Unsolicited WIP excerpt

...because I have siblings on the brain today.

No idea when this fic will ever be finished, or if, but I was inspired to start writing it by Ben Platt's "In Case You Don't Live Forever," which strikes me as such a Legolas-Laerwen song that I couldn't help trying to write to it.

His eyes sting at the words, the depth of melancholy pride in her voice. He knows what she means, about giving up wishing, but he has never managed to do it. Always, it has marked him different from his father and his sister – that he dreamed of green where the trees were black and twisted, of warmth where their souls froze. It has spared him no grief, but if he is to be the wisher of the family, then he will allow himself to wish once more that Laerwen could have been allowed the same softness, that she could have learned what she might be in another world. That she could have allowed herself the dreams he never gave up, that she could have seen beyond the bounds of a world that has let her down so many times.

For himself, he cannot wish that things were different – not now. Years spent denying the sea-longing, and now he will go; he will listen to the desire of his heart and let himself be pulled along in its wake – and he will take the beloved he never thought his life would grant him and see if the sea might save them both.

But he can wish for her.