Pink Biscuits by Himring

Chapter 1

Set some time during the Long Peace.

(Russandol=Maedhros; Findekano=Fingon)

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Fingon:

Such an unusually warm evening! The breeze is wafting the scent of honeysuckle through the open windows.  The reception is crowded, but for the moment Russandol and I are alone together. If it were not an uncharitable thought, I would think he’d driven everyone else off with his discourse on the proper equipment and schedules for northern patrols. I must admit I wish myself that he wouldn’t go on and on about it, tonight. However important all this is, we are going to discuss it thoroughly and at great length with my father tomorrow, so do we really have to talk about it now? But I haven’t got the heart to force him to change the subject or beat a retreat, so I nod sympathetically and make noises of assent whenever his voice rises at the end of a sentence to ask me a question.

The funny thing is that, if you don’t listen too closely to what he is actually saying, he doesn’t sound all that grim and driven. There is an almost musical cadence as he speaks, a lift, a lilt that might lull you into thinking of harmless things, cheerful things... It could even be one of the conversations we used to have in Valinor, before we knew anything of war. I try to match that light tone of voice mentally to a Valinorean subject and find it more difficult than I expected. What did we talk about in Valinor? Endless gossip, long discussions—both learned and silly—at formal and informal gatherings, I know, but it is the quarrels, the grief and the anger that seem to have imprinted itself in my memory word for word,  while the cheer and banter have grown strangely hazy...

‘...and we will invite all the little orcs along for a picnic and we’ll give each of them a glass of milk and a biscuit with pink icing and I will teach them to make daisy chains and you will teach them table manners, won’t you, Findekano?’

‘Of course I will... What?!!’

I am so startled that my hand jerks and I tip most of the contents of my glass down my sleeve. Everyone in the vicinity turns around to stare and, with great interest, watches my arm dripping and red wine puddling on the floor.

‘Yes’, Russandol informs me gravely, seamlessly switching back into Sindarin, ‘it is almost certain that Khuzdul has had considerable influence on Adunaic.’

The look that he gives me is that of a cat that has got at the cream. It is obvious that he has carefully timed this conversational gambit to cause havoc. At least he had the decency not to try and make me splutter... Too late, I remember that he did precisely the same thing to me at a mind-bogglingly boring begetting day party in Tirion long ago. Well, no, not precisely the same thing: last time, it wasn’t orcs in daisy chains. A picnic, Russandol? Biscuits? Pink icing?!

By some sleight of hand, he produces a handkerchief. Trust him to have provided himself with one for the occasion.

‘Permit me, cousin’, he says solicitously and starts dabbing delicately at my wine-sodden sleeve.

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Chapter End Notes

 

This piece is obscurely related (Dawn might not consider "inspired" to be the right word, under the circumstances) to Dawn Felagund's Love by Moonlight.