Of Ingwë Ingweron by heget

Of the Hunters of the First Tribe

Read Of the Hunters of the First Tribe

The first tribe of Speakers, Kwendî, were never large in number, and their choices would keep their tribe small. In this time all elves lived near the shores of the Great Mother Lake that had birthed them, Cuiviénen, and there did most remain. Yet some chose to venture away from shore, for in that time all elves were curious. But curiosity and hunger drew the people of the first tribe away from the safety of the lake more than all other elves and thus sealed their fate.

The first tribe was the Minyar, led by the First to awaken of all the Speakers, and Imin regretted that his people were never as many as those of other tribes. Tata was the leader of the second tribe, from which they were known as the Tatyar, and their numbers were great enough that more than one village was needed to hold their numbers. Of the third tribe Enel was their chief, though so many were the third tribe that added together the first and second could not equal. The Nelyar thus had many villages spread across the shores of the Great Mother Lake. The Tatyar people with flat dark hair and pale skin delighted in all curiosities and new knowledge, and the third tribe found the sounds of water sweetest and thus clamored around the shore and paddled into the lake itself.

But the people of bronze and golden skin, with hair that shone light and golden when the great camp fires were lit, they were fearless. They were first to see the meat of animal kills and use the gift of voice to shout and frighten the scavengers away. They were first to decide to emulate hunters like the great cats and the wolves, to leave the echoing water and run through the fir forest and dark plains in search of prey. With the clear voices and the use of song the Minyar Kwendîcalled out the plans. With newly invented words they called the ideas of running ahead, of circling the prey and herding it, and of throwing from many hands as if one.

No other creature looked like them, walked on two feet and had hands that could grasp and throw and make. On the first hunt it was rocks to scatter the animals, like they had done to the other scavengers to claim old kills, and sharpened spears from branches and young saplings around their home. A Tatyar would find a way to lash the knapped stone scrapers the Kwendî were beginning to use as knives to make a sharper spear-point atop the wooden javelin. On the second hunt this spear would prove superior. The Minyar would learn to make these stone knives, but most traded with the Tatyar instead. The second tribe had not the skills of bodily strength, the understanding of animals both prey and predator, the songs and strategies of how to successfully hunt the best game. Better the Tatyar craftsmen spend their time on the spearheads and knives, for their hands were skilled to it and familiar, and the Minyar to the long hunts. Thus no time was wasted, and true talents matched of crafter and hunter. This was said to be the wisdom of the customs of the Speakers, the Kwendî, and none questioned it.

The Nelyar fished. In truth they accomplished more than that, for their careful tending of the water reeds and plants growing on the narrow rich land between shore and the surrounding woods was the beginning of agriculture. The Nelyar would tend the reeds to make woven goods like clothing and baskets and later the walls of their houses. Tubers and edible greens they also farmed, beginning to control the environment instead of the other way around.

The Minyar grew strong on the rich red meat of prey, drinking the thick blood and sucking the bone marrow. They would offer pieces of heart and liver and lung to the Tatyar craftsmen who gave them the spearheads. Not just stone, but tools and art of many materials became the province of the second tribe. Clay from the lakeshore baked in fire pits became hard enough for bricks and pots, and skilled hands learned to make many shapes and patterns. Once enough deer were killed and antlers gathered, bone weapons became common. Even the Tatyar children would expend their curiosity by hunting through the woods after rutting season, looking for discarded antlers to make into new tools and ornaments. Thus the character of the Noldor, of what the second tribe would value most, was given its foundations.

But to leave the sight and hearing range of Cuiviénen, to run after the great deer and horse and boar, was dangerous. Not only was such big game dangerous to the hunters, where a kick or tusk of an animal even fatally captured could injury an unwary Minyar tracker, but the Kwendî were not the only hunters on the plains. Great beasts, monsters of horn and ivory dying the earth with blood^[1], also competed with the Minyar for prey, or saw these Kwendî as food. Hunters, both male and female (for in those days and indeed forever after for the first tribe saw no difference of gender in the skill of a runner to defeat the swift deer or an arm that could hurl a spear^[2], were lost to the violence, and thus the first tribe was never able to grow in number like their kin who did not venture into danger.

And the best illustration of this is the story of the mother and father of those we would later name Ingwë and his sister Indis.

 

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The father of he who would be called Ingwë Ingweron was a hunter of the Minyar, one of the first pairs to awaken but not among the first found by Imin. He was especially regarded among his tribe for swiftness of foot. His was the untiring energy to run after swift prey like the small deer and striped-back dun horses. His first name had been to liken this speed to that of the wind, though there was a time this name of the father of Ingwë Ingweron was not spoken. When Indis was born her brother told her the true name of their father, Alakô the rushing wind, told her that she must hold the name in her heart, let not the other tales displace it.

She that woke at the side of swift-footed Alakô was his wife and a hunter likewise skilled, whose arms with spear or spear-thrower had no equal. She was called by the strength of her shoulders and lovely arms. Among the first people of her tribe it was said that one always knew who cast the spear that flew the farthest and truest, for it would be hers. Maktâmê, by those arms skilled in wielding weapons she would be named.

Fates are cruel.

Around the great lake called Cuiviénen for a span of much constant walking was forest with trees dark and tall. But to persevere would take a hunting party through the tangle of giant firs, primitive pines, and swaying ferns to open plains dotted periodically by single slender trees. Here the horses and many species of deer, elk, and bison grazed and ran. Here were the packs of wolves and hyena, the lion prides, and other predators which hunted such beasts. Here the Minyar crouched in the long grasses, watching carefully and learning the tricks of hunting beasts, of how they could run down the deer, horses, and bison. The boy that would become Ingwë Ingweron was too young to join such a hunt. He was left in the village to wait the sunless days for his tribe to return from these ventures. When the time for the hunting came, the boy that would become Ingwë helped his mother gather the spears and spear-throwers. At the shores of the lake he filled the waterskins, and from the storing mats he selected large pieces of jerky to sustain the hunters on their journey. Solemnly he painted the lines of camouflage and ritual paint across his father’s body and face, frowning as his father laughed from the sensation. His father and mother each drew a line around the boy’s jaw and over his beating heart, telling the boy that when he grew taller and stronger he would be permitted to join a hunt, but not this one. The boy wiped at the paint and reminded them to check the lashings of their spears. No fear was in his heart, only pride and eagerness. His parents were great hunters, would be the first to bring down a deer or elk, and his stomach rumbled at the anticipation of such delicious meat.

It was not to be.

Swift-foot Alakô ran, two members of his tribe including his wife Maktâmê trailing behind him, as they harried the young buck they had singled out from the herd. One spear cast from him, the others from his helpers, all the while laughing and singing, for their skill in felling prey had grown mighty indeed. They thought themselves masters of these plains. The deer crashed to the earth bleeding and exhausted, spears hanging from its flanks like swaying saplings sprouting from the earth. But the hunters had grown too arrogant, too incautious in the darkness of those early days. The man knelt beside the fallen prey, all his attention on the knife in his hand and ending the struggling cries of the dying animal. The thick stinking blood spurted over himself and the earth as he ran the blade across the throat. His back was turned. He did not see the beast that drew near, attracted by the smell of blood and dying noises. A solitary hunter, something much like a leopard, leapt down from the trees that stood like islands among the sea of grass and attacked Alakô. A creature made mad and full of bloodlust from Melkor's taint savaged the elf and dying animal both. The man screamed as his flesh was rent, muscles of his leg opened to the bones, claws that raked across his face permanently removing an eye, and arms and hands also badly injured. All the while he screamed.

The hunters drew back in fear, all but the woman Maktâmê. She rushed forward with spear in hand, trying to drive the beast away from the mangled thing that was now her husband, attempting to save him. She was able to force the beast off, but not before sharp fang and tooth scored debilitating wounds to her arms, those strong and famous arms desperately trying to pry the man away.

But the bodies of the elves healed swiftly from even most horrific injuries, spirits fending off diseases and agents of rot, clinging to bodies even when hope was slim. ^[3]

The man once named Alakô survived this attack, and also his wife, though her arms no longer proved useful for hunting, and one would hang uselessly from her side. Maktâmê of the arms, they would still call her, but arms that brought her fear instead of envy, Skarnâ-Maktê. The hunting party returned with no meat, carrying only the bodies of these two Kwendî which had once be the pride of their membership. The boy who would become Ingwë watched his parents brought home, the blackness of despair finding lodging and lordship in his heart. As the few rudimentary healers of the Kwendî, equipped with their early ignorance, worked to close the gaping dreadful wounds, all found it a surprise that the man who once ran so swiftly even survived. But this greatness of strength was not praised, for from that point on he was severely crippled, a figure of fear and scorn, only able to hobble around the camps of the Minyar half-blind. Thus he was seen as useless to his tribe. In those early days the Minyar valued strength and effectiveness towards their continued survival as a people, and the man could no longer offer any. The boy who would be Ingwë watched as his once laughing and talkative father grew cold and silent. He had once thought his father too silly, too often smiling when there did not seem a reason to be. Even before the accident, the boy who would grow to be Ingwë Ingweron had been a solemn and serious child, wishing to make things with a gravitas that brought his father to tears of laughter. The now lonely boy regretted the negative thoughts he once had about his father’s smiles. No more smiles would come easily to this family.

Mocking names the injured man was rechristened by the tribe, names of worthlessness and scorn and fright for the dreadfulness of his appearance, the frailty he had become. Skarwô and Ulgundô and Khyannô and Nukottô were the names the man was called. Never would the man acknowledge these names, nor his wife or son, but they could not unhear them.

The boy's mother grew bitter from her days spent tending his broken father, unable to hurl the spears, the lacework of puckered silver scars making a mockery of beauty she was named for. Her bitterness fed also on the scorn upon her and her husband. And the boy himself grew grim and quiet.

A figure of ill-omen to his tribe, the child of weaklings he was called by the Minyar and their proud chieftain, as if the earlier strength of his parents was forgotten. Sullen, they called the boy, for he was. The tribe renamed him the unspeaking one, Ûkwendô. By this act they highlighted the powerlessness of his standing among his people, denied him his personhood among the Kwendî. Little was expected of him, only that he would remain a dead weight among his tribe much as his mother and father were.

This child of Alakô and Maktâmê had been the eighth born to the small tribe of the Minyar, an auspicious number. Once he had been the welcome child, the lucky one, a child with greatness expected. He that would be Ingwë Ingweron did not forget this.

After her son was born, Maktâmê shared nursing duties with another hunter who gave birth a few months before her, freeing both women to join the hunting parties as they alternated duties. This fellow hunter's son was Asmalô, seventh born of the Minyar, and he grew to be a typical hunter, of gregarious smile but swift to snark at those that annoyed him. This other woman and her son had once been as a brother and second mother to the boy that would be Ingwë. Asmalô was his first friend, but this broken bond was overshadowed by later and more portentous friendships. While they that had been named Alakô and Maktâmê recovered from their horrific injuries, Asmalô’s mother had been the one to clean their wounds and force food into their son’s hands. Afterwards, when it was clear the limit of recovery, Asmalô and his mother shunned the friends they had once so highly praised, speaking the same harsh and cruel names. To his once friend and companion Asmalô spoke the name Ûkwendô, and so the two no longer played together or shared meals, until the discovery that changed all.

Before, he that would be Ingwë wanted to be a hunter alongside with his friend and eventually marry another Minyar hunter, as that was expected custom. His favorite part of the hunts had been the painting of hunters before they left, the ceremony complete with speeches from Imin Ingweron. Now he avoided the ceremonies that sent the Minyar hunting parties away. He did not join Asmalô for the boy’s first hunt, run by his side and hurl spears, or stand beside him to hear the chieftain speak and accept paint and blessings. Before the accident, the boy that would become Ingwë liked to pretend to be the chieftain, sticking stray feathers in his hair and making proclamations to his fellow toddlers. They would all giggle, and their mothers would pick them up and tickle them, Maktâmê kissing her son’s cheek and pulling out the feathers with her teeth. Imin and Iminyë would watch with bemused patronizing fondness, and she now called Skarnâ-Maktê recalled with pride how her chieftain once praised her son’s powerful voice. “You are made for greatness, my son,” she told the boy that would be Ingwë, and she never stopped telling him this, even in the blackest despair of their lives.

Now a pariah, the boy that would become Ingwë, the boy that others called Ûkwendô, learned he must fend for himself, to hunt and forage for food, and discover how to go to the camps of the Tatyar and barter for goods on his own. He could not depend on his parents or the charity of the other Minyar, not even the boy he once called brother. Nor would his pride allow it. He could not allow fear to root inside him, or the stings of sorrow and scorn cripple his feet as well. The boy did not call himself Ûkwendô; he was the singular one who dared the forests without a companion. He knew even then that he was Ingwë. Tall and strong and cunning he grew, but few among his own people had eyes to note it. Asmalô watched but never approached. The young man who gathered knowledge on subjects wide, but who was rarely asked to share in it, this was he that would be Ingwë.

As the hunters and warriors bragged of feats and challenged each other in the ritual circle of the tribe, one stood silent. One did not cheer as Imin and Iminyë’s son wrestled another to the ground or Asmalô learned how to use a piece of bark as buckler shield against spears. As others watched proud warriors fight to gain honor and fame, one would leave secretly the village of the Minyar. The young man that would be Ingwë was rare among his tribe to delight in silence of others’ voices, to prefer the wind and the fire rings of other villages. He built tentative friendships among the other two tribes, dared to what the other Minyar refused. The boy that the Minyar called Ûkwendô had few willing to admit a shared acquaintance among his own tribe, but many knew him of the Tatyar and Nelyar.

Strongest of his bonds, long celebrated in the history of the people to come, was to the young men that would be Finwë of the Noldor and Elwë of the Lindar. Elwë of the third tribe had visited the Tatyar village in the company of his parents, looking to trade cooking vessels, fish, and sharp tools. While there Elwë befriended the young craftsman, Finwë, and so would often return to that village or Finwë travel to his. Later another young man would come eager to exchange goods for a knife and be spotted by tall Elwë. Elwë would invite over this fellow outsider, and thus the young man that would be called Ingwë was adopted into the friendship of Finwë and Elwë. Older and steadier, the one that would be Ingwë humored their lightness and easy prattle. He appreciated that neither boy could bring themselves to call the Minyar youth by the cruel name. Instead they called him the Kwendê for jest of his taciturn stares. One who hunted alone for food to support both his mother and father, his friends marvelled at the older boy’s skill and considered themselves fortunate in be in his confidence. The man who would be Ingwë was in truth the greatest of the Minyar. But no totems of victories decorated him, for no one else believed there was any honor to be gained by challenging the son of the scarred ones.

 

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Chapter End Notes

^[1] “ the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood.” (Silm 29 - “Of the Beginning of Days”)

^[2] “In all such things, not concerned with the bringing forth of children, ….the men and women of the Eldar are equal ... no matters which among the Eldar only a ner can think or do, or others with which only a nis is concerned... there was less difference in strength and speed between elven-men an elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals.” (HoMe X - “Laws and Customs of the Eldar”)

^[3] "[The elves] were tenacious therefore of life ...even from the first days protecting their bodies from many ills and assaults (such as disease), and healing them swiftly of injuries, so that they recovered from wounds that would have proved fatal to Men."(HoMe X)

Of the Birth of Indis

Read Of the Birth of Indis

The people of his tribe would say two things about that act of Ingwë's mother, when she lost the use of her arm to drag her husband from the leopard's deadly embrace. First that Maktâmê did it for Alakô was her mate, and it was tribal lore that the first concern of a woman was to the one at her side, he that she saw first when she awoke. That he would always be the primary concern.^[3]

Second that it was foolish of her to do it. The man was too badly injured by the predator, and that by going after him all the woman truly accomplished was to injure herself and thus place two burdens upon her people instead of one. She would have better served her son and tribe and the legacy of her husband had she let him die that day, and kept her body strong and whole. So said was the wisdom of the Speakers.

None said what should have been, and was, the truth that should have been said.

That there was one of the Kwendî screaming out in pain, and compassion would not allow anyone to stand aside and attempt nothing to stop the pain of a fellow being.

That compassion was the greatest strength of Maktâmê, and the greatest gift she gave into her daughter Indis.

 

 

The broken man that his tribe called terrible names like Skarwô and Ulgundô, Khyannô and Nukottô had been grievously injured in body, it is true. But the long years of pain had weakened his resolve and spirit. To be so cruelly shunned by one's only home, to have no hope of recovery, no one's strength could have mastered that in the end. Thus the woman with her scarred arms, one that was useless to lift and stroke the faces of her family, held onto the man as he sat by the edge of the camp. Her good arm would thread through his remaining fingers, squeezing them tight in her fear. But the hand she held would rarely echo her gesture.

The father of the young man who would become Ingwë watched the waves that gently lapped the shores of the Great Mother Lake. One day, Skarnâ-Maktê knew, the despair would grow too great, that emptiness that she could not fill, not when there was so little spirit inside her as well, and her husband would walk into the embrace of the lake. When the suffering was too burdensome, the Kwendî already knew, one could abandon the body, return to the stars, or that darkness between. And yet the father of the man who would become Ingwë lingered, held back by the feeling of those fingers.

But his eye was empty and looked out upon the lake.

 

Their son could not watch. To the camps of the Tatyar and Nelyar he walked instead, to find peace among the forest or even to hunt alone among the tall grass, anything to avoid his home. To the Tatyar boy Finwë who had no parents, lost long ago in a tragedy forgotten, and raised as the clever and tolerated nephew of all and none, the man that would be Ingwë went and watched the younger man mold clay vessels for storing food and invent names for the markings Rúmilô drew in the clay. To the Nelyar boy Elwë who had two younger brothers the man that would be Ingwë went and helped his taller friend chase after the boys and their friends, to clean mud from their faces, and learn to swim on the lake. Joy was to be hunted outside his village, thus knew the man that would be known as Ingwë Ingweron. He could not continue to bite his tongue and say nothing as the chieftain and highest among his tribe mocked his parents and him, not after he became a man grown. To improve his family's standing drove him like the need for air and water. And the man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could not bear to be witness to the last fading of his father.

 

One last attempt to save her husband did Maktâmê devise, and begged for another child. A child, she hoped, might give her husband a task to focus on, a reason to not fade. Or at least give her one. And perhaps she knew he was lost to her, and hoped to preserve that last bit of his spirit, create one more thing of joy, something that would be born unscarred.

This plan was mostly unspoken, for it would have been mocked if her tribe learned she wished a child from the weak and grotesque. "Neither of you have the strength for a child," they would have told her. That any child from two with inner fires so low and guttering would be one with a spirit so weakly glowing as to be embers easily stamped out. This was the wisdom of the tribes. But they were wrong, the woman knew, as she watched the first child of her and her husband approach. Her strong son, who carried three dead hares in his hand and knelt before them, swiftly and expertly skinning the animals, spitting the meat and roasting the flesh, then pulling off the best parts to feed his father. All the while with bright blue eyes that refused to release their tears. "My first son is powerful, and learned to make the hunting snares of Tatyar boy," the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê said.

To which, with a helplessness born from many mothers, the young man who would be called Ingwë corrected her, "The snares were from Belekô, a Nelyar."

