Dancing In The Dark by Grundy

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In Vino...

Only just realized this chapter never got posted here!

This one hits 'weddings And funerals' and 'culture shock' on ye old Taboo bingo card.

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If Curufinwë had worried Artanis might down half the bottle in one go, he was pleasantly disappointed.

It turned out that she drank as gracefully from a bottle as she would have from a glass, and at what he judged to be approximately the same pace.

The bottle just held a lot more than a glass would have…

For a little while she asked after followers of his she had known, and he asked her for what news she had of her brothers, for not only had the younger ones been in Menegroth with her, she wrote to Ingo regularly and so was more up to date than he was on the progress of Ingo’s little building project.

He knew perfectly well she had other things on her mind, but much like with himself, there was no point in pressing Artanis if she wasn’t ready to talk.

 “Curvo?” she asked at last, when they’d been through several innocuous topics and part of their bottles.

“Hm?” he replied, regretting that he couldn’t properly judge the color of the wine through the dark bottle.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Have I ever said no to such a request?”

He took another swig.

“About being married, I mean.”

He swallowed.

Damnation.

“You can ask, but is this something you should speak to your brothers about?”

She frowned.

“I don’t know that it’s really a question they would be able to answer. And it’s for a married ner, not a bachelor like Ingo or Aiko.”

He tried not to panic.

“I don’t like to ask Ango, what with Lótë having turned back with Atto,” she continued. “And I doubt Artaresto would be able to answer, even if I were willing to make my nephew privy to my personal concerns.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You can ask, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll have an answer,” he replied, uncertain where she was going.

“You know that marriage is viewed slightly differently among the Sindar,” she began.

He snorted.

“That much was obvious, yes.”

She gave him a stern look.

“I don’t mean their attitude toward joining,” she said impatiently, using the Sindar euphemism for sex outside of marriage – a word the Noldor had neither known nor needed before they had come back to Beleriand. “Though I suppose that does enter into it.”

He rolled his eyes. He didn’t think much of the way the Sindar shared their bodies with anyone who woke their interest at the moment, much less the way they avoided the natural union of fëar that was meant to accompany that of hroär.

“Don’t be prudish. The Noldor didn’t learn any different until they reached Aman – and clearly not all Noldor forgot about the old ways, or how did Tyelko and Irissë come by the knowledge?”

Curufinwë very nearly spat out his wine in shock.

He’d known the two of them shared an unnatural attraction for each other, that Tyelko looked on Irissë in an uncousinly way, but to have acted on it… He couldn’t decide if the absence of marriage actually made it better or worse.

“New rule,” he announced crossly, glaring at her. “You will wait until I have not just taken a drink to say such things. This wine is too good to waste.”

“Agreed,” she said with a shrug. “Though I really do not see where it is so shocking.”

“I suppose it shouldn’t be,” he grimaced. “Now that I think on it, that makes quite a few little oddities over the years make far more sense.”

How driven to distraction Tyelko has been without her, for a start. One could not conduct such an affair for many years with a nis one would have married but for the laws of our people without it having an effect.

“Are you going to be very Noldor about the whole joining thing?” she asked anxiously. “If so, perhaps I shouldn’t talk to you about it. But I don’t know who else to ask. There aren’t very many mixed marriages.”

“I will try my best,” he sighed. “That is all I can promise. It is an attitude I do not understand, or much wish to either. I have to confess I’m relieved that you married properly.”

Artë flushed.

“I actually thought their attitude toward joining was quite sensible,” she confessed. “Why would one not want to be sure that they are compatible with their mate in that way before making a commitment that lasts for the life of Arda?”

He peered at her.

“Artanis, are you telling me-”

“That I joined with Celeborn before we were bound? Yes. As I said, it made sense.”

He nearly spit his wine a second time, though he supposed this one was his own fault for being stupid enough to take a sip before she answered.

“First,” he told her, “that is the only warning I am giving you about bending the rule about saying shocking things when I am drinking before I retaliate. I’m sure I can find something that will make you either spit your wine or snort it out your nose laughing.”

“Duly noted,” she said gravely.

“Second,” he continued, “it is a good thing indeed you did not speak to your brothers about this, whatever this is, because they would have killed Celeborn for behaving so inappropriately! I’m halfway considering it myself!”

She glared at him, though not nearly as harshly as she would have if she thought he meant it in any seriousness.

