Pursuing with weary feet, the road called life. by Urloth

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Úan ~ A monster is found in the night.

this is the second half of the former second chapter. Now split properly. Now I can finally work on the next chapter without squirming about how badly the former chapters were XD

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All the details would be crystal clear, as they could only be in elf memory when Heledir looked back upon that night a great many years later.

The moon was a barely there sliver; the stars the brightest they had been in many nights, with not a cloud marring the perfect, velvet appearance of the night. The air had been fresh and clear; almost sweet with the lingering green scent of the forest all around them.

Heledir and his companions had been cutting across a clearing, which was more of a grassy meadow, straddling a small river, given its size. The grass had been thick like a plush carpet and barely made a sound underfoot.

Heledir travelled with the remains of a hunting group, which had split off from a larger encampment in order to gather food. The whole of them were something of an eclectic mix. Originally they had been wandering Nelyar who had never responded to Elu Thingol’s summons to join him in Doriath, after they had wandered away during the Nan Elmoth years.

In time that group had gained some affiliated Silvans, and perhaps one or two wandering Moerbin who had liked the feeling of the group.

Recent year, and recent wars, had swelled the group from a small wandering tribe to almost the size of a decent village.

Its numbers had been fed with the fleeing, cast away refuse of Doriath, and very recently those who had escaped to Lindon, and found it not to be to their tastes.

Heledir, himself, was counted amongst this later number, though he was Moerbin by birth and raising; unrepentantly, as the Noldor would call him, a Avar. He had only gone to live in Doriath in order to woo his wife and had wound up staying.

The smaller hunting groups were necessary to continue to feed the group. They simply were too large to hunt as a large pack anymore.

Two weeks prior one of the hunting party had snapped his ankle in an unseen rabbit warren, and they’d been required to stop completely for a full week to let him recover. After that their pace had  been at an agonising pace while the limb mended.

Heledir, being in charge of the group, had obviously stayed behind with Urion, the wounded hunter, while sending their younger members ahead with the much needed meat. Two more, Angalph and Tiriel, had stayed with him to help nurse Urion back to mobility, because two alone in the woods in these times was just asking for trouble.

Urion had healed fast, and now they had almost gained back their full speed. Full of determination to catch up with the main group, now bare hours away, they ran through the night instead of resting.

The faces of their loved ones were beacons in the night, held constantly in their hearts as a protection against the horrors of the past centuries. 

As they moved, taking turns with Urion on their backs for he still could not move without pain, it felt almost like the moonlight was lighting a path for them. Their feet found no rocks, nor any holes to catch ankles in as Urion had originally.

It was young Angalph who discovered the creature in the grass.

The young hunter, whose honed senses usually caught the slightest movements, was eager to find the river their senses told them was only just up ahead. He was parched, and overheated from carrying Urion whose burden had only just been taken from him by Heledir.

He glanced back at Heledir, whose form was distinctive with his hair completely covered in cloth, and with Urion’s arms gripping his shoulders tightly. As he glanced, his feet tripped on a body curled within a tall stand of grass. He let out a shout of dismay as his legs collided with the coiled form. The person, whoever it was, moaned pitifully in reply. 

Heledir called a halt, eyes narrowing. Tiriel paced to his side, reaching for her dagger as they looked towards where Angalph was struggling upwards out of the grass.

Their sharp eyes made out a crude nest made in the grass, and a body curled within.  Moonlight highlighted knees brought to a chest with arms clasped around them. The burnt smell of flesh hung weakly in the air as the same eyesight caught a hint of blisters, noted mottled discolouration and blistering on the long torso. There was no hair, the curve of the scalp alien but it made the soft leaf shape of the ear more obvious.

“Ai…Elbereth…” Tiriel choked, gagging as the smell reached her, echoing exclamations from the rest. It was a shocking find, and left them wondering how one of their own had come to be out here in the midst of the wilds, bare, shorn of hair and burnt all over.

The body stirred in the grass, and garbled words hummed discordantly in the air.

