What the Water Gave Me by Rocky41_7

---

Chapter II

On the accent: I have chosen to eschew the accent in Nienor's name, because in published Silm it isn't used.

---

There was one thing that finally got Himil out-of-doors: Hild insisted the sheets needed to be washed and the loft swept clean. Finduilas offered to take care of it, but Hild assigned her the task of keeping Himil out of the way until it was done, a state of affairs that quite obviously offended Himil to no end, but Hild was sterner with Himil than with Finduilas, perhaps owing to their being of the same species.

            Finduilas nonetheless flicked out an old blanket in the grass for Himil and brought them out a tray of tea with slices of buttered bread from the loaves she and Hild had made two days previously. Summer was rolling in on the tail of spring by then; it was warm enough to be out with no cloak or scarf and the birds and insects had returned from their winter absence. The light gleamed richly off the slight curl in Himil’s hair, though she squinted out in the light after so many days indoors. Finduilas wanted to offer to brush it and braid it for her again, but she refrained.

            “Hild has chosen the ideal time for cleaning the loft,” declared Finduilas when they had finished their bread. Himil flicked her sharp eyes over to Finduilas but said nothing. She picked at the grass and watched a goat meander about. “Why is that, you wonder?” Finduilas said, when Himil did not fulfill her assigned part by asking. “For now I have such a lovely setting in which to give you my gift to you.”

            Himil heaved a sigh, not all in the manner of one expecting to receive a surprise gift, but rather anticipating enduring a trial.

            “And what is that?” she said.

            Pleased to be asked—pleased to see Himil exhibit even perfunctory curiosity—Finduilas reached for the bundle at her side to unwrap her project of the last several days, which was a new baby shift with a scalloped collar. She held it up for Himil to see before handing it over.

            “It will be too large at first,” she said. “But she’ll soon grow into it!” Mannish babies grew quickly, she understood. Many of the parents in the village had commented on how their children’s youth flew by. Even some who had been babes in arms when Finduilas first arrived were walking by then!

            Himil sat, staring at the tiny gown in her lap, silent so long Finduilas wondered if perhaps she knew not what to say about it. Finduilas could not say she had been an avid sewer in her life, but surely her work wasn’t so terrible!

            Then, Himil thrust it back at her.

            “Keep to yourself your pity!” she snarled, that fire which had heretofore only been hinted at blazing in her eyes. “I need it not! I will be no pet project of yours! Perhaps it is your Elvish disposition which makes you so arrogant and presumptuous, and so quick and so keen to believe you know what is best for me! Or perhaps they are your flaws alone; I know not, nor do I care. Believe you this: if I had anywhere else to go but here, and any way to get there, I would stay no more under your insufferable smothering!” She rose to her feet and whirled back into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.

            Finduilas could do nothing but sit in shock on the blanket, clutching the little shift, replaying their last several interactions in her mind, wondering where she had gone astray. Perhaps Himil was right. Perhaps it had never been any right of hers to try to save Himil. But how could it be that the right thing to do was simply to let her sink or swim on her own?

            She remained in such unhappy considerations the rest of the day.

***

            Himil had returned to the loft as soon as Hild had finished cleaning it, and was already asleep when Finduilas climbed up after dinner, or at least feigned that it was so. Sometimes, when she bedded down, Finduilas would try to engage Himil in some conversation, but whether asleep or no, she guessed Himil would not welcome the effort that night. It was not the most complicated guess she’d ever had to make.

            Dark and close was the dead of night in the loft when she was startled awake by Himil’s desperate sobbing. Flailing around in the covers in a most inelegant way, Finduilas struggled upright to see Himil sitting up, clutching at the covers over her legs, bawling.

            “Himil! What’s wrong? Is it the baby? Shall I run for the midwife?” she cried, grabbing at Himil’s arm in her panic.

            “I cannot have this baby,” Himil sobbed. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” Her voice broke and she turned to Finduilas and slumped against her, weeping raggedly into her shoulder. “What misery,” she wailed, “that we should both survive, when I meant it to be an end for us!”

            “Shh…” Finduilas, startled by the close contact, sat stiffly, and then tentatively put a hand on Himil’s back. She had observed that Men were more physical with one another overall than Elves, most notably in their casual relationships. Perhaps Himil required this. She began to rub her hand in circles. “Himil, I know your strength,” she urged quietly. I named you for it! “You can deliver this child. And you will not be alone! Hild and I will be with you. She has birthed three daughters herself, and the midwife will be here also.”

            Himil went on crying, twisting her fingers up in Finduilas’ shift, and the Elf’s heart stung sympathetically.

