Nymeria could not sleep. When she closed her eyes, she was overwhelmed by her own malicious memories. Her heartbeat would drum faster; she would smell sea salt no matter how far inland she was. The scent of the ocean, once familiar and comforting, had since been sullied by Abraham’s influence. With the smell came a tangled weave of thorns embracing her legs, a blow piercing her nebulous soul, a helplessness infiltrating mind and heart alike: and a taint of fear, bitter in her mouth. Once the feelings came to her they chained her; and then her mind would descend from sanity to insanity, conjuring nightmares (distorted, perhaps, but with a grain of truth) that made self-confidence and self-trust a distant and failing hope.

There was an abyss yawning wider and wider in her soul. She doubted that she could fill the void.

When the nightmares prevailed Lilómiel would wake her, after she began trembling and shaking in her sleep. The black tried valiantly but vainly to put her worries to rest (his words were sweet and coaxing and gentle) but she had long become immune to such wheedling. As he gave her promises of safety and security, reminding her of the Falls and Kaj and Archibald and their arsenal of warriors, she thought only of how useless they had been in the moments that haunted her most. Besides, she’d point out to him—she’d never bothered to tell them. How could they protect her if she wasn’t willing to divulge the truth of what had happened?

Then tell them, he snapped back. Don’t just—don’t just sit there.

There were other thoughts submerged in his subconscious, less pleasant and kind things. Despite his patience, despite his unfailing love, he didn’t quite understand what had happened on the beach. The emptiness that grew inside her, choking what little sympathy and dedication she had, would not and could not be understood by the dragon. As winter stretched on without end, Lilómiel became as sullen and hopeless as Nymeria herself.

She knew the distortion of the world around her—its seemingly perverted nature—was due to the somatization of her emotions. As her anxiety built, so did the wrongness of the earth and the trees and the sky. Shadows faded and swelled; sunlight dripped and quivered. Leaves rustled in muffled dissent. She drifted, neither here nor there and yet at a loss to care. Day faded to night and night to day and yet the winter did not pass nor relent. It was wrong—wrong like Abraham’s victory—and she wondered if the gods needed a reminder of a spring thaw.

Nymeria did not know what drew her first to Thranduil. It might’ve been his hoof-prints in the snow, or the blood trailing him, or the gleam of his golden coat (visible only through Lilómiel’s eyes); it might’ve been his shout, wounded and broken, or her own selfish desire for absolution. In all of Helovia only three lay claim to her friendship—and the Laurelin, glistening and bright, was one of them.

His loss, his pain, echoed her own.

The land falls away as they ascend. Lilómiel drifts above, his dark wings a rustling and angry omen of descending dismay. The two of them are drawn towards their mirror soul. Snow crunches and sighs beneath Nymeria’s hooves; she quickens her step, until she is running on an inescapable and impossible collision course. The impact will not be physical so much as emotional.

She calls to him: her voice is a lonely thing, almost feeble in its gentleness, cajoling and wheedling (you are not alone)—she knows what she sees in him, the ragged lines and slopes of defeat carved into his slumped shoulders and shivering limbs.

If she could, she would pity him, but she has no emotion to spare.

Horns pierce and slice through the air as Thranduil turns his head to her, wetness in his eyes, breath smoking and clouding the air. Lilómiel drifts, his wings a distant and rhythmic beat. She remembers his distrust when she first met Thranduil; Lilómiel’s certainty that something wasn’t right, that the Laurelin slipped too easily between the cracks of her armor. Looking at her… friend… now, she thinks her companion wrong for such petty suspicions. Right now she cares too deeply and too sorrowfully for Thranduil to waste her time on trivial skepticism. He calls to her in answer—voice as dead as Volterra’s had been when she’d first confronted him—and she moves instinctively to him, ensnared within a violent weave of fate and choice and companionship.

“What happened?”

They are like souls, but Nymeria doesn’t care so much for that anymore.

Now, the companionship he can offer is diminished by her happier and more recent memories of Själ, of the Order, of even Mesec; he is no longer as important to her as when he was her only friend. It was Själ, after all, who had defended her in recent days. It was Rikyn who had reignited a buried sense of duty.

What would Thranduil do? What could he offer?

Thoughts, unbidden, swell in her mind, flower to happiness and peace and disguise. She looks at Thranduil steadily, her cheekbones sharp as a sword’s edge and her lips stern as a soldier’s face, examining him as if she can see deeper than just his bones. He sways—not in body, but in heart—and she feels a faint and unsatisfying twinge of pity as he lowers his head to the snow. Is there to be nothing for either of us? And then bitterness flares, hungry and all-encompassing: how can he be any worse off than I am? It might be jealousy she feels, or hate, or sympathy; she doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know. It would be, altogether, easier to simply purge herself of emotion.

You can’t, Lilómiel points out diplomatically. Besides… he doesn’t deserve to feel this way.

How would I know what he deserves or doesn’t deserve to feel?

The Laurelin groans and she shifts her weight automatically. Her brow knits as she observes him thoughtfully (his nature perverted, his spirit as broken as hers was had been.) The brittle curve of his neck, the gaunt angle of his legs—they were insidious and pervasive, indicative of destruction and misery. She is aware that she should offer help. She is aware that she should fetch someone more capable of doing than she is—like a healer who could soothe his physical pain. Somehow she doubted that that was what he needed. No: what he needed was someone to lean on, someone to love him.

The solution was basic. It was primal, derogatory, and a total succumbing to the needs and whims of flesh. Nymeria was no fool—she saw him and saw the emotions that pulsed through him. Head low, voice seductive and yet broken—the cards he was playing were obvious, at least to her. She observes him silently, lashes swinging together, her ears twisting forth. The darkness of yours and mine.

Ah, she could and would credit him for that; his tongue was gilded, sweet as a bee’s honey.

Time is a temperamental thing. There it ran slow; now it runs fast. Decisions bear down on her. There is not one way to deal with this, not one way to go: what is wrong and what is right has long since been perverted by her memories. She thinks, absent-mindedly, of Isopia and her churlish stance on Volterra’s wrong-doings; she thinks, sadly, of an unwelcome weight on her hindquarters; and she thinks lastly of duty, of a crown, and of hope.

Then he touches her.

Memories swing and skitter back to the last stallion who had touched her; she is stoic, silent, in face of her terror, giving only the slightest quiver beneath Thranduil’s muzzle. He is not hard, not fierce, not punishing nor cruel: his touch is soft, gentle, tender, a sweet advance upon her body. She is secure in her knowledge that Thranduil would not push her beyond what was right and that he would halt at her first word.

Then she turns her head to him and brushes against his shoulder with her own muzzle, leaning into him.  “I will shelter you,” she murmurs, her voice a lingering kiss.

(She will replace the memories that drown her. She will fill the void that kills her.)