memories we bury or live by by Astris

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memories we bury or live by

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Anairë kept her silence for the first two weeks or so – shame, perhaps, or a lingering sense of delicacy and a desire to allow the wounded time to recover. Eärwen was willing to accept that. Alqualondë’s docks were still stained with blood despite the sweat and splintered hands of those set to scrubbing it, and the graves for the dead stretched long and desolate under the stars.

Still, excuses expired after a time, and she began to wonder.

The message she had been waiting for arrived at what would have been the Mingling, had the Trees still stood. Many of them still carried the memory of the light in their hearts, a biological ebb and flow of time that dictated the rhythm of now-indistinguishable hours in starlight. She straightened from the grave she had been digging at the soft tap on her shoulder, reaching up to tuck back the sweat-soaked hair that had fallen in front of her face.

“Lady Eärwen?”

She nodded, regarding the messenger curiously – clothing cut in the style favored in Tirion, Noldo-dark hair.

“I have a message for you,” the girl said, holding out a scroll tied with a blue ribbon. Eärwen accepted it with a murmur of thanks and watched the messenger scamper off.

She did not need the familiarity of the handwriting on the outside of the parchment to tell her who had sent this message; Anairë always tied her ribbons unevenly, the right end hanging lower, as though she had sealed it in careless haste.

She turned it over in her hands, fingers trailing along the smooth edge of the parchment. After a long moment, she tucked the unopened letter into her belt and bent again to her task, blisters sending lancing pain through her hands as she lifted the shovel once more.

***

Here: starlight, crowning the distant peaks of the mountains, where the light of the Trees began to fade into sparkling darkness. Anairë’s lips on Eärwen’s, soft noises of need and the whisper of skin on skin, the grass under her prickling her bare back.

Afterwards: lying quiet in Anairë’s arms, staring at the silver-specked black.

“Go far north enough, and all you can see is stars,” Anairë said dreamily, fingers tracing circles on the flat plane of Eärwen’s stomach, sending tingling lightning through the warmth that still lingered. “Have you ever gone?”

Eärwen shook her head.

“I have heard it is beautiful,” Anairë mumbled, burying her face in Eärwen’s hair, breath hot against her skin. “Perhaps we should go.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. She thought of touching Anairë in the clean light of the stars, learning the way her dark skin faded into a night unlit by gold or silver.

You are more beautiful than the stars, she wanted to say, but the words felt clumsy and out of place beside the breathing reality of Anairë. Instead, she pressed her head closer to Anairë’s chest to feel the steady beat of her heart.

***

Eärwen caught sight of Anairë’s daughter in the midst of blood and battle, sword flashing and a snarl on her lips, and for a second saw someone else standing there, spilling the blood of the ones she loved.

This is a dream, she tried to tell herself, when she took up a sword herself to defend her home.

The first bite of steel into her arm destroyed that fantasy.

***

We did not know.

She clenched her fingers around the parchment in her hands, feeling the crackle of ink and despair. Anairë’s penmanship was impeccable as ever, but her words had an undercurrent of desperation.

We did not know, my children did not know, will you ever forgive what we allowed to happen?

In the endless night, her bed was empty of all but shadows. She sat in the garden Arafinwë had once tended, knees drawn up to her chest, cradled by the scents of lilac and camellia. Her children were gone, her home destroyed, and her heart - it felt like a barren field, frozen over by winter.

***

"Be more careful," Eärwen muttered, tugging a bandage tighter around Anairë's arm. "Diving for pearls is something experienced Teleri do, not - not foolish maidens raised in a city--"

Anairë laughed, pulling her in for a kiss. Her lips tasted of saltwater. "I got you your pearls, though."

"And gashed yourself open on a rock."

"Don't you have any reward for your hero?" Anairë dropped a pearl into her hand. It caught the light, glimmering faintly. Eärwen scowled to hide her smile.

"Your reward will be a visit to the healers to keep that from getting infected."

“Oh, come now.” Anairë closed Eärwen’s hand around the slippery pearl. The light of Laurelin glinted off her wet skin, her water-dark hair. “Are you truly angered?”

