The Kids Are All Right by grey_gazania

FA 495

Winter had come early to the south of Beleriand, and though it had yet to snow, the air was cold and wet. The Elves standing guard at Círdan’s outpost at the Mouths of Sirion were red-cheeked from the wind, and both of them were looking forward to the change in watch, when they would be able to go inside and rest by the fire for a time.

“It’s going to be a rough winter,” Aerlin said, standing with her gloved hands clasped behind her back. “I can feel my bones acting up already.”

Braglanen fiddled with the strap of his quiver. “Don’t say that,” he said. “You’ll call down bad luck.”

Aerlin snorted, her breath condensing in the chill air. She didn’t believe in luck. The ache in her old injuries always meant bad weather. Whether she said it aloud or not wouldn’t make a difference. But she’d long ago learned that trying to make Braglanen give up his superstitions was a futile exercise, so she stayed quiet, focusing on the land around her. She was peering out through the mist, watching for any sign of movement, when she caught sight of a ragtag group of people moving towards her.

“Braglanen,” she said quietly. “I think we have guests.”

As the group came closer, their figures became clearer. Two dozen or so men, three women, and one lone child were trudging along the bank of the river, following its course towards Círdan’s outposts. They were in sorry shape, grey in the face and swaying with exhaustion, and a number of them seemed to be sporting injuries.

Braglanen and Aerlin stepped out to meet them -- alert, but not with their weapons drawn. Morgoth had yet to send any servants in the guise of refugees, and people escaping from Hithlum had been making their way south in a slow but steady trickle for the past twenty-odd years.

“Do you come from Hithlum?” Braglanen called as they approached.

“We come from Nargothrond,” a man answered. He was carrying one of the others over his shoulders, and apparently had been for some time; though his shoulders were broad and strong, he was stooping under the weight of his companion. His face was grave, and he said, “The city has fallen.”

For a moment, Aerlin froze, certain that she had misheard the man. But the sorry state of the people in front of her spoke for itself, and she felt herself grow cold with dread. She hurried to catch up with Braglanen, who had already reached the newcomers.

“That is ill news,” Braglanen said, stretching out his arms to help one of the women, who was limping badly. “How many more are behind you?”

For a moment there was silence. “None that we know of,” one finally said. “Orodreth is slain, along with nearly all whom he led into battle. The city has been destroyed by the dragon, and the rest of our people were taken captive. Túrin still lives -- and may the wretch be damned for his foolishness -- but we know not where he has gone.”

At that, even Braglanen fell still, utterly stunned. Surely this couldn’t be all that was left of Nargothrond, that great city that Finrod Felagund had labored so long to build and protect?

“What happened?” Aerlin finally managed to ask.

“Orodreth took us to Tumhalad to face Glaurung,” the tallest of the men said, his grey eyes shadowed. “We were routed. By the time we reached the city, the dragon had already made his way inside. Lúthwen and her children are all who escaped.”

“I knew,” said a woman -- evidently Lúthwen. “I don’t know how, but I knew in my heart that the battle had gone ill. So I took my girls and we ran. No one else would come. They said I was mad. Even my sister--”

Here she broke off, fighting back a sob, and covered her face with her shaking hands.

“I’m so sorry,” Aerlin said quietly. “Let’s get you all inside. We have food, and Eirien, our healer, can see to the worst of your wounds. Then we’ll get you to Balar. The Houses of Healing there will be able to treat the rest of you.”

“Thank you,” the tallest man said. Together, he and the other remnants of Nargothrond followed Círdan’s people to safety.

***********

Ereiniel fought back a yawn as she trailed after her mother, walking down the frozen dirt road and into the Houses of Healing. It wasn’t even dawn yet, but Lord Círdan had called for all those who worked there to be woken, telling them that a party of injured Elves was coming over from the mainland. Nargothrond, it seemed, had fallen, and the survivors had come to seek refuge on Balar. It was dire news. Nargothrond had been a thriving city, one of the few strongholds of the Elves to survive Morgoth’s assaults over the past few decades. Now only Doriath, Gondolin, and Balar itself remained.

While Ianneth stopped to consult with Halwen, the chief healer, Ereiniel joined her neighbor Ólwen by the fire. Ólwen, too, was yawning, and her eyes were still puffy from sleep. The two women didn’t speak, but they nodded at each other in greeting and together began to hang pots full of water over the flames to heat.

Medicine wasn’t exactly Ereiniel’s calling. In fact, though she’d turned fifty in the beginning of the year, she’d yet to find any craft that truly suited her. But the Houses of Healing always needed extra hands, and thanks to her mother’s lessons, Ereiniel was skilled enough to be useful.

She liked being useful.

Occasionally, too, she was called upon to use the Elessar, the gem her father had entrusted to her before his death. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Falas, she’d found that she could use it to focus the light of the sun and heal those who were gravely wounded. She wore it now, on a chain tucked beneath her tunic, for it was the only thing of Fingon’s that she still possessed. Her feelings towards her father may not have been as simple as they had been when she was a child, before she knew of his part in the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, but she still missed him terribly.

By the time the people from Nargothrond arrived on the island and were ushered inside, the water was warm and the necessary supplies had been assembled. Ereiniel was sent to help a man with a broken ankle.

“Did Eirien tell you where the break is?” she asked him, unwrapping his makeshift bandage to reveal swollen, bruised skin.

The man shook his head. “The others needed her attention more than I did.”

Ereiniel nodded and then began to carefully palpate the area, seeking the location of the broken bone. The man winced, squeezed his eyelids closed, and breathed in through his teeth in a hiss, but he didn’t pull away from her touch.

“I’m Gildor,” he said after a moment, his voice tight with pain. “Gildor Inglorion.”

“I’m Ereiniel,” she said absently, her attention still focused on his ankle. “It’s nice to meet you.”

His eyes opened. “Ereiniel, daughter of King Fingon?” he said, looking at her intently. “You must be; I can see it in your face.” He winced again and then said, “I knew your father. Not well, but I knew him.”

She didn’t want to talk about Fingon, especially not with someone from Nargothrond, the city that had refused to aid their king in his final stand against Morgoth. Those extra warriors could have been all that was needed to turn the tide of the battle, and then her father might still be alive. She changed the subject back to Gildor’s injury.

“I found the break,” she told him. “The bone has started to mend itself, but it’s crooked. We might have to break it again. One of the more experienced healers will decide.”

If her abruptness had offended Gildor, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded and held still as she rubbed balm on his bruises, splinted his ankle, and wrapped it in clean bandages. Then she helped him to a seat near the fire. Lothrin, Ólwen’s sister, brought Gildor a bowl of porridge to eat while he waited, and Ereiniel moved on to her next patient.

A few hours later, once everyone had been examined and fed, Ereiniel gathered up those who didn’t need further attention from the healers. “We have places for you to stay,” she said. Then she began to lead them back to her own neighborhood, where there were empty rooms waiting to be occupied. Lord Círdan had clearly expected that many people would be fleeing to Balar, for he had made his city large indeed. There was more than enough space.

Little Mithrim, some of the Falathrim called the neighborhood. In fact, not everyone in Little Mithrim hailed from Mithrim; Maewen and Erestor, Ereiniel’s two closest friends, both lived there with their families, and they were from the Falas. But most of the Noldor who had escaped from Eithel Sirion had settled there, and they had been joined by a number of Mithrim’s Grey-Elves in the past few years -- especially since Annael, Ereiniel’s grandfather, had arrived on Balar with a large group of his people. Nargothrond’s survivors would probably be more comfortable among their fellow Noldor than they would be in other parts of the city.

The sun had risen while they had all been in the Houses of Healing, and the fine layer of frost that had covered the ground overnight was beginning to melt. The salty air was still cold, though, and Ereiniel could see her charges shivering. She shrugged off her own cloak and offered it to a woman around her age who was holding a small girl in her arms.

“Thank you,” the woman said, as Ereiniel helped her fasten the garment.

“What’s your name?” Ereiniel asked.

“Hannas,” the woman said. “And this is my sister, Saelwen.”

Saelwen was resting against Hannas’ shoulder with her eyes closed, sucking on her thumb. She was pale and hollow-cheeked, and she looked exhausted. She couldn’t have been any older than Ereiniel herself had been when she and her mother had left Mithrim, and Ereiniel had a sudden urge to pick her up and hold her close, to tell her that she was safe now and that everything would be all right.

But she didn't. The little girl was surely more comfortable with her sister than she would be with a stranger, and saying that everything was going to be all right would be a lie. Saelwen’s home had been destroyed, her friends and neighbors taken captive, and now she was in an unfamiliar city full of new, strange faces. Ereiniel remembered how that felt. Everything was not going to be all right, and she knew it.

News of Nargathrond’s fall had traveled quickly, and when they reached the heart of Little Mithrim, Ereiniel found that her neighbors had already made up temporary beds for the newcomers. There was a fire lit in the neighborhood meeting hall, and Ereiniel’s aunt was waiting inside with more food and drink.

Henthael, Fingolfin’s former scribe, was helping Ólwen sort out spare clothing by approximate size. “Whenever you’re ready, we can show you where the bathhouses are,” he said, turning to greet the newcomers. Then his eyes lit upon the tallest of Nargothrond’s survivors, and his face went wooden.

“He can’t stay,” he said, his voice flat.

“What?”

“That’s Celebrimbor Curufinwion. He can’t stay,” Henthael repeated.

“Actually, it’s Celebrimbor Nyellion now,” Celebrimbor said coldly.

Ereiniel sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Henthael,” she said. Lord Círdan had allowed Celebrimbor on the island, and Henthael had no right to undermine that decision. Besides, they had all heard of what had happened in Nargothrond, of how Celebrimbor had denounced his father’s deeds and cut all ties with his family.

But none of that seemed to have occurred to Henthael. “He’s the son of a Kinslayer,” he said, glaring at Celebrimbor.

“And I’m the daughter of one,” Ereiniel reminded him. “Will you shun me, too?”

She kept her eyes fixed on Henthael’s face, letting him see her disappointment. Henthael had had no love for her father, thanks to Fingon’s hand in the deaths at Alqualondë, but he had been fiercely loyal to Fingolfin, and after seeing Ereiniel wield the Elessar in the aftermath of Morgoth’s attack on the Falas, he had turned that loyalty to her, child though she was. She was the only descendent of Henthael’s king who was left outside of Gondolin.

She’d become well acquainted with him over the past two decades, and she knew that he was prone to speaking rashly when angered. But she knew, too, that he wasn’t so petty that he wouldn’t apologize when he came to his senses.

Sure enough, Henthael tried to meet her gaze but, flushing, failed. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, squaring his shoulders and looking over at Celebrimbor. “I should not be so swift to judge.”

“Celebrimbor had naught to do with Curufin’s crimes,” a burly man called Belegon said firmly, before Celebrimbor could speak. “He was faithful to our city and our people.”

Ólwen helped defuse the situation further by handing Henthael an empty bucket that sat by the hearth. “Be a good fellow and get us more water, will you?” she said. Henthael took the bucket and hurried outside, and everyone seemed to sigh in relief as the lingering tension left the room along with him.

“Don’t mind Henthael,” Ereiniel said to Celebrimbor. “He says things that he doesn’t really mean. It’s nice to meet you. Cousin,” she added, reaching out to grasp his arms in greeting. Cut off from his father or not, Celebrimbor was still the great-grandson of Finwë, just as Ereiniel was Finwë’s great-granddaughter. They were kin.

