Overcoming by Elleth

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

When Anairë does not spend her energy bantering endless, idiotic words with the lords of Arafinwë's council, she draws her memories like a comforting cloak or a protective shell around her. But one evening, long enough after the Dark Years that the new Lights have become trivial and mundane, when the westering sun slants upon the land in just the right angle to jolt her into memories of Laurelin at the height of his glory, even that shell is no longer enough. There has been too much loss to bear easily, and Anairë's need for companionship has gone unsatisfied, safe for visits of Nerdanel and Amarië, both grieving themselves, and granting only what meagre comforts they themselves can afford.

A thought grows in her when she closes the door behind them to lock out the night, and it keeps gnawing away on her resolve for days and weeks, makes it impossible to sit still, think clearly, ignore how silent the house has grown.

The thought is deceptively simple, and yet not: There used to be one other, and that is the friendship she misses most dearly.

She knows well that she won't be welcome in Alqualondë, which, with her family dead or departed, has now become Eärwen's jealously guarded realm behind high walls, rather than the open haven of their youth that burst with song and light. But at last Anairë damns propriety, gives in to the impulses that many would no doubt call selfish, and rides anyway, blasting down Calacirya to the shore on a black horse in blue and silver trappings. Guards await her at the gate, heavily armed with man-high bows, since their old slender playthings did not suffice to defend their ships – and their people – from loss and certain death, and she stands before them weaponless and states her intent, to see Eärwen. Though her eyes are nervous and wide with grief for the town and the friend that she once loved, she is treated as a prisoner might be, and led through silent, abandoned streets to the palace hewn into the cliffs above the sea. She could have found the way herself, but one of the guards says, and her voice is tinged with grief, also:

"It is not safe. Not for our people to let you go unwatched, nor for you, a Noldo whose children spilled our blood in these streets. But the Queen awaits you. She saw your coming from afar, and commanded that no harm be done to you unless you come with ill intent."

"I come with love and friendship only." She crushes the grief and tears that want out by the time they reach the palace gates, wrought in pearls and silver, and bears herself proudly, her hair uncovered and unbraided where she should wear a widow's veil – for though her husband is not dead (not yet, most say, if they speak of him at all), there is a sea between them and the only way for them to reunite leads through the halls of Mandos, if even that. She shoves the theought aside, and her heart thuds faster, beating hard and painful against her ribs the closer they come to Eärwen's private chambers, a series of grottoes carved from rock and open to the sea, looking out upon the Twilit Isles and the Lonely Island far out in the Bay of Eldamar. Once, long ago, sitting head to head and arms linked before either of them had married, they'd stolen a kiss on that balcony, and laughed softly and silently at one another when a wave showered them in spray.

The guards leave her before the door, and retreat to a respectful distance. Anairë raps her knuckles against the wood, three times, swiftly and decisively before she can change her mind and flee. The woman who opens is – grey, Anairë thinks – grey raiment, grey eyes, grey veil over her hair, and nothing about her the silver and sea-blue that she ought to be. The sea, too, is grey in the evening twilight.

She looks barely like Eärwen at all, but Anairë pushes past her and then stands in the middle of the room, clenched hands barely unfurling before her fingernails dig into her palms again.

"You have changed," Eärwen says. Even her voice is low, grey, lacking the music it used to hold.

"You have, also. I barely recognize you – widowhood does not become you."

"Nor you."

Neither of them are widows, but Anairë keeps that thought locked behind her lips and her eyes on the flagstones. They might as well be. There are lichens growing in between the cracks of the stone, grey too, and intricate and leafy. She reacts out of impulse when suddenly the grey woman flings herself at her, and there are Eärwen's soft, strong arms around her, and her face, hot and wet with tears, pressed to her shoulder.

"You should have come sooner!"

There are no more accusations than that one only. Forgiveness is less easy, but they hold each other throughout most of the night and wake, limbs and dresses tangled, with a dull ache in their temples from crying, at sunrise. With her friend's warm body against her, Anairë is content, or less lonely, at least for the moment.

They rise reluctatly, breakfast together on the balcony, while the sun climbs from the sea in gold and peach, and paints a sheen of colour upon Eärwen's ready canvas – she lights up like a cloud. It seems unlike her, still, but at least for now she looks alive, and Anairë finds herself eating automatically while her eyes are drawn to Eärwen yet again.

"Do you remember," Anairë says, in between bites of sugar-kelp wrapped around soft cheese, "that time in the mud-bath?" It is a foolish thing to say, to break the silence and distract herself from the play of light upon Eärwen's face, another anecdote from their youth, which had left them both shrieking with glee and flinging the contents of their tubs at one another over some trivial, laughing, well-placed insult of Anairë's to indeed start such a battle.

