The Kids Are All Right by grey_gazania

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Chapter 2

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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.

 

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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.

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Chapter End Notes

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