In Need of a Cold Shower by heget

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Chapter 4

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The treeless expanse of scrubby brown grasses, short bushes, and bright yellow flowers and lichen spread out before them. “Mud,” Seregeithon intoned with the deepest despair of a losing general’s proclamation to his surviving troops. Helcerían and Elrond, fellow veterans, sighed in agreement. 

“Mud.”

Their trek through the northern pines led to where the mountains lowered themselves to the shore’s level. Far enough north that forests were no longer viable, what stretched out along the southern coast of the ocean was plant-life no taller than their knees. They had bypassed the Ered Luin and were now north and east of the Emyn Uial hills but a long walk awaited them to reach the icebay proper, and the solid glaciers of the Grinding Ice were further still. The tundra greeted them. Yellow, brown, and more brown. And some patches of white, like a ptarmigan changing its feathers to the brown molt.

To most eyes it was an ugly landscape, but to Seregeithon, born to the remote reaches of Mithrim and spending most of his life until the war finally pushed him deep into Ossiraind’s trees on the wide plains of the Ard Galen, the tundra had a comforting homey feel.

Summer was still far enough away that not all of the ice had melted, but with the majority of the once frozen water transformed into the thick sludge of spring mud, Seregeithon would have preferred snow. Out of the trees, the wind had no barrier, and Helcerían pulled up the hood of her coat and Seregeithon and Elrond fiddled with hats until only their faces were uncovered. The bite of the cold winds would fluctuate, Seregeithon knew by a lifetime of experience, with some days worse than others, and the weather stayed warmer near the coast. Today, however, was cold.

And muddy.

Hiswalagawen laboriously launched itself into the air, honking its complaints about a lack of waterway to ease the acceleration, and flew off, scouting ahead for them. The giant swan returned every few days to tell Helcerían their general location relative to the bay - and a tally of foraging bears seen from the air.

In the flat and treeless expanse, bears and other dangerous animals would be less likely to come across them unawares. Still, Seregeithon worried especially to trigger a bear with cubs. Nor would he welcome the attention of a pack of wolves. His greatest fear was orcs.

There was a concentration trick to walking on mud and other surfaces to lighten the body’s downward pull. It made traversing deep snow swift, to avoid breaking the surface tension and sinking in, but it could not be used on water nor for very long, as it required energy. The mortal men that Seregeithon had patrolled with before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad could not learn the skill, a shortfall shared by the peredhel boy.

To save their snowshoes and stay out of mud, they angled their path to the rocky ground closer to the coast, where every step was along uneven round stones, like the worst possibly constructed cobblestone streets. White-coated reindeer watched them curse nonchalantly from their buffet of lichen. Helcerían cooed over the cuteness of the calves following their mothers.

Seregeithon, one-time shepherd child, enjoyed her delight but then had to -smarmily- correct her on the superiority of lambs as the cuter ruminant infant. Elrond’s expression turned dead-eyed as he listened to the two. Foresight could have not saved his predictions for this journey.

Rather than listen to them bicker, Elrond went and gathered plants, inspecting each to see if they matched medicinal ones that he was studying. His calling as a great healer was centuries from now, but his curiosity, inspired by the story of Lúthien and Huan saving Beren, had been kindled from the youngest of age. 

Seregeithon called to him to rejoin their trail. “Fool, don’t get lost. And the great bears are as interested in those plants as you. I will not explain to both Lord Círdan, High King Gil-galad, and your twin, King Elros, how some winter-starved bear aiming to fatten itself for the next year decided that a skinny half-elf was the perfect addition to its gut.”

Elrond pouted and got his revenge soon, though the younger man did not think of it as such. He only thought that he was offering friendly advice a few days later as they hiked over a small icy remnant of a large glacier that had once sheared the rocks and topsoil of this plain. Helcerían was insisting that they move out of the valley that they were currently in to return to the wider tundra.

