For the First Time in Forever by quillingmesoftly

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Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Neniel plays matchmaker, and Maglor is along for the ride.

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 Days together turned into weeks, as they left the bank of the Baranduin to travel through the Eryn Vorn. The days were mostly filled with singing to the trees and the animals, going through the tengwar, and finding firewood while Neniel hunted for food. Apparently, she considered hunting her responsibility by virtue of her gender, much like he considered the cooking to be his job. His expression of startlement the first time he'd seen her skin an animal had made her almost shake with laughter. 

“Why do you assume that I don’t understand death?” she asked him, a smile in her voice, once she'd gotten her laughter under control. 

“I guess you do,” Maglor responded slowly, once he’d bitten back the objection that nobody expected a girl who sang like Vána Ever-young and attracted almost as many animals to skin them. It wasn’t accurate. The Amanyarin wouldn't, but the Sindar certainly might. And apparently, the Avari really did expect exactly that. “Death is part of Middle-Earth, and you were born here, and you deal in it. But you haven’t seen a war, Neniel, have you? It’s – it’s different. Death starts to mean something different.” 

Neniel pursed her lips and shrugged, continuing to peel the pelt from the carcass. “We are immortal, and the world is still not that old, compared to how old it may yet become. I think things will change.” 

Maglor thought about Beleriand, about how even young Elrond and Elros had never gone anywhere alone if they could help it, and shook his head. 

“For your sake, I hope they don’t,” he said. Please, no. Not Eriador too. 

Neniel smiled, and kept skinning, beginning to sing one of the work songs from Lothlann he’d taught her. Her brown hands were stained with blood. 

---

 Every so often, she would go to the river and sit beside it in silence, dangling her bare feet in the water, her eyes closed. Even centuries after Morgoth being cast into the Void and Thangorodrim thrown down, it made Maglor incredibly uneasy. 

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he told her one day, after she had sat with her legs in the Baranduin for about three hours again, bow cast aside, quiver unstrapped from her back, and head tilted to the side in silent contemplation. 

One golden eyebrow rose. “Wouldn’t what?” 

“Do that. Sit there so vulnerably.” 

She chuckled. “Oh, but I must. Commanding things should only be done at great need, after all. My father’s arts, for that reason, usually rely on persuasion, which means I must charm them. And I find it rather difficult to be charming with my weapons in hand.” 

He raised his eyebrows in turn. “You should have met my brothers. They could give extensive tutelage on the topic.” Although, he had to admit, charming was not the particular word anybody would have applied to Maedhros, particularly after Angband. Charismatic, certainly. Magnetic, even. Charming – not quite. 

Curufin and Celegorm could be charming, though, when they wished. Ambarussa, too. 

Carnë, on the other hand...

“I don’t think so,” Neniel said. “You don’t talk about them much, but I never got the impression they were very good listeners.” She frowned. “That – that sounded less rude in my head. I’m sorry.” 

Maglor snorted. “Of all the things you could lay at my feet, that’s probably one of the better things. No, we none of us were good at listening. Not even me.” If he was any good at listening, he would have realised that binding themselves to the Everlasting Darkness was an indescribably bad idea.  

“You’re a musician,” Neniel pointed out. 

“Aside from that, I proved a poor listener,” Maglor said. “But is that what you’re doing? Listening?” 

She nodded. “I am listening to the currents.” She frowned. “There is something strange going on with Ossë. And Uinen.” 

“Strange?” Maglor enquired. 

“They are unhappy. I do not know how I have not sensed it before, because it is not a new sadness – I suppose I always had something else on my mind, on visits before – but Ossë is sad. Uinen is, too.” She reached for her quiver and strapped it onto her back, and then reached for her bow.

“What are they sad about?” Maglor asked, although he has a strong suspicion that he knows Ossë’s half of the story.

He is sad, because he loves her and does not think she will love him back. 

She looked very troubled. “I’m not sure. I hope something ill hasn’t happened. Mam has not said anything, she would have sent a message.” 

“How?” he asked, curious. “The water-mirror?” 

“Or she would have asked a bird.” 

He blinked. “Your mother speaks to birds.” 