"It does not matter if the child is not strong," Maktâmê said, "or brings home glory and gifts." Of heartbreaking loveliness was the smile she turned to her son, one that glanced beyond him to where his father sat near the ring of campfires and picket stakes that ordained the border between the safety of the village and the dangers of the dark wild. "But that child would be mine, and of Alakô. A new life, like you, my son." She left unsaid that any chances for another child grew slim. That the call of the water and the darkness was stronger than her voice and her arms.

 

A child was conceived, and this would have been joy. But not soon after, when the faintest signs of the child growing inside were present, did the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê wake to see no one resting at her side. In great fear did she run through the camp, searching for the figure that was so manifestly unlike in silhouette from all other Kwendî. But she was unable to see it, unable to call out the name no one spoke, unable to face the truth she knew the second she awoke and felt a coolness from the lack of another body beside her. The man that had once been so swift as to be named for the rushing wind was gone. The despair had called in the lapping tiny waves of the shore, and the Great Mother Lake had swallowed him.

She that was called Skarnâ-Maktê wept, and spat disdainfully into the lake, turning the burning bitterness of her eyes into a wild challenge to all the Minyar who gathered around her. In anger she cursed and wailed. Imin, the first among the Kwendî, he that claimed the title of eldest and leadership of not just his tribe but to speak for all the Speakers, observed her. He permitted this brief display of grief and defiance, and he cautioned his wife, she that was counted first among the women of the Kwendî, and his children to make no move. What threat was the scarred women, the former hunter with useless arms, to them? In their haughty pride they dismissed Skarnâ-Maktê and her grief.

The burst of fury soon gutted itself, and the hopeless tears, and the woman who was once called Maktâmê and envied and praised among all the hunters of the Minyar, she that once delighted in the carefree laughter of her husband and the feel of the wind-stream from his sprinting, wiped away the emotions on her face. Away from the public center of the camp she walked, looking for her son. At the edge of the village she sat, under the shadows from the tall sentry fires. Long she waited, promising the unborn child whose heartbeat echoed her own that there would be hope and strength. That the young man who would become Ingwë Ingweron could support the child, even if she could not. That not all the paths before this tiny new heartbeat were bitterness and absence.

And when her son finally came back from his foraging in the dark forests around the camp, arms full of cycad stems to leach into an edible food, Maktâmê told him of what happened. Ukwendô was the boy mocked, and in this moment he made no word. He only grasped both hands of his mother, the one that could not feel and the one that could, and squeezed them tight. Nothing, he vowed silently, would be as important as a better life for them.

 

 

For many years dark spirits and evil servants of Melkor had hunted around the lake, shadows of whispering terror masked in shapes to imitate the Valar Oromë who rode Nahar. They were body-snatchers who lurked in the upswept boughs of the pines or the parasitic voids of starlight that clung to the backs of the galloping horses, the subjects of warnings and cautionary songs. The hunters of the Minyar suffered most from the dark hunters. Parties who went on the long treks to the plains where the best game was found did not return, and fear during those long waits shot up like fast-growing trees. There had always been fear of an unsuccessful hunt, or that a hunter may be injured or die, as what happened to those once called Alakô and Maktâmê. But the fear was greater now, for the danger and uncertainty was greater. By chance the smallest of the three tribes, now the Minyar were very few in number, and they quailed with terror of these patches of darkness. To the safety of the great campfire rings they began to cling, turning their songs of hunting into that of being hunted. Tales spread of the disappearing children of the wise tribe, who had by custom long wandered the woods alone for supplies and curiosity. The wails of their grieving parents echoed across the lake. Even the third tribe, who by choice rarely left the shore, tending instead to their reeds and tubers and fish, lost people to these evil spirits. Finally the three chieftains of the tribes, Imin and Tata and Enel, declared that no one was to leave the confines of the camp unless necessary, to always be in range of the light cast by the fires. For safety this was demanded, but now the tribes of the Kwendî were isolated from each other. None suffered as much as the Minyar, who depended on their long hunts for food and had little skill with catching fish or digging in the muck of the shoreline for food. Nor did they have large stores of pine nuts stored in large clay vessels, a crafty precaution common in the Tatyar villages. The man who would become Ingwë Ingweron glared in impotent rage at the dark forest and the back of his chieftain's head. He most among his tribe traveled alone between the camps, needing so to support his kin. This proclamation doomed everyone, but none so much as the new sibling his mother was about to birth.

 

When the labor pains began, the young man watched helplessly. Unlike his friend Elwë, who as the eldest of three sons from the leader of one of the smaller Nelyar villages had been around births before, he that would be Ingwë had little knowledge of what to expect. He was not popular among his own kin, and as a figure of ill-omen none wished him near during an important and auspicious event like a birth. One of the Minyar woman, a young mother of two with a sister who had also given birth, though that child was among the hunters taken by the spirits, came to assist the woman called Skarnâ-Maktê. It was not a gentle birth, but swift, and soon the woman who had first been named Maktâmê for the lovely strength of her arms held in her one good arm the tiny form of her daughter.

The infant girl was small, but not unnaturally so, with perfect tiny fingers and toes and a soft mop of golden curls.

"Wait to name her," the young man who would be called Ingwë requested, for in those days it was sometimes custom for the parent to wait until the child had grown, to observe what traits developed that would best depict the person, even if this was more common among the second and third tribes than the Minyar. "Do not name her now, in this time of fear, clouded by our grief. She is strong, she will grow up loved, her name should be for her glory."

At this his mother smiled, the first gentle smile since before her husband abandoned them to his despair. She told her son to find a good name, for she could not fathom one, and thanked the other woman for putting aside her evasion of the tribal pariahs to help.

 

The inspiration for the name would come from an unlikely place, for soon after one of the Nelyar, a young man with pale silver hair named Nôwê, sneaked into the Minyar camp. He was a close friend of Elwë's brother and a well-liked member of his own tribe, and for the sake of that friend he disregarded the ban placed by the chieftains. He found the young man who would be Ingwë, and with the voice of near panic whispered the dire news. Elwë's parents, the leaders of the small Nelyar village closest to the other two tribes, had been abducted by the shadowy hunters.

Elwë meant to go after them. Wild in grief and need for vengeance, he would dare the dangerous woods and the plains beyond, willingly searching out those whispering spirits that drank in the starlight and gave nothing back, those horrors that preyed on the Kwendî.

 

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron knew he must join this hunt.

 

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Chapter End Notes

^[4]  “Thus, the Eldar say, the first thing that each elf-woman saw was her spouse, and her love for him was her first love; and her love and reverence for the wonders of Arda came later.” (HoMe XI) - AN: this quote is one of my least favorite lines from Tolkien

Of the Three Hunters and the Vala Oromë

Read Of the Three Hunters and the Vala Oromë

 

The Nelyar village was near the marshland of the lake, where one of the rivers that fed the Great Mother Lake spread out into a mesh of channels and reed-beds. The mud squelched under the toes of the young man who would be called Ingwë. He allowed no grimace of discomfort reach his face, for the terrain though wet and unpleasant was familiar to him. The path was not, for Nôwê led not along one of the common paths between the villages but across the sea of reeds and short fern trees. To leave the protective fire ring of the villages was still prohibited by the three clan chieftains and punishment would be swift if they were seen. But the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron disdained the proscriptions of his chief.

Lizards leapt and skittered as the silver-haired man of the Nelyar guided them through the shifting reeds and leafy ferns. His passage was sure and clean as the breeze, and the man that would be Ingwë followed like a golden shadow.

"Belekô fetched the Tatyar friend of Elwê, the one that talks more than a river over large stones," said Nôwê, pointing with his fishing spear where to ford the stream across their path. "They have been long friends, since before his second brother was born. I was sent to fetch you, for you are wise and strong, Kwendê. Speak sense to my friend, for he plans to hunt the Dark Hunters." The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to hear the fond nickname that Elwë and Finwë had renamed him in jest, to be Speaker instead of the Unspeaking One, but he did not reply to the silver-haired man. Nor did he ask what sensible words were desired of him, that he dissuade Elwë or join on this foolhardy hunt. The anger that smoldered like hot charcoal in his heart knew which path the outcast of the Minyar preferred. He was the son of hunters, of the swiftness of the wind, and to be caged by fear was anathema to him.

The chieftain of the first tribe had forbidden hunters to go after the Dark Hunters, the voids of starlight that clung like ticks on the backs of horses, the things responsible for the disappearances of so many. They were what could not be hunted and killed and thus none were to venture out to hunt them, so the first to awaken had proclaimed, and his command had been repeated by Tata and Enel, the other chieftains of the Kwendî. Elwë was no hunter as the man who would be Ingwë was, but anger and grief paid this no heed.

The sentry torches that ringed the Nelyar village were half-lit, though the central fire pit was bright. The round huts of the third tribe, woven reed walls packed with clay and capped by large pointed thatch roofs, loosely ringed the central fire like oversized mushrooms. A young man of the third tribe perched atop one of the houses, the firelight gleaming off the dark silver of his hair. Seeing their approach, he scampered sure-footed off the house like a squirrel and shouted to the travellers. Loudly he told them to hurry, that everyone was gathered by the great longhouse where fish were cleaned and smoked and stored.

The man called Nôwê, later Círdan, and he that would be Ingwë Ingweron were last to arrive. Already they could hear voices.

Taller than any of his kin or the man that would be Ingwë, of a height only with the first awaken of all the elves, was the one called Elwë, and his implacable face was visible over the heads of the people around him. He stood before the door of the longhouse, holding a spear in one hand with a cloak of finely-woven rushes and a heavy pack around his shoulders. The long silver of his hair, darker than the near-white of Nôwê or his other brother Olwë, fell down his back in tangled waves of starlight. The remoteness of the stars was in his face and their piercing fire in his eyes.

As nervous as the half-tamed wolves that some Kwendî fed food scraps, the youngest brother, Elmo of the climbing feet and loud voice, joined his brothers and a young woman of the Nelyar whose hands covered the swelling of a child. They watched the approach of Nôwê and the Minya, but the eyes of Elwë seemed to see nothing.

Already present was the young man of the second tribe, whose hands held no spear. Finwë babbled an incessant stream of meaningless words, sounds that flowed beside the grim face of Elwë without touching his ears. The inventive and talkative boy of the second tribe could craft many words, but he did not understand this grief or need. With no memory of parents and no experience of loss, his pleading to Elwë that the older boy not go were useless. The noise was useful at least for the young man his friends called Kwendê to find them.

“He shall go, Phinwego,” proclaimed the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. “I shall hunt with him.”

The cacophony from dark-haired young man stopped, startled by the firm words from his quiet friend. He turned to look at the equally mask-like face of the friend he knew as Kwendê, then back to Elwë. With a steadiness that would surprise many present, Finwë said, “Then I will join you.”

The young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron smiled to see the courage in the face of his Tatyar friend. That Finwë held a knife of bone with a smooth handle of carved antler in his hand, blocked from view until they had moved in close, was also reassuring. The grip was steady, though the face was pale. Less a hunter than even Elwë, the young man named Finwë had little skill with tracking beasts and knew none of the songs for hunting and killing. Friendship and resolve were their own song, though, knew the young man who had lost his father to a mad-driven beast and the scorn of his tribe, and grief and anger a guide chant as sure as any hunting song of the Minyar Kwendî.

Elwë moved finally, a slow nod of the head and a blink of eyes that spoke gratitude when a tongue could still not speak. His mouth was flat and thin, but the boiling anger of his eyes, the helpless fury that wished to lash indiscriminately as a thunderstorm, narrowed the fury’s purpose to a spear of lightning. Collectively the crowd waited, with the stillness of a fisher on the lake - or the people when a chieftain wished to address an assembly of all of a tribe. “Gather water. We will return only when we find the Dark Hunters or whom has sent them,” Elwë addressed to the gathered crowd. “Wolwê leads until I return. Do not leave the shore.”

Elmo made a cry of protest, but his other brother, eyes red with tears, held him back, and bowed to their eldest. Heartsick and afraid, Olwë would obey. Yet the arms around his youngest brother were tight, as if any pressure were lessened then Elmo would slip away like smoke into the darkness between the stars, become as lost to them as their parents were, as lost as any abducted by the Dark Hunters, as lost as Olwë feared Elwë would be.

Elwë placed a hand atop each of his brother’s heads, made as if to address words to them, but no sound came. Instead he nodded once more.

A woman with a necklace of white shells whispered the story of what happened as she filled a pair of bladder-skins with water and gave them to the young men that would accompany Elwë. Her eyes would dart to the three brothers, like a moth that could not pull away from the flames.

The people of the village had noticed a foul taste in one of the stream channels that fed into the Great Mother Lake and found dead frogs and fish floating near its banks. A dam was hastily constructed to keep the taint from lake, but great concern and debate gripped the tribe. This had happened before, when a dying animal collapsed in a pool or steam and spread its death sickness down the water. Still the people were worried, for the growing malice of the Dark Hunters worsened all fears, and the two leaders of the village decided the need for knowledge of potential danger to the Kwendî was too great, that the ban of leaving the safety of the villages must be disobeyed. The parents of Elwë, Olwë, and Elmo went to investigate upstream. They promised to discover the cause of the taint and carry word back to Enel and Enelyë, chieftain and chieftess of the third tribe of the Kwendî. The waters of the Great Mother Lake were safety and life for all the elves, but most of all to the largest of the tribes whose voices echoed the song of its water. Despair greater than what was already faced would rule if the lake was darkened.

They did not return. Too many stars had circled the dark of the sky, and the people of the village knew their leaders had been taken by the Dark Hunters.

 

Waterskins slung across their backs, spears and knives as well, cloak ties fastened and hair braided away from eyes, the three young men accounted themselves prepared. The man that would become Ingwë reached down into the white clay near the lake shore and painted thick lines across his face. Around his eyes and across his jaw he marked with cool white clay, then quietly and steadily painted the faces of his friends, a line across the brow of Finwë, three circles on Elwë’s forehead and a wide stroke around the brow to circle under each eye. Only a custom of the Minyar was it to paint the faces and bodies before a hunt, or the more permanent markings for feats of renown and victories in the dueling rings. Yet Finwë and Elwë did not question the actions of their friend, or rub at the ticklish marks as the clay mud cooled against their faces. Nor did the man that would be Ingwë tell them that the marks were death-masks.

One of the Nelyar reached a final time to restrain Elwë with a pleading hand. A weaver of reeds with eyes as green as leaves and a face small and brown and worried, he cried to Elwë, "What if you perish too? What shall we do?"

"I shall return," said Elwë in a voice firmer than the black of the sky.

These words and their certainty would long be repeated among the people of the third tribe. The trust of the Lindar was built on these words, for they would be repeated with the same certainty when Elwë went to the Undying Lands. And their echo would hold the heart of his kin when he would go missing in the woods at the Hinder Land's last shore. The weaver and his kin would wait for Elwë, as they waited and watched him leave now. The tall man with hair falling like star-silver down his back faded into the dark shadows of the forest outside the ring of fire. But like the wheeling stars, the people of the village of the reeds knew Elwë would reappear.

 

---

 

As the three trekked through the fir and peheún^[4] forest, the silence of this trip struck them as unnatural. Among these trees near his village Elwë would usually remark how his youngest brother Elmo would disappear into the high branches, leaping from tree to tree under the shadow of the dark needles, only to return under dire threat of brotherly retribution with sap and dirt on his fingers and hair. Or how his other brother Olwë never went into the forest, mostly in fear of their youngest brother and his penchant for lobbing pine cones down on unsuspecting travellers beneath the trees. No laughing reminiscences did the oldest son of the third tribe share this journey.

Even the Tatyar youth, the one that would later be Finwë and first King of the Noldor in Aman, was silent, which would be the most peculiar aspect of this hunt if anyone was to ask the opinion of the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron.

A light mist of rain started to fall, warm with diffuse droplets more akin to the mists off the lake than the drenching rains of a storm that thundered, and thus the young men were mostly untroubled by it. The young man of the Tatyar, the usually gregarious Finwë, unwrapped the large shawl from his shoulders and arranged it carefully to cover his head, attentive to comb the colorful fringe to hang neatly and smoothly. He was proud of his shawl, for though the thin fabric had been woven by one of the Nelyar, and the paint likewise bartered from the Minyar, it was Finwë who had carefully dyed the long fringe in alternating tassels of bright orange and woad blue.^[5] In the bright campfires of the villages the vivid colors made him a figure of attention, and he was always keen to drape his shawl and strings of glass beads to the most flattering effect. The beads had been left at home, and without the torchlight there was no illumination to reveal the bright colors, but still Finwë brushed the long fringe and tucked the ends securely around his neck. “It will be harder to hear anything approach,” he whispered to young man he thought of as Kwendê.

“I shall ask the tree,” said Elwë in a flat voice, brushing them aside to walk up to a tall specimen. His friends looked at each other from the corners of their eyes but said nothing, for they were accustomed to this strange folbile of the Nelyar. In a way it was comforting to hear Elwë speak of such, to show a sign of behavior more alike himself. Grim and silent was not the conduct of the oldest son of the village near the river mouth, for he loved to talk on trips through the forest as much as Finwë prattled while crafting in the village. Deep and unwelcome was the grief and anger that stilled Elwë’s tongue, stopped him from speaking long of his brothers’ antics or the forest they travelled through. Usually when Elwë began addressing the trees themselves, talking to the pines as if they would suddenly answer back, was when his friends would demand he shut up. Now the man that would be Ingwë took it as a good sign, to watch Elu run a hand over the bark of the arboreal giant and question who had passed between its boughs.

The trees were alive, and there was something inside them, as with all things that grew and could die, that thing the oldest of the elves, the ones that awoke on the shore, called a spirit, a phaja. One could sense the phaja with enough focus, though it was common knowledge that the Minyar of the first tribe could feel spirits, even emotion and the edge of thoughts, stronger than the other Speakers. It was one of the unspoken advantages of the hunt, to find prey, to feel the songs of the fellow hunters and know intentions. Yet a phaja did not equal a voice, and it was undeniable fact that only the Kwendî had voices to use and understand. The young man that would be Ingwë found the practice of the third tribe to speak to the trees the height of foolishness. Far better to waste one’s efforts, if one must, on the animals that at least had a mouth in which to make sounds.

With no reply, Elwë used the advantage of his great height to reach the branches of a younger pine, scaling the ladder of branches before leaping to the crown of the taller tree. Soon he was lost to sight high in the boughs, and Finwë shivered and rubbed his arms, nervously glancing from the knife at his belt to the masklike face of his friend to the dark branches that hid Elwë from view. Rain dripped off their faces, rinsing off some of the white clay, removing some of the lines of death-seekers.

Elwë climbed back down from the tree, shaking his head before leaping the last several feet to the spongy earth, the long silver braid of his hair falling behind him like the tail of a cat. He grabbed the spear he had stabbed into the loam by the tree roots and brushed the dirt that clung to the stone blade. With a small shrug he returned to his friends, but his face darkened in concern as he saw the crease of concentration on his taller friend’s brow. “Kwendê, what is it? I saw nothing from the heights, yet you look as if you sense something. You are the skilled hunter among us; what is it?”

