The Family We Choose by Ilye

They looked more like refugees than homecomers as they alighted from the white ships. And there were so few of them, too.

Anairë watched Arafinwë lead the descent; saw Eärwen run to him and felt no jealousy at seeing her swept into her husband's tired arms after his long absence at war. She only felt a hungry ache, knowing that her own husband wasn't there to do the same for her.

She knew her Ñolofinwë had died. Eärwen had snapped awake in bed one night after Irmo had lent her Sight instead of dreams. "Ñolofinwë," she'd gasped, and then relayed the vision to Anairë as they huddled close beneath the sheets. Flames and death; a great battle and a white horse; a hammer’s terminal strike and a cairn in the snow-capped mountains. Her Ñolvo was dead, and Anairë had spent herself in tears too many times to count whilst Eärwen silently held her.  But of her children there had been no word and so she still scanned the faces alighting on the quays for one – any – of her own. They should have been at the head of the ships; they should have been there.

But Findekáno was not there. Turukáno was not there. Irissë, Arakáno, Elenwë, Itarillë... they were not there. She stood on the quay, amidst a crowd of others who also scoured the crowds and found no-one, and she was alone.

Her eyes staggered back to Arafinwë. His arm was about Eärwen's shoulders and her hand rested between his shoulderblades. He was upright and as animated as ever as he spoke to a petite, dark-haired girl whom Anairë felt she should recognise. They only exchanged a few more words before Arafinwë nodded and then, as one, he and Eärwen turned towards Anairë, and that was when she saw a sorrow in his bright blue eyes the like of which she'd never seen before.

The girl spoke in Quenya that sounded rusty and there was a deep, patient exhaustion in her voice, although she offered no apologies or much information at all, in that first meeting. She called herself Aeglariel, although Anairë may have better known her as Alcarillë.  And, though she was surrounded by her own family, she called Anairë amil and embraced her. And that was when Anairë broke apart.

~~~

They met again in the tall topiary maze of Tirion palace’s ornamental gardens. It had been hours since Anairë caused a scene on the quay, after which Eärwen and Arafinwë had brought her back to the palace and soothed her until the vicious sobs had ground their way to a smooth, still numbness inside her chest. Arafinwë had gently told her what he could of her family, then excused himself. Eärwen stayed with Anairë, stroking her hair whilst Anairë sniffled and grieved into her breast, but it was clear that she longed to follow her husband and grieve with him for the family they, too, had lost, and so Anairë had lied about a desire for solitude and found herself alone.

There was, she supposed, a certain peace in her aimless wandering through the maze’s hedge-lined channels. True, she could find the exit if she tried hard enough, but she had nowhere else to be. In the soft breeze the leaves’ whispering sounded like the voices of her loved ones, and as she walked she found the scattered topiary animals and glass sculptures just beautiful enough to distract her from her thoughts.

Alcarillë was sitting on a bench recessed into the hedge when Anairë rounded the corner. Above her was a topiary eagle, its wings spread to cast a merciful shade over the bench. Her head was bowed so that her face was cast into complete shadow and her hands were clasped in her lap, and she was so still that Anairë first took her for a statue.

Anairë rocked to a halt, her fragile calm fracturing as her grief began hammering against her ribs again, and Alcarillë looked up.

“My Lady Anairë,” she said as she stood and dipped her head. “Excuse me; I had not expected to meet you again out here. I will leave you to your peace.” She turned and took a few steps away.

“Wait.” Anairë’s voice came out almost without her realising, still cracked from her tears earlier that morning. “I am sorry for how I spoke to you upon the quay.” And she was, for her words had been flung harshly, almost cruelly – but though the memory of the their malice made her cheeks burn, she had not lied.

Alcarillë stopped and turned back. “What you said was true enough,” she said calmly, echoing Anairë’s own stubborn thoughts. “For though your son was my husband, and your husband like a father, you do not know me and I am not your daughter.”

“And do you not also have family who stayed in Aman?” Anairë accused her, thinking of the group of women she had seen clustered around the gangplank. She wanted to be pleased for Alcarillë, but the nod she received only speared her with jealousy.

“My mother and my sisters stayed here and came to greet me,” Alcarillë replied, still calm, “although my father and my brothers followed your husband and died defending him in Middle-earth.”

“Then why are you here and not with them?” Anairë gasped. “Your mother – she must be desperate…”

Alcarillë smiled, though it was a forlorn thing in a league of nostalgia, and suddenly Anairë saw before her not a girl, but a woman of many lives and vast experience.

“I am not the same girl that left this city so many centuries ago. I have loved, and lost those loves. I have seen the world – my world – broken and remade by our gods. I have seen lives and words redirected by simple words and almighty songs. I have seen death; I have brought it by my own hand and I have even commanded it of others.” She paused, and her smile sweetened. “And I have made life. I have lived.”

Anairë met her eyes and felt suddenly ashamed: of her words, of her inaction, of everything she had missed out on. It made her wonder if her own family had left her because they were not living here. But she said nothing.

“But your question, Lady, was why I am here,” Alcarillë said after a moment. She did not seem disconcerted by Anairë’s silence. “My answer is because they treat me like royalty; because I was a Queen once, and Regent, and my son is now High King across the seas. I was invited to the palace, and I accepted the invitation because my mother and sisters – though delighted to see me – will also need some time to reacquaint themselves with the concept of who I am.” She tilted her head knowingly. “Besides, you were alone and grieving, which was a great pity. I knew and loved your family as my own and I wished to offer comfort if I could – although I do not think I am helping.”

“Not now, no,” said Anairë, taken aback by her own directness which seemed coaxed out of her by Alcarillë’s effusive warmth. “In time, though, I think you might.”

Alcarillë smiled, and to Anairë it felt like spring. “Then seek me out when you are ready, Lady, and I should be glad to do so.”

