Beneath Starlit Skies

9

She dreams of fire, melting glass, and clanging metal.

In her dream she stands before a monster of white flames. The eye of the beast gleams like the blood of the earth—molten and hot. She can feel the swelteringly heat roaring over her sweat-drenched skin as she thrusts a steel pipe into the eye and spins it.

Glass twists and stretches on the end of her pipe like an abstract something between a liquid and a solid. It glows red and orange in the heat. She pulls back and flies to her workbench, immediately setting to work. She molds the soft glass with tweezers—-pulling—-prodding—and twisting it into her desired shape.

She smiles at her work and is filled with pride as she separates it from her blowpipe with a sharp clink. She sets her creation in the annealer where red glass cools into a speckled blue.

She is a glassblower, a master of lampwork; an artist who has tamed fire.

Fire is a monster; it burns and consumes and destroys. It turns everything it touches into ash and dust. Fire is an untameable beast—wild and dangerous. It is a thing to respect.

She has tamed it.

She commands the fire and it obeys. Instead of destruction she wills it's hot tongues to burn with creation and it does. She takes what destroys and uses it to create. She defies what once was and contradicts it. Fire is no longer dangerous. It is a thing to master.

I am in control, she thinks to herself.

Someone calls her and she turns around to answer with a smile. They speak gravely and their eyes are full of pain. Why are they so sorrowful? Why are they so solemn? She doesn't know and listens as they relay a terrible truth to her. Her smile fades.

He is dead.

(She learns of a crash and spirals into devastation and grief.)

Blue speckled glass shatters in the annealer.

Her world is shaken and any semblance of control slips like water through her fingers.

::

It rains.

The sky is dark and grey. Shadows loom over the forest. The cold slurry of rain and ice burns as it falls, stinging her cheeks. The sting numbs her skin and the cold makes her eyes water.

She pulls Mairon by the hand, leading him onwards and to her cavern home.

As she steps into the refuge of the cave but a tug from behind informs her that Mairon hasn't. Bemused, she turns around. Mairon is standing at the mouth of the cave, staring strangely at it.

"Mairon?"

His mouth presses into a firm line as his eyes crease. There's thoughtfulness in his eyes along with a glint of... something. She cannot identify it, whatever it may be because it's gone just as quickly as it came.

"Have you been here all this time, Celeriel?" He asks, finally entering the cave and glancing around. There are various small clay pots and jugs placed against the cavern wall filled with seeds, nuts, and berries. A half-woven basket sits beside a carpet of soft leaves and flowers.

"For almost as long as I can recall," she says with a slight furrowing of her brows.

Her first memory was starlight.

(Her last memory was starlight.)

"And your parents?" Mairon presses on. Someone had to have raised her up until now after all. Someone had clearly taught her how to read and write in her strange script, and how to speak in her strange tongue.

"I do not remember them." She says in a quiet voice, suddenly feeling small underneath Mairon's gaze. "I remember only waking beneath starlit skies."

Ah, ah.

There it is—the mystery, suddenly greater than before. It's odd how bits and broken pieces of the puzzle that is Celeriel are slowly revealing themselves to him. She has no known relations, and her origins remain an unknown, though he is beginning to suspect there is more to it than star-kindled skies.

A bitterness fills him.

Of course she would likely know the truth I seek, Mairon thinks sourly, face darkening at the thought and inner voice mocking. The one the elves call Elbereth.

The Queen of the Stars.

Varda.

"Hn." He huffs with a scowl on his face.

Celeriel tugs on his sleeve.

He blinks.

"D—-did... I do... something wrong?"

Why would she think that?

"No." He says, kneeling with a wince. "You did everything just right. I was thinking about someone... unpleasant."

Celeriel's eyes widen in horror.

"Mairon you're bleeding!"

Cursing, he presses his hand against his wound, now reopened. Fury ignites in Celeriel's eyes and her face twists into a scowl.

"You liar!" She cries angrily. "You said that you were alright!"

"I am alright."

Celeriel glances at the blood pooling in his hand, then at the small puddle collecting on the cavern floor dubiously.

"Sit," she orders, setting to work. "Don't move."

He watches her produce a long strip of cloth, brows furrowed in concentration as she stanches the bleeding; the tip of her tongue peeks out of her mouth as she bandages his wound.

It's endearing.

She endears herself to him.

If he isn't careful she might come too close. Then it would be far more painful when the time inevitably came for him to end it.

"You need to rest, Mairon."

He is broken from his reverie.

"Yes, I will." He promises, heart squeezing at her attempt to appear stern. Her arms are crossed and her cheeks are puffed out.

He hates himself for thinking it; he can't help it.

So precious.

She's a treasure.

He found her—she found him, actually, but what difference did it make?—and wanted to keep her.

She was his.

Why should he let her go?

Mairon doesn't want to ever let her go.

She would struggle on her own. She needs him. It would be too cruel to abandon her or to kill her.

Are we not Gorthaur the Cruel? A mocking voice asks, reminding him of all the things he does not want to think of now.

Not to her. He bites back, feeling tired of the voice, a voice which sounds like a twisted echo of Morgoth. To her, I am Admirable.

You are Sauron. It reminds him nastily.

I can be Mairon for her.