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron hesitated. What he felt was with mind and not eyes or ears, and was faint and moving away from where they stood. He knew it was unlike anything he knew before, but felt like firelight against the skin on the other side of the picket fence, or mist when it was still out in the middle of the lake, or wind that blew coldly across the top-crowns of trees while leaving the air at the ground still.

A muffled echo floated down through the trees, yet it was not thunder.

Three pairs of eyes met and three young men determined they go in the direction of the sound that was not thunder.

The last of the warm light rain stopped, and the three pulled the cloaks from their heads, shook the clinging water from their limbs, gripped the weapons ready at their sides. By silent acknowledgement they agreed that Elwë take point.

The ground sloped up, and the trees began to thin.

Once more they heard the echo of the sound that was not thunder.

Flashes of silver, like fast fading stars, sparked in the distance, but the pinpricks of light were low to the ground, and there was no lake up ahead to reflect starlight, so the vision made no sense. Again three pairs of eyes met and frowned. There was the sound of an animal running through the underbrush, the even gallop of a horse or bison, but the beats were subtly wrong, too widely spaced for a normal creature, and the strange muffled music behind the drumming sound could not be of any herd that had been hunted. His suspicions deepened when the man that would be Ingwë connected the soft pattern of beats to the quick-fading flashes of light.

The sound that was not thunder called a third time, and it was not an echo.

The man that would be Ingwë Ingweron could sense the unknown ahead of them, the thing he had no words for, and moved to shield Elwë and Finwë, to be the first to meet it as it came. Yet it was not out of fear to protect them, for even then he knew whatever approached was not of the Dark Hunters. What he felt was not a void in the starlight, a shadow of terror, something that could harm the people. The man that would be Ingwë knew with the same firmness that the Great Mother Lake was full of water, that fire would burn the hand, that his father was dead and that he loved his newborn sister, that the thing that approached was not dangerous to the elves, would not harm them and steal them away.

Ingwë would later describe the impressions he felt before he saw the Vala Oromë, of the sensations before Nahar rode into the glade, sparks flying from his golden hooves, of what he felt in his mind before he saw the strange form riding what seemed a horse. When Oromë first appeared he would seem a giant figure of tree shadow and caged lightning and dappled pelts and the sound of antlers clashing that somehow flickered and became a person, lessened into a man-sized shape without removing the sensation that a star burned in fusion behind the light of a torch. In lines of poetry Ingwë Ingweron would attempt to capture that warmth and joy and a brightness that the eyes did not see but heard. Of how the figure felt like the spirits of the trees that Elwë talked to and of all the roots of the trees into one great essence, of Elwë himself and his love for those trees, the love for his younger brothers, the angry desire to hunt down and punish those that had stolen his parents. Of how the Vala seemed to echo all at once every hunting song of the Minyar, the ones of watching wolf and lion, of learning the animals, of venturing forth, the long trek to the plains, the swift running of deer and horse and bison, the hunt itself, and the victory or defeat afterwards. That his voice was every song at once and none, that he was also the silence in the forest with only the murmur of the leaves in the wind, the silence of waiting for a snare to spring or the silent nod to a deer with the relaxing of a sling with the decision not to shoot. Of Maktâmê’s laugh as she flung the spear, of Elmo sticky with pine sap, of Elwë declaring he would hunt the Dark Hunters and Finwë’s courage to stand with his friend, of the successful parties of the Minyar carrying a half-butchered buck into the village and smiling and singing as they handed the blood-rich liver and organs to the Tatyar craftsman who made the spearheads. Of the search, be it for food or vengeance or solitude or joy. Of the forest. Never before had he that would be Ingwë seen a Power, seen Oromë, but he recognized the song inside him.

Ingwë lowered his spear and did not cry in alarm as Finwë did or shout a challenge as did Elwë.

He laughed, a heart of joy and wonder as he felt the echo of wonder and surprise from the figure atop the silvery horse.

“You have found us,” he shouted in a glad voice, overcome with laughter at the unbidden thought that the figure had been hunting for them as much as they thought they had been hunting him.

“And what I have I found?” answered a voice like the baying of hounds and the clash of antlers and the gentle rustle of leaves under a favorite tree, echoing the same mixture of laughter and joy and wonder.

---

Chapter End Notes

^[5]  Another name for the monkey puzzle tree. AN: One of the greater difficulties with this fic and setting is adhering to canon about the lack of flowers blooming east of Valinor until the elves arrive and the gap in the Pelori Mountains is opened. I've thus attempted to limit the number of angiosperms around Cuiviénen.

^[6] Finwë’s sigil is a bright blue and orange.

Of the Names of the Valar

Read Of the Names of the Valar

Now it was accounted in various manners and places of the Vala Oromë and his first meeting among the elves. Knowledge he shared and lasting friendship, the names of creation and the one whom had created, new skills with which to enrich the lives of the elves, and most precious to the three that had discovered him, the perpetrator and motives behind the Dark Hunters that had so plagued their villages.

The three elves watched the figure dismount from the giant silver horse, landing softly in the loam of the forest floor with a hunting cat’s grace. His form looked like that of the Kwendî, standing tall and upright on two legs, and the empty hands he held out in front of his body with open gestures signalling unarmed and wishing no harm were no different from those of any elf. In the shadows of the forest it was hard to discern details, but as the Vala knelt to the ground, numerous fireflies floated up from the underbrush, and the greenish tint of the light that the insects emitted brightened everyone in the glen. In their light the figure was clearly a man in shades of brown from his hair and skin to his tunic and leggings that tucked into a pair of soft fur boots. Only his eyes, bright green and shining like the fireflies, and the white of his smiling teeth, were different. The stranger unclasped the cloak, which when he first entered had seemed to be a mass of budding branches flowing behind him but was in the glow of the fireflies only an ordinary length of green and brown felt, and folded it underneath his body to give a comfortable and dry seat. That was a signal on its own, for felt, especially so soft and richly dyed, was for the garments of the Minyar leaders and carefully treated. He sat as a storyteller might, as one of the first to awaken eager to explain a new skill or discovery to the rest of the tribe. As Oromë quietly waited for the elves to move, the fireflies settled onto his hair and shoulders, casting strange shadows on his face, but his gentle smile was easy to see.

Ingwë knew this was no Dark Hunter, that this rider would never harm him or his friends, and so he undid his own cloak and sat on the ground, folding his arms and legs in the position one took when ready to listen to a long song of many deeds and a lengthy hunt. More fireflies floated over and settled in his golden hair, twinkling like netted stars. Elwë and Finwë cautiously followed their friend’s example and lowered their spears and knelt before the strange figure.

“Greetings,” said Oromë. "We have questions to answer."

Ingwë laughed.

With that unexpected and rare sound, his friends relaxed. If wise and solemn Kwendë was unafraid, then his example they would follow. Finwë cupped two of the fireflies in his hands gently, and Elwë repeated their most pressing concern, for like his Minyar friend, he could feel in the sight of the mind that the figure kneeling before him was no elf, no matter how closely his appearance matched that of the Kwendî.

The Vala could easily answer his own question of who the three elves were, that they were the long foretold and eagerly awaited Children of Ilúvatar, the second melody of the design for creation that had been Sung into being. Who Oromë was, and what, could be answered by the titles of ‘Hunter’ and ‘Lord of the Forest’, though to explain in words everything that those simple titles encompassed and that of the Powers, the Valar, was harder. That there was a One responsible for the planning of the universe and its creation, from every grain of sand to the bright stars to the passage of time to the world itself was not a difficult concept to grasp, for the vastness of such a thought matched the vastness of Ilúvatar itself. Eä was fitting, the three elves thought, for the very first of the Kwendî to awake had been Imin, and he awoke with the cry of Ele! It was a cry to behold the world in either case. And that there was many people under Ilúvatar that worked as a tribe did to carry out the needed tasks, each appointed by personal aptitude and interests, made sense. What Finwë found incredulous was that Ilúvatar, and beings such as Oromë before him, had created the world and everything vast or minute in it through singing.

“You mean if you wanted a clay jar you could just sing a tune and -elâ!- a pot appears in your hand?” Finwë questioned, a skeptical look on his face as his calloused potter’s hands mimicked a fire sparking to life or a solid object needing several hours worth of labor poofing into existence like smoke.

“Not I,” said Oromë. “I am no craftsman, creator of tools from the earth and stone. For that song you would want the one more powerful than me who is skilled with his hands, a most creative mind, whose delight and domain is the rock behind our feet.” The eldest of the three elves felt the faint pressure against his mind while Oromë paused, brushing against their thoughts like a cool breeze for more words the elves could understand. “Mbartanô perhaps would be the name you would call him, the World-Artificer. His are the plates of stone upon which everything rests, and his hammer makes the mountains and valleys.”

“Must be a large hammer,” Finwë jested.

“He has many hammers,” the Vala corrected, “and some are hammers and some are ideas one uses like a hammer. His works can be small objects as well, not only the mountains. The stone axes you knap into useful shapes, that is him.”

“Aulë,” said Ingwë.

“Yes,” replied the Vala gravely, “the Inventor. And in our own language, if we did not desire to sing the full extent of his name, the shortened form would sound aloud similar to that.”

“Your own language?” Finwë questioned. Elwë shoved him with a half-exasperated grin.

The Vala opened his mouth to speak, and strange syllables poured out, harsh as breaking rocks and logs popping in bonfires layered over the cries and roars of animals and the crashing waterfall. The creature behind them that looked like a tall horse with a coat as silver as Elwë’s long hair flicked its ears and snapped its tail against its flanks. Elwë and Finwë winced, and the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron wondered why he could not discern the meaning of any word. He felt that if he but listened long enough he could have.

Elwë, raised in a tribe of singers, had no difficulty believing songs’ power. He had watched new shoots rise from the river mud to the encouraging voice of his brother’s wife and how Nowë never had a net unravel if he sang over it. Visiting the nearby village of his friend, he had seen how Finwë and the other Noldor sang to track the time for the kilns so the leather-soft pots covered in wood ash came out hard and shining with green and brown glaze. Therefore he had found Finwë’s doubting question about singing a jar into existence silly, for from one angle that was exactly what the potter did. A song could describe an object or place never seen, or bring out any emotion in the listener, or strengthen or change what was already made. It was the Void that confused Elwë, that song alone drew out from nothing the creation of everything. He wondered if an elf could learn those powerful songs, the songs the Valar had used, and hearing the harsh and layered language of the Valar, he believed those powers.

When the three asked the Vala his name, Oromë sighed like the wind through dense leaves. “If I were to describe my name...the sound of horns,” he said and hefted a white object from his belt that none remembered being there. In his hands was the horn of a large auroch capped with rims of gold, and he brought the object to his lips and blew softly through the narrow end.

“The sound we heard,” Elwë said with soft wonder. “Arâmê.”

Elwë’s new word closely matched the sound the horn had made, which was richer than the reed flutes of the Nelyar. As gentle as the sound had been, it still recalled the brightness of lightning. The Vala smiled and nodded. “Arâmê you may call me. And what may I address the three of you as?” he asked in polite formality.

“Elwê, for the stars,” answered the tall and silver-haired Elwë.

“Phinwê,” said his friend. “And it is the same ending as Elwê; don’t listen to them if they tease otherwise. Phin is like the sound we use for a tress of hair, but I do not know if my parents named me for anything, hair or otherwise. It is not remarkable; the color is very common in both my tribe and in the third tribe from which Elwê comes from, not like his silver color or Mahtân, who has hair like a fox pelt.”

“Might it be you were born with a lot of hair on your head already?” teased Elwë. “My brother was born with very little, but his good friend entered the world with a full thatch of hair atop his head.”

The Vala turned to face the last of the companions.

“My friends address me as Kwendê,” he said.

The Vala laughed. “How appropriate, for you were first I heard to speak.”

Again there was that feeling of another mind, no more invasive than the sensation of meeting another person’s eyes squarely. ‘Your name is Ingwë,’ the voice that was not spoken words said.

‘Yes,’ Ingwë thought.

‘But if it the other name you wish to be spoken aloud, I shall, if I am accounted a friend.’

Ingwë could not help the smile that spread across his face. The joy from sharing his name, the secret that had sustained him during the lonely and dark years, almost prompted him to foolishness. Aloud he spoke, “We know you are not one of the Dark Hunters, for all that you are a Power and no elf and that you perch atop a horse as it runs.”

“Riding,” Oromë corrected. “When Næchærra grants me, for his speed is greater than my own, and together we can outrun and catch the monsters we hunt.” His hand motioned to the silver horse behind him. The animal raised its head from where it had been grazing at the ferns, and from the light of its eyes it was obviously no more a mere horse than Oromë an elf. “But it is the name of the Dark Hunters you want, the ones who have taken forms in mockery of me as to hurt the Children of Ilúvatar and undoubtedly blame me for it.”

“Yes,” Elwë hissed.

Oromë’s face grew dark, as if thunderclouds covered what should have been the bright lightning of his eyes. “Mailikô,” he said in a voice with no less venom than Elwë’s, “the Greedy One. He was one of us, in some ways the greatest and most powerful. The brother of my leader. But he rebelled against the One, jealous and hateful of the world Ilúvatar bade us create and protect, and he has sought ever since his first rebellion to destroy or maim to his own purpose all that we hold dear."

Of Melkor and his misdeeds the Vala Oromë had many words and none were kind. In return the three elves told of Dark Hunters and how many from all three tribes had been abducted, until the chieftains forbade their people from leaving the safety of the village bonfires. Of this Oromë had divined from their thoughts, but the confirmation of how dire the problem and how many had already been taken troubled him. His self-appointed task was to hunt Melkor’s foul creatures and prevent tragedies such as these from happening, and his grief at his failure was palpable. “We had refrained from war against Mailikô in fear that our struggles would have inadvertently harmed your people still sleeping. Never did we imagine that you would wake and our enemy find you first. It is our failing that you were harmed, your parents taken.”

Elwë refused this guilt. “You did not know. Did not know where we were or that we were here awake or that this Mailikô was here and preying on us. I would not blame Tata for the fish my brother did not catch. And you are an enemy of Mailikô and his Dark Hunters and have vowed now to help.”

Politely no mention was made of the undercurrent to Elwë's words, that resentment would return threefold and caustic if promises were not kept, vengeance not rendered.

“More than just I,” said Oromë. “But first I request you take me to your villages, let me see the rest of the Children and speak to your leaders. And point me in the direction of where you best guess these villains of Mailikô ride in imitation of me and steal your kin. That,” Oromë hissed, “they shall do no more.”

Nahar behind him raised his silver head from grazing and flattened his ears, then gave off a high-pitched scream that Ingwë recognized from following the horse herds on the open plains. The head stallion’s warning call to approaching predators that was, and Nahar’s golden hooves suddenly looked much sharper and heavier.

The three elves agreed to lead Oromë back to Elwë’s village and from then onto the other villages, especially those of Imin, Tata, and Enel. Finwë in particular was nervous to take the Vala to someone with authority who could ask and approve the right questions. Elwë was worried for his brothers and the rest of his people, wishing to reassure them, and the young man that even now thought of himself as Ingwë thought of his mother and sister.

 

As the three elves guided Oromë and Nahar through the pine forest back to Elwë’s village, Finwë tentatively seeing if he could rest a hand on Nahar’s flanks and pet the giant horse as they walked and Elwë introducing the notable trees to the Lord of the Forest, the man that would be Ingwë observed the Vala. Something about the Power unsettled him, though his great soul shone out clear as lightning and as pure as freshly unfurled leaves. Finally the Minyar youth identified the cause of his hunter’s instincts prickling all the hairs across his neck and arms to stand alert.  

The form of Oromë, that seemed to be a brown-haired Kwendi in soft leathers and the finest bow and hunting horn, was not steady. The flesh around his eyes was shifting, pulling in the most miniscule ways to change the shape of the eyes. Those green eyes, imbued with divine light, did not change, but the manner in which the lashes lengthened and eyelids folded transformed his eyes into unfamiliar forms. The nostrils of his nose were flaring, not in the act of taking breath, but because his nose was another feature of his face shifting to a new appearance. Oromë’s face twisted subtlely not as one did under the sway of emotions but through shifts of bone and muscle, his cheekbones rising and falling, chin lengthening to mimic Elwë, then broadening to be as square as Finwë, then shifting again. As the man that would be Ingwë watched, the facial features finally settled into a slightly aquiline nose and wide eyes, with oddly familiar broad lips. “Have you chosen a face to your full satisfaction now?” the elf said to Oromë, teasing.

Solemnly the Vala nodded. “We did not remember clearly what forms the Children would have, in all the minute details and proportions. This is an excellent form, well-balanced and agile and strong. And many pelt variations, more than what I see here, if your friend Phinwê is to be understood.”

The description made the man that would become Ingwë Ingweron smile. “We are of all three tribes, my friends and I, and it was these small differences in appearance that the first awoken used to divide themselves, as well as temperament and which of the three first couples they liked best.”  

“How appropriate,” said Oromë. “Yes, I have decided since I shall walk among the Children, I shall share your shape, and thus corrected my appearance. Odd though, for both Aulë and I recalled that your lower faces would also have hair. I rather liked that, those beards.” Oromë rubbed at his chin.

“So what shape would it be, if you were not among us?” the elf asked, his mind groping for understanding. “If you were to visit horses, would you look like Na-” here Ingwë stumbled over the strange name, finally settling on the abbreviated ‘Nahar’. “Or would you shape yourself to another form?”

Oromë smiled. “Nahar? So be it. And yes, I could if I wish take the same of a horse, though to run on four hooves I prefer the great elk. The wolf, the panther, the elephant, or the weasel, those shapes I find pleasing. And,” the Vala winked, “if I was feeling particularly lazy, I would take the form of a sloth.”

The other two elves turned to listen to this discussion, though of the three, only the older two had seen the giant lumbering creature Oromë spoke of, the giant sloth with its clawed front paws. Slow and strong, ponderously heavy with fat and muscle, the ground sloths would easily feed two or three villages, if spears could evade the claws and pierce the thick and armored skin. The Minyar hunters chose other prey, knowing there were faster animals but safer and easier to hunt.

“So what do you really look like? Your true form?”

Oromë laughed, for even Ingwë perceived that such a question had as answer that which Finwë would not understand, at least not after only one conversation. Had Finwë the skill to see phaja as well, the other boy would not expect spirits could be easily described like concrete objects. The Vala attempted anyway. “Vibrations.”

“What?”

“So much of this world is but vibrations of essence. Light and song. They are vibrations. I am no different.” The white teeth and green eyes on that shifting face smiled.”I am Arâmê, and I look exactly how I choose to look. That is my true form.”

 

Light discussion among the three elves on which animal they would choose to be if they could like Oromë shift their physical forms preoccupied the remainder of the walk back to Elwë’s village, until they were close enough to see the palisade illuminated by firelight. A great outcry there was in the village at the return of Elwë and his companions, greater still for the three were accompanied by an unfamiliar man and a horse that shone bright white in the firelight and did not shy or run from people. Unlike the wolves, horses were flighty creatures and rarely seen so close by the fishermen and reed-weavers. Oromë and Nahar held back from entering through the village gate until the crest of fear dissolved away. He that thought of himself as Ingwë waited beside them as Finwë smiled and shouted appeasing words and Elwë’s firm and repeated proclamations calmed the crowd. “He is the Good Hunter,” Elwë explained to his village, and it was the stern glare of their new leader that quieted the uproar more than the goodly light from Oromë’s eyes. “He is not of the ones that harmed us, but he that hunts them. He has come to help us.”