It really shouldn’t startle him, considering that Tyelkormo had spoken to anything with a pulse, and he’d seen Elwing turn into a bird, for goodness’ sake. But the idea of a woman who was technically a river speaking to the birds did surprise him. Neniel nodded, drawing a comb out of the doeskin pack that had appeared by their camp-fire a fortnight ago.

“She speaks to most animals. She could have asked a wolf or one of the dogs, I suppose. One of them brought the pack to me. Good thing, too. My hair was starting to look like a birds' nest.” She looked at him, and grinned. “Something you know a lot about, after all.” 

“Hush,” Maglor said, the corner of his mouth quirking, as he ran a hand through his hair. He’d cropped it to his jaw, at her suggestion, after she’d looked between his hair, the comb, back again, and winced. It was one of the many things he’d have never considered back in Aman, but the decision to cut his hair short hadn’t killed anyone yet, so he was willing to give it a chance. 

“Discussing things you know about–”

“You mean ‘speaking of things I know about’–” Maglor corrected.

She gave him a reproving look. He shrugged. “You asked me to teach you.” 

She held the reproving look for a few moments later, and then smiled. “I suppose I did. Thank you.” She paused. “Speaking of things you know – do you know anything about what is happening with Ossë and Uinen?” 

Maglor hesitated, and then realised that by hesitating, he had effectively already answered the question. Neniel’s smile widened. 

“You do know something!” 

“I know that Ossë is in love with Uinen, and is convinced that she does not feel the same way,” Maglor said. “That’s probably the sum of useful information I have in this.” 

“He thinks she doesn’t – men!” Neniel said, glaring up at the tree canopy.

Maglor smothered a smile. “I’m fairly certain that we can’t apply that term to male Maiar. Can we?” 

“Males,” she corrected, her glare swinging to him. “Alright. Uncle Ossë is being an idiot. What else?”

He shrugged, unable to think of anything else, and he felt her mind brush against his own, gently. The feel of their minds brushing together was almost pleasant now, as he heard the babbling of a brook. May I? 

 He sighed, and nodded, thinking back to the conversation with Ossë, and all that he had shown him. Neniel tossed the comb from one hand to the other, as she watched it unfold, and then she smiled.

“Uinen’s keeping?” 

“Don’t you start,” he sighed. 

“We can work with that. How’s your hand?” 

“It aches, but nothing more than that. What are you thinking?” 

---

Maglor sat by the seashore, and plucked at the harp-strings. An old Quenya ditty of anxiety, of love that the singer dared not to speak of. Beside him, Neniel swayed in time to the rhythm of the song, and broke into a wordless harmony, wrapping her sweet, strong voice around his. 

Flowers grow beneath my love’s feet, 

Her eyes are dark and her voice is sweet,

Sweet like honey, more maddening than wine,

And oh! How I wish I could say she was mine. 

 

But how can I speak, when she is so near?

How can I speak? My throat is closed in fear.

How can I speak, to one so dear, 

For if I speak, she will not stay here. 

The silly rhapsody continued, as the singer praised his love’s eyes, figure, hair, and lamented his own anxiety. Then Neniel sang a song in her Avarin language, melody quick and worried. Maglor responded with another sadder one, one of the haunting melodies of the Vanyar, of hopeless love for one already wed, forgoing the harp accompaniment, for his hand was aching now. He was fairly sure that it was a song that Indis had composed, before the Statute. Neniel sang again, a Sindarin ballad. They kept going, back and forth, until at last the only thing that came to mind was Leithian. 

He took a quick drink from the water-skin, and prepared to sing again.

Is this really your best chance?

I think so. Uncle Ossë has never been patient. 

Maglor hummed, finding the key he could sustain for the length of the song, and sang. Neniel sat beside him, her braid swinging as she nodded her head in time to the beat. At the third stanza, she got to her feet and started to dance, her arms swirling gracefully above her head as she spun circles around him. The world shimmered before his eyes, and he could almost see the woods of Doriath, all those years before he and his brothers invaded them. He sang, and she continued the dance, and it turned slow and ponderous as he sang of Morgoth’s might; fierce when he sang of Barahir’s men, all sharp aggressive foot-strikes and high leaps. On and on she danced, until he came to the fourth Canto. As he sang of Daeron’s flight, and Beren’s enchantment, she stopped, arrested, standing motionless and frozen. He paused. 