~~~

Anairë went back to the small town where her parents lived, and found there little of comfort. She was not surprised to discover that she missed Eärwen terribly, with her golden summer gentleness and her warmth when the evenings chilled; yet she knew things could not return to the way they were, not with the leagues of sorrow that distanced Arafinwë’s eyes from those around him, or the ease with which he now lost his once-famed composure. Anairë supposed that he was disturbed by the war and would settle again given time, but she had not felt that her presence in the palace was helping and so she had removed herself to let Eärwen focus on repairing her husband’s spirit.

There was a clear boundary between those who had gone into exile and those who had fought to bring them back. The Exiles grieved in a pragmatic way, like death was a high probability but life could not halt because of it. Anairë found herself grieving more like the others who had stayed in Aman: profoundly and dramatically, like one’s own being was threatened by a loved one’s death. Yet, though she had wished it at first, she grew quickly frustrated that nobody would talk of her husband or her children. It was as if, by not speaking their names, one could ignore their sacrifices in the name of vanquishing Melkor. But much as it pained her to dwell on the matter, Anairë could not stand by and practise the equivalent of covering her eyes and plugging her ears when it meant ignoring the lives of her family that she had missed. Neither would she pretend that their lives and deaths in exile had been in vain.

And so, some weeks after the refugees returned, she found herself back in Tirion.

~~~

She found Alcarillë in the depths of the garden at her mother’s house, on the city border. The smell of cut grass was high on the rough wind and the borders furthest from the house looked freshly dug with broad, bare patches amongst plugs of young plants. Alcarillë was engrossed with extending the border at the far end of the garden, but got to her feet as soon as she noticed Anairë’s presence.

“Lady,” she began, and offered a dip of her head, but Anairë waved it away.

“Please, don’t let me interrupt you. I had hoped to talk, but I can come back another time.”

“Now will do perfectly,” Alcarillë replied, and somehow her gentle voice brooked no argument. “We can go up to the house, or you may sit here if you prefer?”

By way of answer, Anairë took a seat on the lawn. “By all means, continue as you were.”

With a smile, Alcarillë dropped back to her knees at the border edge and reached for her trowel. There was also none of the awkwardness that Anairë had expected; just an easy company where the silence was as easy as conversation. For a time, neither of them said anything. The sound of Alcarillë’s digging blended with the wind and the sounds of the blackbirds scrabbling in the nearby trees. Anairë folded her hands into her lap, turned her face up to the scudding clouds, and decided how calming it was to simply sit and exist without pity or denial of her situation.

“Do you garden?”

Anairë opened her eyes again and found Alcarillë’s sharp blue eyes on her. With a bemused look at the other woman’s filthy trousers and the smudge of soil down her cheek, she shook her head. “I appreciate the gardens, but we have always had staff to tend them for us.”

“As have we,” Alcarillë replied, and trowelled enthusiastically into a patch of ground, “and no doubt they will have a thing or two to say about my so-called handiwork here. The same was the case once I became Consort, and then Queen. But then it was my right to insist, and I do find it so therapeutic.”

There was a lightness in her voice that had been absent on the first day they had met, to indicate she spoke the truth. Anairë opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a gust of wind that drizzled blossom over them from a nearby tree.

Alcarillë sat up with a huff and used her forearm to brush wayward tangles of hair out of her face. “Phew, this wind!” She went back to her digging, speaking almost as though she were thinking aloud and had forgotten that Anairë was there. “I am certain we remembered the weather here differently when we were in Middle-earth. Especially on the Helcaraxë – though that is to be expected, I suppose. We used to reminisce about the tranquility here, and the warmth, and how when it rained it would gently shower; none of those great, belting affairs that drenched us to the bone and turned the ground to bog. But I start to wonder if that was just a figment of our imaginations.” She looked up at a spray of large white petals further up the lawn, and gestured with a nod. “Look at what the wind has done to my magnolias, for instance – it’s like a dove was savaged by a fox over there.”

