Édebar by Urloth

It was prince Ñolofinwë’s fifth visit that broke Eärwen.

Not in any dramatic way but her mother came to find her and found her huddled up under her bed sobbing and rocking herself as much as she could given the limited space beneath her bed and the tight curled up position she had assumed.

Her breaking was due to a number of factors, in hindsight. A lack of sleep and the heightening dread that had overcome her when her father had gently asked her about her feelings in regards to the Prince Arafinwë were the main two factors. Others certainly had their part in the eventual sobbing mess she became one mingling.

It was not the first time her father had asked her about Arafinwë, it was not even the tenth. Prince Ñolofinwë’s visits usually lead to a plethora of such questions. He usually asked her as they had enjoyed the after dinner wine that was served, for Eärwen a new treat she was still discovering. However he wasn’t limited to that. He asked her during the morning meal sometimes. He asked her when sometimes coming across her reading in the garden outside her quarters.

That night had been the first time he had added a reference to the truly staggering debt that he felt was still owed King Finwë for … basically all of Alqualondë; its infrastructure, its original docks which had allowed it to expand enough to create its now famous seascape, and the original houses that had stopped the late Teleri from simply expiring on the coast before they could plant their feet.

And how nice it would be if he could do something… just something. And look at how close Arafinwë was to their family. Would it not be nice if Arafinwë could truly be a part of their family?

Then he mentioned that Prince Ñolofinwë had already come to discuss the grooms-gild that would be settled on Prince Arafinwë’s marriage… if such a marriage happened.

He was such a nice young man Eärwen. Your brother’s best friend Eärwen. I wish you knew him better but I supposed it’s not the done thing for a girl to be close to her brother’s friends. But you at least already know him. What do you think?

And thus she curled up beneath her bed and let herself fall apart messily for reasons she didn’t like thinking about too much.

“Oh dear,” her mother sighed over her, calling for a maid to help drag Eärwen, covered in dust (the cleaning staff were later disciplined) from beneath the sturdy frame of the bed, “he’s been a little forceful I admit but really Eärwen you’re at such an age that you should be ready for this. Dry your tears, I think you need a little time away from the palace. I’ll arrange for a retreat to Édebar for you to clear your head.”

Eärwen was cleaned up and then just like that, Eärwen’s bags were packed, with a messenger already sent ahead. Osanwë enhanced by a Noldor far-reach stone meant that the messenger had not even begun the return trip as Eärwen was being bundled onto a horse with two of her father’s favourite’s on either side of her to make sure she reached her destination.

Though the dust and grime beneath the bed had been cleaned from her and her clothes had been changed, by the time she reached the horse she was dirtied anew, garden dirt on her skirts and also a caking of blood and a little bit of flesh beneath her nails.

Her brother’s face would heal eventually. He had been gracious enough to simply flip her over and pin her to the ground rather than retaliate with any force despite her inflicting her nails upon him.

Édebar was a tidal island. It had been a resting place of the Lady Uinen who had gifted it to a group of those who had pledged devotion to her to create a sanctuary for those who were mentally distressed or unhappy to find peace again. It was a far more discrete option than the long trip to Lorien, and Lorien was usually reserved for extreme cases.

Girls crying about their marriage prospects was not considered extreme.

Édebar was not unfamiliar with treating young ladies for the hysterics that might occur as the prospect of marriage loomed before them. Eärwen was less than enthusiastic about the prospect. She had never left Alqualondë once in her life.

“Well now is a perfect time,” her father said, unable to look her in the eyes, “there is no guarantee you will live in Alqualondë all of your time.”

So just like that it was done. Eärwen had imagined the first time she left her home. It was to have been some sort of adventure, perhaps at the side of her sister Umëawen who was frequently to Tirion and to Taniquetil, the diplomatic treasure of her parent’s brood.

Being packed up as a dirty secret and ushered out onto the roads at the most intense time of the mingling when the streets of Alqualondë were deserted was not how it was meant to be. She was not filled with excitement as they reached the furthest part of Alqualondë that she had ever had a reason to stray to.

Tol Eressëa was in the distance if they looked left out over the great harbour, and though she had been there, visiting that isle did not count as leaving Alqualondë in her mind. There was a connection, unseen but felt, between the island community and the mainland.

There was no such connection between Alqualondë and the lonely looking isle in a northern situated bay. They rode through Laurelin’s dominance and well into the next mingling to make it to the isle in time for the tides to be right, but the water was still too high to cross when they arrived. They waited at a tavern, Eärwen sitting between her escorts with her cloak drawn up over her head to cover her distinctive hair, and ate their way through a platter of periwinkles.

Or they tried to, but the atmosphere was disturbing in the little town that likely existed only to service the retreat on the isle. The light here was less prevalent, and Eärwen found her eyes were beginning to ache as she adjusted to the gloomy cast everywhere. The shadows everywhere were three times the size that she was used to, and lay entirely at odds with what she expected from shadows. They stretched out, yawning and greedy, over the ground instead of staying compactly next to the object casting them.

Eärwen had heard of the northernmost lands of Aman and their shadow drenched chill. Alqualondë was constantly lit with violets and blues as the light of the trees filtered through the distance between them both. The light of her home had threads of tell-tale silver and gold to it to mark which tree was prevalent, but such threads were lacking here on the northern coast. Instead the light made an attempt at gold and silver, but ended up a muted, dingy, and sallow nothingness.

It didn’t help her feelings of unease or quell her longing to go straight back to Alqualondë.

The plate of periwinkles was empty and the bowl for the shells full by the time the tide was low, even with the atmosphere affecting their appetites. They set out, following a stone road that had been uncovered by the retreated water, and Eärwen feared the entire time that her horse would slip on the wet stone.

It took them one turn of a sand clock to reach the isle and the sturdiness of the dry road leading up the slope of it. Eärwen nearly flattened herself to her horse’s neck in relief. She was near to flattening herself to the horse anyway. She had been awake through two minglings and a turn of each of the trees. Her joints were aching and her head was pounding. The gloominess of the isle drew on her eyelids, trying to close them. By the time she was helped off her horse she wasn’t sure if her legs would support her.

She was lead through a quiet hall where she saw people sitting in fanned wicker chairs, and the hushed murmurs of quiet, calm conversation rustled around them.

She was undressed without much protest at being treated by a child, and the bed seemed to rise up to meet her.

She slept immediately and deeply, and rose only once to relieve herself, groaning in protest as her body informed her that a whole tree’s dominance of riding wasn’t something she’d ever done in her life.

-

The next morning a gentle hand on her shoulder roused her.

She gently batted at her mother’s shaking, moaning into her pillow. The blinds drawn against the tree light had her room nicely gloomy, the perfect environment to simply nap all day.

It wasn’t like she had anything she needed to do anyway.

Umëawen was away and Mairolwë h-

She opened her eyes and looked at the woman looming over her, then shrieked and jerked away because she could not place her anywhere in Eärwen’s acquaintance.

The room was unfamiliar. The bed was too narrow, the walls too plain with only a single tapestry of waves that Eärwen would never have allowed hung in her personal quarters.

“Pardon me,” the woman bowed a little, bemused but not alarmed at Eärwen’s reaction. Her clothing was sewn from a plain beige cloth and a style that couldn’t be mistaken as being anything other than the uniform of a holy order, “I am the attendant on this floor and I noted that you were allocated time in the tidal pools this morning.”

Eärwen just blinked, mouth tacky and sore from how dry it was and her heart still racing.

“I understand you arrived at towards the end of a mingling,” the attendant was opening the curtains which were thin and would not have kept the light back in Alqualondë. Opening them barely affected the prevalent gloom in the room as it was, “But it has been a full turn of Telperion and another mingling since you arrived. It is unhealthy to sleep so long. Please arise.”

There was a plain looking wardrobe which the attendant opened. Eärwen recognised the shift pulled out as one of hers.

“Oh,” the woman lay the shift out on the end of her bed, then a wrap-dress to cover it, the type usually worn by those intending to go swimming “Your companions left mid Laurelin but they have left you a note, it is in your bureau. Drying linens are provided at the tidal pools. Will you require a guide there?”

“Aah,” Eärwen opened and shut her mouth, overwhelmed, “I don’t know where they are… yes?”

“I will wait down the corridor for you to change.”

The door clicked shut. Eärwen was left to sit in silence, still stunned at the rate everything had changed.

She looked around the bare room, skin prickling in discomfort, then reached for the clothing since the air was so much colder than she was used to. The bureau wasn’t really a bureau. It was a narrow table. There were no drawers and there were no shelves. There was a lone bottle of ink and a small stack of paper. Next to this was an envelope but whatever it was she expected to be written by her father’s favourites she was disappointed to find that all they had left in ink was their apologies for not personally saying goodbye, and the knowledge that her stay was scheduled for a month and that the cloister that ran the retreat knew whom she was and would take care of her.

The final line of text informed her that her father wished for her to use the name Mairawen. He was worried that if it was known that she had gone to Édebar when the rumours of her impending betrothal to the Prince Arafinwë were so prevalent that it might hurt her prospects, and also cause problems for her kin. Her eldest niece was almost the same age as her, and they had to keep in mind her future prospects as well. A family relation suffering hysteria at the thought of marriage would easily offset any connection to the royal family, especially since her niece was the daughter of a younger daughter.

Eärwen bit her lip, turned the single page of the letter over, looking for more writing.

There was nothing.

Her stomach hurt a little and her hands had a slight tremble when she finally put the paper down, unsure of what else to do. There was a hollow feeling in her head, and she wondered if this was what ships felt like when they slipped their moorings and wound up drifting out to sea without their crew.

The corridor she stepped out into was eerily quiet. The attendant was not talkative, and moved in a bubble of silence that was impenetrable to Eärwen who had been raised to always put a respectable distance between herself and any person of the cloth.

They went down the corridor to a wide staircase that spiralled down to further hallways. It seemed a straightforward route but the walls blurred together, all the same white washed simplicity. By the time their feet moved from terracotta tiling to a blushing peach coloured tile with a shimmering glaze, Eärwen had forgotten whether they had descended three floors or four.

The quiet hall she remembered from the night before turned out to be far larger then she recollected, a cavernous space with small clusters of wicker chairs and pot plants with trellises to allow flowering vines to crawl up and give each cluster an illusion of privacy.

It was empty, at least she thought it was empty. There was no whisper of echoing voices through the room as she remembered earlier.

Where was everyone?

-

They walked out of the large sanctuary buildings and across a wide and well cared for lawn, the grass soft enough that Eärwen wondered for a moment if it might be a strange type of moss. They followed a path across it laid in a sandy type of stone, and then down a wooden ramp-way through the dunes which created a path across the stony beach to what looked like a massive canopy somehow suspended over the water.

The tidal-pools had not been left in their natural forms. They were carefully sculptured smooth and widened so each was likely a similar size. It was nice that bare feet could walk without fear of being shredded, Eärwen supposed. There was wide canvas set over them resting on poles she had not seen approaching the pools, to create shade from the reflection of tree light on the water added to the bizarre feeling. For one thing the tree light was not nearly strong enough that she thought it would create a glare.

It just felt wrong. Completely wrong. And looked wrong.

Eärwen looked down at the rock pool and then over her shoulder at the attendant who was hanging up her dress on a clothes horse in the little closed off area of land leading up to the carved (carved!) steps into the pools. There was a gate system she supposed that was closed during high tide to keep the water in once the water had gone out. She couldn’t see it though, or much beyond her rock pool since there were bright canvas screens set up for modesty.

Strange.

Bizarre.

Wrong.

Eärwen stepped into the water with a grunt of dismay at both the bitter chill of the water and the stagnant feeling of a tidal pool with not even a hint of tidal flow.

Her shift puffed up from the air caught in it and she irritatedly poked at the bubbles of fabric until it finally began to float out around her.

“Please let your body float naturally,” the attendant intoned, “and clear your mind of thought. Focus on the sounds of the water. This is a time for reflection in the mornings. You have come to us because of naturally occurring maidenly fears as your adulthood approaches. Let the water ease away some of your worry, and heal your distress.”

Eärwen tried not to roll her eyes. Her ears had that blocked feeling that meant that water had well gotten into them and the attendant’s voice, already bland, gained a tinny quality.

Did she have to do this every day?

She wasn’t sure exactly what her ‘maidenly fears’ were and how they were supposed to be healed. She simply … wished not to be married. To Arafinwë Finwion.

Marriage wasn’t something she objected to. Marriage wasn’t something she aspired to either.

Her sisters were married as was her only brother. Umëawen and her husband kept a house just outside the city for when they were in Alqualondë. Arawen and her husband lived on Tol Eressea. Mairolwë and his wife lived in the palace. With their examples and her parents she felt she had seen everything that marriage could offer. From what seemed like unfathomable love such as Arawen’s, to the uncomfortable travesty of Mairolwë’s.

And Mairolwë’s marriage was why she was uninterested in…

She glared up at the canvas, dim beige nothingness that gently moved from time to time with the wind. The water was warming up the longer she rested in it so that unpleasantness was slowly fading away. It still felt wrong though, to rest in salt water without movement.

Prince Arafinwë was the reason she was uninterested in…

It would be nice if there was a sunken bench or something. The feeling of water in Eärwen’s  ears was becoming slightly irritating. Maybe a chair that could be submerged.

She thought about her mother’s distemper at the summer humidity when Eärwen had just been old enough to wear her hair long, resulting in a formal dining suite ending up in the large fountain in the central courtyard. Her father had commissioned a bench to be installed around the rim of the fountain the next year before the summer had started.