Heledir was not sure if he had actually heard anything, or simply imagined the words. To him the words were in a language that his ears thought they knew, but his mind considered incomprehensible. It was akin to words muffled on the other side of a wall; the sound familiar but the content unknown. 

“Ah…” Urion stirred at his back, breath warm on the edge of Heledir’s ear, coating the mythril rings through the cartilage with slight condensation.

Heledir promptly shivered, and wished his hair wrap was covering his ears like it usually would when not out hunting.

“That is Quenya if I’m not mistaken…” the wounded hunter said in a helpful tone. He would know. He was old and had regaled their troupe once or twice of the story of how he had hidden in an old tree upon a cliff, and watched the burning of Swan-Ships at Losgar.

Heledir’s vision filmed red for a terrifying moment.

A Noldor? 

A Golodh?! 

Here within the woods they thought safe from Fëanor’s curse?

 Sparse moonlight heightened, or perhaps cast the illusion, of other details he had not picked up before: a longness of limb telling of height uncommon to Silvan or Sindar, a more almond tilt to the tightly closed eyes and an aquiline nose.

He could not reach for his knife without dropping Urion but his two companions were not burdened and had drawn their own weapons: Tiriel her long knives and Angalph was nocking an arrow back against his ear, bow string thrumming with tension and glowing silver in the light.

What had Arda come to that kinslaying came so easily these days?

Surely though they could be forgiven for killing a kinslayer?

Heledir, before he’d fallen in love with a rather stubborn Doriathrin Healer, had been of the nomadic tribe the scholars of Doriath had called the Taenferdhrim. They had managed to avoid most of the conflict; and had Heledir’s kin been about, they would have shaken their heads and talked of the effect of Doriath on formerly moral minds.

But they were not here now to stay his hand.

Kinslaying seemed a slightly innocuous title anyway, thought Heledir, since he counted the Noldor as no kin of his.

Later after contemplation he would wince at his own hypocrisy.

The life of the presumed Noldo would have ended in that moment if not for two things happening at once: Tiriel’s hands experienced an unexpected cramp as her knives left their sheaths, and she dropped the blades as her fingers froze. At the same time Angalph’s arrow appeared so warped in the middle it would be dangerous to all to let it fly.  He dropped it with a curse.

Silence washed over them, thunderous and consuming, filling their ears till all that they could hear was their heartbeats and the rapid draw of air into their lungs. Slowly Tiriel reached for her knives again only to hiss loudly as once more the muscles connecting her fingers to her palms, and then her palms to her wrists, tensed up again with painful spasms.

Angalph drew another arrow only to find the end of it so weak it had splintered in his fingers, the fletching fluttering uselessly to the ground.

“Something is at work here…” Urion murmured again, fingers tapping a nervous but thoughtful beat on Heledir’s collarbone.

“Angalph…” Urion called. The younger hunter looked  over at them, his pupils swallowing his iris, looking like a rabbit with its foot caught in a snare. Heledir found it strange how quickly he was panicking, for this was strange but not worth that terror surely?

Yet Tiriel, older and more experienced, was the same. Her hands were trembling, and sweat shone silver on her tanned skin.

There was something was in the air now, pressing down like an unseen hand upon the backs of their necks in warning. It caused Heledir’s heart to suddenly surge, and his muscles to tense like he was about to run.

 “Angalph…” Urion said again, softer, his heart a rapid staccato against Heledir’s back. “Put down your bow but draw an arrow…”

Angalph drew forth an arrow, and in the pale light they saw it seemed unmarred. There was no unexpected warping of the shaft,  no ruffling of the fletching as the hunter smoothed his fingers over it, and there were no cracks in the flint head. Angalph knew how to make his arrows; they were sturdy things that did what they were meant to do.

“Walk over…” Urion instructed, watching the stilted, jerking steps Angalph made to the wounded Noldor. Sensing what the other wanted him to do, Angalph knelt, drew back his arm and made to stab the stranger. 

The head of the arrow, which had been fine when he had run his fingers over it seconds prior, shattered. 

