silent night by Fernstrike

silent night

Cloudless night blanketed Rómenna, stars glinting like stalactites clinging to the inky dome of the sky. The winters here were mild, milder than the once or twice Elendil had passed midwinter on the continent, where the snowdrifts piled high and the wind chill clawed its way into one's bones. This island was too far south for furs, and this bay too sheltered. Still, he gratefully accepted the shawl his wife laid on his shoulders, fixing it with the pin she had looked out for him earlier, before the tale-telling that was closing out the year's observance.

"You never wore this openly before," she noted.

"Neither did you line your eyes in blue." He held her unflinching gaze. "There's need to now."

"Do you think they know?" she said softly, nodding towards the low glow of the library. "The boys. Do you think they understand?"

He glanced indoors from where they stood on the balcony, watching his sons read to their sons, swaddled but with squalling calmed by the hushed reading of fairy-stories from the old days. Picture perfect. There was quiet there, and some ignorance maybe - a sense, at least, that the world was not yet slipping out from beneath their feet.

"There was a time this room was full on midwinter," he murmured. "People spilled into it from the hall and music and laughter spilled into the streets. It's so quiet now."

"That's not what I asked."

"You think they can't understand inference?"

"Don't," she warned, fire sparking in her eyes, the brightness of a cornered tigress, as she glanced back at them. "Inference is not how we're going to survive what's coming."

"And what is coming?"

She fingered the bronze shawl pin, a delicate piece with a head like a cresting wave. "Something that will not take defiance for an answer."

"He is a prisoner," Elendil whispered harshly, sparing a worried glance at his family in the room - safe, sheltered. They could almost have been mistaken for a painting in their stillness and near-silence.

"It is not our ancient adversary I'm worried about," she implored, covering the pin with one hand. "No hidden code in pins or brocade or coloured kohl will bring allies to our door. Tonight's silence is proof enough of that. No-one answers these messages anymore, Elendil. No-one dare. That is the truth of it."

He looked up at the studded sky, seeking out the brightness of Eärendil for some semblance of hope; but the night was in its adolescence, and the Mariner's return yet hours away. One patch of sky did shine brighter than the others - but it reminded him of the tales he had heard of convergence, of the sort Tar-Meneldur had written of in books now locked away or lost. An omen? A doom? A transitory thing, he urged his wayward mind. And cold, and far away, and wordless as it looks down upon us.

He turned once more to his sons and their children, covering his wife's hand with his own. "Do you think we'll see the libraries filled again in our lifetime?"

She bowed her head, saying nothing.