She chuckled but the noise died out as she came back to herself and remembered where she was. And that there were sea-stars livelier than her.

Actually sea-stars were very lively if you waited and watched them on the reefs, lying and letting your body be rocked by the roll of the sea.

Eärwen deliberately breathed out and let her body just … sink.

And promptly discovered that these tidal pools were a lot more natural at the bottom than the sides.

She rose, coughing out water and desperately trying to get a startled hermit crab out from where it had tangled in her shift’s belt. Next to her pool there was a sudden explosion of water that managed to rise above the modesty screens. “Ma’m are you alright?” she heard the attendant ask.

There was an angry grunt and splashing violent enough that the modesty screen rippled from the force of the water hitting it. Eärwen, despite her earlier maudlin mood, couldn’t help a grin as there was further splashing and then a violent barked curse so foul that Eärwen could almost believe her mother’s tall story about profanity turning your spit to vinegar for a moment.

“Ma’m please don’t splash so much you will disturb the other guests. Please. Perhaps if you removed your wrap. I understand that in your condition you are modest about revealing yourself but you are perfectly safe behind the screens.”

-Poor you,- Eärwen thought to the Ma’m behind the screen, -I wonder why you are here.-

The splashing was dying down but wasn’t stilling. Eärwen detected an almost petulant tone to it, or really fancifully imagined a petulant tone to the occasional sharp splash against the stone.

“Please try and relax Ma’m, you need to rest during such a delicate time. Please let the water hold your body and clear your min-“

“Please go away,” a thickly accented voice interrupted her, “I don’t need instruction to float like a dead seal –“

-Dead seals get eaten before they float usually- Eärwen righted herself and gripped the side of her pool, leaning in to listen, interested.

“-and your voice carries further than you likely think. I will lie here and float until its suitable to get out. Thank you.”

“Very well.”

Eärwen marvelled at how the attendant’s voice hadn’t changed its smooth tone. Surely being dismissed like that would invoke some sort of ire. She flopped over, kicking out her feet and rest her chin on her arms where she was still clinging to the side of the tidal pool.

Well that had been in-

There was a curse word fouler than the one before, enough to make Eärwen’s eyes pop open and she had a brief flirtation with being scandalised for a heartbeat before curiosity won.

“Fucking piece of shit.”

The violent splashing that had introduced her neighbour started up again.

“Ma’m please be calm,” the attendant possibly hadn’t even stepped away from the canvases.

“My wedding ring is gone,” the accented voice rose in pitch with the last word, “the chain it is on is broken. The ring is gone!”

“Please be calm,” Eärwen snuck forward and wriggled her hand under the canvas, peeking under it and receiving a stunning view of…. wet cotton over shoulders and dark hair, “ma’m I will have the pool checked when you get out. We drain the pools as the tide goes out, your ring will be found.”

“When is low tide?” Eärwen pushed the canvas up a bit more, wanting to see the face that went with the accent, and that was when one of the poles holding up the canvas snapped, the screen came down on her back, and echoing across the gloomy canvas cavern she heard the chain reaction of wood, long exposed to sea air and sea water, giving in to time.

The previous quiet broke down into yells of surprise and annoyance, and a couple of screams of distress here and there.

With canvas and a broken pole against her back, Eärwen crawled forward and tipped herself headfirst into the pool in front of her.

She surfaced to look into two sets of eyes. One belonged to the attendant; as calm and meditative as before despite the increasing chaos, a rather pretty shade of hazel if Eärwen  thought about it, almond shapped in a narrow, strongly jawed face. The other eyes were wide and blue, set with a thick fan of lashes beneath generous brows in a heart shaped face.

This was the face she was far more interested in.

Because taking in the black hair snaking wildly out over wet shoulders that wore both shift and wrap defiantly, the sharpness of the nose and of course the accent informed her she was in the presence of a bonafide Noldor.

A real live Golodo.

That wasn’t Arafinwë Finwion or his brother.

The disappointment that she wasn’t looking at her very first Vanyar was minor in the face of such.

“He..hello,” she paddled to keep herself upright, “pardon me. Should I try and get your wedding ring?”

“Miss did you push up the canvas and cause the pole to snap?” the attendant inquired.

Eärwen dunked herself to avoid answering, and let herself sink down till her knees hit the sharp, natural rock bottom of the little pool. A foot nudged her cheek. She pushed it away, then steadied herself with it since it was available, her other hand feeling its way through the rough puckered stone for something unstone like. Something fell on her head from above and she caught it, running her fingers over the necklace chain.

Now, the ring. The ring.

Metal. Round. Hole in the middle. Ooh that felt like it was set with a stone. How fancy.

Wait was that it? She’d definitely found a ring of some sort. She should let go of the foot in her hand probably.

Eärwen gripped the ring in her hand till its metal edges pushed into the flesh of her palm and let go of the foot. Truly though it was small. She felt for her own foot, frowning at how much larger it felt. Then her lungs reminded her even she required breath and she let herself surface, looking for the stranger.

Those blue eyes had not become any narrower in her brief escape. Eärwen felt suddenly unnecessarily shy in the face of such a gaze and ducked her head to the broken necklace and the ring in her hand.

“It looks like the catch simply got loose, I think I can fix it,” she turned the loosened catch over, put it between her teeth, and bit down. It closed up. She dunked it in the tidal pool and then offered it proudly back to the Golodo.

Wide blue eyes blinked and then a hand that was both delicate and narrow and all the things Eärwen admired about her sister’s hands reached for the chain and took it, little finger slightly raised.

“Thank you,” the Golodo said, softly, and ducked her head with a blush coming to her cheeks that was probably modesty. Eärwen got the feeling that she might be sitting in a fake tidal pool amongst downed canvases and disrupted swimmers with a ~Lady~ of some variety. She was fond of ~ladies~. They were the best form of amusement in court since they were three parts delicate flower and one part a-piece-of-glass-deliberately-placed-in-your-shoe.

“Been here long?” Eärwen wanted to grasp onto the familiarity of such a disposition wrapped up in a foreign package and not let go.

“Ma’m…. Miss, we are clearing the pools so we can fix the canvases, if you would please…” the attendant’s voice, if the attendant had been a normal human, should have had a hint of censure in it, but it remained a placid lake.

Eärwen’s feet found the stairs first but she maintained some grip on her manners given how well they’d been beaten into her by a myriad of tutors and she turned and offered a hand to the Golodo to help her out of the pool

She had expected a delicate wrist to go with that delicate hand and she was not at all disappointed what she got in that respect, but what took her attention away from the blown glass elegance of the complicated join of hand to arm was the cuff of green-yellow-murky-dark that wrapped around the arm just beneath said wrist. The sodden sleeve of the wrap dress had covered it but raising her arm had dragged the material back when the sleeve around the upper arm remained like an anchor in the water.

A delicate hand pulled a sleeve quickly over it but the same effect pulled down the other sleeve to reveal the same thick circle of bruises. The Golodo looked at her and then with a visible swallow tilted her head up and walked past Eärwen, letting go of her hand and walking to collect one of the towels the attendant was offering.

Disheartened and confused Eärwen let her walk past, noting another interesting fact about the Golodo – she was pregnant. Enough to make her stomach bump out beyond what could be mistaken for having eaten too large of a breakfast. It put a further damper on her mood. Eärwen had guessed her to be the same age as herself.

Eärwen counted to ten in her head once the Golodo had gone out of sight and then collected her own towel, getting neither glare nor reprimand from the Attendant.

Guests with a little more stature could command a shaded table on the terraces in good weather. Here Eärwen sat, disinterestedly spearing her kelp salad, the view out across the ocean more appetising where she could see the vaguest hints of Alqualonde’s towers.

It had been… three days.

Three…

…days.

Not weeks.

Her visit was still just beginning.

She looked down at her hands which were still pruney from a morning spent idling in the tidal pools (with new poles and the attendant coughing every time she had swum too close to the modesty screens.)

The Sanctuary, she begrudgingly admitted, did seem to have a vested interest in healing. Even if they covered that cause of needing healing with words like “maidenly woes”, “feminine concerns”, “gentile displacements” and “anxieties from the mundane.”

What this meant was that after an unrousing talk from the attendant she had been told that she would have to take the first steps towards healing and talk of her worries. And no one would force her to speak.

Which meant largely being left to her own devices save for the morning dead-star-fish impression, mealtimes, and the evening prayer. Eärwen had taken to walking as far as the gentle walking tracks through the sanctuary would take her. In three days she’d managed to find every single termination point belonging to the gravel lined paths and her sanctuary appropriate foot wear, she had discovered, had left her with blisters that loved to sting in the salt water.

Eärwen hadn’t seen the Golodo again.

She tapped her fork angrily against her plate, uncovering a piece of shredded radish she’d missed when picking through the kelp. She speared the unfortunate morsel and chewed on it, turning her gaze back to distant Alqualondë. She would give anything for eel fried with the particular sweet sauce that the lunch vendor near the fifth pier did.

“Please try and eat a little more of the sole,” someone said near her, or she thought that was what it was said given she had never been a good student in the language and...

“It tastes like fish.”

It was Quenya.

“That’s the point.”

It was the Golodo from the sea pools, she sat at her own shaded table, dress neat and prim which was at odds with her hair which ran down her back in an unruly wave of black. She was in the company of a very tall gentleman with hair as wild and loose as hers, raven waves spreading out around him like snakes.

Her husband? Eärwen thought, thinking of the saga of the lost wedding ring. The couple was sitting close together and the gentleman’s hand was resting on the girl’s stomach, rubbing gently.

Eärwen’s stomach twinged in painful fearful reaction. That could be her. Soon. Maybe. If the other was her age then she must have been recently married. The gentleman caught her stare and smiled at her, bright and friendly. Embarrassed Eärwen smiled back and dropped her gaze. When she raised her gaze again she saw that the Golodo, her Golodo, was looking at her with a stiff expression.

The gentleman raised a hand and beckoned. Eärwen, unable to pretend that she hadn’t seen that when she was looking right at them, stood up awkwardly and took a step towards them. The gentleman raised his hand in the universal ‘halt’ gesture.

She froze.

He twirled one finger around and pointed to the chair she had vacated.

Sit… sit with them. She grabbed the back of the chair and looked at him, raising her eyebrows. He nodded and beckoned her just like before.

She pulled the chair over with her, wincing when it scrapped on the terrace tiles.

“Hello,” the gentleman’s Telerin was perfect. There was only a tiny hint of accent.

“Hello….again,” Eärwen’s eyes slid between both of them.

The woman was looking down at her plate, chewing on something determinedly given the clenching and unclenching of her jaw.

“My daughter says you helped her find her wedding ring,” the gentleman’s eyes were a beautiful blue, not as lovely as his daughter’s, but close. She was very happy to meet her Golodo’s father.

Not that she wouldn’t have minded meeting her husband.

But mainly she was happy to see her Golodo again. So she could apologise for … whatever it was. Looking at her wrists.

At the brui-

“ –f Tirion.”

“E… Mairawen of Alqualondë.”

She met his eyes and they were knowing in a way that made her feel like she had been pulled up by one of her tutors for becoming lazy with her work.

“Tarwë and Alaistë as said,” he gestured between them again, “we are here for two months to take a break from the city. Yourself?”

“I am here for a month,” because her father very much wanted her to marry the m-

“…because I’ve never left Alqualondë.”

“A holiday?” Tarwë didn’t seem to think it was strange she was here.

His … daughter… Alaistë, she pressed the name into her mind, did however. Given the look Eärwen was being given by those large eyes.

Not so large now. Normal sized. Adequately conveying disbelief that Eärwen would come to such a place for a holiday. Or choice as her first experience of life outside of her home.

“A nice safe choice,” Tarwë glanced at his daughter and Eärwen saw a round bruise, old enough to be green in the centre and yellowing at the edges near his ear when his hair slid back with the movement of his head, “my eldest decided to run off without telling us where he was going. One whole season later he sent me a letter to say he had found an apprenticeship with a smith he had met in a farming settlement. Wound up marrying his daughter… the smiths. The others were far more reasonable. Visited Taniquetil with their mother.”

“Taniquetil?” Eärwen leaned in and glanced at Alaistë. She was looking back down at her plate again.

“Hm yes. Well I am happy to see someone your age here, Alaistë could use company  her age. Or close.”

“How old are you?” Earwen hoped her question might raise blue eyes from a kelp salad. “Nine and a half yeni,” Alaistë replied, glancing up only once before savaging a piece of kelp.

Eärwen’s smile froze but she forced it to stay there, “oh I thought you were younger. I am six yeni.”

“Ah. No. she is merely short,” Tarwë waved to one of the attendants, “where can I get another pitcher of water?”

“I can get you one sir.”

Alaistë was blushing, “I am very short.”

“Maybe you’ll grow?” Eärwen suggested, “there should be time yet?”

She didn’t know. You were an adult at 10 yeni. There was even a party; a festival and her father would meet all those who had come of age… but you could get married before that. Sometimes those her father met already had children…

Ah… she was feeling unhappy now.

“No my feet fit my body,” Alaistë shook her head, “there’s nothing left to grow.”

Eärwen blinked, remembering how small Alaistë’s foot had felt. Not that she went around feeling women’s feet. In fact she’d only ever inspected her own feet but hers were so much bigger.

She glanced down at them as she thought that. Her brother called them seal flippers.

“Hm,” Tarwë followed her gaze, leaning around the table “oh you’re going to be quite tall when you’re done growing won’t you?”

