Neighbourly Relations by Himring

Epilogue: Aegnor to Andreth

Unlike the previous chapter, the Epilogue is set a little time before the outbreak of the Dagor Bragollach.

Canonicity issues: see end notes

I saw you first at Tarn Aeluin, as I walked beside your father along the shore. You were playing with your cousins, chasing each other in a game of tag. A spray of gravel and small pebbles flew from your quick feet as you swerved to avoid capture. As you ran, you laughed with the joy of the game.

I loved you then. Should I have said anything? You were young even by the standards of the Edain. I waited. It is a thing we do, we Noldor.

You grew older and, for one brief hot summer, we waded among the reeds in Lake Aeluin together and climbed  the steep slopes among the pines to stand gazing out over the land and let the breeze touch our faces. Only, by then, I could see all too clearly what was coming. Not to tell you would have amounted to a lie, so I did.

 ‘Then let us marry right away and have children,’ you replied immediately.

It is the way of your kin. That is how they survive among the dangers of Middle-earth, begetting children in the face of disaster. They live in the present and promise each other eternity.

I tried to see it your way. But I am a Noldo, too literal-minded. I could not make myself speak promises I knew I would have to break. You took it that I did not love you—or that I did not love you as you wished to be loved.

Andreth, Andreth, I am still out here among the pines. It is you who stay in the house, learning the bitter lore of your kin and looking for lines in your face in the mirror. But your heart has aged more quickly than your face. And it seems that is my fault. Perhaps it is my punishment.

And now my time is running out more quickly than yours. Death draws closer, day by day, to me and to those I learned to love. There is little I can do to stem that tide, however hard I try.

And yet, Father, if you were to reach out your hand now and offer to pull me to safety in Valinor, I would not come. I have fallen far too far in love with short-lived things. I could not endure life in slow, sad Valinor again.

For here it is in everything: around me the pines, the welling streams, the mountain air itself, all ache with mutability. Even the rocks I stand on already dream of falling, being submerged by the sea.

So let me fall with them and merely hope that, as we fall, we will still be held, together.

Chapter End Notes

This will pass only as canonical if you are willing to accept that neither Finrod nor Andreth in the Athrabeth are entirely reliable witnesses to what happened between Aegnor and Andreth. And I have to confess that it grew in my head at a time when I didn't have Morgoth's Ring with me and ever since then it has refused to budge.

However, I will say that even when I was reading the Athrabeth first time, Finrod seemed to me suspiciously certain about what was going on in his brother's head. I would have trusted his account more if he had claimed to know less. Andreth is a different case: she says far less, but she is clearly very bitter.

If you wish to decide for yourself that it is my Aegnor who is the unreliable witness, you are welcome to do so.