Summary: Finally, it’s time for Caranthir to talk: His view of Haleth and their relation told through several flashbacks. Companion piece to “Enchantress”, but might as well stand alone.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the settings used in here. This was written for the author's personal amusement (shall I spell that out for you? F - U - N) and I'm making no money whatsoever with it (the maniacal laughter in the background is Caranthir who finds the idea alone hilarious since he thinks what I'm doing is pretty poor, even for mortal standards... damned arrogant Noldo.).

Warnings: Err, descriptions of nakedness. Implied sexual situations. Nothing explicit though. I think an R-rating is not necessary.

Author’s Note: This story alludes once or twice to other stories I wrote, but still I think it can be understood without reading them first. Enjoy!

Seductress

The girl is small, almost tiny, though of lithe muscular built. No striking beauty, yet not unattractive either as she stands there, clutching a sword that is not hersin scratched hands, her head held high in defiance, her eyes sparkling wildly.

“And may I ask your name, my Lady?”

She straightens slowly, her tangled hair whipping in the breeze, as she raises her chin in barely concealed pride.

“Haleth,” she answers.

The name is pure enchantment coming from her tongue, sounding fierce and wild and utterly beautiful like the wind on the mountains.

“Haleth Haldadiel of the Haladin.” (1)

And thus we met.

Haleth.

I will never forget that day, nor her face under the cloudy sky, nor her hands as she tried to wipe the dirt stains from her cheeks. I could not if I tried.

Haleth.

I said it to myself again and again; I whispered it against the mighty walls of my fortress, I let it slip my lips in the solitude of the woods around it, I breathed its loveliness into the rustle of the grass swaying upon the mountain slopes.

Haleth.

I remember one of my brothers telling me in a voice of barely concealed scorn that I was not merely enamoured by her, but utterly and completely ensnared in some net of evil cunning only one of the Atani could conjure.

I had laughed back then, like one gone mad, and dismissed it all as nonsense.

Now I know that maybe it was not so far from the truth at all.

She was everything to me; an act of defiance, the breaking of bonds, the epitome of everything I desired and could not have, the taste of something strange and forbidden upon the tip of my tongue; sweet like an early morning of spring upon the pastures of Yavanna, when the mists have not yet lifted, the air is rich with the scent of fresh dew and honey-suckle, and everything is young and new.

Meeting Haleth is the turning point, the new beginning, something as wondrous and curious to me as the Coming of the Sun and Moon into this darkened world.

Suddenly it is infinitely hard to remember that there was anything before this and even harder to grasp that anything will come after; impossible to think that there is more in this world than her and me and the cloud spotted sky.

Then she smiles and everything falls into place.

Middle-earth is big, league after league of lands undiscovered, and that we meet is not chance, not coincidence, not some fickle mood of the Gods who turned their backs on us long ago.

It is fate.

It was unreasonable to give in to my longings. I knew that even back then. It was wrong in so many aspects and yet it felt right in a way that was intoxicating.

I loved watching the way she moved, the way she waved her hand in answer to some question, her gestures when she was talking, how her eyes shone, her cheeks flushed and her speech got quicker after drinking some wine. I loved her voice, deep and throaty when discussing serious matters and whenever she wanted to appear tough and strong, yet bright and girlish when she was excited about something, and I adored the way her hips moved when she walked, like a slender willow swaying in the breeze.

She slowly but surely exposed me to weakness and to my surprise and even more to that of others, I gave in to it most willingly, like one succumbs to sleep on a mild summer’s night.

Until now I do not know what exactly it was that she did to me.

It begins with a distant gleam in her storm-cloud eyes, a spot of weakness in her defiant stance. The casual brush of one hand against the other follows, the stolen touch of my fingers in between one straying strand of her hair.

The kiss in the arcades.

We begin to spend the nights together. She is beautiful and the starlight is beautiful and she in the starlight is a thousand-fold so.

“We love,” we say and everything is fair and easy. We love.

