Morning Mist and Silver Sun by StarSpray

Water

Written for Tolkien_Weekly's Water challenge series.

Winter Play
Ice and Snow

Some of the trees lining the Esgalduin still bore scars from the Dwarves' battleaxes. Dark, bare branches reached toward the bright sky, missing the nightingales whose voices had once filled the forest with song.

But among the drifts of ice and snow on the ground ran children, whose playful shrieking was less delicate, but infinitely more lively than nightingales.

Giggling breathlessly, Elwing fell back into a snowdrift and stared up at the cloudless sky. "I love snow," she told Elurín when he fell beside her.

"I wish Ada could play with us."

But Ada was king, and always busy now...

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More Questions than Answers
Puddles

Steady rain turned the world a gloomy shade of grey. The path was more puddles than ground, and Elwing thought everyone's clothes must be more mud than cloth by now. The bag holding the Nauglamír was heavy in Elwing's hands.

And in her mind there were still more questions than answers. "Where are Nana and Ada?" she asked Lady Galadriel. "And Eluréd and Elurín? Where are we going?" Galadriel never answered. Her face was set and hard, like she was angry.

"We are going to the sea!" Lindir told her, smiling. But his bright cheer was more forced than real.

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Memories
Fountains

"Tell me about it. Gondolin."

"It was glorious. White and shining in the sun, with fountains glittering in the squares..."

Idril saw them together on the beach, heads bent together as they spoke in half-whispers, like everything shared was a secret. She saw Elwing hide a shy smile behind a curtain of dark hair, and Eärendil's gaze strayed over the sea as he remembered the beauty of hidden Gondolin.

"Now your turn. Tell me of Doriath."

"It was beautiful, all green and gold and white beside the Esgladuin, where elanor and niphredil bloomed. My grandfather met my grandmother dancing there..."

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Learning
River

Eärendil hoisted Elros onto his hip as Elrond clambered onto a chair. Elwing paused, smilng, in the doorway to watch as he answered all the questions the boys had about ships, while they stared in fascination at teh plans scattered across the table. Elros in particular wanted to know everything there was about sailing.

Later, Elrond brought Elwing a map. "The world is so big," he informed her solemnly and wide-eyed.

She smiled wistfully, and traced the dark line that was the River Sirion with a finger. "Yes," she agreed, remembering the long journeys of her childhood. "Very big indeed."

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Swimming
Lake

There were no lakes near the mouths of River SIrion, no calm, glassy mirrors of the sky, glittering surprises in the midst of cool shady forests. Only the river itself, and the sea, always moving, rushing, crashing against stones and sand. Elwing had learned to swim in a lake; her father taught her and her brothers.

But Elrond and Elros learned to swim in the Sea, and she always feared the undertow would sweep them away, though Eärendil laughed at her worries. "They'll be fine."

But when he disappeared out to sea, she kept the boys on shore, building sandcastles.

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Lost
The Sea

Cold pierced her very bones, and her nose and lungs burned with salty water as they longed for air, and she tumbled down, down into the depths of the Sea, dark but for the blinding, brilliant light of the cursed Jewel for which she had lost everything--her family, her homes, her sons...

And just when she thought she could not survive another moment, strange power encased her, and she rose with the Silmaril as a beacon on her beast, breaking through the waves on wide white wings.

Sirion burned behind her. Despairing, Elwing turned West, where somewhere Vingilot waited.