---

The Silmaril awoke unexpectedly, rest disturbed before it was fully complete for the first time. Not used to this, it lay dazed against the grass as it tried to sort through the sluggish input of sensation, all around it. Noise and smell were the easiest to process. Sensation and sight took a moment to catch up.

It had been awoken by a dull collision to its side which had left the burnt skin there throbbing.

Reluctantly it uncurled itself just enough to peer with barely open, blurred eyes. Shadowy figures loomed around it, glow radiating from bared skin. The figures moved with a predatory fluidness, and had their intent focused sharply on it.

It closed its eyes again, and shivered. They reminded it of someone important, made up of flashes of colour and sensation. Barely they remembered the mouth viewed by un-eyes through facets, the fair face, and the sharpness of an ear as the someone turned away swiftly from the trilogy of them.

They knew not the person. But they knew that memory was vital, and tucked it away before returning to their immediate surroundings.

“Greetings…” it mouthed, searching for what words came easiest , “and… well met…I am …” then words failed it.

Not only did it not know what “I am…” was supposed to mean, never mind what it, the Silmaril, actually was, but also because the feeling in the air suddenly changed and for the worse.

Their skin prickled, and their newly moist mouth went dry again.

Hisses and snarls, the screech of metal rubbing against metal and harsh breathing surrounded it. Its heart squeezed painfully.

 Something came close.

The Silmaril could hear the thing’s breathing; the gentle crunch as its weight hit the grass and then a warmth more organic then the sun’s came close to them.

 They smelt saline just beginning to go sour, something musky, and something like the trees. Above it came rustling noises it could not place, and then suddenly a sharp explosion of sound.

Sharp slivers of stone pelted the Silmaril’s oversensitive skin. It reacted out of self-preservation. No one had ever thought ill of its presence when it had shone its brightest and most beautiful; no one had ever been angry or managed to stay angry for long.

It gathered up light, pondering at the way it now had to consciously reach for the light inside it, when before it had been natural. It took the light, and cast it out with all the light it had observed during its feverish travels. The surrounding air seemed to shimmer and explode outwards in a joyous splendour.

Immediately its eyes began to burn and it whimpered to itself.

One of the figures shouted something that it didn’t understand all the words of save “eye” so it kept the light glowing, and its eyes open.

 The burning was spreading around its eyes, it could feel wetness trickling down its cheeks, and sharp stabs of pain were travelling back through its head.

It could no longer see the figures, the world for it was now a blaze of gold and silver light, but their ears still worked. They heard again “eye” but this time also heard “shut”. Obediently they closed their eyes for a moment. The burning faded away as its eyelid coated the eye with more moisture. It opened its eyes again to continue shining. Maybe if it did this long enough, it thought, there would be no more shouting; not more of the  ill will around it that it could taste sourly on the back of its tongue.

The voice talked again, but this time another followed it. This time it recognised the language and it knew far more words. It closed its eyes once more, as instructed, but this time kept them shut, hoping it had pleased its observers.

The light within it flowed away back to where it had been resting and it followed it, way deep down inside. 

The quantity of that beautiful, entwined gold and silver was not be depleted in the slightest despite the output. The light wrapped itself around them internally, and the Silmaril began chiming with pleasure as the light warmed it through, and banished the lingering phantoms of pain that the mind had unwittingly kept a hold of.

Observing closely what was happening within itself, the Silmaril noticed there were an impression of leaves and the hint of the edge of a petal within the light but nothing distinct. As they drifted back to the real world, aware of its watchers still being about, they noticed someone else was within the light as well. It was not a strong impression, more like a figure in the distance; nothing more than a fleeting taste of strong pride, a flirtation of emotions, and the ghost of skills that someone else had possessed, a long, long time ago.

It tried to move towards it but failed, left behind as the light retreated to a place it could not go. Darkness fell and the Silmaril fell with it, into true unconsciousness instead of whatever spiritual state it had been in before.

---

The stranger’s eyes flew open, and Heledir had no time to shout a warning before he was caught in the light that spilled across the clearing and illuminated even the roots of the trees.

He floundered, no longer able to see the earth he stood upon though he felt it; no longer able to see anything but the light.