Eärwen, who has been sucking on a slice of apple, looks surprised, then nods, and sure enough she is soon half-smiling. "Would that we could repeat it," she says, and then her face grows clouded again, grey, just in time with the sun rising into a bank of clouds. "But I do not think it would be wise to visit the baths with you. The Lindai are my people, but the resentments against you and yours run deep – I would have summoned you, had I not thought that you and Nerdanel --- for she offered to atone, she meant to help us cleanse the town, carve us markers for the dead, but I --- had your safety to consider as well as their hearts. You do not spit in a grieving people's face, not singly, or collectively, for selfish reasons."

There is a pause, and Eärwen's eyes flicker to Anairë. "I would have rejected it --- would have had to, I was waiting for your offer, but that never came." Her voice is bitterly grieved now, the betrayal evident, and Anairë seeks to clasp her friend's hands, which she pulls away hastily, and then uncertain what to do, clenches in her lap.

Anairë replies, quietly, her eyes downcast, "I have no talents to match Nerdanel's; what would you have had me do - dance for your people or sew them clothes?"

"It is said that you sit in Coucil in Tirion, and argue quite shrewdly."

"No more so now than always. Only because I have been made into a politician by circumstance does not mean that my advice is worth anything, or that I could be of help to you. I remain a Noldo, and you just said that inviting one here whose --- children also rushed into the battle..."

She stares out over the sea. The harbour with its great arch of rock is hidden away beyond the bend of a cliff, and that is a mercy, but there are ships out with their nets flung wide, and she almost feels herself entangled like a fish and drawn into some unknown world where all this might not have happened, where the sunlight on the sea is Laurelin's path of gold spilling through the Calacirya and she is visiting here out of pleasure, for seeing a dear friend in ideal, idle bliss.

When she escapes from that half-dream fancy, she finds the table cleared, and Eärwen gone, and with her warnings in mind remains in her chambers until evening, wandering to and fro restlessly, her fingers brushing over dust lying thick and grey in corners, on piles of books long unread, and finally she flings open the door to Eärwen's dressing room. There is no dust there, this at least is kept clean and ordered, but all of Eärwen's sea-green, silver, mother-of-pearl, foam-white dresses, have been relegated away to one corner, covered with blankets, nearly invisible. The rest of it, of course, is grey. There is a flutter in Anairë's chest seeing the colourful garbs at least are kept safe. It is like a glimmer of hope that somehow things may yet change.

But when Eärwen returns in the evening, that glimmer fades to nothing. She looks like a snuffed-out candle, and discarding ceremony crawls into bed immediately, pausing only to slip from her shoes. Anairë joins her, stretched on the pillows across. Now that she has time to consider her friend closely, the hair-fine lines around her eyes, the way her eyelids crinkle when she blinks, the rigid set of her full lips, she understands it is more than just the dresses that make her appear so grieved. It is with the utmost care that she retrieves a soft hairbrush, lets the grey veil flutter to the ground, un-pins the loops and coils of Eärwen's braids, and brushes out her hair until it lies long and silver-shining across the pillows. Eärwen, in the meantime, falls asleep, owing an explanation of what transpired that day. Anairë goes to sleep next to her, pillowing Eärwen's head in the crook of her arm, and her own face against the nape of her neck.

There is a rich breakfast waiting for her beside the bed when she wakes, and Eärwen is gone. The sun has come out, and the curtains blow in a light breeze from the sea. Anairë considers swimming, but decides against it – the sea can be treacherous and now less than ever Ossë and Uinen bear the Noldor great love. The day once more grows long in idleness, and in the evening, when a serving woman sets the table for Anairë and brings a tureen of seafood, fruit and rice, Anairë has had time to quiet her mind and think of something to do. The servant's eyebrows rise when she hears of the items requested, but she dips into a curtsey.

"The Queen asked of us to fulfill your every wish. If there's anything else that you will want, lady, there's a bell there by the door, just ring and one of us will come."

"I want for nothing else, thank you --- except to be assured your speed and silence. I want this to be a surprise for your Queen before she returns."

At that, the woman's grim face softens somewhat, not quite smiling, but she looks on kindly enough, and returns soon, bearing thick towels and a small basket of vials aplenty that rattle and clatter.

