Growing Wisdom by Anérea

Introduction: The Journey Begins

List of canon characters and one textual ghost:

• Baran, Bëor's son: leader of the House of Bëor at this time; he was in his late teens/early twenties when they crossed the mountains into Beleriand, and thus also met Finrod;
• Boromir:  Andreth's father and Baran's grandson (and great grandfather of Beren)
• Amie: Andreth's mother is not named in canon; in my headcanon her hand-dyed fabrics and embroidery are renowned and even Elves appreciate her craftsmanship.
• Aunt Nel: Adanel, wise-woman of her people, Andreth's aunt by marriage (age 29)
• Uncle Bel: Belemir, great grandson of Beor and Adanel's husband (age 29)
  (Nel-Bel is the family's collective nickname name for the couple)
• Breg: Bregor, Andreth's nine year old brother
• Bear: Beril, Andreth's three year old sister
• Andreth is a precocious seven years old here, and while she enjoys making up nicknames for everyone else, she insists on her full name being used.

Read Introduction: The Journey Begins

Andreth didn’t think she’d ever been so excited before. Great grandfather Baran’s gripping stories from the olden days always sounded so marvellous, especially the Mountain Crossing, and "Long Journey" was one of their favourite games to play. Now they were all going on a real long journey. The last Great Festival gathering three years ago had been at their own encampment, and when her family had travelled to the one before that she’d barely been crawling, so this was really her first time venturing beyond the familiar surrounds of her home. Breg boasted that he remembered it, but he had only been three then, like Bear was now, and because he liked to make stuff up she thought that maybe he was making it up from other people’s stories.

::

Breg was really good at making up games, although he always took the best parts. When they played Elves and Dwarves with their friends, he always said he should be the Elf Lord because he was the tallest, and fair, like King Felagund, and she should be the Dwarf Smith because she was the clever, crafty one, but she knew it was because she was shorter. But now Beril was old enough and the perfect size to be a Dwarf, so she could finally be an Elf. But she really liked playing Fairy Queen Melian — not because her hair was dark like hers, or because she was so beautiful, or even that she was part fairy, but because she was so wise.

Andreth wanted to be as wise as her when she grew up. Sometimes she wondered whether there would be enough time in her life to learn all the things she wanted to learn. She thought it so unfair that Elves lived for so long when they were fated to die in less than a hundred years. So she was determined to learn as much as she could as quickly as she could. She loved venturing into the woods and along the river with Amie, looking for plants and bugs and different types of earth to experiment with for her dyes. People thought Amie knew Elvish magic because her cloths and thread were the most vibrantly colourful in all Estolad, but they didn’t see all the many, many times scraps she used for testing new ingredients came out as dull as anyone’s. Aunt Nel sometimes foraged with them when she needed to replenish her herbs and remedies. It was from her that she learned which plants were also useful for healing, which sometimes were the same as those that were poisonous to eat. Often a plant provided both colour and healing, and those seemed to her to hold the most magic. Aunt Nel said she could see the different colours of the magic in plants, and Adanel longed to learn how to see magic too, but Aunt Nel said it was just something she had been born with and she wasn’t sure it was something she could teach her.

::

Three days of dark clouds and light rain had done little to dampen their spirits, and by the last evening of their journey Andreth thought Aunt Nel would burst from excitement. The Great Festival gathering this year was at her Grandfather Marach’s encampment, and this would be her first time visiting her old home since marrying Uncle Bel at the last festival.

The clouds rolled away on the last night, leaving the air so crisp and sky so clear that the stars shone bright enough to see by. As Ada banked the fire after evening meal, Adanel pulled her bedroll from her tent and laid it out in the open. Andreth thought this was the best idea and lay her own blankets next to hers. Bear also wanted to cuddle up outside with her, but she wriggled about so much that Andreth was relieved when she changed her mind and ran back to Amie and Ada’s bed in the tent. It was thrilling to lie so snug under the blankets pretending to be ancient Elves of the starlight time while Aunt Nel told Elvish stories about the stars. She wanted to stay awake the whole night and try to remember all the names. But she thought she might just close her eyes, only for a few moments…

When she opened them the sky over the distant hills to the east was a paler shade of blue with just a hint of orange in the dips between the peaks, and Adanel was already building up the fire for breakfast. Today was the day they would arrive! Cosy and warm as it was under her blanket, even though bobbles of dew covered the wool, she was too excited to wait for the sun to chase the chill and crawled out into the dawn. Breg was awake too, and they raced each other to the stream to fetch water, sloshing rather too much on their way back.

By the time sunlight had tucked the blue shadows back into the hills, breakfast was done and the camp was preparing to leave. They would reach the homestead of Adanel’s kin sometime after midday.

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Chapter End Notes

To be continued...

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Created for the X Marks the Spot challenge prompts:

• Helcaraxë: Setting out on a journey
• Lammoth: The rising of the sun.
• Losgar: Discover something has been forgotten. (still to come)

The third chapter of this fic was written first, as a stand-alone drabble sequence because I hadn't had the brain-energy at the time to write the preceding chapter. In the process, I started developing a whole bunch of Ideas about these folk around this time period, and as I started writing the preceding introductory chapter, I realised that it needed a preceding introductory chapter of its own! So here it is, and I'm publishing it now before I get caught in a weird kind of Counter-Clock World backward-written story!

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Unbeta'd and possibly the fasted bit of fanfic writing I've ever written, so constructive critical feedback is very much welcomed!