From Crystal Fountains Unfailing by Lindariel

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From Crystal Fountains Unfailing

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The Source of Narog poured in many silver rivulets down the sheer grey cliffs of the Ered Wethrin. The waters converged on a narrow ledge before spilling smoothly into a deep natural stone basin in a low hollow set about with fir and willow trees. To the east of the hollow, where the trees ended and the ground was more level, daffodils dotted the meadows, waxy white near the water but shifting to bright yellow farther away from the water. One last tendril of their musky fragrance lazed across the meadow as the sun disappeared behind the mountains.

Avenues of tents stretched across the near end of the meadow. Some clustered around bright banners, while others were less regimented. An unceasing line of Elves -- Noldor, Grey-Elves, Green-Elves and Falathrim -- moved to and fro between the waterfall and the camp, all bearing vessels -- chased silver ulmali, fine glazed and thick unglazed clay jugs, carved wooden buckets, even a few treasured glass carafes -- to catch the cold mountain spring water.

From her seat in a pavilion pitched under the blue and silver banner of Ñolofinwë, Alatáriel watched the impromptu parade intently. The High King of the Noldor had well chosen the site for tomorrow's feast. The waters of Ivrin were said by the Grey-Elves to possess the virtue of healing, and Ñolofinwë intended everyone present to drink from them, including and in fact especially the two representatives Elwë Singollo had sent from Doriath. Would any fetch water for that standoffish pair, she wondered, turning her regard back to the natural beauties of the Pool of Ivrin, from which Teleporno was returning carrying a graceful Falathrin calph. She smiled as he entered the pavilion.

"It is well that Teleporno makes himself useful," observed Findekáno, "for he has scarcely taken his eyes off you since you came out of your tent." He was resplendent in sapphire blue and his famous gold hair ribbons, lounging crosswise in his father's seat and leaning toward Russandol sitting at his left.

Setting down the calph in front of Findekáno, Teleporno nodded. "This is the first time I have seen her wear her hair that way since--" he began.

Alatáriel interposed calmly, "since we sailed." Russandol's right arm twitched at her words, and Findekáno laid two fingers on Russandol's forearm. Russandol's lips tightened at the touch; he sent Findekáno a sidelong glance and nodded slightly.

"Yes," Teleporno agreed as he sat in the chair next to Alatáriel, "and it is so pleasant to see us all in festival array." He smoothed the pearled cuffs of his aquamarine coat, then stuck out his leg and contemplated it. "I think I have not worn stockings this bright since--"

"Since that time I dragged you to Itarillë's begetting day party, the one where everybody was supposed to wear green because it was her favorite color," Alatáriel finished his sentence.

Russandol brightened a bit. "I remember that one! I had a new coat--"

"With matching green hair ribbons," Findekáno said. "Redheads should always wear green," he said lightly, standing and reaching for the calph. He turned it about in his hands, admiring the glazed octopus that writhed across its entire surface before pouring from it into the matching vessels that waited on the table. He handed the full vessels around, starting with Teleporno. "Thank you for fetching us water," he said with a deep nod.

As they drank a harper began to play somewhere in the middle distance, and a singer began the evening song to Ulmo. It took a moment for Alatáriel to register the Quenya words after so many years of hearing the Falathrin version of the hymn, but she recognized the voice of her cousin Turukáno immediately. He had always been the most devout of their generation. She shut her eyes and listened, recalling her own encounter with the Lord of Waters and the Telerin prayer Teleporno had offered.

As she sat with her eyes closed in the twilight she fancied she heard it again, that sound at the farthest reaches of her hearing. More a throb than a hum, it sounded so familiar, yet so remote and fleeting! Alatáriel opened her eyes, quickly scanning the entire landscape.

"I like your ribbons, cousin," Findekáno said when her eyes touched him. He gestured to the silvery ribbons woven into the two side braids that looped to meet the crown of her middle braid, which was stitched through with more silvery ribbons. "Very shiny, but not metal. What is that stuff?"

"Oh, these? A technique I picked up from the Grey-Elves," Alatáriel said shortly, looking pointedly at Russandol who flushed pink, which showed well against his dark green outfit.

