I was tagged to share something by @analogousstructureamrod @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @mnimeresponding and @ecofutural! Thank you all, and I henceforth tag @antlered-vixen @balrogballs @wormbishounen @mircallaruthven @annarobots @melians-griddle if yall want to share anything. This snippet is from my WIP where reembodied Golf and Feanor visit Lalwen and her hippie polycule on Eressea.
Lalwen studied him for a moment, saw how his gaze did not quite meet hers, marked the tenseness of his shoulders. “Thou speakest not thy full heart. Tell me, Aracano, what thou wilt.”
Nolofinwe sighed, opened his mouth to speak and hesitated, for he knew she might take it poorly, and yet, she had given him leave to speak his true heart, and so he asked the question that had been burning in his mind since he had gotten here, and which he now thought appropriate to broach, given what had befallen the night before.
“When shall the others depart?”
Lalwen’s heart seized as she heard him utter the words she should have known he would say, and she looked up at him with furrowed brows. “Wherefore should they depart?” She knew the answer to her question, but she thought to feign ignorance, so as to lead him into confessing his true sentiments.
“Because I am here. And I am…I am thy brother.” There was not a word for what they were. Nolofinwe misliked calling her his lover, though that was what she was. It was too honest, too forward, for it was one thing to whip her purple and another thing to name the act. But he was a brother, and a brother loves his siblings.
Anger rose in Lalwen’s breast, flaring hot and orange in her head, righteous indignation at his profound rudeness, but she did not let it show, for to reveal her wrath would avail naught, and he would not be moved by another’s anger.
“Thou art here, and thou art my brother, and I love thee, and it is a blessing and a miracle. But I cannot send the others away, for I love them too.” Lalwen said sadly, and took one of Nolofinwe’s hands to cradle it in both of hers.
“But I love thee,” Nolofinwe’s voice was choked thick with incredulity. “And once said’st thou that thou loved me more than any other. Said’st thou that I had the greatest share of thy heart’s love. Spakest thou soothly, Lalwende my most beloved?”
“Soothly spake I, Aracano, and soothly speak I now that I love thee not any less than I did before. But my love is boundless, it overfloweth all about me, and I share it as freely as once the Noldor shared our jewels, liberally scattering them on the seashore. My love is like those jewels, freely given and freely taken, and worth no less for its generosity.”
“But I would not share thee, Lalwen. I will have no others before me.” His dark brows knit together, and he leaned closer to her, and she heard in his stern voice the straining of his pride, cracking under the weight of this obscene obstacle.
“No one is before thee, Aracano, but they are beside thee. And I cannot dismiss those I love, who have loved me for so many long years, longer than many lives of Men. I am not false, Nolvo, or I am false no longer, and I will betray them not.” She looked him in the eyes, desperately wishing that she could bring him to understand this.
Nolofinwe bit his tongue, holding in a retort that Lalwen was presently betraying him. But it would be cruel to say so, for he understood, though he hated that it was true, that these new relationships had been formed in his absence, and that she spoke truly, and that his mere presence would not undo their being there, no more than the blowing of a trumpet may fell the walls of a citadel.
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