After a moment’s hesitation, he returned her gesture. “I’m not like Curufin,” he said. There was a hint of pained earnestness in his voice. “Please believe that.”

“I think you made that plain some years ago,” Ólwen said. “We all know how you repudiated him. It’s like Ereiniel said -- Henthael speaks without thinking. You are welcome here, no matter who your parents are.”

“Please,” Ereiniel’s aunt said from near the fire, where she had begun frying eggs and kippers, “come eat. Sit and rest. You’ve all had a long, hard journey.”

They sat, and Ereiniel helped Tinneth pass out food and cups of barley water. Though most of the refugees had eaten only a few hours ago in the Houses of Healing, they ate again eagerly -- unsurprising, given how thin they all were. Even Saelwen woke at the scent of food, hungrily devouring the fish that Hannas cut up for her. By the time Henthael slipped back in with his bucket, everyone was too intent on their meal to notice him.

“We have work that we need to see to,” Tinneth said to Ereiniel. “But you stay in here today, all right? I’ll see if Maewen and Erestor can join you. Someone needs to make sure our new neighbors can find everything they need.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Ereiniel said, giving Tinneth a quick peck on the cheek. “Erestor should be able to come. We’re working together on a new fishing net for Uildir. And Maewen can weave just about anywhere.”

Sure enough, as the adults trickled out of the room, Ereiniel’s friends came in. For a moment, Maewen looked around the room at the newcomers. She then set about tethering her backstrap loom to a low hook on the wall. Erestor took a seat across from Ereiniel, laying the half-finished net and several coils of twine between them.

Looking at the twine, Ereiniel wanted to sigh. It was boring, repetitive work, tying the same knots over and over again, but without nets they could catch no fish, and without fish the people of Balar would not have enough to eat. So she kept her complaints to herself, working with Erestor in companionable silence as Maewen wove beside them.

Celebrimbor and a few of the other men from Nargothrond selected clothing and sought the bathhouses, but most of the group took the opportunity to sleep -- except for Hannas, who sat with her eyes unfocused, stroking her sister’s honey-colored hair. Saelwen was curled on her side, asleep, with her thumb in her mouth once more, and Ereiniel felt another pang of sympathy as she looked at her.

“I’ll be right back,” she said quietly, setting down her side of the net. An idea had struck her.

“Where are you going?” Erestor asked.

“You’ll see,” she said.

She returned a few minutes later with a small block of wood, her whittling knives, and some sandpaper.

“We’re supposed to be working,” Erestor said pointedly, flicking his eyes from her to the net.

Ereiniel sighed. “Just trust me, all right?” she whispered. For a little while she sat still, turning the wood over in her fingers and feeling the weight of it as she envisioned what she wanted to do. Then, when she had the project fixed in her mind, she began to shave careful slivers from the block. Slowly, a spinning top began to take shape beneath her hands.

Erestor was back at work on the net, but Ereiniel could see him biting his tongue. Making toys isn’t work!, he clearly wanted to say, but he managed to contain himself.

It was Maewen who figured it out first. She looked up from her weaving, glanced from the top to Saelwen and back, and flashed Ereiniel a small smile that showed off her dimples. Not long after, Erestor caught on, too, and the irritation melted from his face. He understood now what Ereiniel was trying to do.

Saelwen woke as Ereiniel was testing the top’s balance, making small adjustments here and there as it wobbled. The girl’s attention was quickly caught, and she watched Ereiniel work with interest. By the time Ereiniel had finished sanding, Saelwen had left her sister and scooted closer to Ereiniel and her friends. But she didn’t speak; she simply watched the toy spin, a look of longing in her tired eyes.

“It’s for you,” Ereiniel said, picking it up and holding it out to her.

At first, Saelwen gave Ereiniel a look of doubt, but when Ereiniel made no move to pull the toy away, the little girl reached out and took hold of it with her boney fingers.

“What do you say?” Hannas said from where she sat. She’d been watching the exchange carefully, but had made no move to intervene.

“Thank you,” Saelwen whispered. She turned as though to scurry back to her sister’s side, but then stopped, looking back at Ereiniel. “You have a star on your skin,” she said.

Ereiniel glanced down at the four-pointed star inked on the inside of her left wrist. “I do,” she said. She knew that Saelwen was unlikely to have seen a tattoo before, for tattooing was a tradition of the Falathrim, not the Noldor. But in the aftermath of the destruction of Eglarest the star had seemed necessary. Even Ianneth hadn’t protested when Ereiniel had returned home one day with the unexpected adornment.

“Why?” Saelwen asked.

“To remind me that there’s always light, even in the dark,” Ereiniel said. “And that as long as I can see the stars, I’ll be able to find my way.”

“Does everyone here have pictures on their skin?”

Shaking her head, Ereiniel said, “No. But a lot of us do -- even Lord Círdan.”

Beside her, Maewen set down her shuttle and rolled up her own sleeve, showing Saelwen the delicate daylily bloom tattooed near her elbow. “I have one, too,” she said. They had gotten them together, although, unlike Ereiniel, Maewen had had her parents’ explicit approval.

Saelwen moved a little closer, the top still clutched in one hand, and said, “It’s pretty.”

“It’s a daylily,” Maewen said. “Because daylilies can grow just about anywhere.”

Turning towards Erestor, Saelwen looked at him expectantly, but he shook his head. “I haven’t got any.”

“Oh.” Saelwen looked once more at Ereiniel’s star and then, solemnly, said, “Thank you for the top.” Then she returned to Hannas’ side.

Ereiniel smiled, and as she tucked her knives away and turned back to the net, her heart seemed to grow lighter in her chest. Everything wasn’t going to be all right, but she thought that she might be able to make things a little better, at least for Saelwen. A top and a conversation weren’t much, but they were a place to start.

***********

Like the morning, the afternoon and the evening were spent helping the people from Nargothrond settle into their new homes. It was late indeed when Ereiniel finally crawled into bed, but it seemed to her that barely five minutes had passed before dawn, when she was woken by someone rapping sharply on the front door.

“Up and at it, Ereiniel,” Gurvadhor was calling from outside. “It’s training time.”

She groaned and resisted the urge to bury her head under her pillow. She was still tired from the day before, and arms training was the last thing she wanted to do right now. But she knew exactly what Gurvadhor would say in response to that: Orcs won’t wait for you to be well-rested, young lady.

He only called her young lady when he was annoyed.

“Just a second,” she called back, heaving herself out of bed. She scrambled into her clothes -- breeches and a long tunic that was split at the thigh for better mobility -- and pulled on her boots and cloak before exiting into the frosty dawn.

Nearly everyone on Balar had at least some skill with weapons; it was only sensible, given all that had happened over the past few centuries. But Gurvadhor, who had been a captain under Fingon, was determined to train Ereiniel up to the standards of the Noldorin military. If you ever find yourself fighting for your life, I want you to have the best chance of survival possible, he’d said once. Your father would never have forgiven me if he knew I did anything less.

She followed him to the training grounds, where she shed her cloak and began to stretch alongside her teacher. When she deemed herself limber enough, she took up a blunt practice blade and moved to stand opposite Gurvadhor. Usually he gave her a sign that it was time to begin, but today he attacked as soon as her hands had closed around the hilt of the sword. Ereiniel was hard pressed to parry the unexpected assault, and Gurvadhor succeeded in smacking her shoulder with the flat of his blade.

“Slow,” he chided. 

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to move more quickly. It soon became plain that he was determined to push her hard today, almost as though he was punishing her for being tired, and Ereiniel became annoyed enough that she began to push back. Gurvadhor nodded in approval when her attacks became more fierce, and when she managed to knock him to the ground with a well-placed blow to the back of the knee, he actually smiled. But she erred by holding back, waiting for him to climb to his feet. Instead he lunged, grabbing hold of her ankle and tugging hard, sending her tumbling in the dirt. She barely had time to blink before the blunt tip of his sword was level with her heart.

Sighing, she let her own blade drop. Gurvadhor stretched out a hand, helping her back up, and as she brushed herself off, he said, “You need to stop treating me like a comrade.”

“What do you mean?” Ereiniel asked, looking at him in confusion.

“I mean that during these lessons, I’m not Gurvadhor. I’m your opponent,” he said. “You should’ve pressed your attack when I fell, but you didn’t, because you’re seeing me, and you know me, so you think you should be fair. But that’s not how battle works, Ereiniel. Orcs and balrogs won’t be merciful. They won’t be honorable. They’ll take every opportunity that they can to kill you, and if you fall into the habit of treating your opponents with courtesy, you will die.”

His face was grim and his voice grave, and Ereiniel knew he was speaking from experience. Gurvadhor had fought in many battles, surviving even the crushing defeat of the Nírnaeth Arnoediad. It had been Gurvadhor who had brought the news of the king’s death to Fingon’s wife and daughter. He, Henthael, and a handful of other Noldorin survivors had banded together with a number of the Falathrim after the battle, helping each other across Hithlum and to the Firth of Drengist, where Lord Círdan had ordered some of his ships to wait in case of defeat.

“I’m not your father,” he said, “and I’m not trying to be, because I know that no one could ever take Fingon’s place. But I care about you, Ereiniel. These are dangerous times, and I want you to survive. It’s a virtue to be fair and just in your day-to-day dealings, but it’s not a virtue in battle.”

“I understand,” she said, subdued.

He shook his head. “You don’t,” he said. “But at least you’re listening.” Scooping up the swords, he added, “That’s enough for today. But think about what I’ve said, and be ready to work even harder tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“Good,” he said. “Now head on home. I’m sure your mother will need your help today.”

Chapter End Notes

Nyellion - ‘son of Nyellë’. Having cut ties with his father, Celebrimbor has stopped using his patronymic (Curufinwion) and is now identifying himself as his mother’s son instead. His mother is unnamed in canon, so I’ve given her the name Nyellë.

A note on the Elessar: I'm making use of an earlier origin for the Elessar that Tolkien ultimately discarded, but which I like. In the early draft, the stone was created by Fëanor in Valinor. Upon his death, it passed to Maedhros, who later gave it to Fingon as a gift. In my verse, Fingon gave it to his daughter just prior to the Nírnaeth Arnoediad.

The arrival of the people of Nargothrond didn’t change life on Balar all that much, even as a few more survivors trickled their way down the coast to Círdan’s haven. There was talk, of course, murmurs of dismay and grief and fear, but the everyday tasks went on. Having no set craft, Ereiniel went wherever she was needed -- helping Annael tend to the sheep, or assisting her mother in the Houses of Healing, or going out on the Otter with Uildir when he needed an extra set of hands with the nets. Life fell back into familiar, mundane patterns.

Then winter crashed down with a vengeance. It grew bitterly cold and soon began to snow -- wet, heavy snow that fell in great drifts, hindering passage from one part of the island to another. The days grew dark and gloomy, and people took to spending as much time as possible in the neighborhood meeting halls, all pressed together for extra warmth, rather than in their chilly houses. Lord Círdan encouraged it; already, Ereiniel knew, he was beginning to think about conserving Balar’s supply of firewood, and shared fires were one way to do that.

For her part, Ereiniel felt like the snow was shrinking her already-too-small world. Hemmed in on this island, kept busy by painfully mundane tasks, it seemed to her that the future, which had once looked wide open, was now bleak and hopeless. Between the weather and her own restlessness, it was hard to keep her spirits up.

“I feel like I’m back on the Grinding Ice,” Henthael muttered one morning. “This isn’t a normal winter.”