Heledir felt for a moment as if his fae was being forcibly plucked at.

Such light shone like nothing he had beheld; something of the sun within it and something of the moon, but the light had a potency and radiance that neither celestial body could match. There was light, and then there was colour; shifting and glowing, every shade imaginable. The light winked as it reflected like it was bouncing from facets cut by the surest hands amongst the first born.

The beauty was inescapable; it surrounded him and seeped into him till it touched his fae which rejoiced in loud chorus. Unexpectedly a great surge of possessive want came over him, and all he could think was to possess what caused the light. He wanted to lock it away from anybody, no, everybody, for all would wish to possess this light.

All this he saw and felt within seconds before Urion’s hands were clapping over his eyes, his friend’s face buried against his hair to block the sight of the two eyes piercing the darkness.

“Úan!” Angalph yelled into the light. He had his face buried in one arm, sprawled across Tiriel whom he had tackled when she made a move to lunge. and claw the eyes out of the stranger’s face so she could hoard them away.

He had instinctively known she must not touch the light source, but whether it was his own sudden greed, or preservation of his friend that had driven him to slam her against the earth with his own body weight, he was not sure.

“Close your eyes!” Heledir ordered the stranger. The light persisted to gently press against his eyelids, trying to seduce them to open again, and he barked the order in an even sharper voice.

The light disappeared for a moment before it came back again, just as persistent as before. The creature had blinked, he realised.

“Close your eyes and keep them closed!” he snarled in a harsher tone of voice then he imagined himself possible of producing. At his back he felt the rumble, and his ears perceived Urion repeat, he presumed, the order in Quenya.

The light immediately winked out, and immediately his head cleared. The contrast was stark; he could think beyond adoring and obsessing over how beautiful that light had been. But he also wanted to weep for its loss, and demand the creature open their eyes again.

“What black witchcraft was that?” Angalph asked, rather than be subjected to another one of those thunderous silences.

“Morgoth could not possibly have bred something like that…” Urion muttered shakily, like a warm blanket on Heledir’s back as the cold of the night swept back in. It made their sweat, now sticking their clothes to their skin, clammy.

“But the only thing I have seen such a light from… it is impossible. No it is not possible in the slightest way. The Valar must have been giving us a sign not to kill this Golodh.”

Heledir did not question, he was suddenly too tired to even think. He stared at the curled figure for the longest time, head throbbing, and his skin feeling sore like it did whenever he spent too much time under the blazing sun without his covering robes.

 “We’ll take him with us…” he sighed.

---

They entered the clearing three walking, one injured, and left three walking, two injured.

The Golodh had cried out pitifully when Heledir had picked him up, Urion now clinging to Tiriel’s back.

His group watched their leader carefully adjust over-long legs, and arms so they did not drag or swing uncomfortably. Heledir was the tallest and best suited to carrying such a large person while Tiriel had not carried Urion since the morning, and was well rested.

Urion could see the guilt beginning to manifest in the three other hunters; the nausea beginning to rise at how quickly they had turned and tried to act on thoughts of murder. 

Perhaps after millennia of not paying attention Eru Illuvatar had noticed that his beloved first children were happily offing one another without any hint of hesitation. Perhaps the All Father had moved to try and correct the problem.

Urion could give no other explanation for what was too precise to be a string of bad luck or bad maintenance amongst a group of people whose meticulous care of their weapons could mean survival or death. He himself had tried, reluctantly, to wound the stranger to test this theory.

With bile rising in his throat he had crawled over to the figure while Angalph and Tiriel argued against bringing the stranger with them. Urion had tried to unsheathe his dagger, concentrating on thoughts of how he would carefully send the sharp, straight blade between the stranger’s ribs, and through a lung into the heart.

The dagger had promptly caught on something in its customised sheath. Despite how gently he had been drawing the blade out, the catch had yanked his wrist hard enough to make it ache. The feeling in the air had been downright recriminating all at once, and he had felt like a child caught doing something he knew he was not allowed to do.

Heledir adjusted his burden and glanced at Angalph.

