Bits and Pieces Under 300 Words by sallysavestheday

Thaw

Tuor's warmth melts Idril's ice.

Even in Gondolin, Idril still shivers. The walls of her father’s city are smooth and opaque: Tirion laid over the Helcaraxë, shaped from his memory into pillars and columns and whorls of bitter, scintillating white. Nothing evolves here; they are frozen in time. Preservation-minded Turgon clings proudly to his tower, conserving the remains of their people in Tumladen’s bell jar: ever watchful, ever wary. Ever cold.

What heat was in him fled with her mother under the Ice. Now his chilly fingers mold and shape her to her duty: not a daughter but an architect’s tool, crafted to build, to shield, to defend. Her icy planes refract the captured light. She smiles and smiles, shining, but under the surface the fissures unfold, her frozen edges cracking as the weight of their long isolation bears down.

The threatened rupture is stayed by Tuor’s warmth. He is all sunshine, this Man, so simple and sincere in his affection that even her father’s fearful humors are assuaged. It is a small step, finally, from her still, cold room into the welcoming circle of his arms.

On their wedding night, Idril trembles as the cool column of herself turns under his warm, weathered touch. That rough heat smooths her fractured edges, wearing them down. His calluses catch in her hair as he draws it through his fingers, tugging the splinters of ice from her heart. So tender a caress, over and over, until she softens into something lush and tropical, sighing and surging under his hands.

Her bones melt, at last. She pours herself sweetly into his palms.

Chapter End Notes

For the Opposites Attract challenge (prompt pairs heat-cold and break-repair).