“You’re not wrong,” Gildor said morosely, adjusting the cushion on which his still-healing foot rested. Though they were inside the meeting hall with most of their neighbors and flames were crackling merrily in the hearth, he was bundled up in a cloak and a scarf. “It’s never been this cold in the south before.”

It’s probably Morgoth’s work, Ereiniel thought. But demoralizing pronouncements didn’t generally go over well, so she kept the grim notion to herself.

They were sitting in a circle -- her, Henthael, Gildor, Erestor, and Hannas -- carefully unpicking old ropes for oakum. Saelwen sat beside them, playing jacks with a gaggle of girls from Dor-lómin. Maewen, too, was nearby with her loom, chewing on her lower lip as she contemplated her pattern, a series of interlocking pinwheels in shades of soft green.

After a while, she set her shuttle aside and held out her arms, turning her torso from side to side as she stretched. “Ereiniel, I meant to tell you,” she said. “You know that beam on my big loom that’s been threatening to crack for months? Last night it finally did.”

“I’ll have a look at it,” Ereiniel said.

Maewen nodded, her chestnut curls bouncing, and leaned closer to Gildor and Hannas. “Ereiniel can fix anything. Well, almost anything,” she corrected herself when Ereiniel raised her eyebrows. “She can fix a lot of things, anyway.”

“What Maewen means is that Ereiniel is an insufferable dilettante,” Erestor said, his voice dry. “She knows how to do a little bit of everything, but she never sticks with any one thing long enough to begin mastering it.”

“I get bored,” Ereiniel said. She dug her thumbnail under a strand of rope, not looking at her companions. Erestor wasn’t wrong; she had hopped from one field to another, and more than a time or two, but none of the things she’d tried her hand at had kindled any sort of spark in her. None had made her feel the way her neighbors seemed to feel about their own chosen crafts.

She may have been descended from Noldorin kings, but sometimes she felt like a complete failure as a Noldo.

“I get bored, too,” Erestor said. “You think I want to make fishing nets for the rest of my life? I want to be a loremaster. But there’s no call for that here. Not now, anyway.” He shrugged. “At least when I make nets I’m being useful.”

It was an old argument, a bone that Ereiniel and Erestor had been worrying at for several years now: What kind of future can we reasonably expect here? There was no animus behind it from either of them, not really, but today, gloomy and restless and cooped-up as she was, Ereiniel felt Erestor’s words stick like barbs in her skin.

“Are you saying I’m useless?” she demanded.

“What? No!” Erestor said, looking genuinely shocked that she’d interpreted him that way.

“Well, it sounds like that’s what you’re saying,” she said, tugging on her rope with a bit more force than was necessary.

As the others watched the budding argument with apprehension, Maewen stepped in to smooth things over.

“Look,” she said gently, “I know it’s cold and miserable, and I know we’ve all got a touch of cabin fever, but arguing isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

Ereiniel didn’t answer. Instead, she pushed herself to her feet and said, “I’m going to go have a look at that loom.” Before any of them could respond, she was gone, picking her way across the crowded room until she reached the door, where she pulled her cloak off one of the pegs on the wall and wrapped it around herself. Then she trudged out into the snow.

It was a lucky thing that she and Maewen both lived so close to the meeting hall, because the snow was deep and the wind was fierce. Fingers of cold air seemed to find their way through every stitch in Ereiniel’s clothing, and by the time she reached her own home her teeth were chattering. She ducked inside to grab what she needed, enjoying the momentary reprieve from the wind, and then ventured back outside.

When she reached Maewen’s house, she let herself in. No one on Balar bothered to put locks on their doors, and besides, Maewen’s parents had long ago made it plain that their daughter’s friends were always welcome. So Ereiniel didn’t hesitate to light a candle and make her way to the family room, where Maewen’s loom stood against one wall. There were no threads on it, and the warp weights were piled neatly on the floor beside it.

Raising the candle, she could see that the upper beam had begun to give way. She assessed the damage with a critical eye. It didn’t seem to be beyond repair, so she pulled out her tools and set to work, carefully filling in the cracks with hide glue and then fastening a series of clamps around the beam.

It didn’t take long for her to finish the job, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back to the meeting hall, not yet. So she blew the candle out and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the loom, just breathing, trying not to think about the cold or the snow or the way the grey, grey sky seemed to press down from above, trying not to think about her dissatisfaction and the pent-up energy that made her want to crawl out of her own skin.

How long she sat there, Ereiniel didn’t know, but she was brought back to the present by the click of the latch and a voice calling her name.

“Ereiniel? Are you in here?”

It was Maewen. She appeared in the doorway, squinting in the dark, and paused for a moment before approaching her friend. Kneeling down beside Ereiniel, she reached out and took hold of her hands.

“Stars above,” she said. “You’re frigid. Look at you.”

Ereiniel realized then that she was shivering. Even though she was out of the wind and still clad in her cloak, Maewen’s dark house with its empty hearth was cold indeed. When Maewen released her hands and pushed herself to her feet, Ereiniel immediately found herself missing the warmth of the other woman’s fingers.

“Stay here,” Maewen said. She left the room, returning a few moments later with the quilt from her bed. She draped one end over Ereiniel’s shoulders and then sat down beside her friend, pulling the other end of the quilt tight around them.

“Thanks,” Ereiniel said quietly.

“Henthael sent me to make sure you were all right,” Maewen said. “You’ve been gone for a while.”

“I didn’t want to go back yet,” Ereiniel said, leaning against Maewen’s soft, warm shoulder. “I knew I’d just end up picking another fight with Erestor.”

Maewen wrapped her arm around Ereiniel. “You know he didn’t mean that the way you took it, right?” she said.

Ereiniel shrugged, and then nodded. “I know,” she admitted. “But it’s a sore spot. I know I should have figured out something to do with myself by now. I know. I just...haven’t.” Running her fingers along the edge of the quilt, she said, “I don’t feel useful. I feel trapped.”

“Yeah,” Maewen said, her voice quiet. “But at least we’re safe here.”

Ereiniel snorted and muttered, “For now.” When Maewen frowned, she said, “You know I’m right. Morgoth came for Eglarest and Brithombar. The only reason he hasn’t come for Balar yet is that we’re harder to reach than the people on the mainland. But it’s only a matter of time. Doriath has Queen Melian to protect it, but once Morgoth kills the Elves in East Beleriand or finds Gondolin, it’ll be our turn. Again,” she couldn’t help adding, remembering the fire and ruin that had crashed down on their home, remembering the blood, remembering how many of their friends had never made it to Balar at all.

“Don’t say that.” Reaching out, Maewen tapped the inside of Ereiniel’s wrist, right over the tattooed star. “Light in the dark, remember?” she said. “We’re still here. There’s still hope.”

“Is there?” Ereiniel asked, letting her eyes fall closed. “Sometimes I feel like all my hope died with Ada.”

She knew that Beleriand’s slide into its current dire straits had begun years before the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, with the chaos and death brought by the Dagor Bragollach, but in the years between the two battles, life in Eglarest had gone on as normal. Then her father had been killed, and the Falas had fallen, and the world had collapsed into fear, fire, and flight. Normal was a thing of the past. The Elves of Middle-earth were no longer thriving; here on Balar, they were merely holding on, and hope seemed to be in short supply.

“Is this about Nargothrond?” Maewen asked, looking at Ereiniel with perceptive eyes.

“A little,” Ereiniel admitted. “It feels like this war will never end, and I’m tired of us dying. I’m tired of us being driven from our homes. But at the same time...” She stopped, swallowing, and then, her voice barely audible, said, “I’m angry. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m so, so angry at the men from Nargothrond. I don’t care what Orodreth thought about the Union. Ada was his king, and Orodreth had a duty to help him. But he didn’t, and now my father’s dead, and Morgoth has control of half the continent. It didn’t need to happen that way. If those men had joined the battle, we could have won.”

Her words had grown more heated as she spoke, and now she scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist, wiping away angry tears.

“I know how much you miss him,” Maewen said softly, rubbing one hand in slow circles over Ereiniel’s back. “But you can’t blame Orodreth’s decision on his subjects.”

Pressing her fingers to the pucker in her tunic where the Elessar was concealed, Ereiniel nodded. “I know,” she said. “But knowing it doesn’t make me any less angry.”

“You’re hiding it well, at least,” Maewen said. “I don’t think any of them have noticed. I mean, it took Erestor nearly a full week to catch on, and he knows you almost as well as I do.”

A half-laugh escaped from Ereiniel, and she asked, “Have you two been talking about me behind my back?”

Maewen shrugged. “We’re your friends,” she said. “We worry about you.”

Leaning over, Ereiniel pressed a brief kiss to Maewen’s cheek. “You’re good friends,” she said. “I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you, either. You were my very first real friend,” Maewen said. “Did you know that? I didn’t have a single friend until I met you. Not one. Nobody wanted to play with a fat little crybaby like me. But you didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

“That’s because you were always nice,” Ereiniel said simply. “And you never made fun of my accent -- unlike a certain other friend of ours that I could name.”

Of course, she didn’t have that accent anymore, having long ago slipped into the speech patterns of her Falathrim peers without any conscious thought. But when she’d first arrived in Eglarest, Ereiniel had spoken with the accent of her native Hithlum, the strong northern burr that her mother still retained. She’d been mocked for it sometimes, but never by Maewen.

 It had been Maewen who’d turned Eglarest from foreign territory into home.

“We should head back,” she said reluctantly. She didn’t really want to leave their shared quilt cocoon, but she knew that if they didn’t return to the meeting hall soon, someone else would be sent to look for them.

Together they placed the quilt on Maewen’s bed and then left the house, trudging through the snow-covered streets until they reached the meeting hall. Ereiniel dropped down to sit on the floor across from Erestor, looked him in the eye, and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, plucking another length of rope from the pile and passing it over to her. “We’re okay. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t been bickering for decades, anyway. The very first time we met, you called me a bully and told me that if I kept picking on Maewen, you’d make me regret it. We’ve been at it ever since.”

“You did stop teasing Maewen, though,” Ereiniel pointed out, the corners of her mouth twitching,

“Hey, I knew trouble when I saw it,” he said with a grin. “Even if trouble was six inches shorter than me and missing her front teeth.”

“I’m not six inches shorter than you anymore.”

“True,” Erestor conceded. “But only because you’re a big galumphing Golodh who hasn’t figured out how to stop growing yet.

Ereiniel stuck out her tongue at him, but she was smiling as she rubbed some life back into her fingers and returned to her work.

***********

Snow continued to fall. Every morning, Ereiniel helped her grandfather clear the path to the barns and pasture, where they brought fresh water and feed to the sheep, made certain that the windbreaks were still standing, and checked the animals for any signs of illness or injury.

Then it was back inside, where she did whatever work needed doing. Afternoons saw her sequestered in a corner of the meeting hall with Madam Ithrin, her tutor, who did the best she could with chalk and pieces of slate. The scholar had had no choice but to leave her books behind when they had abandoned Eglarest. Now she taught from memory alone.

They were halfway through a lesson on Rúmil’s Sarati when Ólwen rushed into the meeting hall and beckoned to Ereiniel from the door. 

“Go on,” Ithrin said, setting her own slate down on the floor. “Clearly she needs you.”

There was only one reason Ólwen would be summoning Ereiniel with such haste. Someone had been injured.