“Curufinwë,” she said, a hint of danger entering her voice, “you are the one who was always so adamant about keeping an open mind. You should therefore be able to keep an open mind about this, particularly since I am actually married to the ner in question now!”

“It is still not the way things are meant to be done,” he said mulishly, ignoring the validity of the first part of her statement.

“Not the way things are done among the Noldor, but it is very much the way they are done among the Sindar! To their thinking, it would have been odd not to join at least a few times before marrying, to be sure we were certain of each other and not mistaking a passing infatuation for finding the one we were truly meant for.”

“Very well. Go on.”

“When a Sindarin couple does decide to marry, to formally bind themselves to each other, it is just as sacred and inviolable a union as any among the amanyar.”

“I have conceded the point, Artë. Get on with the actual question.”

“Is it…”

She hesitated.

“Is it normal to speak of children almost at once after marriage?”

He almost laughed with relief, for given how she had approached the subject, he had been expecting far worse.

“No, not at all. The first years of marriage are about the bond with one’s mate, strengthening that bond, and learning what it is to live as a couple now that you are wed. You know it is no longer the same as being unbound.”

She nodded, though somewhat uncertainly.

He raised an eyebrow.

“If you noticed no great difference, then I would say that perhaps you ought to have been more careful about ‘joining’. Do you mean to tell me the Sindar never have accidental unions?”

 “You know perfectly well they do,” she chided. “Artaresto and Merelin were one.”

“That is different,” he snorted. “Arto did not understand the ways of the Sindar at that time. He assumed she meant what any of us would have meant by such an advance, and he was so taken with her that he did not stop to think.”

“They are not the only ones, and it is not always due to cultural differences,” she retorted. “It happens every so often, but most usually among couples who are well-suited to each other in any case. The Sindar and Avari hold that when one meets one’s Eru-intended mate, it may be difficult not to bond at once.”

“You would know better than I,” he shrugged. “Silmë and I both being Noldor, there was no joining, only binding.”

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could say anything.

“I do not want to know,” he said firmly. “There are still a few things in this world which have nothing to do with Morgoth that I do not wish to think on, and you joining with anyone, husband or not, is one of them.”

She looked amused, but subsided in favor of taking another drink herself.

“Anyway, where would you get the idea that children are something a couple think on immediately after marriage?”

She sighed.

“This must be another difference between us and the Sindar,” she said mournfully. “For they do speak of it, almost at once. I was being asked even at the wedding feast when we would beget our first. Thingol led the toasting by hoping we would be fruitful. I had not until that moment thought that there might be any significance in the presence of so much more fruit than normal.”

Curufinwë’s jaw dropped.

“But how…?”

He trailed off, trying to make sense of it.

“I suppose there must be some practical reason for it,” Artanis offered uncertainly. “A couple may have been together for many years before they decide to formally bind, so perhaps with that in mind, proceeding to children more quickly is not so surprising?”

He rather thought that even a couple that had been joining for yeni would still need time to adjust to a marriage bond before bringing children into the world, but he had no more certainty than she did what informed the Sindar perspective.

“Or maybe it is due to life here being so much riskier than it was in Aman,” she mused, clearly thinking out loud. “When you know you may die at any time, perhaps it makes begetting a child seem more urgent, that you will have something of your mate, or he of you, if the worst should occur.”

“It is not a line of reasoning that would occur to me,” he snorted, drinking himself. “If anything, I would think the risk should make one less likely to beget children, not more.”

“I thought that myself,” Artë admitted. “I was quite taken aback at the question, and at how persistently so many of Celeborn’s kin continued to ask once we were wed. I wonder if my reticence isn’t part of what made Thingol behave as he did.”

“What?” Curufinwë demanded. “Because you are not yet with child after scarcely a year married, you do not truly love his nephew?”

“Something like that, I think,” she replied sadly, taking another drink.

“What a troll-brain! It’s a good thing his queen thinks more clearly!”

She snickered.

“You cannot come up with any better insult than troll-brain?”

“Shush. I am focusing on the problem at hand,” he informed her loftily. “Namely that my adorable little cousin is being treated poorly for being confused by a set of norms completely conflicting with those she grew up with. And rather backward!”

“I’m not precisely confused,” Artë shrugged. “Merely wondering if I had missed something about marriage. It is not as if my mother were here to advise me, after all.”

“Or your grandmothers,” he agreed. “But what about an aunt? You could ask Irimë.”

“Yes,” she said sardonically. “I could. If only I hadn’t run off almost at once with my disreputable cousin because everyone else at Mithrim was trying to smother me.”

