The Line of Kings by Michiru

Birthright

A father-to-be reflects upon the reality of living in exile. What does it mean to be Noldorin?

First Age Year 361

He slid into the room before the hinges shrieked loudest, but still saw his wife stirring in bed, roused by the noise. She tossed her head back, staring past her shoulder. Her eyes did not quite pierce the gloom of early morning, but she was alert enough for him to realize he had deluded himself to believe she had missed his initial departure.

"What is it?" she asked, the solitary note of fear echoing through their bond, louder than she would have liked. Her wash of irritation brought a tired smile to his lips.

"False alarm. Just a scouting party from Eithel Sirion." He unhooked his sword belt, propped it up by the bed, and kicked his boots off. The dawn was now just hours off, and, after a brief internal debate, he decided he didn't care if his captains saw him in rumpled clothes. He flopped on top of the thin quilt without getting undressed.

"Must they trouble you with every little trifle?" she groused, curling into his arms as much as the swell of their first child would allow. He buried his face in her hair, breathing deep, willing away the tension still wound deep in his muscles.

"I am the warden of the tower," he mumbled against the crown of her head. "If the Enemy does make an assault on Beleriand, he is most likely to do it here, or through Maglor's Gap. I can hardly command the forces of Angband to wait upon our rest." She scoffed, and he smiled.

"Though I'm certain that, once they'd felt your displeasure, they would be sure never to provoke it again, Naltariel."

There was a beat of silence in which he could have corrected himself, Laegalad, but somehow he couldn't bear to follow through, even as she stiffened in his arms. An elbow razored between his ribs, pushing him away. He flopped over, laying more fully on his back, giving her space, with a sigh.

"I hate it when you do that, Orodreth," she said finally, after a silence he measured in the incremental twinges of a headache settling between his eyes.

"Do forgive my tongue for slipping before the sun is roused," he grumbled back, squeezing the upper hollows of his eyes between his middle finger and thumb. Far from easing the pain, the motion seemed to exacerbate it, entrenching it more deeply in his hroä, reaching it into his fëa.

"It is not your tongue that grieves me, but your heart, for that is where the slip occurs," she said gravely. He sighed, and wished again that the child had arrived. The closer she came to the world, the more her personality seemed to bleed through, and though he loved her dearly already, his daughter's character was of a very different sort than her mother's. Where Laegalad would have argued, his daughter lamented, and made him feel a bully.

"Sorry," he muttered, not sorry at all, but feeling guilty nonetheless. He rolled over, back to his wife, and shut his eyes, determined to get some rest before the sun rose and the daily business of watching the North began again. A hand, long and bony, curled about his wrist; her insistence niggled at his mind.

"Why does our child grieve you so?" she demanded, cushioning her head in his hair, face pressed against the back of his neck.

She could never, but his throat constricted around the words, and Naltariel — Laegalad released his wrist to caress his face, stroking between his eyes, down the bridge of his nose and up again, dispelling some of the headache.

"I know you, Artaher," she whispered in his ear. "I know Orodreth better, but never forget that we met when you were still Artaher Valinorion. That tongue is a tongue of grief, and you only began using it again when you learned of our daughter. What doom lies over us that such a joyful time should lead you to mourn?"

"Only the Doom of the Noldor," he said lowly, as the future stretched bleak before his eyes. A future where his children, direct descendents of a prince of the Noldor born in Aman, never spoke Quenya, never saw the Light. A future where Noldorin customs were exchanged for Sindarin; where every day their native culture became more and more obsolete, until they were Noldorin in name only. No matter how she tried, his wife could offer him no comfort for the cold echoes of the Prophecy in the North. "Nothing more."

Chapter End Notes

1. I can only offer up my final two years of college as reason for why I've been absent for so long; that, and wandering muses and an honors thesis that literally almost killed me (anxiety is an increasing problem for me). It's been a long time since I've thought of my Noldor, sitting neglected in a corner, though I continue to claim The Silmarillion as my principle fandom. I do hope to at least finish posting this drabble series, though my life is in a bit of a state right now, so I could fall off the planet again shortly.

2. As a complete sidenote, re-reading this piece and trimming it into shape for publishing, I find myself wondering what could have been if I had made Laegalad a lady of the Sindar. I imagine Sindarin-Laegalad struggling to truly grasp the significance of the Doom of the Noldor; I imagine her arguing (to herself and to her husband) that the Doom didn't apply to their children, surely, for they were only half Noldorin. I imagine the conflicts she must have faced within her own family, for marrying not just a prince of the Noldor, but the prince whose father disdains Sindarin and King Elu Thingol's authority. AU Sindarin-Laegalad may have to be a thing that is explored and I still don't know what possessed me not to go down that road to begin with.