“Will I? I suppose?” Eärwen had heard something of the like from her mother though couched more in terms of worry that she might become too “manly” a height and scare away suitors.

Not really a problem now since her mother seemed for have forgotten about those suitors.

“Is it true in Tirion Ladies have Champions that will dedicate their exploits in athletics and hunting in their name?” she asked since the conversation was lulling and she didn’t want to think too much about suitors.

“Oh I don’t know, do we look like nobility to you?” Tarwë asked.

“Yes,” Eärwen answered bluntly.

“Ah caught out so quickly,” Tarwë sighed.

“You didn’t need to confirm it for her,” Alaistë was smiling despite her words but it dropped away as the attendant returned with a new pitcher.

“Here is the water. We have some wine for those not on a restricted diet sir..”

“No thank you I am not interested.”

“We have some ale….”

“No I do not drink alcohol. I will continue to drink this.”

“I’ve never met an adult who doesn’t drink alcohol,” Eärwen wondered.

Tarwë’s smile felt old. “There are always exceptions.”

“But water can be so unsafe,” Eärwen protested.

“I don’t think we’re in danger here, not with a well blessed by Yavannah herself and watched over by the Lady Uinen,” Tarwë refilled Alaistë’s glass and then his own.

“What about in Tirion?”

“Oh if you know where it is, there is perfectly safe water,” Tarwë waved his hand,

“besides the rumours about Tirion’s problems with its sewerage system is just that. Rumours. I’ve never actually seen proof of half of what is said.”

But wait that means you have seen proof of half of it, Eärwen picked up, and a glance at Alaistë who was giving her father the sort of fond look women do when the men in their lives are telling outrageous lies, was further proof.

Ugh… at least Alqualondë’s water problems were mainly from when the sea water sometimes got into the pipes carrying their precious fresh water down from the springs further inland.

“But the champions,” she stubbornly returned, “is that true?”

“Hmmm yes there’s something of that going on right now,” Tarwë nodded and glanced at Alaistë, “but it is really something that the younger generation is involved in. Alaistë do you know more?”

Alaistë shook her head in apology, “no it’s for the unmarried really. Though a couple of married women have raised eyebrows,” her own eyebrow rose with the words.

“Ah yes,” Tarwë sighed, “a pity.”

“Sir,” an attendant lightly touched his shoulder as he opened his mouth and given the way Alaistë was eying her father, perhaps interrupting some teasing words to his daughter, “I know you are here to rest but a letter has arrived for you and it is marked as needing to be read immediately.”

“I see,” Tarwë’s face sagged, like it was too heavy for his skull and then with a nod to the attendant he stood, fixing his gaze on the main bulk of the sanctuary building. “Pardon me, Mairawendë do you mind staying here and making sure that my daughter is not blown away if the breeze becomes too strong?”

Eärwen giggled in time to the exclamation of “Father I am not that frail.”

“I don’t mind,” Eärwen was happy. She wasn’t quite sure why. She had a feeling it might be something to do with desperation and an unwillingness to dwell on anything other than the present. There was a voice that sounded a lot like Arawendë saying that she was like a child being offered a new toy to interrupt a crying fit.

“You would probably have men climbing all over you to champion you,” Eärwen enthused.

Alaistë, rather than look happy at this idea, instead looked ... disgusted? Very briefly of course before she gave Eärwen a typical “thank you” smile.

“I wish we had something like that in Alqualondë,” Eärwen hopped the subject away, “but it seems boring watching men have fun. Are women allowed to be champions too?”

“Not that I’ve heard of,” Alaistë leaned back, crossing her arms over her stomach, “you like to compete in athletics …Mairawendë?”

It was a false name, a disguise of the verbal kind… an outright lie. It sounded almost nice when Alaistë said it.

She didn’t like it though.

“Yes, I like swimming but I also run. I ran in the festival of Nessa last year! The middle distance.”

She hadn’t placed. There had been no garland of beaten metal leaves and jewelled flowers for her but she had been happy with the copper stemmed iolite flower she had been given as one who had placed in the middle of the pack.

“Impressive,” Alaistë leaned in just a little, “I’ve never competed in anything much. When I was a little girl I did win a stick of rock candy at the Festival of Tulkas for the horse shoe toss. Do you compete Festival?”

“No only recently. You are not allowed to compete in the running until you are five yeni,” Eärwen watched Alaistë

 “Ah,” Alaistë smiled, “Maybe I could have competed if I’d been born in Alqualondë then. I wasn’t married till I was seven yeni.”

“That’s still awfully young,” Eärwen tucked her dress tighter to her body as a breeze began to pick up that had a slight chill to it.

“How could I say no to such a good match?” Alaistë smiled at her.

The tone was happy and cheerful and Eärwen nodded along with it even as she asked

“what is a good match?”

“Well, wealthy, well positioned in society, known for his noble spirit, and athletic for me,” Alaistë threaded her fingers through one another. Eärwen meanwhile was trying to keep her expression in place in the face of a good description of Arafinwë Finwion to herself.

Was Prince Arafinwë athletic?

 “Well… good… was the courtship nice?” Eärwen inserted awkwardly.

“… it was nice,” Alaistë’s smile changed its tone but Eärwen couldn’t read it.

Just nice?

She wasn’t expecting gushing romance but … nice?

Nice was such a nothing of a word.

“Do you know if there are any nice walks through the gardens?” Alaistë pointed out towards where shrubbery had been convinced despite brisk sea air to thrive, albet lower to the ground than was usual.

“Yes I know a couple,” Eärwen let the subject change, eager to perhaps walk with her new (hopefully soon) friend.

“Would you show me them? Or point them out to me?” Alaistë asked her and Eärwen happily volunteered herself to show Alaistë all the walks she had discovered.

-

Alaistë was, Eärwen discovered promptly thereafter, far different away from the table and walking than sitting like a particularly beautiful doll under the shade on the terrace. Was it her father’s presence?

Eärwen thought about the bruises she’d seen, just very quickly, and her mind stirred for a moment like a hive of wasps lightly rocked.

Alaistë, up and about on her feet, was quicker and nimbler than Eärwen had expected her to be, though apparently her pregnancy was not that advanced yet, not even two seasons. Eärwen had expected dainty steps but Alaistë’s stride once she was moving ate up the ground beneath her like she was warming up and ready to take flight into a sprint at any moment.

They came to the shrubbery and after a moment of admiring them, Alaistë set her sights towards a grouping of trees that were managing to grow with some sort of attempt at height in the distance.

“I used to climb trees a lot as a child,” she said as they marched briskly along, Eärwen swept up in her vigour, “my parents, there were many orange trees all through the grounds of our house. They used to make a perfect place to perch in or play in, or even read in. My mother used to scold me but I don’t think she realised that some of my best studying was done up a tree.”

“Was this in Tirion?” Eärwen tried to imagine it, the white city and beyond it possibly manses like existed in Alqualondë, with large walled off gardens within.

“Oh no,” Alaistë shook her head, “I didn’t go to Tirion until my betrothal. I was born and raised in Formenos.’

“The Orchard Town near the Pelori?” Eärwen had to search her memory for that one, delving into classes she’d not wanted to sit through and thus were hazy.

“The very same town,” Alaistë smiled with such pleasure that Eärwen finally felt as though learning every settlement in Aman and their main source of produce had actually been worth sometime. She forgive a long gone tutor for drumming the information into her. It was worth it to see a smile like that.

She hurried after Alaistë as the other woman took off again, nearly bounding off in her enthusiasm to reach the trees.

-

A week later Eärwen was feeling positively sanguine towards the sanctuary. She couldn’t resent it any more, though the tidal pools remained, in her opinion, a waste of time. The reason for her lack of ill-will was Alaistë.

She usually saw Alaistë on the walk down to the tidal pools. Then pruned, she usually found herself napping somewhere in the gardens for an hour before dragging herself to the handball courts that existed on the other side of the sanctuary. Usually Alaistë was there. In fact Alaistë was the one who had told her about the little off shoot of the gardens in the opposite direction to where Eärwen had been determinedly mapping the garden paths with her feet.

The afternoon was meant to be spent meditating or giving back to the sanctuary through helping in the gardens. Alaistë got a pass because she was in “a delicate state.”

She spent her pass sitting at the edge of whatever vegetable patch Eärwen was situated in and telling her about Tirion, the life Alaistë lived there as someone involved in the court. There was a large gap in the narratives. Alaistë’s husband featured like a character written in at the last moment. There was no description of him amongst the lavish tapestry Alaistë wove with her words. Rich brocades, jewels, and gold drapped the characters Alaistë told her about, but the mysterious husband was an empty void.

Clearly there but undescribed, unspoken of, his actions unaccounted for.

Determinedly ignoring the voice not unlike her sister’s that insisted that she was using Alaistë as a distraction from her situation and fixating on the other woman to an unhealthy degree. Eärwen instead fixated on that empty space in Alaistë’s stories.

She didn’t want to ask Alaistë though. In the space of a week they’d gone from an awkward stare across the table, to spending most of their time in each other’s company. She felt, no, simply knew, that asking about the mysterious husband would ruin the swiftly grown, far too intense, and far too fragile friendship.

She could have asked Tarwë but she ran into the awkwardness of asking an acquaintance whom she did not share a strong familiarity with, about business that she, in all honesty, had no right to be asking about. His being a much older man made this twice as awkward.

Three times as awkward.

He had as much admitted he was a grandfather.

Well he had to be. Alaistë already had a son, which had been a frightening discovery, and apparently Tarwë’s eldest son was expecting his fourth child.

Eärwen did not have grandparents on either side of her family, the migration had not been kind on her family and not just in regards to her infamous uncle. She put her reluctance to ask down to her own manners and let the matter be, stewing over the mystery when she had the time.

And she did have a lot of time.

She wasn’t used to not having tutoring or social engagements, either her own or at the side of her mother and sisters.

Her tenth waking at the sanctuary began with a letter.

Adressed to her in Mairolwë’s handwriting. For a moment she’d become excited and thought that Umëawen had written to her, but her sister slanted her writing more acutely than Mairolwë

Eärwen turned it over, unsure of whether she should open it and give her brother a chance, or to simply burn it. Or rather rip it up and put the paper in a composting pile since she only had her room’s lamp to burn things with and she wasn’t stupid.

The room was beginning to lighten towards the brighter state of gloom that heralded soaking time in the tidal pools.

Eärwen opened the letter out of irritation that her brother, at a distance, could make influence her so much.

~Sister I hope that your stay at Édebar has been enjoyable thus far. I think it will have been eleven Tree cycles since I last saw you when this letter arrives and I do hope that you will read it despite your current unhappiness both with myself and with current circumstances.

Good enough, Eärwen found that she was running her thumb over her nails unconsciously. She glanced down. Eleven days had removed the muddy red stains underneath her nails. She could still feel the weight of her brother’s jaw under her hands though as though she’d only just reached for him. The proud handsomeness that drew sighs from her friends despite her brother’s married status hadn’t fractured once, and his hands, strong from silver-smithing and his enjoyment of wrestling though who knew where he found the time for either with so many duties, had been considerately gentle when he’d pinned her down into the earth of the garden she had cornered him in.

~I myself have found time to think about your parting words to me. I acknowledge that you are correct. Your current predicament is my fault and I am sorry that my actions are causing you such great unhappiness. All of your accusations are correct in fact, but I suppose this is little more than a formal confirmation of something you already knew.

Yes, Eärwen acknowledged.

~But in light of this please don’t turn completely away from me. Prince Arafinwë’s friendship has been an important part of my life since his first visit to Alqualondë, when we were still children together. You were only just born I believe. He thought you a far more beautiful baby than he’d ever seen in his life. Not of course that he had seen many babies given his status as a youngest child and the Goldórin penchant for sequestering expectant mothers in the last stages of their pregnancies until the child had seen a season.

Eärwen’s eyebrows furrowed at this non sequitur. She was disinterested in discussing Prince Arafinwë. She was completely uninterested in anything that pertained to Prince Arafinwë save what could turn Prince Ñolofinwë’s mind away from the idea of forging a marriage between his brother and herself. And, she presumed, King Finwë because even in Alqualondë it was well known that Prince Ñolofinwë did nothing without his father’s approval.

~He is a good man Eärwen. I can vouch for this. Our sisters can vouch for this since I know you do not consider my opinion worth any more than the salt scrapings from the roof. Even our parents, begrudgingly, hold love for Arafinwë for he has been a part of our lives for so long and his personality is such that you can’t help but love him. For someone of your status and stature you could not do much better. Arawen and Umëawen married well though beneath them. Also even with your seal feet you are unlikely to be taller than him.

Eärwen crumpled the letter in her hands and threw it at her desk, two thirds of it unread yet. She would shred it and work it into the compost pile in the afternoon.

-

She was unsettled as she laid back in the tidal pools, and everything that she had not noticed for over a week was once more annoying. The stupidity of the canvases, the stagnant feeling of the water despite being let in fresh at the high tide, and the worthlessness of lying still in water every morning for up to an hour.

She sighed with pointed annoyance and deliberately kicked to make the water fountain up and hit the canvas modesty screens.

“I thought you were going to stay in bed this morning,” Tarwë’s voice immediately answered, “what has you so petulant this morning?”

 “Sir?”

“Oh. … Mairwendë! I thought you were Alaistë.”

The attendant was gone and Eärwen dared pushing up the canvas, careful this time though with new poles surely the canvas could take a little jostling.

Tarwë glanced at her and raised an eyebrow then smiled, “don’t let yourself be caught. I think Alaistë is still in bed. She felt a little poorly at dinner last night.”

