The Fortune Teller by Talullah

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Chapter 1

Legendarium Ladies April - Prompts for April 22 - posted on Amnesty Week
General Prompt: Prejudices
Picture Prompt: Female Figure, Edo peoples

Poetry Prompt: Poem collected in the Man'yoshu, by Lady Kasa
I dreamt I was cradling
a double-edged sword close to my chest -
what does it foretell? It tells
that I shall meet you

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Armenelos, S.A. 93

The market was bubbling with movement and colour, and a mix of scents and noises made Tindómiel dizzy. She loved coming here, although it was not usually permitted, as her mother thought it was not proper or safe, and certainly not stately or royal.

But today she made a special effort to be granted permission. She had heard Vardarmir telling Manwendil that they should go together because the settlers from the West were coming to town and they had good steel knives and swords to sell. Vardarmir, although much older than the both of them and already married, had no child of his own yet, and was always a kind and attentive brother.

And so, she strolled after her two brothers, distractedly stopping here and there to touch a roll of silk, pet the animals or eye some brightly coloured candy. Those were things that she had always loved to do, but today, she was looking for something else, something that was not always present in the market at Rómenna.

When Vardarmir and Manwendil stopped for longer at a stand, having finally found the steel traders they were searching for, she told them she was going to go on looking and took off on her own. Tindómiel knew that Vardarmir thought that mother sheltered her too much and wouldn’t object to leaving her out of his sight for a little while.

Tindómiel hastened her pace through the stalls, her eyes roaming in search of the little funny sculptures she remembered from childhood. At last, at the far end of the market, she found them, carved in stone or wood, ranging in sizes from the length of a hand to an arm, all crude and undetailed, just as she remembered. There was no one in sight but a small boy, clearly dressed in Druédain garb, and so she waited, examining the sculptures.

At first, they seemed indeed poorly done, not at all life-like as the art that people produced in court, emulating the elven taste, but as Tindómiel looked closer, she noticed the perfection in the craftsmanship, how every surface was perfectly polished, how the lines gracefully met… it was funny how the details were so fine and yet the whole did not resemble a graceful lady, or an elegant horse or a working man, but rather caricatures… There was something there that she could not quite define, but intrigued her and lead her to think that the artists who had made them had much to express with their choices…

She had no further time to think about it, as a woman cleared her throat, obviously calling for her attention. Tindómiel raised her eyes from the works to find a Druédain woman standing behind the stand, waiting.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “I was… I was wondering if…” Tindómiel hesitated. Although she had wanted to do this for a while, now that she was here she did not know how to ask for what had brought her here without sounding foolish or causing offence. She swallowed the knot of doubt in her throat and went on. “I was wondering if there is someone to read fortunes.”

“I read fortunes,” the woman replied in perfect Adunaic, albeit with a strange weight to the vowels that made her sound foreign.

“You’re not old.”

The woman laughed. “Lady, you don’t need to be old to see a little further. You are born with it or you aren’t.”

Tindómiel nodded, noticing that her fingertips were icy and how her heart raced. She realized, as soon as the woman had laughed, that she had found what she wanted.

“Come to the back,” the woman said.

Tindómiel followed her past the stand, expecting to find behind it a brood of dirty children, something cooking in an open fire and the men resting and playing music while the women worked. She found an orderly camp, with three wagons neatly arranged around the tents and only two children, seemingly clean, quietly playing with an iron hoop.

The woman led her inside the smallest one, which had a thick wool rug and cushions on the ground.

“Shoes off, lady,” the woman said. Tindómiel obeyed, discarding her silk slippers at the entrance.

“Sit.”

Again, Tindómiel obeyed.

The woman sat on a cushion, opposite her, and Tindómiel noticed how pretty her eyes were, despite the wrinkles. Before that day, Tindómiel had only seen the Druédain from afar and not very often. The woman in front of her now was very short, but not ungraceful or unlovely, for that matter, and neither was the boy who had greeted her at the stall. While they certainly were not tall and fair skinned as her kin, they did not seem to be the savages that people thought they were.

The woman extended her open palm to Tindómiel, waiting for her to place her own hand in hers.

“Let’s see your future, pretty lady,” she said. “Let’s see if you shall be married soon.”

Tindómiel held her hand back at the last moment. “That’s not what I want to know,” she said.

The woman waved her hand. “Ah, then let’s see if an adventure waits for you.”

Tindómiel shook her head. “I don’t want you to read my palm.”

“Ah,” the woman said, lifting an eyebrow. Tindómiel felt that she was looking at her for the first time. She sat there for a while, just watching Tindómiel.

“Tell me, lady,” she said at last. “Do you sometimes had strange dreams?”

Tindómiel nodded.

“Mmm… And do you understand them?”

Tindómiel hesitated. “Sometimes. But only when they come to be.”

The woman pressed her lips and nodded.

“So you want me to tell you what your dreams mean?”

Outside someone started playing a cheerful tune in a string instrument. Tindómiel hesitated again before answering. “I do… but, more than that, I want to learn how to understand them by myself. And there are other things.”

“And you came to the Druédain because we have witchcraft and are odd little people, no?”

“No,” Tindómiel said as firmly as her state of nervousness allowed. “I came to you because someone recommended it.”