Convinced so, the Nelyar raised their voices to the songs of welcome, and lit more torches and sentry fires so the light could reveal the details of the new arrivals. Delight and excitement rose out of their withdrawn alarm. Olwë and Elmo pulled away from embracing their elder brother and stroking his face in relief at his return to bellow out that a path be opened in the crowd so this Good Hunter could enter.

Arched neck and hooves prancing, Nahar trotted through the gate to gasps from the elves, basking in their wondering admiration. “Smug insufferable servant,” the Vala murmured. Ingwë swallowed another laugh, for Oromë's tone had no harshness. The Hunter followed the stallion into the village, smiling in wonder at the circular huts and the lines of salted fish hanging from wooden frames, at the bright torches and the hands that held them, and most of all to the faces of the elves that stared up at him. “Greetings, Children. I am Arâmê,” and with an indulgent sigh, “and he is Nahar.”

Of the Beginning of Days

Read Of the Beginning of Days

Of the fellow Powers like himself did these gathered elves of the Nelyar village who now called themselves the followers of Elwë question of Oromë, wanting to know of the Powers what were their numbers and their strengths and where the Valar lived and what all the Powers looked like. The total number of Powers who came into this world from the Timeless Halls, a hand gesturing to the dark sky but obviously pointing to some indescribable void beyond it, Oromë could not answer, though he explained that of his kindred, fourteen were accounted the strongest, the appointed leaders. Fourteen, the man that would be Ingwë noticed smugly, was the first number of the Minyar after Imin and Iminyë found a cluster of golden-haired elves sleeping and claimed them as their people, back in the beginning when the elves were awaking and searching for one another.^[7] Evenly divided by seven were the Valar, but as Oromë explained, not an even seven couples. Thanks to the query from a woman of Elwë’s tribe, the gathered elves learned that Oromë’s people had kinship bonds that the second generation of elves possessed but not the first, for the Unbegotten were sibling-less. A strange dissimilarity, thought the followers of Elwë, for all that the Powers had emerged from the thought of Ilúvatar just as the first of the elves had awoken in the clay.

“We haves bonds to one another,” said Oromë, “many different types of which I search for your words to describe. Some were a part of us at our creation by the One who made all. Some we found among each other, that we saw a likeness in our songs and what we loved. Friendship and that internal qualities by which you divide yourselves into tribes would be the parallel. Then there is one of whom the bond between us was set at her inception, whom I love I would say the way you, Elwê, love these two before you that you call brothers.” Oromë pointed to Olwë and Elmo. “The way the two who raced up to see you returned safe, that is very familiar. When I return to my home, my sister who is swiftest of all us shall race up to me and demand an accounting of my journeys. She shall be cross if I have come to harm, delight in anything that pleased me or my victories, and then shall still scold me for leaving in the first place, while understanding why I must go. Is that not the bond of siblings? Then the deer that surround her wherever she goes shall nibble at my hair, and I will have to shoo them away.”

He pointed back to the questioner, a heavily pregnant Lindar woman with her dark braided hair twined with duck feathers and whose hands gripped those of Elwë’s youngest brother. “The one you would say I am husband to, that I love as Elmo loves you, she is very dear to me, and shall be the second to greet me. Her song is the fairest of anything I have heard, since long before I entered Arda. That is how we found one another, the bonds between us, in the place that had no place or time. We would at first sing alone, or with those the One had said we shared a bond, but as we sang and listened to others sing, we found those that we preferred to sing with, or those who singing we liked most to listen to and they to listen to us. It is that way with my wife. Beauty itself would be her name, Banâ, and not be sufficient enough to encompass her. Her songs are ever those of new life, of the creation of newness and beauty, of the young things. She is the seeds that will make new trees, of the nursing animals and act to make them, the new leaves that unfurl pale and green. Always she is newness and youth and love.” Oromë’s voice sang with love to describe his wife, and even without the mind-sight of the Minyar, all the elves present could feel the tender joy and see without sight the image of a woman none had met. It was not a clear picture, just a pair of soft hands cupping a caterpillar and allowing the fuzzy creature to crawl up her fingers, but there was a golden light that infused the image.

"Not all of us have bonds of that you would call siblings or spouse. The one that delights most in the song of water, be it the smallest of rivers or the oceans that make this lake seem small, has neither. Ulumô is what his name would be, before you interrupt to ask.” Oromë gave a teasing glance to Finwë, and that the Power could joke with such easy and gentle humor dissipated the villagers’ lingering worry. “But he does have companions who also delight most in the songs of water, river, lake, and ocean.”

The wife of Elmo smiled and placed a hand over her bulging body, her other hand holding her husband. “I am most glad to hear that, Good Hunter. That the powers that made this world are like us. Or that it is the other way around, that we are like you? I would like most to meet your spouse the Everyoung.”

Oromë smiled to the wife of Elmo, Linkwînen of the reed cloak and duck feathers twined in her hair. “There is the echo of her song in you, Linkwînen.”^[8]

“What of children?”

To this question Oromë grew still. “That we do not have, nor can.” His solemn face returned to the bright smile, “but of the weaker Powers that follow me and my wife, our tribe perhaps you would call them, there are a few small and foolish ones that despite my love I would say I am in constant exasperation trying to tend and parent them. One of my hunters, for example! Oh, he is very strong and determined, very skilled, but he has no head for directions or time, constantly distracted and forgetting his duties. Hopelessly in love, the poor sod, so I forgive him always if he errors. But I worry, for the Enemy may take advantage of him. The reason I was riding in this direction was to find him, for he has not checked in with me in a year. The explanation could be as innocent as he found something silver and stopped to admire it. Or it could be ill.”

“The Enemy steals your people as he does ours?” Elwë asked.

The likeness between Oromë and Elwë grown more pronounced than ever, grave did the Power answer, “Sometimes. Or Mailikô convinces them to join his side, through persuasion or by overpowering them. Many of his number are such, Gothombauk and the other horrible ones, ñgwalaraukô if I were to use your words. And then there are the willing traitors like he that was chief servant of Aulë. Ah, there is a story I must tell.”

Once more the Vala regaled his listeners of how he and his brethren fought against their Enemy in the vast expanses outside the world, the emptiness on the far side of the stars, and then in Arda itself, back before anything grew in the soil or in the water, not even the algae and tiniest particles that the minnows and shrimp fed on. How the very stone raged as molten fire so there was no firm land to find purchase, and Aulë was sorely pressed. He told of how Mailikô used the extremes of temperature to turn Ulumô’s waters to steam or ice, then pausing to explain what ice was, as the land surrounding Cuiviénen received no cold snow. Fortunately for the need of example there were mountains in the distance tall enough to see that their crests were paler than the rock below. The concept of snow kindled a new wanderlust in the breast of the man that would be Ingwë Ingweron. Before Oromë, the elf had not pondered the possibilities that the distant mountains may hold.

Continuing on, Oromë told of how their battles were long and inconclusive until help arrived in the form of a newcomer. Uninvited, unexpected, but gratefully needed and welcomed, Tulkatho defeated all the Enemy’s followers and scared Mailikô away from Arda. Oromê described Tulkatho running into battle with laughter and a ruddy smiling face, carrying no weapons and using little in the way of strategies to fight but so strong as to not matter, and of his good humor and golden hair. Collectively everyone turned to look over at the only member of the first tribe that these elves had any regular contact with. Appraising Elwë’s friend, together the Lindar shook their heads and decided there was no resemblance.

Oromë described the time of peace and bliss that existed for a while, of their first home in Arda on a green island in the center of a lake. Two tall pillars topped with bonfires Aulë crafted, one to the south and the other to the north, and together much of the entire world was bathed in light. Here the Powers rested and made long celebration of their victory against their Enemy, though their chieftain mourned the brother who had turned against the One. He hoped that having been driven from the confines of Arda perhaps Mailikô would return to Iluvatar and repent the folly of his destructive avarice. The Enemy did not choose that wise and goodly course, alas. But with Tulkatho’s overwhelming strength, none saw a way in which the Enemy could hope to assault the peace of Arda, and in this false confidence, unaware of treachery’s threat, the Powers celebrated their victory on the verdant island in the center of the world where the light of the two great fires met and mingled. Wearied by his long labours, Aulë the shaper and tamer of the stones of the earth rested upon a bed of soft grass that his spouse, she that created all living things, grew for him. As he rested, so did the mighty warrior Tulkatho, who had lent his strength to all the Powers without reservation. As the warrior rested and received the congratulations of others, the sister of Oromë proclaimed her love for he with golden hair and a laughing spirit. As this, the weary warrior sprung from the grass with a glad shout brighter than any he had in battle and proclaimed his equal admiration of the lithe-limbed and deer-swift sister of Oromë. Nessa she was, the Dancer, the Bride, and Oromë smiled to describe her. It was decided to have a wedding to celebrate their love and choice to espouse another, and so many of the Ainur, from the fourteen great Valar to their least servants, attended. Only in hindsight did the absence of many servants who should have attended or the swift departure of those like Mairon, the highest of Aulë’s attendants, once the initial vows were made and the dancing begun, reveal that Mailikô’s departure from the confines of Arda had been only temporary. ^[8]

The concept of a wedding, to make a large celebration involving the entire community out of the decision between two people, was unknown to the Kwendî. The union of two tribe members would affect the tribe as a whole through the changes in the social network, this was true, yet it was not occasion to hold a tribal event on par with the raising of a new communal building. The true motive of this particular wedding, as the listeners could readily perceive, was to have an excuse for joy after a long and terrible period of conflict. For what could be more contrary to such a violent division between those that should have been complementary in thought and efforts than the celebration of a new union?

Oromë listed unfamiliar names and described fantastic forms of the gathered Powers: of the lord of clouds with wrens and warblers nesting in his hair and on his shoulders, his lofty lady wife who made the stars and whose eyes were as bright as her creations, the spouses who fashioned the earth and then filled it with the living growing things, of Oromë’s wife with pale yellow and pink flowers floating from her feet to coat her hands as she braided the bride’s hair, and himself, the nervous older brother. Of the three siblings whose duties were not the material world but those of spirit Oromë noted as having been in attendance: a sister who wept for all and thus encompassed both grief and wisdom, her brother who resided over judgement and would have in his custody the spirits of those departed, and the youngest of the three who dealt with dreams and unlike his elder siblings was actually pleasant to share company. More Powers he described, attending the wedding with their host of servants and followers, of the lady of repose and healing with her soft pale robes and hands as light as lake mist and the lady who recorded all that had come to pass, each who had as spouse one of the lords of spirit, of the lord of waters standing uncomfortable in the gathered crowd but smiling as the butterflies that followed Banâ sipped at the water that dripped off his scales, and last of all the bridegroom and bride. Oromë described the procession on the soft grass as bride and groom approached each other to the resounding cheers and songs of the gathered, of the lord of clouds standing in witness for Ilúvatar as Tulkatho and Nessa spoke vows to another. The bright purple eyes of his sister had glowed with joy to announce the golden warrior as her husband, and she only released her grip on his hands as to make a dance of celebration at the completion of their vows.

Oromë grew silent as he conceded that in even the language of the Valar there were no words adequate to describe the Dance of Nessa.

No celebration would last unended, and it was as the newlyweds slept, and all the attending guests in likewise slumber and stupor, that the betrayal came. Servants of the Powers who had switched their allegiance in secret to Mailikô hastened to the north and south to destroy the pillars that upheld the lanterns of Aulë. While Tulkatho snored and Oromë admitted he too had been lost in hazy remembrance of his own first union with his lovely spouse, and none of their loyal warriors were stationed with alert eyes facing outside the island where the wedding had been held, no one noticed these traitors approach. Former servants of the Star-kindler cloaked themselves in shadows and the blue wolf that once hunted beside Oromë stilled any warning cry. Ossai, rebellious servant of Ulumô, generated terrible storms to pound at the great stone pillars with lashing winds and drown the light with onslaughts of water, yet it was the chief servant of Aulë who caused the most harm. Once a figure most admired, chief of those admirers being himself, this Abhorred One knew the fissures and stress points in the pillars that held the world’s illumination, and it was his hands that showed Mailikô and his terrible followers where to strike. With blows to the wide base of each stone pillar, cracks that reached through the centers to spider out on the far side, the grinding of loose and liquified rock, down the columns fell with a roar greater than any peal of thunder. Long shadows fell over the earth before the twin lights guttered out, and in darkness the broken pillars smashed into the earth. Continents broke. The two fallen lamps pushed out the very oceans, causing tidal waves and earthquakes as the once perfect symmetry of the world was irrevocably shattered. The Powers awoke to darkness and the despoilment of the world they had long laboured to create. Fires raged where the land had once been green. In shock did they behold the seabeds emptied and dry, trees uprooted, gentle hills flattened, and over everything immense clouds of dust. Of the multitude of species of both plant and animal Aulë’s spouse had devised, only a handful survived this cataclysm.

Oromë bowed his head. “If my sister’s dance is the expression of joy indescribable, then the song of grief from Nienna was the expression of sorrow no words of mine can recount. Not even the poetry of my king can match the articulation of feeling.”

War resumed, and the Powers retreated to the far west. At the edge of the world there was a large landmass that had survived mostly intact from the cataclysmic collapse of the two pillars, and it was here that the Valar gathered examples of all of the surviving lifeforms. Then they rose a great palisade of mountains, the highest to ever be. Behind the wall of these mountains the Powers built their houses and tended their crafts, creating ever newer and more beautiful things. “And in the center is our city, our home village, and there is a green mound blessed by my spouse’s elder sister, where she has poured all her thought and song of the green things that grow from the earth that is her domain. The Weeper watered this green mound with her cool tears, and from this mound grew two trees. As they grew their flowers emitted a dew that gave forth a light more pure and bright than the lamps that had been destroyed.” The Great Hunter paused and pulled two items from his brown tunic, the leather of the fabric briefly shifting to the texture of bark before parting before his fingers. The effect was deeply unsettling, and Oromë winced in apology. A small pouch grew from his belt like a budding fruit until it transformed, hanging off the braided cord around his waist like an exact match for the bag tied to Nöwë’s belt. Oromë unfurled his fingers. “Here are two leaves from the Trees.” He used his other hand to pull them apart and unfold the leaves until they draped across his lap. “This one, narrow and dark with the silver underside, belongs to the elder. The one underneath, pale green like a beech, is a leaf off the younger.” The leaves were larger than any the elves had seen before and shimmered in the firelight. “The light from the elder tree’s flowers is silver and cool, whereas the younger is a fierce golden brightness. They alternate their lights as to not overwhelm, and thus our time is divided into days organized by this cycle of light.”

Oromë encouraged the audience to reach out and feel the texture of the leaves. They had an aroma that was faint but pleasant, and completely foreign. Once curiosity was satisfied, Oromë methodically refolded the leaves into small intricate star-like shapes and tucked them into his newly-formed belt-pouch.

“The Star-kindler collects the dew of their flowers to make many lights to illuminate all corners of our homeland, vats and jars and small glass vials full of silver and golden light, and has used them to create the brighter stars you see in the sky. I did not bring any of these lamps with me, but I find it a comfort to bring a piece of the Trees with me wherever I travel.”

Such familiar behavior, to carry a physical piece of home while on long journeys away, comforted the listeners and reduced the alienness of Oromë. Then the Vala stood, towering over the elves, and spoke several sharp words in his native language, the syllables stinging their ears. Nahar pulled away from one of the huts where the giant horse had been nibbling at the thatched roof. Ears pinned back in a strange expression of guilt, the horse snorted and bowed its head, then trotted off to the shoreline to sulk and splash his hocks in the lake water. Oromë’s language shifted back to that of the Kwendî, his sounds no longer piercing and painful. “We are guests, Næchærra, and there are plenty other plants for you to eat that shall not inconvenience the Children.” The stallion turned to face away from Oromë, tail swishing back and forth, and waded deeper into the lake, kicking and splashing with his front legs. “Cover yourself in mud if you wish, but know we must leave soon to visit the other villages as we have promised.”

“Shall you leave soon?” Nôwê asked.

Oromë turned to look at the three who had discovered him. “I have promised to travel with them to the village of your leader, the first chieftain who is senior above all other villages. It would be improper of me otherwise. I cannot making binding promises on behalf of my king, but I can convey messages. To the three chieftains in order, as I have been made to understand, shall I visit, and to as many of the other groups as Kwendê and his friends can guide me. As it is my duty to hunt the creatures of Mailikô, it is the first village of the hunters that shall point me in the proper direction.” The Great Hunter smiled. “I look forward to that.”

---

Chapter End Notes

^[7] As noted in the Cuivienyarna and "Quendi and Eldar" under the section about the Clan Names. -Author's note: as those numbers are far too small to generate a sustainable population, I leave it ambiguous if the first generation of the Minyar stayed at fourteen. Anyways, one of the lynch-pins of this story is the supposition of at least one fully matured second generation at Cuiviénen by the time Oromë finds the elves.
^[8] same Linkwînen
^[9] Much of this chapter rewords information from the first five and half pages of the chapter from The Silmarillion of which shares its name.

Side stories and supplementary materials can be found here. The two-part "Making Friends" functions as an unofficial chapter from the point-of-view of Elwë and is best read before or after Chapter 3 despite chronologically occurring during Chapter 2 of "Of Ingwë Ingweron". Erikwa sets up for the next chapter.

Of the Naming of Indis

Read Of the Naming of Indis

Though the introduction of the people of Elwë’s village to one of the creators of their universe had happened with success and ease, the three young elves were not such foolish optimists to assume an equal ease in all other introductions, especially when they were not leaders or holders of high regard and respect among the other Kwendî. Elwë was the firstborn son of the now-lost leaders of his village, but for him to inhabit the position they had held was still something newborn and thus as weak. Enel and Enelyë knew him not and had not gifted him their approval. Finwë was admired for his craftsmanship in his own village, but it was Rumilo who led and made decisions - and even he bowed to the will of Tata and Tatië. And all bowed their will to the First among Chieftains, Imin. A great problem faced the three that led Oromë and Nahar to the Minyar village.

This problem was not what the man that would become Ingwë Ingweron thought of as he returned to the Minyar village. Plotting how to successfully introduce the Vala Oromë to his chieftain and tribespeople should have encompassed all his mental efforts. His mind should have been formulating what words to say, the correct level of deference and obstinate conviction to show in both tone and action to his chieftain. He needed both to garner respect for his words and by association to the Valar he had found. To ensure that the Hunter Oromë swiftly gained the full acceptance from that village that the man who would become Ingwë Ingweron had never accrued, this should have been his concern. To overcome the uncertainties that would be raised merely because he was the one to find Oromë, this was the disadvantage the man that would be Ingwë faced. That he had disobeyed his chieftain to leave his village when ordered not to, and that such a betrayal of trust disrupted the fabric of his tribe as gravely as had he disobeyed an order while hunting, the gravest of crimes because a hunter that could not be trusted to follow orders meant empty bellies for everyone, should have been his worry. The man that would become Ingwë existed under censure from his tribe for his sullen and solitary ways and could ill afford more. These were not his thoughts.