There were scratches on his neck and shoulders alongside roundish bruises, they made a set, much like the bruise on his jaw and the scratch on his chin that were still barely visible. Unlike Alaistë he had no shift to pull over the bruises and he seemed not to care, or had perhaps not noticed.

“Why do I have to wear a shift?” Eärwen asked, seeking the first thing in her mind to keep away from a sudden rash of guilt.

“Reasons owing to breasts probably,” Tarwë’s hair was piled up on his head in a great ragged bun. He had a great deal of it… hair. It was thick and raven-dark, clearly Alaistë took after him in that regard.

“What does Alaistë’s mother look like? Your wife, is she beautiful?” she queried. Tarwë was very tall and his eyes were a different blue to Alaistë’s. They had the same nose though, a proud protuberance from their face that was almost like they’d copied the cliché of what a Noldor’s nose was.

“Ala… my wife?” Tarwë looked up at the canvas and a delighted smile spread briefly over his face before he looked back to Eärwen and the smile faded away. “Lovely,” he said vaguely, “she is lovely.”

Eärwen just looked at him. Well there was another thing Alaistë had inherited then. An inappropriate use of nothing words.

“Lovely?”

“Very lovely,” Tarwë managed to enthuse blandly, “…just lovely. Alaistë is shorter than her.”

“You really enjoy pointing out how short your daughter is don’t you?” Eärwen rest her chin on her arms, the canvas remaining pushed up by her forehead.

“It’s lovely,” Tarwë winked at her and the tone of his voice drew lovely out of its nothingness into somethingness. A true appreciation of Alaistë’s diminutive stature. He was teasing her, Eärwen realised and forced herself to frown at him.

Unaffected he chuckled and sunk down into the water till the straggling pieces of hair down his neck floated up near his ears, “thank you for spending time with Alaistë, she is lonely enough at home and then I selfishly picked her up and took her all the way out here.”

Eärwen didn’t believe that, or couldn’t believe that. The wonderful stories Alaistë had woven of the court were full of people Alaiste knew and was friends with, clearly. She knew so much about them and spun them so real that Eärwen could almost see them in the air between them.

“She has a gift for observation that my son is a fool for not noticing,” Tarwë was watching her with, what she had to guess, was his own version of a court-mask, serene and neither happy nor upset.

“…your son?” Eärwen tilted her head. Why should Alaistë’s brother care why-

“Her husband,” Tarwë leaned back against the wall.

“Her husband,” Eärwen echoed.

“My son.”

“Your son.”

Water dripped off the canvas between them, running in a chill line down the side of Eärwen’s face.

“Married to Alaistë who is your daughter?” She knew things were different in Tirion but surely not this different.

“I wish she was my daughter in truth, but no she is the woman my son married, my daughter by marriage.”

There was a long pause between them as Eärwen digested this sudden shake up in what she had assumed and imagined about their lives back in Tirion, and Tarwë watched her do so.

“You couldn’t have simply told me that when I asked you about Alaistë’s mother?!” Eärwen snapped, angered at the ruse and the stupidity of the conversation she’d just engaged in.

“I wanted to engage in the illusion that she was my daughter a little longer,” Tarwë brought his hands up in front of him, “just a little longer. I would be overjoyed if she was my daughter born. But sadly no. She is not.”

“I see,” Eärwen could hear a ringing, from inside her head. She was mad. She was furious. Her face felt hot and her hands were curled into fists, chin no longer resting on her arms.

“For what it’s worth,” Tarwë slowly lowered his hands, “she is shorter than both her mother and my wife.”

Eärwen did not dignify that with an answer. Instead she reached her hand down into the water and launched a spray of water straight at his face. Then she pulled back, canvas springing down into place, and marched out of her tidal pool, back stiff and proud as she dressed and walked all the way back to the sanctuary.

-

Alaistë didn’t look unwell.

She was tucked up in one of the fanned out wicker chairs in the main room. It had been a tiny mission to find her. Eärwen hadn’t found her in her room (the second floor), and had sulkily gone back to her own to put on a fresh shift and dress before coming down to the cavernous foyer to track her down. The dingy light was doing a good job of making her glow, or perhaps it was just the light rosey flush on her cheeks.

Eärwen’s heart squeezed in a delicious ache at the sight and she almost sighed, but kept the noise in, reminding herself of the deception she had just uncovered.

Alaistë was sitting with a sewing basket on the chair next to her, and a tiny tunic in her hands which she was attempting to sew ties onto the sleeves.

Eärwen deflated, unable to stay mad at such a sight.

“What are those for?” she indicated to the long strips of fabric in Alaistë’s hands.

“Hm? They’re ties so the extra material can be folded over the hands of a baby to make sure they don’t scratch themselves.”

“Babies do that?” Eärwen pulled a wicker chair for herself closer and took a tentative seat.

“Yes, my sister showed me how to sew them on after my son scratched his face.”

“Is this your actual sister or your husband’s sister and Tarwë’s daughter?” Eärwen asked and her voice came out so petulant and sulky that she wanted to punch herself.

Alaistë looked up, looked down, and frowned. “He can’t keep a secret to save his life. Why are you mad at me Mairawendë?”

“Well… you didn’t tell me. I’ve gone and embarrassed myself asking about your mother from him!”

“What did he say?”

“….that she is lovely…and that you are shorter than both her and his wife.”

Alaistë sighed out and pressed her hands against her face for a moment, muttering a few of those foul curse words that Eärwen had first gotten to know her voice by.

“I suppose my mother is lovely,” Alaistë agreed. “I am sorry that you were misled Mairawendë.”

Eärwen promptly felt the bottom of her stomach drop out as guilt slammed into her.

“Why do you call him father?”

“He acts like my father. He watches over me and protects me. He cares more about my health and for my happiness than my husband does. He understands… what is happening. I wish I could have been his daughter,” Alaistë smiled down at the fabric in her hands, “I wouldn’t have been married to his son then… but his wife would actually be my mother.”

“You don’t like your mother by marriage?”

“No… we do not get along.”

“Oh,” Eärwen’s shoulder’s sagged down. How horrible. Arawen’s mother by marriage was a lovely woman. Umëawen’s mother by marriage was incredibly timid and not often seen in public but she knew Umëawen doted on the delicate court lady when her sister and her sister’s husband were in Alqualondë.

“Why are you here?” Alaistë was watching her, hands stilled.

Eärwen thought of the twisted feeling in her shoulder from coiling up too tightly beneath her bed and how her nose had run and her eyes had been puffy from the amount of dust under there because the maids had been skimping in their duties.

“Marriage,” she said shortly.

Alaistë‘s eyes flicked off to the side for a moment before centring on her again, “as am I.”

Unbidden Eärwen remembered the yellowing bruises she had seen on Alaistë‘s arms.

Something slithered through her thoughts. An uneasy non-thought settled for a moment against her stomach and made it tighten till it ached, and skin was suddenly goosebumped.

“Is that why Tarwë brought you here?”

“Yes,” Alaistë brought her head up and tilted her chin proudly, “I found out my husband has a mistress in Taniquetil and collapsed. Tarwë, Father,decided I needed time away from Tirion to recover. Also he needs the rest himself. When he becomes too stressed his stomach begins to pain him and he throws up blood.”

Eärwen’s eyes widened. Shock ran through her.

“That’s awful,” she croaked.

“Yes I know, it’s alarming to behold and he’s ruined many a good set of ro-“

“Not that! Well yes that also! Your husband,” Eärwen;’s throat tightened. How could someone like Alaistë have a husband that was unfaithful? Or rather how could anyone be unfaithful when they had Alaistë as their wife?

She wasn’t going to play around pretending that such violations did not happen, or pretend to be shocked because of the news that an adultery existed. Pretences like that were for three people, her brother had told her once, the pious, the stupid, and those who were guilty of the deed.

“I have accepted it now,” Alaistë waved her hand, “in fact I am thankful towards the woman. It means he has to leave for a few days whenever he wishes to visit her. The little breaks without him were a blessing.”

“If I was your husband I would never even comprehend violating our marriage vows in such a way,” Eärwen said, blunt and proudly.

Alaistë looked up at her in surprise and Eärwen’s face felt so hot that it was physically painful. She leapt up onto her feet, bowed as quickly as possible, and hurried around the shielding dwarf-palm in its fancy pot.

Then she ran, all the way back to her room at top speed, nearly taking out the ever calm attendant who only murmured quietly for her to “please show some decorum” as she passed her.

-

Her face, still burning with the tips of her ears actually aching from the force of her blush, was only given a reprieve for an hour or two.

There was a polite knock on her door, then the door knob rattled but she had latched it and so it did not open. Eärwen remained quiet. The doors were not that well fitted. For example hers had a gap just wide enough for one of the sanctuary’s butter knives to be slipped in and up, lifting the latch deftly.

Alaistë let herself into the room and brushed down her skirt as though interfering with the lock had gotten dust on her.

“Are you feeling better?” she asked. Eärwen stared at her and wondered if she could remove her ears in some way to stop the pain from how they burned.

“No.”

“That was a very nice thing for you to say, I am very touched by it. There is no need at all to feel embarrassed.” Alaistë’s voice was soft and sweet and Eärwen imagined it was the tone she took with her son.

“You’re only three yeni older than me, my sisters are older than that compared to me, don’t talk like I’m a baby,” she grumbled into her arms and then pulled a pillow over to hide her face in.

“I do not think you are an infant,” there was a dip in the bed and then the blankets dragged as Alaistë crawled over to her and a warm hand was laid on her back. “Mairawendë look at me. Raise your head.”

Now she really was being spoken to as though she was a toddler. Still, Eärwen glanced over her shoulder despite herself, doing her best with a one eyed glare to convey how much she did not like that tone of voice.

Alaistë leaned in and her lips pressed warmly against the one part of Eärwen’s cheek, burning red still, that was visible to her and her lips were cold, slightly chapped from the constant breezes on the isle, and seemed to make Eärwen’s blush only worse.

Her ears were in agony now.

“Not your toddler,” she grumbled despite the fact that Alaistë was manipulating her body the way she’d seen her sister by marriage deal with her tantruming nephew…and Eärwen was letting her.

“No but you certainly act like him,” and now she was being pulled upright and into Alaistë’s arms.

Which was nice.

Very nice.

Very warm.

“If you were a man I’m sure you would make a good husband to whatever lucky woman you married…when you were a more reasonable age.”

“I’m a reasonable age for marriage right now,” Eärwen slipped her arms over and up around Alaistë’s middle.

“No, and as I do have experience in this please let me be the first to say that even seven yeni is too young.”

Eärwen frowned up at her and Alaistë smiled down at her.

“When we leave please come visit me,” she said, “I will give you my details and you can write to me.”

But wait, if Eärwen had been upset about Alaistë letting her keep the wrong assumption that Tarwë was her father then how would Alaistë react to the fact that Eärwen had completely lied about who she was and …

“I have my own confession to make,” she clamped her hands on Alaistë’s shoulders, “I’ve lied to you as well.”

“Technically it wasn’t a lie,” Alaistë corrected but she was smiling and so Eärwen memorised that smile because surely it wasn’t going to last.

“It was half a lie at least,” Eärwen returned. “My name isn’t Mairwendë.”

“No? It’s not at least an epessë? Going by your epessë isn’t a lie at all.”

“It’s not even an epessë. My name is Eärwen. Olwiel.” Adding the last bit was hard.

“Ah,” Alaistë had stopped smiling but she wasn’t frowning, “that explains a great deal.”

“Pardon?”

“Why you look so much like Princess Umëawen and your silver hair. I didn’t want to ask but father said you were possibly a …”

Alaistë’s voice trailed off.

She looked profoundly uncomfortable.

She leaned in, kissed Eärwen on the cheek and wriggled off the bed with a slight grunt of effort.

“Thank you for telling me, I’m not mad,” the Golodo said quickly and then it was Eärwen who watched her friend rush away, heart in her throat and utterly confused.

At least, she managed to console herself, Alaistë had not said she hated her or was angry at her?

In fact quite the opposite.

Eärwen was not very good at comforting herself.

-

The next day she did not see Alaistë when she walked down the tidal pools and she took a seat at the covered table where only Tarwë sat with a great deal of trepidation.

“Ah, Mairawendë, Alaistë is not feeling well again. I’m afraid she’s reaching the part of her pregnancy that didn’t agree with her the last time either.” The tall gentleman’s demeanour was no different than usual which mean he didn’t know or he was a good actor and Eärwen simply decided to believe the first to try and quell the nauseous dread in her stomach.

“I thought the sickness happened in the beginning of the pregnancy,” Eärwen pushed her kelp around her plate. “It does usually but there are exceptions. Hers hit later.”

“I’ll go visit her then.”

“Perhaps give her time to rest,” Tarwë’s meals were always blander than the rest. She supposed if he had a weak stomach that made sense.

Throwing up blood though. She shivered.

He looked healthy enough. Well he’d had dark bags beneath his eyes when she’d first met him if she recalled it right, but she’d been more interested in Alaistë then. His cheeks were a bit more hollow than looked natural. But he seemed buoyant and with his personality she couldn’t imagine him being the sort that became so stressed he began throwing up.

“Did you and Alaistë fight?” Tarwë asked her, carefully stirring his soup of vegetables in a stock without touching it.

“No, not really,” Tarwë made a noise of unmistakable relief.

“Good. Good. I worry. For her. She should never have married into our family. I should have been stronger and said no to my son when he said he wanted to marry her. She was still very much a child when the betrothal happened. Like you are now.”