Eärwen sighed and planted a conciliatory kiss on Anairë’s cheek. “I could never be angry for long with you. But I do want you to see the healer as soon as possible.”

Anairë grinned. “Very well.”

***

She dreamt of kissing Anairë, and pulled away with the taste of blood on her lips, the sting of grave-dirt ground into the blisters across her palms.

***

She had met Anairë in Tirion, during a time when both of them were being courted by the sons of Finwë. It was a chance meeting – the girl from Alqualondë, so out of place in the shining city, and the daughter of a commoner poised to be raised to nobility by way of Nolofinwë’s notice.

Theirs was not love at first sight. It was, perhaps, not even love – not for a long time.

Still, it was impossible to deny the flare of heat under her skin when their hands chanced to brush. And there was a definite gleam in Anairë's eyes the first time they found themselves alone in a room together, a look that made warmth curl deep in Eärwen, setting afire a desire she had never felt before.

(There was no forgetting their first, hurried kiss, Anairë ducking forward to press her lips to Eärwen's when Olwë's back was turned, both of them smoothing their faces to studied indifference when he turned back around.)

Arafinwë had known of her continued desire for Anairë, had not minded that her heart held so much love that she could not spend it all on one person. She and Anairë had kept their trysts secret, for the sake of propriety, but there was never a time when Eärwen had felt she had to choose between her loves, and there was never a time when she was without at least one of them close by until darkness fell over Valinor.

When Arafinwë returned, eyes echoing with guilt, tread heavy with sorrow, she took his hands and waited for him to speak, part of her afraid to press too hard lest he break.

“I do not think that Alqualondë holds any joy for me now,” he said at last. She saw the flash of memory in him – arriving to the bloodied docks in horror, seeing the bodies of kinsmen and friends strewn like so much dead wood. “Leaving was a grave error. What happened was – beyond words. I cannot stay here.”

“I will not leave here,” she told him. He nodded.

“I would not expect you to.”

***

Another letter, longer – I do not wish to intrude on your grief. When – if ever – you are ready, if reconciliation is something truly possible, not merely empty words meant to bandage still-bleeding wounds... I will always be here.

She wondered if Anairë was as afraid as she was of what had happened – what was still happening.

A third letter, a fourth. Is this what we have become – grave-dirt and stars we are afraid to lift our eyes up to, because they mean the light is gone and night has fallen? I am selfish, but I would that you not bury our – friendship, if you would grant me that much, now. Do not bury what we have.

I am here if you need me, Eärwen.

***

After a long time, Anairë's letters stopped coming.

Part of Eärwen was relieved. Was not this, after all, what she had hoped to achieve through her own silence? Had she not wished to drive away Anairë, because what had happened was too large and bloody to ever fully heal? If they simply kept away from each other, there could be no risk of reopening any of those wounds.

(Forgiveness, after all, was such a hard thing.)

She tried to hate the growing part of her that wanted Anairë back.

***

She wrote letters, did not send them - tossed them into the fire instead, to watch them curl into ash, the black ink of her words obliterated.

Oh, Anairë, didn't you see this coming? Didn't you see the confrontation building, the emptiness in place of repentance, the inevitability of the drawn swords and spilled blood?

Didn't we all see?

***

Anairë’s last letter to her stayed in her pocket, the parchment growing soft and worn.

Please send word, Eärwen. I do not want to think that what we had is gone forever.

***

"We forget, you know, about eternity." Anairë tipped her glass to one side, watching the golden liquor inside splash against the side.

Eärwen blinked, already halfway into the warm haze that drink always sent her into. "What do you mean?"

"Arguments – feuds – those are futile, when we have all the time in the world." She tipped her head up to the sky, where the golden light of Laurelin was just beginning to creep across the silver sky. They were on the lawn outside Nolofinwë's house, sitting alone on the dew-soaked grass, just drunk enough to pay no heed to the moisture seeping into the fabric of their dresses. "How long can you go without re-encountering someone, if you offend them? In all of Aman, there are only so many places you can spend all the rest of the ages in, avoiding someone."

