Ilverien by Lferion

Sustenance

Fingon ponders hröar and relationships while waiting

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Prompts - Lit:B3 Sins of our Fathers, Art:I1 Embroidery/Tapestry, Poetry:B2 Villanelle, Fanwork:G4 Rule 63

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Fingon adjusted the low, smocked bodice of the newly finished summer dress to cup and show the swell of emergent breasts. Feeling the cloth against the sensitized skin, the slight extra weight, seeing the curves framed by the ruffles made by the smocking was a particular kind of pleasure. Not sexual really, but including a pleasant awareness of those parts. He produced milk easily and abundantly, took pleasure in the fact and the sensation that his body could provide a child -- his child, any child he cared about -- with sustenance. The fact that he enjoyed wearing skirts that swished around his calves and bodices that made the most of his breast or chest, and at the same time delighted in employing his unquestionably male parts in making love with both his husband and his wife was -- should be -- no-one's business but their own.

The Dwarves have the right of it, he thought, gender as a choice, a thing one might embrace several aspects of in quick or slow succession over the course of one's life. Dwarven bodies generally hold the potential for both penises and wombs, seeding and bearing, where Elven bodies are generally shaped as one or the other in that area. But as with Dwarves, nearly every Elf can lactate. Fingon missed the company of Dwarves.

Somebody -- a father by authority, if not a father by seed and spirit; not likely to have been a mother of any kind, -- somewhen, had decided it wasn't appropriate, wasn't seemly, wasn't something, for a male Elf to be seen nursing, even though the other feeding tasks were praised and expected. Even though it was uncomfortable, even painful, to have eager milk and hungry children, yet be denied the simple solution to both by someone's notion of propriety.

Of course, somebody, somewhen, had also decided that intimate relationships should all and only be dyads, (preferably dyads of ner and nis, though other kinds were not forbidden), not the range of possibilities relationships actually did come in. Most especially not triads. That didn't stop triads from forming; it only prevented them from being publicly acknowledged.

And that was why Fingon had stayed on Avallonë, at the Cottage of Lost Play, the house Ilverien Littleheart had brought to their joining, when necessity had required Prince Maedhros and his wife present their infant daughter to the High Court of Assembled Kings. Fingon pointedly not invited, indeed dis-invited, prince or not.

But Maedhros was returning today with Ilverien and Erien their -- all three of their -- daughter.

And all three of them would be feeding her, though for the next season or so, Fingon would have the primary honor, letting Ilverien continue to adjust back to her single-self, non-bearing hroa, a process that took at least half a coronar for most, and a full coronar for some. Maedhros perforce will have been doing the most part of nursing Erien, and would be relieved to be secondary, as he had been in Ereinion's early years.

But most of all, they would be together again, loving each other for who they were as people, not as Princes, political pieces, expected to present themselves and live as apparent generative equipment dictated, not in ways that reflected truths more complicated, nuanced, and largely frowned upon.

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Joined in hand and heart and feä
At last come home from strife
Three we are and merry be

Upon the mainland two did plea
For nér and nér the scorn was rife
Joined in hand and heart and feä

To Avallonë by Crown's decree
A nís found, playing fife
Three we are and merry be

A play-filled cottage greet with glee
Away put sorrow's knife
Joined in hand and heart and feä

Content upon Tol Eressëa
We build our renewed life
Three we are and merry be

As princes, néri, lovers free
With her our witnessed wife
Joined in hand and heart and feä
Three we are and married be

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