Part 02: Grief in All Her Guises by Eilinel's Ghost

Grief in All Her Guises | Part 02 of the Atandil Series

I’ve not given up on my beloved informal “thou.” This piece just takes place primarily in the stage where they’d be speaking Taliska and I’m unsure whether it had a similar usage, so I’ve defaulted to “you” instead. (Tolkien Estate publish the existing Taliska grammar and syntax challenge.)

A QUICK EDAIN PRIMER for anyone who doesn’t obsessively carry the Bëorian family tree around rent-free in their heads:
Balan: the Atani chieftain later known as Bëor
Baran: Balan/Bëor’s eldest son
Belen: Balan/Bëor’s second son
Original characters: Estreth, Meyla, Avina, Hathus, Gelvira, Esrid, Geberic

CW: childbirth, referenced out of scene but not depicted
CW: infant loss, referenced in memory but not depicted
CW: spousal loss, referenced in memory but not depicted

Read Grief in All Her Guises | Part 02 of the Atandil Series

310th YEAR OF THE SUN, SUMMER

The Woods of Ossiriand, Near the River Thalos
                                               

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“Alda…sírë…ondo…” 

It was pleasantly hot in the late summer sunlight. The last several days had been sharp with autumn’s onset and Balan found it a relief to lie in the bright grass beside the riverbank, soaking in the warmth. He liked how these unwieldy words felt upon his tongue. Letting his eyes drift idly over the little glade, he tried to recall the names of what he saw, reciting each over and again to learn their shape. 

“Anar…fána alma…vilya…lómi…lingwë…”

A butterfly was dipping back and forth over the mud and he frowned at it, prodding his memory. It was a childish sounding word. It had reminded him of his sons’ fumbling attempts at speech when they were young, the syllables each softened and rounded together. Wilwarin, that was it. It was the word that began these secondary lessons. A butterfly had landed on Nóm’s arm while they were working and he greeted it under his breath as it lingered, congenial, like a friend pausing to chat.

“That’s not what you’ve been teaching us,” Balan remarked as he caught bits of the murmured words.

Finrod looked up at him, surprised. “That was my own native tongue.”

“We’re not learning your tongue?”

He shook his head. “I have been teaching you the language of these lands. It will serve you far better—and earn friends in place of adversaries.”

“And what of your kin and people? Should we not learn yours as well?”

“The one is sufficient.”

Balan had found that unconvincing and said so.

“There is a good reason for it, Balan.”

“But you’ll not trust me with it?”

“One day I will. Naught good has ever come of its concealment.” Nóm returned to the pile of branches they were preparing for the huts and began stripping bark away with his knife. “But that is a tale for another time. For now, trust me that it is most expedient for your people to learn the language of your hosts. My tongue will do little good in these lands.”

“Nevertheless, I should like to learn it, useful or no.”

“Nay, you misunderstand me. It is not a question of usefulness. It is a disadvantage to speak it here, and a peril. Your people are far better served by Sindarin.”

“Good then,” Balan had replied. “You shall teach it to them.” He took the finished branch from the other’s hands and met his eye with a sidelong smile. “But you’ll teach me both.”

And so Balan had begun learning a double set of vocabulary, one alongside his people and a second that Nóm taught him quietly. He knew the language was commonplace for the Elf, but here away from any others of his kind the words were their own private dialect, a knowledge that only Balan shared.

“Wilwarin,” he murmured as the butterfly ventured out over the river and felt the shape of it move over his tongue.

“Gods save us, you’re alone.” 

Balan started from his reverie, then leaned back against the bank as he recognized the newcomer. “Well,” he said with a wry twist of his lips, “I was.”

“Drowsing by the water when you’re meant to be drying yesterday’s catch,” Estreth kicked him amicably as she passed. “Uninvited company is no more than you deserve.” She set a basket beside the riverbank where several taught lines were strung between the trees, to which she began tying small fish from the basket to dry in the sun. “Well, where is he then?”

“Hm?”

“Your shadow.”

Balan rose as she finished the first fish and walked to where his own basket lay neglected beside a half-strung line. “With Meyla, I believe, teaching her some kind of meal. He learned the pottage and eisl from her yestereve and says he must repay the debt.”

Estreth snorted.

“Which I’m certain,” Balan added, “will be far more complicated than pottage and eisl.”

“I’ll eat a boot if it doesn’t involve some kind of singing.” 

Balan chuckled, then improvised in a rough tune, “Pick five handwidths of farrely nettles, cut them with a silver knife. Bathe them well in summer’s moonlight, sing a melody o’er them thrice.” A wry smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “Aggravatingly delicious, I’m sure.”

Estreth laughed at the juvenile sing-song. “I didn’t know you’d the constitution to mock him.”

“Mock him?” he said with feigned affront. “I wouldn’t dare.”

They fell into an amiable silence as they worked their slow way along the lines. Though Estreth had teased him for avoiding it, Balan enjoyed this kind of work. The simple repetition soothed him and it allowed his mind to wander where it would without risk to the task at hand. Besides that, he found a quiet satisfaction in the specificity of these knots, modeled and formed for this precise purpose and passed from mother to son, father to daughter as a tangible lore. Balan’s preoccupation with learning often left him isolated within his own mind, and he enjoyed these instances where knowledge was primarily physical. It grounded him in the tangible rather than the cerebral. A gust of wind sighed through the trees and Balan let it fill his lungs. The air was pleasant as it traveled in over the water and it lifted his hair in its passage, cooled the sweat on his neck. 

“I wonder if it isn’t growing too mild to dry these,” he said, glancing toward the mountains where the slopes already showed the first blood of autumn.

“No, we’ve time for this catch at least. The spiders wove with the dawn this morning and the raven sang in five cries. The chill will come late this year.”

