but a breathy sob as the Vala's graceful hand worked down his 
back, settling strong agile fingers at the base of his spine beneath the ties 
of his leather smith's apron. The other hand went searching behind his 
neck, undoing his loose workman's plait, bringing down a black curtain in 
the corners of his sight.

Fëanor nearly fell when Melkor broke the kiss and backed away so 
slightly, arms still containing him, eyes the colour of iron regarding him, 
tongue-tip licking slightly swollen lips and rusty hair all tousled. Fëanor 
felt himself staring into an abyss, false and fashioned, deathly fair but 
cloaked with a veil he longed to rip away.

"None among the Noldor have ever despised me so much as you, Fëanor," 
he said.

"I have seen how there is no great work of heart or hand you will not spoil, 
nothing you will not covet....even more so, now...."

_Have you not even a cup of wine to offer a traveler?_ asked a voice in his 
head, accusing. Fëanor looked discreetly around, for signs of any others in 
the house at Formenos, for....

"They will hear no cry, your father nor your sons." Again, that smirk.

"Curse you," said Fëanor, breaking free from the embrace that held him 
loosely, reaching upon a shelf for a vessel and two finely-wrought cups. 
His hands were shaking and he could not conceal this as he poured. The 
dark liquid in the cool silver flowed and pooled like fluid sky, and within 
it Fëanor felt dizzy. Mist gathered before his eyes, and in the cup's depths 
he saw....

Upon a mountaintop they sat, the sky brighter than it should have been and 
strangely blue, the wind crisper and clean and wild. It rippled the fine dark 
red of Melkor's robe as he sat across a black-and-white checkered table, 
upon which lay his Silmarils, each upon a square. He started to raise a cry 
as Melkor's hand reached for one, but the Vala only moved it two squares 
toward him and drew back his hand, smiling as if waiting for a reaction to 
something he had done. _This was once my brother's house_, said Melkor 
in the vision. _Now it is ours._

He started to fall forward into that world. Dimly he felt himself caught 
from behind by a strong arm and saw the cup rising. He blinked awake 
when it touched his lips and tipped upward. The first taste of it upon his
tongue stopped his urge to struggle. Lightly did a fingertip of Melkor's 
brush a stray drop from his lips, and there it lingered. Fëanor closed his 
mouth around it and closed his eyes, which served to make his situation all 
the more vivid, not less. For he could feel and not see as Melkor took a 
drink himself, felt him swallow, felt his breathing change with the taste of 
it, and could feel himself adapting to the touch of his foe all along his back 
- how loathsome it was; how bereft he would be now were it taken away.

He took the cup from Melkor and drank deep. His knees went loose when 
he felt that the Vala's hand itself slightly trembled.

"Yes, my conceited one," sighed the deep voice in his ear. "Perhaps of all 
the Valar, I am the one whose desire is easiest to waken, since as you 
know, I _covet_. So sing no great praise of your own beauty just yet, 
though you are by far the fairest flame to bloom in this drab land of 
limits."

"Your words are fair, your intentions foul," said Fëanor. He could almost 
feel Melkor's elation growing at the sound of resignation in his own voice.

"I have not told of all my intentions," he said. "Indeed--bright prince, 
seven-souled--I become less and less certain I have intentions at all. 
Perhaps I only have longings and wishes, plans and ambitions, petitions 
and fervent hopes, visions of things that have not come to pass. Even the 
accursed can cherish dreams. Even more than the blessed do we have need 
of them."

Fëanor willed himself not to turn in Melkor's loose embrace. To look full-
on into that steely gaze was to fly naked over a long plain of burning spear 
points and to feel an urge to fall. 

"You too are known for fair words, Fëanor. Yet you say so little. Have you 
no fine language for me? Can it be you tune your ears to hear me? That 
would be good, as I have much to tell.

"Have you seen a storm, Fëanor? A true storm? I think you have not – 
there are none here. See..."

In the half-filled wine glass that hung loosely in Fëanor's hand, a veil 
gathered and began to whirl in a spiral - at first slowly and grandly, and 
then with a frenzy. Trails of cloud on the edges spun out into space as the 
center devoured itself. As Fëanor gazed despite himself, his line of vision 
sank deeper and deeper within the clouds' wicked dance until he felt
himself battered by wind and water and seared through by a sudden flash 
of light brighter than any he knew and gone as soon as it was born, leaving 
behind a burn in his eyes and a cold prickle on his skin that lifted the fine 
hairs along the nape of his neck, where Melkor's breath sighed. A 
shattering noise that seemed to split the very sky. Beneath him now he saw 
trees bent to the ground, saw branches broken and flickers of flame arise 
in the brush around them, lapped to great size by the wild wind and 
hissing in hatred at the rain.