It turned out to be Aearchith, one of the apprentice blacksmiths. He’d slipped and fallen, burning himself quite badly on the length of hot iron that had lain on his anvil. By the time Ereiniel arrived at the Houses of Healing, Halwen had already begun to clean the wound, but the reek of charred flesh still hung in the air. The stench always reminded Ereiniel of Morgoth’s attack on the Falas, when his orcs with their terrible engines had hurled clinging flame over the walls of Eglarest, setting the buildings ablaze. Sometimes the people in the buildings had escaped. Other times they hadn’t, or had only made it out with severe injuries.

The first time she’d used the Elessar had been on the boat to Balar, to heal Ólwen’s sister of burns inflicted by the orcs and their weapons.

“There’s not much in the way of sun,” Ereiniel said, thinking of the grey sky overhead. “But if you bring him outside I’ll do my best.”

Halwen nodded, turning to Halloth, who stood in the corner with, Ereiniel was surprised to see, none other than Celebrimbor. She realized that they must have carried Aearchith from the smithy. Now they carried him outside, taking care not to touch his injury.

It was frigid outside, but at least the Houses of Healing themselves blocked most of the wind, standing as they did in a quadrangle around a small courtyard. Someone had cleared most of the snow, though the ground was dead and bare, but it meant that Halloth and Celebrimbor could at least set Aearchith down on one of the benches without having to do any digging first.

Standing beside him, Ereiniel drew out the Elessar from under her tunic, pulling the chain over her head so that she could hold it in both hands. She looked overhead for a moment, judging the position of the hidden sun, and angled the gem so that it caught what little light there was, casting a dim patch of green over Aearchith’s burn.

She wasn’t new to this; she’d been using the Elessar for over twenty years by now, and was no stranger to its workings. But the dimmer the sun, the harder it was to use it. The Elessar drew its power from the light of the Two Trees, destroyed long ago. The sun itself was merely the fruit of one of the Trees, already leaving the Elessar less efficient than it would have been in Valinor before the Darkening. When the sun itself was obscured by clouds, wielding the Elessar truly was a struggle.

Still, Ereiniel did her best, biting down on her lower lip as she focused. Slowly, gradually, the sounds around her faded away, and she felt the heat of the sun filling her up as the Elessar pulsed in her hands like a second heartbeat. When she blinked the green sparks from her eyes, she saw that Aearchith’s burn had closed, though the skin was still reddened and slightly blistered. There was blood in her mouth, too, from where she’d bitten her lip.

“It hurts more now than it did before,” Aearchith said, though he sounded more puzzled than upset.

“That’s because your nerves have grown back, my lad,” Halwen said. “Now let’s get you inside and treat what’s left.”

Ereiniel didn’t join the others as they went back to the Houses of Healing, instead sitting down on the bench while she got her bearings back. She didn’t notice until he sat down beside her that Celebrimbor, too, had stayed outside.

“May I?” he asked, looking from the Elessar to Ereiniel’s face.

For a moment Ereiniel hesitated, but then she handed him the gem, watching as he turned it over in his calloused fingers.

“I haven't seen this since I was small,” Celebrimbor said. “But I remember it. After your father brought Maedhros back to us, I remember Curufin sitting with it, day after day after day. He drove himself half mad, trying to unlock its secrets.”

Curufin, Ereiniel noticed. Not my father.

“He wanted to heal Maedhros. I think he felt that if he could learn how to use the Elessar, it might absolve him of having abandoned his brother to Morgoth. But he never did manage to figure it out.” With a wry half-smile, Celebrimbor added, “He’d be furious if he knew that Fingon’s daughter had done it. He was already angry that Maedhros gave it to Fingon in the first place. He’s never had any respect for your branch of the family.”

He looked at the gem for a moment longer, and then carefully handed it back to her, watching as she returned it to its chain and tucked it beneath her tunic once more.

“I never thanked you, by the way,” he said. “For speaking up on my behalf. I’d expected some hostility, once people learned who I was, but I didn’t think anyone here would welcome me so quickly.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Ereiniel said, after a few moments’ surprised silence. “And however messy the politics might be, you are my cousin. You’re kin.”

Celebrimbor gave a noncommittal hum and said, “Speaking of kin, Kinslayer isn’t the first word that comes to mind when most people hear your father’s name.”

“No,” Ereiniel agreed, “but it’s the first thing that comes to Henthael’s mind.” Pulling her cloak tighter about herself, she said, “He was my grandfather’s chief scribe, you know? Very devoted to Fingolfin. But he always faulted my father for what happened at the Swanhaven. He told me once that my father was a king, but not his king. Fingolfin was his only king.”

She paused, and then said, ““He’s prickly and tactless and angrier than he likes to admit. But he’s loyal and he works hard, and he knows more about Noldorin government than anyone else on this island. I think I’ve learned as much from him as I have from my tutor. But he lost his wife and son on the Grinding Ice. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive your family for that.”

“He shouldn’t,” Celebrimbor said.

“Maybe not. But he shouldn’t hold it against you, either.”

Celebrimbor shrugged, but didn’t argue. Instead, he asked, “How did you figure out how to use the Elessar, anyway?”

"My tutor had a theory," Ereiniel said after a moment. “Madam Ithrin. She thought that maybe it worked by focusing the light of the Trees. So I thought -- the sun is the fruit of one of the Trees. Maybe it could use sunlight, too. I took it out in the sun sometimes when I was alone, and it was almost like it had a heartbeat. And then Morgoth attacked us. We were fleeing on the boats, and Ólwen’s sister, Lothrin, was badly hurt. She’d been burned by that clinging fire the orcs use." She shrugged. "I had to try."

“I’m impressed,” Celebrimbor said.

“Don’t be. I haven’t managed to teach anyone else how to use it. And I’ve tried, too. But it only seems to work for me, and I don’t know why. I mean, I’d think the proper healers, at least, would be able to use it, but none of them can.”

“Proper healers?” Celebrimbor said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Do you have improper healers, too?”

“No. We have people like me,” Ereiniel said seriously. “I know which plants are good for which ailments, and I can treat everyday bumps and bruises, but without the Elessar I can’t do much beyond that. I’m a useful set of hands, but I’m not a real healer, not like Halwen or my mother.”

There was something almost brotherly in Celebrimbor’s voice as he said, “A useful pair of hands is nothing to sneeze at. What’s that saying I’ve heard the Sindar use? ‘It takes twenty men with their feet on the ground to hold up one man with his head in the air’? We’re at our best when we cooperate. We’re not meant to work alone.”

His statement startled a laugh out of Ereiniel. “Annael, my mother’s father, he loves that saying,” she said. Then, because her fingers were starting to go numb, she added, “But if I stay out here much longer, this useful set of hands is going to freeze stiff. I ought to get back to my lessons.”

“Of course,” Celebrimbor said as they both climbed to their feet. “But…thank you. Again.”

With that, the two great-grandchildren of Finwë went their separate ways.

Chapter End Notes

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The winter grew even more fierce, but in some ways the Elves of Balar were lucky. When the worst blizzard yet came howling across the island, it came mid-morning, giving people enough warning to congregate inside. Packed into the meeting hall with the rest of the neighborhood, Ereiniel watched as the drifts of snow outside grew higher and higher, first reaching the windowsills, then covering the windows completely, making the room grow dark until more candles and lamps were lit.

In the afternoon, to pass the time, Henthael pulled out the big chalkboard and the slates, and he gathered some of the older children for an impromptu lesson in shorthand. Gildor, whose ankle still couldn’t bear weight but who had begun to limp about the place on a pair of crutches, was watching with interest.

“Fascinating,” he said, when Henthael paused in his teaching while his students practiced. “Is that Rúmil’s shorthand?”

Henthael nodded. “Adapted slightly for use with Sindarin, but yes,” he said. “I teach some of the neighborhood children every few winters. It keeps them occupied in the evenings. Admittedly, we usually only spend a few weeks on it, so most of them are passable at best. But Erestor here could make a craft of it if he wanted to. Between his handwriting and his memory, he’d make a good scribe.”

“Yes, you’ve said that before,” Erestor answered, looking up from the book he’d borrowed from Balar’s ragbag library; not much literature had survived the sack of the Falas. “But I don’t want to be a scribe. I want to be a loremaster.”

“Rúmil was a loremaster, young man, and the inventor of our first alphabet,” Henthael said. “You have to start somewhere, and there are worse ways to make a living than by writing things down.”

Gildor peered over Ereiniel’s shoulder at the slate in front of her and saw that, rather than copying the shorthand symbols as he’d thought, she was instead copying out a few lines of rather shaky tengwar.

“I’m trying to learn to write with my right hand,” she explained. “Since Gurvadhor has me learning to wield a sword with both hands, I figured I ought to do the same with a pen.”

“Ah, you’re a lefty,” he said. “It’s easier to write sarati with the left hand than it is to write tengwar, I’ve heard. Is that true?” 

“Only because most left-handed children develop bad habits that never get corrected,” Henthael said, though he wasn’t who the question had been aimed at. “Ereiniel here was lucky, because the king was also left-handed, so he was able to advise her parents on proper techniques for her. It’s all about the grip and the angle of the paper.”

The king, of course, being Fingolfin. To Henthael, there was no other king worth mentioning.

The afternoon dragged on into the evening. There was no chance of returning to their homes for the night, so Little Mithrim’s residents cooked and ate a meal from the communal food supplies and then prepared to bed down for the night. 

Ereiniel found herself squeezed between her mother and Maewen, with Maewen’s mother on Maewen’s other side and a few blankets shared out between them. Most of the people in the hall fell asleep quickly, but Ereiniel found herself lying awake, staring at the ceiling as she lay still, not wanting to disturb anyone by tossing and turning.

The trouble was Maewen. In some ways it was torment – lying beside her friend, seeing the soft swell of her breasts rise and fall, feeling her breath tickle Ereiniel’s cheek.

They had played at romance when they were younger, wondering what it would be like to kiss a boy and practicing with each other to see how it would feel, all giggles and flushed cheeks and warm lips. Ereiniel still didn’t know anything about kissing boys, but she knew all about kissing Maewen.

She’d liked kissing Maewen.

But Maewen had her eye on Thínion, a quiet potter’s apprentice from Brithombar, and besides, that wasn’t how things were done among the Elves. Women were meant to be with men, and men were meant to be with women. As disappointing as it seemed to Ereiniel, she knew that it was just the way things were. She knew that there was no point in confessing her feelings to anyone, let alone Maewen herself. She would simply have to learn to move on.

Eventually she drifted off, her last thought being that the world was deeply, deeply unfair.

***********

They were snowed in for three full days, but on the fourth day, some of the men managed to dig out a path from the door. Soon others joined in, and Ereiniel and Henthael wound up working together to clear a path to the smokehouses through six feet of snow. It was hard work, and sweaty, and after a while they both took off their cloaks, counting on exertion and their woolen sweaters to keep them warm.

“I’ve never seen snow this deep before,” Ereiniel said, clearing another shovelful from their path with a grunt. “Not even visiting Haru in the mountains at Barad Eithel for Midwinter. It’s unnatural.” And then, because she knew that Henthael – who was a realist to the bone – wouldn’t accuse her of being gloomy, she added, “It has to be Morgoth’s work. First Nargothrond, now this weather… His reach keeps growing longer and longer.”

Balar’s main advantage was its location – as an island, it was protected from Morgoth’s orcs, who feared the ocean and its wrath. But the ocean posed no barrier to the weather. Nor, Ereiniel thought, would it pose a barrier to anything that flew, and Morgoth was surely hard at work creating new monstrous creatures to help him wage his war against the Elves. He wouldn’t stop until he had wiped out all resistance.