“Your portents.” Balan chuckled as he retrieved a loose line and lashed it back around the nearest sapling. “I’ve yet to see winter obey a raven, or spring the barking of a dog. But I’ll hope you’re right, for the sake of our morning’s work.”

“I am right.” Estreth pushed her basket further along the line. “Scorn our omens all you please, but you’ll remember it was my people guiding yours to early harvest during the hard winters. Our lore has kept us well for long enough to prove its usefulness.”

“True enough, and fairly chided.” Balan retrieved a fish that fell from his last knot and retied it. “I’ll doubt you as ever, but I’ll reform my ways and will not tease.”

“Good lad,” Estreth said with a sidelong smile. She carried her basket to the last line and worked for a time in silence, until Balan moved to join her. “You’re a keeper of lore,” she said quietly. “Did your people ever tell stories of the ghomennin?”

“Now and then, when they wished to keep children from straying too far from the encampment. I don’t recall many in recent years. There are true terrors enough on these paths that we’ve little need for invented ones. Why do you ask?”

“You don’t think the ghomennin are true terrors?”

“Creatures who rise from hillsides to trap you in a dance and consume your soul?” Balan laughed dismissively and continued with the work.

“Beautiful giants appearing without warning; ethereal beings who can ensnare you with their song…”

Balan glanced at her sharply. “That’s hardly a subtle insinuation.”

“It wasn’t meant to be subtle,” she retorted, then began chanting softly under her breath.

“Ghomennin gather, gather ‘round,
They dance a circle ‘pon the ground.
As serpents weaving mesmerize,
Ghomennin hold with shining eyes
The one unguarded in his ways
And bind to them his tale of days.”

“He’s not a demon.”

“Well, he’s the face of a pup and the eyes of a haunted old man,” Estreth said as she strung the last fish up on the line. “It’s all far too fay to be safe, if you ask me. And you’re half gone already. I’m surprised you aren’t perched by Meyla’s fire this very moment to not stray out of his sight.”

“As you said, there was yesterday’s catch to dry.” He tied the last fish to his line as well, then shouldered the basket and followed her back toward the encampment with a grin. “And I won’t shirk every duty in the name of hospitality.”

“Hospitality is one word for it.”

“Dare I ask what another is?”

“Whatever you’d call the creature a serpent transfixed.”

He grimaced at her, then walked ahead as Baran called his name from the camp.

❈  ❈  ❈

In the end, the new dish turned out to be little removed from the previous day’s pottage and eisl. It was a simple broth, scattered with various roots and vegetables, and bolstered with a fleet of doughy spheres. 

“It’s some relief,” Estreth noted to Balan as they and Balan’s sons joined the meal, “that even he can’t produce dumplings in pristine globes. These are reassuringly knobbly.”

“And reassuringly substantive,” Baran added with a wink at his aunt.

“Oh gods all,” Balan mumbled irritably, “not you too.”

Baran laughed and then held up his cup as Belen and Nóm joined the group around the fire. “Mead, Bel?”

“Mm.” His brother leaned over and refilled the outstretched cup from the jug he carried, then glanced at Finrod. “Nóm, how do you ask for mead?”

“Annog nin i miruvor,” Finrod held out his own cup toward Belen. “Though to be precise, miruvor is not quite the same as your mead, but it’s my closest guess.”

“Annog nin i miruvor,” Belen repeated as he filled the cup, then set the jug on the ground between them as he turned to his soup. 

“Nearly. Move the emphasis forward on your tongue when you say annog. Yes, like that,” Finrod smiled as the boy repeated the phrase, then he retrieved the jug from where Belen placed it and turned to fill Balan’s cup. “Ma nin antatyë i miruvórë.”

“Ma nin antatyë i miruvórë,” Balan repeated.

“Mára.”  Finrod gave him a sidelong smile, then set the jug back in its place.

“And which would you favor, Nóm, given the choice?” Baran asked with a grin, “Mead or its translated cousin?”

“To answer that, tell me first what it is I would quench by the drink,” said the Elf with a matching grin, then relented as Baran looked at him in confusion. “Mead when I thirst,” he answered, lifting his cup in salute toward the other, “and miruvórë when I long for my youth.”

Balan broke into laughter at this and lifted his own drink in response. “An answer proving your affinity with us after all, Nóm. To treat with one’s nostalgia in the depths of a cup is quite Mannish of you.”

The laughter passed around the little group and then tapered off into various conversations as they settled into their meal. Balan leaned back and let his gaze drift around at each, the contented lethargy of the morning overtaking him once again. It was odd, he reflected, how often in these past months the feeling of completion arose. He felt it now, watching Baran finish his soup and walk back to tend the broken goat pens, or seeing Meyla’s daughter, a child of three or four, run eagerly to join the group, her little hands still woven into the formation she just learned. He felt it keenly watching Nóm move among them, speak their language, or seeing him follow attentively as Avina held her hands up to show him the newly acquired skill. Whatever it is he was, he had been missing and now he was here.

A smile split his face as Avina began her recitation in front of the Elf, holding her hands with the fingers still interlocked and pressed between her palms. 

“Here I hold the lodge for meeting, here I build the doors of oak.” Avina turned her hands to show the thumbs held upright against the near side of the fingers, then spread them apart. “Open them to see the feasting, and hear the songs of merry folk!” She twisted her hands palm upward and the interlaced fingers danced as though seated along banquet tables.

Finrod laughed. 

“No, no,” Belen interjected, “that isn’t how I was taught.”

“Mercy on your father, Bel,” Balan said with a chuckle, and drained the rest of his broth.