Eärwen bristled, subsided, then bristled again. She knew his intentions were good but she wasn’t a child.

“Well I suppose that is the old man speaking in me.”

“What was Alaistë like when you first met her?”

“Playful, bright and bubbly and making up for her miniscule size and unfavourable placing as a younger daughter with her personality. We had ridden all the way out to Formenos so my son could ask for her hand. I misunderstood the situation and thought he was asking for her older sister’s hand. It was a match I was happy to contemplate. With her older sister I mean. A lovely young woman. My wife did not like her but I did. Ah well.”

Tarwë shrugged a shoulder and finally ate some soup.

-

“Are you avoiding me?” Eärwen asked the moment she made her way to the suite that Tarwë and Alaistë shared, a neat little set of rooms with a bedroom apiece and a room that connected the two.

“No I woke up this morning sick enough that I thought my internal organs were trying to crawl out my mouth,” Alaistë waved a hand dismissively, and she did look unwell enough that Eärwen left the topic alone.

Instead she crawled into the bed and lay down tentatively, watching her friend who watched her in return.

“Though to be honest, your talking about being a man did keep me up for a while last night, thinking about it,” Alaistë said at last, chuckling in a manner that didn’t sound like she was amused by the thoughts.

Eärwen’s heart squeezed and ached for a moment, “did you?”

“I managed to make myself jealous about an imaginary wife for an imaginary male you.”

“Oh no, if I’d been a man I would have eyes only for you,” Eärwen promised.

“You were four yeni when I was married.”

“Four yeni and a half,” Eärwen leaned in.

“Very well. But either way I would have been married.”

“Well then I would have …hm,” Eärwen stopped to think, “well then I would have come to Tirion and become your champion. And present you with all of the prizes given to middle distance runners who place somewhere in the middle that I would win for you.”

Alaistë snorted then covered her face in her hand for a moment. “You’d make me one of those women that people raise their eyebrows over would you?”

“Yes, in jealousy at the good looking Telerin who is winning you so many consolation prizes,” Eärwen promised.

“The Telerin Prince,” Alaistë raised an eyebrow at her.

“Well,” Eärwen shrugged a shoulder, “isn’t the imaginary you where I am a man lucky?”

Alaistë snorted again, then let herself laugh, properly. Eärwen enjoyed the noise, patiently waiting for her to be done. When Alaistë was done laughing she raised her head, and her smile had a strange tinge to it that Eärwen didn’t recognise.

There was no retort, just a silence since Eärwen was waiting for words but Alaistë was not bringing them forth. Instead Alaistë leaned in closer, close enough that their noses bumped and Eärwen felt breath that wasn’t her own against her mouth.

“I am more lucky that you are very much yourself though Eärwen,” Alaistë said and leaned in, stealing Eärwen’s chance to bask in the sound of her actual name as said by Alaistë because she was too busy being shocked by the kiss that had been laid on her lips.

For a moment it was simply lips upon lips, then Alaistë deepened it. Eärwen had been kissed before. A suitor or two had pressed his luck only to become very unlucky, and Eärwen had once kissed a maid who worked in the laundry in exchange for… well, that was old history.

The present was more important. The present involved being kissed by Alaistë with increasing fervour as Eärwen responded with her limited skills (mainly she knew how not to knock teeth.)

She drew it out as much as she knew how to.

Then Alaistë pulled back and Eärwen had to let her go.

“I suppose that is not how the ladies in Tirion show their friendship,” Eärwen asked, needing confirmation, because up until she had been kissed she hadn’t been aware how much she wanted to be kissed by Alaistë. And now kissed she wasn’t going to be happy if she couldn’t kiss her again.

“It is not.” Alaistë confirmed.

“Good…. Um…”

“Because I wanted to,” Alaistë supplied her before she could get the question out. “I’m not sure why. I like you. I like you more than I have liked anyone in my life yet.”

“I see.” Eärwen thought about it. She could inquire more, and pick it to pieces the hows and the whys. It might just be the island and being forced into one another’s company. Eärwen decided she did not want to know and that she would simply go with now. She had two more weeks on Édebar. She should savour them.

So she leaned forward and kissed Alaistë with the best of her ability (no clinking teeth). The chain with Alaistë’s wedding ring swung forward and bumped against Eärwen’s collar bones. She reached up and touched it, Alaistë pulled back from her and together they stared down at the gold ring with its unconventional star sapphire.

“He has a mistress,” Eärwen said, “and I only have two weeks left on the island.”

“I’ll take what I can get. I am well aware that this could be moving too fast,” Alaistë kissed her again, “please tell me to stop.”

“No thank you,” Eärwen wrapped her arms around her so she could not wriggle away if she tried and then kissed her back.

The next waking came with a difference. Eärwen woke up tucked into a bed larger than the one on the fourth floor, arms curled over warm back with one arm gone numb from the weight on it. Alaistë was resting with more pillows propped under her to be comfortable than Eärwen had seen a person need. She hadn’t even known you could request extra pillows. Yet here was Alaistë with about five, most of them propping her stomach.

Eärwen had seen naked women before. Wearing a shift whilst in the ocean was really only for public and strangers. Family and the occasional small outing of friends over taken by the moment and without adult authority to say no to them was another matter.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about this naked woman.

Well she was pregnant.

And Eärwen had engaged –

Eärwen wriggled closer, as close as a pregnant stomach would allow her, and wished that perhaps Alaistë could have slept facing the other way so she could get closer. Not that she was complaining. Alaistë was warm. Her arms were comfortable around her and her body wasn’t too heavy though that might just be the numbness.

Her hair smelled really nice too.

Eärwen let herself grin, probably stupidly, and watched the very dim influence of Telperion take over from the dim mingling outside.

-

They escaped the morning tidal pools and instead took advantage of the low tide to make their way around them towards some of the last natural remaining tidal pools further along the beach. Tarwë trailed them bemused. He’d asked her quietly off to the side if they’d fought again.

She had been happy to say no.

The rocks were slippery and uneven, welcome and familiar. Though sharp and hazardous of course.

She reached out and braced herself on a rock, Alaistë out in front of her, apparently part sea-gull alongside the half goat that Eärwen had originally presumed her to be.

“Oh what’s that?” Alaistë pointed down at where a sea-anemone was seeking prey with cheery bright crimson flare.

“Anemone, they like to lure their prey into their tendrils and sting them to death,” Eärwen enthused, stepping over a dip in the rock where the water had puddled.

“Brilliant, the fauna in Tirion is so boring,” Alaistë beamed at her, then something caught her attention and like a magpie she went to investigate. Eärwen stayed and watched her, taking in the sight of her with new eyes.

“When I first met her she was up an orange tree balancing on branches so thin my first impression was of heart racing fear that she was about to fall and break her neck,” Tarwë commented, catching up behind Eärwen.

“How thin?”

Tarwë stuck out his forefinger.

“Liar,” Eärwen’s heart leapt into her throat just at the thought of balancing on branches… no…sticks that thin.

“In many things but not in this,” Tarwë shielded his eyes. Eärwen wasn’t sure why. It was not actually that much brighter out here than anywhere else on the isle. It did hide the facial cues of his eyes quite well though as he said, “you two have lain together.”

Eärwen’s world stopped dead and she stared at him, unable to read his eyes, his mouth a neutral line. She couldn’t tell a damn thing from his tone either.

“I am not mad, or disgusted,” Tarwë turned his words out gently, “I have my misgivings at the swiftness that this has happened. I know first-hand how fires swiftly lit are the first to die out.”

Eärwen managed a confused enough expression that he mumbled, “a Ñoldor would have understood that analogy.”

“Relationships begun swiftly and hurriedly do not last, or do not prosper,” Tarwë brought his hand down, looking straight down into her arms, “they bring only pain and resentment with the passing of time. What you once thought was the centre of your life becomes the most repulsive existence you wish you could remove but are unable to.”

Eärwen’s stomach sank, it felt like someone had piled sand into her, wet sand that was trying to tear through her stomach. Her legs were filled with it as well, anchoring her in place and her chest was tight. Her throat felt like it was swelling up to twice its size.

“That said, you are only here for half a month more. And in another month we will leave, back to Tirion. You might write but with the distance between you hopefully what is between you will fade into a pleasant memory… or in the worst case scenario become something all the more desirable because you are denied it. Hopefully not. You are not nearly as stupid as myself.”

“Ah,” Eärwen managed.

“I am going to walk down further near the sand. My feet are simply not made for traversing these rocks,” Tarwë held up his hand, clearly not wanting her own opinion or any counter arguments. “Let me stew in my own self confidence that I know exactly what is going to happen in the future and that everything is going to go horribly.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing that could make you throw up blood,” Eärwen retorted.

“I will stew in a peaceful and harmonious fashion.”

-

Tarwë’s words followed Eärwen wherever she went.

She was feeling a little sore by them, and more than a little frustrated that she seemed to have missed out on the hard-headedness that adults complained about in youths her age. Wasn’t she supposed to be pigheadedly stubborn? Instead she listened to his words and stewed.

But she also almost moved herself into Alaistë’s room, only leaving her side to collect a new shift and dress before meeting with her again on the way to the tidal pools. If half a month was all she had left then she would soak up as much of her first love as she could.

So there.

Tarwë did not speak to her of it again. He was his genial, fixated-on-Alaistë’s-height self with his bland diet and his abstinence from alcohol of any variety.

If Alaistë was feeling upset about anything she hid it well, right up until four days before Eärwen was meant to depart.

They went for a walk, Alaistë leading as usual. They did not speak. Or rather any attempts at conversation fell flat. Alaistë seemed distracted, or intensely focused on a singular thing that did not involve Eärwen. The route Alaistë picked out did not head for the trees but led them in meandering circles through shrubbery and the vegetable gardens then right down to the tidal pools and over the rocks till they found purchase on the hillside to walk up onto an area of land they’d not walked on before and perhaps were not allowed near. Eärwen cast her eyes about, further down the hill were small clusters of cottages where she suspected the attendants lived.

Alaistë still had not said a word and Eärwen had reached the end of topics she could use to try and start a conversation safely.

So they stood there, and eventually sat as Alaistë’s feet began to protest the weight on them. It was a beautiful vantage point. They could see the distant violet shimmer of Laurelin’s light amongst Alqualondë’s towers. Eärwen squinted and perhaps it was her imagination but she thought she could see the movement of people on the docks. Not the people persay, but certainly an impression of movement.

But perhaps it was simply her imagination.

She would be returning there… soon. She was excited and relieved but also reluctant. Oh she would not miss the isle, there was only so much kelp salad and tidal pools without actually being tidal pools she could suffer through, but the reason she did not want to leave was sitting right beside her. Silently.

Eärwen drew her knees up as the silence continued and found it was pleasant comfortable thing if she stopped worrying about it. She let her gaze find Alqualondë again, and rested her chin on her knees, thinking of the ways that she could remain in contact with Alaistë when she was gone.

“I don’t think it’s possible that I will ever be able to visit you once I leave,” Alaistë said at last and her shoulders slumped.

Eärwen slipped her arm around Alaistë’s waist, rather than acknowledge the sudden painful tightening in her larynx.

“But really you must. Alqualondë is a far nicer part of the coast than here, I don’t want you thinking that all of the Teleri occupied coast is like this,” she said at last. There was no response, and so clearing her throat Eärwen carried on, “Alqualondë’s warmer for one thing. And the water is bluer… the streets are paved with a stone that comes from the hills which has little shells embedded in it still. It’s brighter… the light is usually violet though some days it seems more aqua and the silver b-b-bells are everywhe–” her voice cracked miserably “really i-it’s beautiful. Please come visit me.”

“But I can’t,” Alaistë turned her head away, “I have my son and this child soon to be born. I have to maintain my husband’s household. I have to make up for my absence and my breakdown. I have duties…”

“Throw them away. Come live with me. I can take care of you.”

“No, you know that’s not possible, especially not my son.”

She was an awful person, Eärwen thought, not sure if she was thinking of herself or Alaistë. Probably herself. Who asked a woman to throw away her child?

“Take heart Eärwen,” Alaistë wrapped her hand around Eärwen, “at least soon you will be returning home.”

“How can I?” Eärwen found herself sobbing, hand migrating from Alaistë’s grip upwards, her body falling into the embrace that Alaistë opened up for her, only the other’s stomach keeping Eärwen from completely moulding herself to her friend’s body, “I don’t want to go home and get married. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to marry him. I don’t want to get married at all now that I’ve met you.”

“Then tell your father no,” Alaistë said simply, “and don’t say such words. I’m a passing fancy.”

“You will never be a passing fancy to me. And it’s not nearly so easy as ‘no’. This is the sort of situation where the only unacceptable answer is no, I can tell, there’s too much at stake for me to say no. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

-

Whatever foul wind had brought Eärwen’s emotional distress continued when she awoke after the next mingling. Or rather she was woken by an attendant, earlier than usual, who had come to inform her there was a guest for her waiting in one of the guest parlours.

She traversed her way down the stairs, wondering if it might be one of her sisters come to collect her early, which brightened her thoughts only for them to dim again at the thought of leaving without a chance to say goodbye to Alaistë.

What if it was her brother?

He had sent her two more letters since his first but she had not even opened them. She had not thrown them out either. But they sat unwanted at the bottom of the travel trunk her clothing had been packed in.

She felt awkward at the thought of having to face him face to face, but then reassured herself that Mairolwë never left the city. He had too many duties.

Likewise her parents.

So whom?

All the attendant could say was that it was a guest who had said they were calling upon her.

