Wander No More by Elrond's Library  

Haleth slipped through the trees, treading softly over the leaflitter and loam. She adjusted her grip on her bow of yew, resettling her arrow where it was nocked, but not drawn. Her quarry – a twelve-point stag, standing proud as he threaded along worn game paths – eluded her still, but not for much longer.

He paused in a glade, a meadow carpeted with white and yellow flowers whose heads followed the sun. She drew, sighted, loosed. The arrow landed exactly where she wished it to be – a clean shot through the eye, a painless death for such a magnificent beast.

“Why?” A clear voice called out in Sindarin from the other side of the meadow. The language was still new to her, the accent unfamiliar compared to how the Fëanorians had taught her. “Did you not see me?”

Haleth stood slowly from the bushes that had concealed her so well. “I did not,” she responded in the same tongue. “My people need food, miss.”

The speaker revealed herself to be a vision of loveliness, dark hair tumbling like a waterfall down her shoulders that fell in waves to her knees, cheekbones high, eyes bright with interest. Haleth had spent enough time in Thargelion to immediately know her as an Elf, or as they liked to put it, one of the Firstborn.

“What are you?” she asked. “You are too tall to be one of the Noegyth Nibin, and besides they are all gone.”

Haleth had no idea what a Noegyth Nibin was, but it didn’t sound like a compliment. “I am Haleth, of the Haladin.”

The mysterious woman crossed the glade, lifting Haleth’s hair to bare her ears. Haleth pushed the woman’s hand away irritably – how dare this stranger presume to touch her? “No,” Haleth said. The stranger took a step back, palms open at her sides.

“I beg your forgiveness,” the stranger said, placating. “We have not seen your kind, though it was foretold.” She continued in rapid Sindarin that Haleth could not begin to catch.

Haleth cut her off, impatience winning over the slowly growing interest burning in her gut. “I must return home,” she muttered, trying not to sound apologetic in the face of a beautiful woman. “I will take my hunt with me.”

She hoisted the stag over her shoulder and strode away without a backwards glance.

The second time Haleth found her way to the glade full of white and yellow flowers, she wasn’t hunting game. She was, however, looking for the stranger.

She couldn’t get her face – though if she were being honest, it was really her entire body that appealed – out of her mind. And so, with a mind towards her desire and bedecked with the lavish collection of jewelry Lord Caranthir had attempted to woo her with, Haleth retraced her steps.

Music met her ears first, a cheery melody on a pipe. Next, a woman’s voice, high and bright and joyful. She crept forward, still hidden in shadows of the trees, watching as the stranger, her stranger, danced in the glade, voice and arms uplifted in sheer ecstasy.

Haleth smiled, feeling the cadence of the dance deep in her bones, the music liable to carry her forward, to join the ethereal dance without a thought. Desire pooled low in her gut.

The music came to an abrupt end, and Haleth shook her head out of the daze she had fallen into only to find the woman standing at the edge of the meadow, looking straight at her with a soft smile on her face. She wasn’t even panting, as Haleth would be if she had danced for that long.

Without taking her gaze off Haleth, the stranger called out to her companion. “Daeron dear, go home.”

The person playing the pipe vanished, as if he had never been there. The beautiful stranger held out her hand, and Haleth took it without thought. With a mind and heart still turned to dancing, the stranger pulled Haleth in a twirl, and, with Haleth disoriented, pulled her into an embrace, fitting herself in every dip and hollow of Haleth’s back. The stranger’s breath tickled the back of her neck as her lips traced the shell of Haleth’s ear.

“Beautiful,” the stranger whispered. Her hands started to wander across Haleth’s stomach, pressing her close. Haleth couldn’t help the breathy moans that escaped her lips.

They coupled in that glade, surrounded by the flowers and the heather and the bright sunlight streaming haphazardly through the crowns of tall trees.

Haleth woke as the night began to chill her skin, her head pillowed under a cloak of such fineness and softness she instinctively knew it was the stranger’s. She sat up to find her strange lover weaving fine braids through her midnight-black hair. They regarded each other with soft smiles.

“Will I see you again?” the stranger asked, suddenly earnest and afeared.

Haleth hesitated. “My people are a wandering people. I am leading them west. We know not where or when we will settle, if at all.”

Her companion smiled brightly. “My father has land aplenty. I’d like to keep you close, if I can.”

“Lúthien!” a familiar voice called, distant through the trees – the pipe player from before. “It’s getting dark!”

The stranger – Lúthien, not a stranger anymore – rose and, in an echo of earlier that day, held out her hand for Haleth to follow her into the unknown future.

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