“Go ahead and tell them what we have found…” he ordered. Angalph hung a refilled water skin from his belt, before the young hunter was off, disappearing into the trees as quick a moonbeam.

Though they had been sure of a happy return when they had broken camp that morning, they now walked into an unsure reception, hearts conflicted.

---

The child had just entered that slightly difficult stage of childhood where he yearned for independence yet needed a parent’s constant attention. It was a dark night, and he was caught with indecision, wanting to sleep alone but not wanting to miss out on the warmth of sharing a bedroll with his mother.

That was the night when the monster came.

Angalph, whom he knew vaguely as a hunter, arrived first. Angalph was alone, sending a thrill of worry through him that his ada was not there.

After that the adults had gone into a huddle, and talked about adult things in soft, excited voices which suddenly became tense and angry. What ever bubble of excitement in the child for his father’s return popped, and dread trickled through his limbs.

There were none of the usual welcoming songs in the encampment, when the much awaited group had arrived with an extra member.  Just tense silence, watching eyes and hands lingering on knives. His father, whom he admired very much, did not even whistle his usual returning tune. Instead his ada strode straight towards the child’s mother, carrying a naked, blistered bundle of flesh. 

“Go find your grandmother and ask her to finish braiding your hair…” his mother ordered tersely, already reaching for the large pack she carried. It was full of jars of medicine, and cloth that he had not seen her use before despite the fact she was a healer.

The child resented being hurried away, and badly wanted to greet his father whom he had not seen in two weeks. He took two rebellious steps towards the man instead of away towards his grandmother, and the sight and smell struck him like a blow to the gut. There was the char lingering on the bony arch of a foot, the bubbling of blisters on a hip, and the meaty stink flowing through the air.

He wrinkled his nose and blinked away tears, shaken enough by the sight of his father carrying what looked like a sack made out of raw meat, to obey without his usual backtalk. He left his mother’s fire, and ran to the fire where his grandmother had set herself with her friends for the night. 

“Ai! Tathar my darling, were you frightened?” she asked when he arrived, lifting up her blanket for him and he was happy to burrow beneath it with her, and press his face to her neck. Tathar was not actually his name. His gradmother called him Tathar for the trees she had adored in Doriath, and he answered more readily to that nickname, finding no attachment to his mother’s name despite it being given to him within an hour of his birth.

There was still, under the smell of travelling, the sweet scent of the perfumed lotion his grandmother used. He wriggled closer still, and breathed in deep so that it cleared the wretched smell away from his head as she rubbed his back gently.

“Nana-i-ada is it an úan?” he whispered softly.

“No darling, that is someone just like you or I. They are badly injured though, burnt by fire, which is why they are like that.” Tathar did not believe her but nodded, and let her soft voice lull him into a restless sort of revelry, while her fingers carefully redid his unravelled sleeping braids.

---

Nellaeweth, for all her reassuring of her grandson, did not fall as easily asleep. She remained awake, staring at his small head, and marvelling at the downy softness of a child’s hair between her fingers. Then at the sound of people whispering harshly, she forced herself upright to look over the barrier of her pack, towards Tuilinnel’s fire where her son was still standing, withstanding a verbal assault while his wife hurriedly brought out her supplies.

It was a given people would take issue with a potential enemy in the camp, no matter how wounded. Gorfaron, who had survived the sacking of Doriath with her, had been advocating giving the wounded one a swift death. It was not mercy, though, that drove him to stare balefully at the figure, hands toying with a knife.

To his dismay, however the vote had been put forward before Heledir had arrived, and the stranger was welcome for now. Nellaeweth swallowed a little, a chill in her stomach. 

‘Úan?’ Tathar had asked; ‘monster?’, and perhaps that was what had now been brought beneath the safety of the trees.

All she saw was the reddened skin, and blisters on a weak, and wounded body in her son’s arms, but that body could easily belong to the men that had broken open her home in the guise of a windstorm.

A windstorm made out metal blades. 

“At least clean it so we do not have to endure its smell!” Gorfaron, unsatisfied at being denied the death of the Golodh, snarled from his side of the fire. Then he glanced towards his mother who was resting in the shadows, eyes shut as they were wont to in these years, with his father dead from a golodh blade through the gut.