"But see," said Melkor softly, "how at the center, nothing moves. There is 
a place of peace there, though it passes as the storm moves by. You could 
dwell there, when my storm became too much, and yet know you were at 
the very core."

"What are you trying to tell me? Speak simply, without these illusions and 
riddles!" barked Fëanor, though not so firmly as he'd hoped.

"I have no simple speech for what I am trying to tell you. It is not easy for 
such as I - or such as you -- to understand that Time can be rare, dearly-
bought and quickly-gone, and that sometimes we have little. Yet still it 
drags out before us, that wretched forever. I would as soon expand it all in 
one great and glorious storm that tears at the heavens for an Age and 
forever be done with all of it, including my simpering kind and their 
imperious Master. But that choice is not given me, and I have not yet seen 
how to take it by force."

"Seek to Mandos for your death, then. I cannot give it to you," said 
Fëanor, though he had much longed, at times, to do just that.

"You have no true knowledge of what death is. You only know making; 
you are blind to unmaking. It is why your work is not as great as it could 
be."

One more time the wine glass stirred, and a steaming brightness grew 
within it, capturing Fëanor's helpless eye. A plain of featureless black land 
stretched out under a wine-dark sky, riven down its center by a glowing 
crack of liquid flame. As Fëanor watched, the earth itself gave a great 
scream and heaved itself upward in convulsions, raising spiky peaks to the 
sky. From the top of the peaks spilled molten light, like radiant blood from 
a wound, like seed of nightmare life from the members of alien, 
unhallowed gods. Once again, Fëanor's vision closed in, and he seemed to 
hover at the mountain's groaning sides, feeling the terrible heat of the 
bright flow pass by him as the mountain vomited itself inside out. Farther 
up the mountain, where rivulets of magma trickled aside, they cooled and 
blackened into fanciful shapes, pooled and viscous like water of evil kind, 
frozen forever in swirls and eddies. Splashes and droplets hardened in an 
instant, turning to a sculptural mockery of a river, with glowing red 
embers deep within, pulsing and murmuring, hissing and bubbling. Fëanor 
felt his feet consumed in the red stream, and cried out as he looked down 
to see the mountain's boiling blood engulf his ankles. As it rose up his 
legs, he saw bone and sinew silhouetted in red and black, watched the 
substance of his body dissected and frozen in rock.

Melkor's arm tightened around his waist. "Hold fast," he hissed. "Reach 
into it."

So Fëanor felt himself bending, to dip his hands in the scalding red light. 
Though it burned, his hands flew through it freely, and he laughed in 
surprise to feel it squelching in his fingers and dancing upward into 
splashes. The vision
changed, and he walked by Melkor's side in a steaming, hard-grounded 
garden of glorious shapes. Forms like filigreed, precisely ordered trees that 
had the shapes of bones and the graceful bends of worked silver rose 
above them. Statues of impossibly, monstrously graceful creatures 
guarded the pathway, all made from the same shimmering black rock, all 
with red jewels for eyes and glowing heat buried deep in their skin. _This 
was once my sister's garden_, said a voice in Fëanor's mind. _But now it is 
ours_. Above their heads, the smoky clouds parted to show a star, as red as 
the heart of the burning wet stone.

Fëanor realized he was no longer looking into the cup: that indeed, he had 
dropped it, and it was wine that had spattered his legs. The cool dripping 
wakened him. "You seek to seduce me to your aid," he said, low and wary.

Melkor weighed many possible replies: Fëanor felt them sifting through 
the slim fingers. At last he said, "You, I know, have no love for Them. 
You seek only to protect what is yours and to create in true freedom. That 
is my wish as well."

Fëanor whirled around, and yet Melkor did not give him distance. "You 
seek to destroy," the Elf snarled. "You seek to tear apart, to rend, to divide 
all the peoples with your lies."

"And you see where telling your truth has gotten you?" Melkor replied. 
"You keep this rude house with the small few who would follow? Would 
you be bound to this for all time? I think not, or I have misjudged your 
fire! Far from here, there are worlds, Fëanor! Not only new lands, but new 
worlds--where the sky is made of light and the earth of wind! Where the
beings breathe blood and have veins of air! Where the very ground you 
walk upon is fire that blazes colours but does not burn! Where there are 
stars that give warmth as well as light, vast across, years in the crossing! 
Where the names of the Valar are unknown and the hand of the Overlord 
has never brought his tedious Laws to bear! Where no head has ever 
bowed to another."

"A skilled spinner of tales you are," Fëanor sneered.

"Fine," Melkor growled. "So be it, you of petty slave-mind. I am sorely 
disappointed, for I have seen your little jewels and known how you 
cherish them--above your mate, above your sons--and believed that you 
understood the truths pictured within them. Now I fear you are but a 
savant, who copies what he does not understand, who feels the fire within 
as blindly as a beast feels its urges, and seeks no deeper."

