The Sandglass Runs by Dawn Felagund, NelyafinweFeanorion

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Confetti

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Artanis and her husband apparently sailed back at the start of the Fourth Age to Tol Eressëa and didn’t waste much time before setting up the island’s largest and most renowned all-inclusive resort. I don’t know much beyond that because—typical of Doriathrim behind their magical fence, squatting in opulence with their own kind while everyone without grows their callouses—they haven’t been exactly forthcoming with invitations to those of us outside their immediate family. Not that I’d want to go anyway; I get the occasional brochure among my junk mail, and the place looks entirely too … chummy, like you can’t sit on the beach with a whiskey without at least a dozen people trying to put oil on your back or holding your hand till you frolic in the surf or lobbing a frisbee over your head. I like the water quite a bit—I swam in the Helevorn every day it was free of ice—and might like to go, but not if I’m going to be forced to lay facedown and naked with just a towel across my butt while a Telerin masseuse lines my back with hot rocks.

I have happily commenced my plan of not doing anything to “mentor” Artaher. I’m back to work at the information kiosk in the Tirion Public Building that used to be Arafinwë’s palace before he unkinged himself. It’s a new fiscal year, so it’s a particularly busy time as new documents replace the old, and instead of sitting on my rotating chair and watching for people to come in through the front door while hoping not to be startled—visibly at least—by someone walking up from behind me, I am replacing old pages in my reference ledgers with new. Some lesser inventor from the Noldor who remained behind made a device that, with a couple workings of a foot pedal, minces paper into tiny squares where it can be repurposed as confetti; thus, Arafinwë’s government is funded at least in part by the festival industry that buys confetti from us by the bag. My union has negotiated an hour of paid leave for every bag of confetti that I produce, so I’ve been quite contentedly chopping up old papers all day. At night, I go home and fix crackers and soup for supper and play my lightning-guitar or tinker with a palantír that is disk-shaped and small enough to fit in your pocket. Right now, it is distorting people’s faces in comical but wholly unacceptable ways, but it will send messages. Sometimes, Amarië and I play in one of the more squalid clubs on the shadowy side of the city, me on the guitar and her screaming her poetry over the heads of the crashing crowd. I receive a chipper “Appointment Reminder!” card each week about therapy; I put it into the confetti maker to lend the next bag a little color.

And then I get one of those dull, white, soulless envelopes in the mail. It’s been almost two weeks since I left Artaher with his parents, and I expect I’m about to be chastised for failing to forsake my evenings to make sure he’s grasping democratic principles and to help him fill out job applications and to forewarn him that when he’s summoned to a healer to check that his new body is functioning as it should, he will be poked in some very weird places.

Instead, there is a colorful flier for Artanis’s resort, folded so that it fits in the envelope, and a ticket for a passage by ship to Tol Eressëa, departing in two days.

The next day, I put the flier into the confetti machine without having opened it, where it becomes tiny festive squares decorated with smiles and frisbees and naked, pedicured feet. I have no intention of going and am working earnestly on turning the orange-tabbed section of the blue ledger into my third bag for the day when my supervisor comes over to take my place so that I can “write directions for my coverage for the next week.”

My foot quickens on the pedal, seemingly against my will. “Coverage? I don’t have any leave left.” Amarië is always after me to use my full union benefits, and I don’t argue. It’s not like I like it here—I didn’t exactly like making hoes and grill plates in my father’s forge either—but it has become surprisingly comfortable in the way that my father’s forge, with its leaping flames and caustic chemicals, was once comfortable as well. Still, I’d rather be home.

“This came from way on high,” my supervisor tells me, and when I don’t look impressed, elaborates, “Lord Námo high. You’re to be given a week off, paid and covered. And before you argue about the confetti,” he quickly adds, “you’ve been averaging two bags a day, so you’ll earn two hours leave each day as well.”

I gesture at the bag by my feet. “This is my third bag, and it’s almost full.”

“Three bags, then.”

And that’s when I realize the order is indeed from on high on high. One difference I’ve noted between Tirion of old and democratic Tirion of today is that everything seems suddenly more valuable. We used to be lavished with whatever we desired: the best of food and wines, luxuriant clothing and resplendent jewels, every whim and fancy actualized with just a word. Now, nothing is lavished; it is parted with, the same despondent language that one used to use when taking leave from a loved one. Amarië would tell me that what was once lavished in fact came from the majority of people who lived in the lower streets and whose lives haven’t changed much (or have changed for the better), and today’s frugality is a symptom of equality. Regardless, every iota matters now as it never did before. If they are willing to part with three hours of leave a day, this is serious.

I still don’t plan on going. I’ve walked home, turning over an idea for my pocket palantír in my mind and looking forward to an uninterrupted week to work on it, when I realize that the little shack I built for myself behind my mother’s house has a rental cart tied in front of it, and the horse—a sturdy palomino—is cropping the grass I never both to clip.

Nelyo is in my shack, holding up one of my shirts by either shoulder and grimacing, while my mother assembles a neat stack of trousers in a travel trunk. He doesn’t greet me when I enter but announces, “Carnistir, this is hideous.”

I grab it from his hands. It has armpit stains and a streak of oil down the front. “That’s a work shirt!”

“I should hope not,” he replies.

“Not the Public Building!” I jab my finger toward the second room in my cottage where I keep a workshop. “That! That work!”

“Thank goodness.”

“Why the hell are you here, going through my clothes?”

My mother ignores my outburst at my brother. “Little love, do you have anything suitable for the coast?” I always wish I could be irritated with her persistence in calling me “little love,” which she’s done since I was actually little. I’m thousands of years old, with two daughters, once a lord of my own lands, and in my second body—yet it unmans me every time. “Not really,” I say, deflated. “I’m not planning on going to the coast,” even as I know I’m going to the fucking coast.

Nelyo eyes me up and then says to our mother, “Findekáno is close to his size and has too many clothes. I’ll pack some extras of his.”

“I’m not wearing Findekáno’s clothes!”

Two days later, I am standing on a dock on Tol Eressëa wearing Findekáno’s T-shirt—red with a crowing rooster that says LORD OF BIRDS—being hugged by Artanis for the first time since we were kids, with my family milling behind me and Artaher at my side.