Once Eärwen's private bathing chambers have been decked out with her purpose in mind, Anairë waits, near-dozing over a book of old stories that fails to hold her attention. Eärwen does not return until well after dark, shedding her outer dress on the floor without care, and vanishes into the bath without another word. Anairë can hear a soft yelp behind the door, before it is opened, and she emerges again, hands on her hips in front of the open door. A waft of steam rises behind her, from the hot tub. Anairë grins.

"What is the meaning of this; were you expecting a guest?" Although Eärwen means to sound strict, Anairë can tell, there is a timbre of surprise, perhaps even delight in her voice. They used to bathe together often, and it seems this reminder is a welcome one.

"I was merely expecting you. I have watched you for two days now, and you are unwell. I mean to help assuage a little of it, if you will let me."

Eärwen hesitates. "And I have thought the same of you; you draw your grief around you like a shroud. Let us make it mutual --- you know I do not like being owed things, least of all so in my own house."

"I thought it a token of friendship less than a service rendered. But as you wish; the day has yet to come for me to reject the prospect of a bath and a massage."

Eärwen ducks back into the bathroom, and Anairë follows, and finds her loosing her hair of the usual assortment of braids, and, though normally long and straight, it falls crinkled now, like little waves spilling down her back over the sheer material of her undershift, and already, at the nape of her neck, it is beginning to roll in on itself into tiny, frazzled curls.

"Much better," says Anairë, and resists tugging on one to get Eärwen to follow, though regret that she did not sits heavy in her stomach until she has disrobed and walks down the three steps into the tub to sit, up to her neck, in water that is still hot enough to flush her skin immediately; the fires for the underfloor heating must be burning high. Closing her eyes she smiles when she hears Eärwen descend into the water, the lapping of little waves at her body, and then her friend lowering herself into the water with a hiss through her teeth.

"Too hot?" she murmurs.

"Just right --- you know that I can bear more heat than you." Eärwen unscrews one of the vials and upends it into the water. On the steam, the smell of something salty-floral rises, lavender and lemon, enveloping them. With eyes still closed but knowing her beside her, Anairë leans her head against Eärwen's. They sit in silence for a while, and let the water leach the cold from them, the weariness from their limbs, smoothe out the knots from their muscles, and some of the grief from their hearts and and minds.

Eventually, Eärwen asks, into the silence, her lips brushing Anairë's temple, "Why did you come now, not sooner, or later? Why did you stay?"

"I was growing sick without you. I missed you since the news came that you had lived and reigned here now," she replies, her voice low. This topic does not offer itself to full-voiced debates, at least not here – it has been often enough in the council chambers of Tirion, and she wants none of that this evening. "Tirion, it all made me sick – how we are held accountable, Nerdanel and I, for birthing the sons and the daughter we did, for their deeds, and how we are expected to help right their affairs now that they are gone chasing their wretched vengeance and their light --- I would have gladly given all the work my hands can do to help rebuild Tirion, but as it is, it feels as though they oppose me out of spite, that we are being punished for crimes that are not ours."

"Shhh, my dear." Eärwen's gentle hand touches her cheek after the bitter words. "Nerdanel said much the same to me, in the letters she sent. At least in Alqualondë, she wrote, I feel that my skills would serve a purpose other than humiliation, as when my projects and schemes are shouted down by the council because the association with my family tainted me. Arafinwë tries to quiet them, but he is only one, and often fails. And yet, these are the men who did happily fawn upon Fëanáro and Maitimo, and were all too eager to kiss Makalaurë's golden hands for their skill before the shadow fell upon the Noldor."

"I know. I have stood beside her more than once, and watched it happen more often. I do not know whence she takes her strength. Or whence you take yours." Anairë folds her fingers over Eärwen's.

"Rest and sleep. And now, knowing that someone is waiting for me, that I do not need to languish in my chambers alone, in a cold bed with no company. I have slept better these past two nights than I have for the past years. My own lords and ladies are not nearly as vile as the counsellors of Tirion, and I have no such blame to bear. Indeed I pleaded with my father to surrender the ships --- not merely for you, because I thought you were among the people that had encamped without the town and ready to depart, but because all knew that Fëanáro had become fell and might turn to violence."

A hitch in her voice has Anairë open her eyes. Eärwen's eyes are reddened and brim with tears, and for the second time they cling to each other, hands stroking over hair and the bare skin of their backs and shoulders, their bodies pressed together with no clothing between them, and the other's heartbeat thudding against the opposite body.