He snorted.

“They’d have gotten over it once they’d had a reminder that you are Artanis.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked hopefully.

He thought about it.

“Probably not. With Irissë gone, you’re the only girl, even if you are grown and married now. Sorry.”

“Exactly,” she said emphatically, pointing at him with the bottle. “I didn’t want to deal with all that. Just like I didn’t want to deal with explaining to the Sindar that I don’t want to beget children with Morgoth’s shadow hanging over us.”

“Sensible,” he agreed, lifting his bottle in salute.

She clinked her bottle against his in something like a toast.

“I don’t think I could deal with the fear, raising a child in a world like this, where they could be killed or taken. Or where they might have to live without a parent because their parent was killed or taken. Do you know I barely know anyone in Doriath who has not lost a family member?”

He was stupefied by the notion. His father’s mother was the only one either of them knew of who had ever died in Aman.

“What does Celeborn say to all this?” he asked.

Artanis grimaced.

“He does not agree with me, obviously,” she admitted. “But nor does he wish to fight about it. He thinks given time, I will feel the urge for a child. He is being patient.”

Her irritation with such transparent humoring of her odd foreign notions was plain.

“Hold your ground,” Curufinwë advised. “I’m a parent, and worse, I’m fool enough to have brought my son here. It is the single stupidest thing I have ever done. You are more right than you can possibly know about the fear.”

“What do you mean, Curvo?”

“You may think you know what it is like to fear for a child, but until you actually have one, it is only imagining. It is much…more when it is no longer academic.”

She nodded pensively.

“That makes sense. I think.”

“You think?” he repeated, wondering if perhaps it was time to try to maneuver the bottle away from her. They’ve both been drinking fairly steadily, and his bottle is at least half empty.

“I will only be able to be certain whenever I do beget a child, however many yeni from now that may be.”

He laughed.

“To your hypothetical someday child.”

He didn’t say it out loud, but he knew perfectly well she’d hear his silent addendum: May she or he be sufficiently Noldo to irritate the hell out of Thingol and Celeborn both.

They drank again.

“How is Tyelpë?” she asked next. “Since raising a child on the Hither Shores is no hypothetical for you?”

He took a long swig before he answered.

“I have already said to you that I am an idiot,” he told her. “That alone should tell you much. My son is growing up without peers his own age, for I grudged none of my followers sending their young ones back to safety, nor Tyelko either. Tyelpë also has not the freedom to roam as we did in our younger days – he must keep to the fortress for his own safety, and in winter, he may go weeks without being able to stir outside for bad weather. Nor can I take him with me when I travel, for I do not feel he is mature enough or skilled enough yet to deal with the dangers.”

She grimaced, clearly thinking that she herself would be unhappy in such a case.

“I have no choice but to teach him swordplay, and tactics, and how to defend himself and any people he may come to lead,” Curufinwë continued. “I would be far happier if I could simply mentor him in the forge, where his real talent lies, and where he is happy and truly desires to learn.”

“Another smith?” Artë asked with a smile.

“He will do great things,” Curufinwë assured her confidently. “Just you wait and see! But I’m determined to keep him away from the Oath as much as possible. He was only a child, he didn’t swear to anything – I believe he still has the freedom to make his own path, shadowed though it may be by his family, and I will not have that taken from him.”

“I am surprised to hear you say so,” she said pensively. “I thought you would be more dedicated than any to your Oath.”

He laughed grimly.

“I should be, shouldn’t I? Atarinkë!” He lifted his bottle sarcastically and tried not to snarl, covering it by taking a drink instead.

“I did not mean it so, Curvo,” she said soothingly. “And I don’t think your mother meant that you were your father with your name, either.”

They have had that conversation many times. Artë has always professed the firm belief that his mother had seen what a good father he would be, even when he was young. He has never been able to determine how much of that is simply stubborn loyalty from the little cousin most like himself.

“Not the point,” he said, waving his bottle irritably. “The Oath is unfulfillable. The Valar knew it. Uncle Ara knew it. Stinking cesspits of Angband, you knew it. I bet Maitimo knew no good could come of it after Alqualondë. But we’re stuck for it, aren’t we? Atar even made us promise a second time, as if swearing by Manwë and Varda hadn’t been enough.”

Artanis’ eyes are full of sorrow, deep as the sea.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” he continued morosely. “The worst of it is that Silmë knew it, before we ever left Tirion. She begged me to leave Tyelpë with her. When I said no to that, she asked that I leave her with another child, to make the absence and the missing more bearable.”