"Alatáriel did us all a great service the last time she came north, when she convinced the Grey-Elves to share the secret of their clothmaking with us. But I never saw any of their cloth as supple and lustrous as that," admitted Russandol.

"What's the secret?" inquired Findekáno.

"I prefer not to talk about it by night," replied Alatáriel firmly, managing to send her disapproving sidelong look at both him and Russandol at the same time.

"Never mind, Finno, I will explain it to you later," Russandol said.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Later, as the careful conviviality of dinnertime lapsed into evening, Alatáriel sat barefoot in the open doorway of her tent, noting in her journal her recent observations about the olvar in the upper reaches of the Narog. Her choice had been to camp with her brothers who had clustered about their father's banner at a substantial distance from the Fëanorions, albeit closer to the High King's banner. The delegation of Falathrim among whom she had lived for the last 20 years were camped in a hollow circle behind her, under a banner Círdan had devised specially for the event; it had a Falathrin swan-ship and two dolphins on it, and every time any Fëanorion loyalist got near it he twitched. Russandol and Makalaurë themselves had been avoiding the entire area all day. To one side of her tent, she could hear Ingoldo talking with Artaresto and working out a particularly complicated song fragment on his harp. On the other side of her tent Findekáno and Angaráto were playing some kind of betting game in Aikanáro's tent.

She put down her pen just as Teleporno loomed up before her in the moonlight. He had taken off his fancy coat and looked distracted. "Can you hear it?" he asked. "The Lord of Waters is speaking."

"That must be what I was hearing earlier," she realized. "Of course! The Ulumúri! We heard that sound on the beach, after the Moon rose but before the rising of the Sun."

"He must be speaking through the falling water. Come with me! We will go and listen to what he has to say," urged Teleporno, pointing toward the hollow next to the cliff.

Quickly they walked through the daffodils and into the grove of trees. The willows rustled ceaselessly in the still air rich with the scent of firs. As they walked a vibration became apparent, distant and eerie like the sound of conch horns being blown far away. The sound mingled with that of the falling water as they arrived beside the pool.

The stone basin shone pale silvery grey; it was very fine-grained, worn smooth and roughly egg-shaped. Clumps of ninglor stalks, not yet blooming, grew here and there around it, especially at the shallow rounded end where the waters welled out and down toward their eventual meeting with Sirion. Alatáriel took a moment to admire the graceful reedlike shapes in the dappled moonlight and missed Teleporno stripping to his loincloth and splashing over to the waterfall. When she saw he was already in the water, she removed and lay her pearled white gown safely on the grass before wading into the basin clad only in her linen sheath. She moved nearer to the falling water. The cascade was twice her armspan across, leaving plenty of room for the two of them to stand under it side by side. She took up a stance beside him under the cascade, up to her waist in the pool, face and hands turned upward to the sheet of water falling from more than thrice their height, and cleared her mind.

The vibration intensified, not just as a sound in her ears but also as a bone-deep itch in her whole hröa. The sensations all merged into an impression of being contained and cherished by the water. After an instant, an hour, a yén, the sensation localized in her chest; she realized only in its loosening that something had been constricting her heart. She breathed down to the very bottom of her lungs as the vibration receded to a distant pulse, leaving her trembling.

"Teleporno, I have something to tell you," she blurted out, stepping back from the waterfall.

"And I you," he replied, still in the water.

"You first," she encouraged.

"No, you spoke first," he insisted, wading out to where she stood at the edge of the pool.

"I have been carrying a burden of guilt since the Kinslaying," she said in a rush. "Ever since my kindred attacked your kindred, I have been afraid for our friendship, afraid that you think less of me because of what--" Her voice caught. She breathed deeply, forcing out the last words with a sob, "the terrible things they did."

Teleporno reached for Alatáriel, and they went into one anothers' arms. He replied softly, "it is true that I have looked upon you differently since then. This is what I wanted to say to you. I knew you had nothing to do with any of that, and yet in my heart I have felt you shared in the blame anyway." Tears welled up in his eyes. "The Lord Ulmo has helped me understand that I was wrong," he whispered.