Anairë winced at the violent analogy. “It is said that the rising of the Sun and Moon have changed the weather,” she offered, attempting a steer on the conversation. “The air circulates differently, because the temperature fluctuates more than it did by the Trees – at least, that is what I am told by those who study such things.”

“You make a good point. Perhaps it is that Aman has changed. Not just the weather, either; I suppose you have grown used to it by now, but I never saw it by Arien’s light, only by the Trees.” Alcarillë paused to examine a flower towards the back fence, her fingers tracing a gentle caress across its yellow petals. “The plants are so different – hardly surprising – but there is much to learn.” She gestured to the new borders she had dug. “I have no idea whether they will grow, but it’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

“New things always are,” Anairë said, and caught herself by surprise. “Oh! That was always a saying of Ñolofinwë’s.”

“Yes, I remember.” Alcarillë’s expression was placid enough, belied only by a shrewd glint in her eye that intimated the conversation was about to change direction again. “I would be delighted to simply sit here and make small talk about the weather, if it pleases you, but if there is something else that you would rather discuss…” She tailed off.

Anairë considered the offer. Small steps, she thought, and took a deep breath.

“Well, maybe you could tell me of my grandson.”

Things were different when Anairë returned to the palace. Eärwen welcomed her like an old friend, but when Anairë asked if she could once again take up residence in her old suite, Eärwen’s lips tightened unhappily and her eyebrows drew together in regret.

“Of course you can," she began haltingly, "but Anairë, you know I cannot – not with Arafinwë the way he is now –”

Anairë cut her off with a wave of her hand. “I understand. I would be quite happy with your conversation, my love, whenever you should have chance to share it with me. It is just that this place feels more like home than anywhere else I have to go. And besides, I should like to know Alcarillë better, which I cannot easily do from afar at my parents'.”

Eärwen’s patent relief came in the clasp of her fingers around Anairë’s own, although Anairë found she couldn't tell what, exactly, Eãrwen was relieved about. “Now that, dearest, makes me glad. We have all lost too much of the family we were given, and I should hate to see you turn away from those who would choose to have us as their family.”

And so she stayed, and things changed. Anairë and Eärwen spoke daily as before, but now of more trivial matters instead of reminiscing about their families and guessing at unknown events in Middle-earth. There was, Anairë supposed, relevant little left on which to speculate, and reminiscence seemed too raw, too secret, these days. Only once the subject of their children came up. It flared up suddenly, like a match lit at midnight, when Anairë mentioned by-the-by that Irissë would have loved the masquerade ball being planned for Midsummer.

There was a sharp clink as Eärwen set her teacup back into its saucer with more force than was required, then sat with her hands clasped bloodlessly in her lap.

“Arafinwë should have brought Artanis home,” she said, very softly, through tight lips. Her sightless gaze was fixed somewhere between here and Námo’s halls. Finding herself at a loss for words, Anairë reached for Eärwen’s shoulder, but Eärwen flinched away, blinked at her, and then launched into an explanation of how difficult it had been to find enough green serviettes this year.

Anairë broached the subject with Alcarillë the next time they met. In the months since Anaire had moved back to the palace, they had fallen into the habit of meeting regularly to walk through the gardens. Usually they would stroll through the ornamental borders, with Alcarillë examining the the way the plants responded to the seasons. This time, though, Anairë took her elbow and steered them into the privacy of the maze.

Alcarillë looked at her with mild surprise, but remained quiet until Anairë said at length,

“I suppose Artanis never showed signs of wanting to return home with her father.”

Alcarillë’s shoulders shook in a silent huff of laughter. “My goodness, no! Middle-earth is very much her home now, in the same way that it is Ereinion’s. She married one of Elwë’s kinsmen – did you know that? Celeborn, he is called, and he named her Galadriel."

She spoke the Sindarin names, and from another Anairë would have found it strange. But it slotted seamlessly into Alacrillë’s accented Quenya and wound her further in the mysteries of a foreign, mysterious queen.

