"Gift Horse" by Himring

[hhimring]

B2MeM Challenge:B6 wives and mothers unnamed in canon (Women of the Silmarillion)
Format: Teaser (excerpt from WIP "The chief in a village")
Genre:   Family (not)
Rating: General
Warnings: cheating on the prompt (see note)
Characters: Fingon, Gil-galad (mentioned)
Pairings: see summary
Summary: The woman who ended up not marrying Fingon

Erien had taken to Gil with an enthusiasm that turned out to be fuelled by relief.

‘I like you, Fingon’, she said, speaking more frankly than she ever had while Father kept trying to push me into proposing to her, ‘and I could like you even more if you were more interested, if you know what I mean. But all this “royal” business? It’s not for me. I would have done my best to do my duty if you’d asked me, but I’m so glad you didn’t!’

I must not have looked very intelligent at this point, for she gave me a sympathetic look and reminded me: ‘You were brought up to it, you know.’

I discovered my jaw had dropped and was hanging open and hastily shut it. If I had somehow managed to get out of this whole sorry mess without losing Erien’s friendship, I decided, it would be extremely ungrateful to look that gift horse in the mouth.

Especially if the gift included a mother substitute for Gil in the same package!


Note:
So I'm cheating here, because: a) she isn't actually Fingon's wife, b) she isn't actually Gil-galad's mother.
There is also the name thing: I'd wrongly remembered "Erien" as being the name of Fingon's wife in a discarded version in HoME. Checking my facts in Oshun's bio, I realize that the wife was unnamed even there: "Erien" is the temporary name of an abolished daughter of Fingon's. Typical. Never mind.