A Star in Truth by Elleth  

A Star in Truth

Arwen dreams.

She has lived a different life than her own, enmeshed in the shades of a wide, wild forest. She dreams of a wide, deep caldera covered in green, in flowers, in fields, in lakes. She dreams of a dome in its center, smoothed down by time and water into a steep, glassy hill. On it, a crown of white stone blinding to her sensitive eyes, and her heart settles from the fear of pursuit into a calmer beat.

The white crown resolves itself into a city of turrets and towers and walls, so different from her home. It is a city of light, and coming out of the darkness, she feels disoriented, dizzy.

And never more so than when the brightest light of all is revealed to her eyes and she all but falls to her knees in awe on the stairs of the King's dais. It is the sun become a person - not fiery Arien, guiding the last light of Laurelin in the sky, burning on her skin. It is a gentler light, golden and warming, the sun stored in ripened grain and fruit.

Her name, she learns, is Idril - Itarillë in the forbidden tongue that her own name is drawn from. It melts across her tongue like honey when she speaks it to herself in the quiet twilight hours of night and morning and something burns inside her like a star and she sits on the walls gazing out over Tumladen, imagining Idril beside her.

Itarillë, Idril, Celebrindal.

She whispers those names into the night and thus hides her shame, though she cannot help the feeling that when Idril smiles at her, she knows. That Idril smiles at her all the same, that Idril offers to show her the wonders of the city and slips her hand into her own as they walk, offers to brush and braid her hair, so intrigued by the shades of night she finds, gives her gifts and jewels and makes her heart race, makes her want to possess that light, and suddenly she feels as if she knows how Fëanor must have felt, his greedy love for the radiance of the Silmarils, that poor, trapped light.

She knows - or fears, never having known such kindness - that Idril acts entirely in recompense, in apology and a shared grief for her mother, and in strange apology for the plummet off Caragdûr of her father in punishment for throwing that poison dart.

Following that thought comes resolve. She cannot repay kindness so, capture Idril that way, not when she - they all - are already trapped, by Amon Gwareth and the Echoriath much as she was in the forest before. Not when they are kin and she would not wish to shame Idril with such strange desires. Instead she draws the burning in her heart deeper into herself and lives on that longing, and perhaps it begins to show, for from her old name, the forbidden one, a new one is devised.

No more Lómien, they call her Undómiel now, a star in twilight, as if there is a glow under her skin, in her pale face, as she pines away after Idril and finds comfort only in silence and solitude, for what is a star if not remote, untouchable, alone amid the darkness?

Idril's glance on her grows sharper, suspicious, piercing, and she is certain now that Idril knows of her plight. And then one day Idril comes to her on the city walls and sits quietly beside her by the Caragdûr. When night falls and the stars rise over the mountains, Undómiel feels as though she herself would plummet down by her own will rather than reveal her shame or deceive Idril further, and when she turns her head to speak her truth, she is surprised to find Idril there.

She is so close that Undómiel can feel her breath on her lips, and it takes no movement at all to close the distance, and feel as though she is made entirely of blazing light, light, light, that crumbles hills and levels mountains and spreads to envelop the entire world, a star in truth.

And thus the dream ends and Arwen wakes and is herself again, and her lips tingle, still, from that kiss. She does not sleep the rest of the night, haunting the shadows and watching the stars.
 

Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to Anna (IdleLeaves) for the beta!