Forth Again, to Behold the Stars by feanorusrex

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Chapter 6

It was now golden summer, more than a year since they had left Brethil. Life went on, and Niënor watched Lalaith grow, amazing at how quickly the time passed. She often found herself talking at length to others about what her daughter had done that day, or calling for Brandir, “She stood up, come and see if she will do it again!”

Niënor was aware that she ridiculously in love with her child, and she did not care. Was Morwen like this with her? Did her mother exclaim over tiny Niënor when she stood up, by planting her hands on the ground and pushing up to stand on her own for a few seconds shrieking happily in her own nonsense words before she toppled over again? Though she wanted Morwen to have been there in the same place that she was now, exclaiming over Niënor’s first attempts at walking, she could not imagine her mother expressing such open affection. Invaded Hithlum was not a place for such familial happiness, and Morwen was never so open even at the best of times.

But Linreth was peaceful, and Nienor did not hesitate to be so for her own baby. And she did, doing her best to make Lalaith feel loved like Brandir had when Niënor had been a child. And though Brandir was not her father, Niënor had never seen a man so enamored of a child. When she called for Brandir to come and see Lalaith standing he rushed into their front room, knelt down and lifted Lalaith into the air, telling her that soon she would be walking better than he could.

Niënor read to her, feeling that it would be good for the baby, even if she could not understand the stories yet. She could find no tales about women who fought dragons, and she had not yet decided if she ever planned to tell her daughter about her own mother’s past, so Niënor created her own, telling Lalaith about two women called Morwen and Aerin who fought a dragon and defended their village. She did not give the dragon a name.

Thinking of Aerin, Niënor considered writing to that women. She was her last link to her old past, and Niënor wished her well for the help she had given to their family, but as far she knew Aerin still lived under Brodda and his Easterlings, and Niënor did not want to reveal that she was still alive to Brodda if he read his wife’s letters.

She continued her work at the inn. Niënor adopted more and more responsibility, until she directed many of the other workers in their tasks. She likes providing a meal, bed, or conversation to its patrons. She had been on a few journeys in her life, and appreciate each act of kindness shown along the way no matter how tiny. While she was still interested in the healing arts, particularly or healing the mind, Linreth’s residents were healthy and there were not enough of them to need- or pay- two full time healers. Niënor contented herself with tending Lalaith’s minor wounds - many as she had begun walking, and almost immediately running- and helping Brandir when he had a surplus of patients.

She knew that this was not some far-off, epic destiny, but that was all right. Túrin had been burdened with a great doom but while his deeds might someday be the stuff of songs, heroes rarely got to come home to a mother, best friend, child and most recently, a little white and black cat that had followed her home and none of them had had the heart to turn away.

But not everything was peaceful. Her feelings for Brandir, her protector, physician, teacher, friend, and now ‘spouse,’ changed very suddenly and entirely without Niënor’s consent. One moment they were eating their evening meal together, she holding Lalaith, and he speaking about some small matter. Watching him, Niënor realized that she wished to be married to him, really married, body and soul. Her heart beat against her breastbone, as he finished speaking and made eye contact with her, his look dictating a question, but his words were lost in the loudness of Niënor’s own mental realization. She felt dizzy, and off balance. Why must she feel like this? With Túrin, she had not felt such. She had been taken with him, but then, Niníel had been taken with everything around her in those days. Túrin had asked for her, and she had eventually said yes, because Niníel felt incomplete, with half her life missing, and because she knew that Túrin was something important to her, she would do anything to get those pieces of herself back.

Now everytime she faced Brandir, Niënor felt self conscious, awkward. Barely able to speak to him, Niënor dealt with this by avoiding her old friend as much as she could in a shared house. Why would something like this happen to her? Niënor was not some young maiden who could barely look at her beloved. She had suffered a dragon, and doom, and very nearly death, and yet!

As Niënor lay beside him at night, covered by a blanket even though it was summer, and hot, because without something covering her, she felt exposed. There in the broiling heat of the night with her child asleep paces away in her cradle, Niënor stayed awake, wanting him. Coward, she thought of herself, choked with desire and terror that accompanied the fleeting thought of voicing her feelings to him. Coward, that I cannot tell him.

Niënor understood the content of all the works concerning love now. She understood why love could cause death, and bring down cities, how one could fulfill the most adventurous tasks, or create the most insane scheme only to get one person to look on them as beloved.

