A New Day in Valinor by Lferion

Roommates

Orientation for the newly Returned is an opportunity Tauriel takes in stride. A double drabble.

Written for the Silmarillion Writer's Guild January 2021 Resolutions challenge:
-- Day 6: Today's bonus prompt is an addendum to our Crackuary bingo card from February: a bonus 3x3 mini-card! - A2: OMG They were Roommates.
-- Day 10: Bonus prompts are images for instadrabbling from the Naturalist's Guide to Middle-earth challenge, Sept 2020 - Image 5, Lattice Fungus & Orange Elf-cup.

On AO3

Many thanks to Morgynleri and Runa for encouragement and sanity checking, and the denizens of the SWG discord for enthusiasm.

Tauriel looked across the small room at her roommate. Carnwen had hair as red as hers, though a slightly lighter shade and elaborately braided, and a name as plain and uninformative. Otherwise, she was hard-put to find commonality between them. How were they to manage working together? A First-Age Feanorian, an Aulendur, who had died in the disaster of Sirion, and a Third-Age Silvan who looked to Elbereth if anyone, and had died defending Erebor against Sauron's forces. Perhaps the contrast was the point, another part of this program of adjustment to re-embodiment, introduction to Valinor as it was now.

Carnwen was re-plaiting her hair in a kind of openwork, doing her fine finger motion exercises, even as Tauriel was making a shallow woven reed basket as her practice. Suddenly she was reminded of a patch of mushrooms she had seen once, an array of little cups, interrupted here and there with taller latticework bulbs, both brilliant, fiery orange. She laughed at the memory and Carnwen looked up, eyebrows raised. "I was just thinking that we are like some mushrooms I saw once, and wondering if they grew here. Would you like to come and see what we can find?"