I would not have called it that from the beginning, though. When we first huddled together after that feast in Thargelion, it was for little more than physical warmth. It was about lying together in fur-lined blankets, shielding ourselves from the icy winds descending from the Ered Luin and the coldness that were our lives. Two lost souls clinging to each other for the sake of utterly cold comfort.

The first time I saw her naked I felt like I would die from the yearning of feeling her skin beneath my fingers. I had come upon her accidentally in the bathing chambers, shortly after her arrival in Thargelion, not really expecting her to be there. She did not realize my presence, nor did I make myself known to her.

Later I always felt the tiniest bit embarrassed of spying on her thus, but back then I only stood there hidden in a corner, soundlessly, hardly daring to breathe, watching her and wanting her for my own.

She stands there in the steam, naked, but for the towel draped around her dripping wet hair, finally free of the dirt and grime of battle, her skin still damp over well-defined muscles, her breasts small and well-shaped, her hips as slender as a boy’s.

She stands there as if she does not belong in this time and place, a queen of Men, a creature of myth, a goddess of war, eerily beautiful in all her fleeting splendour.

I cannot help myself but to want to touch this Oromë in female incarnation. I want her to scream my name while her nails dig bloody patterns in my back. I desire to feel her firm muscles moving beneath my hands and to breathe the scent of her hair. Oh Eru, please, let this daughter of Men be mine, let her be mine. (2)

I know now that I gave in to an illusion when I thought for just one moment that I would be the one who could tame Haldad’s wild offspring. She belonged to no one but the earth and the sky itself.

And yet I let myself get lost in the nights we spend together, for where at day she would act stern and unapproachable at times, at night she would loose her hair and become wholly a woman and everything about her muscle and sinew and soft white skin. We could lie in each other’s arms and pretend there could be forever for us. Though none of us ever truly believed in this.

In these moments the world might have gone up in flames around us. I would have been oblivious to it.

And so I did not count the days with her. They passed in a haze.

I ask her where she comes from.

“From beyond of the mountains,” she says.

“Then it is only fitting,” I say. “For I come from beyond of the sea.”

And it seems indeed only fitting at that very moment that these two lost souls, one from East of the mountains, the other from West of the sea, should meet right here, at this time and place, among the battle-stained fields of Beleriand.

“From beyond the sea,” she says and she smiles. There is no hint of awe displayed in her face, only barely veiled curiosity.

She has met the Laiquendi before, she tells me, but she has never seen an Elda of Aman.

I do not care much for the Laiquendi, I do not care much for the Edain,and yetthere is this small, long-legged daughter of the Fírimar standing in front of me, enchanting me by the way she pushes one strand of unruly hair out of her face.

Curse you, Caranthir Feanorion, curse you. How in all Arda is the one, who has even the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost crawling in the dust before his very feet, falling so easily for a woman of the Secondborn?

You penetrated my soul and I am hating you for it, Atanwende. I hate you for making me weak.

It is true. I despised her for what she did to me. I despised her and at the same time I loved her unconditionally for the very fact. And she knew this quite well, for ever on her face was this knowing smile that unsettled me greatly. Sometimes I would even hate her for it; her beautiful, knowing smile that always looked as if she had been able to catch a quick glimpse of all the secrets of the world and yet was wise enough to keep that knowledge to herself. Haleth Haladintári, queen without a crown. (3)

It was years later that I would travel to Estolad and find a strange woman in the place where I had left my Adanwen. My Adanwen, another illusion I gave in too quickly, too easily, all for the sake of being proven wrong.

I had taught her Quenya. I had taught her Quenya in some selfish attempt to make her more mine than she was, more mine than she ever would be. I adored how the sounds of the tongue of Aman reached a curious unity combined with her own harsh accent. When I came to Estolad I realized that it had all been for nothing.

For this woman was not Atanwende anymore, but a stranger, the Lady Haleth, renowned among Elves and Men. We had grown apart over the last few years, had become estranged and yet more alike than we ever had been before. There was an invisible wedge between us that might as well have been as wide as the Sundering Seas, for I knew that, although I still felt like loving her madly, this would be the last time we had met and touched and loved.

And as much as I hate to admit it, it hurt me most to see how she seemed to never have given in to any illusions concerning our relationship.

