Many Journeys by Elleth

Patience and Quiet

Aerin faces the arrival of the Easterlings in Dor-lómin.

"Ought we not fight them?" Aerin said between her teeth, standing in line to be counted with those left on the homestead after the war: Indris, her child-sister of eight years, the serving-women and workmaids, more anxious than defiant and many clutching children to themselves, her mother’s mother driving her walking stick into the grass with her weight. Too few, and none fit for fighting.

The Incomers were almost upon them, robed in furs and claret silk brocades. Aerin sighed – they would not have looked amiss at an Elf-lord’s side, the tree-tall man in their midst walking with a rider’s gait and a gold-tipped bow strapped to his back. She remembered the rumors, that Brodda was landless and wife-less with no heir or house to his name, cunning in battle, one of the few faithless in faithful Bór’s tribe.

Her mother had been following her looks – she had always been uncanny in the way she could read hearts, and now the grief-worn face cracked like a rock exposed too long to lashings of hail and wind. Aerin did not realize it was a smile until Gilris’ posture crumpled, and she was wheezing with a mirth that slurred her words. “Fight them, my bird? How?”

Aerin averted her eyes from the imposing figures. “You told me once – many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet. And a man with no house or wife may be glad of both, though she may burn the very roof he sleeps beneath, if she can do no more good than that.”

Her mother shook her head, but then the Easterlings had reached them, and Aerin swallowed any of the awe she might have felt.

Chapter End Notes

"Many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet" is a quote from the Children of Húrin, there applied to Aerin rather than spoken by her or her mother.