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Fingon can feel the edge of a dream as he wakes, but not its substance. Sleep clings to him, thick and dark as molasses, even when the outside world begins to infringe. It smells of hyacinths, so fragrant he can almost taste the flowers. Light warms his cheek. A nightingale sings. Some bit of grass tickles his neck. A little sharpness pokes his hand; he opens his eyes and sees that a junebug, iridescent green-pink, drags its round body over his finger, jointed legs pinching slightly at his skin. And just behind that—
An elven face, half turned from him, eyes shut in sleep. Hair loose, straight and yellow as straw, scattering of freckles over the cheeks, long and very slightly upturned nose. Aegnor.
Something in Fingon’s neck clicks as he turns to look at his other side, some slight shifting of his body back into place. He yawns, and hears his jaw click, too.
But there is Angrod, just where he ought to be. Elbow thrown over his face, hands unadorned, golden mane catching the light. He is dressed oddly, all in white.
Some distant, childish thought strikes Fingon: We must have fallen asleep playing in Father’s gardens. But no, no—no, that is wrong, long gone. Then—we must have been drinking. The midsummer festival of the trees. The hunt.
Angrod shifts slightly in sleep, lets his arm fall. The ruddy scar that ought to curl over his upper lip is gone. But why should he have scars?
A glancing blow from an orc blade, Fingon remembers, if it had gone lower it would have struck his throat. His dream dances again in front of his eyes, a mud stained silver banner buffeted by the wind. Behind Aegnor’s features there is a blackened land, a scattering of ash. Fingon's eyes flick away, into the garden.
The bowing, weeping willows. The bright red hyacinths, scattered as rubies on the shore. The shadowed, tucked away places, covered with sunset-orange nemesia and crimson bleeding-heart. That is where the dead queen had lain, Fingon thinks, and knows what has come of them.