Meril and Mornacu by heget

Meril and Mornacu

Meril shuffles papers on her desk because she does not have enough time between her meetings with petitioners and her lords to do what she really wants to, which is push out her heavy chair, stand up and stretch her legs, take a brisk walk through the stone corridors of Barad Eithel to keep her muscles from cramping any further, and rip the sleeves of this new gown off her arms because the fabric itches like biting midges. She is going to fire her laundress and hire a new, competent one.

The next meeting is with the Tata, and she cannot afford to be rude or distracted, because she dearly does not want to accidentally offend the Tatyar Morben’s representative. Their alliance is newer than even the Mithrim’s alliance with the Noldor, and the Lady of the Mithrim has no marriage to keep that allegiance. Their representative for the meeting is not a touchy or proud man -his unflappable, causal bearing makes him stand out from his fellow Morben- but Meril does not want to chance a mistake. She likes him, even if he is undoubtedly a bizarre man. Meril is fortunate that the two spokesmen she must deal with to learn the needs and concerns of her people to represent them against the Noldor councils of her new husband and father-in-law are both men that she likes and respects. For her Sindarin subjects she relies on the herdsman that helped to rescue them and their flocks and save the horses, the man that has risen to fill the vacuum of the deaths of so many of Meril’s family and old leaders among the Mithrim. Meril can no longer walk with ease among her people, following the herds of horses and sheep grazing on the high meadows and down on the vast flowering plains, so she leans on the reports and petitions that Annael brings to her. Annael is familiar and known. Mornacu is strange.

The man that the Morben, the Tatyar Avari that had until recently avoided all other elves and hid in the deep caves of Hithlum after creeping into Meril’s homeland only a scant few years before the War started in earnest, sends to speak with her is a tall man. He is gangly and boney and reminds Meril of a crane or a stick-figure, and his face is covered in scars. He might have been a handsome man without the scars, but they pucker his mouth and and jaw and the largest scar runs straight down his face, through the missing eye. The man’s original name Meril does not know, but his people, when they adopted the Sindarin tongue, call him Mornacu, the Hound of Morwë. Meril thinks it might be a title instead of a name. Morwë is their leader. Was. The Morben do not speak much of Morwë to outsiders still, but they revere him and he is their central inspiration. As he was also killed long ago, back in Cuiviénen when trying to speak out against the first king of the Tatyar, and his followers that were not also summarily executed were banished or fled, Morwë’s Hound is who Meril deals with. Still, Meril is a daughter of the Eglath, the followers that stayed to search for their king Elu, so she understands the Morben and Morwë. She understands that lingering reverence.

The rest of the Morben are Tatyar, dark hair and pale skin and would look remarkably like her new in-laws if dressed in the same garments and standing the same way and kept their mouths shut. Their faces share the similarity that comes from being interrelated cousins, and Meril knows the current day-to-day clan leader is a second or third cousin to his wife. The Tatyar are a small group, barely more than a hundred total, she thinks. Meril is attempting to memorize their blood ties and family lines, now that she has memorized those of her new in-laws. She does not know if there had been more of them before the War, because the Morben had shied away from revealing themselves. The current clan leader was their leader from before - they did not suffer the same tragedy that befell Meril’s family. A dour man with dark eyes and dark hair with the same frown lines and nose shape as Meril’s father-in-law, and Meril fantasizes about lining the two men up next to one another to see if their resemblance is only in her imagination.

Mornacu does not look like them at all. He dyes his hair dark and wears cloth coverings around his head and across his lower face, plain dark clothing, but Meril has seen the roots of that hair once and knew it was a pale gray, and beneath the scars and missing eye is a Lindi face. She does not know the makeup of the tribes that stayed at Cuiviénen to know if Mornacu was considered of another group before. The rest of the Morben do not treat him as bloodkin -he is not a cousin of someone- but he is theirs.

No, he is Morwë’s.

He was, this part Meril does know, Morwë’s childhood friend. Maybe. Childhood companion, definitely, and Mornacu was there when Morwë was killed, and the missing eye was lost trying to save Morwë, and the spindly tall scared man is fanatically loyal like a dog to the memory of his dead friend. Morwë was bright and hopeful and believed in friendships and peace and trust, all virtues that do not come easily to his kin and followers. They are suspicious and insular and still frightened by the scars of Cuiviénen. Morwë was different and wanted a better, safer, happier life for everyone. Mornacu tries. Meril does too.

Chapter End Notes

Of the Morben - or true Avari in Beleriand, we are told that they avoided the other elves, be it the original Sindarin inhabitants or later Noldor, with the exception being that when Fëanor landed in Beleriand the non-orcs that they first encountered with Avari claiming descent from the Tatyar and not Sindar. And that this Tatyar Avari group soon found that instead of the warm welcome of kin that the Sindar and Nandor or Sindar and other Nelyar Avari groups aka Silvan experienced where they were readily embraced and integrated in ... this was not that. The Tatyar Avari immensely disliked the Fëanorians as arrogant, and that's the last the reader hears about them.
But again, as were are told that Sindar welcomed in Avari (Sindarin: Morben) who chose to leave hiding and join against Morgoth - well, it just made sense that they would go to Meril instead of trying to go back into hiding.

Eglath is the name that the Sindar in Beleriand gave themselves after their kin split, the Forsaken, because most but not all wished to stay to look for the missing Elwë.

Of the Avari, one of the tidbits of information that we have are the names of two of their leaders - Morwë and Nurwë.

And yes, Mornacu is a very self-indulgent fusion, and the story of the civil wars at Cuiviénen is one I shall eventually write.