She descended the stairs and went to a part of the sanctuary she had not actually been in the entire month of her stay. She knew that somewhere along here were large prayer rooms where the light could be completely shut out and large cushions covered the floor. Tarwë had availed himself or rather been convinced to avail himself of one of the sessions held in there. He had reported that there had been a great deal of incense and humming and he had indeed felt substantially calmer leaving than when he had gone in.

But they were along the side of the building that faced inwards across the land, and the parlours where those wanting to visit sanctuary inhabitants faced towards the ocean.

The attendant opened the door for her and she stepped in to see a man… a very beautiful man, watching the water and that distant spark that was Alqualondë, which the window afforded a good view of.

Even in Édebar’s gloom he glowed. He was fair, in skin and his hair, his simple travelling braid unable to conceal the myriad shades of gold brushed through it. His profile was proud but not harsh, it was softened to a beauty that was distinctly unfeminine. He was tall, one of the tallest men she had seen. Her head only likely came to his shoulder.

He was not unfamiliar to her. In fact she did know him, at a distance despite the closeness of their paths in life. He had first come to Alqualondë as a child with his family. Eärwen had been too young to see them then, confined to the nursery even for meals since she had been at a precocious age where food was also a missile in her hands. However her brother had brought back stories of him; his bright and beautiful new friend.

And thereafter he had returned to their house, sometimes with an accompaniment because his family could not come with him, and then when he was older he came simply by himself.

He was her brother’s closest companion; Mairolwë’s dearest friend with whom he shared a long and intensive discourse that kept the messengers between Alqualondë and Tirion well exercised and employed.

She must have sat at the same table at him hundreds of times but never had she shared more than a light distant discussion of the weather with him.

“Princess Eärwen,” he saw her, turned, bowed to her and offered her his hand in greeting.

“Prince Arafinwë,” she curtseyed to the same depth as his bow and took his hand, warm and with silver rings upon nearly all of his fingers, “greetings to you and what brings you here to isolated Édebar. I was unaware that you would have any concerns up here. Have you come from Alqualondë?”

“Ah, I have missed hearing Telerin. I came here straight from Tirion. Your brother said it’s unlikely you’ve been reading his letters last time he wrote to me, but he did say he would tell you that I was going to visit you,” he kissed the back of her hand and her skin chilled all over, the fine hairs rising up in prickling unease.

Arafinwë gestured for her to take a seat in one of the modest chairs that occupied the room. There wasn’t actually a lot in the guest parlour. Three chairs, a table, a faded rug, and a small bureau like the one from the bedrooms with requisite paper and ink.

“Why would you come and visit me Prince Arafinwë?” Eärwen asked, “we do not know one another. I can’t say we do not have shared concerns since your brother has been trying to arrange our….” Her voice trailed off and her hands flapped rather than actually say the word. Arafinwë wasn’t sitting, forcing her to look up at him, mentally noting his eyes were a nice dark shade of blue that was familiar though she couldn’t place it.

Arafinwë’s head tilted, his gaze pinned on her. It was an uncomfortable situation.

“I think you can send the attendant away now,” he said instead of answering her.

Eärwen glanced over her shoulder. The attendant stood just inside the closed door. Watching them.

“Actually I would rather she stay here,” she didn’t feel happy at the idea of being alone with Arafinwë for all his inclinations.

“But I am here to talk about our marriage,” Arafinwë smiled widely. Eärwen’s stomach dropped right out of her body and her heart jumped in her chest so hard that her ribs ached.

“P-please leave,” she asked the attendant who looked at her then at Prince Arafinwë.

“I shall be out in the corridor,” with a bow the attendant left and Eärwen was alone with Arafinwë. Her skin began to crawl just at the thought and her palms began to sweat.

“I do enjoy hearing the use of Thorn without it being a political gesture,” Arafinwë mused.

“O-oh?” Eärwen floundered and nodded, “well that is nice but why-“

“Do you know that when I started using the thorn in Quenya and claimed it was a habit picked up in Alqualondë that my father smiled at me for the first time without any sort of resentment? It was almost… a thankful smile.”

“Ah…” Eärwen’s mouth opened then shut.

“Why did you tell me this?” the non sequitur was like a punch to her stomach. She was left wordless and stunned. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do or how to reply appropriately. It was too much information; unwanted and personal information that made Eärwen feel uncomfortable with this near stranger she’d known for years.

“Arawen thinks that part of the reason that you’re so unhappy at the thought of marrying me is that you aren’t close to me and do not know me well. So there. As a gesture of…whatever this is. Arawen is very naïve.”

Eärwen’s tongue felt heavy but she was piqued, “you write to Arawen Prince Arafinwë?”

“I write to all your siblings, not just your brother. Why do you think Umëawen has managed to do so well in Tirion? Information for her good behaviour when I visit Alqualondë. And Arawen’s husband has a gambling habit that your brother and I cover for when he visits the mainland. In fact you’re the only one of your siblings I’ve never had regular contact with,” Arafinwë considered her, taking a seat and Eärwen was disgusted to note that closer to her he was just as beautiful as her first impression.

“I thought you would simply nod and do what your parents told you to,” he leaned back into the chair, “you have always been so normal, what I’ve noticed of you. Eager to please and happy to be coddled. You’re like my brother’s children I think, if I was going to draw an analogy to anyone in my family.”

Eärwen bristled, “I am finding your tone and words to be offensive. Please state what you want to say to me.”

“Very well. I want you to marry me,” Arafinwë looked her up and down, “my brother’s idea has merit and my father gave it a passing nod. I doubt he actually was listening to what Ñolofinwë was saying. All he probably heard was “Arafinwë” and “stop the rumours.”

“That’s a little unfair to your father, I doubt he would have missed the fact that your brother was talking about your marriage,” Eärwen shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I do not want to marry you.”

“So I supposed with your sudden… vacation I should have guessed that. You do not care then, what this could mean for your brother?”

“Appealing to me about my brother will not work. I hate him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be sad to hear that, you are his favourite sister after all.”

Eärwen’s heart twinged but only for a moment and then anger took over. “I do not care. He is free to have favourites but I am not obliged to help him from the situation that he and you have gotten yourselves into through your own stupidity and selfishness.”

“Selfishness?” there was a subtle shift in Arafinwë’s voice. It made the prickling in Eärwen’s skin intensify. “it is not for someone like you who is loved and cherished by her family to talk about selfishness. Your brother gave up his dreams and his hopes for your family. He married his wife and ceased to smile and laugh honestly any more. I am not a fair-weather friend to turn my back on the only person who has ever valued my existence without any sort of resentment. You have been given everything in your life that you have desired yet when you were called upon to do a favour for your family you ran away”

“My mother sent me here,” Eärwen snapped.

“Clearly it’s not for anything serious since she sent you to a dingy, poor sanctuary on a miserable mudflat instead of sending you to Lorien,” Arafinwë dismissed.

“And I will be returning from this mudflat with the firm decision in my mind that I will not marry you!” Eärwen retaliated, “I know Mairolwë doesn’t love her but he had the right to say no to marrying her just like I have the right to say no! Right now and when I return to Alqualondë! No. I am not giving up my chance to find love …”

Alaistë her too swiftly caught and too young heart called out.

“…give up my chance to find love,” she foundered, repeating her last words with her voice dropping away at the tiny sneer directed at her.

“Love?” Arafinwë mocked her, “do not tell me you believe in the childhood idiocy that there is some great love out there waiting for you.  No such thing exists. There are loves and lovers to be had certainly, but if you think marrying for love is possible then you are wrong. Marriage is the death of love which will eventually die and leave only resentment and anger. It is better for you to marry as best you can and find your love elsewhere. Especially for someone like you!”

“How dare you!” Eärwen yelled, to her feet in an instant.

“The only suitors that you will ever have will be men who see the greatest social coupe that Alqualondë can offer them. Just like your sister’s to their husbands, you will be simply a stepping stool for that man to gain power and wealth. Grow up Princess, and open your eyes to the fact that you will receive no better offer than my own!”

Arafinwë caught her shoulder and pushed her down, strength so much greater than her own that she was forced to oblige though not before she had dug her fingernails into his wrist so deeply that she smelled iron.

“You come from a family infamous for its love,” she snapped, “your father is the one to whom loves happiness came twice.”

“Oh that’s what they say in public,” Arafinwë flicked his hand in dismissal, beautiful smile on his face that was bitter and angry “and in private we are Father’s greatest mistake and shame. We are proof of his shortcomings and his weaknesses; evidence of how sad and pathetic he is.  My father doesn’t drink alcohol because of me and Lalwende,” Arafinwë’s bitter smile was now fully sour, “he doesn’t touch it. Not a drop. He doesn’t trust her, my mother. He’s a worthless creature who killed his first wife to marry a woman whom he doesn’t love any more, didn’t love since before his third child was born, and had to be drugged to conceive his youngest children. He lets his wife hit him and lets her break priceless belongings and doesn’t do a damn thing. That is the “great happiness” that came to my father.”

“You are disgusting,” Eärwen whispered, unable to comprehend quite what filth had been spilled before her. Unable to look away or shut her mind to the words.

 “If you marry me I promise I will never send you to a place like this ever. No matter how hysterical you get,” Arafinwë had an ugly smile she decided. It didn’t matter how it glowed, nor how beautiful he was. Ugly.

It was an awful ugly smile. No matter how kind he forced it to be, no matter how warm or how it lit up his perfect features like someone had found a way to illuminate alabaster from within, it was ugly.

“I won’t marry you,” she forced herself to say.

“I am your best choice,” Arafinwë returned, “but if your mind is set I suppose I will leave you to convince your parents yourself. Your brother did not win. What makes you think you will? Since I am in the territory I must make my regards to your parents-”

“You mean you will be visiting my brother, Eärwen couldn’t help the curl of her lip, even as her voice shook “don’t bother lying. If you want me to marry you, do me the greatest favour of respecting my intelligence.”

Arafinwe shrugged but his eyebrows had drawn together, “shall I relay a message to your parents then Princess?”

“Tell them I am still unsettled and I wish to stay another month.” Arafinwe was truly frowning at her now.

“Leave first so I can compose myself lest everyone know that Arafinwë Finwion is a bully who makes young girls cry,” Eärwen commanded in her best authoritative voice which was ruined by the way she was trembling from head to toe now.

Arafinwe had at least the decency to look ashamed and he left the room without another word.

Eärwen counted to thirty in her head, ignoring the attendant who had entered when Arafinwë opened the door and who was hovering.

She rose, feeling like her legs had become jelly, and walked to the corridor with her mind set upon reaching her rooms. Each step was unsteady. The distance to her rooms, which had taken her perhaps six minutes to walk from, suddenly became a marathon that she had to hold onto her surging emotions throughout.

Eärwen made it to the great hall and saw a familiar dark head behind a flowering Laurelin’s-kiss vine  turn, dark blue eyes meeting hers.

Tarwë had been sitting in one of the wicker chairs, semi-hidden. Now he rose, stepping out behind the vine and glancing in the direction of the large main doors which were open to let in the sea air. Eärwen supposed that Arafinwë had left in that direction. Someone like him, so beautiful and noble, would have drawn any ones attention.

He could have at least worn a cloak, Eärwen managed to think resentfully.

“Who was that?” Tarwë asked her gently, “if I might inquire.”

Eärwen looked around.

The hall was empty as it always tended to be in the morning. She supposed everyone was in the tidal pools floating.

Thinking about nothing.

Clearing their minds.

“My parents want me to marry him,” she mumbled.

“I take it by your demeanour that you do not so wish for such a bond,” Tarwë had the most soothing voice. She hoped he used it for good when he was about his normal life. The life far away from here on this isle. Far away with Alaistë as his daughter, even if it was by marriage. A life where he protected Alaistë and kept her from harm, and where at least Alaistë was not alone in her loneliness. A life Eärwen didn’t have a part in.

“No,” she swallowed. Her head was still ringing from his words and her eyes were hot and wet.

She blinked furiously, yes furious, that was a good word. It welled up unexpectedly, a bilic surge of heat straight from her heart.

She would later say it was as though Melkor had taken a hold of her heart. A hate took hold of her, profound and deep. It surged hot and she wished Arafinwë and her brother harm.

“He’s a catamite,” she hissed out because trying to talk would lead to tears or screaming, she wasn’t sure which, “who lets my married brother, who is also a catamite, fuck him.”

There was the minutest of flinches from Tarwë, nothing more than a slight ripple in his frame.

“A CATAMITE!” Eärwen roared, control lost, “A CATAMITE AND AN ADULTERER. AND MY PARENTS WANT ME TO MARRY HIM.”

 Tarwë’s hand came down on her shoulder and it was warm and reassuring. It didn’t squeeze or try and halt the words spilling out of her. She leaned into it.

“I hate him, I hate both of them,” she sucked in air which hurt as it struggled past her closed throat, “I hate them. And I hate my parents. And I hate his. They’re the ones that came up with this. I hate all of them.”

Tarwë turned her carefully towards him and she buried her face against the dark cloth of his tunic and began to cry. The tears were weak at first but then suddenly her eyes were flooded and the shaking in her limbs became so bad she would have collapsed if Tarwë’s other arm had not come around her and kept her up. A wretched noise filled the air but she couldn’t have controlled the horrific howling from her throat if she’d tried.

She really did hate them.

Her brother whom she’d once respected, and Arafinwë whom she’d never bothered to know but had also respected, and her parents who only cared for her brother’s reputation, and Arafinwë’s parents who were concerned for their own son and Ñolofinwë who flew into Alqualondë like an omen bearing crow to push and push and push for the match to be made..

