I Sang by sallysavestheday

I Sang

Caranthir treads water in the center of the silent lake. The full moon has broken through the clouds, lighting the surface in a silvery trail. Tilion sails steadily tonight. The moon’s arc is slow and calm, the water still and cold.

But Caranthir burns.

He has brought his aching heart to the lake for solace, as he does now and then when the dizzy promise of rebirth overwhelms him. Mandos spit him out -- healed enough, by some strange reckoning -- but his whole self still disputes that judgment. The raw edges of the Oath are smoothed away, along with the pains of failure and betrayal and rage. But that easing only makes the deeper grief more bitter. And it is a wound he must bear alone. He seeks the company of no one as he cuts through the water, weeping, his chest heating with sorrow and exertion, finally tiring and slowing to roll and float, face-up, remembering.

Haleth had been afraid of very little, but she was afraid of Helevorn. The dark waters gave no hint of what lay beneath them; the obsidian surface of the lake turned back all eyes. Depth and current and dangers were invisible, and she had never learned to swim. Not really: only paddling in the rivers, splashing and giggling with the bank always within reach and the fishes nibbling at her toes.

He had persuaded her into the lake with uncharacteristic levity. The lightness in his blood that her nearness inspired compelled him to tease and dive and arc his body through the water like a ridiculous sea creature capering for an audience as she clapped and laughed. In the end, she consented to be carried on his back, thighs tight around his hips, arms gripping with mingled glee and terror as they waded in, then plunged. At night, and with no witnesses, so none would see her hesitant face or hear her cries.

He had feared, even under the jesting, that she would find the water cold, unwelcoming. Her wiry intensity was bound to the land: she stalked the world sleek and taut as a stoat bristling at an enemy. But, freed of the ground’s grip, she was effortlessly buoyant, limber and graceful, wide-eyed with delight.

He remembers her hair, floating loose in the water. The silvery moon, reflected off the surface and in her eyes.

Night after night they escaped to the lake, anchoring and buoying each other in turn, following the moon path farther and farther as Haleth’s strokes gained strength and balance and her confidence grew. At full moon she glided to the center of the lake and shouted into the silence, legs churning under the surface as she raised her arms to the sky: aureate, glorious, alive.

Her mouth on his tasted of the dark waters, of the flash of silver.

They stumbled up the lakeshore, dripping, clinging to each other. Fell, entangled, to the pile of robes and towels and blankets.

Drowned.

Tilion drives his chariot above the dark lake in Valinor much as he did in Thargelion, winking and shivering across the surface of the water, beckoning a swimmer on. Caranthir breathes, and kicks, and breathes, reaching again and again with his empty hands.