"Artanis' heart is in that country," Alcarillë went on, "and she has no intention of leaving it. Besides, her ambition is too great, and her pride. You should have seen the look of disdain on The Herald’s face when he announced that the Valar had rescinded their ban over the Ñoldor.”

“I can well imagine it,” Anairë said. She knew the stubbornness of a child determined to defy the parent. “And yet… Eärwen feels that Arafinwë should have brought her back with him.”

Alcarillë sighed. “Poor Arafinwë. He may as well have tried to coax the stars out of the sky.”

“She always was headstrong, that girl,” Anairë agreed. She thought of what she had been told of her grandson: of his profound, abiding love for the wild unpredictability of the remade continent East of Ulmo’s deeps, and his desire to know it all. She could see how that same kind of passion might bloom in the rebellious daughter of Eärwen and Arafinwë. The last time she had seen Artanis, she had been barely past her majority and filled with the cocksurety of any young adult who had yet to make a grave mistake. Her Findekáno and Arakáno had been much the same, and Anairë suspected that spending so much time in male company had done little to temper Artanis’ fire.

“She is no girl now.”

Anairë glanced across at Alcarillë and saw a glint in her eye to match the edge to her voice. Alcarillë went on,

“No, no, she has grown into an exceedingly powerful woman. I know not what she learned with Melian – Melyanna – in Doriath, but she is indeed a force to be reckoned with. But,” and she softened a little, “part of that power comes, I suppose, from knowing her own mind with utmost certainty.”

“That must be the source of yours as well, in which case.”

Anairë said it without thinking, then bit her tongue – but too late. She darted a sideways glance at Alcarillë. The other woman’s eyebrows rose and her lips quirked in amusement.

“It seems that way to you, does it?” She shook her head. “Think of the swan paddling frantically beneath the water’s still surface.”

“But you seem so at ease with the decisions you have made and all you’ve lost,” Anairë protested. She would never normally have been so forthright, but something in Alcarillë’s calm, open demeanour invited it.

Alcarillë shrugged. "They cannot be unmade," she said baldly. "You cannot unring a bell. That does not mean I wish I had chosen differently, but I try not to be overly decadent in my grief and indulge my what ifs. There is no practical use in it, after all."

"But you still grieve," Anairë said, as though she had only just realised this fact. "You still regret." She sat down on the stone bench beneath the topiary eagle and patted the seat next to her.

Alcarillë sat beside her. For a long time it seemed as though she would uphold her refusal to indulge her grief, but at last she said,

“We sent Ereinion away, you know, to live in safety with Círdan in the Havens.” She tilted her head up to the sky that was the same watery blue as her eyes. Her voice was perfectly calm, but her jaw clenched and she swallowed down some emotion before she went on, “He was only eight.”

Anairë lightly touched her shoulder. “That must have been a very hard thing to do,” she replied evenly, though she wondered how it hadn't proved merely hard, but impossible. Alcarillë nodded, still staring skywards.

“The hardest. And now I have abandoned him again although, like the last time, I know it is the right place for him.”

“He is not a boy now, though. He is a king." Here, Anairë felt in more comfortable territory. Sorrow and death were alien to her, but she did know a thing or two about kings. "You raised him to make wise decisions and this was merely one in a long line of them. You didn’t leave him, my dear. He chose not to come with you."

Alcarillë turned to her, and though the ghost of her grief was still in her eyes, her clever smile winged its shadow across her lips.

“I would say the same of you: your family did not leave you. You chose not to go with them.”

Anairë caught her breath. Why had she stayed? She had tormented herself with that question over and over, and never found an answer that completely satisfied her. She had not gone because it was not a woman’s place – yet Artanis and Elenwë and Irissë and Alcarillë next to her were proof otherwise. She had not gone because Aman was her home, but here she was abiding in the palace residence with no place to call her own. She had not gone because she loved Earwen; poor, conflicted Earwen, who in tending to her husband’s traumatised soul kindled her own anger’s embers and welded her own heart shut to love.

Anairë could have sunk headlong into the tragedy of it all, but instead she found Alcarillë’s ringing pragmatism in her ears. The reason she had made her decision no longer mattered. It could not be unmade – neither her decision, nor theirs.