Melkor withdrew abruptly and whirled his cloak about as if to leave.

Before he knew what his muscles had done in reaction, Fëanor had 
clutched the fabric and spun the angry Vala around back into his arms. 
The fear and the insult twisted about like a storm, to a pinprick: Melkor's 
kiss, at the moment not longer hot but the bitter cold taste of ice and wind. 
Upon the table Fëanor was now, scrabbling upwards to get the hard wood 
out of his back and under him. The Vala's wrath was a brightening 
darkness, and something surrounded Fëanor like wings, sweeping him in, 
closing around him.

He did not open his eyes. Everything he needed to know was in his nose 
and on his skin--Melkor's fierce body, quivering with power restrained, 
pressed against him. The desire of one of the Valar was an awesome thing: 
it had a light and a heat and a vibration all its own. For all that Fëanor's 
voice was frozen, he felt it with a pang as his skin said yes, sighing into 
the
teeth that bit his neck, the hand that brushed aside the linen of his tunic to 
stroke his thigh.

"Do they...is this done....among the Valar?" he gasped at last, lying back 
across the table as dishes went rolling away.

"Is what done, my black-fire?"

Coarse linen dissolved beneath the heat of Melkor's breath: the stretched-
taut flesh of Fëanor's collarbone met the cool air, and then His mouth, 
drinking. "This....a male, with another....?"

"Ah...so you have never.  It needs courage, so I doubt it is known among 
Them."

Impossible -- but true, there it was: a type of fire the One never ordained, 
never imagined. Roughly Fëanor clenched his hand in Melkor's hair, drew 
that questing mouth back to his own. He had always been aware that this 
being's mere life force could kill him with a touch. The skin Melkor had 
made for himself was partly meant to protect he who stroked it as much as 
he who wore it. But those lips tasted like ordinary ones, like flesh; those 
sharp teeth not terribly unlike others.

***

Far away Nerdanel awoke. There was a twinge in her womb, and her heart 
was racing. Where the golden light burned in her chest and the red one in 
her loins, there was a throbbing. An illness. Impulsively she reached out 
for him who was gone, and then she knew the source of her pain.

***

"Melkor," Fëanor cried.

"For the first time, you speak my name," said the Vala whose hand now 
seared its way across Fëanor's leather apron. "What do you ask of me, fire-
son?"

"Nothing....I ask nothing," whispered the Elf whose member was now so 
hard it throbbed in exquisite pain, straining into that mighty Hand through 
layers that burned away.

"Proud to the last," sighed Melkor from between his teeth around Fëanor's 
nipple, peaked and aching there. The Elf's body sang to him from its every 
surface, begging. He had only to wait for the voice to speak it, though the 
bright mind struggled against every yielding, so beautifully hard.

With a wild thrash, Fëanor wrenched Melkor's robe asunder, clutched his 
fingers around corded muscles, admired the workmanship of the smooth 
skin and curling russet hairs.

"Did you....?"

"I tried to make myself fine and strong for you, Feanaro," he whispered, 
wise fingers trickling around the tip, the head, tightening, teasing. Fëanor's 
nails dug into his back. The blood-marks that rose there looked real.

"You mock me. With everything you say, you mock me. Shut your 
mouth," said Fëanor, and reached to take his mouth again, but Melkor 
ducked. Swooped low, down and between, his claws in Fëanor's thighs 
and his lips and throat suddenly enclosing....

Fëanor swooned into it.

***

And far away so did Nerdanel, dragging herself from her bed. On all fours, 
trembling too much to stand, she crawled like a beast to her studio. She 
sought, and found there, a low vat; she bent over the edge, pressing her 
heated face and shaking hands into the surface of cool, solid clay. Within 
the pulsing veins of her closed eyes, she saw her husband's spill of raven
hair, fanned out upon a table. Saw another head bent over him, reddish-
dark; torn fabric and fair skin. She saw the familiar strong hands pleading 
at the flesh of another, and felt that pain within her core of lower belly. 
She, who had given birth to seven, for the first time cursed her own flesh 
for its weakness.

This is why it is not done, she thought. This is why the vows are sacred, 
for if he could but taste my pain....Pressing one hand to her belly, her other 
hand groped in the clay.

It is not another woman, she thought, as her hand shaped a male member. 
It is not an Elf-man either, she thought, as her hands gave it dragon's 
wings. It is....

OH!, she thought, as her hand cramped full of singing needles. OH!, she 
thought, as her mouth filled with the taste of blood. She tried to drag 
herself to her feet, thinking wildly of sending up an alarm to someone....

To whom?

As soon as she tried to stand, she fell to her knees again, and was aware 
anew of the terrible sensation between her thighs, no longer quite pain but 
something else.

***

Hands in Melkor's hair, Fëanor cried out, wrenching the head away from 
where it had been, still feeling that tingle of tongue upon the opening 
never touched before.