Someday, he would find a way to make a winged dragon, and then Balar would be doomed.

Henthael paused, leaning on his shovel, and said, “I think you’re right. And I think, sooner or later, we’re going to have to fight again if we plan to survive. There’s nowhere left to go. Right now we’re an afterthought, because we’re not a threat. But that won’t last forever.”

“That’s what I told Maewen,” Ereiniel said. “She told me to hold onto hope, but…it’s hard, you know? There’s not a lot of hope to go around. I don’t even know what to do with my own life, let alone how to successfully defy Morgoth.”

Her grandfather had tried to defy Morgoth. Her father had tried to defy Morgoth. Morgoth and his servants had killed them both. What hope did she have of succeeding where they had failed? 

“Maewen would say that we’re defying Morgoth by staying alive,” Henthael said. “But she has a naturally sunny and optimistic disposition.”

“She does. I wish I could be like that, sometimes.” Ereiniel jabbed her shovel back into the snowbank. “Instead I just…shovel snow. Make fishing nets. Feel trapped.”

It was easy to be honest with Henthael. For all his bluster and occasional tactlessness, he’d always had a kind word or gesture for her from the time she was a small child visiting her grandfather – a boiled sweet, or praise for how well he’d heard she was doing in her lessons. And since the destruction of the Falas, since Ereiniel had first discovered how to use the Elessar, he’d stepped in to take over part of her education – the intricacies of government and the reality of politics, the difficult choices that had faced her grandfather and, later, her father.

He always made time for her, and he’d told her once that he’d seen an echo of his king that day, on the boat to Balar. Ereiniel thought that was just about the highest compliment anyone had ever given her.

Heaving another shovelful clear of the path, Henthael said, “You underestimate yourself. You give me hope, Ereiniel. Fingolfin is alive in you. I’m sure Turgon is doing right by his people in Gondolin, but the rest of us haven’t seen Turgon in hundreds of years, unless you count a glimpse on the battlefield. We’re not like the Sindar. We’re not used to our royalty shutting themselves away. Everyone knew Finwë. Everyone knew Fingolfin. Everyone knew Fingon, too, and while your father and I may have had our differences, I will say that he was always there for his people. He did his level best to listen to us and do right by us, and I respected that.”

“So you’re saying, since my uncle is hiding away in Gondolin, I’m the next best thing?” Ereiniel asked, skepticism audible in her voice.

“I’m saying that you represent something bigger than yourself,” Henthael said. “If you were a boy, you’d be next in the line of succession. Think about that. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Ereiniel. Think about what you already do for your people, and think about how to build on that, instead of worrying because you haven’t found a craft yet.”

They both fell silent and returned to their work, but Ereiniel pondered Henthael’s words as she shoveled. What did she do for her people? Apart from using the Elessar, she mostly felt like she did the chores. She helped her mother make medicines. She shoveled snow. She made fishing nets, and went out on the boats, and gutted the fish and prepared them for smoking. She fed the sheep, and helped with herding and the shearing and the lambing. She helped repair roofs and walls that had been damaged by wind or rain. She took her turn on privy-cleaning duty without complaint. Wherever a spare hand was needed, there she went.

Maybe that was Henthael’s point. Maybe toiling alongside her neighbors meant more than she thought it did. What was it Celebrimbor had said? We’re at our best when we cooperate. We’re not meant to work alone.

Maybe there was a way forward.

***********

She didn’t mention her thoughts to anyone for several days, not until she had a concrete plan in her head. But the following week after dinner, as she sat repairing the sole of one of her mother’s boots while her mother darned socks, she said, very quietly, “Hey, Nana? I’ve got something to tell you. But you have to promise not to laugh.”

“Why would I laugh at you?” Ianneth said, raising her dark brows.

“I don’t know,” Ereiniel said. “I’m just nervous.” She swallowed, steeling herself, and then said, “You know how neighborhood council elections are going to be held after Midwinter? Well, I want to run for a seat.”

Ianneth simply gazed at her for a moment, but then put aside the sock in her hands and turned to fully face her daughter. “That’s a big responsibility,” she said, though her voice was placid. “What brought this on?”

“I was talking to Henthael,” Ereiniel said, “and he said some things that made me think. I want to start doing more for people. I think…maybe I have a duty to do more for people. To make sure everyone’s needs are met and everyone’s voice is heard. That’s something Ada and Haru both tried to do, and I shouldn’t be doing any less.” She paused, looking at her mother’s face, and asked, “You’re not going to tell me not to do it, are you?”

“Of course not,” Ianneth said. “If you want to try your hand at politics, by all means, try your hand at politics. But know that it’ll be a lot of hard work.”

“I’m not scared of hard work.”

“No, you’re not,” Ianneth said, smiling gently at her daughter. “But what I meant was that you’ll need to put in a lot of hard work just to run at all, whether you win or lose. You’ll need a platform, a reason for people to vote for you. You’ll need a strategy.”

Feeling a bit of the weight she’d been carrying leave her shoulders, now that she had confessed the idea and not been shot down, Ereiniel asked, “Will you help? I mean, I know you’ve never been officially involved in politics, but you do know quite a lot regardless. I remember that Ada used to ask you for advice. He said he counted on you to be sensible for him.”

“Of course.” Ianneth picked up her darning once again and said, “I assume you haven’t told anyone else yet? You should tell Henthael and Gurvadhor. I think they’d both be willing to give you advice. Henthael especially. He has a great deal of faith in you, Ereiniel. Why don’t you talk it over with them both tomorrow?”

***********

Ereiniel told Gurvadhor the next morning over her combat lesson – wielding a shield and a spear this time, the spear being Ereiniel’s preferred weapon. The snow was still ankle-deep, hindering both their movements, but as Gurvadhor had often said, you didn’t get to pick the battlefield conditions or the weather.

Apart from the snow, it had been a good session. She’d won two bouts out of three, and Gurvadhor had praised her improvement in using a shield for offense as well as defense. Now, as they both did their cool-down stretches, he said, “It’s an intriguing proposition. I think you have potential, if that’s what you’re asking, though it may take you a little time to find your feet. But I’m not sure that I have any particular wisdom to offer. I was an army captain, not a councilor. It’s true that Fingon was one of my dearest friends, but anything I know about politics I learned only by observation.”

Henthael was more positive. When Ereiniel confided in him after her afternoon lessons with Madam Ithrin, he said, “Well, that’s not where I expected you to go after our conversation, but I think it’s a good idea. When you’re not bickering with Erestor, you do have a gift for defusing arguments.” With a wry half-smile, he added, “I know that disappointed look of yours stops me in my tracks every time.”

“It’s just a shame that I have to pull it out so often,” Ereiniel said, though her voice was light and teasing, free of any rancor.

“Yes, well.” Henthael cleared his throat. “At any rate, I think you’re on the right track, and I’d be glad to help you.”

Impulsively, Ereiniel threw her arms around him in a hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Henthael,” she said. “You and Gurvadhor, you’ve been like uncles to me. You’re always there. I can always count on you.”

Henthael didn’t answer, but the way his arms tightened around her as he hugged her back said more than any words ever could.

Chapter End Notes

Nana (S.) - mom

Ada (S.) - dad

Haru (Q.) - granddad (in this case, Fingolfin)

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The next people Ereiniel confided in were Maewen and Erestor, as they ate lunch together the following day. They were her best friends, after all, and if she couldn’t trust them not to laugh at her, who could she trust? 

“Well, I’d vote for you,” Maewen said. “That is, if I had a vote.”

“It’s only three more years till you turn fifty,” Ereiniel said. “That’s not that far away.”

“Yeah,” Maewen conceded, “but there won’t be an election that year. I’ll have to wait till I’m fifty-seven for the next one.”

Erestor rolled his eyes. “Stop complaining,” he said through a mouthful of barley rusk. “I’m fifty-nine and I haven’t gotten to vote on anything yet, unless you count voting on what my father should cook for dinner.”

Swallowing, he nudged Ereiniel with a friendly elbow and continued, ‘You’ve got my support. I think we need some younger voices, personally. I mean, yes, everyone on the current council is very wise and venerable, but I don’t think any of them really understand what it feels like to grow up here. I feel stuck, and I know you do, too. But when I try to talk about the things that worry me, I get brushed off. It’s always, oh, you’ll understand better when you’re older, once you have some real life experience under your belt. Nobody listens.”

Turning to Maewen, he said, “I envy you sometimes. It’s easy for you. You’ve been weaving since we were kids. You’re good at it, and you like it. I don’t think you’ve ever considered doing anything else. But right now my dreams for my life feel as far away as the moon.”

Ereiniel knew that Erestor wanted to be a loremaster. He was the most intensely curious person she’d ever known, hungry for every scrap of knowledge that he could find. He’d read his way through every book in Balar’s ragbag library multiple times, memorized the sagas of both the Falathrim and the people of Mithrim, and had wheedled Madam Ithrin and Henthael into letting him join Ereiniel’s lessons – even Madam Ithrin’s private Quenya classes, the ones Lord Círdan turned a carefully blind eye to.

Elu Thingol was the king of the Sindar, but Círdan had always done things his own way. Thingol might have banned Quenya from being spoken in his lands, but when Fingon had asked Círdan to allow his daughter to learn the native tongue of her father’s people, Círdan hadn’t refused.

Ereiniel knew what Erestor meant, too, about feeling stuck. The first blow had been struck against them some twenty years ago, with the destruction of Eglarest and Brithombar. Now they were waiting for the hammer to fall a second time, as it surely would. Some days that was Ereiniel’s first thought upon waking – would today be the day that some giant winged beast came roaring across the bay and out to the island, bent on destruction? It was like living with a sword hanging over their heads, a squeezing, claustrophobic feeling that the future was shrinking ever smaller right before their eyes.

She hated it.

Erestor was now attacking his salted herring with vigor. “You’ve got broad appeal, too,” he was saying. “You’re one of the Golodhrim royal family, your mother’s people are the people of Mithrim, and you grew up at the Falas, so you’re basically a Falathron by adoption. You’ve got ties to all three cultures. That’ll help. I know I’d trust you to listen to everyone in the neighborhood, not just to the Golodhrim.”

That wasn’t an angle Ereiniel had considered, but Erestor made a good point. For as long as they’d lived on Balar, there had been occasional inter-Kindred squabbles among some of the council members, and from what Ereiniel had heard her grandfather, Annael, say, Lord Círdan had to work hard to keep those sorts of arguments out of the island’s High Council.

She hoped she could be as fair as Erestor apparently trusted her to be. It was true that she felt between peoples sometimes – not quite one thing and not quite the other. She’d always viewed it as a negative, feeling like she was too Noldorin for some of the Sindar, but not Noldorin enough for some of the Noldor. Erestor’s new, more positive spin on the situation was food for thought.

“Thanks,” she said. “I really love you both a lot. You know that, right?”

Maewen smiled, and Erestor laughed. “We sure do,” he said. “Best friends forever, remember? Didn’t we pinky swear it when we were small? Back in the days when I was an obnoxious little twerp?”

“You’re still an obnoxious little twerp,” Ereiniel said, flashing him a teasing grin.

“But we like you anyway,” Maewen added earnestly. Then she leaned over and pressed a kiss to Ereiniel’s cheek, causing Ereiniel’s face to grow warm. “You can do this,” Mawen said. “And we’ll be behind you all the way.”