“I did choose not to, you are correct,” she said with the steady voice of someone at last finding peace in their heart. “But each one of them was fully grown; old enough to make their own choices as I did mine.” She smiled to herself, though it hurt to do so. “I let them make their own mistakes.”

Alcarillë glanced at her sidelong and lent her a knowing, humourless half-smile of her own. “That never stops you from wanting to protect them, though, does it?”

“Never,” Anairë agreed, then added ruefully, “Besides, swearing a child to the parent’s side never helped anything. Look at Fëanáro and his sons.”

The air between her and Alcarillë chilled. “Fëanáro’s sons would have been the first to tell you that they took their Oath as adults, of their own volition,” she said stiffly. “And they bore the responsibility of that decision, even though it broke them one by one. Your children were no less loyal to Ñolofinwë; the difference is that he had the good sense not to go swearing Oaths before the Valar.”

It was the first time in their many months of a slow-budding friendship that Anairë had seen Alcarillë come to anger, and it was an awe-inspiring thing. Her face had paled and her eyes darkened and flashed, but even though deeply stirred by the subject, she spoke with composure and admirable self-mastery. Unbidden, Anairë found herself thinking that she would have made the perfect foil for Findekáno; the ice to his flashbang temper and the measures to his impulse. And the curious voice of pragmatism wondered how, when all Findekáno had ever wanted in the way of love was –

“You know,” said Alcarillë, snatching Anairë’s thoughts back to the shade beneath the eagle, “Once he became High King I spent decades trying to talk Ereinion into brokering a treaty with Russandol and Makalaurë, but he would not have it. It was eminently sensible of him, if I am honest, but still, I hoped they might somehow unmake their own decision…” She looked as though she wanted to say more, but stopped herself before thoughts became words and instead gave a canny tilt of her head. “I suppose it is my own fault for seeing that he was raised to make the just decisions that any true king should.”

“He is like his grandfather in more than appearance, then,” Anairë said, and was surprised to find herself for the first time smiling as she remembered her late husband. “Ñolvo always acted like a good leader, even before he became one.”

“There, at least, Russandol did make a sensible decision by handing over the crown,” Alcarillë said, her voice softer now and her anger well anchored. “Ñolofinwë was an excellent king.” She paused for a moment as though if in thought, then said abruptly, “I don’t suppose you know it was only because of him that Ereinion was born?”

Anairë hesitated. She did not know… and did she want to? Her indecision must have been plain on her face, for Alcarillë then stood and held out her hand.

“Perhaps that is a conversation for another day. Come, let’s walk again, for I would love to see how the yellow roses responded to last night’s rain shower.”

Over two years passed before Anairë felt ready to hear first-hand of what she had heard called the greatest tragedy of the Ñoldor.

From time to time she had been tempted to ask, when she noticed that Alcarillë's thoughts would follow a certain path into a careful silence before she spoke next, deliberately arranging her phrasing so as to avoid mentioning the son that Anairë missed like a dancer misses the rhythm.

She met Alcarillë as usual beneath the shade of the eagle. By now she had heard the tales, of course, and the songs, and so she knew of how Sorontar had been kind to her family across the sea. The more optimistic of the Ñoldor reckoned the eagle’s favour demonstrated that Manwë had not forsaken the house of Ñolofinwë, for all their deeds in Alqualondë and beyond. Anairë smiled politely as she let them babble on, and remained agnostic.

Alcarillë was gazing up at the eagle’s face, her hands clasped in front of her. She was lost in thought, her eyes seeing through time to a distant country, and Anairë knew in that instant, without preparation, that she was ready.

“Tell me the story of you and Findekáno,” she said, without greeting, before she could change her mind.

There was heartbeat’s pause; then the gasp of a held breath released, and a surprising sweetness crept into Alcarillë’s smile.

“My dear, darling Findekáno,” she said, her voice so full of joy at her memories of him that Anairë wanted to weep because yes, that was the love that he had always inspired in others. How could she have forgotten?

Alcarillë turned away from the eagle and towards Anairë. “You are sure you’re ready?”

Anairë lifted her chin in a nod, not trusting her voice. Alcarillë held out her arm. “Then let’s walk, for I would love to tell you of him.”