Her love for her daughter was like cool water, necessary for her to live, sustaining, strengthening, but this was fire, raging inside her, burning the meat of her heart. And though she could end this torment by a few words to Brandir, then he would know, know how she felt, and she would be open, exposed, raw, vulnerable, and the worst part was that if he did not feel the same, he would be gentle and polite about it, and Niënor would never be able to face him again.

Niënor pondered how Brandir might feel about her. While she remembered when Turin asked for her in marriage the first time, she had refused, because of some nameless unease, and because Brandir has advised her not to accept his proposal. But he had not warned her to refuse because of his own feelings, but because of his own misgivings, and she had judged him to be completely without jealousy at the time at least. But looking back, perhaps he had spoken from his own interests as well. But then why had Brandir never said anything? Even now, when she had clearly expressed her lack of feelings for Túrin after getting her memories back, now when a year had passed, if he felt something then why his silence?

He must feel nothing then. Niënor did not want to risk it. Their friendship and their living situation would be ruined. But then again, if he should feel the same, if he looked at her in the same way, then they could marry truly this time, and...

Niënor pulled her blanket tighter around herself, and turned on her side, farther away from him. If she was too cowardly to broach the subject, then she should not get the pleasure of imagining a positive outcome.

Yet still she wanted.

It was a Midsummer's festival, one of Linreth’s one of only communal gatherings and Niënor and Brandir sat together, watching the dancing villagers swirl in a field edged with colored lights, when Brandir touched her arm and said suddenly, “I would dance with you, Nienor, if I could.”

She was startled. He must have thought that she was envious of all the other couples. Niënor wanted to tell him that he could put his arms around her without the pretext of a dance to make it acceptable but instead answered, “It is well. I have no wish to dance.” Which made her sound uninterested, and he lifted his hand from her arm, but she could still feel the ghost of his touch against her skin. Coward, she thought. “No, wait, I mean, that is very kind of you. Thank you.” Niënor added hastily.

The seasons changed, and while her feelings did not go away, they shifted form, so that while she still loved him silently, she did not feel that she was burning every time their eyes met. She came to terms with her feelings, or almost. Niënor would like to believe that she did anyway. She could ignore many sorts of pain, and love was no exception. Perhaps something would happen, or perhaps no miracle would occur.

Another amazing thing happened in the autumn, that took her mind off of assumed unrequited love for quite a time. The traveling woman arrived at the inn, looking like any of those who passed through, and it was not until she removed her cloak, and Niënor’s heart lept in surprise, and recognition. “Mother!” She gasped, hastening to Morwen. “Lady, what is your name?” she said, keeping her voice calm, trying to avoid a scene which she knew that Morwen would hate. But her excitement overcame her, and the words tumbled out of her mouth, “It seems to me that you were once called Morwen Eledhwen, and my mother besides.”

Then the woman looked up sharply, her eyes combing Niënor’s face. “We were separated years ago as we left Doriath, and my memory was taken, but I found my way to Brethil, and Túrin was there as well. Now I live here with my husband and my- our baby girl and-” she broke off.

“Túrin, you say?” Morwen said.

“He is dead now. And Glaurung with him. Mother, please come home with me, there is so much that I wish to tell you.”

“My searching all these years has not been in vain.” She did not smile, she hardly ever did, but her face was lit with the radiance that had given her the surname Eledhwen. Morwen allowed Niënor to take her arm and lead her to the small house she called home. It seemed impossible that she had found another lost part of her life, but here was her mother, listening as Niënor told her very nearly everything of the years they had spent apart. She left out her marriage to Túrin. Her mother had endured enough sorrow as evidenced by her own account of wandering, sparsely detailed as it was.

“Your father is dead.” Morwen told her daughter, later in the night. Niënor was tired, Brandir and Lalaith having long since retired, but did not want to stir from her chair, wanting one more moment with her mother, fearing that it would all be false come the morrow. “I felt it as surely if I had died, and I dreamt of him.”

“Where is his body? And why would he have only perished now as it has been decades since we lost him?” But some things remained unanswered. The night stretched on, and in the morning Morwen still remained with them. Their family expanded to include a fourth person, and Niënor, anxious to make her mother feel that she was necessary and not receiving charity,gave Lalaith into her care while she and Brandir attended to their daily labors.

