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.)