~~~

Middle-earth, Anairë was surprised to learn, did not consist entirely of battle, death and heartache. Findekáno and Alcarillë had befriended each other on the Helcaraxë, she learned, and his unerring warmth and good humour had been like a lantern even in the bleakest, grimmest hours. Anairë shivered at the thought of them huddled together when they stopped for the night, and the memory of his sweet voice made her eyelids sting as Alcarillë told of the tunes he used to sing to keep their spirits up as they struggled through the snow and over the ice.

Anairë had heard of Findekáno’s journey to Thangorodrim before. But the songs and rhymes, Alcarillë assured her, did no justice to the terror they all felt at his disappearance, or the political storm he stirred when the Fëanárians learned of their half-dead king’s retention in his ostensible enemy’s camp.

Anairë shook her head. “None of that would have mattered to him,” she said, “even had it occurred to him before he left. He always did follow his heart first of all.”

“That is true,” Alcarillë agreed, “although that rescue healed the rift between the houses more than any possible overture from Fëanáro’s sons. It made your husband into the good and worthy king that he was, and I would be lying if I said I thought his scions weren’t also good and worthy kings after his death.”

The tragedy of that was understated – perhaps because to Alcarillë it was more fact than fantasy. But Anairë wanted to scream and sob and lament that Ereinion Gil-galad had come to the throne only after the deaths of four kings and the abdication of a fifth.

“The crown should never have been Findekáno's fate," she said, "no matter how good and worthy he was. I wonder if he would have survived that battle, had I raised him differently – if I had taught him to be an heir instead of allowing him to go chasing off through the wilds as a youngster.”

"Those wild-chasing skills came in handy; do not berate yourself for that," Alcarillë replied. Her smile’s ghost remained, but her good humour was fading as the story twisted towards its dark and tragic end. “We raised Ereinion as the throne's heir because the likelihood was increasingly high that he would succeed his father. There is nothing so terrifying as raising a child to be a king, let me tell you. But you had no need for that with Findekáno – you could not have foreseen all that happened, and I am glad you were able to enjoy his childhood without that shadow swamping you both."

She pressed her lips together and Anairë thought she had no more to say, but then she finished with characteristic understatement,

"It is a great pity that heirs became a necessity to immortals."

Anairë tightened her grip on Alcarillë's arm. “Let us hope Ereinion needs no heir now that Morgoth has been vanquished.”

As quickly as the cloud had descended, it lifted again. Alcarillë's lips curved in a small, private smile.

"Hope we must," she said, and shook her head in mock despair, "for I think he will beget none. He is too much like his father in that regard, and – what's worse! – thrice as stubborn."

That caught Anairë unawares. She bit her tongue and slanted a glance at Alcarillë, who met her eye with a knowing look and an eyebrow quirked in invitation.

Anairë cleared her throat. She had long wondered about the circumstances of Ereinion's birth – and now, with the information offered in outstretched palm...

“Hmm, I have always been curious,” she ventured, “how you and Findekáno came to marry.”

Alcarillë eyed her shrewdly. “You mean because of his… ah, reputation?”

"I mean because of Maitimo." Anairë’s own bluntness surprised her, but she felt a sudden surge of protectiveness towards Alcarillë, almost as she would have felt if she suspected someone of toying with her Irissë’s heart. But then she caught herself, not only for the unexpected warmth she felt towards a girl she had known barely two years, but also because this was Findekáno, who was ever generous with his own huge heart, and incapable of playing with another's emotions for his own amusement.

Alcarillë did not seem the slightest bit fazed by the conversation’s turn. Instead she sucked her breath over her teeth, reminding Anairë of her iron self-control.

"We do not call him Maitimo any longer," she chided, "for he insisted to us that he was no longer so, after his torment."

