Mythmoot Mathoms by Dawn Felagund

Love There Too

Olórin comes upon a young Finwë and Míriel at Cuivíenen. This ficlet is for Dreamflower, who asked for "Olorin back when he used to walk among the Elves unseen."

Love There Too

"But of Olórin that tale does not speak; for though he loved the Elves, he walked among them unseen, or in form as one of them, and they did not know whence came the fair visions or the promptings of wisdom that he put into their hearts."

-the Valaquenta

It's not the path I usually go down. But for some reason, that day I whipped from the meadows where I played as a breeze among the flowers and headed for the dark fringe of forest. And that was how I found them.

I knew of them, of course. Oromë had not long ago discovered them, and there had been much debate over what to do with them since. But I did not expect their voices to be as they were, accustomed as I was to the chatter of the birds and the complex and arduous speech characteristic of my kindred. I listened to their thoughts, perceived the colors and textures familiar from the minds of my own kind—although the thoughts of the Quendi moved faster, folding upon themselves, diving within themselves, mercurial and capricious—and marveled at how they distilled such complexity into such precision, such brevity, such beauty as was their speech.

There were two of them near a rivulet. The maiden was engrossed in rinsing a dye from some threads she had colored; the man was broad-shouldered and wore some kind of circlet upon his head made from twisted metal and set awkwardly with unpolished and uncut stones. He grasped a tree branch and so suspended himself—his toes in only barest contact with the bank—over the rivulet so that his reflection shimmered beneath her work. He was asking her questions and she was explaining what she was doing: how she combined the berries with the crushed shells she found further up the rivulet, one giving a vivid hue and the other sealing it into the threads. How she'd discovered this; the precise procedure she used. Her mind skipped like a stone upon a flat pond and her speech was quick and precise to match; she was used to the others being intimidated by her, finding her aloof and hard to know, and beneath the quick rhythm of her thoughts was a slow seething confusion over why he cared so much for the dyeing of threads and why she cared so much to keep talking so that he might not leave her side.

I stood for a while beside them and watched, until the dye stopped unfurling, crimson, down the rivulet and the maiden ran out of words to say about it and so lifted the whole dripping mass from the water with hands that trembled with more than cold. Her discontent was heavy and gray upon her thoughts like the weight of a stone.

But I saw into his thoughts too: a mind also busy—wondering ever what lay over the next hill, around the next bend in the path—and hands to match, bandaging the broken wing of a bird or stringing a bow for a child or chipping a knife slowly from stone. Wishing always to fix things, to make them better. Yet his mind calmed around her, for he saw nothing to fix and only, in fact, felt a rare pang of inadequacy.

I have never preferred the shadows of the forest and my meadow compelled me back, but before I went, I felt them each wonder about their regard in the heart of the other, and I touched my mind, albeit briefly, to each of theirs in turn to say: There is love there too.