Belen grinned and held up his own hands, fingers laced across the outside instead. “Here I hold the lodge for meeting, here I build the doors of oak. Open them and where’s the feasting? Where are all the merry folk?” He had opened his hands to show the empty palms, then held one palm flat and flopped the other hand’s fingers loose over it. “Look about, you’ll find them sleeping. Listen and you’ll hear them snore,” he raised a hand to his ear, then turned it to a fist that arced down toward his palm once more. “As the morning comes a’reaping, they’re sleeping off the night before.” He marked this last with a particularly crude gesture hidden behind his hand where Avina could not see it.

“Balan!” Estreth struck Bel’s father jokingly as the group laughed and he dropped back on the ground in mock shame. “And you taught him that at Avina’s age, no doubt.”

“It’s no worse than the ghost tales you filled their heads with,” Balan retorted, pushing back up to rest on his elbows. “And a rude rhyme never kept them up in fright.”

“Nor did my tales.”

Belen looked sheepishly across the fire at his aunt. “I’ll confess there were one or two nightmares.”

“Those were instructive. They weren’t meant to frighten you.”

Balan glanced at her, an eyebrow cocked. “Like the ghomennin?”

Estreth tossed a lump of bread at him and it bounced off his chin. 

“Eh!” He retrieved it from the ground and ate it. “And you the one who lectures me on thrift. Don’t waste perfectly good grain.”

Finrod laughed at their bickering, then turned back to Avina who was attempting to follow the conversation with a bewildered smile. “Shall I show you one I knew as a child?” He took hold of her hand as she nodded and closed it into a fist, then raised a finger for each line as he sang,

“Papa cooks the meal,
Mama sets bread to rise.
Brother sits a’harping
And Sister’s songs arise,
Baby sees noone looking
And gobbles up the pies.”

At the last line, he took her little finger and ran it pecking across her palm. She giggled and looked up at him, her eyes bright with laughter. “Again?” His face mirrored back her glee and he repeated the rhyme over and again until Meyla called for Avina from the hut. Then he raised each finger from the little fist, naming them as he went. “Papa, mama, brother, sister, baby. Gwinig,” he shifted into Sindarin as he tucked her little finger back down against her palm, then followed in reverse along the line, “nethig, honeg, emig, atheg.” He closed his hand over her fist with a squeeze and nodded toward the hut. “Go on, now. Your mother needs you.”

Avina ran to join Meyla and Balan looked up at Finrod expectantly.

“What,” Nóm said, laughing as he took the outstretched hands in his, “would you learn children’s rhymes as well?” He wrapped his hand about Balan’s fist to close it, then repeated the same game, only now he sang the rhyme quietly in Quenya as he lifted each finger.

Balan focused for a moment, then repeated back, “Atya, emya, hanno, nette, winimo.” 

“Quétalyë mai, you speak well. But a poor friend I should be if I let you go about calling your fingers baby and papa.” A smile broke across Finrod’s face once again—like the dawn, Balan thought as the other released him and took hold of the left hand instead. His hand spread open against Balan’s, palm to palm, the slender fingers towering for a moment over the Adan’s before slipping down to match fingertips instead. “Nápo,” he pressed his thumb gently against Balan’s, then followed with each finger as he named them. “Lepetas, lepenel, lepekan, lepinke.” He slid his fingers over to wrap about Balan's thumb and forefinger. “And when these two are paired together, we name them nápat.”

“Nápat,” Estreth mimicked and pinched Balan’s arm with her thumb and forefinger. “That’s useful, at least.” She rose as she finished the soup and gathered the bowl and utensils. 

Balan touched his finger to Finrod’s ring as their hands moved apart. “What does this signify?”

“It is the mark of my father’s house.” Finrod slipped it from his finger and held it out to Balan. “He fashioned it when I was a child, long ago, and gave it to my keeping when our paths parted. It is one of the things I treasure most in this life,” he added as Balan held it up to the sunlight and watched in wonder as the emerald eyes blazed out in green fire. 

“Can I see it?” Belen asked and his father passed it into his hand. 

“Madja, look at this.” Belen held up the ring as Estreth walked by him on her way back to the huts. “The leaves are smaller than grain.”

Estreth paused behind Belen and glanced at the ring in his hand. “It’s beautiful,” she said, reaching down and tracing her finger over the intricate curves, then she looked pointedly across at Balan with an eyebrow raised. “Serpents.”

Balan rolled his eyes, then grinned and mimicked a hiss.

“Reformed ways indeed,” she said with a chuckle, then walked back toward the center of the encampment.

Bel looked at his father in curiosity. “What are you two on about?”

“Your aunt,” Balan said, “thinks he’s one of the ghomennin.”

“What, Nóm?” Belen handed the ring back to Finrod. “That’s nonsense.”

Balan shrugged and took another sip from his cup. “So I told her.”

“She’s only saying it to aggravate you.” Bel grinned at him, then added as an aside to Finrod, “It’s a favorite familial pastime.”

“What are the ghomennin?” Finrod asked.

“Bel?” Balan looked to his son. “She told you and your brother more fables than I knew.”

“She did, though I remember them more from spook stories than from madja’s tales. When we were children, we’d tell them before daring one or the other to go ‘round a hill or through a nearby thicket. I think half of it we made up on the spot, if I’m honest. But generally speaking, they’re meant to be some kind of woodland spirits or demons—forgive me, lord—“ he added toward Finrod, “whose halls lie under the hills and who come out to snare those who stray in the woods. Madja would tell us of them when we were small so we’d stay near the camp and not wander too far afield. She taught us to leave jars of goat’s milk out each night and little bowls of hawthorn berries as signs of goodwill. As the stories go, if they’re not appeased they’ll come out from the hillsides and find wanderers in the woods or valleys, mesmerize them with a song, and…oh—” Belen broke off, suddenly uncomfortable, and looked over at his father.