His thoughts were for his newborn sister - and the name he wished to bestow upon her.

He that even now knew he should be Ingwë knew his sister should have the name Indis.

Indis, for Nessa, for the Bride, the sister of the mighty Hunter, and thus he wished to claim for her a name of one of the Powers that created and held stewardship of the very universe itself. There was an arrogance in naming her this, in proclaiming that she would be as swift as the deer, as graceful a dancer as to be beyond words to describe, and that her chosen love and equal could only be a warrior unconquerable. Yet the alternative, more conventional reading of the name he gave his newborn sister was, while less cosmic in its ambitions, no less confrontational and bold. Indis, First among Young Women, was an usurpation of Iminyë and especially Iminyë’s daughter, Ravennë.

The second child of Imin and Iminyë must be here described, their daughter Ravennë. A boast it was to name their child the lioness, in honor of the great hunting cats that instructed by example the Minyar how to hunt and who shared with the first tribe a similar tawny golden pelt. It was a proud name for a proud young woman. ‘Most beautiful’ the daughter of Imin and Iminyë was lauded, the princess of the Beautiful Ones, but this was falsehood. All Kwendî were comely, and the golden hair of the first tribe was esteemed as highest beauty by others outside the tribe, but objectively Ravennë did not outshine her peers in appearance. For one, she was short among a people that prized height, and her mouth considered ill-shaped for her face. She inherited her father’s jawline that made Imin handsome but his daughter not. Her eyes were the bluish purple common to the Minyar, whereas had she inherited the golden brown of her father, the striking similarity to her namesake would have elevated her to the acclaim so liberally bestowed. Her brother was handsome, insufferably so. None regularly praised him for his looks. But Ravennë embraced the flattery of her beauty and made falsehood reality. She cared herself as the most beautiful daughter yet born to the elves, and could not fathom a rival to this claim.

In the darkest roots of his heart, where the veins drank bitter resentment to survive his shattered childhood hopes, spite towards Ravennë fueled this decision of the man who wished to proclaim himself Ingwë. Ravennë, proud and beautiful and beloved by the village, possessed everything he desired for himself and his family.

More so than Imin’s son, the bumptious prince, Ravennë was his target.

---

The journey by foot from the small Nelyar village to the singular large village of the first tribe was not arduous or long - though despite the wetter terrain, the distance between Elwë and Finwë’s villages was shorter. On a rise of land away from the direct shoreline of Cuiviénen, the Minyar village with its ever-present fires was easy to spot only a few minutes after the lights of the other village had faded. Like a lodestone it directed their path, the shapes of its fence and buildings slowly growing more distinct in the ever-night. Soon their feet found the well-worn path.

The man that privately thought of himself as Ingwë began to lengthen his stride as to separate himself from his companions as scouts did on the long hunts.

Finwë began to play with the dyed fringe of his shawl, a nervous tick, and turned to remark to Oromë. “We let Kwendê take the lead here. This is his village.” Finwë had often visited his friend, Elwë, to attend village celebrations like roof raisings and the addition of new children, but he had never stepped a foot inside of the Minyar village. Elwë, as heir of a governing couple of one of the numerous small groups that had branched out of the main following of Enel, had spoken formally to the chieftain of all the elves, and the prospect of meeting Imin was not an idea completely foreign to him. This was not to say Elwë felt no nervousness, only when compared to his good friend.

Oromë gave a solemn nod.

Nahar pushed against the elf’s back in a gesture meant to be reassuring, yet the force of the nuzzle unbalanced Finwë.

Elwë had fallen back to fill his waterskin in one of the streams that flowed outside the Minyar village, for the large stream that fed his village still held the tainted taste, and he wished to limit how often he drew from their stores of good drinking water. He said nothing as his friend stumbled or his other friend jogged towards the village gate.

That such an arrangement among the three friends of who ran eagerly forth and who fell back should be later repeated, to profound historic effect, should be no surprise.

The two elves, Ainur, and horse-shaped Maiar waited as Ingwë returned to his home village. From their positions behind him, none could see the tightness to his normally stoic face or the worry hiding in the tension of the skin around his eyes. The Lord of the Forest sensed it, and restrained from making a fond sound.

 

Asmalô, seventh-born of the Minyar and one of their more promising young hunters before the depredations of the Dark Hunters curtailed the long hunts, rose from where he crouched on a hillock outside the thorn-lined and torch-brightened palisade that delineated the confines of the Minyar village, his lanky body nimbused by the village fires. His movements were jerky, though his distance from the village’s safety was not great enough to explain his fear. Even in this eclipsing angle, the whites of his widened eyes were clear. “Ûkwendô!” he called out to the other member of the first tribe. “Please be you! Imin knows you are not in the village, that you disobeyed his command!” The former childhood friend of the man that would be Ingwë spoke with concern when Ingwë expected only angry censure. “You give no heed to anyone in the tribe, and I fear tolerance of your defiant ways has ended. You can no longer go alone as you wish,” the young hunter began to scold, then dropped his lecture as he beheld the companions of the one he thought of as a loner. “Who do you bring with you? ...Lo, Ûkwendô, what have you brought to bear upon your people?”

“Peace, Asmalô. Elwê of the Nelyar and Phinwê of the Ñgolodor are known to us, and the ones with us mean the Speakers no harm.”

“Who are with you?” Asmalô stammered, staring at tall Oromë and Nahar gleaming silver in the starlight.

“Not the Dark Hunters that so scare you and our mighty leaders,” the man who would be Ingwë Ingweron said in a false mild voice, the undercurrent of mockery rising to color his speech. Asmalô caught it, and his thoughts warred if to openly rebuke the slightly younger man for the confrontational audacity.

Finwë began to run towards the two Minyar to forestall further conflict, but Oromë pulled him back with a hand on the young man’s shoulder as he stepped forward instead. Seeded within the action was a gradual increase of the Vala’s size and the incorporation of an uncanny luminosity to his skin, until the Power stood half again in height taller than the elf beside him and glowed with a holy faint blue light. The texture of bark and dappled fur had returned to his skin, and a sweet scent of crushed pine needles waffled strongly from his form. Such action naturally pulled the attention away from the elf who had transgressed against Imin’s decree and displayed towards it a blatant disregard. Had Asmalô held his weapons in his hand, he would have dropped them.

“Greetings, young one,” Oromë called out in a voice that boomed like his hunting horn, the Valaróma. “Your concern for your friend and people do you credit. And forgive me my amusement, for it is not so that your mother named for the yellow songbird^[9] beloved by both my wife and king? I had not known that the Fruit-giver had allowed various seed-eaters to awaken on the far shore, aside from those like the pine buntings.”

In later recountings of the meeting of Oromë and the Vanyar, that the first topic consisted of the habitat range of small birds was allocated to a footnote.

 

The population of the Minyar far exceeded that of Elwë’s village, and all that were of age were gifted in mind-sight as to feel the true nature of the spirit of Oromë as he that would be Ingwë had in that forest glade. Thus the meeting between the Vala and the first tribe of elves need not be imagined as greatly differing from the first assembly, aside from a few particulars. It was tall Imin, crowned with a pair of feathers and draped in beautiful striped and spotted furs, and Iminyë in a gown made of hundreds of rattling bone beads and a thick cloak of a white auroch hide who greeted Oromë, while his tribe stood behind in amazement but not fear, and the Vala bowed to them and spoke in a tone less informal than before to humor the first-awaken Children of Iluvatar.

Oromë swiftly recounted the identities of the Valar, their origins and their appointed task in Arda, their maliciously recalcitrant member and his war against their rightful authority, his search for the elves and his wayward servant, and the sudden encounter, as well as his intentions to aid the Kwendî by clearing the hunting grounds of the evil shadows that abducted the elves. The sheer magnitude of new information to confront would have daunted anyone, yet the Unbegotten had awoken once to an entire world with which they needed to fill their blank minds, and even this shock was not as great. Imin and his wife had the comfort, when they gaze upward, that the stars still shone down. A disservice it would be to their characters to say they were hidebound and unwilling to accept the cataclysm to the society and world they had outlined and commanded. One should not judge too harshly those that would lead the Refusers.

Oromë and his horse were welcomed into the village, led to the clearing in the center of the village between the circle where disputes were settled and warriors trained and the grand hut of the chieftains family. Here Imin and Iminyë pulled out a pair of stools to sit and listen, as everyone gathered around them. Finwë and Elwë were included in the invitation, but fundamentally ignored. Elwë made a token effort to shoulder all responsibility, as it was his need to avenge his parents that had drawn his friends Finwë and Kwendë from their villages, and Finwë was eager to praise his friend's virtues to a disbelieving audience. The Minyar response was quiet but profound befuddlement. 

In the excitement and upheaval of Oromë’s arrival and the revelations about their entire universe, the transgression of venturing far from the village in secret seemed forgiven. This was a false assumption, but the meeting of ones’ deities took priority.

Ingwë stood before Imin as a young buck would face an elder male with a herd, muscles coiled tense and eyes staring straight on without subservience. His spear he had handled off to Asmalô, and his face was bare of paint or markings. The expression of his face was not one of challenge or anger, though its impassiveness was barely less confrontational. His thoughts, as always in the village, he guarded from others to sense. This stoicism dismayed Finwë and Elwë, who knew of the joy and excitement their friend had felt with the discovery of the Valar, and were leaning their hopes on that confident delight to convince the Minyar of Oromë’s goodness, as it had for themselves and Elwë’s people. “I returned with bounty, and the stars shined upon my hunt,” he said to his chieftain, the ceremonial words of hunters when entering the village with success. The Minyar tittered at the incongruity of likening all this to bringing back some felled deer, and even Imin smirked. No other hunt could have a greater prize. Imin and Iminyë’s son, vain Inkundû, disliked the sensation of feeling envy towards the village pariah. His sister, Ravennë, appraised the son of feared and pitied Skarnâ-Maktê with fresh eyes and shrewd calculation.

Oromë excused himself from the undercurrents of these interpersonal interactions, though his interest in observing them was strong. His opinions and observations he would hold private until he returned to the Mánahaxar.

Of particular interest to him were the small children, from the half-grown teens lean with hunger to the toddlers and infants clutched tight to their mothers and fathers.

Maktâmê held her infant daughter in her good arm, openly weeping to see her son returned hale and in high spirits. He did not run to her, but his pace to reach her side was decidedly quick, and it was a firm voice that bade her listen to the name he had chosen for his newborn sister. Bitter resentment of her tribe and those that lead it encouraged Maktâmê to eagerly embrace her son’s suggestion, even if she had not yet heard the full story of Nessa and knowing full well the conflict this would bring with Iminyë.

When Maktâmê’s son returned his attention to the discussion between Oromë and his tribe members, the topic was the proposed hunt.

Kanatië, whose spouse was the first taken by the Dark Hunters, spoke. “Are you truly so mighty, Great Arâmê, as to scare off those horrible things that stalk us?”

To this Oromë replied by hefting aloft his great horn and bringing it to his lips, then blowing a single pure and roaring note that rang across the shoreline and deep into the surrounding forest. “Those that I hate, hear that sound and fear me. Those that I hunt, hear that sound and flee from me,” Oromë proclaimed. His voice was low and deep, especially in contrast to the aural lightning strike of the Valaróma’s call.

“Then we shall hunt, all who are most able,” Iminyë said. “Our food is near depleted, and we wish to see you and the skill and prowess you promised. Then my husband shall take you to meet with Tata and Enel.”

The implication that he and his friends would stay behind was not lost on the man than would be Ingwë, and he shoved aside Inkundû to stand before his leader once more, ignoring the sputtering anger of the prince.

“Do you care to speak now, Kwendê?” Imin asked, a lilting note on the name that outsiders used to call a member of his tribe. The rebuke was unsaid but hammered like a waterfall, fueled by hurt feelings and confusion, for the man that would be Ingwë had kept himself aloof from his people.

“Now that I have worth to share,” Ingwë eventually snapped out, a curt gesture in the direction of the Vala, "I shall speak."

Oromë interjected, “The three shall come with us. It is right, as they were first to find me. Though if I am to meet with all the Children, if you are spread out along this giant saline lake, it might be prudent of me to teach you how to ride.”

---

Chapter End Notes

^[9] yellowhammer

Of the Great Hunt

Sorry for the wait - here's a longer than average chapter. Enjoy the stealth Draugluin cameo.

Read Of the Great Hunt

The Vanyar would later sing of it as the Great Hunt. Their poetry spoke of Cuiviénen as the time of the Awakening, the Great Hunt, the Duel, and then the Great Journey. Elves who had lived before the settling of Aman were known not as those that had undertaken the Great Journey, as it was among the Noldor, but those that had partaken in the Great Hunt.

Finwë and Elwë stayed behind in the Minyar village with the children too young and their mothers like nursing Maktâmê. Also appointed to stay behind were Inkundû and Ravennë to fulfill their parents’ roles as leaders while Imin and Iminyë led the hunt. Neither were pleased, though Inkundû’s face displayed his resentment more clearly than his sister as his mother painted a line of red clay across his jaw.

Elwë sat with Maktâmê and the infant Indis, comfortable and accustomed to such young children, whereas Finwë invited himself to the cache of spare spears, javelins, and other weapons stacked in the communal hut between the dueling circle and the chieftain’s house. These were the extraneous or damaged weapons as opposed to personal weapons of each tribe member, and Finwë busied himself by inspecting them. His goal was to identify the craftsman of each weapon if he could and to repair or re-sharpen what his skills could. Halfway through his self-appointed task, Inkundû would come over to loom over Finwë’s shoulder in peevish boredom, blocking the young man’s light. Imin’s son would begin a snide comment disparaging Finwë’s honor and intelligence, Finwë would turn red-faced and enraged to retort, and Elwë with his shadow-soft steps would be there unexpectedly, looming in turn over the shoulder of the Minyar prince with his greater height, interrupting this burgeoning squabble with questions for Finwë about the geologic properties of each stone for tool-making. Deliberately ignoring Inkundû, Finwë would prattle to his best friend about the superior knapping ability of flint as Elwë pretended to attentively listen. This was a game the pair had long played. Not so bemused would be Inkundû, and once more Ravennë would think her older brother deficient and immature.

---

The rest of the village, following the lead of Imin and Iminyë, began the long trek from the shoreline through the surrounding forest out into the grasslands. Before the abductions and deaths from Melkor’s cruel agents, the Minyar hunting parties would have split during the forest trails into groups of three to seven and fanned out into many directions. Wisdom was that the greater the number of hunting attempts, the likelihood of one group succeeding would outweigh the failures of the others. This division of the hunting parties, and that each group returned on their own schedule to the village, exacerbated the disappearances and abductions of the Minyar. The tribe had assumed innocent delays until many star rotations passed with none returning, and so scattered and separated, the pattern of these disappearances was at first overlooked.

Such a hunting party would include at least one pair of the first generation, the Unbegotten, with their greater experience in tracking and understanding prey, and a novice hunter to benefit from their knowledge. Another necessity would be a runner who could tire the animal in a long chase if projectile weapons failed, for as a last resort it was discovered that despite the greater swiftness of the beasts, an elf had near-immortal stamina and a will that overrode any weakness of the body. Hunting parties, once established, changed only once the novice hunter desired to allow another youth to replace them, or if some disagreement became too great for the dueling ring to settle. Sometimes two hunting parties would work in tandem or request a supplementary runner. Regardless of a single hunting party’s success on a trip, what could be returned to the village was shared with all, even if the individual allotment of meat, bone, and hide was unequal. This was not to state that fierce competition and jockeying of reputation among the parties and individual members of the tribe was not fierce and rampant.

Great hunts, where there were enough runners and spear-hurlers to corral an entire herd, and enough hands to carry more than one butchered carcass back to village, were rare and momentous occasions. That everyone had this opportunity to hunt with Imin and Iminyë was a boost to everyone’s status, a concept easier to grasp in concrete terms than the heady idea of hunting beside the god of the hunt.

Oromë had shifted his appearance to be no taller than Imin and changed his apparel to match the simple leggings and loincloths of the elven hunters. His belt carried no weapons or waterskins, only the gold-capped hunting horn, and his long brown hair was twisted back into a single tight ponytail. The boughs of the evergreen trees swayed with his passage, their limbs creaking like a slow eerie fanfare. Pine needles fell to carpet the forest floor behind his feet.

Before they entered the forest, Oromë had waved Nahar to run on ahead, and the silver horse had galloped away into the surrounding hills. “He searches for the nearest horse herd,” Oromë explained. “If I need him, I shall call, and it will not take him long to reach me.”

Oromë hung back, allowing Imin and the most experienced elven hunters to take the lead in the trek from the village through the great evergreen forests. His face revealed nothing. Still, a grave suspicion that the Vala was humoring Imin with that patronization of a grown man watching an infant toddle and crawl on village mats made the chieftain and other Unbegotten elves irritable. Iminyë was the one to finally voice a sliver of their concern. “You did not wish to show us the proper trail, Great Power Arâmê? I see you carry no weapon as we do. Is it because our ways are incorrect?”

“I have never seen you hunt,” Oromë replied in an even, conciliatory voice. “I cannot offer you judgement without knowledge.” He laughed, a short self-deprecating little sound. “This shall be a fresh thing for me,” he said, echoing his previous tales of entering Arda.

Iminyë smiled at this, mollified. The same smile appeared on Imin’s lips. “To enter a world where every experience and thing beheld is fresh for you and everyone around you. Yes, we understand.”

Kanatië turned around to address the young man that she still thought of as unspeaking Û kwendô. “You should do the same, Son of Skarnâ-maktê. Observe how your people hunt.” Behind her, Asmalô whom she had mentored in his first hunting party grimaced. He that would be Ingwë replied not.

Cutting remarks and the wounds upon temperament and mind that they caused were reason to send one to the dueling ring, so that aggression could be matched with aggression and then released. Had he not been the shunned one, such words could have earned Kanatië a swift duel in the ring, and it would have expected. Asmalô, not for the first time, desired to champion the boy he had nursed beside. But he knew if he entered a fight to defend the honor of one who showed no outward sign of concern or regard towards his personal honor and standing among the tribe, it would not earn Asmalô any of the gratitude for whom this action would be done in the name of. Asmalô had long missed opportunities to proffer an assisting hand to his once friend, and now any outreaching gesture would be rebuffed. So the cycle was perpetuated, and Asmalô knew himself to be a useless and cowardly man, despite the bragging marks painted on his skin.

Thus Kanatië’s snide dig hung over the hunting party like an unwelcome odor. The man that would be Ingwë slowed his pace to take a rear position along the trail, back where any turn in the trees would hide him from view of the leaders. His tribesmen glanced back, troubled by the lack of anger to be sensed in the undercurrents of his thoughts. Secretly that was what troubled them most about this son of the unfortunate hunters, that his resentment of his tribe clearly remained and yet could no longer be readily sensed. He did not pretend to accept his place, but he hid his thoughts from them, as he hid himself. Imin waited for the nod from one of his most trusted hunters to signal when the young man would peel away from the tribe to hunt alone. The chieftain did not explicitly expect this to happen, but he would not be surprised. The young man’s disobedience and solitary ways would be watched for now.

