Title: Dreaming Flowers
Fandom: Silmarillion
Challenge: Shake
Other prompt: TSFW November prompt 'Poppy'
Rating: G
Length: 300
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zhie, Morgynleri & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Poppies really do come in sky-blue, grey, purple and many other unexpected colors.
Summary: Maedhros returned, learning again to sleep.


The poppies shook their heads as he passed, nodding at him -- gold and red, white, grey, pink and purple and blue. Irmo's dream-flowers came in every color, every size and variation. It was soothing to be among them, care for them, to watch over the fields, to learn which varieties likes to grow together, which apart, the ones that wanted very specific conditions of soil, rain, sun, temperature, and which would grow nearly anywhere, absurd places, ridiculous conditions. As once he had learned to sleep.

Nothing had grown on Thangorodrim's black and ruined peaks, but only a little lower lichens, mosses, hardy and enterprising grasses had grown even under starlight. With the coming of the Sun had appeared stubborn, astonishing flowers, blue as the distant sky, dancing in the wind. Himring too had known them, not so defiant, finding sheltered places high on the Eastern cliffs.

Returned now, anonymous in Lorien, coming slowly to terms with being in the world again, he had not yet slept, could not sleep, in comfort or otherwise, nor had he dreamt, poppy-aided or not. Caring for them, that he could do. Until one day he found himself following a trail of grey and indigo, silvery and lavender poppies up an escarpment to where the air smelled of ice and stone and snow-mist, and he was greeted with a mossy dell filled with sky come down to earth, banks and brakes of golden centered pale blue poppies, and the deep, resonant hum of bees. Not a place he knew, yet somehow, he did. The soft moss beckoned, a tiny spring trickled musically over rocks into a pool reflecting a blue-poppy sky shading to violet as the sun sank.

It was there that Fingon found him, waking refreshed from dreaming sleep, ready to face the world.