Noldolantë by Grundy

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Warming Up

My prompt for "A True Leader" was "A flower without fragrance draws notice, but not interest." 

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If Súyelírë thought it odd over the next few weeks that he was suddenly both an even more attentive student during their language lessons as well as much more enthusiastic about walking the boards, she did not say so.

Makalaurë was grateful that she did not ask, for the last thing he wanted to hear was that his new friend, lovely a singer as she might be, was no fit companion for a prince. If this were Tirion, his father would already have gotten wind of their meetings and put a stop to it. Of course, if this were Tirion, it was unlikely they would have met in the first place.

“Always prompt,” Lorilindë laughed as he joined her at their usual meeting spot, a small garden just off the promenade.

“I do my best,” he told her, pleased that she had noticed.

“Yes, so I am learning,” she replied with a smile. “Tell me, friend Makalaurë, do you sail also? We have been always on land, but some very nice spots there are a short way up or down the coast. I think you would like.”

Drat.

Thus far he’d largely managed to avoid boats. He had the comfort of knowing he wouldn’t embarrass himself by being sick in one, as one of Aunt Eärwen’s brothers had taken him out on a short sail in the harbor – just enough to determine whether or not he was a ‘seasicker’. But he had more than enough to do learning the local language to even think of taking up the most widely practiced local craft.

And he should probably try this in Telerin – no, Lindarin, he corrected himself. (Although the correction sounded suspiciously like Lorilindë.

“I ride in boats,” he said, praying he’d picked the right verb. “Sail the boats is for others.”

“Ah,” she nodded.

He must not have mangled it so badly that she couldn’t catch the meaning.

“You can be in the boat, but not in charge of it?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I must leave the sailing to those who know it well enough not to be a danger,” he explained. “Left to my own devices, it is doubtful I would get very far without capsizing.”

“Cap size,” Lorilindë repeated thoughtfully. “Another word for sink?”

“Capsize – one word – isn’t quite the same as sinking,” he explained. “Tipping over. Wrong side up!”

“Ah,” she laughed. “Lucky for you then that I can sail just fine. And have a boat.”

“It is not improper for us to go out without a chaperone?” he asked.

In Tirion that would have been asking for all manner of trouble – above and beyond just meeting so frequently in out of the way but undeniably public places.

“Lindar do not talk as Noldor do about such things!” Lorilindë laughed. “You even have a word for such talk, do you not?”

Now it was Makalaurë’s turn to laugh.

“Gossip is the word,” he said. “Is there no such word in Lindarin? I find that hard to believe!"

Her eyes sparkled with what he recognized as humor as she firmly denied it – he could tell that they did have such a word, but he suspected it got far less use than its Noldorin counterpart.

“The Lindar have better things to talk about than who is breaking a rule that everyone agrees is quite silly!”

“Mmm,” Makalaurë said skeptically. “But I guess you gossip about other things?”

That only got another merry laugh, as she took his hand to encourage him to walk with her toward some of the smaller southern docks.

“But really, it will not make any trouble for you?” he asked.

He valued her friendship, and not just because his progress with Lindarin was coming along much faster with a partner to practice with. He would risk no injury to her, even if it was just her reputation.

“I trust you, my friend,” Lorilindë replied with a smile. “Besides, if you behave unrightly, it will be a long walk back alone!”

“Badly,” he murmured. “I won’t. I only wanted to be sure I was not making trouble for you. What is the word in Lindarin, please?”

She repeated it, and once he heard it, he could see why she would expect the Noldorin construction to be ‘unrightly’. It was always a surprise when they discovered that despite the common origin, the two languages had sometimes made wildly different choices.

“Then we sail?” Lorilindë asked hopefully. “There is one spot in particularly I think you wish to see - sure to inspire songs!”

Her boat was only a small one, and he recognized it as one sailed for short distances or pleasure, not longer journeys or serious fishing. It would only fit a few people, and from the looks of it only needed one to sail.

“It is a nice boat,” he offered, aware that his sailing vocabulary was woefully inadequate no matter what he spoke.

That got a wicked grin.

“If you talk about her in Lindarin, you must use the right words! This is a sloop, not a boat,” she said with a grin. “But if we speak Noldorin, I will accept ‘boat’ – because I know you know not what the correct term would be.”

“Is it that obvious I’m a landlover?” he asked with a sigh.

“Landlubber!” she corrected, obviously trying hard not to laugh. “Though I think perhaps your word works also? Lubber is a clumsy person, someone who cannot handle their sails at all.”

“Are you making this up?” he demanded in mock indignation.

“No more than you made up ‘tin ear’,” she giggled. “Come!”

In the space of a few minutes, he found himself bundled on board and Lorilindë guiding her craft confidently out of the harbor.

He would have made conversation, but Lorilindë grinned and began a song he’d heard sung occasionally on the docks – but she was being more careful than the singers normally to enunciate the words so he could catch them all. Between that and the scenery, he was too taken to say a single word before they put in at a small cove nearly an hour later.