"I am nothing without you,” I say, impatiently unravelling the tight braids holding her hair back.

"Do not be ridiculous,” she says. "For when we are apart we are the Lady of the Haladin and the Lord of Thargelion, but when we are together we become Adanwen and Feanorion; we become two non-entities who do not know where their place is. We dissolve somewhere in the darkness between dusk and the following dawn. We are nothing when we are together. Nothing at all, son of Feanor."

She was right in that. When we touched we became something completely different; we left behind who we were, where we came from, what we dreamed of. We shed the roles we used to play in the harsh daylight and exchanged them for something dark and comforting and utterly illusionary. We became something new, something that could only last for one night and no longer. We became something that we could only be when we were together. And when we were together we became nothing. Nothing at all.

They say the greatest of love stories always end tragically. Ours did not end tragically. We simply quit. Or at least, so it must have appeared from an objective perspective. I was never quite so objective about it.

“You could simply stay here, could you not? The lands are big enough for your people to live in, and we would not be far apart.”

She smiles at me sadly, an expression akin to pity that would enrage me greatly if only I was not so damn love-struck.

“No, Feanorion. Can you not understand that you have to let me leave? I have my own aims, my own ambitions. I cannot stay. I have to go. I have to make something out of my life. I cannot remain here walking in circles. And this is what we do at the moment, do you not see? If I were in your place…”

“What? What would you do?”

“I would let you go. And you would go with all the blessings I had to offer.”

There is nothing, nothing at all, I have to say to this. I can feel her slipping away, slipping out of my hands, and there is nothing, nothing at all, I can do to hold her back.

“I will go,” she says sternly. “ I will go and you will stay. You will stay and do deeds of valour, son of Feanor. And you will remember me.”

“How do you know that I will?” I snap back and realize that I must sound like an impertinent boy who has just been denied some childish wish.

She gives a short laugh.

“Of course you will. When the Sun is up and the wind is in the East. Then you will think of her who came from beyond of the mountains. You will think of Atanwende.”

“Atanatariel,” I say and my anger dissolves into nothing, like smoke in the wind. Such is the power she holds over me. No might in this world would succeed in holding this daughter of the Sun back right now. She smiles at me, like a pale winter’s sun piercing a cloudy sky and I pull her close. (4)

“It was an honour to have known you, daughter of Haldad.”

She did not answer me anymore, that much I recall. What she did was to press a fleeting kiss upon my cheek before she turned and strode away. We met one last time before she finally left for Brethil. Haleth was gone from my life as quickly as she had entered into it years before.

Sometimes I think she left to spare me the pain of losing something I could never have had in the first place. In this, she was always more level-headed than I. While I cherished the present moment she already had thought years ahead.

She was something I never could quite fathom, something made of rock and soil, firm and solid, but she was also a person who took what she could get in life, without ever going so far as offering apologies. She was a bold and confident Atani-chieftain with tattoos covering her arms and eyes rimmed with dark paint; small, sinewy and muscular, her every movement speaking of pride to rival even mine.

“I have no fear,” I remember her saying. “There remains nothing I have to lose.”

I am not sure if she ever got to know the expanse of the damage she did. For part of her always stayed with me and always shall be there, somewhere, somehow, like the skeletons of the Trees that stand upon Ezellohar in far lands that have been changed forever.

Sometimes I think I still can hear her voice on the wind, murmuring faintly over the mist-veiled miles between us.

I am left with this at least.

I shall be content.

Or so, I tell myself.

THE END

(1) Haldadiel: “daughter of Haldad”

(2) This, in fact, is non-sense. According to the Silmarillion (Ainulindale) “... the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning ...” So, strictly speaking, the idea alone of Orome taking up female form is more or less absurd. But hey, the poor guy has just utterly fallen for Miss Atani-chieftain, so show some mercy, please. ;)

(3) Haladintári: “Queen of the Haladin”

(4) Atanatariel: “daughter of the Fathers of Men”

As always, comments on faulty Elvish are not only appreciated, but wished for. Make a difference now! Improve my Quenya-skills! ;-)