Of Ingwë Ingweron by heget

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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

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