The fair pallor of the hands upon her harp by Himring

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Chapter 1

Written for Legendarium Ladies April 2019, for the prompt "Childhood and Youth".

It looks as if I did not get around to cross-posting at the time.

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Finduilas set down her small harp in frustration.

‘I will never get anywhere with this,’ she sighed.

The other two golden heads lifted and turned towards her.

‘You are only just starting,’ said Galadriel. ‘Your uncle and I have been playing for a long time. I was being quite honest when I told you that you had made astonishing progress since I last heard you!’

‘That is not what I meant,’ said Finduilas, a little shamefacedly, because it felt rather petty arguing with such generous praise.

‘What is the problem, then, Finduilas?’ asked Finrod, putting aside his own harp and giving her his whole attention.

Finduilas shrunk a little in her chair. Was she wasting her time and theirs, which could have been spent improving her skills?

Then she determinedly sat up straight, with her feet firmly on the floor.  ‘All this evening,’ Finduilas explained, ‘it has been songs about Aman. The Bay of Eldamar! Tirion upon Tuna! The white heights of Amon Uilos!’

Her uncle and aunt looked honestly puzzled. She thought they probably had not even realized how they had drifted towards the subject of Valinor. It seemed almost inevitable, whenever these two were together, although they had so many other interests when you talked to them apart.

‘I appreciate songs about Valinor, I do!’ Finduilas hastily added, ‘They are beautiful and I can see the memories they evoke in you! And it means a lot to me. But they still are your memories, not mine. I have never seen Aman, I cannot feel them like you do, I could never play them like you do.’

‘But,’ said Galadriel, ‘they are part of your history, the history of your family, Finduilas! Do you not wish to learn them?’

There was hurt, underneath, thought Finduilas, although her aunt was trying not to show it. It was part of the hurt that had been running like a thread underneath the beauty of the songs, the hurt of exile. Her mother would have had something to say about that, something short and pithy, although she would never have said it to their faces. But Finduilas was not her mother; she did not wish to take sides at all. It was possible to feel the pain of exile from a place you had left of your own will, evidently, and still feel it even in a new place you dearly loved and seemed to have made your own.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but…’

‘No,’ said Finrod to his sister and to Finduilas: ‘I think I see. We mingled a history lesson with a harp lesson, when it would have been more helpful to you to keep the two apart. What kind of music would you like to play tonight, Finduilas?’

And, while Finduilas was trying to come up with a definite answer, stumped by the sudden choice offered to her, Finrod suggested, with an intuitive leap that was typical of her uncle: ‘Maybe there is a song that you have composed yourself that is on your mind?’

Finduilas lowered her head, feeling found out, but Galadriel jumped in eagerly, hurt apparently all forgotten: ‘Oh, there is?! You are working on a song? Let us hear!’

Finduilas had not intended to share her idea with anyone just yet. But maybe the time had come? She was stuck, in parts, and bothered by it and although asking the opinion of Galadriel and Finrod on her first composition before she had perfected it seemed almost presumptuous, maybe they would have advice she could use?

‘It isn’t finished,’ she said, pre-emptively.

Then she raised her harp and began, a little shakily:

 

The feet of the forest

in fading gold

and burnished brown

were buried deeply;

a restless rustle…

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Chapter End Notes

Finduilas is seen playing the harp as an adult in the Lay of the Children of Hurin (Lays of Beleriand) and the title is taken from this:

..folk wondered at the fair pallor
of the hands upon her harp, her hair of gold
on slender shoulders slipped in tumult,
the glory of her eyes that gleamed with fires of secret thought in silent deeps...

[The last bit of this passage is a prompt that I had failed to fill in March (G50, on the Tolkien Quotes card for B2MeM 2019).]

Galadriel and Finrod both canonically play the harp and are both notable for playing songs about Valinor (although clearly neither of them only played songs about Valinor!).

Finduilas's song is a bit from one of the versions of "Winter comes to Nargothrond", an unfinished poem associated with the Lay.

In my 'verse Finduilas's mother, Orodreth's wife, is one of the northern Sindar. This is based on a statement in HoME, although it comes from the version where she is Gil-galad's mother, too, which I am otherwise not following.