What about her?

Why did she have to be the one to give up her life for this?

She cried and she howled and she almost didn’t notice the attendant, her attendant, coming over and carefully taking her by the arm. With Tarwe’s help the attendant guided her to one of the quiet dark rooms she’d only heard about, with soft cushions on the floor and incense still thick in the air, where she was allowed to curl up and keep crying without being stopped.

Sometime later when she had cried herself out the attendant returned. There were other attendants with her, another woman and a man. The man picked her up and carried her back to her rooms. Around his shoulder she saw the two women begin opening large windows into the pitch black room, letting thin, liquid light to illuminate moss green cushions, one of which had a large dark patch on it from Eärwen’s tears.

She was laid on her bed and the attendant bid her to call if she required assistance, and that he would just be in the corridor, before leaving her.

Eärwen drank a glass of water because her headache would not allow her to lie down without doing so, and then she let the chill of her sheets against her too-hot cheek draw her into sleep.

She woke up to a soft hand stroking her hair.

“Hello,” Alaistë whispered, stroking back wisps of hair from Eärwen’s face, “it’s been a whole turn of the trees.”

Eärwen sat bolt upright in response to that.

That was precious time! Time she could not afford to be lost! She didn’t know if she’d be allowed the extra month. Well she’d phrased it as a demand but she had no idea how or if her wish would reach Alqualondë.

Memories of what she’d said to both Arafinwë and Tarwë came back to her and she felt shame run through her as well as a deep pang of fear at the possible repercussions.

Alaistë’s face was hagrid, there was no other way to describe it. It was paled and her eyes had deep bruised bags beneath them. The hands touching Eärwen were trembling lightly.

“I’m sorry,” Eärwen whispered, catching them in her own. Small, just like she’s noticed the first time they’d met, and so delicate. Alaistë’s wedding ring had been jammed onto the correct finger, a painful looking sight where the metal pinched the swollen digit.

“It’s not that,” Alaistë’s mouth trembled as she tried to smile. Eärwen’s stomach dipped in dread.

“What’s wrong?” Eärwen forced herself up, tugging

It took Alaistë a few tries but at last she managed to whisper “my husband is here.”

Oh no.

Eärwen began to shake, just as much as Alaistë. She rallied herself to pull the older woman into her arms, squeezing tightly.

“He’s in our rooms so I came up here because I knew you would not mind. He and father are talking. They will be a while.”

“Alright.”

Alaistë fretted against her, “he can’t make us go back,” she mumbled into Eärwen’s shoulder, “don’t worry.”

But that did nothing for Eärwen. She would worry. She would worry until the mysterious husband was gone.

Of a like mind they lay back against the bed. It was thinner than Alaistë’s bed on the second floor. That did not matter as they stripped wraps and pushed up their shifts, pressing their bodies tightly together as though to mesh into each other’s skin.

Alaistë kissed hard enough that Eärwen’s lips were aching from the force and she had to make a protesting noise. Alaistë pulled back after that but her touch was ravenous, and there was a desperation to how she moved, hands running all over Eärwen’s body.

Memorising it.

Don’t worry Alaistë had said. How was Eärwen supposed to do anything but?

-

She rose from the tangle nest of dresses and sheets. Alaistë caught her by the wrist.

“I am just going to the lavatory,” Eärwen whispered, pulling on a shift and finding her wrap amongst the mess.

“Alright, come back quickly,” Alaistë’s eyes were heavy lidded and she looked so warm and comfortable that Eärwen almost gave up and crawled back to her.

She did leave though, and as she closed the door quietly behind her she heard Alaistë whisper “liar” after her.

The words scored a direct hit. Eärwen shrugged her shoulders, feeling a weight upon them that she could not see the source of. It was not to the lavatory that she went but down the stairs to the second floor.

The door was shut.

She swallowed and pressed her hands against the wood, finding that they were shaking. She couldn’t bring herself to knock or to simply open it. Instead she knelt, and wretched with fear but also a consuming need to know, she pressed her ear against the door.

“She had a fit of rage. I have a list of a damages—“ the voice was familiar but placing it was hard when Eärwen’s heart was up in her ears. She knew though that it had to be the husband. It was not Tarwë whose voice she now knew well.

“No matter,” Tarwë interrupted the husband; his son, “I learned my lessons from her long ago. Everything of value to me that I have left is either locked up in the attic or is in the treasure house at Formenos. Just have the servants clean up the mess and arrange for any repairs – I assume that my damage has taken the brunt of it.”

“And your sleeping quarters.”

“Funny how she never has her fits of rage in her own quarters,” Tarwë drew out in a musing voice, “very well. How is your brother?”

“A-“

“I saw him yesterday as I told you. Your other brother.”

“He is fine,” the voice sounded aggrieved and angry, not very much but it was a distinct undercurrent, “Nerdanel’s pregnancy progresses healthily.”

Nerdanel? Eärwen looked at the architrave as she tried to place the familiar name.

“And the rumours?”

“Unfortunately they have not quieted.”

“All of them?”

“Indeed, both run rampant… in fact those about Tyelkormo are growing stronger.”

Tarwë sighed.

“Fëanáro is handling my duties well?”

“Just fine. There have been no riots.”

F…Fëanáro? High Prince Fëanáro Curufinwë?

Eärwen pulled back in confusion and stared at the door.

Why would Tarwë be giving duties to his prince?

“Alright thank you for coming to see me. I am sorry you did not intercept him before he got here. Go collect you brother from Mairolwë‘s marriage bed please and be discrete about it. I am happy to have Findis’ company for the final month of my stay. Don’t come back here when you return to Tirion. Anairë was quite distressed when she saw you.”

Eärwen scrabbled away from the door, missing the angry words that retorted the jibe.

The world span around her. Her feet staggered under her, unable to coordinate as she tried to get down the hallway enough that it seemed she’d not been eavesdropping.

She wasn’t fast enough. The door opened.

“Princess Eärwen?” Prince Ñolofinwë of Tirion looked at her in surprise, eyes wide. Ah yes, that was where she had seen Arafinwë's eyes before. Behind him Tarwë looked at her with eyes exactly the same as his two youngest sons.  His expression was resigned… sad. Her eyes searched his and she saw regret also before the King… the King of Tirion placed his hand on Prince Ñolofinwë’s shoulder, “the Princess has been good company this past month. She has become good friends with your wife Ñolofinwë.”

“Oh…. Oh! Thank you Princess, that is wonderful to hea-“

“However she has her own business to attend to,” Tar…F…..F… King… Finwë tilted his head and smiled, “we can’t keep her.”

Eärwen swallowed and nodded, feet turning under her without her notice and she fled in an orderly fashion, back straight and trying not to look like she was trying to get away from them as quickly as possible. She fled up the stairs and to her room and shut the door.

Alaistë rose up on her arms and looked at her, distraught. There were tear tracks on her friend and lover’s face.

“You lied to me,” Eärwen said weakly and the words were instantly regretted.

“Do you really think it would go down well to know that Princess Anairë’s breakdown was so severe that the King of Tirion personally took her away?” Ala… Anairë…

“Anairë,” Eärwen said out loud. It was stranger’s name, known passingly from royal announcements. She had not gone to the marriage of Prince Ñolofinwë. She had been invited to swim with the handmaidens of Uinen and one did not pass up such an opportunity. She had however attended the marriage of Prince Fëanáro, truly a child then, and that was where she remembered the name Nerdanel from she realised.

“Anairë…. It was right there for me to see. I thought my Quenya was failing me when I couldn’t figure out your name but it was all right there. Alaistë and Tarwë. You must have th-th-thought I was such a fool.”

“No,” Al…Ala….A…the stranger on the bed’s voice rose in the high squeaky way that a voice tended to go when tears were being wrestled back, “no I never thought that. Please. Please believe me. I wanted to be Alaistë. I wanted to be normal and I wanted to be someone who wasn’t Anairë. And you fell in love with Alaistë and I couldn’t… I thought if I told you you would stop. Eärwen…Eärwen please…”

There was a thump and the rustle of cloth. The stranger pulled herself off the bed and crawled over to her, dragging a sheet after her. Warm arms pressed her to a warmer chest. Eärwen couldn’t cry properly, she had no tears left after the meeting with Arafinwë. She struggled but her strength was gone from her. She just sagged after a while, pretending Alaistë still existed and it was her whispering comforting nonsense into her hair.

-

Eärwen had never met someone so … gaunt. Truly Princess Findis did not look as though she should be able to stand. Her fashionable dress did not hide how prominent her collarbones were, nor the emaciated stretch of her neck and her sunken cheeks were not camouflaged by her blusher. Her arms had a strange fuzz across them, when they emerged from her sleeves so that she could clasp their hands together in greeting.

The princess hair was a middling brown colour, dull, and seemed to be thinning though the swept up fashionable style might have been the reason for that impression with all the lengths of hair being pulled in every which direction.

Anairë was a silent presence behind her, head lowered and not speaking to anyone.

Tar… King Finwë was watching them, eyebrows furrowed deeply. He was looking pale and his plate of steamed vegetables was untouched, as was his water. As the two women took a seat at the already set shaded table, he pressed his hand against his stomach and excused himself with a grimace of pain.

Both Findis and Anairë watched him go with worried expressions, glancing to one another with a shared knowing that had jealousy surging in Eärwen before she could help herself.

“Princess Eärwen,” Princess Findis’ voice was as whispy as her presence, “I have heard a lot about you. Mainly from Ñolofinwë which means it is second hand knowledge. I have heard that you might become betrothed to my younger brother.”

“That is something that has been discussed,” Eärwen watched Findis’ cutlery push food around the plate without touching it. She wasn’t able to maintain eye contact with any of them.

“Please do not.”

Eärwen’s head came up in surprise.

“Our family, please run away now while you can,” Findis gave her a serene smile that was a perfect copy of her father’s. “We are a horrible lot and we only seem to exist to make our spouses terribly unhappy. Well all of us save Fëanáro. But I suppose he doesn’t count as our family. He holds himself apart from us all.”

Anairë sighed and pressed her fingers together, “Findis it’s not that bad.”

“Yes it is,” Findis shook her head, “My husband has already parted from me, his passion spent within the first year of our marriage. Ñolofinwë throws you around and commits adultery with our own cousin in Taniquetil. Lalwendë enjoys drowning kittens or pulling the wings off butterflies, and is regularly taken into the care of Nienna in the hopes she will eventually learn compassion and Arafinwë is… well his personality is nice but any woman marrying him isn’t really marrying him is she? She’s marrying a lie. Never mind mother and father.”

That serene smile was turned on Eärwen, “have I shocked and horrified you yet?”

“I had not heard about your sister but the rest I have an inkling of,” Eärwen replied hoarsely, shivering in her seat, “well...  I did not know that his mistress was his cousin also.”

“Indeed. Our mother’s sister’s daughter. See? Anairë?”

There was a sad sigh. Earwen's heart broke inside her chest at the noise. It had been labouring since she had confronted her but now it shattered completely.

“She is right, you should refuse.”

Eärwen glanced to the side at her. Anairë’s shoulders were slumped and her face was half covered by her loose hair.

“I agree. Pardon me,” Finwë returned. He looked ragged and when he reached for his glass of water Eärwen spotted a fresh blood stain on the hem of his sleeve.

“They say I am one to whom happiness has come twice. Do I not look that way to you Princess Eärwen?”

“Not at all,” Eärwen shook her head.

“Such honesty,” Finwë chuckled, “I will miss you.”

“Yes,” Eärwen pressed her hands together to stop their trembling, “I will miss you as well.”

-

One cycle of the trees later Eärwen received a message from Alqualondë. Her request to stay another month had been agreed to. Please take care, her mother ended the letter.

It was very formal.

She looked for any hidden familial words but could not find them.

Her mother had probably been in a hurry. She had many duties to attend to after all.

She had missed the morning tidal pools. Her skin felt strange for not having laid in the water for so long and her head buzzed with thoughts she wished she could empty out of her mind.

Instead she roamed through the empty main hall, heart empty and mind buzzing.

“Hello.”

She paused and looked over her shoulder at Anairë who stood cautiously behind a potted lily-of-peace, watching her.

“Good morning,” Eärwen managed.

Anairë swallowed, watching her still.

“I….I have been allowed to stay another month,” Eärwen said.

Only a few wakings prior it would have been a source of joy but now? Now what would she do?

“Ah look at that!” a voice loud and clear as a bell carried across the space and had them both spinning towards the doors, “we do not have to look for you at all.”

A man was striding in, a fussing attendant dogging him. He had a toddler on one hip, and saddlebags over his arm. His clothing was as plain as a farmer’s, in fact Eärwen saw a scorch mark on the hem. His skin was dark gold save a spray of white across his nose and cheeks like inverted freckles.

He was…beautiful.

The beauty of Arafinwë the day before or the passing noted beauty of Ñolofinwë was nothing compared to this.

It was as though Laurelin had somehow had a son, a son with eyes as bright as silver molten in the crucible, and a smile wide and prompting you to smile back no matter how you felt.

“He..hello?” Eärwen managed.

“Greetings to you,” the stranger looked at her with a raised eyebrow but his attention was on Anairë who smiled weakly up at him, eyes flicking to the child reaching for her with surprise.

“A gift to you, dear lady, a week early from your begetting day.”

The wriggling toddler was dumped in Anairë’s arms.

“You didn’t tell me your begetting day was in a week,” Eärwen said, stunned still.

