Title: Transitive Properties
Fandom: The Silmarillion
Challenge: Hungry
Bingo prompt: Custom
Rating: PG, ish. By implication.
Length: 400
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Morgynleri for encouragement & sanity-checking.
In The Very Wine of Blessedness, by thearrogantemu (https://archiveofourown.org/works/11990775), mention is made of Miriel and Indis being together, and how they are ‘by the transitive property of Finwë,’ already married.
Very much not LaCE*-compliant.
Summary:
Finwë, Miriel and Indis, all three.

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Finwë Ñoldorán was not Made to be singular, or even truly alone. His was a fëa that cried out for interaction, conversation, exchange of thought, intermingling of feeling, hungered for the close company of other people (Elves, trees, kelvar and olvar, maiar and less tangible, comprehendable, coherent entities. His hroa was tactile, exuberant, energetic, reveling in touching, feeling, singing, moving, making. Giving and receiving pleasure of all kinds. He was generous with his gifts, unabashed in his appetites, took delight in other’s happiness and pleasure. He Woke with a talent for listening, for sympathy, for discernment, but not for moderation.

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Why? Why do we have to choose? Miriel frowned as she wove long grasses around the reeds of her basket. We have chosen to walk to where there is more than starlight. The silver-and-gold that shone in Finwë’s eyes when he returned after going ahead to see that land of light; light that made no difference to the love that flowed in rivers from his heart, that held so many people, but foremost, closest, dearest: herself and her heart-sister-first-beloved. Her heart held but two in intimacy, and Indis’ also. They three made a knot, weft and warp, strong together, incomplete apart. The stars did not care that they were three, why should the trees? People’s arrangements of intimacy, of craft and art, of friendship and family were their own to make, as long as everyone involved was informed, aware and in agreement. Children cared for. Which had never been a problem, even when (especially when) parents were lost, taken by the darkness. She took another long strand of grass, pale as Indis’s hair, and wove it firmly into the reeds and dark grasses already netted together in the basket. There would be no tearing of their cloth. No choosing between.

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Customs are like lace, Indis thought, contemplating loops and lines of long black hair twining with gold on the coverlet. Little twists of thread building one on another on another, making patterns. Small choices, repeated, small variations over time. One bobbin in the middle, then another; new thread worked in, old ones tied off, making a cloth, a whole. Sometimes large variations, abrupt changes. Starlight, Tree-light, Moon- and Sun-light all different.

Custom now said this coverlet should cover only two. Should was not must, lace was not people. Their children had, would continue to have, three parents, come whatever light.

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*LaCE — Laws and Customs among the Eldar. Found in volume 10 of The Histories of Middle Earth. Essays and notes about (among other things) marriage and naming practices.