Balan chuckled and shifted to sit more comfortably, then he picked up the explanation. “They enchant you with a song or trap you within their dance, then draw years from your soul to prolong their own life. It’s meant to be a tale of how our days are numbered,” he glanced at his friend apologetically, “though telling it to you now, it does sound rather like someone trying to make of you a horror.”

“Perhaps it is,” Finrod said simply. “If it is a tale held over from the dark years, then that is likely enough to be true.” He finished the last of his stew, then set the bowl aside and looked back at Balan with a glint of mischief in his eye. “I’ll confess to you, though ‘twould damn me in Estreth’s eye, my halls do lie hidden beneath the hills.”

“Beneath as in at the foot of?” Bel asked uneasily from across the fire.

“Beneath as in under.”

“Are you trying to frighten the lad?” Balan stood and began collecting the used bowls. 

Finrod laughed. “Fortified caves, Bel, nothing sinister. And if it’s any comfort, know it is rare among my people. In fact,” he added with a grin mirroring Belen’s earlier aside, “teasing me for dwelling so is one of my own kin’s familial pastimes.”

Belen smiled in return, but the nervousness did not entirely leave his expression. Balan passed the pile of bowls and cups to his son. “Take these back to Meyla, would you? And help her till the washing up is done,” he added as Belen moved away with the load. “No slipping off to the woods, do you hear?”

“Aye, I hear. Ever your words my teachers and ne’er your deeds.”

His father feigned giving chase and Belen darted toward the huts with a laugh. Balan walked back to the fire, plucking a handful of hawthorn berries from the nearby tree as he passed and slipping a few into his mouth. He held out the rest toward Finrod as he moved to sit beside him on the trunk. “Appeasement, ghomenno?”

Finrod looked amused as he chose a few berries from Balan’s palm and held them in his own, lying like droplets of blood against his skin. “Do I prove my guilt by eating or refraining?”

“If it was a test, what’s proved by telling you first which way to choose?”

“That you believe me innocent,” he replied with a smile and ate the berries.

Balan laughed. “You know that already, or you’d have cast them back to the earth.” He ate a few more, then held out the remainder to the other. “What did you mean before, when you said it was likely the tale meant to cast you as a terror?”

“Ah, is that why you sent the boy away?”

“Something held you back and I flattered myself it was his presence and not mine.”

Finrod was silent as he finished the berries, then spat the seeds onto the ground and began in a quiet voice, “Long ago, when my people first awakened along the Eastern waters, the Darkness was already in the world. The Foe was aware of us before the Valar discovered our fathers walked beside Cuiviénen and he sent terrors and devils to haunt our steps. And because in those days Oromë the Mighty rode over Endor hunting the Foe’s fell beasts, the shadows took in mockery of him the shape of a hunter, the dark Rider upon his wild steed who devoured those of our folk who wandered. Long our fathers feared the sound of hooves, the specter of the Hunter, so that when Oromë did find them at last, many saw in him a terror, fled, and were lost to the darkness. Thus did the Morgoth poison our hearts toward goodness ere ever we had the sight of it."

“And you believe our tales of the ghomennin came also out of that darkness?”

“Perhaps. You can see for yourself the similarities. It was inevitable for Ilúvatar’s children to meet, whether in early years or later, and spreading division between us would ever be his preparation for that eventuality.” Finrod was quite for a moment, twisting a sprig of dried grass in his fingers. “Indeed, he has already made the attempt among my own people. I myself first heard of you through his whispers, though I knew not until long hence that such was their origin. Usurpers he named you in his slander and brought us to suspect the Valar held us in a gilded prison so as to pass Endor’s inheritance to the Secondborn, by restraint thus displacing the First. An easily controlled people, he murmured ever in our ears, dripping honey to feed our pride. Those the Valar might bend more readily to their will. A weaker race.” His voice had grown increasingly bitter as he spoke and he cast the dried grass into the fire with a vehemence that startled Balan. “Damn him to the Void,” he said quietly and his eyes burned with a fierce fire. “He set poison within the cup of friendship and turned to bitterness what should have been the wine of gladness.”

Balan was quiet as the implications of this took root. He watched his friend in disquiet. “You yourself have spoken with him?”

“Yes.” His face clouded and to Balan’s eyes it seemed for a moment lined with untold years. “But ask me not of it. I have answered your earlier questions, let that be enough.” He stood abruptly and gathered his outer tunic and bag from the ground.

“Forgive me if my words trespassed, lord. I meant no offense.”

Finrod paused, then turned back to rest his hand briefly on Balan’s shoulder. “Loth are we all to recall follies we’ve since disowned. If I have been brusque, my friend, know it is from my own shame and not from any displeasure with you. There was no offense.” He collected his sword as well and slung the looped belt over his shoulder. “I will return by nightfall,” he said and disappeared silently into the trees.

❈ ❈ ❈

Despite his words, it was past both nightfall and the evening meal before Finrod appeared again in the encampment. He had wandered the foothills for hours to clear his mind, bemused by how unsettled the conversation left him. There had been nothing unexpected about the exchange—it was a series of perfectly natural questions. Yet as he spoke he felt the same rush of adrenaline grip his throat as he had when Thingol denounced him for the bloodshed at Alqualondë. A strange comparison. It unsettled him that something this simple elicited the same response. 

At first he considered it must be the shame of recounting lies to the one slandered. That had a thread of connection, at least. He recalled a similar look of distress upon Círdan’s face when he realized the origin of the rumors he passed on to Menegroth. Wittingly or unwittingly, being the conduit of Melkor’s lies was no easy place to sit. But that discomfort was not the source of this anxiety. Balan brought his own lies of the Darkness into the conversation and if anything it was a shared analysis of each’s experience. There was no judgment in that exchange.

