Skin by Scribe of Mirrormere

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Chapter 1

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The sweet, spicy woody scent of the olibanum burning in multiple houses filled the halls of Doriath’s lower chambers, a welcoming scent to settle the spirit after the feast.

And ease my stomach, Aredhel added in her thoughts, for she had eaten to the point of passing out. It was hard not to when the meals served in the grand hall of Doriath were richly spiced in manners which the aroma alone made her drool. There were tastes she was already accustomed to in Nan Elmoth, a hint of her own mother’s cooking in them, but the foods of Doriath invoked images of many peoples’ customs, each unique yet equally delicious.

“My legs cannot hold me any longer,” Aredhel sighed happily and yawned. Her companions both shook their heads in amusement.

“Did I not warn you of the danger of gluttony?” Galadriel her cousin teased.

“You did, but then I would never have tasted a Nandorin roasted hog,” Aredhel said happily. “Or the lentils the Cuind have brought from the south!”

Eöl her husband gave a serious sigh. “You had an entire bowl of lentils just for yourself,” he commented, which brought an amused twitch to Galadriel’s lips. Though she, Aredhel knew, regarded Eöl with wariness for the odd black metal fused throughout his body, the time spent with him this evening had warmed her a little towards him, finding him strange (though no stranger than Aredhel herself) yet not a threat.

Around the corner turned Mablung and Beleg, their shifts in protecting the lands having concluded. Mablung walked with an affectionate arm around Beleg, whose head leaned slightly towards Mablung’s shoulder. Aredhel smiled at their affection.

“Best you do not share a bed tonight,” Galadriel said, breaking Aredhel’s reverie, “if you wish your husband to be capable of drawing breath.”

“It surely won’t be that bad!” Aredhel laughed just as Mablung glanced back and offered an impish grin before winking at Eöl, his younger brother.

On each side of the hallway hung long tapestries, and as they drew near one in particular caught Aredhel’s attention. She stopped to take a closer look.

“Hwenti!” she said brightly. “And I have never seen trees like that! I take it the depiction is of the far southern lands?”

“Correct, my lady,” Eöl said.

“And this…a Windan? Ah, the leaves of their trees are such a lovely shade of pink! I would love to visit.” Aredhel sighed. “There are no Hwenti or Windan in Valinor, thus I was never exposed to their culture. I wasn’t familiar about any culture of the Moriquendi, though my mother and yours belonged to the same tribe. All I heard were rumors from the other young elves, of more savage races of elves.” She grimaced at the memory and glanced at her husband, Mablung, and Beleg in apology, but from their nods she knew it wasn’t the first time they had heard of such sentiments.

“Most of the tribes chose to remain in Cuiviénen,” Eöl explained, “though many did follow out of loyalty to Elwë - our Elu Thingol - eventually. I was present during that time, as was my brother.”

“You were there at Cuiviénen?” Aredhel said, smiling in admiration. “Oh, if only I were alive then, to hear the most important meeting of the tribes deciding on where to go! But you must be so ancient - you require a cane!”

Galadriel, who had been rolling her eyes at the looks the two elves had been giving one another, was unable to suppress a chuckle.

“And what of me?” Mablung asked, extending out his arms. “A thousand years separates myself and my little brother!”

“You don’t seem as knobby and brittle as he does,” Aredhel said, sticking her tongue out at her husband and earning herself a glare through narrowed eyes.

“What more did they say of the Moriquendi?” Beleg asked Galadriel.

“The generation that grew up with your kin had little to none of the bias their children and children’s children had,” Galadriel said. “Especially…one particular uncle.”

“Uncle Fool Fire!” Aredhel said. “Fëanor, you might know him as. He used to take his family traveling around Valinor, and I sometimes joined them. I used to hear him say the most awful things, but it never occurred to me just how awful they were!”

“What did he say?” Eöl asked.

Aredhel hesitated. “Well, I don’t agree with it of course, but my uncle used to say ‘the darker the skin, the darker the heart.’ All of his children used to repeat it. None of them had even met an elf of the Moriquendi!”

Galadriel, who always had despised Fëanor, gave a disgusted look, but Mablung laughed. “Oh, my! And this came from that elf who was the first to slay another of like kin, and die by his own fire! I would have liked to have met him just to see how utterly insane he was for myself!”

“That is indeed ignorant,” Eöl said, frowning. “Did he not know of any tales from his parents?”

“Who knows? The guy was his own kind of weird. But what of you, Eöl, oh husband? Surely there’s something your kin said in foolishness about skin!”

“Well…” Eöl glanced at his brother, whose lips stretched into a smirk.

“Tell them, little brother,” Mablung encouraged.

Sighing, Eöl turned back to Aredhel and Galadriel. “There is a saying, more often than not spoken only in jest, that the pale ones are terrible at keeping secrets, for you can see their veins plainly through their skin.”

Galadriel’s lips stiffened; clearly nothing had prepared her to hear such accusations. “I can keep secrets well enough!”

“So can I!” Beleg laughed. “Not so certain about Lady Aredhel, though.”

“Depends on the sort of secret, and the sort of person the secret is about,” she said, half her attention on her own arm. She ran to Eöl and pulled back one sleeve, exposing his brown arm and areas where the galvorn was fused into his body.

“We can keep secrets well enough, indeed!” she said. “Your veins are an ugly shade of green while mine’s a pretty blue that goes well with my outfits! I call your kin’s words an act of jealousy!”

“Jealousy?” Eöl said. “They are merely words, heard most in our youth before we speak no more of our superficial differences! What we see here can only be a trick of the light. I am certain my own veins are just as blue as yours - or yours such as green as mine!”

“Ha! That’s a likely story!” Aredhel said, punching his shoulder although she was still grinning with mischief.

However, Eöl, ever the austere, flinched from the punch. “Was that necessary, Lady Aleila? No matter the argument, in the end the color of our blood are all the same!”

“But mine is still nicer to behold than yours, husband.” Aredhel playfully stuck out her tongue at Eöl again.

“Really?” Galadriel groaned. “You two are fighting over skin?”

Mablung leaned back against the wall, smiling up at Beleg as the arguments continued on. “Rôg would be proud of my achievement here, don’t you think?”