“I will not call him Nelyafinwë.” The very thought made Anairë bristle – even now, after all this time, the fact that Fëanáro had dared –

“We called him Russandol,” Alcarillë replied blithely, though the way she smoothed her free hand over Anairë's wrist said that her umbrage had not gone unnoticed. "Later he was also known as Maedhros – some Sindarin nonsense, but it seemed to suit him well enough.”

We. Telling, that; so clearly there had been some kind of arrangement. Anairë did not realise she was frowning until Alcarillë stopped walking and touched her fingertips to the furrow between Anairë’s eyebrows.

“You worry,” she said gently, “though whether for me or Findekáno or something else entirely, I am not sure.”

Anairë looked into Alcarillë's calm face for a moment, then admitted,

"I suppose I am concerned for all hearts involved." And that, she was surprised to realise, was the truth. It was not just Findekáno's open heart she feared for in this particular saga -- for she knew long ago that it belonged to his cousin. It was that she still needed reassurance that Alcarillë had not found herself duped, and even that Russandol, for all his sins, had not been elbowed out of the triangle as the topping to his torment.

“Then let me tell you there was no trickery; no deceit." Alcarillë squeezed Anairë's fingers, and Anairë believed her. "It was an arrangement transparent to all hearts involved. Love worked differently in Middle-earth. It had to. We did not have the luxury of peace or time. And I am certain that Morgoth's filthy workings twisted emotions as well as events – I know you have heard the ugly stories of violence against cousins and siblings and children."

Anairë's stomach lurched; of course she had heard those stories. They included her children, her grandchildren, her nieces and nephews... She closed her eyes, but opened them again as Alcarillë quickly added,

"Conflict changes people, but you know, it is often for the better instead of the worse. One finds a different kind of closeness because of it. Tell me, Anairë,” she said, taking Anairë’s hands within both of her own, “have you ever had a friendship so deep that your love transcends all known obstacles?”

Anairë thought of Eärwen, for whom she had forsaken her own family, and nodded.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “but she is tied to another.”

Alcarillë squeezed her fingers. “And that was the way with us. Findekáno walked alone into hell for Russandol and saved him with nothing more than a song, a wing and a prayer. There was no coming between them and I always knew it. Yet Ñolofinwë, in his infinite wisdom, pressed for an heir, and I could give Findekáno something Russandol never could.” She paused and her face split into a smile. “I loved him enough to do that for him. So I proposed. And he gave me our darling Ereinion.”

Though reassuring, Alcarillë’s happiness was less than infectious this time.

“Then they must have known that their deaths were coming,” Anairë said, unable to shake the foreboding that had darkened her heart. “Both Ñolofinwë and Findekáno.”

Alcarillë’s smile dissipated into a sigh. With Anairë’s hands still in hers, she led them a few steps along the maze until Anairë realised they had come full-circle and sat beneath the eagle again.

"I doubt that Findekáno really knew, although I couldn't say for certain. The Doom of the Ñoldor was heavy upon him, for sure, but he was always too optimistic to let others’ worries keep him down. Besides, he was still Crown Prince when Ereinion was born; there was less reason to believe it so. Perhaps Ñolofinwë saw further than your son. But Sight would have made no difference in the end; we were betrayed, and that was the fact of it. The only decision Findekáno could have made differently was not to fight at all. We were as near as damned to winning, and then –” Her voice cracked and she tailed off.

There was an unsteady hesitation, broken only by Alcarillë’s intake of breath. Anairë wavered, for now her curiosity was blunted, but then Alcarillë spoke again, suddenly full of an icy anger that froze her expression into glacial severity.

“I should have been there, you know. I was his captain; I should have been fighting at his side. I should have covered his back.”

Anairë wondered what good that would have done. “Why were you not?” she asked instead, soothingly as she might have done with Irissë in the heat of her temper. To her surprise, Alcarillë’s anger melted instantly, like a delicate Autumn frost dissolves in a grey morning rain.

“They were supposed to have managed without me,” she sighed, “and the battle was planned down to the last – it couldn’t have failed.” She sounded surprised, as though it was still beyond her how they could have lost, and her eyes were fixed on somewhere very far away. “I stayed behind as Regent at Barad Eithel. I was pregnant.”

Anairë caught her breath. “Then you mean – Findekáno never knew his son?”