No the true source, he realized as the sun sank over the plains, was his own reluctance to let his history encroach on these friendships. It had been a kind of intoxication dwelling here with them this past summer, being known only on his own merit without the negotiation of politics, without the spectre of rebellion and exile, or kinstrife and grievance as a lens for every action. That also was a thread of connection, he admitted, and a stronger one. It was the panic of the looming precipice, knowing the friendship built might not weather the truth of you.

Telling Balan of the days before the Darkening was edging perilously close to that sheer drop. It would be inevitable, he knew, but still he was surprised by how jealously his heart guarded this newfound companionship.

A smile creased his face as he moved through the camp and saw Balan and his elder son seated beside the central fire. “Mae govannen,” he said as he joined them, then smiled and added in Taliska, “Hello, Balan.”

Balan nodded in greeting, but made no reply. He sat stiffly beside the fire, his arms resting upon his knees and hands clasped tight together.

“You’ve been rather a time,” Baran said conversationally.

“I have, forgive me.” Finrod sat beside them and stretched his legs out before him. “I’m afraid I quite lost myself among the trees and hills. A forest in full grandeur is like a long draught of a mountain spring to the troubled spirit. I did not realize how long I had been absent.”

“Well, nothing’s eaten you, so that’s one concern mended.” Baran nodded toward his father. “He worries when anyone wanders. Quite two-faced of him since he’s the worst offender of us all.”

“Don’t drivel.” Balan’s voice was sharp and his son shrugged apologetically.

Estreth appeared from the shadows on the river’s side of the encampment, bearing two water skins slung over her shoulders. “Balan,” she called, “Eimet asked me to send you. He needs to know if the day’s work mends what’s needed.”

“Mm.” Balan made an affirmative sound, but did not budge.

“I’ll go,” Baran said, rising. “I know what’s required.”

“Is it the goat pens still?” Finrod asked after Baran retreated into the clearing where Estreth had emerged.

“Damned creatures will not stay put.” Balan frowned into the fire.

“As a fellow creature prone to wandering, I confess a modicum of sympathy for their plight.” He flashed a bright smile at the other in a vain attempt to ease the mood. “I think sometimes my steward would put up a pen to keep me within the bounds of my city, if given the chance.”

There was no reply and a cold silence spread over them as they sat, watching Estreth fill a bowl with herbs she brought back from the fields and shift a large cauldron to sit beside the fire. A muted cry rang through the camp and Balan stood abruptly, then disappeared beneath the trees.

Finrod watched him go, then turned hesitantly toward Estreth. “Have I insulted him in some way?”

“No, not to my knowledge.” Estreth poured one of water skins into the waiting pot. “It is only the circumstances in which you found him. Gelvira bears her child tonight.”

“Yes,” Finrod replied, smiling, “I passed Hathus as I entered the camp and he told me the tidings.”

“It often takes him this way. He’ll be gone till morning, most likely,” Estreth emptied the second skin into the cauldron and pushed it back over the fire. She sat, lifting the bowl of herbs into her lap and crushing them to a paste with a rough-hewn pestle, then glanced up at the Elf as his unspoken questions lingered between them. “His wife died giving birth,” she added by way of explanation.

The look of perplexity only increased.

“Esrid died in childbirth,” Estreth enunciated the Taliska sharply and met his eye to communicate the thought, assuming he was unfamiliar with the words. 

But the confusion continued to deepen and his brows gathered in concern. “Do you mean that generation itself is a peril to your people?”

“Is it not to yours?”

“Nay, for us it—“ Finrod broke off as another cry rang through the camp and he looked back at Estreth, stricken. “Forgive me, I did not know; and I fear in my ignorance I spoke thoughtlessly. I’ve caused offense.”

“Not to me, lord.”

“Nay, but my glib festivity to Hathus must have appeared heartless, or premature at best to one who yet waits upon the precipice.”

“He wouldn’t reproach your goodwill, Nóm. You err if you suppose that fear and danger must overshadow any joy in the anticipation. With our people it’s ever the mingled fare. Our joys and sorrows are invariably hand in hand.”

“So I am learning.” He paced several lengths beside the fire in uncharacteristic restlessness, then turned back toward her. “What is there I can do? I would like to be of help.” He held out his hand toward the bowl of herbs. “I could assist with that.”

“No. We tend to each other in this,” Estreth said with a shake of her head. Then she softened. “But I will need more water. You could fetch two more skins from the river. Then, if you are earnest in your wish to help, go mind Balan. Make sure he doesn’t wander too far off.”

❈ ❈ ❈

Finrod reflected on the irony of his assignment as he passed through the darkened forest. He had deposited the water skins as directed and now wound his way soundlessly through the trees in search of the other. He was far more likely to join a friend in wandering than to usher them back from it, but he judged the responsibility Estreth delegated lay more in companionship than in herding. And that task he welcomed.

The night was nearly half gone before he found Balan at last, sitting atop a hillside out of earshot of the encampment. His back was to Finrod and he sat huddled together in a clump, his knees drawn up against his chest and arms wrapped tightly about them, his chin resting on his knees. It was like catching a glimpse of his childhood, Finrod thought as he saw him outlined in the moonlight, so small and vulnerable, a tiny figure alone against the mountains. He felt the urge to reach out and wrap an arm about the rigid shoulders and comfort the pain they fenced. He reached out toward the other’s mind instead, nudging a gentle awareness of his presence before he spoke so as not to startle him.

“I wondered if you would come find me,” Balan said without turning.

“Estreth sent me.” Finrod walked forward to stand where the other could see him. “I would have come on my own, but I feared that would be an intrusion.”

“No,” Balan said, his voice flat. “You’re not intruding.”

