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Retellings of the Silmaril Retrieval Quest of Lúthien and Beren, be it the Lay of Leithian in the form of poetry or the countless works of material art in the form of paintings, tapestries, and sculpture, are more unavoidable in the start of the Second Age here in Tol Erresëa and Valinor than Faelindis would have imagined. Songs were composed and sung extensively before the Fall of Nargothrond and even whispered, softly and fitfully, in the bowels of Angband. It is a tale of hope and joy and triumph. The enduring popularity cannot be surprising.
Faelindis flinches from it. She cannot help it.
Faelindis met Lúthien. She knew the princess of Doriath during her unhappy time in Nargothrond and had been overwhelmed by not only beauty but the kindness and diamond-hard conviction of self. No one who met Lúthien could argue otherwise. But Faelindis knows the shame of how neither her nor Lady Finduilas had aided Princess Lúthien, were unable to free her from her captors or convince the city to change their hearts. That failure had been bitter while Lúthien yet lived her second life with Beren far to the south, despite the apology letters sent and received by Lady Finduilas. It was the desperate undercurrent to Túrin’s treatment, that this time he would be heeded and given aid and love, to be worthy of Lúthien’s grace. Others are tactful enough not to bring up Túrin’s tale and stories of his deeds and doom in Faelindis’s presence. But she cannot escape the images of Lúthien. And there is no fairness to Faelindis’s fear and the seed of hate that it is germinating.
Faelindis was never dragged before the Iron Throne, but she knows the walls of Angband and the echoes of Morgoth’s voice. And she cannot bear it, not a single time more, to see a depiction of that throne room and Lúthien standing so brave and tall and clever before the Dark King surrounded by his orcs and wolves. She cannot hear of Lúthien’s imprisonment in three-trunked Hírilorn and the daring escape via an enchantment of hair. The comparison of Hírilorn to the coffin-sized stone cell that Faelindis was forced into during her decades of imprisonment are nothing at all alike. Years of Angband, years without the hint of the sun or stars, of orcs and balrogs, of the only face not unkind being her Faron, and he but a despairing ghost like her. Decades of slavery and the orcs’ leering eyes. Faron in warg pit - she cannot look at images of noble Huan beside the brave and steadfast lovers without flinching. The pair of brave lovers facing off against Carcharoth when the snarling of young wargs frightened her, when still Faelindis sees how Faron flinches from the barking of dogs and feels the scars of their fangs on his arms. The Gardens of Lórien dampened the memories and removed most marks on their bodies, but when Faelindis dreams, she remembers weeping. She remembers listless terror and hopeless acceptance.
‘But you escaped from Angband,’ others remind Faelindis, as if she had not followed mutely and bewildered, without faith in hope of true escape. She had only followed Faron because she had not wanted to die alone in the dark, surrounded by orcs and balrogs and wargs. There had been no goal, no confidence.
Still the well-meaning try to show her images of the escape from Angband, as if Faelindis would offer commentary on the accuracy of Thangorodrim’s chimneys in the background.
Almost a year with the sensation of Tol Eressëa’s fresh air upon her cheeks, the feel of sun and stars softening what memories linger beneath the darkness of her dreams, of Faron’s returned smiles, only then does Faelindis look closely at a painting of Beren and Lúthien’s escape from Angband. The image that she reexamines makes her flinch, as all did, even the joyous ones. But this one is from the moment after Carcharoth has bitten off Beren’s hand, and it reminds Faelindis of Gwindor’s missing hand and Faron’s missing fingers. The lovers are stumbling through the broken craters and ash-covered wasteland that surrounds Angband, a terrain that Faelindis knows exactly how it feels beneath uncovered feet. Those memories have not been dampened.
Lúthien’s facial expression is bewildered and scared, which Faelindis blames the artist for an overreach of imagination - Faelindis met Lúthien in Nargothrond when she had been imprisoned and desperate to rescue Beren from the Isle of Werewolves, when Lúthien had been scared that her beloved was dying and had not been deterred. Lúthien was defiance incarnate. Not lost. Not clinging to Beren. Not tottering aimlessly through that slag field of ash with their quest in ruins.
Faelindis pulls the seed of resentment out of her chest and lets it wither in the open air, drowning it with another spat of weak tears.
She buys the painting. Faron says nothing when she hangs it in their house.