Gorfaron’s eyes caught the light, and smouldered with the blood lust he held for all those of Feanorian origin.

“Be at peace Gorfaron,” Heledir sighed, and hefted the bundle again against his chest, shushing it like a babe when it mewled in pain, “we do not know if this is one of the Feanorians; we do not know if it is a Golodh at all.” 

True in some ways. Wrong in so many others. Such was the beauty of a white lie.

“No others have such a height to them,” Gorfaron indicated to the long legs that hung over Heledir’s arms as awkwardly as broken branches.

“Plenty of Silvan and Sinda have such a height: Beleg had such a height, as did Mablung. You shame both with your wish for more violence when we seek to escape it!” Nellaeweth snarled, the anger hitting her need to whisper and rasping across her vocal cords in a harsh manner. She moved away from her bedroll, leaving her grandson cuddling the cloak she had been using as a pillow with the hopes that he would not wake.

She did not like the strained look in her son’s eyes as Gorfaron snapped at him. She was not close to Heledir, she was mother in name only, having born him and given him to the two men who had raised him as soon as he had been weaned. But as weak as their relationship might be, she would not have someone savage her son like this; even verbally, and for simply being a honourable man.

It put her on the attack. 

Tuilinnel was giving her a relieved look as Nellaeweth continued to make Gorfaron back up with her words. Varda bless, no matter what happened, her son always had a steadfast supporter in his wife, thought Nallaeweth.

Nellaeweth had raised Tuilinnel to be loyal, but of her own mind and Tuilinnel’s mind was clearly made here. It was in the determined skilful way her former foster daughter now took her knife to a green branch to make a sturdy splint for the clearly broken arm crossed over their guest’s chest.

“We will take him…” there was a pause as Tuilinnel glanced at the slightly twitching body that she was unsure of the gender of“…to the river to clean him, and dress his wounds. Naneth please continue to take care of Tathar for me.” 

“You do not even need to ask,” Nellaeweth reassured her, and retreated back to her bedroll with one last glare at Gorfaron. There she tucked her grandson back against her chest with a small sigh.

Tathar twined his hands into her hair with a sleepy grumble, tugging on it unconsciously until she lowered her head, and pressed kisses to the wrinkle between his eyes. When Nellaeweth, proud grandmother at last, had first seen Tathar take his stumbling steps with that odd swaying gait he had all through toddlerhood, she had immediately thought of the lost swaying fronds of the willows in Doriath’s pleasure gardens. The temptation to call him after such had been too great, and had been unable to stop herself.

The name had stuck until even his mother used it instead of the beautiful insight name she had gifted her child, and Nallaeweth felt a pang of guilt that her nickname had usurped her daughter-in-marriage’s insight name.

Nallaeweth’s lips lingered till the wrinkle smoothed and Tathar slid back into reverie.  Behind her the sound of Heledir’s footsteps as he began to walk away towards the river with the wounded one disappeared. 

Nellaeweth’s ears were tuned to the sounds of the river, and though Heledir and Tuilinnel had taken themselves further down the stream so they did not disturb the encampment, Nellaeweth still heard the scream, as water was applied to tender flesh of their guest.

The shriek stirred the camp; hands unconsciously going to bows, and knives as some stirred from reverie but as soon as they ascertained it was only some poor soul having their wounds taken care of they were resting again, as much as they could.

Nellaeweth still remained sleepless as she listened to the soft sobs come from downstream; the little screams and wordless cries of pain. Tuilinnel knew her healing, she was a recipient of the Mithril fibulae from Menegroth’s Great House of Healing, and would be doing nothing that could do the stranger further harm. The treatment would not be pleasant though.

 Another scream, long and drawn out, then another which petered out into a whimper. 

Nellaeweth clasped Tathar closer, and pressed her spare hand against her ear turned into the air so she could block the sound; try and break the focus of her attention. The night closed in with breathing all around her, and the distant screaming nearby.  Her memory began to travel a dark and terror filled path.