Elrond slowed down until he was abreast with Seregeithon, their snowshoes crunching with every wide step. “I am skilled in ósanwë,” the young half-elf whispered to the older man. “I doubt it is intentional, nor do I think our companion can sense it as keenly as I. Yet you emit a ...feeling, is the term that I must use, whenever you stare at Lady Helcerían.” Elrond hesitated, and Seregeithon thought back fondly of the child that he and his commander rescued from the Kinslayers. “Like a bull elk in rut. It’s distracting.”

Oh. Damn.

So it turned out that trying to not think about Helcerían and how alluring she was was more distracting than the alluring fantasies. His short temper frayed like an unraveling ribbon. The rest of the day and following one was miserable. Elrond and Helcerían found the more abrasive side of his tongue not to their liking. After an argument that devolved into accusations about the War of Wrath and pacifism, Seregeithon stalked off with his spear to hunt the nearby herd of reindeer and fell a supply of fresh meat. Elrond stayed with Helcerían, providing a sympathetic audience to her complaints.

“Infuriating man. Makes me want to choke him. He’d probably like it. Wants me to do that.” She paused, confused, her voice turning quiet and lost as she questioned herself. “Why did I think that and know it for the truth?”

Elrond did not answer her, though he could have with a single word: ósanwë.

Abstaining from imagining Helcerían unclothed and committing various acts involving his similarly unclothed body were impossible for Seregeithon. He stopped caring.

Elrond took to pinching his nose and mentally reciting poetry and the names to distract himself from the stray thoughts and mental impressions of his companions. Elrond had attempted to recite both the Lay of Leithian and the Narn i Chîn Húrin, but some passages were dangerous in the current atmosphere.

Helcerían had returned to wearing that large silver brooch of a horned whale, now on the outside of her coat holding a thick silk sash belt. The sash was a pretty pale color between silver, lavender, and blue, chosen to befit her icy name. The long tails of the sash, capped with large silver pendants in the shape of snowflakes, swayed as she walked. Seregeithon could tell that the both items were something that she considered precious, and he agreed that it suited her. She should wear that sash- but paired with garments that could only be described as brief. One of those mortal tunics that ended well above the knees with a gathered neckline and flounces and lace. Seregeithon re-evaluated his last thought. No, Helcerían’s tastes would not lean to lace. But soft fur and velvet trim? She should be indulged in those fabrics.

What did she look like while at the royal court of Alqualondë? Had her garments been so strange and disorderly- or were the fashions of their kin across the sea more revealing?

Now he found a motive to entertain interest in the land beyond Middle-earth. 

The idea of wandering Alqualondë in Helcerían’s company entertained him for a little while, but soon Seregeithon returned to his favorite fantasy: where he was naked atop soft wool, the fibers almost entrapping his limbs in their plush texture, and Helcerían sat naked astride him, hands on his stomach to prop herself up, riding him, her head thrown back and her long white hair fanned down around her.

Truthfully these fantasies embarrassed him, for he had never entertained thoughts of another person, man or woman, elf or mortal, as he did now with Helcerían. She had not asked for his feelings or encouraged them- except by every move that she made, the haughty expression of her pale eyes, the way that the wind played with her hair, the smooth song of her voice- and he was mortified at the prospect of his one-sided desire becoming known to her, for surely she would be disgusted at his presumption.

Especially that she had called him a stubborn Moripedi, then insinuated that she thought him overly violent and consumed by the desire to kill enemies. Which, in fairness, Seregeithon had heard those statements before, when instead of retreating to the Isle of Balar like so many of his compatriots, be they Sindar or Noldor, he had seeked out Orothaiben’s crew. Orothaiben had sang over every slain orcs, insatiable in vengeance, finding more beauty in spilled blood than the blooming of flowers. Seregeithon found kinship with the mad Nandor instead of the peaceful, weary refugees. Helcerían named him true.

