A Garden of Plots by LadyBrooke

Chapter 1

Nimloth is reborn in Valinor, and she wants to scream and rage at the injustice of telling her to be happy that she has been reborn in this false land of supposed non-death and non-decay.

But that will only cause them to believe that they are right, so instead she does what she can for the other Sindar and the Silvan and Avari who come to ask her advice.

And then she builds her house, which she models on what Dior told her of Lúthien’s house, because she had loved to imagine it.

When it is built it is tiny by the standards she is used to, the grand caverns and towering tree houses of her first life, but it is hers. She plants flowers outside of the cottage, and rejects the artificial lines of most of the houses in Valinor. Her garden is wild and beautiful, and she laughs at the faces of those who think that it is lesser because of that.

Once it is finished, she begins to invite those she likes and thinks it will help. Nimloth cannot stay here all the time, but when she does, she welcomes her visitors with open arms and the offer of the spare bed to stay in and hide from the rest of Valinor for a while.

She makes most of her new friends that way. Anairë, especially, welcomes the chance to not be part of the remaining royal family of the Noldor, to get rid of the airs that are required to exist there, and to simply be who she wishes to be.

They talk of their families and their children, lives lost and reborn, and lives lost and still waiting in the Halls. After that, they begin to spin plots together, plots to reclaim what they have lost, plots to gain respect that has been denied merely because their husbands are dead, plots that the world will not know about until they are able to stand and say they are happy with how things are now.

Their friendship is built on this, the former daughter-in-law of the first King of the Noldor and the wife of the first from his house with the great-great-niece of the first King of the Sindar and the wife of the second. It grows to be more, like the flowers outside do, but it is rooted in the recognition that they are both capable of far more than others think they are.