The Family We Choose by Ilye

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Chapter 1

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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.”