***********

So, the next day, following her morning training with Gurvadhor, Ereiniel made the three-mile walk to Balar’s city hall, where she spoke to Tathar, one of the clerks, who put her name down for her neighborhood’s ballot.

Lord Círdan was there as well, discussing the health of the clam beds with Lînneth, but he paused to greet Ereiniel. She returned his greeting with a respectful nod; while Círdan had never insisted that anyone bow to him, saying that such things should be reserved for Elu Thingol, his king in Doriath, he had taken Ereiniel and her mother in, defended the Falas for centuries, and led the survivors to safety after Morgoth’s attack. He was deserving of the appropriate deference.

“What brings you here today, Ereiniel?” he asked, fixing her in his keen gaze, with his piercing grey eyes that had always reminded her of stars.

“I’m registering for the election,” she said. She was blushing, she knew; she could feel her face grow hot, and knew she must be turning red beneath her freckles. Like her freckles, the ease with which she blushed was a legacy from her father. But she couldn’t help it; she was, still, a little worried that people might think she was being presumptuous. As her mother had pointed out, she was quite young, only just eligible, and while Erestor might think some younger voices were needed, Ereiniel knew that there were plenty of people out there who would disagree.

But all Círdan did was look at her pensively and say, “Interesting. I wish you luck.” Then he turned back to Lînneth and resumed their prior discussion.

Oddly, Ereiniel felt as though she had passed some kind of test, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.

***********

It continued to snow, though the monotony was punctuated by showers of hail and, most miserable of all, sleet and freezing rain. Give me a good snowdrift to deal with any day, Ereiniel thought as she slipped and slid her way across the slick, ice-covered walkway back to the house, a basket of the eggs she’d collected from the chicken coop hanging on one arm.

“If these boots didn’t have such good treads, I’d have six broken eggs and probably a broken bone or two,” she told her mother, as she shed her outdoor wear in the entryway.

Ianneth chuckled, but said, “No broken bones, please, love. That broken arm you had when you were nineteen was more than enough.”

As Ianneth heated up water to boil a few of the eggs, Ereiniel resumed working on her midwinter gift for Annael – a cloth belt embroidered with a pattern of heather and gorse. Her gifts for everyone else were finished – new quills and a sheaf of thick paper for Erestor; a beeswax and lanolin balm for Maewen’s hands, scented with bergamot; new gloves for Henthael; sea salt mixed with lavender oil, for her aunt Tinneth to soak her feet; and for her mother, earrings, two pearls that Ereiniel had found in oysters that past the summer and had carefully wrapped in silver wire.

They had left behind everything but the clothes on their backs when they had fled Eglarest, all of her mother’s pretty things except for the necklace Ianneth had been wearing that day, the jade heart that Fingolfin and Lalwen had given her when she and Fingon had wed.  Ereiniel thought that her mother deserved something else that was pretty.

As her mother cooked and as she sewed, Ereiniel went over what Erestor had said to her, his views on the mingling of peoples on Balar.

“I never thought of it that way before,” she concluded. “That being a little bit of everything could be a good thing. I’ve always just felt like a misfit. But maybe he has a point. I don’t think I’d be biased towards the Golodhrim. We’re all Edhil, after all. And we’ve been mixing together for centuries, at least outside of Doriath.”

“It’s about respect,” Ianneth said. “That’s why my people were willing to ally with the Golodhrim against Elu Thingol’s wishes. You grandfather and his people respected us. They fought beside us, intermarried with us, adopted our language and even some of our ways. Thingol calls himself our king, but he’s never respected us the way Fingolfin and his people did.”

She jabbed at the logs in the hearth with the poker – more out of irritation, Ereiniel thought, than out of an actual need to poke up the fire – and said, “Thingol used to accuse us of being thralls, because we dared to live out in the open, in the sight of Angband, instead of cowering away behind enchantments like they do in his kingdom. He calls the Golodhrim arrogant, but between the two of them, I’ve always known whom I would choose, and it isn’t Thingol. Not that I'd say a word against him in front of Lord Círdan, of course,” she added as an afterthought. “They’re kin, after all. But even Círdan doesn’t obey Thingol’s every decree.”

Cutting two thick slices of bread from what remained yesterday’s loaf, she said again, “Respect. That’s what it’s all about. Erestor has the right idea. He’s got a sharp mind, that lad. He’s wasted in what he’s doing now.” Ianneth sighed and added, “A lot of you young ones have talents that are going untapped, and it’s a shame. I worry about what the future will hold for you.”

Ereiniel nodded. “We talked about that a bit, too,” she said. “About feeling trapped here, and about how some of the older people – not you, Nana, but plenty others – don’t take us seriously when we try to talk about that. I thought maybe that could be part of my platform – you know, youth representation. I know it’s not just me and Erestor who feel like all the doors are being shut in our faces.”

Ianneth had been about to fish the boiled eggs from the pot, but she stopped, and then walked over to her daughter and wrapped her arms around her in an embrace.

“I’m sorry, love,” she murmured. “I never wanted you to have to grow up during a war. We had such dreams for you, your father and I. We thought we would have a longer time of peace. Your father was so certain that if we all worked together, we could defeat Morgoth. I wish his efforts had succeeded.”

“It’s okay, Nana,” Ereiniel said, closing her eyes and hugging her mother back. “You did your best. You’ve always done your best.”

Ianneth pressed a kiss to the top of Ereiniel’s head and said, “You’re a good girl, Ereiniel. I’m very proud of the young woman you’ve become.” Then she stepped away, collected the hard boiled eggs, and placed them on the plates with the bread before carrying them to the table. “Now eat up,” she urged. “You have a lot of your peers you need to talk to, if you want to succeed.”

“Speaking of peers,” Ereiniel said as she tapped her egg against the table, “I wanted to ask you. I know he’s not exactly my peer, but would it be all right if I invited Celebrimbor to celebrate midwinter with us? I mean, he doesn’t really know anyone here, except for the other people from Nargothrond, and we are cousins. I thought it might be nice for him to celebrate with family.”

Of course, Ereiniel realized that that would mean she would have to come up with a gift for him. Perhaps some of the same balm she’d made for Maewen; her friend always swore that it was the best thing for keeping her skin from getting chapped in the winter, and Celebrimbor’s chosen craft took just as much dexterity of hand as Maewen’s did.

“I think that would be very kind of you,” Ianneth said, “and I have no objections. It’s been difficult for the people from Nargothrond, making a fresh start here with nothing but each other. We know what that’s like, you and I.”

Ereiniel nodded. Yes, they knew what that was like. They’d come to Eglarest alone after the Dagor Bragollach, knowing no one, with no company but one another. The first few years had been difficult, before they had finally begun to settle in. And then, less than twenty years later, Eglarest had been destroyed, most of their friends and neighbors killed or taken captive. At least, through all of that, Ereiniel had had her mother with her. But Celebrimbor was alone.

Ereiniel, though, had no intention of letting that situation stand. Not when she could do something about it. The next time she saw Celebrimbor, she would offer her invitation.

Chapter End Notes

Ages: Maewen (47) is about the equivalent of a mortal 17-year-old. Ereiniel (50) is about 18, and Erestor (59) is around 21.

Edhil (S.) - Eldar

"He [Thingol] had small love for the Northern Sindar who had in regions near to Angband come under the dominion of Morgoth, and were accused of sometimes entering his service and providing him with spies." - J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Problem of Ros", The Peoples of Middle-earth

Comments are love, comments are life. ♥

Ereiniel spent the next two weeks talking to the younger residents of her neighborhood – and, even more than talking, listening to them.

I feel lucky that I made it to adulthood, said Orodwen, who was five years older than Ereiniel and had come to Balar as part of the group led by Annael. But I’m worried my little brother won’t get to grow up at all. I feel like we’re all standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to be pushed over.

Her brother, young Galadhion, was only twenty-six, and had been a babe in arms when Hithlum had been overrun following the Nírnaeth Arnoediad. The fact that he’d survived the attacks by the Orcs and Easterlings to make it to Balar in the first place was a near miracle.

I wish there was something we could do to fight, said Daerthui, who, at seventy-four, was probably the oldest of them. Some tangible way to resist, you know? Everyone says we’re resisting by surviving, but that’s not what it feels like. It feels like we’re sitting on our hands waiting to see where the next blow will fall. There has to be something we can do to foil Morgoth’s plans.

Ereiniel understood his frustration, because it did feel as though they were simply waiting for the next stroke of Morgoth’s sword. But, practically speaking, she wasn’t sure what else they could do. There weren’t enough people on Balar to form an army and wage war. At best, they could take to the coast in light ships, perhaps, and harry Morgoth’s forces that way.

Still, it was something to think about.

Meril and Cúron, who were twins and had been born at Barad Eithel within a few weeks of Ereiniel’s own birth, both told her, We love our crafts, but we wish we could make art, too, like our parents did in Valinor. Not just practical things. We want to make something beautiful, even if it only lasts a little while.

Practical things could be beautiful, too, Ereiniel thought, but she could see what Meril and Cúron meant. All of the children of the Exiles, Ereiniel included, had grown up on tales of the beauties of Valinor – the light of the Two Trees, the elaborately carved buildings lining the streets of Tirion, the galleries of artwork crafted by the finest artists, the flourishing gardens that bloomed year-round. Who could blame them for wishing to recreate some of that beauty here in Beleriand?

Talagand, another child of the Exiles and eighteen years Ereiniel’s senior, was the most melancholy of the lot. I don’t really care what happens anymore, he said. We’re all going to die sooner or later. There’s no point in telling ourselves otherwise. We don’t stand a chance.

Ereiniel wondered when he had last touched his harp, and realized, too, that she would have to find a way to combat this type of despair in her peers.

Tuilin, newly married at fifty-eight, said, I used to think about what I would name my babies, when I was a little girl playing house. But Eithelion and I have been talking, and we don’t think it’s right to have children. Not now. Not with the world the way that it is. Maybe in the future, if we’re lucky, but that ‘maybe’ seems more and more out of reach each day.

That was a completely logical conclusion for the couple to draw, Ereiniel thought, but it was also, in its way, quite heartbreaking.

I don’t know what I want here, Hannas said. I want my home back. I wish Túrin had never come to us. I want my father. Then she’d burst into tears, and Ereiniel had pulled her into a hug and let Hannas weep into her shoulder.

I want my father, too, Ereiniel had said. She wished she could tell Hannas that the pain would ease, but the truth was that a loss like that would always hurt. Besides, no one, on the heels of the death of someone they loved, wanted to be told that things would get better. It hadn’t felt reassuring when anyone had said it to Ereiniel in the wake of Fingon’s death. It had felt dismissive and callous, and she doubted Hannas would appreciate any more than she had.

All told, Ereiniel had spoken to everyone in the neighborhood between the ages of fifty and seventy-five, and had been left with a lot of food for thought. The dissatisfaction among her generation was palpable. The question was, could she do anything about it?

She could listen, and she could speak up. At the very least, that was a place to start from.

***********

Midwinter arrived, and despite the ongoing war and the snow and the bitter cold, the elves of Balar prepared to celebrate. Boughs of pine and juniper were brought into the houses and meeting halls, lending their crisp, refreshing scent to the air. Mead was brought out, Ianneth glazed a ham with honey and set it to cook, and Ereiniel baked the whiskey-soaked currant cake that she'd learned to make from her father, and that her father in turn had learned to make from Lalwen, his aunt, before her death in the Dagor Bragollach.