Anairë sighs, blinking through the tears in her eyes. "I did not leave because of you," she says, or rather whispers, against the junction of Eärwen's neck and shoulder, and then there are Eärwen's lips on her skin in turn, leaving a trail of little shocks when she kisses down, a string of dots like a pearl necklace, and lingers over the hollow in Anairë's throat when Anairë's fingers thread through her hair. She says, "I miss Nolofinwë dearly, but I love you also, and ---"

"--- shhh, say nothing more," Eärwen murmurs, in a tone that forbids argument, and Anairë accepts it, with a sudden levity, the realization that their men have no more place in their lives, and that Eärwen has never spoken of Arafinwë and their sundering, but it does not matter now, it does not matter.

They have each other.

And a moment later they are out of the bath, Anairë following Eärwen's lead, leaving a trail of water over the tiles, and she finds herself draped upon the bed without resistance, her skin prickling in the cooler air from the sea, and her heart once more beating swiftly against her ribs, but this time for a different reason; she lies on her stomach and Eärwen straddles her with sudden, newfound vigour in her movement, no trace of tears or weariness left.

Eärwen's hands, sudden and slick with warm oil, smoothe over Anairë's body, shoulders, spine, sides, leaving the path of the droplets pooling in the small of her back, over her buttocks and down onto her thighs. Anairë raises her head and glances over her shoulder, Eärwen slides her hand further down her thigh, resting it on the back of her knee, her warm fingers drawing circles, and returns her gaze with bright eyes that have caught the candlelight. A muscle somewhere low in Anairë's stomach flutters.

"If you would have me stop, you need but say it. It is not my intention to make you uneasy, but it seemed... as though you would welcome the intimacy," Eärwen says, pausing in her motions and wipes her hands clean as though she expects the answer to be negative.

Anairë laughs softly, under her breath. "You understood well enough."

Eärwen nods, licks her lips, suddenly appearing nervous, eyes darting"--- I would not, you know well enough that I would not, share this with people I do not keep close in love."

"I know." Anairë smiles, and rests her head back upon her folded arms. They do indeed have each other. "As I love you – but, lie here with me for a little."

Eärwen complies with Anairë's request and, stretching out alongside her friend, skin to skin, tilts her head up for a first touch to Anairë's lips. It is not the hasty bash of two mouths that they'd shared long ago on that balcony, clumsy tongues lapping at one another and teeth clashing, nor the desperate attempt at some comfort from moments ago. They know better and act upon it now, they know how to kiss slowly, explore, take their time, let the heat from the bath settle between them, thread fingers through damp hair, until Eärwen's pulls back, and they look at each other, both the grey eyes and the brown ones wide, and their lips flush with blood and smiling.

They do it again, deepening the kisses gradually, languidly, lazily with no rush, for the joy of exploration, the closeness; Anairë's fingers stray over Eärwen's wrist and find her pulse throbbing wildly underneath her touch. The idea fills her like a rush.

"I have caused this?" Their fingers twine as she grins.

"I would not have it another way, go on – show me what else you can do – or would you rather, I..." And Eärwen is wicked, which she does not often show, taking full advantage of Anairë's nakedess, and slips both her small hands to Anairë's full breasts, teasing her nipples, not to linger, over her ribs to tickle as she goes, which makes Anairë squirm and choke down laughter, over her hips to her inner thighs, and then upward.

Neither are strangers to love, neither are strangers to their own bodies, though both are strangers to this with one another, and they delight in the exploration. There is a certain crook of fingers that Anairë bucks and grinds against, gasping for air, Eärwen's delight becomes vocal when Anairë kisses over her lower belly, never touching her more intimately until Eärwen begs her and she has no choice but to relent, pushes her legs apart, and grows bolder after a moment's hesitation, until Eärwen herself is left writhing against her tongue.

In the end they lie spent and exhausted, limbs flung wide, in the cool breeze that has picked up. The first stars fade into the rising morning across the sea when they wrap the sheets around themselves and decide to sleep, foreheads touching.

Anairë once more wakes in a cold bed. Judging by the sun it is noon, or nearly so, and Eärwen is gone, probably sitting in council bleary-eyed and tired at this time --- but that is when a flicker of grey on the balcony catches her eyes.

Eärwen stands there, in one of her grey dresses, the grey veil over her hair, and if not for her own nakedness underneath the sheets and the familiar ache of her limbs that confirms the past night was not some fancy, she might have thought it a dream. Pulling the sheets around herself and stepping out, Anairë rests her head upon Eärwen's shoulder and wraps one arm around her.

Eärwen turns and smiles gently. The last night has changed very little, there still is a deep sadness upon her, and Anairë wonders why it would be otherwise. But Eärwen's eyes, at least, are a little brighter.