A night of unfathomable loss and terror had frozen her, but she had found her way out of that ice-heart. What was left of him, the ash outline of a man coating the inside of a suit of armor and a spear that could not be discarded?

Why had the boy mentioned ósanwë?

 

That evening a light dusting of spring snow fell, thickening the crust of frost on the ground and glazing the outsides of their tents. Helcerían brewed hot tea and passed cups to Elrond and Seregeithon. The smell, strange yet heavenly, matched the golden color, and when Seregeithon drank it, he felt warmth instantly fill his core. “Vása berries,” Helcerían explained, returning the small vessel holding the tea powder to her pack. 

“Could have used that during the Siege,” Seregeithon said, thinking back to too many cold patrols with hardy men of the Hadorians as they tried to encircle the gap in their line around Angband. 

Helcerían refilled his cup with the last of tea and listened to the description of distilled beers popular among the People of Hador. Elrond helped her pack up the camp, but when he tried to help Seregeithon undo and roll up the tent, he snapped one the poles by accident and Seregeithon banished Elrond from that chore. Helcerían shook her head.

“Which spirits do you like best?” she asked to soothe Elrond’s ego, which prompted the young man to describe various wines, which led to a discussion of food that the two had been having for weeks, along with their ongoing talk of birds and falconry.

Helcerían pulled up the mass of pouches dangling from her belt and retrieved a beautifully modeled silver fish on a chain. Fiddling with the fish-shaped metal container, she snapped it open to reveal the scent of dried spices. “Cooking herbs,” Helcerían explained. “I have made this soup many times. When we have fresh meat instead of the dried jerky- fish with white flesh, not salmon or dark red. We should have some when we reach the Icebay.”

Seregeithon bowed his head politely. “As you command, Milady.”

“Tell me more of the Edain,” Helcerían said, “the Hadorians when they still lived far to the north. It is strange to me to think of an entire people who have never seen the sea.”

“Let Elrond tell you; they are his kin and his brother’s subjects.”

“But I cannot describe Dor-lómin or the campaigns against Angband in the farthest north.”

Seregeithon grumbled and frowned. “We froze. We fought orcs, then dragons. Dragons stink like no other fell beast in all of Arda. Men around me died. Ugly story.”

“Charming,” Helcerían snarked.

That night Seregeithon’s fantasy of himself entwined with Helcerían entailed no speaking from either one, only rough panting, her hands around his neck, in his hair, tugging and pulling and squeezing. Rough, but then tender after they were both finished. She curled up against him, and in his dream he stroked her softly, too afraid to voice his feelings, the overwhelming calm and happiness.

Rather than travel through the nights they made camp, judging the stars to guess at the distance that they made each day. The three conversed and worked on small tasks, the small animosities forgiven. Seregeithon repaired gear or worked on carving antlers for spearheads and fishing hooks. After Helcerían requested, he made a set of square tablet cards for weaving ribbon and trim, though she did not have yarn for any spare projects. There was not enough loose snow or ice to make shelters, but a storm was incoming if the wind was any indication, so that particular evening when Hiswalagawen rejoined them Seregeithon searched for a break in the flat terrain to find some form of shelter. Helcerían spelled heat into the fabric of their tents- a song that the Ainur taught to Elves. Melian has instructed the people of Mithrim how to hold heat or cold in a piece of woven cloth, but Helcerían’s version was closer to the lyrics used by the Army of the Valar. It was a handy piece of craft that the Noldor crossing the Helcaraxë could have benefited from.

