Swans and Seagulls by LadyBrooke

Chapter 1

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“Why did you not forgive him?” Celebrían asked, curled in a chair in the corner of her grandmother’s living room in Alqualonde. She could hear seagulls outside the room, reminding her far too much of leaving and grief. She would have to return to Tirion in a few days, she decided.

“Your grandfather?” Eärwen turned her head from her rope-making to look at Celebrían. “I forgave him long ago for the little I needed to, but forgiveness does not grant us a different fate. Perhaps if he had been free to live here, as he had promised upon our marriage, but I have come to realize that for all he tried to run from it and however much he does not look it, he is in his own ways as loyal to his father and eldest brother as Nolofinwë was. And I would not leave the sea for him.”

Celebrían had not thought of it that way before, when everyone had framed it as a matter of anger. “Then you do not hate him?”

Eärwen laughed then, high and free, until the swans outside her window looked in. “Do not listen to the gossip in the city. He is still one of my best friends, and if ever he needs aid, he need only send word here.”

“They said that you blamed him for your children leaving.” Celebrían carefully looked out the window, much as she had once in Imladris, when some elf from the Havens had asked here if she would blame her husband or herself if one of their children chose another fate. 

It was quiet for a moment, and then the rope fell to the ground and Eärwen made her way across the room, on feet that would have been silent if not for the shells underneath. “Our children’s fates are their own choices. We can only raise them as best as we can and let them fly free afterwards.” 

“And if I am angry at mine?”

“You try to understand, and you forgive them for leaving, even if you cannot speak to them to ask why.”

Eärwen’s eyes were filled with tears, Celebrían realized in the brief moments between Eärwen looking her in the eyes and wrapping her arms around her in a desperate embrace. And then she was crying too, as she wondered if she could forgive her own daughter as Eärwen had forgiven hers.