“Same thing.”

“It was an Elf lady.”

The woman’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

“So you must be a lady of the court. Maybe even the princess…” The woman sounded a little fearful.

Tindómiel did not want to give away her identity so swiftly. She realized now, looking at herself, that it was inevitable. She bowed her head. “I am the daughter of Elros Tar-Minyatur, yes.”

The woman bowed her head in deference, even as she started rising to her feet. “Lady, I am much honoured that you have searched for us, but this is no place for you.”

“Quite the contrary,” Tindómiel said, catching her wrist. “Please, talk to me. Please.”

The woman sat down again.

“Please, I need to learn. You know that among the Men folk only your people deal with such things. Even my father, for all the elven blood in his veins either does not know or does not talk of… magic. And I feel these things inside that I do not know how to bring forth.”

The woman inhaled deeply. “My people has often been maligned… if I am caught teaching these things to the king’s daughter… please, lady, have mercy. I have children to raise.”

“What if I promise you that no harm will come to you?”

The woman lifted an eyebrow. “Do you really have that power? Because royal or not, you are a woman, like myself, and we seldom are mistresses of our own fates, let alone those of others.”

Tindómiel lowered her eyes, ashamed. “You are quite right. I was foolish to speak so swiftly. But please, I can promise you this - I will never betray our secret and whatever you might teach me will never be related to another, not with your name involved or even a reference to your folk.”

She took the woman’s hands in hers and noticed how cold they were.

Slowly, the woman nodded. “Alright. But only little things at a time.” Tindómiel nodded, assenting.

“So, first the dreams,” the woman continued. “I am Kita, by the way.”

“Tindómiel, at your service.”

“What was the last thing you dreamt?”

Tindómiel inhaled and searched her mind for the right image. “I dreamt I was cradling
a double-edged sword close to my chest - what does it foretell?”

The woman gently dropped Tindómiel’s hands. “It tells that I shall meet you soon.”

~~~

Twenty years had passed since their first meeting and for Tindómiel, they had been a blink. She had rejected suitors and had found a way to impose on her mother the notion that she should have freedom to come and go as she pleased, for she was as able and trustworthy as a son.

She had learned some magic but she felt that there was still much more to be learned. How she still hesitated in using that word. How crude it seemed for what she did. She much prefered to refer to it as ‘her craft’. She had read books and had experimented with words of power and certain herbs and the strength of the moon and the tides. Kita had been a friend and a good teacher, albeit a hard one. There had never been a lesson that did not make Tindómiel find many things on her own, through trial and error.

They had met whenever Kita’s family came to sell their wares on the market and whenever Tindómiel thought it was safe to tell her family that she would be travelling with only a maid and a man servant. She wished that she could go completely alone, but Glasdil, her mother, would have never allowed it. Not even her father, who was far more liberal would have entertained the thought.

Still, she had enough freedom to learn about the world and about herself and how to combine her will with the currents underlying the water and the earth to work to the good of the land. She had become a healer of sorts too, after receiving a book sent by her Uncle Elrond, whom she longed to meet. And slowly, her parents had started to see that she was not wasting her life away, but rather, building one that was unique and full of purpose and accomplishment. Glasdil still hoped for a marriage and grandchildren, and Tindómiel was not averse to the idea, if only she would ever find a partner who was willing to accept what she did and how she did it.

Kita’s son had turned into a handsome young man who followed her with his dark eyes. Sometimes, her eyes followed him too, but that was not a thought she wanted to entertain, not yet and not with the trouble it would certainly bring.

She grew to know the Druédain and their customs and was often treated as one of them. She knew a little of their language, loved their music and food and had, on occasion, spent time with them on the road, as they moved from village to village selling their wares. They were not dirty, they did not thieve, their animals were not ill-treated. To her, their weathered faces showed only kindness and that was more beautiful than any smooth, fair skin or cold, blue eyes. The children were many indeed, but they were polite and smart. There were occasional exceptions, as there were in all the other tribes, of course, but it angered her that only the Druédain as a whole were tainted by the misdeeds of one of them when.

As her knowledge and love of the Druédain grew, Tindómiel thought more and more about how Elenna was a patchwork of tribes, languages and customs, a safe haven for refugees, that had swiftly started to marry between themselves and concocting new traditions. Even if her parents were building a great, sullen city in Armenelos, Elros had been raised in tents, moving around the land, and Glasdil, her mother, was the daughter of a chieftain who had lived her first years knee deep in mud, at the Mouths of Sirion. It pained her that the Druédain seemed to be forever set apart from that tapestry, in part because of the prejudices about them, in part because of their own fears.

But now, despite her reflections, she had to hasten and ready herself to be present at the wedding of Kita’s daughter. The one thing that she could do herself to help others see what she saw was to unabashedly and constantly respect and nurture the friendship that she received from Kita and from her family.

Finis
May 2020

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Chapter End Notes

This story is preceded by Full Moon Magic but it stands on its own, I think.

The poem of the prompt is used in the dialogue.

The Druédain and the prejudices about them were inspired as much in canon as in the Romani.

Elros' wife name was chosen from Real Elvish (Glasdil - Lover/Friend of Joy).