Finrod moved quietly to sit beside him. Now that he was near, he could see the reason for the huddled posture. Balan’s whole body was shaking and the grip about his legs tightened as each bout of shuddering came over him. “Are you chilled?” he asked, concerned.

“No.” Balan’s teeth chattered as he denied it and he shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know why it takes me like this, but I can’t control it. It’s why I go off alone, it worries Baran and Bel to see me this way.”

“Sorrow is always unpredictable. There is no shame in it.”

“Estreth bears it with more fortitude than I.” He felt the tension grip each limb again, holding back the urge to flight that rose whenever the memories surfaced. 

“Estreth?”

“She's Esrid's sister. Hadn’t I told you?”

“No, I did not know that. I assumed she was yours.”

He shook his head. “She joined our people at Esrid’s marriage. It was unusual for either clan, but they wouldn’t be parted and our people were determined to press on on toward the mountains while theirs remained. They’d been orphans since childhood, you see, so each was all the other had. In truth, I believe my wife’s death rent Estreth’s heart in many ways that never touched mine—to my lasting shame. Yet in times like these when memory is the most brutal, Estreth remains, not just in the encampment but alongside them, present and attending despite all of it. Whereas I…” Balan let out his breath in a rush of exasperation and clenched his fists to still the trembling.

Finrod took the other’s hands in his own and pressed them gently between his palms, steadying them. “Grief meets us each in her myriad guises, Balan. There is not one embodiment of sorrow acceptable which leaves all others inferior. Nay, rather our varied griefs are each threads from which the tapestry of remembrance takes shape. Do not disparage how your body mourns; it is but your voice taking its place in the shared lament.” He watched him quietly as the long moments stretched on, then released his hands and shifted to face him. “But perhaps…” 

The Elf reached out to rest his fingers upon Balan’s face, palms shrouding the eyes and thumbs pressing gently against the forehead. “Aia Nienna quanta nyérë,” his voice mingled with the wind whispering through the dry grasses around them, and Balan was immediately mesmerized by the sound. “Órava omessë lúmessë ya maurë…” It wrapped about him like water, the words rising and falling, waves passing through him. Perception slowed and all the teeming earth gathered in his thought. He was aware of the scuttling insects and the delving worms, the forest creatures and the mountain lions denning in distant ridges, the owl soaring overhead and all the forms unaccountable stirring beneath the night sky. He felt the presence of his people waiting in the valley below and gasped as the weight of their collective need bore in upon him. The gentle pressure on his forehead increased and a thread of warmth spread between his eyes. With his sight shrouded he could see it: a molten rivulet of gold traveling down his spine and spreading out through each fiber. Stillness fell where its tendrils touched and the melodic words followed in its wake, filling Balan’s senses like an incantation. The voice was inside him now, resonant in his bones, flowing through his blood, breath filling his lungs. 

A prickling danger rose along the base of his scalp.

The ghomennin gather, gather ‘round,
They dance a circle ‘pon the ground.

But rather than recoil, he found himself near laughter as his memory called up Estreth’s rhyme. It was danger only if the goal was avoidance, and Balan had no desire to escape. The urge to laugh returned and his heart dared Estreth’s cautions to be true so he might find himself ensnared forever, held motionless on this hilltop, a statue cradled within the other’s hands till the world’s ending. If his soul was consumed in the process, then let it be so. It was a fair price. 

Peace passed over him and quieted the fey mood; stillness that had evaded him since he was little more than a child, lonely and afraid and inheriting the clan’s headship well before his time. Again with eyes covered he watched as scorched embers lifted from each finger, from his arms, his legs, from his tongue, from his chest. The embers came together before him and coalesced into a whole, each piece returning like shards of a shattered vessel, and he felt the warmth and weight of it settle within his palms. He wrapped them gently about it and held the years of sorrow as a lovely, fragile thing, abstract and yet innate to him. The grief itself was not gone. It remained within his body, he could feel it distinctly, but it no longer overmastered him. He saw it glowing before him, warm and precious. And everything was stillness.

Then the voice too tapered into silence. 

Finrod removed his hands and returned them to rest upon his own knees, while the humming of summer bugs rose once more to prominence in the night air. Slowly, Balan opened his eyes and looked about him, disoriented. Nothing had changed. They sat still upon the hillock, the grasses sighed with the same hush of nighttime, and his outstretched palms were empty.

“What did you do?” Balan turned his hands over in the moonlight, his voice tinged with awe, for the shaking was gone and his body at ease.

“Do you find it better or worse?”

“Better.” He took a deep breath and it was steady. “What did you do?”

Finrod laughed and lay back in the grass. “Ela!” he breathed as he looked up at the night sky and beckoned for Balan to join him. “Do you see him there?” he drew a pattern in the stars above them as Balan moved to lie beside him. “Menelmacar, the Swordsman of the Sky.”

“No, where are you pointing?”

“There.” He shifted so his line of sight was closer to Balan’s. “There are three stars a hand’s width over the tree-line, brighter than their sisters about them. Do you see?”

“I believe so.” Balan tried to focus as his mind still worked to grasp what he had experienced.

“Those are his belt. Now follow the furthest upwards and you’ll find his blade raised in charge.”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Then cross here and the curve of his shield wards the skies.”

“Mendelcar?”

“Menelmacar,” he corrected, “heaven’s warrior.” The finger moved further along the sky, itself luminous where it caught the moonlight, and Balan felt again the unsettling presence of a second thought within his own as the image of a dim huddle of stars rose ahead of the finger’s path to illumine what Finrod outlined. “This is Itseloktë.”

“Itselot—Itseloktë.” He turned the word over on his tongue and added it to the list of recitations. “Itseloktë. What does it mean?”

