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Deleth had not trusted the Ainur when he first arrived, and she did not trust the other that came after. He had been tall and strange and too close to the Enemy, and he had stolen away her friends and returned them with light greater than starlight in their eyes. He had spoken as though he knew them, as though he could give them everything they could ever want or dream of. Deleth had thought of the wide world she had yet to explore and decided that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But all the people she cared about were going, and that settled it. There would surely be another wide world across the sea, even if her heart had ached for what she was leaving behind.
Melian was not the same as the Hunter that had first arrived. She was wild in a different way, in the wilderness of flora, not fauna. She set up a defence around the wood and brought all of their people inside it and became their queen. Deleth did not find Melian unlikeable, only untrustworthy. The Ainur were unlike the elves, were forever strangers no matter how close they came. Deleth enjoyed Melian’s company, was pleased by how happy she clearly made Elwë, was enchanted by her daughter, was pleased to raise her son alongside the little princess. Sometimes she and Melian went out into the deeper parts of Doriath and embraced the starlit wilderness in a way that most of their people had forgotten how.
Deleth had a long memory. Deleth did not forget. Deleth walked through the forest, through the halls of the city and remembered whose hands and hopes had shaped this place. She remembered the names of the craftspeople who had made the doors and the furniture and the lights, of the hunters who had kept them fed, of everyone, and of herself. She who had gathered up their people when Elwë had gone missing, she who had convinced Olwë to take those that wanted it onwards, she who had remained, had searched, had begun to build settlements while Elwë stood in the woods for two hundred years, falling in love.
There was a part of her that was angry at them, for their long absence, for all the fear that they put their people through, both those who had stayed and those who had gone on. But there was another part of her that saw Elwë’s bright eyes and Melian’s too sharp teeth and loved their starlit forest fiercely. This was, after all, where she had wanted to be.