With the small body against her breast, she was back in the toy-closet; in the dark, with as many children as she could grab from the communal playroom she had been overseeing crowded about her, whilst the second sack of Doriath devoured the world outside the flimsy teak doors.

---

Tuilinnel had not experienced anything like this before.

She had assumed the stranger was male for lack of breasts, yet as she debrided the infected gashes, and burns that needed the harsh treatment, she realised that there were indeed small breasts on a chest she was sure had been flatter than her husbands.

Those shoulders also seemed far more slender than her first glance had told her. With reluctance she nudged apart the stranger’s tense thighs.

Female then.

The thought made her feel sicker than the thought of this treatment inflicted upon a male, though she knew from what she had heard that there had been plenty of female warriors amongst the Feanorians, most of whom had been just as feral as the males.

Then as she checked the less severe burns on the woman’s stomach her wrist had brushed against a very male organ. She glanced down, rechecking what she thought she had felt.

 No that was not possible.

But her eyes could not lie about what they saw: she had ascertained that the stranger was female, but now the chest was completely flat again, the shoulders broader, and there was no mistaking what lay limply against one burn mottled thigh.

“Heledir?” her voice wavered a little as she glanced at her husband, gesturing to the stranger’s genitals.

“It is an úan,” he muttered “,how am I supposed to know why this…” he gestured to the stranger’s chest.

Tuilinnel thought he was gesturing to the reappearance and disappearance of the stranger’s breasts, but then she realised he had not noticed the change at all.

She squinted to where he was pointing and realised why he might be distracted from such a noticeable thing. 

All first born seemed to glow slightly when surrounded by darkness, the song of Eru Illuvatar and their own strong faer moved just beneath the skin, manifesting as a slight luminescence.

Their stranger however…

There was the glow she had expected, rising from the surface of the skin, and then a further glow, more like a patch of deeper brightness, subtle and almost lost beneath the first luminescence.

 She startled when she realised that the glow was coming from within their stranger, from their core it seemed. There were dusky shadows cast across their chest she had assumed were cast by the moon through branches above them, but with this discovery her healers knowledge could now identify the shadows as backlit ribs… and when she looked further, peered deeper past the ribs, she could see… movement.

It was the stranger’s heart and lungs. Their heart beat like any other, the light giving her a shadowy, barely there outline to observe its pulsing. Chambers contracted, than pushed out laboriously to send blood about the body, while a ghostly shape inflated and deflated over it in time with the stranger’s breathing.

Beneath one of her hands, which had paused on a bony jutting hip, the bone moved beneath the skin, the skin itself stretched with the movement. The skin seemed to mould itself around the new skeletal structure with no marks to indicate any strain.

She pulled back from the distraction of seeing living organs and saw that, yes, there were the small breasts again, and the penis she knew she had seen was no longer there. 

The healer in her was fascinated, for it was a rarity indeed that even a healer saw organs that were still pulsing with life.

The rest of her felt nauseated. She found what she saw grotesque and frightening. The alien ability of switching between both genders alarmed her.

“Why did you not kill it?” she hissed to her husband, who paused where he was carefully washing ash and dirt from the flesh on the creature’s neck. The thing’s neck had not been as brutally burned, and could withstand the treatment.

His hand was large on the jutting vertebra at the nape; he could likely snap the bone in a moment.

Tuilinnel was a healer who had made vows before Melian; had made an oath to do no harm to those vulnerable and to heal those who were in need, as the Queen had demanded all healers bow. But in this moment she forgot it.

This… this was not… not natural! She should not have to consider it a patient! Her hand clenched for a moment, and her nails pierced her palm. The pain shocked her out of the dark spiral of her thoughts, and deep shame flooded her.

An oath was an oath, not a trivial, easily broken promise.

“We tried,” her husband looked at her for a moment and she rocked back on her feet at the look in his eyes, so terrified yet with a foreign hunger to it, “but we could not.”

---

“Close your eyes…” Heledir ordered his wife, when they had bandaged and cared for as much as they could.