The kitchen became full as Annael and Tinneth arrived mid-morning, Tinneth bearing a basket of freshly-baked rolls and Annael a net bag of parsnips and rutabagas, which he quickly set to roasting and mashing, and another of pearl onions, which Ianneth took in hand. She took over the other half of the stove, preparing to stew the onions in a mixture of broth and cream. That was a recipe that came from Ereiniel’s grandmother, Amareth, who had not survived the attack by orcs when Annael and his people had first tried to flee Hithlum. Her absence had left a hole in their family, though they did their best to make merry despite it. As Annael had said, Amareth would not have wanted to see them mourn forever.

By the time Celebrimbor knocked on the door at noon, a mince pie balanced in his hand, the house was toasty warm from the fires and full of a medley of tantalizing smells. The table was set, and candles were burning in the pewter candlesticks that Ereiniel had made during her attempt at learning metalworking – a little lopsided, but Ianneth had insisted on keeping them regardless, in the way mothers often did. Ereiniel knew for a fact that, up until it was lost in the destruction of Eglarest, Maewen’s mother had kept Maewen’s very first piece of weaving, dreadful though it had been.

“Come in, come in!” she said to Celebrimbor, ushering her cousin through the door. She unburdened him of the pie, gestured for him to take a seat, and asked, “Would you like some mead?”

“Please,” Celebrimbor said. “But tell me, what can I do to help?”

“Nothing,” Ereiniel said firmly. “It’s all under control. Nana runs the kitchen like a military operation on holidays. She won’t want anyone extra underfoot. Besides, you’re our guest.”

Pouring him a glass of mead, she continued, “You know, I’ve never had a cousin before. I mean, I have cousins off in Gondolin, technically, but I’ve never laid eyes on them, and it’s not like there’s any sort of reliable messenger service to or from that place, so we’ve never even exchanged letters. This is new.” With a smile, she added, “Exciting, though.”

“I’ve had cousins,” Celebrimbor said. “Never one so intent on adopting me, though.”

In a different tone, the words might have seemed mocking, but Celebrimbor’s voice was warm, with a touch of gentle amusement. “Not that I don’t appreciate it,” he continued. “I wasn’t expecting anyone here to welcome me as family. It was a nice surprise.”

“Well, you seemed so alone,” Ereiniel said with a shrug. “And I know what it’s like, fleeing to a strange place where you don’t know anyone. Eglarest was lonely when we first moved there. And I had Nana with me. You’re on your own.”

A lot of people were on their own these days. It was a rare thing for a family to stay intact in these war-ravaged times. The only person Ereiniel knew whose close family were all still living was Maewen. Erestor still had his mother and father, but he’d lost three of his grandparents in the destruction of the Falas. Ereiniel’s grandmother had never made it to Balar, and the fates of Fingon and Fingolfin were well known. Some, like Celebrimbor, were sundered from their kin, whether by choice or by misfortune. And others, like Henthael, had no living family left at all.

Celebrimbor was fishing around in his pocket now, and he pulled out something wrapped in a scrap of brightly-colored cloth. “This is for you,” he said, pressing it into her hands.

Ereiniel opened it to find a cloak pin in the shape of a four-pointed star, nearly exactly like the tattoo that adorned her wrist. “It’s my star,” she said, touched by the fact that Celebrimbor had made something so personal for her. “Thank you.”

“It’s stainless steel,” he said, “so it won’t rust or tarnish.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “I’ll admit that I don’t know what the significance of the star is. But I figured it had to mean something, otherwise you wouldn’t have inked it into your skin.”

Ereiniel chuckled, and then said, “It’s a reminder. Light in the dark, you know? My mother named me Gilwen, and Fingolfin used to call me starshine, gil-galad. I’ve always liked the stars. They remind me that there’s still hope, no matter how dark things might seem these days.”

And these days, things seemed particularly dark.

“I have something for you, too,” Ereiniel told him, and then went to the mantel over the hearth, where she’d laid out the gifts she had to give. She returned with a corked, brightly painted pottery jar. “It’s a balm. For your hands,” she said, placing it on the table in front of Celebrimbor. “I learned how to make it from one of the beekeepers. My best friend swears by it.”

“The weaver, right? Plump girl, curly hair?”

Ereiniel nodded. “Her name’s Maewen,” she said. “She’s been my friend since Nana and I first moved to Eglarest.”

“And there’s a boy I usually see the two of you with,” Celebrimbor said. “Who’s he?”

“That’s Erestor,” said Ereiniel. “He and Maewen are cousins. He’s my other best friend.”

“Two best friends. You’re lucky.”

“I am,” Ereiniel said softly. “All three of us are lucky. Most of our other friends didn’t survive the destruction of Eglarest.”

Celebrimbor nodded – more in understanding, Ereiniel thought, than in simple acknowledgement – and said, “Most of my friends didn’t survive the Dagor Bragollach. And the few who did didn’t survive the battle at Tumhalad.”

“It's not right,” Ereiniel said, pouring herself a splash of mead. She raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry and, when Celebrimbor nodded, poured a second measure into his half-empty glass as well. “I’m so tired of all the death,” she said. “It feels like this war will never end.”

Taking a sip of her drink, she added, “Ada gambled everything on the Union of Maedhros, but he lost. And now he's gone. It sounds like Orodreth made the same mistake, putting all his eggs in the basket of one big battle.”

“It was Túrin’s idea,” Celebrimbor said. “Orodreth shouldn't have listened to him, but he did. And the whole city paid for it.” His gaze was far away, but after a moment he seemed to come back to himself. “At any rate, thank you for the balm. I’m sure it’ll come in handy in this cold weather.”

At that point, Ianneth called for Ereiniel from the kitchen, and she excused herself for a moment.

“Bring out the neeps, will you, love?” Ianneth said, her own hands full with the dish of stewed onions. Annael was carrying the ham and Tinneth had the parsnips and the rolls. The four of them proceeded out to the main room.

“Dinner is served!” Ianneth trilled. She took the seat at the end of the table, while Annael sat at the head. Ereiniel ushered Celebrimbor into the chair beside her own and then began pouring mead for the rest of the family. Once they were all seated and their glasses were full, Annael raised his in a toast.

“We’re halfway through the darkest season,” he said. “It’s been a difficult winter, but from here on the days will get longer and the world will get warmer. We’ll make it through, and we’ll survive another year. I know it. And today we’re gathered together as a family to celebrate the turning of the season with all the joy that we can muster.”

The five of them clinked their glasses together and each took a sip of mead.

“Ereiniel, will you say the blessing?” Ianneth asked.

She nodded and bowed her head, her hands clasped in front of her. “Bless the table, bless the bread. Bless the roof above our heads,” she said, deciding to go for something simple. She wasn’t certain what Celebrimbor was used to, after all. She remembered her father telling her once that Maedhros, at least, had abandoned the tradition of asking the Belain’s blessing before meals, and she wasn’t sure if that had been restricted to him, or common across the lands of the Sons of Fëanor.

“Let it be so,” Annael said, and then raised his head and began slicing the ham.

By the time they were halfway through the meal, the conversation was flowing freely and easily, any initial awkwardness long overcome. And when it came time for dessert, as Ianneth set out Celebrimbor’s pie and Ereiniel brought out the cake she’d made, Celebrimbbor said in surprise, “Whiskey currant cake! That’s a Golodhrim recipe. Caranthir used to make it whenever we visited him. He said it was my great-grandfather’s– our great-grandfather’s favorite dessert.”

“I learned to make it from Ada,” Ereiniel said. “He learned from my aunt Lalwen.”

At the mention of Lalwen’s name, something in Celebrimbor’s face seemed to grow soft. “I always liked her,” he said, a hint of regret in his voice. “She could brighten a room just by walking into it. Her death was a tragedy.”

“It was,” Ianneth agreed.

“Speaking of which,” Tinneth said, “did you bring a candlestick?”

Celebrimbor looked at her blankly. “A candlestick?” he said, sounding puzzled. “No. Was I supposed to? No one mentioned it.”

“But how are you going to light your candle when we go to the meeting hall?” Tinneth asked, equally puzzled.

“I’m not actually familiar with this custom, I’m afraid,” Celebrimbor said. “Is this a ritual from Mithrim?”

“Well, yes and no,” Tinneth said. “It started with us, but the Golodhrim liked it, so they adopted it, too. I would have thought you'd have grown up with it, like Ereiniel did.”

“I don’t think it ever spread outside of Hithlum, Auntie,” Ereiniel said, cutting in. “Celebrimbor grew up in Himlad.”

What she didn’t say was that the Sons of Fëanor and their people would have been unlikely to participate anyway. The custom – lighting candles at Midwinter to remember those who had been lost – had started even before Annael’s father's father's time. Living nearly on Morgoth’s doorstep as they did, the elves of Hithlum had always suffered losses, as every year some of their people were killed or taken to Morgoth’s dungeons.

Fingolfin had first adopted the practice as a way to remember those who had died on the Grinding Ice. But the Sons of Fëanor hadn't crossed the Grinding Ice. They’d had their stolen ships.

“You light a candle,” Ereiniel explained to Celebrimbor, “and you think of the people you love whom you've lost. It's like a family memorial.”

Sometimes it was the only memorial people had. Fingolfin and Lalwen and Amareth all had proper graves, even if those graves were now too far away or in Morgoth's territory. But Ereiniel’s father had no grave, no cairn, no monument. She'd coaxed the information out of Gurvadhor a few years ago, when he’d had too much to drink and grown melancholy, and she knew now. By the time the orcs had finished beating Fingon’s body into the dirt, there hadn't been enough of him left even to throw on the Haudh-en-Ndengin. Her father had been nothing more than a pool of bloody mud, a few clumps of hair, and a handful of bone fragments.

Sometimes she regretted having asked, but she told herself that an ugly truth was better than a pretty lie.

“You can join us in our candelabrum,” she said, forcing the melancholy thoughts aside. “It’s got seven spaces and there are only four of us. There’s plenty of room. I mean,” she added, “if you want to. If you want to sit it out, that’s all right, too. It’s up to you.”

Celebrimbor smiled gently. “I’d be happy to join you,” he said. “It sounds like a lovely tradition.”

Later, as Ianneth, Tinneth, and Annael cleaned up from the meal – Ianneth insisting that Ereiniel stay with Celebrimbor to keep him company – Celebrimbor nodded his chin towards the candlesticks on the table and asked, “Speaking of candlesticks, did you make these?”

“Yes. And I know they’re crooked,” Ereiniel said, a little defensively. “But Nana insisted on keeping them anyway. You know what mothers are like.”

“I don’t, really, actually,” Celebrimbor said. “I don’t remember my mother. I haven’t seen her since I was four years old, when we left Valinor.”

That brought Ereiniel up short. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quiet. “I didn’t mean to drag up something unpleasant.”

“It’s fine,” he said, waving a hand in a vague gesture of dismissal. “I wish I could have known her, but at least I still have the name she gave me. Celebrimbor. Tyelperinquar.” Resting his chin in his hand, he added, “Curufin tried to get me to switch to my father-name when we first arrived in Hithlum, but Caranthir had a talk with him and convinced him to leave it alone.”

“What’s your father-name?” Ereiniel asked.

“Guess.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t even begin to.”

“Yes, you can,” Celebrimbor said. “Just think of the worst possible name he could have given me.”

Again, Ereiniel shook her head, but then she froze as an idea occurred to her.

