The Fairest Vessels That Ever Sailed by Lindariel

Chapter 3: Meads Filled with Many Flowers

Being in the wilderness helps Alatáriel remember how to work and to have fun.

For three days the entire party worked to harvest the willows. The nine Falathrim who had brought the wagons seemed very familiar with the work. Alatáriel wasn't sure whether their work rotation patterns pre-existed this trip or whether they were organizing their work somewhere outside her earshot. Without ever discussing it, threeof them would bend to cut withies from the coppices as three others jumped atop the pollarded trees to cut shoots and the remaining three stacked together the resulting piles of osiers or shoots. They swapped jobs often, laughing and joking with one another the whole time; they all seemed to have lengthy memories for the foibles of one anothers' relatives.  Near the end of the workday Gonodril and Ristaron would round up some horses and bring back one of the empty wagons for loading.

Círdan and Teleporno busied themselves tying each stack into a bundle with some of the shorter green osiers, tensioning the bindings firmly with inserted sticks before tying them off with sailing knots. They seemed to be trying to make a dance of it. As they worked they laughed and at times sang duets in the ancient Nelyar language whose nuance still escaped Alatáriel because nobody but Teleporno and Círdan ever spoke it around her. She could hear its relationship with the Telerin of Alqualondë if she listened carefully, and she was aware enough to notice Teleporno's accent coming to more closely resemble Círdan's over these last several cycles of Ithil. But she was still working to master the Falathrin tongue, so she tried to concentrate on the conversations taking place in that language around her.

There were times when Alatáriel felt downright isolated in this Nelyar community. It was not just the language barrier, which had been eroding over the ten or so cycles she had spent here. It was that they did some things so differently than both her father and mother's people back in Aman. For one thing, Alatáriel could not quite catch the rhythm of this particular series of tasks. She felt strange not having a pre-assigned role in the work. Círdan seemed too immersed in his work -- or was it play? -- with Teleporno to give her instructions on anything. The other workers rarely addressed her and seemed as shy of her as she was of them. She was willing to work hard, but she didn't know how best to fit in, so she always chose to help the gatherers.

She worked steadily in the calf-high carpet of flowers, but rarely said anything to anyone. Every time she finished piling together enough willows for a bundle, her eyes would stray to the far bank of Narog before she started on the next bundle.Whenever there was a rest break she would go off and touch one of the pollarded trees, standing still with her eyes shut and listening to the life within. She would come back to the working area looking thoughtful.

At the end of each workday everybody helped load the wain with the day's harvest, securing the load with willow-bast rope. As if scaling a mast, Teleporno would clamber up the pile to the very top, making sure the ropes were fast. Alatáriel privately suspected that was his favorite part of the entire trip so far. Then Farandîr and Redaneth would set out to check their snares, always coming back with enough rabbits for a fine dinner. The others would help encourage the laden wain back onto dry ground and follow it back to the camp which had been set up inside the square of wagons. There several sleeping tents surrounded a central firepit and a sideless pavilion sheltering a camp kitchen under the oversight of old Maitanor.

The rustic camping conditions had appealed to Alatáriel from the first. She felt she would never tire of sleeping rough in a tent after spending half the night under the stars with people as full of memories (in some cases) as her grandparents. She was, however, unaccustomed to eating this much meat. The fish-based cuisine of Eglarest reminded her of her mother's people in Alqualondë, and she missed it. These traveling Falathrim seemed as eager for meat as her cousins Tyelkormo and Írissë; there was fresh meat for dinner, leftover meat with breakfast, and dried meat brought from Eglarest for lunch every day. But perhaps it had something to do with all the work. Alatáriel had noticed that as soon as old Maitanor had worked his skill on the rabbits, she always dug in as heartily as any of the others.

Each night they all sat around the embers of the cookfire and drank up the light of the stars, singing and telling stories. The Falathrim were perplexed yet delighted by the many changes Ithil manifested; they loved nothing more than to sit up all night and sing to it. Every night,as she playfully twined a fresh garland of leaves and purple flowers for Círdan, Alatáriel took a moment to be grateful that Ithil had settled into something like a regular pattern.

Although Ithil and Anornever mingled their lights in quite the way Telperion and Laurelin had, Alatáriel enjoyed having a sense of the regular passing of time again. She was becoming used to the concept of a "day" meaning one trip of Anor across the sky, while "night" now meant the absence of Anor, the return of the stars, and usually a visit from Ithil. Sometimes the days and nights were different lengths, and the weather was colder or warmer, but the total amount of time containing one trip of Anor and one trip of Ithil was about the same. It was something to rely on, even if the full cycle was barely longer than three hours of the Trees. She was even learning how to sleep on this schedule.

