Work Text:
The love affairs between the elves and us mortal folk are almost always tragic. They are stories where greatness and the mundane meet, where love too often is not enough to surpass the vast expanse of difference between peoples. They are stories where war must take precedence over love, and death must sunder lovers from each other forever.
The tragedy of Nellas was not so grand or poignant as all that. The tragedy of Nellas was that she was, like, twelve.
Nellas first met Turin when he was a solemn, sad little boy of eight or nine who wasn’t sure how elves worked and she was a solemn, shy little girl of about eleven who mostly prefered the company of trees to people. Nellas had never met anyone of the race of Men before, so she watched him for a while, until she found him crying one day and came out of hiding to comfort him. She showed him all the secret places that she had found in her years and years of wandering among the trees, and all the best hiding spots, and she taught him to run silently and unseen in the forest (even though he was never very good at it). And sometimes she told him things about plants, and sometimes he told her things about his mother and his home far away (and she did not tell him that he was safe now, and should not be unhappy for the past, because she was still young, and did not yet think she knew everything, and it was her nature to be thoughtful and grave, so she wept for the plight of Men outside the borders of Melian nearly as much as he did, though with less understanding). And much of the time they simply walked together under the trees in silence, or humming a tune softly, and thought things to themselves.
And so years passed. Turin was ten and Nellas was eleven, and then Turin was eleven and Nellas was twelve, and then they both were twelve together, and always they were inseparable. Then Turin was thirteen and Nellas was twelve, and Nellas realized he was no longer the lonely little boy she wanted nothing but to comfort and protect, and she fell in love in the way that twelve year olds do, not knowing really what to be in love meant, but convinced that no one else had ever loved as truly as she did. She daydreamed about herself and Turin, though she was still too shy to tell him. “Someday, when we’re all grown up,” she thought, “We’ll get married and be together forever and ever, and they’ll write songs about us.” They would be like Luthien and Beren, and if King Thingol forbade them to marry, they would run away together, and then maybe they would find Turin’s people and rescue them, and then he would be their leader, and she would be his queen. But King Thingol liked Turin, and Nellas wasn’t important, so maybe they would only live together quietly in the forest, and no one would pay them mind.
But then Turin was fourteen, and Nellas was twelve, and he spent more and more time with Beleg Strongbow, hunting and training in the arts of war, and he had less and less time for Nellas. And years passed, and Turin was fifteen, and Nellas was twelve, and Turin was sixteen and Nellas was twelve, and Turin was seventeen and tall and strong and a great warrior, and half the girls in Doriath were head over heels for him, and he had all but forgotten there had ever been a girl called Nellas that he loved more dearly than anyone in Doriath. And Nellas was still a solemn, shy girl of twelve who mostly prefered the company of trees to people, and she watched him from the trees, silent as a breath of air, and she pined for the boy who had grown up without her, for the crush that was all the stronger now that he had grown to be a handsome young man, and the friend she had lost.
And then Turin was seventeen and Nellas was twelve, and Turin ran away from Doriath all alone, and Nellas never saw him again.