Droplets by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 5

V.
And then, like when the clouds crack and admit a slender sunbeam: Joy.

Yet it rained on his wedding day and, trickling among the attending crowd were the mutterings of bad omens, as tents were hastily stretched between the trees and Elrond laughed brashly in the face of the superstitions of his peers.

But now, by nightfall, the rain had subsided to the barest patter on the ceiling over their heads, easily forgotten, and Elrond placed his lips upon the pulse at his new wife’s throat, quivering in the rhythm of the rain, as he brought her to his bed for the first time.

Lace and finery slid aside to reveal the smooth perfection of her naked skin, and he gasped with her beauty, feeling his passion surge, a hot reminder of the Edain blood that rushed through his heart and settled in his groin, as she wrapped her legs around him and they sought consummation. Marriage.

She cried out with lips against his ear and bliss stabbed inside him—so keen that it might have been pain or grief—and her flushed skin received his tears. Or were they hers? Crumpled, spent in her arms, he no longer knew.