Atanatari: Of the Three Houses of the Edain by Himring

A Hard Time for Healing

A drabble sequence on Brandir the Lame, healer and later Warden of Brethil, and his family, from the time of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad to the arrival of Turin in Brethil.

Drabbles written for the prompt sequence "Celebrate" at Tolkien Weekly (on LiveJournal), but despite this somewhat dark in parts.

Rating: Teens. Warning for major character death and mature themes.

[The drabbles are in chronological sequence of the events described rather than as written.
The individual prompts are given in italics in parenthesis after the drabble title.]

A Lost Battle (Nirnaeth Arnoediad)
(Homecoming)

'This batch of mead came out really well, Beldis,’ said Gloredhel. ‘It will serve for the feast when Haldir comes home!’
Brandir was too young to drink mead. He loved his grandmother, who filled the house with her golden presence, as loud in anger as in laughter.
News came. Suddenly, Grandmother became very quiet and Brandir’s mother took over. Life in Brethil was never easy—that year, when neither Grandfather nor the rest of his men came home, things were hard indeed.
Men said Gloredhel died of grief. Beldis, her daughter-in-law, said she died of a weakened constitution and pneumonia.

A Young Healer
(Coming of Age)

The night had been long. Brandir went to fetch water and was the first to see his father’s men return. Relief washed over him again.
Dorlas and Hunthor joined Brandir by the pump. Dorlas was elated.
‘I killed my first orc!’
‘We were lucky,’ said Hunthor. ‘No losses… You, though, look exhausted, Brandir.’
‘Hunleth’s fever broke just after midnight. She’ll live.’
Brandir smiled. That, too, had been a first: Beldis had begun trusting him with the dangerously ill.
He noticed Dorlas’s blood-stained sleeve.
‘Let me see.’
‘It’s only a scratch!’
Brandir said, with a healer’s authority:
‘Orc scratches need treatment.’

A Wiser Man
(Birth)

The birth had been an ordeal. And when the child came, it was club-footed.
‘You will celebrate his birth as much as if he were straight-limbed,’ his mother demanded, white-faced on her pillows.
‘Yes, yes’ the young father promised her, faithfully.
But later, alone with Brandir, he blurted out:  ‘Already, he is precious to me. But how will he live? The shadow in the North grows long and he cannot fight.’
Then he flushed deeply, glancing at Brandir’s leg, but added, with rising hope:
 ‘Maybe he will grow up to be wise, like you? And maybe it will be enough.’

A Dying Princess (Finduilas)
(Winning)

‘We won! We won,’ Dorlas insisted. ‘Only—they killed the prisoners before we could free them.’
Despite the grime and blood, she was royal, golden. There was nothing at all Brandir could do for her. He wiped her brow, burnt a little incense supposed to help clear the mind and said: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ the elf-woman answered. ‘No, good friend, rejoice with me! I shall not see the inside of Angband! I knew too well what it had done to a good man and feared it greatly.’
Then a spasm went through her and she said: ‘Mormegil. Tell the Mormegil…’

A Dangerous Patient (Turin)
(Death)

‘Why was it not given to me to fall in battle against Glaurung? Then, whatever else anyone said of me, they would have praised me for dying a death worthy of my forebears!’
That was the only thing the Mormegil had said to Brandir in all those weeks.  The time he did not spend wrapped in dark dreams, he spent in stubborn silence, his face turned to the wall. The Mormegil wished to die—and sometimes Brandir wondered why he was putting up a fight for his life.
Did not his own forebodings warn him of the doom Turin carried?

After his accident, leaning on his crutch, Brandir had lamented that he would never be a hero and a warrior like his father and grandfather
But Beldis said: ‘My brother, the uncle I named you for, was neither renowned nor did he fall in outright battle. Fools may die a celebrated death. Living may take more courage—and more wisdom.’
Groaning, Brandir hoisted himself up from Turin’s bedside. Turin turned his head. Brandir saw pity in his eyes and, although Brandir did not want pity, by that, he was sure Turin was going to live--nor could he regret it.

An Unknown Visitor
(Marriage or Alliance)

‘Elven manners or not, if indeed the Mormegil is Turin, you are kin,’ said Hunleth. ‘And not as distantly as all that! Your grandmother was his great-aunt and your great-aunt his grandmother. That was a celebrated wedding—that feast when your grandfathers married each other’s sisters!  But that is not all, Brandir, for you are also kin on your mothers’ side! Both of you are descended from Bregor of Ladros.’
‘He does not acknowledge name or kinship,’ said Hunthor.
‘He seeks to escape the name,’ said Brandir.
‘Guest or kin, I find him somewhat lacking in true courtesy,’ observed Hunleth.

Chapter End Notes

Brandir's relatives (as his paternal grandmother Gloredhel of the House of Hador, his mother Beldis of the House of Beor, his elder cousin Hunleth and his younger cousin Hunthor) are all canonical, but some of them are only mentioned in HoME (retrieved via Tolkien Gateway, which has some helpful family trees).
Brandir, Hunleth and Hunthor all descend from Halmir, Warden of Brethil, Brandir's great-grandfather. Hunleth is of the same generation as Brandir's parents.