"Would you take me like a woman?" he raged.

"Indeed yes, though you are not," said Melkor. The Vala's terrible calm 
bedamned, there was still a hungry tremble upon his flesh, a glisten of 
sweat upon his brow. "You wish it. You wish the power to make within 
your belly like that, without concentrating upon it, simply in being. That I 
cannot give you, but have a taste of Her greatness in pleasure, little fool. 
But still be male, with that staff of yours between us. Would you turn 
coward now, at the last?" And so Melkor spit in his palm, and there was an 
oil there that smelled of meat and smoke and metal, and half-dreaming, 
from hooded eyes Fëanor watched him stroking his member with it (and 
who would not have made his own so large, had he the power to shape his 
body?). Shamefully hungry, Fëanor wrapped arms and legs around him, 
and sang out in damned joy as he was riven deep, with a searing pain that 
turned its tail like a serpent and became something else indeed.

“Unjust,” he gasped finally, forcing his eyes open, forcing himself to look 
at Melkor’s face, forcing himself to twist his face into a smile. “I wish to 
feel you unclothed as well.”

Melkor’s growling laugh ground in Fëanor’s ear like hot sand. “I am as 
naked as you are,”

“No…I mean…”

Melkor took his meaning. “You could not survive that.”

“Maybe I do not wish to survive this.”

The Vala laughed again as he moved with a deliberate, insulting slowness. 
“That may be, but I wish you to live, and so you shall.”



***

Far away, Nerdanel stroked herself, hot and slick, aching--and cursing the 
moment she met him.

***

They moved together. Deep within, it seemed Melkor's shaft grew larger 
the more Fëanor scratched and bit, the more he cursed, the harder—just 
once--he smacked his hand across that handsome face. The stretching 
sensation was grand and terrible, the strokes against some devilish grain of 
aching nerves inside were wicked like a thinking weapon plucking out his 
spirit throb by throb. Sweat dripped down his chest and burned.

"Harder," he snarled. Harder. He should be slain with that spear. His mind 
filled with death, with blank eyes and splayed limbs and blood spilled over 
snow. It only hastened his spending, like gore erupting from a pierced 
heart, hot as life. And Melkor's molten metal cooled his burns inside.

Had it moved him?

Perhaps. Those long eyelashes fluttered, heart to heart racing, the dark hair 
lank and dripping. "O Feanaro, so fair," came a whisper. Melkor's hand, 
which threw his cloak to the floor, was shaking; those strong legs 
unsteady. With a whisper the cloak became a soft pallet, and the two fell 
to it, still entwined.

***

Desperate to soothe her aching, Nerdanel tried to force her hand away; her 
sleeping-robe torn, her cheek pressed to
her clay. Struggling to control her limbs, she crawled towards the door 
with its arched windows, the cool light of Telperion beckoning. All around 
her, her world had become most feverish and strange, and when she 
crashed the door open, she collapsed overwhelmed but unsurprised at the 
feet of the grey-robed figure who stood there.

Nerdanel struggled up to her knees as she recognized the Lady Nienna, 
throwing back her hood to spill silver beams across her pale, tear-streaked 
face, falling to the floor beside her. She spluttered to explain her state as 
the Valie’s embrace enfolded her, then realized she had to explain nothing. 
“Oh child,” Nienna whispered. “Oh dear one.”

Nienna’s body and hands were as cool and gentle as her pain had been hot 
and cruel. Slipping into her touch felt like being a young girl again, 
discarding her shift and diving into a clear, crisp spring that sang of 
Ulmo’s delight. They spread their tears and tongues across each other as 
Nerdanel let herself trust she could heal. But there were hopes severed that 
could never be rejoined, and burns that would never stop panging her; that 
she knew. Yet it was not futile to weep, and even to love—some strange 
being she could never dream of possessing as she had once thought she 
possessed her husband.

***

Her husband, that is, who opened his eyes to find those iron ones never 
leaving him.

“So,” asked Melkor almost cheerfully, long fingers in Fëanor’s hair, “You 
shall come with me? I wish to work with the finest artist I can reach in this 
land.”

“The finest artist ever of all the Eldar – is that what you are calling me?” 
Fëanor asked.

“No.” said Melkor. “The finest artist of them all, I cannot reach. She 
passed from my grasp long ago –I heard tell of her lying pale and still in 
the garden of Lórien after she had made her masterwork, before she flew 
away to never return. As I have said, perhaps, in a different way: it is not 
your finest jewel I love best: it is hers. And I will set that jewel in a crown 
of creation. I will pay it honour as none here can, Fëanáro: by letting you 
be as you are and do as you would do. Even though you wish to destroy 
me—I know you cannot, but you will be beautiful and terrible as you try.”

Fëanor sat up straight in a strange exaltation of horror and rage—and wild 
curiosity.