“It…how would you say it in your tongue…insects, perhaps? Gnats? Nay, flies would be nearer, I deem. The fly cluster.” He glanced over at Balan with a grin as the adan snorted despite himself. “Our Sindarin kin name it better. Remmirath they call it, the Netted Stars: a mesh of those jewels that alone are fit to crown the head of Tintallë.”

Balan recalled waking beside the embers and seeing the visions flowing out from Nóm’s song: among them was a woman measurelessly tall, strong beyond reckoning, wrapped in a mantle of twilit blue that reached beyond the horizon, that was the horizon. Light spilled out from her and he closed his eyes against the brilliance of the memory.

“Varda Elentári, our Lady of Light, who wove the stars into their celestial dance and set their steps in a sign of doom. Anarríma, Soronúmë, Telumendil, Wilwarin…”

“Butterfly.” Balan reflexively named the translation under his breath and Finrod laughed.

“Yes, the evening’s butterfly.” He pointed to a distant stretch of sky. “There he flits above the mountains: a wing here, another just there.”

“I see it.” Balan raised his hand toward the patterned stars and his finger rested lightly against the other’s. He lingered as long as he dared, then shifted their hands together toward the north. “And what of this one?” he asked as he dropped his arm back onto the grass. “Have you a name for it?”

“We do.”

“I’ve been drawn to it as long as I can remember, ever since I was a boy,” Balan continued as the other did not elaborate. “Some nights when I can’t sleep I’ll sit outside and follow it through the sky. It steadies me, I know not how.”

“It is the Valacirca,” Finrod said after a long silence, his voice quiet, “the Sickle of the Valar. It was set there in the heavens ere your people or mine awakened, as a sign of that truth which we hold in estel: it is Light that shall endure, not Darkness.” He turned his face toward the other and studied Balan’s profile outlined against the tangle of stars. “And I confess, my friend, it gladdens my heart to find this is shared between us as well: many of those nights when you watched its path, we would have kept vigil together. Ever have I looked to those same stars in times of despair to recall that all works of the Dark are for naught. That they will, as was said at the first Music, be but an instrument of things yet more wonderful than those it sought to destroy.”

“And that comforts you?”

“It does—to know we are creatures of the One who is Goodness, and from whose works must ultimately come joy, if not happiness. Lost on the ice before the sun’s first rising, when I came nearest to forsaking hope, even then I looked up through the bitter cold and behold! I saw the Seven Stars rise triumphant in the north, crowning the work of Eru to which Morgoth Bauglir shall never lay full claim, and over which he shall never triumph. In that hour I knew, as I answer you now,” he returned his finger briefly to Balan’s forehead in reminder of the question he addressed, “we are not abandoned.”

Balan’s eyes traced back over the constellations as the sound of his heart pounded hard in his ears. Something had awakened in him at the other’s touch that slept dormant for more years than he cared to count, and he felt as foolish and giddy as an infatuated youth. He knew his face burned red at the realization and was grateful for the wisp of cloud dimming the moon’s light. Then the flush spread to his ears as he reflected that the dark likely caused little hindrance to the other’s keener sight and every expression would be writ plain should Nóm look toward him once more. Balan turned his face toward the mountains.

He was increasingly aware of the hand resting inches from his head. He could still feel where the cool fingertips had rested behind his ears and would have paid any price to have his face cradled within them once again. Or more, to have those fingers tangled within his hair, pulling him in, pulling him down—

Utter foolishness. This weak-kneed devotion was for those of his sons’ years, it was laughable in a man his age. Half his life was spent and yet here he lay, a grey-templed chieftain, tracing stars and feeling the dizzy rush of adolescent desire. It was ludicrous. Then a worse thought struck him. A man of his years was but an adolescent to the creature beside him. He could live out all his days, he could outpace even the oldest of his ancestors, and yet still never surpass the span of a child in the Elf’s eyes. What was Balan’s half-century to one who remembered the dark before the sun’s first rising? Such insignificant creatures they would seem when, as soon he must, the other learned clearly of their transience. A little flock of sparrows, Balan thought bitterly. A cluster of flies.

“Would you tell me of her?” Finrod’s voice cut through the haze and pulled him back to the present.

“Of Esrid?”

“If you will. Memory can be both wound and balm.” He turned his face toward Balan once more and smiled. “Shared, I find it is more often a balm. Would it help you to speak of her?”

“Perhaps.” At the least it might ease this fevered confusion, though Balan balked at the thought after his realization. “What shall I tell you?”

“Anything you wish.” Finrod found his own cherished memories rising unbidden at the question—his grandfather’s hands lifting him as a child, his mother’s laugh, the particular crease over his father’s left eye whenever they debated. Then shifting, the thought of laughter melding with his own, of golden hair caught in the wind and covering his face as a voice sang next to him on a bright mountainside. No, that memory was not yet a balm. “Tell me of her voice,” he heard himself say.

Balan lay for a moment lost in thought. He most often recalled his life in single images, moments frozen in time rather than the embodied memory. But to think of Esrid’s voice was to remember in active engagement, and he had avoided that deliberately. If he only lifted up a moment from recollection, it could be catalogued and kept as an artifact alongside any other histories he learned. This, on the other hand, meant allowing himself back into the memory’s living presence and he felt the panic returning at the thought. He pictured the glowing orb in his palms once more and took a breath. 

“It was low,” he said at last, his own voice gruff in the attempt to keep it steady, “like Estreth’s and with the same warmth of intonation. Deep and kind and quiet, unless she was laughing. Then you could hear her across the whole encampment. When Baran was a child, he and I would do the most ridiculous things to summon that laugh. He had the greatest knack for it and could draw it out better than any other. Though despite that, it’s Belen who inherited her laugh itself. You’ve heard him, Nóm, so you’ll know what I mean when I say it’s the kind of laugh that sets your soul to dancing.” He realized he was smiling at the recollection and turned to look at Finrod. “You were right. Gods only know how, but it is a balm and I’ve run from it all these years.”

