Many Journeys by Elleth

Making a Home

After the Darkening and the Exile of the Noldor, Nerdanel makes a new home for those left behind.

Two ancient trees and a village green are the landmarks of the hamlet on the plain Nerdanel chooses to settle in. She builds the craft room so that the light falls just right, and the rest of the house grows around it as others follow her.

First of all is Pelórë who bears herself with the grace and contempt of someone who has survived a death-blow. She never talks about Tyelperinquar or Curufin, but wheedles from Nerdanel the permission for the forge Nerdanel had denied herself. After a while, waking at sunrise to Pelórë’s ringing hammer, she even is glad for it; rather than of her husband it reminds her of her childhood and the golden days on her father’s estate. As though drawn by that thought, Rainissë and Isimë come visiting, and Nerdanel sits with her sister while her little niece rolls through grass bright with dandelions. When they proclaim their intent to stay, even Pelórë smiles behind her teacup.

Others follow - hesitant apprentices, then two of Nerdanel’s wards during the Darkening who have grown tired of Tirion’s narrow streets and narrower minds. Some work the garden, some wood, rock, metal, clay. When she’s grown into a young woman, Isimë brings home a husband from dancing on the village green, and very soon Nerdanel kneels next to her in the rich black soil to set a flowerbed around the foundations of her child’s room.

"Won’t your face grow numb from always smiling so much?" Isimë’s eyes twinkle entirely too much for Nerdanel not to laugh hard enough to slosh half her watering can onto the trailing ivy Isimë has just planted by the wall.

"I won’t say if only you knew,” she replies, growing somber for a moment before the shadows dispell. Isimë is not old enough to remember much of the Unrest and the Darkening, and if she were she’d not ask. “Seeing how I have yet to cease smiling, can’t you guess the answer?"