Lasrondo watched in disappointment.

Ingwë did not speak to the ones he walked beside, but he never slowed his steps to fall to the last position or deviate from their path. His heels tread on fallen pine needles, and the heady scent anointed him. He did not join in with the traveling chants, but Ingwë was with his tribe and participated in the Great Hunt.

---

The hunting plains of the Minyar had only starlight to illuminate its features and no large body of water to reflect back the light. In this star-dark only the keen elven sight could distinguish the individual herds that grazed among the ferns and grasses. Bereft of the shielding trees, the wind was free to press against their faces and sing loud against their ears. Such a place frightened the other Kwendî, but to the Minyar this place was more home than the shores of Cuiviénen. Here there were no false star reflections in the water, no distant roar of the waterfall or the constant lapping of tiny waves. The lack of water music unsettled the Nelyar, but to the Minyar it was relief.

Here the only fire was what they brought with them. That was the job of those without the greatest skill in aiming and throwing spears or possessing exceptional speed or stamina. They were the fire bearers, and in Valinor they would become the core of the devotees to Varda, but during the Great Hunt, these young men and women unrolled the long leather rolls to pull out bundles of fat-soaked reeds, dried moss, and their precious flint stones. Carefully they lit the tallow sticks and held these rudimentary candles aloft, freehands cupped to shield the pinpricks of light from the wind. Tallow reed lights held aloft, the hunters inspected the lashings of their spears one last time, gazed analytically out onto the grasslands for the locations and relative positions of landmarks and animals, and waited for their chieftain.

In the primitive mind-speech created by the Unbegotten, Imin began to chant a song of limited words and well-known emotions, a pattern ingrained into the tribe. It was the most common -and most generic- hunting chant.

Illuminated by the stars far overhead and their tiny handheld imitations, the Minyar fanned out and began to sing.

Find me prey, the chant said. My belly aches, the chant said, but I have strength to chase after something that shall fill it. I am cunning; I shall find a way to catch it. Find me prey.

As they sang, Oromë changed. It was nothing overt, but the hues and tones of his appearance adjusted to richer and deeper levels. He had not before been insubstantial in any discernible way, but somehow his presence felt more solid as the elves sang. Self-assurance, perhaps, or satisfaction. It was hearing a story retold that one well-remembered, and hearing that each line recited matched what one recalled. Oromë did not feed off of their song, but it strengthened him.

No mammoths wandered within sight, but a large herd of deer was close enough to count the points of antlers in the dark. Colorless in the darkness, light would reveal their hides to be a rich reddish gold with a few scattered white spots high on the haunches, and they were a large species, which promised plenty of meat. Such deer were a favorite of the village.

The stars had made good progress on their rotation across the sky and several constellations had disappeared from the sky completely in their slow journey since the elves had last hunted on these plains, but the deer pricked their ears nervously to the sound of the Minyar chanting. The deer had not forgotten.

The song changed. Prey had been evaluated and selected.

Beatifically, Oromë smiled.

Imin pointed to the lead runners to go ahead, sprinting after the chosen animal. The deer broke into a bouncing run, quickly outpacing the elven pursuers. Half of the hunting party followed the buck, lobbing spears, while the rest worked to further divide the herd, looking for other animals that were falling behind their fellows or panicking in the wrong direction.

A quick chorus of triumph called out for the first animal hit, a clean chest strike that instantly felled the animal, but the Minyar hunters had only begun. They had not come to these plains for just one buck.

With a crow of delight and full body shudder that seemed to vibrate the very fabric of perceived reality, Oromë lept into the air and transformed at the apex of his leap into a four-legged beast, a great stag with ruddy coat and many-branching antlers. He cavorted up to the fleeing herd, looming over them with his greater height and rack of impossibly complex antlers, then when he reached the lead animal, Oromë shifted his physical form once more. This time he chose the body of a great black bull with horns as wide and curved as the rib bones of a giant. He lowered those horns into the path of the fleeing deer and bellowed. Even then the sound had no anger.

The lead deer stumbled as if poleaxed by the bellow of Oromë.

Spears flew through the air, some wobbling as they spun, and two landed with wet thuds in the bodies of the startled fleeing deer.

Imin running beside his wife turned to face her with a silent question, and Iminyë nodded. “More spears!” she hollered to her hunters. “Fetch the fallen! Runners after those two! Knives to the one we have. A full fist before we return! And watch for tracks and signs of another herd!”

Around the black bull that was Oromë the deer herd split and tried to flee, the two injured members falling behind, closely pursued by hunting groups. The man that would be Ingwë hesitated between which group to follow or if to stay behind with Asmalô’s group who had encircled the first slain deer and were beginning the slow but familiar process of butchering it. They sang as they pulled out their knives.

Fortunately the great Minyar hunting party had not widely dispersed in pursuit of prey before the following happened.

Oromë as a bull lifted his dark head, the giant white horns curving up to cup the star-speckled sky between its points. His nostrils widened, and ears flicked with sharp intent. A hoof lifted from the ground; shoulder muscle tensed. The elven hunters turned towards the direction of his glare.

On a distant ridge they could see moving silhouettes of wolves. These onlookers were positioned so that the majority of the elves were between them and Oromë. They were obviously interested in the dead buck that the elves were beginning to skin and quarter. This occurred commonly on the plains. A particular pack liked to follow the Minyar hunters and were well-known and not feared. Sometimes the hunters even left scraps for that wolf pack, back before meat was scarce and hunting limited by fear of the Dark Hunters.

Yet these shapes were not true wolves, and certainly not their friends. Though the lead shape was a pale blue in this perpetual midnight of Arda before the creation of sun and moon, the forms that followed the lead of the pale hunched wolf-figure were made of light-devouring voids. Even at this distance, the elves could judge the size of those distant shapes as unnaturally large. The uncanny matte quality coupled with the wrongness of their silhouettes made it obvious that they were the Dark Hunters.

This time Oromë’s exclamation bloomed from a deep-seated rage. The giant bull shifted back into the red deer with many-branching antlers, and the scream that came from that throat was a clarion piercing note, a sound that seemed to physically manifest as an explosion of light. With that cry, Oromë leapt in direction of the Dark Hunters. It was a leap that said physics were not concrete law but merely the outlines for a player to improvise as one did playing variations on a melody. The pack of not-wolves began to scatter, disappearing into the darkness. The pale blue lead figure paused before fleeing from Oromë, though if the pause was a challenge to the Vala or the freezing of terror, no elf could say.

A second cry and flash of bright white, and Nahar galloped into view, white mane and tail streaming behind him. His path was on an intersect with Oromë, passing by the elves who were butchering the first kill. Asmalô dove to the ground in fear of collision with the galloping horse.

As Nahar leapt towards the fleeing not-wolves, his hooves slammed against the hard earth, cratering it with the ferocious impact of a meteor strike and sending chunks of dirt and stone flying through the air to land dangerously close to the astonished elves. This time Lasrondo was the one to dive to the ground, covering his head with both arms, and Asmalô to pull his fellow hunter back into an upright position and convince him of their safety.

Nahar’s landing at the end of his great physics-affronting leap was no less destructive, and though he did not vocalize, there was a song in the undercurrents of his thoughts, a complex rhythm that evoked the sensation of overpowering rage.

When Oromë and Nahar were abreast, the deer-form flowed back into his original man-shape, and with a leap almost too quick and graceful for the onlooker to comprehend, he vaunted onto Nahar’s back. Astride Nahar, Oromë sat up and pulled a shape into being in his hands. He was too far away and too swift-moving for the elves to see the object that he held. Later Oromë would display them for the elves: his great hunting bow and arrows.

The muscles of his back bunched and strained as he pulled back an arm, then let loose the arrow as that arm flung up with the graceful curve of a hunting cat’s tail.

The arrow arced like a comet over the plains. Wind screamed in agony in its passage, shrill and short, and air rippled out like water from the impact. Earth liquefied under the arrowhead, and the impaled shadow-shape writhed like a spineless deep-sea creature brought to the surface before it dissolved into the ground. Faint wisps of steam rose from the crater around the embedded arrow. A tuft of matte-black fur lingered around the arrowhead before disappearing with a foul odor, though no elf was close enough to behold this.

With perfect balance Oromë rode astride the galloping Nahar as the titanic horse quickly crested the hill and pivoted on his hind legs, shining silver hooves raised as if to strike. Oromë pulled another arrow into existence from a quiver of song and released it into the darkness. A split of air, a scream of pain, and the Lord of the Hunt smiled to see another servant of Melkor vanquished. Nahar’s front hooves thudded back to the earth with a quiet impact of sound. Imperiously the stallion tossed his head and snorted. “I concur,” said Oromë, and then he nudged the horse back to the waiting elves with a shift of leg muscle.

When Nahar and Oromë reached the elves kneeling in astonishment around the half-butchered buck, he reached an open hand down in offering to load the carcass onto Nahar’s back. Gingerly Asmalô and the man that thought of himself as Ingwë hoisted the skinned carcass onto the giant horse’s back behind Oromë, carefully positioning the antlers and legs. Nahar’s movement as he carried his rider and the deer carcass to the rest of the waiting elves was now a sedate walk, and his silver hooves barely bent the grass or left imprints in the dirt, so gentle was his stride. The horse could scarcely be believed as an instrument of such impactful violence, had one not witnessed his actions not a minute prior.

“You center your balance when you ride,” Oromë began to instruct as the elves walked beside them. Already Oromë had warned them not to follow directly behind Nahar in his blind spot. However , The Minyar who hunted the dun horses as often as the red deer needed not this reminder of a horse’s powerful kick. “Sit so your legs are between the muscle of the shoulder and the barrel of the chest, and grip with the upper leg, not your calves. Raise your toes so the heel of your foot is lowest. Observe.” Oromë flexed his foot. “This way you will not fall off.” Nahar flicked his ears in a complex pattern and made gentle whuffing sounds, punctuated by a low nicker. “Well, they cannot have perfection. The second gait will be difficult. And they will need usage of both hands, so they must learn to do so without clutching the hairs of the manes in fear of falling off. Oh! Yes, I had forgotten seeing that in the Song. Yes, aides like those would help the Children.”

When this impromptu procession reached Imin and the elves gathered around the second kill, Oromë dismounted and began to carefully cut hairs from Nahar’s tail and weave the strands. Seeing the Hunter absorbed in this task, Imin refrained from interrupting him with greetings and instead bade his tribesmen to continue to field dress the slain deer, waiting for Oromë to finish this strange task. Then Nahar lowered his great head, and Oromë began to rope and twist the braids into loops around the head, one encircling the muzzle, another the ears. Satisfied, Oromë gently pulled this new contraption off of Nahar and began to weave more rope. Finished with his task, he turned to Imin and this audience of elves. “I have a gift for you, for your fellow leaders, and for the three young men who introduced me to the Children.” He held aloft his creation. The loops of braided rope shone silver in the torches. “Use this as the halter for your horses as to tame them. When you have them captured, place this around their heads, and hold these pieces as reins. This shall tame them.^[10] As you see, it is woven from the hair of Nahar.” Oromë paused, and his mouth twisted into a wry grin. “This is only a temporary measure. The ...scent, we shall call it, shall fade. To train a horse to accept a rider is no quick process, if there is to be trust earned. But this shall quicken the process, and our time is limited to do what is necessary. Mailikô’s servants are bold, and that one leading that group was especially powerful. Nahar will stay with you, and he will call forth horses so you may gather and tame them. But I must go. I will not tarry overlong, but that servant should not be permitted within echo distance of any innocent life, and if I have a chance to capture that traitor, I shall seize it.”

“When shall you return?”

“Gather your kills, and I shall bring more, and before you leave these plains for the forest, Nahar has instructed the herd to await you. The trees shall tell me when to rejoin.”

Mighty Nahar stood guard as the elves gathered their kills and searched for more prey, the flare of his wide nostrils the only sign that the blood might in any way discomfort him. The torch-bearers stood closest, but none were brave enough to touch him. In time they grew accustomed and forgot the horse’s presence, absorbed in their tasks. Handë, one of the runners, cornered the man that would become Ingwë in a fit of inspiration, realizing that the young man must have made many solitary hunts. His question was not mocking when he asked what food the loner would have gathered on these plains without companions to assist in finding and running down prey, though Asmalô, fearing that his once-friend would construe the question in a negative way, interrupted and talked over Handë in a fumbling attempt to play peacemaker. With a sigh, Ingwë admitted that his haul was normally eggs, though here on the plains he found a modicum of success with nets and especially with a simple length of cord weighed on both ends with stones by which he could knock birds from flight and tangle the legs of running deer, though he had only attempted this method on smaller ungulates. Handë and Asmalô were impressed by the ingenuity - which the man that would be Ingwë felt was underserved, as the bolas trick was a hunting method he learned from Elwë’s parents- and by the keen eyesight it would take to aim at a flying bird in the pure darkness. The young man would have blushed from their admiration if not for the enforced impassivity of his face. Ingrained habits made him turn away, and he retreated to the safety of Nahar’s silver sides, rubbing the soft nose of the horse and wondering if there might be a nest to raid in a nearby tree.

While his wife directed the next hunt, Imin held the silver halter bequeathed by Oromë and ran appraising eyes over the giant horse. He made a wordless scoffing sound and addressed the objects of his thoughts. “You believe yourself capable of this new thought, to ride upon one of the beasts that look like this and not be thrown or trampled?”

Ingwë startled to realize his chieftain had been addressing this question to him. With a pause that could be construed as rudeness, if proud Imin was so inclined, he finally answered. “Yes.”

Imin waited for elaboration, and he was miffed when the young man’s answer remained a curt single syllable.

Asmalô’s expression was aghast, but his face was hidden by the darkness. Then Kanatië and Elnaira interrupted with delightful cries that they had discovered the burrows of large ground squirrels, and everyone rushed to flush the rodents from the burrows. The meat from an individual animal was minimal, but the hunters were after multiple kills, and the pelts were prized. After the ground squirrels were gathered and piled next to the deer carcasses, the Minyar spotted a small herd of camelid creatures. This time Handë pulled Asmalô and the man that would be Ingwë to join with his group of hunters, and Ingwë felt an unfamiliar joy to run beside another and a greater joy when his spear pierced the side of the galloping animal. Lasrondo nodded in approval when the young man dodged the flailing limbs to give the grace stroke, murmuring the song of appreciation and relief.

Exhausted, the Minyar gathered their bounties, and Nahar carried what they could not. When they retraced their path to the treeline, they found a small herd of horses grazing on the tender ferns around the saplings. The horses raised they heads and made low greeting sounds to Nahar, but seemed to ignore the presence of the elves. As the Minyar knew that they were covered in the smells and effusions of gore from their hunts, and that the animals of the plains like the deer remembered that the elves were dangerous, this unconcern was deeply unsettling. Cautiously they approached the horses, and Imin was bold enough to bring forth the silver halter and loop the end of the rope around the closest horse’s head in a makeshift noose. The horse continued to graze, only flicking an ear to the elf in a sign that that it was not blind to the approaching elves but was choosing to ignore their presence.

“I have oathsworn that you shall not harm them,” an unfamiliar voice sang.

Imin replied, “They obey you well, Chieftain of Horses. I swear we shall not harm them. What food do they need? My people shall gather them, or bring forth from the stores of Tata and Enel’s people.”

Nahar snorted. “It is your people’s fire and spears that have convinced these little ones. Turn those weapons away from their hides and towards the wolves and lions that hunt their foals.”

Imin nodded. “They shall not be so calm without your presence, I still presume.”

Nahar bobbed his head, then turned and lifted his upper lip to make a high-pitched cry. In the distance, trees began to sway from an unseen wind, and a large shape moved across the stars.  

 

Oromë returned to find the elves in enthusiastic debate over the captive horses and if this feat could be replicated with other animals. Imin had adjusted the loops of the halter to fit the lead mare’s head properly, and some of the other elves were scratching ears and carding fingers through the stiff manes. The concept of paddocks to corral and shelter the animals had been outlined, and the debate had progressed onto propositions of where to construct them and upon whom the duties of building and later guarding these enclosures would fall, and how many would be needed and of what dimensions. That had led to the debate over what other animals might be kept in pens and corrals near the village.

“What of the mâmâ ?  They are smaller than the auroch or wisent, and some have thick long hair on their hides that would easier to make felt, perhaps even weave as we do the stems of plants. Despite the large horns on the males, they are not near as dangerous.” Every elf present turned to stare at the eighth-born child of the Minyar. Asmalô was the one to voice what they were all thinking. “That was the most words you have addressed to your tribe since we were children.” Swallowing his shock and remarking from a position of more than a little jealousy, Asmalô added, “Is it that you speak only in the presence of others and not your people that the Tatyar and Nelyar boy call you Kwendë?”

The young man that would become Ingwë Ingweron was not yet accustomed to the attention of all elves present to be focused intently on him and his words, but even in his discomfort the young man found his reply falling easily from his lips. “I speak when I have words worthy of being heard.”

Imin’s face was a thunderclast. “Or to those deemed worthy of hearing your voice? By choosing never to speak to your tribe, your actions were a choice to state that we were undeserving of your voice?”

“You made it clear it was I, and my parents, unworthy of bother to the tribe,” Ingwë countered.

“All voices are alloted the respect to listen to them,” Oromë interrupted, “at least for that initial hearing. Eru Ilúvatar allowed my king’s brother to sing with us, even after he disrupted the song.” A sarcastic lit of mouth. “Twice. It was his will to drown out the other voices that displeased my Father.”

The implicit rebuke was a shadow over their return to the Minyar village, though the excitement of their successful hunt and the herd of horses buried the dark feelings until after Oromë’s departure.

---

Chapter End Notes

^[10] If Tolkien can do riffs on Macbeth, then I claim fair game on Bellerophon and Pegasus.

 

Context clues probably made it obvious, but mâmâ is Primitive Elvish for sheep.

Of the Shielding of Cuiviénen

Read Of the Shielding of Cuiviénen

The elves living in the safety along the shores of Cuiviénen knew not of the dreadful war waged on their behalf, except in general of its existence due to undeniable evidence in the far distance. A war between Ainur in their full power was felt across the entire world and thus could not be completely hidden from them, for the very contours of Arda were being reformed in those titanic battles.

Fires burned in the north, illuminating the crests of the hills and reflecting off the clouds. Long before either Laurelin or the Sun, night was pushed back by ruddy light. They were the flames of dreadful conflict as servants of Melkor battled their un-fallen brethren for dominion of Arda. This was long before the dragons entered Melkor’s black thoughts, but the devastation equalled any rampage of Glaurung. Winds brought heavy ash to fall over the valley of Cuiviénen until a more powerful wind smelling of burning frankincense pushed in from the west, clearing the air of ash.

Distant fires and the smoke and ash that they produced were not the only troubles to scare the elves. The ground would tremor violently, and people feared for their houses. After the sweet-smelling west wind, the tremors were never as savage, but it became common to feel the earth tremble beneath their feet.

It was the crashing thunder and lightning, and the bellowing sound that accompanied no lightning yet still echoed from every hill, that most frightened the Kwendî, for that continued even after the earth-tremors lessened. It was not normal lightning. Elwë described it as if a hammer was being taken to the roof of the black sky itself, trying to shatter it into a thousand pieces.