He had washed himself as well, and felt the cleanest he had in a long time; stronger, like the chaos the stranger had brought had also been cleaned away. He also felt more sure about what he was doing.

He raised his hand to the unconscious, slackened face, and pressed his thumb beneath an eyelid so he could roll it up. He noticed in a shocked, back part of his mind, the rest of him now numb to the surprises their guest had, that even the stranger’s eyelashes had been burned away.

He expected another burst of light, and was tense, ready to dig his thumb in, if need be, to stop its siren call. Instead he gazed into eyes glazed with unconsciousness, the hue of the iris that the dilated pupil nearly swallowed, an unremarkable shade of grey.

 It was such a mundane colour, and such a normal looking eye. At first he thought perhaps Urion had been correct, and the light had been a sign from a divine providence.

Then he saw a flicker of cobwebbed silver. He looked deeper into the grey iris, and saw the flutter of light again. He watched it pulse, building like lightening builds within the cover of thick, dark storm clouds. He shivered.

The sight was twice as menacing in the unknowing of when it would unleash itself and strike.

---

Tathar woke up earlier then he usually did and peered around the camp sleepily.

Why was he sleeping in his grandmother’s bedroll instead of between his mother and father? 

Shouldn’t his father be here?

Oh! He was!

Father was back!

Tathar wriggled out of his grandmother’s arms, as he remembered ,then came to a halt two steps away as he remembered what had happened after his father’s return.

 His stomach felt horrible for a moment, and the child rubbed his hands against his shirt because they were prickling with unease. He walked towards his parent’s bedrolls and paused, seeing a new bedroll covered only by a thin blanket.

 Oh… OH! Tathar’s feet diverted him, and he walked over silently to the curled up figure.

Grandmother had said the úan was just another of their own but… but… it couldn’t have been! This close to it, Tathar could see the blanket rising and falling with slow breathing, and he felt like running away.

What if it woke up and ate him?

His hand reached out to the corner of the blanket. He would just peek at it to see if grandmother was right (she couldn’t be) and then run back.

He wasn’t afraid of the monster… well maybe he was a little.

But he wasn’t a coward! Or a knock-kneed-buttercup! Or… what else had Barwen called Angalph that time he didn’t want to go walking in the dark? A virgin! He wasn’t that either! … Whatever that meant! 

He grasped the corner before he could change his mind and pulled it back.

He stared… into quite a normal looking face, except the skin was quite red in some places. Tathar couldn’t help it, he was disappointed. 

The newcomer’s head was quite weird, he tried to cheer himself up with this thought as he looked for any sign the stranger was more than what it seemed.

There was no hair… it was just… skin! That didn’t seem right. How could you not have hair? Everybody had hair! He poked a little of the bared scalp, and got a half-hearted moan from the stranger.

Warm hands suddenly grasped him about the middle, causing him to shriek and the stranger to jerk in their sleep. 

Tathar was yanked away, against a large, sturdy chest and his nose picked up a familiar scent, and a familiar warmth that had his toes curling and relief running through him like honey.

“You should know better than that son,” Heledir rumbled to his naughty child, then grunted in surprise as his son flipped over like a snake in his hold, and flung his arms around his shoulders exuberantly.

“AD-” he quickly pressed hand over Tathar’s mouth, forestalling the shout.

“Morning voices…” Heledir whispered gently in reminder, walking back to lie beside Tuilinnel again.

“Adar,” the boy whispered correctly, beaming at him and wriggling even closer, settling easily between his parent’s warm bodies. Oh he had missed his son. Sweet love and relief swept through him, and he felt even more at home than he had walking into the camp. There had been something missing from his return, and that missing thing was now here, curling his fingers into Heledir’s loosened hair, and near trembling with happiness.

Heledir smiled back, pressing a kiss to Tathar’s brow as his son set about whispering to him a detailed update of everything he had been doing while Heledir was away.

Heledir tried not to linger on the awful thrill of dread he had gotten when he had seen Tathar crouched over the stranger, easy as he pleased, even prodding it.

Tuilinnel was right, one day Tathar would cause Heledir’s heart to pop straight out of his chest from his antics.