The Sandglass Runs by Dawn Felagund, NelyafinweFeanorion

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BFFs

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I never thought I’d be happy to return to my pointless, irritating job, but I am. I even get in a little early, helped by the fact that I didn’t really sleep last night. My substitute left the ledgers a mess, so I get to huff about that when my supervisor comes to see me first thing and make a big production of laying out the pages around my kiosk in small piles so that whenever a customer comes up, I also get to pull myself away from that work with visible reluctance. I receive four apologies as a result. Then a coworker comes up and asks me how I enjoyed my vacation, and I take pleasure in telling her that it was terrible and those resorts are insipid and will ideally all go out of business, knowing full well that she always chooses to take her vacation days at Tol Eressëan resorts and, in fact, has visited enough that she wrote an article for the Tirion Community Bulletin comparing them (and chose Artanis’s as the best). I enjoy her crestfallen look as she turns away.

Lunchtime arrives, and I leave the ledger pages arranged around my kiosk, take my lunch sack, and walk out to the fountain where I always sit to eat. Small boxes have become the trendy way for Tirion workers to transport their bread and cheese and small vial of wine. The boxes have an image painted on and latch with sometimes-elaborate mechanisms. Among the monarchists, there is scorn for this: that democracy and unionization have produced a workforce that needs contrivances to keeps its hands occupied. On my way out, I see three of them, one illustrating a favorite scene from the Great Journey, another with the Valar as kittens, and a third spangled with the stars of my father’s house. If I had the motivation, I might make a living constructing these boxes and could quit my government job. My lunch sack is made of an old forge-work tunic that I stitched together roughly into a bag; my sewing skills are considerably inferior to my forgework but it keeps my cheese off the flagstones.

I make it halfway to the fountain before I realize that Artaher is waiting there for me. At lunchtime, food carts amass in the square to capture the coin of hungry government workers, and he has two paper cups of soup from one of the nicer carts sitting beside him on the fountain. He is rising. Damn me, I hesitate for a moment. He is splendid: tanned from the week at the seaside, his golden hair free to spill over his shoulders, his blue eyes already brightening into a smile—a shy one, but genuine—like he is truly glad to see me. As I draw closer, he holds up one of the cups. “I bought you a soup? I hope that’s okay.” Some sloshes over the side and burns his hand. “Ouch!”

“Balls, Artaher, be careful.” I extricate the soup from his hand and resist checking on the hand. “It’s nice of you. The guy makes good soup.”

He is sucking at the burned spot on his hand and looking at my lunch sack. “I didn’t realize you would have brought your lunch.”

Unthinking, I say, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll have the soup and share what I brought,” before remembering that my sandwich today consists of lettuce and hot sauce because it’s what was on-hand this morning. He brightens immediately, and I can’t easily walk it back. “I mean, if you like what I brought …”

“Oh, I’m not picky!” One half of the sandwich has a tiny bloom of blue mold beginning on the bread. I take that half for myself, hand the other half to him, and pick the mold spot off when he’s not looking. He bites into the sandwich, which requires a little gnawing because the bread’s a bit stale, and says around the first bite, “It’s good!” (It’s not. It’s terrible.) Then, “Whoa! It’s hot!”

“I’m sorry. I should have warned—”

“No, it reminds me of eating with my Telerin grandfather.” He is devouring the sandwich with so much enthusiasm that I worry that he might actually like it. “The Teleri put chilis in everything.”

I set my sandwich half aside and taste the soup. It actually is good. If Artaher is pretending to like the sandwich that it took me twenty seconds to make this morning, then I have to pretend to like the soup less than I do. I notice that he is wearing small gold hoops in his ears and has adorned his wrists with beads, both typical of the Teleri. He can’t seem to decide if he wants to eat or talk, so he’ll take a bite, say a word, then hold up a finger till he finishes chewing. Which is fine because it means I don’t have to talk much.

“We just got back this morning. I came here right away,” he manages at last. “I … want to apologize, Carnistir—not just for everything in the past but for the trip to … or how I acted on the trip. I clearly made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. I wish you’d stayed—”

I want to tell him that it wasn’t him so much as it was the discomfort inherent in having a raging erection on his sister’s boat while in a bathing costume and in the company of our entire living family, but there’s no delicate way to put that, and bringing up my genitals doesn’t seem advisable. But he’s chomped another bite of sandwich, leaving it my turn to speak. “It’s fine,” I say, but he’s nowhere near finished—blast that stale bread! and me for not buying fresh! takes so fucking long to chew—so I add, “I forgive you,” even though I’m not sure that’s entirely true. After five ages of nursing this grievance, it doesn’t seem like three words and a cup of soup should solve it.

He doesn’t seem convinced either. “Really?”

I shrug. “Sure,” then remembering Amarië add, “It’s been five ages.”

He contemplates that. “I suppose it has. But … Carnistir? I really like you. And I know you don’t think we have anything in common, and I know I wouldn’t have been your choice to mentor—”

“To be fair, I wouldn’t have chosen anyone to mentor.”

“Well, maybe, but … well, I’m glad you’re my mentor. I know you don’t want to do it, but maybe we could spend some time together sometimes? You don’t have to mentor me. Maybe we could become—or at least act like—friends?”

Friends. The confusion of my body, of the [constructed] memory of Taryindë standing over my unconscious form, of his hand on my thigh and my hand on his— Friends. Friends.

Do you know those toys with a small crank that play a song and then eject a plush animal? The twins loved those, and I turned that crank for them until the music sighed and sagged with the worn machinery inside. Once ejected, the animal required being shoved back inside; I did that a lot too. My lust I likewise gather. I crush it in my hands. I shove it back inside the body—the container—made for me to execute this next epoch of my life.

And that’s how I became friends with Artaher.