But Not Always Sweet by Grundy

A Change In the Water

For the Art prompt I5: Mosaic

Eärwen gave the order briskly, mentally braced for questions.

But Duimiel was professional enough not to ask. At least, not to ask the question she was dreading. The craftmaster did still deem other questions were needful.

“Do you wish it taken apart entirely, Princess?” Duimiel enquired. “The tiles could easily be reused, even if not all of them prove suitable for this commission. Or would you prefer it be taken up whole to be displayed elsewhere, perhaps at a later time?”

“Taken up, if you please, good master,” she replied. “It is fine work, and I would not have it destroyed. I’m sure I will find somewhere suitable to display it.”

She did not repeat ‘at a later time’, but then she did not need to. All Aman knew her sons and daughter had followed their uncle over the Ice.

She might stand to see it again when her children returned. When, not if.

The sea had until now been her friend – a source of strength and comfort, test and blessing in one, and so much part of her life she had needed it to be part of her home even in the city of the Noldor. The mosaic had been the closest she could come, similar to the one that graced her father’s hall but smaller, with a more modest fountain at its center. Anything more would have been out of proportion in the house her beloved had built for them.

But now the sea separated her from her children and would not even carry news of them to ease her heart. She could no longer look on it day in and day out.

So she had summoned the woman who made it, and requested it be replaced – Varda’s stars rather than Ulmo’s sea, something that bridged that too wide space between them.

It was only after Duimiel had left to begin her sketches and select colors and materials to present to her that Eärwen remembered she too had a child on the far side of a suddenly vast ocean.

Chapter End Notes

Duimiel is Ecthelion's mother.