“It is not until the time that it is,” Finrod said circuitously, “so rue not the years that have gone. They are not wasted.”

“A platitude I’ll grant you,” Balan said with a chuckle and rolled onto his stomach. “I’m far too glad at its comfort to tease you for the words.”

Finrod laughed. “Mock all you wish, I’ll be a willing subject. Tis a balm of its own for me to hear your mirth.” He turned to lie on his side where he could see the other’s face silhouetted against the moonlight. “But tell on, if you will. I’ll not tire.”

“A valiant promise, with the night already old,” Balan replied with a chuckle, but found his heart warmed by the assurance. He lay in silence for several minutes as the breeze whispered on through the dried grasses, then began in a quiet voice to recount his brief years with Esrid. He told of how the two clans sheltered together through a bitter winter and how Esrid and Geberic, a warrior of Balan’s people, grew close during that time. When the Spring came and Balan’s people wished to move onwards, Esrid and Geberic were wedded, and Estreth joined the migration to stay alongside her sister. It was only a year later that their company was ambushed and a bitter battle fought between the rivers. Geberic was slain, and many others of their folk, and Esrid left widowed and too far west now for the sisters to return to their own kin. 

Balan had not known how best to care for them. In his clan’s custom, those from outside were bound into their number by a spouse or by the blood shared through a child of that union. With neither present, the position of both Esrid and Estreth was tenuous and rested entirely upon the charity of those around them. So when a few months had passed, Balan approached her and as a solution offered his own hand when the mourning period was ended, thus to secure both her place and Estreth’s within the community, Estreth being little more than a child at the time.

It was to be a union of expediency, but as the mourning year passed they began to find solace in each other’s company. Balan’s parents too had been slain when their village was attacked and burned, only a few years before his clan and Esrid’s met, and their shared grief became a point of kinship. Both had been left alone without warning to fend for themselves with little guidance, and both found comfort in the presence of another who understood that terror. They began to seek each other out as the days went on and by the time that year had ended, Balan loved her.

“She never loved me the way she had Geberic,” Balan said quietly to Finrod, “but the love that was there was enough. Eight years we had of it, days upon days of the blissful mundane. Baran was born, Belen was born. We were content, beyond what either of us expected or hoped. And then there was to be another child.” His voice trailed off and he could not continue for several long minutes. He pushed up to sit once more with his arms drawn tightly about his knees and looked out over the valley, his voice distant when he spoke again. “It came too soon. I knew we would lose the child, it was far too early. But I thought…” his voice broke and he took a breath to steady it. “In the end I lost them both, Esrid and our daughter. Alémi,” he added in a whisper, “Little Sparrow I named her in her mother’s tongue. She was impossibly tiny, Nóm, I could hold her almost in one hand. How it was possible that something so small and frail could take the lives of both of them, I have never been able to understand. Nor will I ever.”

Finrod shifted up to sit beside him, silent. Any words of comfort, he knew, would only show themselves hollow in the attempt. His own heart quailed merely at the retelling. What must it be to dwell with each moment of life and death so bound, caught intrinsically together at each turn?

“Baran was in his fifth summer, Belen his second. I remember very little of the ensuing year, but I know I left my wife and daughter buried on a hillside while we continued our march westward. I carried Bel on my back as we traveled, partly to comfort him, partly to comfort myself. It helped to have the living warmth of him against me and his little hands tugging my hair or my ears to keep me grounded. Estreth walked with Baran beside us and sang to keep us all moving forward.” A wan smile creased his face. “We became an unusual little family: lone-father, boys, and aunt-mother. But we all chose each other in that need and have ever been closer because of it.”

“I am so sorry, Balan.”

“Yes. Well. It has happened to countless others besides me. I’ve no idea why I cannot bear the weight of it when those others do.” Balan looked down wryly as his hands shook once again. “You’ve not cured me entirely, I see.”

“No,” Finrod took Balan’s hands in one of his own and reached out with the other to rest it gently against his face. “I only helped to settle it before. Grief does not have a cure, my friend. But that is not an evil, for if we did not grieve we did not love. And that is some comfort, I hope.” He moved his hand so the fingers rested once again on each side of Balan’s forehead, then drew it down slowly to close the other’s eyes with words whispered too quietly to discern. 

A modicum of peace returned and Balan breathed deeply of the night air. All was confusion within him, grief and growing desire tangled together bearing somehow a seed of tranquility. Then through the stillness he heard a murmur rise from the valley below and his eyes shot open in trepidation. He rose to his feet. “Nóm? What is it?”

“Do you not hear?” 

Balan shook his head and looked down at his friend, pleading and yet fearful of the answer.

“I hear an infant’s cry,” the Elf said softly, a gentle smile spreading over his face as he stood and took his friend by the arm to ensure he was steady. “And I hear voices raised in celebration. All is well, meldonya.”

"All is well," Balan echoed and in that moment, standing on a hilltop in this wide, new land, his arm burning with the other’s touch, he believed it with his whole soul. “All is well.”

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya
- Alda: [Q] tree
- Sírë: [Q] river
- Ondo: [Q] stone
- Anar: [Q] sun
- Fána alma: [Q] white flower
- Vilya: [Q] air, sky
- Lómi: [Q] clouds
- Lingwë: [Q] fish
- Meldonya: [Q] beloved friend

- Madja is an invented term for “aunt (mother’s sister)”, loosely inspired by Germanic-Gothic

MISC NOTES
- Some of the references to the ghomennin are loosely based on general descriptions of the Aos Sí.