Niënor had thought that the name might bother her mother, as it hearkened to her first lost child, but Morwen showed only care for her grandchild.

“Morwen resembles you,” Brandir told Niënor one night.

“We look nothing alike,” she responded, half asleep.

“Yes, you have a different hair and eye colors, but in your faces is the same structure and your determination to fight anyone that comes between you and your loved ones. And of course, she is very beautiful.” The last bit consumed her thoughts, and Niënor could not sleep thinking of it. If he was commenting this in favor of their looking alike, and he thought that Morwen was beautiful, and he thought that Morwen was beautiful, then it mean that he thought that Niënor was as well. She had trouble falling asleep after that remark.

“Brandir loves you very much,” Morwen said one night. The mentioned was not with them, but off with a patient, and they prepared supper while waiting for him. Niënor was startled, and wished to immediately ask her mother why she thought such, for Morwen had always been extremely perceptive, and if she thought that Brandir’s feelings for her daughter were truly romantic, then she must be right, surely?

But Niënor could not put any of these questions to her mother, and so, very glad that her back was turned, she replied, “Yes, I know. He is more dear to me than words can say.” But she could speak to him and lay her feelings bare, she was only scared. And yet she had been terrified before, in front of the dragon, before Taeglin, in childbirth, in leaving Brethil, and she had come thought those to greater happiness. I must, she thought, as the days passed, with no action on her part. I must.

He took ill that winter, not seriously, but Niënor tended to him eagerly, feeling that in caring for him, their roles were reversed from those years ago, and she could repay him a small part of her debt. And if she stroked his feverish sleeping forehead as well, this was her business.

Early frost had fogged up the windows, the morning she decided to speak. She might be late going to her work, but it had been months, and what would Morwen say if she knew that her daughter was being behaving in such a retiring, coy fashion?

She walked to the room set aside for Brandir’s practice and his patients, her heart forgetting it's even rhythm, and putting against her ribs. “May we speak?” She walks nearer to him as he turned from his work. Suddenly she took his hand, not having planned this, but unable to stop herself. “Brandir,”

“Are you alright? Your hands are cold, have I given you my malady? Such is often the lot of physicians; I apologize.”

“No, I am quite well.” So get on with it! She scolded herself. She must be unnerving him with her odd behavior. “I- over these past years, I have been through so much. I am not the same person who married Turin, and I would not have done so today. I have realized so much about life, about myself, and today were I choosing a spouse I would choose you. You Brandir, my caretaker, and friend. I mean that I have feelings for you, and,” she could barely speak for the nervousness catching at her words. “I apologize if you do not feel the same, and I will never speak of it again-”

Brandir pulled her towards him and kissed her, causing her to break off speaking. “I assure you, Niënor, there is no need to apologize,” he said softly.

Niënor, filled with happiness, moved towards him again, and he, sensing her intent said, “Yes- but wait, I first want to say that when you first came to Brethil you had the mind of a child and I loved you as such, and I would not allow my feelings to grow because of that. But after that night at Cabed-en-Aras I knew a different women, and I fell in love with her fully, as an equal.”

“I love you so much,” Niënor replied. Her voice was choked with emotion and she embraced him again, showing her feelings when words seemed paltry.

When they married, they could not call it a wedding, but a renewal of vows would not be suspicious. Winter was a strange time for a wedding, but it suited Niënor well. For winter held death and cold, but in the frozen ground, the promise of spring, life, and hope.

 

Chapter End Notes

I wrote this story because it always bothered me that Niënor just/?? Killed her child without even stopping to think? And it bothered me that the baby was treated like a curse. Also Brandir is probably the most flawless character in the Slim and I wanted him to be happy.

I couldn’t really think of a way to say it in the story, but Morgoth probably saw that Hurin’s daughter being a badass and making her own fate, and went: “well shit THAT’S not torture for my captive to watch,” and killed him.

I called it Forth, Again to Behold the Stars, from the last line of Dante’s Inferno- my classical education coming in handy- because in that story they are in hell but they come out, and they survived, and the stars are still there and they go on to heaven, well purgatory first but, and I think that that’s the theme of this fic, Nienor goes through a lot of bad stuff, but she survives and happiness is still there.

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