Time to Uproot by StarSpray

Chapter 1

In autumn, many of the Onodrim who lived in Beleriand had gathered in Neldoreth to hold a great meeting, that they called an Entmoot. Nellas had spent a full month and a half listening to the slow, steady music of their voices, and when it was done, she'd ventured out to find one to speak to. Such gatherings of Ents were rare; Nellas herself had never before witnessed one, and she had feared what it might portend, what might have happened to concern the Ents so much that they had gathered together to discuss it.

The Onodrim were leaving Beleriand. "Great change is coming," the Ent called Finglas had told Nellas when she found him taking his ease by the Esgalduin after the Entmoot had finally concluded. "We feel it in the earth, taste it in the water. It is time for the Ents to leave Beleriand, to say farewell to the willow-meads of Tasarinan, and the beeches of Neldoreth, and the mighty pines of Dorthonion." He sighed, swaying gently in the breeze, closing his eyes for a moment as though to relish it, like it was the last breeze out of Beleriand he would ever feel. "And now I say farewell to you, young Nellas. May you weather the coming storm, and live to put down new roots in another forest."

She'd not seen another Ent since that Entmoot had adjourned, and Finglas' words to her had had Nellas lying awake for many nights, wondering what storm was coming, and if she would, indeed, be strong enough to weather it.

The answer came sooner than she expected, and in the dead of winter. As soon as she caught a faint whiff of sour-smelling smoke, Nellas knew something was terribly wrong. She went to the window and squinted into the quiet, predawn darkness. The wind was coming from the south, where Menegroth stood.

That didn't mean Menegroth was on fire, she told herself even as she scrambled to pull on her boots and furs. But it had happened before. Melian had withdrawn her Girdle and vanished, passing out of Doriath like a gale wind, and the Dwarves had come. They had burned the tapestries and smashed the sculptures and slain so many, and the smell of those burning tapestries—of burning blood and bodies—had been as acrid and terrible as this.

Now, Nellas raced through the treetops, bow in hand and knives loose in their sheaths.

But when she reached the Esgalduin, she halted, nearly falling from the branches at the sight of smoke streaming from Menegroth's once-grand entrance, and banners flapping in the chilled breeze, only partially illuminated by red, flickering torches that hissed and sputtered in the snow that had begun to fall, but showing clearly an eight pointed silver star.

Orcs did not carry banners—not that Nellas had ever heard tell of—and the Naugrim, even if they did dare to return to Doriath, did not use stars in their heraldry.

And then she saw them—Elves in armor splattered with dark blood, moving through the entrance and around the snowdrifts outside. In the hushed quiet that came with snowfall, Nellas could hear the clink of their armor and conversations held in a language not Sindarin, which sounded too beautiful to belong to anyone capable of something like this.

They were Elves. Nellas crouched in the shadow of the trunk, heart racing, stomach twisting, fingers slowly going numb as they grasped a snow-covered branch above her head. She had not been to Menegroth since Dior and his young family had come from Ossiriand, and had no idea what could have caused such a thing to happen—how Elves could willfully attack other Elves…

Nellas had no idea how long she stayed there watching. But eventually a handful of soldiers passed beneath her tree, grumbling to each other, heading toward Menegroth, instead of away. Nellas did not understand what they were saying, but she heard Dior's name, and mention of the Silmaril. A few Sindarin words mingled with their Quenya, and she definitely heard the word brats. Yet they had no children with them.

Sudden horror and dread nearly overwhelmed her when she realized what that could mean, so that she almost fell from the branches into the Kinslayers' midst. But she recovered herself, and fled the sight of Menegroth awash with blood, following the footsteps of the soldiers back through the wood. Elves could dart across the top of the snow and leave not but the slightest trace, but their heavy steel armor had weighed down the soldiers, and made their footsteps easy to follow, though the snowfall was growing heavier, threatening to fill up the tracks before Nellas could reach their end. The trail meandered, twisted, and sometimes circled around onto itself—which explained some of the grumbling she had heard. Melian had withdrawn her Girdle, but remnants of her enchantments remained to confuse those not welcome in Doriath—it was only too bad they were not enough to confuse the Kinslayers into becoming hopelessly lost.

Eventually, she came to the end, where there was a deep snowdrift beneath a stand of gnarled old crab apple trees, into which someone had tossed something heavy. The snow was trampled as though there had been pacing, and there were signs of a scuffle. Nellas dropped to the ground and approached the hole in the drift, trying to steel herself for what she might find.