“Help pull Wavedancer up the sand?” Lorilindë asked. “The water is not quite high yet, it would be very bad if she floated away at its height.”

Judging by the pace they’d kept, Makalaurë could well believe it would be very bad – the walk back would be easily three or four times as long even if it was good terrain.

He listened to her requests – or more properly, her commands, for it was her boat and he was a mere passenger – until they had the boat settled on the sands to her satisfaction.

She grabbed a basket, which if his nose didn’t deceive him contained a picnic lunch, and led him up a rise to a glade overlooking the sea. They must have been below one of the smaller passes through the mountains that let the Treelight through, for though it must be waning by now, the glade was touched with Telperion’s light.

When he stepped beyond the reach of the delicious smells of the picnic basket, he found the scent was incredible.

“What?” was all he could say. “What is this?”

Lorilindë grinned.

“I thought you would not have experienced this before,” she said in satisfaction. “The combination of the salt air and the flowers does it.”

Makalaurë looked skeptically at the little flowers he would have taken for little more than weeds in Tirion. They weren’t anything in particular to look at – small, not showy, and the color a rather washed out shade of yellow. The fragrance, he discovered on closer inspection, was lovely all on its own, but when one stood farther off and breathed it in with the sea air, it became something very special indeed.

“What are they called?” he asked.

“Alatalmar,” she answered.

Makalaurë tried not to look as skeptical as he felt. He certainly wouldn’t have called them radiant.

Lorilindë laughed again.

“You are thinking they are named very wrongly!” she said. “But that is because we are seeing them too early. Wait a few hours until the starlight is stronger! Then they will show their color to better advantage.”

“Very well,” he said. “I will withhold judgement until the Mingling.”

“Glad to hear it!” she replied, still smiling. “The little alatalma may not look special compared to some of the showy orchids I have seen brought in from Tirion, but it got your attention all the same, did it not?”

“Most definitely,” Makalaurë admitted. “Please let me help – allow me to assist?”

Her smile widened.

“You are improving!” she exclaimed. “And as you are – I will tell you one of our sayings, which came from this flower. A flower without fragrance draws notice, but not interest.”

“High appropriate,” Makalaurë nodded, setting the blanket down carefully as she began to pull food from the basket.

“Highly,” she corrected, passing him a bottle of one of the chilled fruit juices he had discovered he particularly liked.

“Highly,” he repeated.

“You look frustrated,” she noted. “But you are coming along splendidly. You use…bigger words.”

“That wasn’t the word you meant?” he asked.

“For better speakers,” she explained. “Not harder…”

“More advanced?”

“Yes! More advanced.”

“I think you still have the advantage on me,” he sighed. “Your vocabulary is easily twice mine.”

“Yes, but I was learning Noldorin before you came to Alqualondë,” she reminded him. “I don’t wish to sound a child if I go visit my cousin!”

She mimed pointing at various foods.

“Please? Yes? No? Not Noldorin. How do you call? Can you imagine how all those clever Noldor would have looked at me?”

Makalaurë chuckled.

“You do not sound at all like a child, only like someone learning a new language,” he said firmly, although it occurred to him that a few months ago he might well have looked askance at someone having trouble speaking proper Noldorin. “Even if you were only able to say basic things, I think you would find most Noldor inclined to help, not mock. Much like your flowers, you attract both notice and interest.”

He didn’t know what had made her look so delighted, but whatever it was, he hoped he could do it again.

“Perhaps that is why my mother named me for them.”

Makalaurë blinked.

“Alatalma? That is your mothername?”

She nodded.

“I…do not usually allow those who do not know me to use it. But as we have been spending so much time together, you may if you wish.”

He looked from the flowers to her.

“I think the name is aptly given, especially since I know of the saying that grew from the flower, but I think it is not a name you are particularly fond of.”

She looked startled.

“That is true,” she said slowly. “The flowers must be seen in their own element, at just the right time, to appear at their best.”

“Yes, but those lucky enough to see them so surely do not forget it,” Makalaurë pointed out. “And you like them well enough to think I would write music for them.”

“For them, yes,” she said, perhaps a bit hastily.

“You were right,” he said thoughtfully. “I hope you will forgive me if I am quieter than usual while we eat. I find I cannot talk and compose at the same time very well.”

She smiled and made the Telerin gesture that indicated she had sealed her lips as they sat down.

The woman and the flowers were now firmly linked in his mind, and yet he couldn’t shake the thought that her father had been right to give her a name that involved singing.

In the privacy of his own mind, he thought he might have a name for her, but he wasn’t sure if he should say so just yet. It would be impossibly forward by Noldorin standards, but he had no idea how it would look in the eyes of the Lindar.

They spent the rest of the afternoon there, enjoying their picnic, watching the stars and the flowers, and singing. Lorelindë Alatalma had been right, he did write music about the flowers. But he hoped before long to tell her that she was in that music too.