The Heroines of Middle-Earth

Still unsure if I headcanon Morwen secretly teaching Nienor how to read and write while in Dor-Lomin, or to have Mablung be the one to teach her in Doriath. (and then she has to relearn it all over again in Brethil :P ) Either way, Mablung was her teacher during her years there, and was the one who taught her how to fight and how to move like an elf (which she used to great effect when she snuck along with Morwen’s bodyguards and even the elves didn’t notice her). His epithet is the Heavy Hand, which I take as he was skilled at fisticuffs/heavier weaponry (aka me indulging in my headcanon of Nienor preferring hand axes to fight since her teacher favored brute force and she’s referred to as the ‘likeness of Hurin in woman form’ and I’m think tall buff axe-wielding woman lol).

In Doriath as part of her training, they would play tag in the forests, or their version of Marco Polo which was each of them imitating bird calls and trying to discern what was the fake bird and trying to find ‘it’. (And if kisses were used as forfeits, no one would ever know 👀. Morwen certainly wouldn’t, Nienor would make sure of that.)

Mablung and Nienor probably got near the point of considering marriage (there’d been more than a few close calls), but then Nargothrond happened, and then Glaurung… And if the next man Niniel fell in love with looked so much like an elf, she would never understand why that pained her every time her husband kissed her and it would feel wrong.

I have two different timelines going in my head, one is where Mablung safely got her across the Girdle into Doriath before they got ambushed. Melian managed to undo most of Glaurung’s enchantment (since I’m absolutely sure a Maia’s power could undo that of a created monster with nowhere the strength of one gifted with the ability to manipulate the First Music). Nienor gets her mind back, but Morwen is lost. She convinces Mablung to help her look for her family, and loyal and utterly devoted elf that he is, he does so. They hit the road and spend the next three years wandering Beleriand (and getting married along the way). They never find Turin, but they do find Morwen and they all move somewhere south, along the coast—but definitely away from all the trauma drama of the rest of Beleriand.

The other timeline: the exhausted remnants of the Nargothrond expedition are ambushed and Nienor flees into the darkness. Three years later, Mablung rides into Amon Obel as in canon, just in time to hear about the dragon’s death and that of Turin’s and Nienor’s. Frantic, he searches the river for her body. But to his shocked relief, he finds her alive. Heavily injured and suffering from a miscarriage, but his Nienor is alive. With her memory restored, she gladly goes with him even though she now feels tainted from her marriage to her brother. The only place she’ll be safe, Mablung reasons, is within the Girdle. But instead of returning to Menegroth, they settle in the Forest of Nivrim. Mablung just…never returns to duty. He lost Nienor once, nearly twice, and his devotion her comes before his duty to his king. And Thingol did give him permission to search for the children of Hurin—he just didn’t give a return date.

It takes Nienor time to heal from everything she’d gone through in the past couple years, but Mablung is literally made of time and he’s with her every step of the way, her hand seeking his like it did in the darkness of Glaurung’s spell. And without the sword of the dragon’s curse hanging over their heads and the world in a small moment of peace, they can finally act on the long-awaited promise they’d made to each other back in Doriath.