Mention of the Helcaraxë led to Helcerían going into graphic detail of what she saw in the years following the rise of the sun. She had returned to the ice desert to find the frozen bodies of dead Noldor. After first she had been uncertain what to do with them, if to leave them or attempt a burial. The Teleri had buried the Noldor slain during the First Kinslaying as they had their own, stripping the weapons and armor off the corpses and then consigning the bodies to the sea, giving them over to Ossë and Uinen as Mandos took their souls. The Vanyar came down from their mountains to help with the funerals, singing the dirges as bodies were wrapped in white sailcloth shrouds. Stroking the feathers of Hiswalagawen’s neck to soothe herself, Helcerían recounted the finding of pieces of the sunken swan-ships and bodies washed ashore, the followers of Fëanor drowned by Ossë and Uinen’s wrath in the days after. “Thieves and murderers rejected by our sea,” Helcerían said. “We did not know what to do with those bodies. Olwë asked. In the end we burned them.”

Helcerían dragged what frozen corpses that she could off the glaciers and into the water, those that she could wrestle from the ice and that she found close to the water, bringing an icepick and spare sailcloth for that purpose on her subsequent return journeys. She could not estimate how many corpses remained dotting the Helcaraxë and forever trapped by the freezing cold, most exposed to the open air because precipitation rarely fell that far north even as snow.  “I tried to save identifying items like jewelry to send back to Tirion. To let King Arafinwë contact the surviving family or keep them until the owners return from Mandos. It was the decent act to do.”

“The Queen of Mercy has in you a most devoted and wise discipline,” Seregeithon said.

His words made Helcerían blush. “Nienna is not my patron, despite the name,” Helcerían said, alluding to Nienna’s association with the winter months. “I think, if there is any of the Ainur that I most admire and wish to emulate, it is Lady Uinen. And not just for her creations, the animals of the shore.”

“Is so?” Elrond asked, prompting her.

Helcerían’s blush deepened, the pink darkening to rosy red. “Her taming of Ossë. That the Storm Terror had joined the Great Foe and caused death and destruction, many acts of evil, but that Uinen did not turn her heart from him. That she was able to reach out to him and call him back, that he repented of his deeds and evil allegiance. And he does not stop all his storms, but that when she asks he will calm the seas for her. Uinen does not control him, but his love for her does.” Helcerían paused. “Neither of you have been in a storm at sea. When the waves are as tall as mountains. The terror.”

“Yet Ossë is our friend,” Elrond said, and the Falmari woman smiled.

“Our truest, most loyal, the one who taught us, the one to avenge our grief.”

Seregeithon refrained from adding to their comments, instead cursing as he finished drilling the fourth hole into the tablet card with an awl and accidentally gouged his finger. As Elrond fussed over the injury and hastily mixed a salve and wrapped a bandage around it, Helecerían hushed her hissing swan. She reached for Seregeithon’s injured hand as she tried to thank him for the gift and express sympathy for his pain, but he batted her hands away. 

Elrond’s eyes darted rapidly between his two companions, weaving suspicions together.

The following morning he decided to add a postscript to his letter.

The letters started before they left the pine forests for the tundra. In fact, the first night that they landed in Forlindon, the herald on sabbatical made writing his priority after gathering firewood and starting the campfire. Elrond had two sheets of paper on the foldable hard surface of his portable scribe’s desk, and Helcerían asked why he was writing two letters. Elrond answered, “The first is for Gil-galad, but the second is for my brother. I wrote to Elros before we left so he knew about my quest, and I’ll send updates so he does not worry for me. Once the two reach Mithlond, the second letter for Elros will be sent with the rest of the mail and goods from the Grey Havens to Númenor. The quest may be concluded by the time that I get Elros’s reply, but that I make the effort to write to him will reassure my brother. He is a worrywort.”

Seregeithon grunted and bit back his comment on how both of the twins had clung to each other, the result of their months of trauma.

Helcerían conferred with her giant swan. “Hiswalagawen will handle Númenor as well.”

Elrond waved a dismissal with his offhand. “She is flying the missives to Mithlond. That is a mighty task itself.”

“She can decide where she flies,” Helcerían countered.

No one would argue with that.

 

Mindful of the fear that had driven Helcerían across the sea, the group was alert to signs of blight or foulness on the wind. Whale bones in massive white piles could be found dotting the landscape in small hills, but most deaths were not recent. No Forodrim yet, which did worry Seregeithon that he had not encountered any of the nomadic mortal tribesmen who should have been following the reindeer herds.