“You have another child?” Artanis whispered in shock. “Curvo, you never said-”

“No,” he said flatly. “I denied her that, too. She was wise, and I was a blind idiot.”

He paused, frowning.

“No, that is not right either,” he corrected himself. “For the blind cannot help not seeing. I could have seen but chose not to, which is worse by far.”

Blind was another word that had been only a concept in Aman, but was a reality here. Several of his followers have lost their sight to wounds or burns. One lost an eye entirely.

“You think now that you were wrong?” Artë said quietly.

“As wrong as Atar,” he admitted. “It was pure selfishness on my part, me not wanting to miss my son growing up. I should have left Tyelpë where he would have been safe. He would have been known as a Kinslayer’s son in any case, but he would have been better off facing the wrath of the Lindar than orcs, trolls, valaraukar, and whatever other twisted creatures Morgoth has devised in his stinking cesspits. Failing that, I should have done as Silmë asked and begotten a child who would have grown up safe and loved and free of my taint.”

“You-”

“No, Artanis,” he growled. “I am not a cranky drunk, but even so I will not allow you trying to say that I am not tainted. We tell the truth, remember?”

She nodded unhappily. They are honest with each other, even when honesty is not pleasant. Let others reach for ‘tactful’ or ‘politic’ phrasings. They say what they mean, and they say what is. If anything, the fact that both of them were blurry from the wine by now should make it easier instead of harder.

Artanis flopped onto her back to lie flat.

“How did it all get to be such a mess, Curvo?”

He snorted.

“I could blame Morgoth,” he shrugged, “but that would be too easy. He certainly didn’t help, but we did quite a lot all on our own. Atar made his messes, I made mine-”

“And I made mine,” Artanis sighed. “Perhaps I should have been more Sindar about marriage and continued without binding for another yén or two. By then I might have better understood what I was letting myself in for.”

“Or you might have been cast out from Menegroth and never seen your Celeborn again,” Curufinwë pointed out. “Or he might have been killed. Or you might have been killed. Or any number of things. At least I’m blaming myself for stupid things I actually did.”

“Was marrying hastily not stupid?” she asked the ceiling of the tent.

Curufinwë regarded his own bottle suspiciously. How much had they had to drink?

“Not if you love him and believe he is the one for you,” he said firmly.

“Don’t want anyone else,” she said fuzzily. “Just don’t want a child. Not now. Not like this.”

“That’s it,” he declared, having thought it through. “You’ve had enough.”

“Have not!” she protested.

He knew perfectly well he was pleasantly cushioned by alcohol, but he was still coordinated enough to grab the bottle off of her, and discovered it was three-quarters gone.

Chalk up one more stupid decision in his column – he should have stopped her sooner.

“Have so,” he said firmly, invoking his older brother/cousin voice. “I’m going to get you some water, and I’m taking both bottles with me.”

He thought about it for a second before adding, “and the corkscrew.”

By the time he got back with a full waterskin, Artë was snoring.

He sighed, and turned her on to her side, propping her with a pillow. He had not forgotten Atto’s blistering tongue lashing about how incredibly lucky he and his brothers had been that Ingo hadn’t choked to death on his own vomit after that drinking contest – and that it would have happened if not for Maitimo.

Fëanaro had still been a responsible enough uncle at that time to also roust his hapless nephew painfully early the next morning to lecture Ingo along with his own sons about alcohol and the proper care of drunken elves too young and stupid to know when it was time to stop imbibing, and to warn what would befall any of them should they be so criminally irresponsible a second time. (Poor Ingo had been convinced that if the treelight didn’t split his aching head in two, Fëanaro’s voice would.)

He had no wish to explain to Ingo how he had been idiot enough to let Artë drink herself to death.

He put a cork in her bottle, in case she wanted to have the rest with dinner the next day, and after a long moment of thought, decided he should probably turn in himself and corked his own bottle as well.

Trying to find dry clothes in his pack proved too complicated for his muddled state, so he simply kicked off his still damp swimming costume and pulled a blanket over himself, making sure to turn his back to her just in case the blanket fell off in the middle of the night. (Though really, it was clear he was the only one who would find the situation embarrassing. If Artë could swim naked, he could sleep naked. There would be time enough to worry about getting dressed in the morning.)

With any luck, Artanis would not have a hangover when she woke, and would feel better for having talked about at least some of what was troubling her.