The Kids Are All Right by grey_gazania

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Chapter 6

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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