Her eyes locked onto his, her head tilting to the side. 

“Don’t stop,” she said softly. “I think it’s working.” 

“What’s working?”

“Ossë’s listening.” 

He continued to sing, slapping his good hand against his thighs for an accompanying rhythm, the tempo of the song slowing as the lovers met. The waves surged, and the Lady of the Seas walked forward onto the beach.

It was clearly Uinen. Her hair was long, and the colour of the blue-green seas; she wore a dress of sea-weed in the Telerin style, with a square neckline, and most of the back left bare. Unlike Ossë, when he chose to walk as a Teler, though, she had not bothered to change her skin to something other than a translucent blue shade. 

“Little singer,” she greeted him. Her voice sounded like the roar of a conch shell. “Streamlet. Why did you decide to recite seemingly every love song you know to me today? As wonderful as your voices are, your whims usually have a reason behind them.” 

“I was thinking of friends of mine,” Neniel said, smiling up at Uinen. “Who appear to be trapped in a love song.” 

“Are they, now?” Uinen said, settling down to sit beside Maglor. The edges of her spirit felt like the impenetrable depths of the sea pressing in on his mind, and Maglor winced. Uinen noticed, and the almost oppressive weight lifted. 

“Sorry, singer.” 

Maglor shook his head, and Neniel continued, rather cheerfully. “Yes, quite. Both of them seem convinced that the other does not love them.” 

“How tragic. If only one of them could dare to speak to the other,” Uinen said dryly. “You know my counsel already.” 

Neniel nodded, and Maglor took a gulp of water from the skin. Four cantos was a bit long, with no other player to play the instrumentals between the cantos. “Yes. Which is why I suggest that you take your own advice.” 

Maglor choked on the swallow, and Neniel thumped his back, until he spat the mouthful out on the sand. Uinen’s eyes had gone very wide. 

“Streamlet, what are you talking about?” 

“Uncle Ossë loves you. And you love him,” Neniel said, with a shrug. “And for two beings who are older than time itself to be stuck in this kind of dilemma is a bit strange, isn’t it? Isn’t it time to actually talk to him?” 

“He loves me?” 

“Yes,” Neniel said. She hesitated. “Why? Do you not feel the same way? I did not think I was wrong on that point.” 

“Of course I do. But if he loved me, why did he not say something?” 

Maglor cleared his throat. “It’s entirely possible he does not believe that it’s possible for you to reciprocate. And, rather than risk alienating you, he would instead choose to delight in your friendship.”

“It certainly seems to have been what you’ve been doing,” Neniel said, and Maglor’s eyes widened. Are you insane? “So why wouldn’t he?”  

Uinen’s eyebrows – seaweed green, Maglor noticed – curled into a fearsome frown, and she stood to her feet, muttering something in a language that tossed like a storm. Valarin, Maglor thought. She turned on her heel and walked down the beach, back into the waves. Neniel grinned, and got to her feet. 

"What just happened?"

"She's going to talk to Ossë." 

"She was here, not one minute ago–" 

Neniel frowned, tilting her head as she looked at him, and her mind brushed against his. He heard the sound of lake waters lapping at a shore as she sought to understand.

"Oh, I see," she said, after a moment, a rueful laugh ringing through the air. "No, I'm afraid that's a quirk of the Ainur. There is, often, very few stages between thought and feeling and choice. Often, the concept of choice does not come up at all." 

Maglor stared, feeling his brain struggle to wrap around that. "You're saying that the Ainur have no control over their impulses?"

"No," Neniel said. "But that's close enough for now." She offered him a hand up, and he took it. 

“Where are we going?” Maglor asked, as he slung the gear onto his back. 

“Back to the woods,” Neniel said. “There are some things that I don’t need to overhear, and Uinen and Ossë clearing this up is one of them. Uinen is probably yelling at him right about now, and then they’ll end up making for lost time.” 

“Making up for lost time,” Maglor corrected. Neniel wrinkled her nose at him, and Maglor shook his head, unable to suppress a laugh. “My life was a lot more predictable before you showed up, you know.” 

“Also more boring,” Neniel agreed cheerfully, taking his hand again. “Come on. Let’s go.”