“You aren’t going to be here,” Anairë whispered, kissing a small hand which reached demandingly for her. “Findekáno did you miss me?” she asked softly.

“Ammë,” the child beamed at her then his face crumpled and his eyes bluer than imaginable filled with tears. Clinging with arms wrapped around Anairë’s neck she was the centre of the little one’s world.

“I missed you too,” Anairë hugged her son and let Eärwen take the bag that Fëanáro proffered, likely filled with the child’s clothing.

“Wonderful. It will be worth Ñolofinwë’s moods having seen this. Now, who are you?” Eärwen was pinned with a bright stare.

“…E…Eärwen…Olwiel…” Eärwen managed a curtsey.

“Ah, I know you. Though last I saw you you didn’t come up to my hip. And now you are Ñolofinwë’s unfortunate prey in his hunt to marry off Arafinwë. Do not do it.” Her hands were clasped in warm hands rough with callouses, “a pleasure to meet you Princess. Take care of my sister while she and you share accommodations here.”

“Oh..of..of course…” Eärwen nodded, overwhelmed, but caught the way that Anairë turned her head away.

“Brilliant. She is in good hands. I can see that already. Then I’ll take my leave, I need to get back before Ñolofinwë returns and figures out what I’ve done. Anairë,” a kiss was laid on Anairë’s cheek, “princess Eärwen,” a kiss landed on Eärwen’s cheek before she could react, and the stranger was out the door.

“He didn’t introduce himself,” Eärwen managed weakly, hand raising to where her cheek was still warm.

“Fëanáro,” Anairë supplied.

“What was that on his face? The white spots.”

“Welding scars… he calls them his welding freckles. He was stupid once upon a time not to wear face protection. He was lucky not to lose his eyes.”

“Th-the child?”

“My son… Findekáno,” Anairë raised her chin proudly.

Eärwen nodded, still dazed and hefted the saddle bags on her arm onto her shoulder, reaching for Anairë’s hand unthinkingly.

Anairë glanced at her, one arm full of a sobbing child, and her chin wobbled.

“Don’t cry when your son is crying,” Eärwen tried to deflect, squeezing Anairë’s hand in her own.

“You hate me now,” Anairë’s voice rose. Confused out of crying, her son stopped his own sobbing to raise his head and look at his mother.

“I don’t hate you,” Eärwen squeezed the hand in her grasp again, “I… I…. I am just….still…recovering from the shock.”

She walked with Anairë up to the second floor, glancing from time to time at her… companion. Anairë didn’t look at her once.

“I’ve extended my stay,” Eärwen blurted out as they stepped into the bedroom.

Anairë did not drop her son... quite. She managed to make it a controlled put down onto the bed where Findekáno proceeded to inspect the many pillows before reaching up and digging his hands into his mother’s skirt. Eärwen could understand the sentiment. She didn’t want to let go of Anairë either when she had her in her arms.

“I have another month here… as long as your own stay,” Eärwen continued, “I… I don’t want to leave and have you think I hate you. I don’t want to leave with …this between us. We have a month to put things right.”

“A month,” Anairë whispered almost reverently, “a month’s reprieve.”

“And then at the end of the month…we can part ways, hopefully as friends and you will come visit me.”

“O-oh,” Anairë reached out, grabbed her sleeve and tugged her over, grip weak but Eärwen happy to let her tow her in.

“In a month I have to go back to Alqualondë, and I have to decide whether Arafinwë is right and I should marry him,” Eärwen continued, “but I think in a month I should know whether there is something to his family that makes me want to stay.”

“Don’t marry him to stay close to me,” Anairë whispered to her.

Eärwen looked at her, thinking about that. It would be a stupid decision to make, based off a mere two months knowing one another, the first month of which had been under deception on both their parts.

“To know that if I married him that there would be a friend amongst his family waiting for me,” she said instead, “one that I have great love for, would make the sacrifice easier to bear. It is not something I think that I will easily be able to avoid. But knowing you, some of my fears are lifted.”

Anairë reached for her waist and wrapped her arms around it. Findekáno took the opportunity to wriggle his little hands into their sashes and pull himself onto his feed, giggling at his achievement.

“Let us make a vow,” Anairë said firmly, “whether we continue as lovers or as friends. Let us vow loyalty to one another, let us promise to never lie nor deceive the other again, and when one suffers the other will be there by their side.”

“I can vow that,” Eärwen pressed their mouths together lightly, “a vow under Eru’s gaze?”

Anairë shook her head, “under Lady Uinen’s. This is her land which has brought us together, let her watch over us from this day forth.”

Chapter End Notes

Tarwë - King (Tar) + unisex name ending (wë)
Alaistë - Not (Ala) + Holy (aistë) to play off Anairë - Holiest

Eärwen heard crying as she stepped into the family quarters, soft and low. A male voice, a youth of indeterminate age.

She ducked her head, lips pressing together.

Usually when such crying was heard it was Tyelkormo, but she did not think it would be him this time.

Indeed as she made her way through the family quarters there was no sign of Tyelkormo at all. The youth was banned from public appearances until his hair had grown out enough from its shambolic attempt at colouring it that they could cut it and claim it was a fashionable change.

Eärwen closed her eyes, seeing for a moment the youth’s devastated face, one cheek already swelling with a bruise from Indis’ slap, his hands stained blue and his hair also a dark but unmistakable blue from the ink he’d mistaken for black and tried to erase his talked about locks of hair.

Nienna forgive her sins but she hated this family with every breath she drew in and she hated its court and people almost as much.

It was unforgivable that whilst Fëanáro was the one who was loyal to his wife and Ñolofinwë freely tupped his cousin that is was Fëanáro who was slandered and his mother’s kin also. The whispers were prevalent that Tyelkormo had been sired upon one of Fëanáro’s female cousins and then passed off as Nerdanel’s.

Fëanáro had, in direct defiance of the order to keep Tyelkormo tucked away out of sight, packed up his family and taken them away on one of their long meanders across the breadth of Aman. His departure only heightened the tensions because Fëanáro might let things pass him by if it meant easing his father’s stress. But he would not forgive the laying of hands on his son.

Eventually Fëanáro would return with his family. Eventually Fëanáro’s retaliation would descend upon the royal household with full force.

The source of the crying, as it turned out, was Turukáno.

“A…aunt…” his sodden flushed face was shocked to see her. Eärwen waved from the doorway.

“What ails you nephew?”

There was a pause of male pride and Eärwen shook her head, “tell me please Turukáno. I might be able to help.”

“Is Findaráto with you?”

“He is not.”

“I spilled some of the oil at lunch that was meant for dipping bread. Grandmother took Mother to task for it.”

Oh dear. Eärwen’s heart sank. “Thank you.”

She called for a servant and had them deliver fresh water, cooler than what was in Turukáno’s room. She left him with a damp chilled cloth over his face and sought out Anairë.

Anairë’s cheek was bruised. She had also been slapped clearly. Given the flinching of her body just from the breeze it was probably more than a slap though whether the harm was emotional or physical Eärwen. Her sleeves were long despite the hot weather, and her head hung low with her tired expression revealed for her hair was up in braids tight against her scalp in the fashion of Tirion.

“What happened?” Eärwen asked, turned to stone at the doorway.

“She said I was becoming too cheeky with her.”

Eärwen went back to Turukáno’s room and returned with a new damp cloth for her to press against her cheek.

“It would be good if we could use the ice from the ice stores but it would result in a scolding,” Anairë muttered, leaning into her. Anairë’s dress was a fashionable shimmer of oak browns and flashes of gold. It might as well have been dull black the way she sagged in it. Her stomach was rounding out with her third child, Eärwen noted this with a slight flurry of excitement despite her building rage at Tirion’s household. Eärwen was expecting her own third child soon, though she was not nearly so far along.

Arafinwë could perform with a woman. It helped if that woman resembled Mairolwë of course. Two sons born in swift succession had killed the last of the rumours swirling around her husband and her brother. This child was… well… accidental as far as a child of the eldar could be an accident.

Never let your drunk husband convince an equally you to put on your brother’s clothing to see what you look like, she supposed, was the moral of the day.

She’d have to commemorate it in the child’s name.

“Are you here long?” Anairë asked her, slipping forward on the couch so she could rest back against Eärwen, head lolling on Eärwen’s shoulder.

“Two months, I rode ahead. Arafinwë is following with the boys. Where is everyone?"

"Well you know where Fëanáro and his have gone to. I got a letter saying they are staying a while with Mahtan. Ñolofinwë has taken Findekáno to the horse yards today since he has outgrown his mount.  Lalwen is with Nienna as she always is, her release date has been postponed again, and Findis has taken herself away to Édebar. I am surprised you did not meet her along the road but perhaps she took the backroads."

"Indis tried to put her on a diet again?"

"Yes, she said that Findis was becoming too bloated and needed to stop eating meat" Anairë tucked her head against Eärwen's neck and Eärwen shivered to feel the butterfly touch of lashes against her throat.

Anairë was so petite, Eärwen could barely believe there was a time she had stood eye to eye with her friend and lover. Eärwen kissed the crown of Anairë’s head and wrapped a proprietary arm around her.

“I have heard a rumour about your husband’s mistress,” she murmured, “care to confirm or deny them?”

“He’s stopped seeing her since the child was born which is a great irony,” Anaire tilted her head up and kissed her jaw.

“What is the child’s name?” Eärwen wrapped her arm tighter around Anairë’s shrinking waistline.

“Oh… Guilin or something of the like,” Anairë shrugged, “I’m butchering it probably. I can’t remember. Why?”

“Just to keep my eye out amongst mother’s fosterlings.”

“Ah yes,” Anairë shook her head, “your mother forgives a lot so long as noble blood is involved.”

“And a hefty debt is accrued and taking in an abandoned mistress’ child is just the sort of thing my mother will do if that mistress’ kin have sway,” Eärwen pushed back her braid with her free hand, “what are you doing tonight?”

“I agreed to have supper with father in his office,” Anairë’s eyes cast down, then up again, and there was a gleam of warmth now which did Eärwen’s heart good to see in the same way a beam of Laurelin or Tyelperion’s grace breaking through a long patch of rain, “but I have a few hours free between dinner and then.”

“Free?” Eärwen leaned in closer and kissed the edge of Anairë’s ear.

“Free,” Anairë shivered and bit her lip. Eärwen felt the sudden tension, worried and unhappy, in her friend’s grip.

“Good,” Eärwen kissed again, “I’ll give your back a massage.”

Unlike Anairë’s last pregnancy, her ardour had completely left her this time. Eärwen understood.

Anairë’s hand relaxed and Eärwen kissed away the last little bit of unhappiness and shame lingering there, letting herself be the balm to the fëa deep bruises her dearest’s being had banked.

-

“It is good to see you again Eärwen, my heart warms when you are near, especially because Anairë smiles so,” Finwë smiled at her over the small supper laid out for them to nibble on. Eärwen smiled back, glad to see that Finwë was not nearly as sallow as the last time as she had seen him. Hopefully the new diet to try and reduce the holes in his stomach lining was working.

“It is good to see you also,” Eärwen helped herself to some cheese and then some pear.

They polished off the plates and then they sat back, enjoying talking to one another for a while until at last a natural lull came over them.

Finwë began to hum a tune then softly murmur the words to it, half dozing in his chair. It sounded like Quenya, archaic Quenya, and Eärwen maybe understood one word in ten.

“Who was that song for?” Anairë asked sleepily, slumped against Eärwen’s side.

“My first born,” Finwë murmured back, sounding half asleep himself.

“Fëanáro?”

“No, no… the child before him. Míriel and I, we had a child, a son with hair as bright as hers and he was our joy beneath the dark trees. And when the darkness took him the grief between us was like a burning coal against our skin and I ran from her. I could not bear to see her and her shining hair in the darkness. I could not bear to look into her eyes and see the loss that was my own. The only thing that sent me back to her was the lightning in the sky as great battle was done to at last seal Melkor away. And then I ran from her again. I was not healed yet. I suppose that was the earliest indication I could not handle grief well. I should have taken note from my failings then.”

“I’m only going to accept your self-pity if you are genuinely are sorry for hurting her,” Anairë grunted.

Finwë looked at them both and his eyes bled grief, such immense grief that they themselves could not yet comprehend, “I do. Each breath I take.” He swore.

“Anairë!” Eärwen scolded, shocked at her.

“Oh it’s alright, he made me agree to bring him up whenever he falls into a self-pitying spiral,” Anairë yawned.

“I did,” Finwë nodded, “I have noticed that I have developed a tendency to get laconic and mopey about the past of late. Anairë is good at getting me out of them.”

“Good,” Anairë grunted again, showing no quarter, “now sing something for us. Something you would have sang for her.”

“Anairë!” Eärwen chastised immediately.

“It feels embarrassing to sing in front of two beautiful woman when they do not sing along with me,” Finwë mused.

“Do not just let her bully you into it.”

“I don’t mind singing,” Finwë shrugged, “and it’s been an age since I sang. I wonder if I can even manage it. Perhaps if I have the right people singing along with me.”

“I don’t even know that language,” Eärwen protested.

“Hum along. It’s a very basic tune,” Finwë was becoming more animated at the thought.

“I can’t sing.”

“Nonsense, you are a Teleri.”

“He’s got you there,” Anairë straightened up, rubbing her back to ease the crick in it.

Slowly Finwë’s song lead them as Anairë had lead them over slippery tidal pools and rocks, and as faltering and unsure as Eärwen had been then, Anairë took the lead as they hummed to an old voice singing of older stars, their hands clasped tightly together.