#meadowlarkx

But with Maedhros, Maglor is only himself. He smiles, expression wry. Can you believe it? his eyes say. All these years and Maedhros still cannot.

“I was waiting and waiting," Maglor says.

Maedhros shrugs. “The queue is long.”

Maglor frowns. His face is bare save the circles of scarlet paint on his cheeks, gold dust swept across his eyelids and along the parting in his hair. “You ought to be up here with us. You are my attendant.”

“A secular role, remember. The high priestess hath spoken.”

Maglor wrinkles his nose. Maedhros knows how he dislikes the high priestess, who somehow manages to outrank him. She is starched stiffer than the silk masks, and she smells of the beef-tallow candles tended at the altars.

“Perhaps Eru shall will it,” Maglor says. “He must want my happiness. Perhaps he will deliver unto his wedded spouse his divine word before the next feast day.”

Maedhros snorts.

From beyond the veil there comes a soft but marked cough. The next petitioner grows restless before the dais, and Maedhros' time is nearly up. He must move along, back into the throng amidst the shrines and offerings. He will not see Maglor for hours and hours yet, when he is led back into the temple weak with fatigue, and then Maedhros will feed him honeyed porridge and wash his feet.

Maglor clasps his hand. “Go on then, brother. Make your confession.”

Today, as ever, Maglor is a proxy, fed on sins and secrets. Eru hears each unburdening, spins the muck into fecundity. But Maedhros needs no boon. He has no crops to tend, no livestock, no lady desirous of a full womb. Since he followed Maglor here years ago he has been clothed and fed by the Vanyar in exchange for naught but his brother’s care. He serves Eru as Maglor does, as do the priestesses. His private dreams are inconsequential. They are not matters for the confessional.

“There is nothing,” Maedhros says. He feels heat rise in his cheeks. Maglor has begun to stroke his thumb along the back of Maedhros’ hand.

“Nothing, truly? I do not believe that.”

Maglor inclines his head. Maedhros is keenly aware of him. He sees the pale arc of Maglor’s neck, smells the oils he himself poured into Maglor’s bath, hears the rustle of the heavy ivory jacquard he brought out from the wardrobe and laid upon Maglor’s bed. In the distance bells are ringing. He thinks of Maglor’s songs, not ceremonial chorales but his own private music, those tunes he sings to birds at the gold-barred windows and to Maedhros, when Maglor senses he is troubled.

When Maglor speaks again it is not speech at all, but a whisper mind to mind.

I have seen the way you look at me when you think I do not notice.

Maedhros means to drop his hand, to stand, but Maglor holds him fast. Coldness fills his belly, chased just as quickly by warmth like a draught of liquor. For he sees no reprobation in Maglor’s eyes. Instead there is a darkness not altogether holy.

“I have been indiscreet,” Maedhros whispers.

Maedhros risks a glance behind through the veil at the ghost of the priestess. Maglor always fusses at how much they know. His daydreams, his barked shins. They watch Maedhros already; they have never liked him in their sanctum. He is too Noldor, too impious. If their parents had not insisted, he would not be here at all.

They will send me away.

Maglor curls their fingers together and pulls Maedhros closer, closer. His eyes flash, and in this moment Maedhros considers that some greater force may indeed work through Maglor, for his brother’s lithe form holds strength it ought not.

“I will not allow it."

Maglor kisses Maedhros on the cheek, lightly as a butterfly, as he will each who comes before him.

I began to wonder idly how a Gethenian ship’s crew might handle kemmer. I didn’t know enough of the biology of either time dilation or kemmer to speculate on the effects. We’d need all sorts of studies, I decided; we ought to begin to design them right away. I looked about for a pen and paper and found my date book, and began to scrawl a list beneath the little ink star on Orny Gor.

This way I allowed my mind to carry me with ease away from thoughts of the promotion, of the decision it would require. There was no pressing sense of time, after all. I had only just learned the news, and could be allowed a moment—a day, a halfmonth—to ruminate. So I sat at my desk, my orsh grown cold, and made notes on the kemmer cycle and space travel until afternoon, when I heard a sound and looked up to see Estraven fuzzy-eyed in the doorway of the office.

“Have you been in here all day?” He was dressed and holding his own mug of orsh.

“Most of it.”

He came and sat on the edge of the desk and read over my shoulder. “You think we’ll all be in space before long,” he said.

“Every world that’s joined the Ekumen has made progress towards faster than light travel, if they haven’t attained it already. And all of them have at least one citizen working for the organization itself. Some Gethenian will too, eventually. So we’ll have to work all this out.”

“And yet I still wonder what would possess a man to think he could fly.”

“You saw the ship come down yourself.”

“So I did,” said Estraven, quietly. He shook his head as though in disbelief. “It was like something from a dream.”

Arranged marriage AU is actually a Russingon fic where the Valar force Fingon to go with Fëanor and his family into exile as idk a kind of weird cultural exchange meant to heal the rift btw the families. But also they make them get engaged for formality's sake? This was one of the first wips I started getting into the fandom and I think I want to take it in a more gothic direction if/when I get back to it.

He had not seen the sons of Fëanor assembled in many years, perhaps not since he was a child. They were mostly in Formenos and did what they would there, and came seldom to Tirion, and though Fingon saw some of them sometimes on the street when they were in the city they did not greet one another or give any sign of recognition. Once he had been very close to Maglor, the second eldest, in a crowd, and he had caught Fingon’s eye and given him a nod and the beginnings of a tight smile, so he had a vague impression of Maglor as kinder than the rest. Of Maedhros, he knew little, only that he was older than Fingon, at his father’s right hand, and apparently less of a smith than Fëanor would have liked. And unmarried, which had been convenient.

“Well,” said Aredhel, a little too loudly. “At least he is pleasing to look at. Ow, do not pinch me, Turno!” She jabbed Turgon with her elbow so hard that he gave an enormous pained grunt. Several seats down Fingolfin’s rictus faltered.