“Oh, he knew our Ereinion,” Alcarillë replied. "He was Findekáno's bright star; he adored him beyond measure." She smiled, a broken thing bereft of happiness or humour, at Anairë. “Neither of us knew this second child, who was too fragile to withstand the sorrow after that battle.”

The brunt of that revelation caught Anairë squarely in the gut. She gaped for the barest moment and then, without thinking, caught Alcarillë tightly to her. Alcarillë gasped, a sobbing sound released on shuddering breath, and sagged into Anairë’s embrace.

“I am so sorry,” Anairë murmured, her lips against Alcarillë’s soft, dark hair. “My dear, I’m so sorry. How you must miss him – how you must miss all of them.”

There was a puff of breath against Anairë’s neck, which she realised must have been half a chuckle when Alcarillë lifted her head again. Even now she was calm and smiling, and Anairë wondered whether she had always been thus or whether Findekáno’s good humour had infected her too.

“Oh my goodness…” Alcarillë paused to gather herself and brushed her hair out of her face. “To coin one of his own phrases, I miss him like an idiot misses the point. But where was the point in his warmth and joy if we are only to be miserable now he is gone? It would be such a waste, don't you think?”

It would, Anairë thought, and said as much. Alcarillë sat up straight, but did not move away from the maternal arm that Anairë had laid around her shoulder and instead leaned their heads together.

“Do you wonder,” Anairë said after a few moments of contemplative silence, “if either of us will ever see our sons again?”

Alcarillë glanced up through her lashes at Anairë. “He will come back,” she replied. “You will see your family again.”

“You can’t be sure of that.” It was the first time that Anairë had voiced that fear: so far, none who had died in Middle-earth had been reborn. None were sure if it were possible.

“I have to be sure. I have to believe that Findekáno will come back, and so will everyone else. He will come back because, like his father, he was a good man.” Alcarillë looked up to the sky again and added,

“And because the Valar don’t seem to value cunning as highly as valour.”

Anairë glanced at her, ready to take umbrage, but Alcarillë wore a look of fond exasperation so familiar that before she knew it, Anairë found herself laughing aloud. Alcarillë glanced at her and then broke into laughter of her own, and together they took joy from their memories of Findekáno, even beyond his death.

~~~

Irissë, to Anairë’s surprise, was the first to return.

Arafinwë brought the news, and he was smiling. Anairë’s heart leapt in her chest, not just for her own good news but because he looked a different nér from the fractured soul who had told her all those years ago that her family was dead. He held her hands as he told her that her daughter was to be reborn and, when she said nothing, Eärwen stepped past him to put her arms around Anairë’s shoulders.

“Are you well?” she said gently into Anairë’s ear. “This is good news! When our Ingoldo was returned to us –”

“I am well!” Anairë exclaimed, finding her voice at last. She laughed as she was embraced on both sides by Arafinwë and Eärwen, her joy bubbling up like a brook in spring, and they laughed with her.

“We shall come with you, if you like,” Arafinwë volunteered, and Eärwen nodded.

“Yes, of course – both, or either one of us.”

But Anairë looked at them together, hand-in-hand even as they embraced her, and shook her head.

“Thank you both for your kindness, but no. I think this is best shared between a mother and her daughter.”

Eärwen and Arafinwë threw each other a glance of confusion – but they understood, they said, and took their leave to make travel arrangements on Anairë’s behalf.

Anairë, meanwhile, made straight for the gardens. Alcarillë was in the usual place with her hands in the soil and got to her feet when she saw her approaching.

“What is it?” she asked, wiping off her hands on her apron so she could hold them out to Anairë. Anairë ignored the gesture and pulled her into a hug.

“Irissë!” she cried, laughing wildly. “My Irissë has been returned to me!”

Alcarillë made a high-pitched sound of delight and fiercely returned the embrace.

“That is wonderful news!” she replied, laughing along with Anairë. But then she sobered a touch and held Anairë back at arm’s length. “But why are you lingering here in the palace? You should be readying yourself – you should be halfway there by now!”

Anairë cocked her head. “Why, I thought that was obvious,” she said, reaching out to take the hands of this patient, loving lady who had led armies, who had proposed marriage to her headstrong eldest son, and who had chosen to make Anairë her family.

“I want you to come with me, for after so long with none, now I have two daughters.”

The end