"So you forgive and move on."

"Theoretically." Anairë raised a finger and arched an eyebrow. "You see, the Eldar have this curious trait – forgiveness, when offered, is a terribly hard thing to accept. If there is only resentment, no forgiveness, we can say that we have done all we can, pin the blame on the other person. It is an even harder thing to grant forgiveness."

Eärwen nodded, having caught only some of what Anairë said. It got harder and harder to follow her logic the more she drank – she tended to get very philosophical right before she passed out.

"We can attempt to avoid a confrontation," Anairë continued, stabbing a finger into the grass as though teaching a lesson to an audience, "but that only lasts so long. We can accept the confrontation, and see where that leads. Forgiveness and repentance--"

"Which are two things inextricably linked," Eärwen ventured, not entirely sure what Anairë was saying, wanting to impress her.

Anairë shot her an appraising look. "Hm. I'd have taken you for a Vanya, with that kind of theology."

"It's not--" She shook her head, losing track of what she was saying. There was a pleasant fuzziness in her head, and Anairë's hand was warm as it enfolded hers. "Go on."

"Yes." Anairë paused as though collecting her thoughts, then plunged onwards, a brightness in her eyes that Eärwen associated with tangled sheets and mingled breath. "If there is forgiveness, there can be peace and healing, you see. Without that, the confrontation may spill over into – violence, I suppose. Theoretically."

Eärwen leaned against her, nuzzling her neck and reveling in the soft noise Anairë made. “Are you planning on gravely offending someone?” she mumbled into Anairë’s skin, and felt her laughter vibrate through her body.

“I suppose with all the politics of this city, it is only a matter of time before I do.” She turned her head to kiss Eärwen’s forehead. “But you, my dearest, I hope to never offend.”

***

In a fit of desperate uncertainty, she penned a swift letter – meet me where you dove for pearls – and sent it off before she could regret it.

***

"Do you want this?"

"Do you?"

Silver glinted in Anairë's hair as she pulled Eärwen close. Her hands slipped down Eärwen's bare hips, over her stomach, lower.

Eärwen closed her eyes. “Yes,” she breathed.

***

She found herself on the seashore in the starlight, ankle-deep in the ocean, sand and shell fragments shifting under her feet as the waves pulled in and out.

Footsteps, from behind her – still familiar, after so long.

"Why didn't you go with the rest?" she asked, turning around.

Anairë had a hopeful smile on her lips, but there was a new sorrow in her dark eyes that made her look somehow older. "I could not bear to leave you, Eärwen."

She couldn't find the right words – never could, when it was Anairë. Thank you, her traitorous mind supplied, and she bit the words back, said, "You should have left."

"Why, because you blame me?" There was fire in Anairë's eyes and under her words, and Eärwen nearly welcomed it. It had been so long since she truly felt something beyond the flaring pain of blistered hands and bloody knees.

But this was Anairë, and she could never stay angry at her for long.

"I do not know who not to blame," she whispered.

"Blame those whose fault it was." Anairë closed the gap between them, reaching out for Eärwen's hand. Eärwen did not flinch away. "And rebuild. Let me rebuild with you."

She closed her eyes. The frozen ground of her heart was starting to crack under the roots Anairë’s words wove into her. For a moment, Eärwen trembled on the edge of pushing her away again, of closing herself off to the pain of rebirthing their love, their home. (Travail was not new to her, but that did not mean she welcomed its pangs.)

“Stay with me,” she said, opening eyes that stung with tears. The ocean tugged at her feet, and she could see the stars reflected in Anairë’s eyes as she nodded.

***

Telperion’s light sparkled off the brook that babbled beside them, lending a quiet music to the shaded hollow. Somewhere, a bird trilled, the melody sweet and fleeting. Eärwen’s back was against a tree, Anairë’s head pillowed in her lap.

"Don't you wish this could last forever?" She tangled her fingers in Anairë's hair, tugging at her dark curls. “You and me and the light and – and all of this, I mean.”

Anairë caught her hand and smiled up at her, brighter than the silver sky above. "We have forever, Eärwen."