On the third night a sense of celebration kept the Falathrim up even later than usual. Their hard work was done, the willow harvest was in, and in the morning they would start the leisurely drive back to Eglarest. Alatáriel was looking forward to the next leg of their journey, which would take only Teleporno, Círdan, and her to another forest. It would be even rougher camping with just the three of them and no wains, but the work to be done there was more to her liking, and it would not take long.

After cleanup Sadron and Galandîs, who as nearly as Alatáriel had been able to tell were wedded, went to their little tent, returning in short order with musical instruments. Sadron set up an infectious rhythm on a small frame drum while Galandîs began tootling on a small fipple flute. Several of the Falathrim whooped loudly and leapt to their feet, beginning to dance around the firepit. Alatáriel did not know the steps to this dance, which was less organized than the ones she had observed back in town. This just seemed to be an expression of joy, both the music and the dance. Then Teleporno joined the dancers, and as she watched him the joy siezed her too. She sprang up to meet him and fitted steps of her own to the music. They had not danced since Alqualondë, and they did not stop dancing until Ithil set.

The Falathrim made short work of the packing up in the morning. Alatáriel still felt fairly useless among all these Nelyar who had spent so much time on the move. Her organizational skill set surrounding travel was considerable, thanks to her parents' frequent trips between Tirion and Alqualondë, but it was more intellectual than physical. Her family's attendants and staff had always been there to do all the repetitive physical things. Yet already on this trip Alatáriel had learned how to break down the camp kitchen, strike and pack a tent, extinguish and scatter a campfire, and bury a latrine. She was learning how to load and secure a wain properly, and how to harness the horses. She enjoyed the feeling of competence the newly won knowledge gave her, but it didn't seem like enough to her. She wandered back and forth among the Falathrim helping wherever she could, thinking of her ataryo and kissing her thumb between tasks until the line of wains departed for Eglarest.

"Now the real fun begins," Teleporno laughed. "It is well we have one of the Einior with us to keep us alive in this wilderness!"

"Who are you calling old, youngster?" shot back Círdan, deeply amused.

"It's not my fault my parents waited until they were in Aman to beget me!" Teleporno defended himself.

Alatáriel laughed too. Although he did not look it, Círdan was quite old indeed, from a generation born at Cuiviénen. Teleporno was younger but still a generation closer to Cuiviénen than Alatáriel. She was not quite sure exactly how Círdan and Teleporno were related, but they seemed to have an old uncle, young nephew kind of relationship. They even looked somewhat alike, both very tall and silver haired like all the princes of the Teleri. She felt like a youngster in this traveling party.

"Before we leave," she said, "I want to visit the other side of the river. The trees on this side have told me some curious things and I need to know more about what is over there. Anyone else want a swim?" She walked over to the pile of her equipment on the ground, removed her cloak, and folded it before dropping it onto the pile.

As she undressed, Círdan made some perfunctory, old-uncle comment about delaying things before eagerly unclasping his cloak too. Alatáriel had learned that Círdan seemed to revel in his grumpy elder reputation even though he was in actuality both wise and good-tempered. She laughed at him, pretending to cower from his crankiness, and smiled at Teleporno who was fairly ripping off his own clothes. She stripped steadily down to the tunic-like undergarment the Falathrim wore with work clothes, then took off her soft boots and stockings."I'll be on the other side before you're even undressed!" she teased.

"Last one across does the kitchen cleanup for the rest of the trip," Teleporno retorted, dropping clothes as he scrambled toward the bank. Círdan surprised them by beating them both to the water, and the race was on. They splashed into the shallows of the slow-moving river, having to wade quite far before it was deep enough to swim. Círdan soon surrendered his lead to the two amanyar, and for a heart-stopping few moments in the middle of the very cold river Alatáriel wasn't sure she could beat Teleporno after all, but her mother had not named her Nerwen for nothing. She stepped out of the river a good three breaths before Teleporno, and a dozen or more before Círdan, but she didn't stop to savor her victory. Instead she plunged into the tangle of willow trunks as Teleporno held back to await Círdan.

"It is well that I lost," sighed Círdan mock-grumpily, wading up onto the shore, "for neither of you children has the first idea how to manage a camp kitchen."

Teleporno laughed, rueing his foolish expectations. He was always forgetting how superb an athlete Alatáriel was. He needed to stop underestimating her. "Teach me, then, and I will teach her," he said, gesturing toward where Alatáriel had gone.

"I shall. Now, let me show you what I meant about these trees," Círdan said, moving toward the nearest rank of them.

Chapter End Notes

ataryo -- daddy (Q)

einior -- ancient, elder, really old (S)

amanyar -- elves of Aman (Q)