Dancing In The Dark by Grundy

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One Good Day

Hits "Table Manners" on the Taboo bingo card. Possibly "Etiquette" also, given that 'nudity' wasn't a space.

Despite the nudity, no warnings this chapter - just good clean fun.

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It was a warm summer afternoon when they at last reached the pools of Ivrin.

The atmosphere was as pleasant and wholesome as Curufinwë remembered it. The smell of flowers, and the song of birds, and the feel of growing things was all around. If you ignored that they were still in Beleriand and Morgoth or his creatures could kill them at any time, they might have been back home, somewhere in the countryside outside Tirion.

Artanis was almost herself amid it all, so Curufinwë had not the heart to refuse when she suggested that they swim before worrying about where to site their sleeping place. He set his pack down and began to dig through it for something to swim in.

He was a bit startled that his cousin simply stripped out of her clothing, but she laughed and told him that was how the Sindar were accustomed to swim, and over her sixty-odd years among them, she had grown used to their ways, to the point that she no longer kept a bathing costume among her things.

“It is most improper,” he muttered, averting his eyes until the water covered her sufficiently for decency.

“As you say, grandmother,” she replied airily as he turned his back to change.

“Indis would lock us both up for years if she could see this – you for doing something so scandalous, and me for not stopping you,” he grumbled.

“Fortunately, she is not here,” Artanis replied, squirting water at him with her hands.

He snorted as he joined her in the water.

“Unfortunately, don’t you mean,” he retorted. “She would have words for your great-uncle as well, and I’d lay odds she’s the wiser of the two.”

Artë snickered.

“Sorry, I don’t think I quite heard you. It sounded awfully like you just said something nice about Grandmother…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said loftily. “You must have inhaled some water, and you’re hearing things.”

A small wave splashed him in the face, and he spluttered, biting back a curse out of habit before he remembered that she was definitely old enough to hear such words now.

“You can say nice things about her, you know. Your father’s not here to hear it,” Artanis said reproachfully. “And inhaling water doesn’t seem to have made you hear things.”

After that, the splash fight was on, ending only when the pair of them were sopping wet and thoroughly exhausted.

It was then that he noticed that Artanis’ skin was turning a bit pink in the sun.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again, not sure how to bring up such an issue to his cousin when she was wearing no clothes.

“The same way you would if I had clothes on,” Artë said, rolling her eyes. “The Sindar may have a point when they call us prudes. You just say it! It’s called sunburn, and I’m almost as prone to it as the Sindar.”

She reluctantly left the water, and pawed through her pack until she found a lotion which she slathered liberally on her skin. To his relief, she also shrugged into a tunic. Then she set about putting up her tent, which was large enough for both of them.

“What is sunburn?” Curufinwë asked, stretching out in the sun to dry.

The sun was relatively new, but he hadn’t noticed it having any such effect on him. Then again, he didn’t usually spend so many hours out in it without clothing either. And the light pinkish hue Artanis had acquired all over would scarcely show on his darker skin.

“The elves that lived under the stars for so many years are all paler than us, as I’m sure you must have seen,” Artanis began.

He had noticed. The complexion of many of the moriquendi is not far off from the porcelain his mother used to reserve for dinner with guests, so pale as to be practically white rather than the healthy bronze to deep browns usual among the Noldor and the Vanyar.  Even the Teleri, from whom Artanis had inherited her lighter complexion, were still darker than their long-sundered Sindarin kin.

“Those of us who crossed the Ice also lost something of our normal skin color,” Artë continued. “We are not sure if it was from malnutrition, or whether it was from the lack of light. I suspect the light myself, for the Sindar are well fed and healthy, yet still paler than any we knew in the West. Their skin was altered by living for so many years without the light of the trees.”

“Yes, we noticed our skin changed without the treelight also, though not so much as yours. What has all this to do with you turning pink?”

“Pale skin reacts poorly when it is exposed to the sun for too long,” Artanis replied, sounding irritated, and a bit disgusted. “This is a mild case, but if I stayed in the sun too long it would eventually be like a true burn, turning red or even blistering. I never had such a problem by treelight.”

“You were never this sallow by treelight,” Curufinwë muttered, electing not to say that even with the newly acquired burnishing of pink, she still bordered on sickly to his eyes.

He was alert enough to duck the wet towel she flung at him for that, which would otherwise have hit him squarely in the face. (It also distracted him from musing on why the sun would have such an effect when Laurelin had not.)

“I don’t see why you’re worried. Clearly Celeborn finds it attractive enough – and how would he know the difference anyway, if the Sindar are all paler still?”

“It’s annoying,” she grumbled, pinning back the flaps before seating herself in the shade of the tent. “I never used to have to think about such things.”

“All the other dangers we face here and you’re vexed by the sun?” he laughed.

“Easy enough for you to say – your skin hasn’t gone all funny!” she retorted, folding her arms across her chest.

He smiled to himself, for Artë sounded completely normal for the first time since Mithrim.

“Does Irissë suffer from the same problem?” he snickered, remembering that she had been the odd one out among her family for her light complexion, nearly matching Artanis for all both her parents were Noldor.

“Worse,” Artanis sighed. “I at least usually remember to use the creams the Sindar have shown us how to concoct to protect the skin. She forgets until she’s burnt. At least, she did when we were last here.”

He filed that thought away to mention to Tyelko later. His brother will be calmer in his mind if he had some news, any news, of Irissë.

