Tolkien's Women

by actuallyfeanor

Summary:

2020-2021 project: Write a short, canon compliant drabble from the perspective of every woman mentioned in the Silmarillion. All chapters can be read independently of each other. Some chapters deal with topics that may require a content warning, for these I have put the warnings in the notes at the beginning of the chapter.
Characters so far: Lúthien, Idril, Elwing, Nerdanel, Haleth, Aerin, Aredhel, Varda, Galadriel, Niënor, Indis, Rían, Melian, Vairë

Chapter 1: Lúthien

Summary:

The tale of Beren and Lúthien is told from the perspective of Beren, the mortal wandering into a fairytale and winning the princess in the end. What Tolkien fails to mention is why Lúthien was willing to sacrifice her immortality and the safety of Doriath, to walk a perilous road with a man she had just met.

Doriath, for all its splendour, for all the majesty of its age-old trees and the dewdrop freshness of the violets in spring, is a prison. Her father doesn't see it; his very existence is intertwined with the roots of the forest and with her mother's magic - they draw breath, and mighty branches creak in the sudden gust of wind.

(Or perhaps he, too, longs for elsewhere sometimes. A painting of the sea hangs in his chambers. He never mentions it. She never asks about it.)

What is immortality worth when nothing ever changes? Centuries crawling by in a haze of ennui. Seasons bleeding into each other, mingling like the light of Laurelin and Telperion (or so she has been told, on the rare occasions when such tales are permitted) into endless twilight.

One day he walks into Doriath, bloodstained, exhausted, yet burning with the unquenchable fire of immediate, fragile, precious, defiant life. And Lúthien throws caution to the wind, shakes the dust of centuries off her cloak, and leaves her twilight half-life behind.