Work Text:
“How long, do you think?” A servant whispered to his fellow in the torchlit corridor outside the dark drawing room where Lalwen, convalescent with grief, lay supine on a divan. Her hair was streaked with gray and her cheeks were gaunt and her skin sallow, and her hands, clutched to her chest, were skin and bones. She had scarcely eaten since Fingolfin’s death. She could not tell you how long ago that had been, nor the hour of the day, nor of really anything at all. She spoke to no one except her handmaiden, and that sparingly, Lalwen whose rosy cheeks had ever aforetime been stretched with laughter, whose giggles and guffaws had rung like music in the halls of the castle, whose mischief and mirth had brought joy to all who met her. But that was no more, and Lalwen’s laughter had been traded for tears, and her smiles drowned by sorrows, for the one she loved was dead. Her spirit drifted away from her body into lands of dark dreams of fire and ash and shadow, but a vision of her brother, ghostly-pale, always appeared in the inky shrouds of darkness and beckoned to her, beckoned her to join him in his arms, beckoned her to the arms of Death. And while she dreamed her body wasted.
“How long, do you think?” The words brought her back into her hroa and she hearkened.
“How long until?” A second voice hissed, not as quietly as he believed himself to be.
“You know how widows are,” the first voice said urgently.
“She’s not a widow, for she has never been wed.”
“She loved him like a wife, didn’t she? And widows, well, when their man is gone they…”
The voices faded as the servants walked away, but the import of their words hung heavy on Lalwen’s heart. Widows died. Young beautiful women lost their men, and they laid themselves upon their barrows to perish, for their purpose had come to an end, and their lives were forfeit by cruel fate. Such is the Doom of women, whose beauty must pass away ere it is ruined by grief.
Without Fingolfin, what was she? Lalwen had asked herself this time and time again in these last weeks, and the answer had seemed to be nothing, but to hear that sentiment from her servants stirred something inside her. Something began to shift in defiance, the indomitable fiery spirit of her house was stoked back to life, and she rose with a grunt and staggered to the window to open the curtains. The Moon, a sign of hope, greeted her as it had greeted the Noldor when they had conquered the ice desert, and looking upon Beleriand they knew that it would be their home. Lalwen looked out over the ruined lands, charred and burnt, where small green things emerged from the ashes, and new trees put forth infant leaves on the mountainsides. The Moon, shining kindly down, cast the land in a wash of silver, and in the North the Valacirca hung in defiance.
Lalwen would have hope. Lalwen would live. In time, Lalwen would even laugh again.