“Do you know if she is still in a fury with Tyelko?”

He had been the one to say they should not speak of unpleasantness here, and yet, with her name already being spoken, he found he had to ask.

Artanis seemed to deflate a bit.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, sounding at once smaller. “I last saw her at the Mereth Aderthad. She went with Turvo wherever he has gone, and since then she doesn’t even write. I don’t understand why she can’t write. Even if she could only send a letter with a bird just once…”

Curufinwë, unfortunately, could understand. Turukano no longer trusted any of them to keep safe the secret of wherever he had found to hide himself and his people away. And after what he’d learned from Artë, he can’t find it in him to say his cousin was wrong to think so.

But it would do no good to say that to Artanis.

So he changed the subject.

“Will your skin catch fire if you dare the sun again?”

She wrinkled her nose at him, but her glare lacked any real force.

“No, now that I’ve put the proper cream on, it shouldn’t burn any further. Why?”

“I have three bottles of wine somewhere around here.”

She stared in astonishment.

“You carried wine all the way from Mithrim?” she said skeptically.

“Of course not, silly, you’d have heard them clinking in my pack long before now.”

 “Not if you’d wrapped them properly so they wouldn’t break on the journey,” she pointed out matter of factly.

“I left the bottles here last time,” he explained, looking around thoughtfully. “The plan was to drink them with Turvo and your brother whenever we all met again. But as I do not think that will happen any time soon-”

Perhaps ever...

“-and you and I are here, we may as well open them. No sense letting them go to waste.”

He frowned, trying to remember which pool it was where he’d secreted the bottles away. Was it that one, or the one over there?

It didn’t help that he hadn’t been precisely sober when he’d taken Ingo up on the suggestion to save the last few bottles from their grandfather’s vineyards, one for each of them, for their next meeting – which was to be by the light of a brighter day, after their victory over the Enemy.

He doesn’t truly expect that part to happen anymore, much less Turvo to agree to drink with him even if it by some strange chance did. Ingo had failed to notice that while he was drinking with both of his closest cousins, it was being achieved only by him flitting back and forth between them. And Curufinwë hadn’t realized at the time just how much reason Turvo had to hate him.

Artanis watched his meandering with some amusement for ten minutes or so before sauntering over to a tree at the edge of one of the pools and –

“Are you talking to a tree?” he demanded, wondering if he should reconsider the idea of letting her have wine. If this was how she behaved when she had yet to have any alcohol…

“Of course,” she replied, untroubled. “You clearly don’t remember where you left your possessions, but this alder does. It’s that one, by the way.”

He gave her a hard look, fairly sure she was having a laugh at his expense, but he finally marched over the pool she had indicated, and checked in the cool, dry gap between some large rocks – where, much to his consternation, he found the bottles he’d been searching for.

“Is this what you’re learning with the Grey Elves?” he asked sarcastically. “How to converse with trees?”

“Among other things,” she laughed. “I fail to see the problem – you have the wine in hand now, do you not?”

He looked down at it, unable to deny the truth of that statement. She laughed all the harder at his indignant look.

Sighing, he fumbled in his pack for the corkscrew that was sure to be in there somewhere. When he finally came up with it, he opened the first bottle, before quirking an eyebrow at her.

“I don’t suppose you brought glasses, did you?” he asked sheepishly.

She snorted, and held out her hand. He passed the bottle to her, curious to see what she had in mind.

“This one’s mine. Open another for yourself,” she ordered.

He almost choked.

“Artë!”

“Curvo!” she retorted, unperturbed. “No one else is here to see us drinking directly from the bottle.”

“That’s not the problem and you know it!”

She shrugged.

“You’re the one channeling grandmother. Although I suppose table manners were more Aunt Anairë’s thing… Either way, I am not a child anymore that you need to water my wine or stop me after only one glass.”

And you’re probably in a mood to get well and truly drunk, given everything that’s happened lately, he thought quietly. But even so…

“These are not some weak Avarin grape juice! A whole bottle would be enough to put Tyelko under the table!”

His older brother has the highest tolerance of any of Finwë’s grandchildren – that they know of, at least, given that Maitimo has never engaged in drinking contests. Finno’s the only one who can come close to matching him, and the one time Ingo had been fool enough to try to keep up, every one of the young neri involved had subsequently been punished by their furious mothers for the messy result – not to mention the tongue lashing Fëanaro had given his middle sons for their foolishness.

Curufinwë still winced just thinking about it.

“Really?” she asked, looking interested. “Take him the third one as a peace offering, then. When he wakes up the morning after, you can tell him the headache is with my compliments, but I’ve changed my mind about strangling him.”

He sighed. He wasn’t sure what was worse – that he was completely failing to dissuade Artanis from her very bad ideas about alcohol distribution, or that as peace overtures went, given that she could not produce Irissë, her plan for Tyelko was probably as good as it got. (Overlooking, of course, the minor detail that it was his wine she was blithely giving away.)

Artanis smiled at his expression and took a relievingly cautious sip.

“Not bad.”

“I should bloody well hope not,” he sniffed. “It’s the last pressing Grandfather did himself.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Excellent. To Grandfather.”

He glared at her, but hastily removed the cork from the bottle that had just become his so he could drink to their grandfather too.

“To Grandfather,” he said, trying not to sigh.

He was going to regret this, he just knew it.