After a long moment of weeping onto each other's necks, they both moved to separate at the same moment, laughing in surprise at their perfect timing.

Teleporno moved to the heap of clothing he had discarded. He tried to step into one of his long green wool stockings, but it snagged on his wet foot. Patiently he began gathering up the length of the stocking in his two hands, sliding it over the heel of the foot and stopping to smooth it, then coaxing it over his dancer's calf and wriggling it side to side up over his knee and thigh, all while bent nearly double and balanced on the other foot. Alatáriel caught her breath. The two of them had been heedlessly underdressed or even naked in one another's presence many times in the past, just as any two adult Elves might be; what was it about this moment that was different? She picked up her gown and began shaking it gently as if to remove stray leaves and twigs from it, but that was just a distraction. She half-closed her eyes so that he would not notice her watching him from under her lashes as he tied off his first stocking and reached for the second one. Her mouth went dry and she stopped shaking the gown as the second stocking went on just like the first. Teleporno straightened up with his tunic in hand, and she forgot to breathe. Her gaze lingered on his smoothly muscled torso as he stretched his arms over his head to put it on. His silver head, gleaming even when wet, emerged from the tunic. He shook himself, smiling as the tunic clung to his wet hips, and the shape of his mouth made her knees go weak.

"Was the water not cold for you as well as me?" Teleporno asked as he slid his feet into his felt shoes. "I am wishing for my cloak, and here you are still in only your sheath!"

"Yes, yes," she stuttered, jamming her arms into the sleeves of the gown and overlapping the front panels, "the water was very cold." She secured the front of her gown, fumbling with the knotted girdle, and hugged herself for a moment, seeking to steady herself.

"Then let us get back to our cloaks," Teleporno concluded, reaching out a hand to her.

Alatáriel took his hand but did not move from where she stood. She looked in his eyes and spoke to him, mind to mind, for the first time: "You and I are guiltless of what our kin did to one another."

Teleporno smiled in pure delight, replying in the same fashion "we were not responsible for that. We are forever and only ourselves."

For a moment the Ulumúri keened louder as they stood looking at one another, then receded beyond hearing leaving behind only the sound of the Falls of Ivrin.

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Chapter End Notes

ulmali (Q) -- flagons, serving vessels for beverages

calph (S) -- also a serving vessel for beverages

The prompt for this challenge was a NSFW quotation from a work of Victorian pornography.  I endeavored to turn this quotation on its head in as many ways as I could devise.

"Why, I know not, but I was instinctively prompted to feign sleep. I did so successfully, notwithstanding the passing of the candle before my eyes. So she at once commenced undressing. When her back was turned, I opened my eyes, and greedily devoured her naked charms as they were gradually exhibited before me. The moment she turned round, I was again as if asleep. I have said that my passions had begun to develop themselves, but as yet I did not understand their force or direction. I well remember this first night, when a fine ripe woman gradually removed every particle of dress within a couple of yards of me--the effect of each succeeding charm, from her lovely and beautifully formed bubbies to the taking off her shoes and stockings from her well-formed legs and small feet and ankles, caused my prick to swell and stiffen to a painful extent. When all but her chemise was removed, she stopped to pick up her petticoats that she had allowed to fall to her feet, and in lifting them, raised also her chemise, and exposed to my view a most glorious bottom--dazzlingly white and shining like satin. As the light was full upon it, and she was still in a stooping position, I could see that below her slit she was well covered with dark hair. Turning round, to put her petticoats on a chair, and to take up her night-gown, she slipped her chemise from her arm, and letting it fall to the ground while she lifted the night-gown over her head, I had for some seconds a view of her beautiful belly, thickly covered with dark curly hair over the mount of Venus. So voluptuous was the sight, I almost shuddered, so intense was my excitement. She now sat down on the bed to take off her shoes and stockings. Oh! what beautiful thighs, legs, ankles, and feet she had! I am now advanced in life, and have had many handsome and wellformed women, but I never saw limbs more voluptuously formed."

-- Excerpt from The Romance of Lust, Volume 1 (1873)