“Not Curufin?”

“Got it in one,” he said wryly. “You’d think two Curufinwës would be more than enough for any family, but he decided we needed three.”

“Stars above,” Ereiniel said. “You poor thing.”

At that, Celebrimbor laughed. “I’ll manage,” he said. “It’s not as though I have any intention of using it now.”

Crossing to the cabinet to retrieve her mother’s pewter candelabrum, Ereiniel said, “Well, of course not, and I don’t blame you.”

“That’s fine workmanship,” Celebrimbor said, watching as Ereiniel began wrapping the candelabrum in a length of cloth.

“Yes,” Ereiniel agreed. “My mother bought it from a craftsman from Brithombar, after we settled here. I can’t remember her name, but I’m sure Nana does, if you’d like to meet her and compare techniques. I’ve heard you’re exceptionally skilled yourself. Not like me with my crooked candlesticks,” she added with a self-deprecating grin.

Celebrimbor smiled back. “I’d like that,” he said. “I have a gift for your mother as well. And truly, I do appreciate you inviting me today. This has been lovely – a far better welcome than I ever would have expected.”

Curufin, Ereiniel thought, in addition to being a conniving, malicious bastard, had really put his son in a difficult position. But she wasn’t going to let that stand.

“You’re family,” she said simply. “And you’re welcome here at any time.”

Chapter End Notes

Belain (S.) - Valar

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Now that midwinter was past and the election was a mere two weeks away, Ereiniel found herself suffering from frequent fits of nervousness. “What was I thinking?” she said to Erestor as they sat working on yet another fishing net; Maewen was home weaving on her large loom and wasn’t with them. “I must have been out of my mind to think I could do this.”

“Relax,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

“But I have to get up and talk in front of everyone!”

“You’ll be fine,” Erestor repeated. “You’re always smoothing over arguments between other people; that’s talking in front of a group. And Madam Ithrin’s taught us rhetoric. She spent all of last summer making us debate each other on philosophical issues, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, but usually I lost. You’re a much better debater than I am.”

Erestor rolled his eyes. “If you want me to help you practice, you can just ask, you know. Besides, it’s not even going to be a proper debate. You just have to give a statement and then answer questions.”

“Would you?” Ereiniel said, feeling a wave of relief wash through her. “You’re a lifesaver, meldo.”

“Breaking out the Quenya just for me, eh?” Erestor said with a grin. “I’m happy to help.”

*************

They practiced, and practiced, and then practiced some more, Erestor helping Ereiniel refine her statement and formulate answers to the questions the two of them judged most likely to be asked. The most obvious question – you’re just turning fifty-one; you’re barely grown; you don’t even have a craft; what makes you think you have the necessary skills to do this? – was the hardest to answer.

“I plan to represent the concerns of the young people in this neighborhood. We think about our lives here, too. We have worries, too. But I think our voices have been getting lost. We’re all Quendi; we all speak. I want to make sure we’re all heard,” Ereiniel tried.

“That would be a good addition to your statement,” Erestor said, “but it’s not a good response to the question, because you haven’t actually answered it. The question is, what skills do you have?”

Ereiniel thought this over for a few moments before saying, “I’m good at defusing arguments. I like to help people. I work hard. I listen to people’s concerns, and I’m not afraid to speak up. This is an opportunity for me to do more for my community, and I will shoulder the responsibility with dedication and commitment.”

“Better. But we still need to polish it up a little.”

Ereiniel nodded, but she didn’t set to work rewording herself. Instead she looked around to make certain they were alone, leaned a little closer to her friend and, voice low, asked, “What if someone brings up the Doom of the Noldor?”

Erestor blinked at her. “Why would anyone bring that up?”

“Well, a lot of people died in the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, and that was our idea,” Ereiniel said, lacing her fingers together.

“What do you mean, our? That was your father’s idea, not yours.”

“I meant the Golodhrim as a whole.”

“There are plenty of Gelydh on the neighborhood councils,” Erestor pointed out. “And Morgoth was already killing us long before your people showed up on these shores. I don’t think the Falathrim are going to be Doomed by association if you get elected.”

“It’s just–” Ereiniel broke off, now pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her long legs, and then said, “It’s a point of contention for some people, what my father did at the Swanhaven, and that’s what brought the Doom upon us.”

Erestor looked at her, really looked at her, a small furrow appearing between his brows, and said, “You’ve never really talked about it with me and Maewen. But it bothers you a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It does. I don’t know what happened,” Ereiniel said. “I think that’s the worst part. I was told one thing by my mother, another thing by Madam Ithrin, something else entirely by Henthael…” Her words trailed off, and she pulled her arms tighter about her knees. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I’d give anything to have just five more minutes with Ada, so I could ask him to his face. But he’s dead.”

He made a mistake, her mother had told her. He believed his family had been attacked, so he came to their defense. The result was terrible, but he didn’t act in malice. He never would have drawn his blade had he known how the fighting had truly begun.

It was wrong for Fëanor to attack the Falmari, Madam Ithrin had said. But it also would have been wrong for your father to stand by while his kin were killed. There were no good choices to be made on that day.

He was a fool, Henthael had said, blunt as always. He allowed himself to be led astray by Fëanor’s sons, just as he allowed Maedhros to talk him into that reckless assault on Morgoth. Maedhros never deserved your father’s friendship. Fingon saved his life, and Maedhros paid him back by leading him to his death.

There was one person Ereiniel hadn’t asked. Gurvadhor had been a close friend of her father’s, and Ereiniel knew that he would have a perspective of his own on what had happened at Alqualondë. But she knew, too, that there was a good chance that he had been in the vanguard with Fingon. She knew that there was a good chance that he was one of the Kinslayers. Call her a coward for it, but if Gurvadhor had the blood of the Falmari on his hands, she didn’t want to know.

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Erestor said quietly.

“I don’t expect you to,” Ereiniel said, but Erestor held up one finger before she could continue, indicating that he wasn’t finished with his thoughts.

“All I can say,” he said, once she’d fallen silent, “is that the Golodhrim have been our allies for a long time, and you’ve been good allies. While your people held Hithlum, Eglarest and Brithombar were protected. We even escaped the Dagor Bragollach, all because Fingolfin was willing to put himself and his armies in the direct line of assault to protect the southwest. To protect us, his allies. The same was true of your father, Kinslaying or no Kinslaying.

“From the time your people arrived on these shores until Hithlum fell, the Falas was safe. And the Nírnaeth Arnoediad was awful, it absolutely was, and then the destruction of Eglarest and Brithombar coming right on its heels, but neither of those losses were your father’s doing. No one should be holding him at fault because he was betrayed by false allies, even if the results were horrible. Besides, isn’t that why you’re doing this? Because the results were horrible? Because the world has been awful and horrible for decades, and we’re growing up in it, and nobody is listening to us and nobody has answers for us?”

Ereiniel nodded but didn’t speak for a moment, too choked by the messy, roiling cauldron of emotions that seemed to have bubbled up in her stomach.

“You’re right,” she finally said, her voice scratching in her throat. “That is why I’m doing this.” Studying Erestor’s face, she asked, “How did you get to be so wise, anyway? You’re only eight-and-a-half years older than me, but somehow you always know how to help me get my thoughts sorted out.”

Erestor flashed her a small, slightly self-deprecating smile. “Am I as wise as all that? All I do is pay attention and think about things.”

“Well, you do it really well. Maybe you should be the one running for the neighborhood council, not me.”

At that, Erestor snorted. “Not what I want out of life, and you know that. I’m going to be a scholar, a lore-master – assuming we don’t all die before my hundredth begetting day.”

“All too possible,” Ereiniel muttered. But then she shook her head. “We shouldn’t say that. Bad enough that Talagand is sunk in despair. We don’t need to climb down into the pit as well. Light in the dark,” she added, tapping the star on her wrist. “That’s what Maewen’s always reminding me.”

“Light in the dark,” Erestor echoed after a moment’s hesitation. “Together we can find a way to survive.”

*************

The day of the election dawned, and Ereiniel returned from training with Gurvadhor to find her mother frying eggy bread with salt and pepper, one of Ereiniel’s favorite breakfast foods.

“For luck,” Ianneth said, tipping several slices onto her daughter’s plate.

“Thanks, Nana,” Ereiniel answered, and then tucked into the meal. Training always left her hungry afterwards, and today was no different, despite her nerves.

Mentally, she began to plan out her day. Her mother had excused her from her morning chores so that she could take a bath and wash her hair, to be as clean and presentable as possible this evening, but she wasn’t excused from lessons with Madam Ithrin this afternoon. Not that she wanted to be; she enjoyed her lessons, enjoyed studying and learning things – perhaps not with the same intensity as Erestor, but still with a level of dedication that was perfectly respectable for any Noldo.

Her mother had not suggested that Ereiniel wear skirts this evening, either, which Ereiniel appreciated. Their arguments over her clothing had been fierce when she was younger, but by now Ianneth had accepted that she wasn’t going to get her daughter into a dress no matter how much she pleaded or scolded or threatened. Ereiniel preferred breeches, preferred to dress the way men dressed, and she counted herself lucky to be rather flat-chested, which made it easier for her to wear a man’s-style tunic – unlike Maewen, who was ample in the bosom and had to tailor her own clothes carefully to keep from revealing things she didn’t want revealed.

Some people looked askance at Ereiniel for the way she dressed – that was something she’d known for a long time. And perhaps it would work against her; as the neighborhood gossips often muttered, she wasn’t a proper young lady. But if she was going to serve her community the way she wanted to, she wasn’t going to do it as a proper young lady. She was going to do it as herself, eccentricities and all.

After breakfast, once Ianneth had departed for the Houses of Healing, Ereiniel fetched the tin bath from its hook in the shed and then went to draw the necessary water. It was still frigid outside, and she first had to break through the ice on top of the water butt, which took multiple blows with the coal hammer; it was a good two inches thick, a testament to how cold it had been for the past week.

While she waited for the water to heat over the fire, she once again looked over her statement and the notes she and Erestor had made. Her friend had donated a sheet of his precious paper to the cause, which allowed her to reread what the two of them had worked on as often as she needed without taking over all of the slates Madam Ithrin used for lessons – something that would not have pleased Madam Ithrin in the slightest. Ereiniel’s tutor was an exacting taskmistress.

The water in the kettle was steaming. Ereiniel filled the tub. She climbed in, enjoying the feeling of the heat against her skin, and began to scrub herself clean with the lye soap she and her mother had made in the fall, paying extra attention to her hair. Just as she’d inherited her father’s freckles, she’d inherited her father’s hair, black and smooth and straight as a stick – unlike her mother, whose hair fell in thick waves to her waist when unbound, though she generally wore it in complex braids. For her part, Ereiniel usually went with a simple plait, but today she decided to be a little fancier and style it in a more complicated herringbone pattern. She might not be wearing a dress, but she still wanted to look nice.

Once she had dried herself off and finished dressing, she emptied the bathwater outside and cleaned up the kitchen. By then it was almost time for her lessons, so she did her best to put aside her nerves and think instead about the topics Madam Ithrin was most likely to focus on today.

There was a knock on the door – Madam Ithrin herself, bearing her chalk and slates. Ereiniel let her in, and the two of them settled at the kitchen table by the fire, ready to begin.

Chapter End Notes

Golodhrim (S.) - Noldor (collective plural)

Gelydh (S.) - Noldor (plural)

Meldo (Q.) - dear friend

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