What she did find was a pair of dark-haired boys, shivering and trying desperately—and failing—not to cry as they huddled together, blinking up at her fearfully. "Ai, Elbereth," Nellas breathed. They were alive. "Come on, come out of there, it's all right, shh…" She lifted them out of the snow, and brushed it off them as best she could. They were wearing jackets and cloaks, and she supposed they must have been preparing to flee Menegroth when they were captured. It was not at all hard to guess who they were—there were only three children in Doriath. "You are Eluréd and Elurín, aren't you?" she asked them. They nodded, watching her with wide eyes. "I am Nellas," she told them. "It's all right, you're safe now, I won't hurt you."

"Wh-where did you come from?" asked one of the boys.

"I live in the forest," Nellas told him. "I smelled the smoke from Menegroth, and when I went to see what was happening, I saw the soldiers returning. Did they hurt you?" She kept her hands on their shoulders, and they shook their heads, although Nellas thought she could see a bruise starting to bloom on one of their cheeks. "I'm going to take you to my home, then, all right?"

Watching them nod and clasp each other's hands, Nellas might have said they reminded her of Túrin, except that he had been older when he came to Doriath, and even as a child he had been too proud to let anyone see how afraid and unhappy he was, something she had not understood until meeting proud Morwen Eledhwen, and hearing in full the plight of the Men in Dor-lómin.

But Eluréd and Elurín had come from Tol Galen, in free and green Ossiriand where no creature of darkness had dared venture in fear of Lúthien and Beren. To come to Doriath that had long been so safe and secure only to find themselves victims of kinslayers in the dead of winter… Nellas could not imagine how terrible this night had been for them.

The forest lightened as they walked through the snow, which continued to fall steadily around them. The silence that came with snowfall had always been comforting to Nellas, but now she found it eerie, and kept glancing around, half-expecting sword-wielding Elves with too-bright eyes to leap out of the trees at them, though no one did.

Eventually, they had to stop to rest. The boys were exhausted, and Nellas' talan was still quite far away. Nellas brushed snow off a fallen tree for them to sit, and crouched in front of the one who identified himself as Eluréd, to examine the bruise on his cheek. "He tried to bite one," Elurín said, watching Nellas. Tears had frozen on both their cheeks, glimmering softly in the grey morning light. "So they hit him."

"They wanted to know where the Silmaril was," Eluréd added, flinching away when Nellas lightly touched the bruise—which was ugly and obviously painful, but would heal on its own soon enough. "But we didn't tell them. We promised we wouldn't tell."

"That was very brave," Nellas told them. "You've both been very brave tonight."

It seemed that that bravery was running out, with exhaustion taking its place. Both boys nearly fell asleep on their feet before reaching Nellas' house, and she had to carry them one by one up through the branches. By the time she got them out of their wet clothes and bundled up in blankets and furs, they were both sound asleep. She was careful not to wake them: they deserved whatever rest they could get. She did not think they would find any solace in sleep after this, not for a very long time.

Nellas restarted the fire in her little stove, and went to the window. Snow continued to fall, heavy, fat flakes that had doubtlessly filled in all the footprints left by the soldiers, and perhaps even the hole in the snowdrift where she had found Eluréd and Elurín. Nellas chewed on her thumbnail as she listened to the fire and to the soft breathing coming from her bed. If anyone else went looking for them, they would find nothing—but that assumed there was anyone left to look.

As the wind picked up and a blizzard started to brew, Nellas thought of Finglas' words before he left Neldoreth forever, and thought perhaps the Onodrim had had the right of it. Nowhere in Beleriand was safe anymore. Doubtless there were orcs and other fell creatures east of the Ered Luin as well, but at least, she thought, there would be no kinslayers.

Yes. Sometimes even the Quendi had to let go of the past. Whatever promises the West had once held had long been broken. Doriath's fall was only the first rush of an even bigger storm brewing in Beleriand—Nellas could almost smell it on the air. The Onodrim thought to escape it by passing over the Ered Luin into the east. So she would do the same, and take Eluréd and Elurín with her—after all, there was nothing left for any of them in Doriath except the ghosts of a glorious past.

Chapter End Notes

Title taken from Ecclesiastes 3

Finglas' words to Nellas in the beginning are inspired by/paraphrased from Treebeard's song in TTT, and his words to Celeborn and Galadriel in RotK (which are probably better known as Galadriel's words in the prologue of the FotR film). Finglas himself is an Ent mentioned by Treebeard as having gone quite treeish by the end of the Third Age.