“Oh,” Helcerían exclaimed, her wonder puffing out like the cloud of condensed air in the cold dry air to hang in the stillness, “look! A northern oliphaunt.” She pointed to the slowly grazing beasts in the far distance, their thick brown fur making them seem like rocks if not for their movement. “The Farshore still has them.” Seregeithon and Elrond wanted to interrupt the Falmari woman to explain that to them, Middle-earth was the Hither Shores, and that few things could sound more bizarre to their ears than to hear a woman of the Haerast speak such, but then Helcerían continued in a mix of wonder and sadness. “We lost our northern oliphaunts. The Earth Queen, Yavanna, needed to reintroduce them to the land, after the Sun and Moon settled into their paths across the firmament. We lost many living beings after the death of the Two Trees - but the great wooly-coated oliphaunts we lost because of the Noldor that crossed the Helcaraxë, slaughtering the herds to survive the journey across the ice desert, too many for the animals to recover. I thought, I thought they would not have survived on this shore too, what with the war.”

Standing behind her, Helcerían could not see Seregeithon smile at her joy.

There was neither privacy nor room to be found in the tent Seregeithon shared with Elrond, for the younger man slept on his stomach with limbs splayed. Elrond neither snored nor kicked in his sleep, thankfully, but the sprawl invaded Seregeithon’s space for his own bedroll - and some acts did not want an audience. It was more convenient to swap shifts and in the darkness facing away from camp, steal a few private moments to use a hand to ease a desire. Ridiculous, the strength of this longing. He did not remember urges this strong when his voice cracked and his bones ached as the growth spurt kicked in.

Seregeithon thought his sneaking away for short indulgences was unnoticed until another evening discussion around the campfire.

“He wanders off,” Helcerían said, and a teasing element entered her tone of voice. “Perhaps we need to treat him like the hunting hawks. Tie a jess around his ankle, some leather straps and a pretty bell. And put a hood on him to calm him down when he grows too cranky and fidgety.”

As Seregeithon growled at her jest, Elrond wordlessly dragged his fingers down his face, pulling at his lower eyelids.

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Chapter End Notes

Tablet card weaving was used in Europe up through the medieval period to make decorative woven bands, using squares of bone or wood with holes in each corner to mimic a loom.
Vása is a name for the sun.
Haerast is as you probably guessed the Sindarin word for the Farshore, aka Valinor. And if there are oliphaunts in Middle-earth during the Third Age, then there can be wooly mammoths during the Second.
 

And the return of another “deleted scene”, this time taking place many years prior to events so far detailed, in which two characters trapped in similar roles during a fic of this author commiserate:

Elros, as eldest son of Eärendil and Elwing - the remaining heir to all three lineages of the Edain Houses through his father’s sire Tuor and his mother’s grandfather Beren- and with his chosen bride Bortë, princess of the faithful Easterlings, attended the councils of Ingwion and Finarfin as the representative of mortal men. Elrond bothered to attend only to take notes for his brother and people, lacking the perfect elven memory. After one such meeting, struck by foresight that was not usually his gift, Prince Ingwion pulled the younger twin aside. “Here,” he said, shoving items into Elrond’s hands. “I don’t know why, but I feel a kinship with you that has nothing to do with family ties. But I am reminded of the embarrassing trial that is my parents and their exihibitionism and overwhelming randiness. The horniness, and my role as a straight man to their antics. Take this pair of wax earplugs and this bottle of very strong liquor to knock yourself out. Some things you neither want to hear nor see.”
Elrond, alarmed and confused, replied, “My brother and his fiancee are not that indiscrete.”
Hollow, dead eyes answered him. “Not them. Oh Valar, I’m so sorry for you. I can see it coming. The bondage and submission kinks.”