In his family hut, comforted by the familiar smell of smoke and wood ash, Elwë held his younger brothers close, one tucked under each arm, listening to their even breaths as they finally fell asleep, exhausted from worry over the terrible lightning and evidence of distant battles that they still knew little to nothing about. He cradled his brothers and thought back to when they were young and small, thankful that even now with all three into adulthood he was still much larger than either Olwë or Elmo. As children they had come to him for comfort during thunderstorms, wishing to be held by him instead of their parents. Now that they were all adults and the world beyond the borders of what any elf knew were being reshaped, still Elwë’s brothers turned to him for comfort. Elwe could not give them answers to those terrible lights and sounds, but in the privacy of their parents’ house, he could be the bulwark that he had always been for his younger brothers. He sat with his back against the wall of the hut as they clung to him, heads tucked into his lap and at the crux of his shoulder. They had been able to squeeze all three onto the sleeping shelf, and Elwë had draped his favorite blanket over his brothers and lap, covering their feet. Unmindful of the patch of drool or the sharp elbows digging into his side, Elwë held them tightly and stared out the doorway. Through the opening he could see the reflections of the lightning and fire against the waters of the lake. “Sleep,” he whispered to his brothers. “I will guard us.”

Until the final peal of unnatural thunder faded away, Elwë stared down the night and the flashes of odd-colored light.

 

---

 

In his time before returning to report to the other Valar in the Mánahaxar, Oromë taught the elves how to craft and use the bow and arrow. The young man of Elwë’s village currently called Belekô, though of his later names that of Strongbow would be most renowned, found the greatest aptitude with this new invention. Soon he devised tricks and games to better test his aptitude and accuracy, and with the repeated splitting of a lofted feather, he found no more challengers willing to partake in his contests. Most of the spear-hurlers among the Minyar did not switch to these new tools, so it was the third tribe who most eagerly embraced the weapon. Even if none of the other Nelyar possessed Belekô’s burgeoning skill, the bow and arrow became a point of tribal pride.

Oromë also showed the elves how to smelt and work with copper ore, being a soft and easy metal to locate and work with. Another metal that the Vala remembered from conferences with Aulë was iron, and that it was stronger but more brittle and difficult to work with. The red of its rust made it easy for the elves to find. “Aside from copper and iron, there is another metal you can pull from stone using your kiln fires, a silvery one but is not silver, that the Mbartanô says when mixed in with copper will make an alloy, a new metal stronger than either starting substance.^[11] But such knowledge is not of the songs I devised to sing, so I know not the metal or correct proportion.” Nevertheless, the knowledge of copper smelting was eagerly appreciated and embraced, none more than by Mahtan, a Tatyar man of Finwë’s village.

Finwë came over and watched Mahtan work with the revolutionary new substance. The Unbegotten man was in the process of hammering copper wire when Finwë interrupted. “The latest earth-shake has ruined the wall of my kiln, and I am still too wroth to rebuild,” Finwë explained his presence. “Until I am calm, may I observe you?”

Mahtan sighed. “Pick up that stick dipped in pine resin and light both ends, then hold the lamp up for me. I need more light to see.”

Finwë did as commanded. Mahtan would periodically nudge the young man to switch angles as the nascent smith carefully hammered a soft length of copper into a progressively longer and thinner piece. Eventually Mahtan would have his fine wire, and with enough pieces he could twist the copper into fantastic shapes and jewelry. Mindful of how disruptive upon one’s concentration it could be with another hovering over a shoulder while one worked, Finwë was uncharacteristically quiet.

Mahtan’s spouse was not in the village at present, or she would be the one assisting him. Since he had the unexpected good fortune in an eager assistant, Mahtan decided to continue with his copper-working projects. He set down the wire and began to smelt down a large bowl of green copper ores. First he needed to raise the temperature of his kiln, a task that Finwë was quick to help with, as it was familiar to him. As Mahtan melted the copper ore, he directed his impromptu assistant once more. “I am making fine small rings. Fetch the stone mold. In that stack, under the buffing cloths. Gray stone. The one without white flecks.”

Eagerly Finwë complied.

The piece that he grabbed was only as wide as his palm but as long as his arm. The stone had a shallow mold for multiple rings carved into the surface, like a strange plant, perhaps a stylized fern frond. The pattern was beautiful and had taken the painstaking work of many hours to create. Yet it was but a tool for the creation of truly beautiful objects.

Mahtan would not allow Finwë to handle the crucible of molten copper, but he allowed the young man to watch as he carefully poured a small amount of the metal into the channel in the stone mold and observe how the metal flowed down the carving into the ring indentions. “Once this cools, I shall pull it from the mold and cut the rings free from the branches, then sand off imperfections.”

“Have you tried other mold shapes yet? I’ve made some with impressions of shells in clay for small vessels.”

“No, and don’t distract me. I cannot allow pour to overflow the grooves and ruin my rings.”

“Who will they be for? This is a gift, yes?”

“Tata,” Mahtan said.

“Chief Tata? Not Rumilô, or Chief of Chieftains Imin?”

Mahtan grumbled. At Finwë’s chirp of confusion, he repeated himself louder and clearer. “I am still Tatyar. We count the Second as our leader, and I cannot or desire to pretend that he does not exist. Rumilô and I and the others disagreed with Tata’s choices, but not all, and our disagreements change not that we are his people. We are not his village, but still in some ways he speaks for us. And we cannot have his anger at us. If we stop giving him gifts and respect, he will call us back to his village, have us all under his watch as Imin does the Minyar. And Sarnê’s kin would not have easy access to salt, or Rumilô his walking distance to the other tribes, or me my ores. In our speech we would have to use all of Tatiê’s words and Tata’s methods for making tools, regardless if there is another way that we prefer. Tata wants us to follow his example, but our deference to him in other ways will suffice. So a fine gift it is. And with this copper necklace, Tata can brag to Imin that he has a prize that Imin does not.”

Finwë pulled a face, so Mahtan was prompted in exasperation to explain further.

“Tata envies that Imin awoke before him, and thus is eldest and leader before him.”

“But I thought the Three were friends?” Finwë asked.

Mahtan laughed long and derisively. “The first three- friends? Ha! No, little Phinwê. They are jealous and competitive. Above all, Tata fears that his people will join Imin or Enel, call themselves Minyar or Nelyar. He does not understand how we can live away from him, not follow his ways, and still desire to think of ourselves as his people and not theirs.”

Finwë sat on his heels and thought about what he had learned, of leaders and friends, envy and loyalty. Of his thoughts, the only that he vocalized was meekly said and too quiet for Mahtan to hear. “I liked it better when I thought they were friends.” 

 

---

 

Ingwë counted sheep.

The animals were mostly juveniles, three of them male, and they were various shades of brown with lighter bellies and rumps. They roamed the paddock area that the Minyar enclosed for the sheep, nibbling at grasses and a few much-besieged bushes. There was not enough fodder inside the paddock to keep the animals fully fed, so food and water needed to be brought to them. Ingwë had covered baskets with dried grass and various seeds for the sheep to eat. One of his tasks was ensuring those baskets remained untouched by other animals or gluttonous sheep. And penned as they were, the animals would be targeted by predators or could break free of the fencing and escape if not guarded. The sheep were not yet truly tamed that a shepherd -a job that the Kwendî were in the slow process of inventing- could take the animals out to forage around the lakeshore and not lose them. So, the young man that would be Ingwë Ingweron guarded sheep.

Ingwë’s reasons were selfish.

He did not adore the sheep. His concern for their safety was not tied to any deep empathy that he felt for the animals, but that he was the one currently chosen for watch duty, and the penning of these particular animals had been his suggestion, giving him a layer of ownership. If he did not protect and tend the herd to a high standard, his tribe could censure him. Thus his pride was intertwined with the success of the animals, and any failure attached to them would give others ammunition to hurt him, especially if the herd came to harm or did not flourish during his watchguard shifts. The task of watching over the sheep and singing to keep them calm and associate the Minyar camp with safety and food was necessary, for the animals were valuable tribal resource. A ready source of meat and fur guaranteed surety of life. Still, Ingwë felt a greater proprietary fondness for his traplines and cloak than these bleating creatures, even if the balance of value was weighed heavily in their favor.

Over the course of the Great Journey, the Vanyar would replace their sheep with goats and cattle. The more intelligent goats, in particular, could withstand the scarcity and variability of food and climb the two mountain ranges that would lay in their path. Ingwë Ingweron’s biases may have also been a guiding hand in the Vanyar’s conversion from sheep to cattle.

With another sigh against his feelings of undue imposition, he raised a bone flute to his lips and began to play the soft tune that combined with a touch of oswarë to blanket the animals’ thoughts with a sense of docile calm. So engrossed in his task, he did not hear the other elf’s approach. Ravennë walked with arm’s reach of the fence posts before Ingwë noticed her presence. His song faltered for a moment as his fingers slipped from one of the flute holes, but he recovered and pretended that her arrival had not startled him. He offered her no greeting, and Imin’s daughter gave him none. Instead she leaned against the paddock fence and observed the sheep. Discreetly, the man that would be Ingwë evaluated her appearance, searching for clues for why she had walked out beyond the village palisade to the sheep enclosure. His guard shift would not finish soon, and he knew Handë was the one who would come to replace him. Ravennë carried no weapons, though she wore a pair of leather leg-wraps that tied into a loincloth instead of a wrapped skirt, and her thick yellow hair was braided and tied away from her face. This suggested a non-sedentary task, and she had a pouch tied to her waist that he could not deduce the purpose of, for he did not recognize it. The cover flap was the entire paw of a leopard stitched to the leather, and pieces of spotted fur trimmed and decorated the cuffs and lining of her garments. The overall effect was showy, Ingwë privately admitted, but he was most curious at what Ravennë had in that pouch, and why she had gone through the obvious effort of dressing in one of her finer ensembles. Perhaps she meant to visit one of the other villages, especially since the earth tremors had lessened recently. Ingwë wished to visit his friends soon. Ravennë had a healing gash across her lower left ribs, the skin paler and more shiny in the torchlight. Though he had not seen the injury, he could reasonably guess at its cause, for duels happened frequently these days. The duels were for preference order to ride the limited number of horses, Imin having given away one of the silver Nahar bridles each to both Tata and Enel. Almost every member of Ingwë’s tribe wanted a chance to learn to ride the new horses, and there was not yet enough animals for everyone. A competition had formed over riding privileges. This was expected behavior for the Minyar. Perhaps that was where Ravennë was off to, though the fenced enclosures for the horses was in the opposite direction, closer to the lakeshore.

Finally, Ravennë broke her silence. “You are very gentle,” she asserted. “Not just with the mâmâ . With your parents, the disfigured ones. And your baby sister. You are an accomplished caretaker. This is a good role for you, which you excel at. Very soft, very patient.” Ravennë nodded at her proclamations, never once turning to actually face Ingwë as she described her observations of him.

The young man, whom Ravennë had only ever addressed as Ûkwendô and seemed to have ignored all their lives, dropped the flute from his lips and stared at her. Her words infuriated him, and he could feel the swell of outrage pouring into his mouth from his diaphragm and from the root of his tongue, flooding up to press against his lips. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would scream at her. Seemingly oblivious to his feelings, Ravennë leaned over the fence and stretched out a hand to attempt to caress one of the sheep. “Katwânîbesê said that the animals were unsettled earlier with the lightning, though at first they grazed and seemed not to notice. Then a large sound, and one of the little bucks nearly somersaulted. One of the horses did the same, spooked and kicked out and nearly lamed itself, but that was discovered to be caused by a lion prowling too close and not the northern fires. I think Katwâ was just unskilled at this task. She cares for herself and does not look outside her face.”

Ravennë pulled out some of the dried broken grasses and rolled seed from the covered basket and tossed them over the fence to draw the sheep’s attention and lure them close to her. One of the young ewes bleated and trotted over to the food, and Ravennë could reach down to stroke the animal’s back. She pulled up a loosen tuff of wool and played with it between her fingers, twisting the fibers.

Still as if she were addressing the sheep instead of Ingwë, she spoke. “Nurwê Enelion will marry soon. He has chosen as spouse Eleniel, the most beautiful daughter of the third tribe. According to them. His father Enel has demanded animals from my father as a gift, so that his son may have resources to establish his own village, as the Nelyar are so wont to do, splitting and budding new villages like willow trees. I must say I do like this new idea of wedding celebrations and offering gifts. Enel almost bequeathed his son the village of your friend Elwê, because their leaders had died and their son is unmarried. They do not like this, a leader alone. They awoke in paired sets, and the lack of match still unsettles them, my parents and the other chieftains. Enel wished to give the Estirinôrê village to Nurwê, but Father and Tata talked him out of that scheme. They were impressed with your tall friend. So Nurwê and Eleniel must build their own homes from scratch and convince their own friends and companions to join them. I do not know where they shall choose. One of the little islands out on the lake for all I know. Father will send Mother and Brother to confer with Enel over which animals to send, if to give them more of our horses or some of these sheep. If I were making the decisions, I would give Nurwê two or three of the ewes and a spare ram. The more intractable animals. Let him and his companions capture their own beasts if they wish more. The Nelyar have surplus plant food.” Ravennë rolled some of the shredded hay through her fingers, tossing the pieces out for the sheep. “That reasoning is most sound; don’t you agree with me, Kwendê?”

At first he was befuddled at her intentions in telling him these facts, but then Ingwë’s feelings progressed through incensed relief on behalf of Elwë and then more confusion. Though her last words were a question, she gave no sign that she expected an answer from him, treating him as a sympathetic but silent ear, same as the sheep. Ravennë pulled away from the soft muzzle she had been petting and stretched. “The sheep like your tuning and gentle songs. You should play more often. Don’t be so silent.” With that parting remark, Ravennë left him.

 

---

 

Wolves lingered on the outskirts of the elven villages. So did other small canids eager to dig through the refuse piles for scraps to eat. Fire and aggressive words would scare them off. Once the initial fear wore off, the elves thought little of the lingering canids. Compared to wild hogs, leopards, or snakes, a few foxes and shy wolves were of small concern when the palisades deterred them.

There was also a clever wolf pack that would follow the Minyar hunters for the express purpose of waiting to scavenge the remains of the elven hunters’ kills, as the ravens and other carrion birds would in turn do to the pack. This wolf pack did not try to chase away the elves from kills as some of the other predators did, perhaps because they were consignate of the danger of attempting so or of hunting the elves as prey. There were lion pelts hanging in the villages for a reason. The wolf pack was treated cautiously, but over time the fear had lessened and nearly vanished. This particular pack was beginning to take the proffered but conditional tolerance of the elven hunters a step forward to work almost in tandem with the Minyar hunting parties. It was almost a friendly competition when they or the elven hunters began to scatter a herd to pick off individuals - and with two groups, if not truly coordinated for the wolves could not understand elven hand signals and the Vanyar mindtouch only brushed the faintest of intentions and emotions, the process of winnowing a prize from the herds was easier for all. Helpfully, the two groups tried not to go after the same beast, for this level of communication of intentions was possible. It was a stray thought common to many elven hunters after a successful spear throw to bring down their kill that perhaps one day they might not lunge a second spear or stone at a horse or deer to leave it for the wolf pack to finish off. It would be a goodwill gesture of thanksgiving and camaraderie. If nothing else, having their own successful kill to tear into would deter the wolves from eyeing the elves’ prizes. Pups from this pack had grown into maturity with a lessened fear of the bipedal strangers, associating them not as prey or danger but opportunities for extra food if treated with deference and caution. Then bored hunters, he that would be Ingwë among them, began to toss objects to the wolves for the animals to play with: stray tufts of fur, sticks, even bits of bone - a willingness to play games instead of trying repel the creatures.

With the threat of Melkor’s Dark Hunters gone, the press for food was not so overwhelming that nothing could be spared for the wolves. With joy and reunion the Minyar hunters sang to the pack that they already thought of with the stirrings of fond ownership.

Thus even before the arrival of Oromë, the elves had begun the process of domesticating dogs.

Ironically it was members of the Second Tribe, Sarnê and his sons, who found a litter of wolf cubs near a dead mother. Without a fear of the tiny creatures and bolstered by tales of the fledgling camaraderie with the nearby wolves, they took the pups back to the village. That action caused an uproar in Finwë’s village which only the inherent cuteness of the puppies quelled. Then both Sarnê and his eldest son, Morisû, disappeared, taken by the agents of Melkor, and Sarnê’s remaining children would not entertain the slightest suggestion of giving up the young wolves that they had adopted as family. The second eldest of Sarnê’s sons had been pestering Finwë to break the edict and travel to the Nelyar village to bargain for precious meat, fish being the only reliable source of protein and the Nelyar villages the only ones with surplus with the Dark Hunters about, when Belekô arrived to interrupt with his alarming message about Elwë’s intentions. Now with Oromë’s intervention and the restoration of hunting parties, meat was easily obtainable for Sarnê’s mostly-tamed wolves.

The preliminary plans to corral ungulate herd animals for easier gathering of resources and horses to ride prompted the Minyar to turn to Sarnê’s wolves. “If we can create a partnership with them as there is between Arâmê and Nahar, to raise more wolves to see themselves as packmates with us ...why it should be easy to accomplish! The bond exists, and Arâmê confirms of his own servants many are hunters that he calls chasers.” Soon the Kwendî created their own word, khugan or hound, to distinguish wolf from the animal that saw elves as family and slept inside their villages. Keeping the more traceable and affectionate of each subsequent litter, coupled with training, soon developed dogs suited for hunting with the Minyar sprinters or for guarding the penned sheep from lions and other wolves. The excitable protective instincts, with their proclivity to bark and sing at the slightest intrusion, endeared the canines to the elves who were still nervous and fearful of evil intent abroad. Therefore most elven villages soon had many dogs roaming inside their palisades, of various sizes and new coat patterns.

It were the hounds outside the village walls that needled Elwë’s attention.

They looked like wolves, if not for muzzles too short and ears too large and rounded for their skulls - and that their stature dwarfed the height and length of any creature that prowled the outskirts of the villages. These wolves that looked more like khugan never alarmed the territorial and protective attention of the elves’ rudimentarily domesticated hounds, and that alone was deeply suspicious. The giants would pace between the tree shadows in silence, and should have been mistaken for phantasms if not for the real paw tracks left in the mud, each larger than Elwë’s outstretched hand. Yet show the imprint to one of the khugan so eager to sniff and chase, and the dog would ignore the track. Elwë wished that Oromë had not left, so that he could question the Vala about these giant wolves with pale blue, green, and gray eyes that never vocalized or seemed enticed by a chance for food. He was certain these hound-shapes were servants of Oromë patrolling the perimeter of the Cuiviénen settlements, the recounted chasers of the Lord of Hunt.

Worried yet grateful at their presence, and certain of his hunch, Elwë instructed his brother and others of his village to catch a large fish, then with a simple yet solemn ceremony, Elwë carried the bounty to the outskirts of his village, waiting for a pair of pale green eyes to return. As the giant hound trotted up to towards the palisade of Elwë’s village, its puzzlement of Elwë’s action clear despite lack of words, Elwë lowered the fish and bowed his head. “We are grateful for the guard that Arâmê has left to ensure our safety. We leave this token as appreciation of your efforts.”

The giant hound did not reply, but Elwë was not expecting it to speak. It did not touch the offering, but the fish was left outside the palisade, and when next inspected, that corner of the land cleared around Elwë’s village was devoid of a single scale or fish bone. The elves took this as a sign that their offering was appreciated.

 

Millennia would pass before Elwë, now Eu Thingol King of Beleriand, would slouch on the floor of his palace in Menegroth and reach a hand to pet the ears of the Hound of Oromë, valiant Huan. Quiet and subdued, Elu would murmur words of thanks to Huan’s kin.

“Where you there, loyal friend of my daughter and her love?” he would ask in a wine-slurred voice, speaking of those days back in Cuiviénen. “What did you and your people think of us and our simple villages?”

In answer, Huan licked his face.

 

---

 

It was not a tremor of the earth or a distant boom of thunder or earth that woke Finwë, but a change in the scent of the lake, a stronger concentration of salt and the perfume of unfamiliar plants, and as he walked to the shoreline, noticing how the waters had receded to uncover more of the rich mud and pale shells than normal, he wondered at the cause. Vaguely he recognized the absence of bird calls, but that silence had been common ever since the distant sounds of upheaval to the north had begun. As the mists parted, Finwë found why.

A figure rose from the surface of Cuiviénen, phosphorus and reflective as wet scales, standing as tall and still as a great tree. Long green and brown hair flowed from her head into the waves of the salt lake, partly shrouding her like a fine cloak. She wore no garments, but with her long tresses she could not be thought of as naked. Like the roots of a mangrove tree the water rippled around her thighs, hiding her feet. Small crabs scuttled between the fronds of her hair, and starlight picked out the mussels and sea stars that hung like precious beads in her tresses. Her arms were raised in a warding motion, and as Finwë approached, she turned her head back to meet his eyes over her salt-crusted shoulder. Her eyes were green as well in the faint light, strangely glassy as fish eyes were wont to be, but welcoming and gentle. The strong smell of salt and sea almond floated to him like sweet music.

“You are one of the Powers?” Finwë called to the woman.

“Ui-nend I am called,” she said, as a pale crayfish skittered across her brow. “Return to your home, little one. I shall keep the waters still. Fear not.”

“Why would I fear?” Finwë called, and wondered at the calm dreaminess of his feelings.

“Waters were moved because of the war,” answered the Power cloaked in seaweed and the growing life of the salt marshes, “And because of that, this valley would have flooded, had we not sent Curumo and others to shore up the stone beneath the waterfall and diverted some of the other rivers that feed into this place. Rather we allow this lake to evaporate into a salt flat than allow the violence of a great flood to drown the Children.”

Images and words accompanied her speech that Finwë could not comprehend, but the gist of her message he could understand. “The lake will disappear?”

“Not soon,” Uinen answered. “But eventually, yes. This is not the only place that is changing. My lord’s seas are deepening, and new shorelines are forming. Not all changes shall be dreadful, but we cannot stop them. Not if we wish to stop him,” she said, turning back to the north. “Go back to your bed, clever Phinwê,” she called over her shoulder. “Olos will send you more pleasant dreams.”

---

Chapter End Notes

^[11] obviously this is bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.

Of the Choosing of Ambassadors

Read Of the Choosing of Ambassadors

The earth tremors ceased, and as the duration of their absence lengthened so grew the easing of the Kwendî’s tension and fear. Such mollification was not universal. Enel, chieftain of the Third Tribe, monitored the volume flow of the waterfall beside his village with lingering trepidation, for the quantity of water had diminished in the shakes, and the song of the waterfall had altered. Nervously he awoke and listened for its roar, irrationally fearful that if the cascading water was ever silent, then he that was The-Third-to-Awake would no longer wake. In those first seconds of life, opening his eyes to see the bright stars without knowing what he saw, only their beauty, Enel’s ears had not yet opened as his eyes had. But in the irrational yet deeply emotional center of his mind Enel thought that it was music, not starlight, that woke him. He could not prove this thought, but he believed that when the first drops of water poured into the lake the beautiful sound that was created was the cue that awoke the Kwendî. He wished not to hear of logic establishing that the waterfall flowed over the rocks beside his village in a time before he awoke, because to Enel all time before his existence was null. The song of water hitting the surface of the lake only started when his lungs took in breath, and the working of his lungs only persisted with that song. Waterfall and wakefulness were one and same to him that was The-Third-to-Awake.

Enelyë, his spouse, chastised her spouse for his paranoia, dragging him away from the stakes that he had driven into the muddy bank to measure the water depth and fret over each shift in the watermark and change in color. She told Enel that he saw nothing more than the progression of tides, ignoring the evidence of the receding shore. The Great Mother Lake was eternal. Enel must be wrong. The hammer blows of lightning had not dislodged the stars from the black sky. Thus it followed that none of the earth shakes had touched the water. The shells and beads of her netted cap rattled as she shook her head. Her hand on her spouse’s arm, tugging him from the riverbank, her own ankles sinking deeper into the mud, her voice pleading with Enel to return to their village and attend his duties as leader of the Third Tribe - all noise of Enelyë, all pointless. “Something eats my lake,” Enel muttered. “Something drains it. Enelyë, release me. I must see it. See the proof. You must see it, too. My waterfall.”

Daunted by the ineffectiveness of her efforts to erode the stubborn stone that was her spouse, Enelyë returned to their village and her cold pillow.

Enel stood at that waterfall when the Vala Oromë rode out of the northern shadows atop the luminous silver Nahar. A piercing horn blast heralded Oromë’s arrival, so Enel was not startled when the rider pulled out of the mist. He did not care. The call faded into the darkness beyond Enel’s torch lamp, and silence hung over their meeting. Enel’s wide umber eyes met those of the Vala, unconsciously begging for reassurance but wary of what new missive might upend his world. Before the unseen war to capture Melkor Enel would have treated the arrival of Oromë with glad hope, most eager of the first awoken three to celebrate the Vala’s arrival and aid, but now after the earth tremors and lightning-filled skies he was chary of the Rider’s gifts. His trust had receded with the shoreline. Enel did not yet directly blame Oromë for all the ills that would follow, cursing the Valar along with their apostate Melkor, as they who would name themselves the Penni^[12] did. Those were the words of the Unwilling and the first division of the Eldar, a time that had not yet come to pass.

Nahar’s footsteps slowed, the horse reluctant to approach the waterfall, as if he sensed the doubt and coldness of Enel’s thoughts. “I know of your fears,” Oromë called above the roar of the water and the mist that hung above its churning wake, “and I bring a proposal that shall soothe it.”

Oromë’s proposal irrefutably did not.

---

Of the grave conference between Oromë and the first three elves: Imin, Tata, and Enel, little is known and details unspoken. Only Oromë’s words were recorded, his offer of the Valar’s own homeland to the elves, that the Children of Eru should relocate across the vast sea and be enriched by their protection and gifts, greatest of all being the light of the Two Trees. The reluctance of the three chieftains is known and their reasoning easy to guess at. The shores of Cuiviénen, the Great Mother Lake, was all of the world that they knew, and Oromë’s words alone would not cleave them from the site of their birth. The war against Melkor to lay Utumno to its foundations had fostered dread in all Powers that were not the familiar Hunter and his shining horse. Oromë anticipated their reluctance. “Let me choose three to bring with me to Valinor, one from each of your tribe, to see the truth of my words and return to you with their validity, as I myself tarried among you to learn your ways before I returned to my king and kin.”

It is said that Imin nodded first, and that Tata tapped his lips and agreed, and that Enel turned away to look at the waters behind them before he turned back to Oromë and said, “We know the three that you wish to take with you, the three boys that found you.”

“It is fitting,” said Tata, and Imin looked, it is said, to the stars above them as if seeing solace or sign.

“Those three I wish as the ambassadors,” Oromë replied. “They were the first to speak to me and speak on behalf of all Speakers, to inform me of your woes brought upon you by Melkor, of your lives and joys and sorrows, your needs and dreams. Let them speak again in the Maharaxë before the full council of my peers and let them see and hear of what we offer up to the Children of Our Father. They are the three that I choose.”

“Who else but them?” murmured the first leaders of the elves.

 

After their discussion with Oromë, each of the three elves mounted a horse and rode towards a village, leaving in one direction whereas they had rode in from three. To the village that Rúmil founded did Tata ride, and Finwë greeted the news of his task with loquacious delight. Praise flowed like a torrent from his lips, and Tata applauded himself for his wisdom. This orphan boy with his mountain of words and ingratiating attitude was the perfect choice to send to Valinor and bring back accountings of its land. Rúmil and the other Unbegotten adults of their village watched as clever Finwë charmed Chief Tata, nervous that the clever lad would tip the scales into an unctuousness of obvious falsity or his clever tongue edge into an offense. The villagers piled gifts onto their chieftain: beautiful items of metal and ceramic and salt. With loaded bags to weigh down his horse, Tata rode home, head full of new words and Finwë’s eager promises.

Further west at the village at the river’s mouth Enel beheld tall Elwë appoint his brothers as stewards to watch over their people, officially bequeathing their parents’ hut to Elmo. “I know we promised a telu^[13] celebration to build you and Linkwînen a new house in which to welcome your firstborn child, but if I am to leave to this land of the Balî, there is no time, and our parents’ house has space,” Elwë said as he clasped his youngest brother’s shoulder.

“I will help,” Olwë added with laughter in his voice to mask his fear. “And sleep in the house of Nôwê when the infant’s cries drive me to tears.” Olwë smiled at his brother, and Elwë rolled his eyes and pointed his knowing gaze to Nôwê’s comely sister. The teasing interplay between the three brothers amused Enel. The-Third-to-Awake regretted that his own son had no siblings, thinking that Nurwë would be strengthened by the support of a brother or sister. The shift in Enel’s mood -and the return of her husband’s attention to her- pleased Enelyë. Of this thought’s naivety one should not be quick to judge, for the third generation of Kwendî were yet unborn and dynastic struggles between siblings and cousins likewise nascent. And the sorrows that this began among the Nelyar Avari, grave as they were, paled to those of other tribes.

Only to his own village did Imin return, the sprawling singular Minyar home ringed by a mighty palisade and pasture pens full of horses and sheep. His son, Inkundû, was not at the gates to greet him and turn the horse loose in a pasture. His son’s absence neither surprised nor consciously aggrieved Imin, and Inkundû was found, as expected, in the cleared circle of the dueling ring, wrestling with Asmalô over leadership of the next hunt. A minor squabble, the bout lasted only to the first ground pin, and Imin watched his firstborn win the match. Inkundû failed to notice his father’s observation, preoccupied with crowing victory as Asmalô rolled his eyes and grumbled a final time about herds moving away from depleted grazing fields. Nor did the chieftain stay to congratulate his son. The dueling ring was a sour reminder of the one that never partook in the rituals. Imin asked if the young man that would be Ingwë was inside the palisade or once more roaming the darkness far from his people. “Skarwô-iondo, where is he?”

Feinting an ignorance of the peevish tone of Imin’s question, Elnaira bowed to her chieftain and answered, “Inside, as he has been since before the Nelya messenger came for you.” Imin turned to the approaching Iminyë and sighed in relief as his wife looped her arms through his and led him deep into the village. He poured his concerns over the meeting into her waiting ear.

“The scarred ones’ son is with Elnaira’s spouse, dutifully helping him butcher and dress meat. I decreed that we roast a sheep to celebrate your return. And if Great Arâmê graces us, a lamb we shall roast.” Iminyë smiled as she walked her husband to the large campfire prepared with grilling racks and beyond to where several elves knelt over animal carcasses with various stone knives. Two elves who were butchering a young sheep carcass, carefully separating the ribs into beautiful racks, lifted their heads at Imin and Iminyë’s approach, but it was the third elf still focused on the least-desirable offal that Imin wanted. “Skarnâ-Maktê’s son, attend us.”

Ingwë raised his head. 

“Great Arâmê made a request for you and your friends. End this task and hear what you have been commanded to do,” spake Iminyë.

With blood-dried fingertips the young man answered Iminyë, “If the Great Hunter calls for me, I obey.”

Imin’s eyes narrowed. There was an insult buried in those words that he could not see, but Iminyë smiled. Imin trusted his spouse. Her judgment was his.

Judgment is not foresight.

Imin and Iminyë believed that there would be no danger to himself or his position as the chieftain paramount of all Kwendî in sending this boy to the abode of the Valar.

 

One person who slept in the finest house in the Minyar village was still doubtful. Inkundû returned from a disappointing hunt to learn the specifics of his father’s meeting with Oromë and the other two chieftains. He sulked through the feast repurposed into a farewell gift for the chosen ambassador. Imin’s son listened with growing alarm as his mother, already appraised of the details, saw no need to listen to a tale repeated and commentary made upon it, more concerned with the final food preparation. Iminyë’s displeasure with her son’s recent failures was subtle, but of its two most recent causes which had more weight was unclear: that his judgment on the hunting trip resulted in little quarry to show for the expenditures or that Inkundû had not been ready to greet his father at the village gate. Inkundû regularly disappointed Iminyë. This Imin knew and accepted, as he knew and accepted Inkundû’s jealous and untrusting moods. To his father alone did Imin’s son make his displeasure known.

“If to be sent as scouts to the homeland of the Powers is a task of great trust and honor, then why do we send Ûkwendô? Father, why not me?” Inkundû petulantly asked.

Imin framed the choice as one that the three leaders had come to independently of Oromë, and perhaps in Imin’s mind he had refashioned the decision as a debate that he had won, such that was his pride. Inkundû would have still protested Oromë’s decision had he known the truth of who made it. He would have argued that Imin should counter Oromë’s decree, as Imin had once done to a poor decision of Tata’s or his reprimands to Enel about the various Nelyar that ran free, like wandering Denweg or Awaskjapatô who lived out on rafts on the lake. Imin’s role was to rule over all elves, even fellow chieftains, and curtail their blunders.

Again the twinge of dissatisfaction with his first-born child bobbed to the surface of Imin’s thoughts before sinking once more, like one of the giant salamanders that swam in the lake.

“Ûkwendô can be spared, and if mortal doom befalls him, our tribe is not greatly harmed by his loss.” Disposable, like the Noldo orphan, the chieftain did not say aloud. Or that the third one, the Nelyar young chieftain, had two capable brothers as suitable replacements. Great Imin frowned. “I have decided that the scarred ones’ child has proven himself useful and able to fulfill responsibilities to his tribe that he has neglected. This is my test of the gift of my trust, as it is also a test of the Powers and if Their promises can be believed or honored.”

“And what if the Powers speak the truth of how wondrous their Paradise is? Do we believe then that Ûkwendô will return to us?”

Imin turned to stare across the village to where Maktâmê struggled to adjust the infant daughter strapped across her chest, shifting Indis’s head so that the small infant could nurse with ease. “He will return for his sister, even if the sullen boy has no sense of duty towards his tribe.” Inkundû scoffed at this evaluation of Ingwë’s motivation, how unbalanced the scales were if the home of the gods was half as glorious as promised. His younger sister, Ravennë, watched her father and older brother in keen, frownful silence.

 

With a leather satchel packed tightly with freshly smoked mutton, Ingwë waved a greeting to his two best friends outside the palisade of the Minyar village. To the west, under the dark shadows of the encroaching trees, Nahar shone brilliantly white. Oromë waited.

The travel kits of Elwë and Finwë comprised of many parts: reed woven mats slung as rolled knapsacks across the hip, heavy bags full of tools, blankets, and food, belts hanging with more items like the fine pouches for flint and dried moss to quickly tinder a fire, and in their finest clothing. Everything spoke of their villages’ collective efforts to outfit these favored sons with the wherewithal to face every imagined possible disaster and a hope to impress the Valar. Finwë in particular carried the illusion that he had half his weight in borrowed beads and copper jewelry. Elwë’s hat shimmered with the iridescence of bird feathers, and this was not the only garment of his that played opalescent in the village light.

The Minyar dressed not their Ûkwendô in fancy garments. As a hunting party scout, he was given dried food and a filled water-skin to carry him on the long trek. The only addition to his normal appearance was a line of ritual paint across his heart and outlining his jaw.

Before he joined his friends, Ingwë turned back around. His mother, standing a few feet away from the others at the gate, knew that her son would need this final farewell. Dried paint flaked off of her one good hand as she raised it for a gesture to beckon him towards the patiently waiting Oromë.

Strong hands caught those fingers and lowered them.

Stuttering, aware of the eyes of the First Tribe upon them, Maktâmê repeated the instructions that she had given her son before the feast started and Imin had dropped his world-shattering proclamation. Only after she finished did her son respond.

Ingwë gripped his mother’s shoulders and pulled her close to him, foreheads touching as he pleaded for the final time. “If I don’t return- if you cannot stay, Mother, if you cannot stay in the village,” and the young man could not articulate which dire outcome he feared as more likely, that his tribe force his family out by a formalized banishment or merely through the absence of communal aid or via the internal grief of his absence driving his mother to despair, “then you go to Rûmilo. You go to the Tatyar. The journey is quick. Is safe. You take the goods that I left for you, the knives, you trade. Phinwê left some pottery in your name. They will help, the Tatyar. And if you cannot settle in their village, go only as far as the river. The next village is Elwê’s. It is the closest. The braided river to the shore, the lights are easy to find, reflecting off the water. His brothers lead their village. Kind boys. Promise me, Mother. You take Indis to them. Do not stay in this place.” Years of negligence and cruelty from his people forced Ingwë’s whispered words in a cornered snake’s desperate hiss. “Go to them. Elmo’s spouse is gravid; soon their first child will be born. A new mother will welcome you and Indis. Someone to help nurse, if nothing else. They have food to share, a place at their fire. Please, promise me.”

Crying, Maktâmê kissed her son’s brow. “Stop. This fear, do not carry it with you to the land of the gods. We shall be safe, your sister and I. We are provided for. Go with hope, my son. With joy and excitement. Explore this new land that they have promised with the same wonder that filled your father and I when we first stepped away from the lake shore. The beautiful light when we first saw the stars.” Her voice shook. “When Imin lit fire and gave us all warmth and light. The Powers promise greater than that. Go. See if it is true.” A thumb smoothed away the deep creases of his brow. The dried paint did not leave a mark. “Look forward, as a brave scout of our people. As Alakô’s son, fleet-footed light and sure, Star-beacon. A torch is for the unknown path before us. So look forward.”

Ingwë closed his eyes and willed his heart to steady and slow its rhythm. “I promise.”

---

Chapter End Notes

"Therefore Oromë was sent again to them, and he chose from among them ambassadors who should go to Valinor and speak for their people; and these were Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë, who afterwards were kings." (The Silmarillion)

 ^[12]Penni is one of the six attested group-names among the Avari.

^[13]telu, tel-u "roof in, put the crown on a building", a barn-raising

Hound of Morwë outlines some of my extrapolations for the Tatyar Avari, but for the other half, the Nalyar Avari that do not become Silvan will split only into the main kingdom led by Enel's family, riddled with the dynastic civil wars between cousins that mirror the War of the Roses, and a small splinter group of pirates. Awaskjapatô (away-shore) leads them.