            “Will it not be sweet too, to have a reminder of your spouse?” Finduilas asked softly. This made Himil’s crying worsen considerably, until she was choking trying to draw in breath, and Finduilas thought she had never met someone with whom she managed to so frequently put her foot in her mouth.

            It occurred to her then, when considering Himil’s tight-lipped attitude about her past and her marriage, that it might not have been a happy one. Perhaps her husband was not dead at all—perhaps Himil had left him behind. A feeling of protectiveness against this imagined foe swept over Finduilas and she held Himil more tightly.

            “Himil,” she said lowly, “if your spouse was cruel—if he mistreated you—”

            “No,” gasped Himil through her tears. “No, no, no. He was good. He was always good to me. He felt—like home.” Her eyes welled over with tears again and she spoke no more for many long minutes, putting her arms around Finduilas and sobbing until her throat was raw, and her eyes red and puffy, and she had thoroughly exhausted herself. Finduilas went on rubbing her back, occasionally glancing towards the hall below to make sure neither Arnor nor Hild had been woken.

            “I cannot have this baby,” Himil whispered again, her voice thick with her tears.

            “But you will,” said Finduilas. “And our aid you will have, whether you ask it or no.” So many contradictions ran through the story Himil had constructed so far with her sparse words that Finduilas could not help but turn it over and over, looking for the path that would make all those gates line up. “Himil…are you truly certain you wish us not to seek out your husband? If he was a good man, if you think well of him and he lives—”

            “No!” Himil shouted. She shivered and pulled away from Finduilas. “Never have I brought him aught but the worst ill. A curse lays on me, Finduilas. I brought him terrible misfortune and I will bring it here too, just you wait. If he lives, and I do not believe that he does, it must be far away from me, and the memory of what was done.”

            “No lie would I accuse you of spinning, yet I find it most difficult to believe this true,” said Finduilas slowly. “You seem no wicked heart to me. Perhaps you place an unfair burden of blame upon yourself. Often, it takes two to make a relationship unhappy.”

            “We weren’t unhappy,” Himil protested, her voice shaking. “Tu—Turambar was…we were happy. That is the wretchedness of it! The cruelty! We were happy. In our stupid ignorance, we were happy. If we had died in ignorance, mayhap we would have died in contentment.” It was the first time she had mentioned her husband’s name and she swallowed as if she might be sick. “But a truth once known may not be shielded again.” She pressed her hands over her eyes.

            All of these things only woke more curiosity in Finduilas’ heart, but she swallowed her questions. This was the most Himil had ever shared; she would not ruin it with prying into what she wished not to tell. Instead, she took one of Himil’s hands carefully between her own. The callouses which had been on her hands when first Finduilas had found her had faded with her idleness, rendering her fingers and palms softer, though still sturdy and warm in Finduilas’ grasp.

            “I am sorry for your loss, although I do not understand the nature of it,” she said quietly. “Beleriand has known more than her share of grief; these lands are watered with the tears of the Children of Iluvatar. In this you are far from alone.” Himil turned her face away, but Finduilas tried again. “You need not suffer alone,” she urged. “It does no good! No gain will you find in forcing yourself to bear up in isolation. We are not solitary creatures, neither Men nor Elves. Please. At least until the birth of your child, permit me to assist you. After, we may speak again about what you mean to do and you need not stay here if it displeases you.”

            Himil seemed to have wept the fight out of herself. She still would not look at Finduilas, but she did not protest.

            “Very well,” she murmured. “I concede; you win.”

            “’twas not a battle,” Finduilas objected. “You may refuse, Himil. If you wish to go out from here, I would not stop you. I would counsel you against it, but I would not tie you to the front post.”

            “I am too weary to go from here,” said Himil.

            “This feeling I do know,” Finduilas sighed. “Let us rest a while, then. We may speak more in the morning.”

            So they lay back down and Finduilas smoothed the covers over them and she listened to the sound of Himil’s breathing, waiting for it to steady into slumber, which did not come before Finduilas herself slept.

***

            Himil fought less after that. She asked for the return of baby shift which Finduilas had made, and tucked it away in the loft with the dress Finduilas had repaired. She ate, following her growing appetite as her pregnancy progressed. Hild gave her some socks to darn, and she busied herself with that for a while, and then with darning some from scratch.

            “Have you no spouse awaiting your return?” Himil asked Finduilas one day. The weather was growing warm, so they sat with the windows open, allowing a fresh breeze to chase the last of the winter fug from the house while Arnor hung the laundry out to dry. Finduilas had pushed most of the furniture up against the walls, and was scrubbing the floor, a job which made the backs and knees of her Mannish hosts ache sorely, and which she was therefore glad to take on herself.

            This startled a quiet laugh out of Finduilas.

            “Nay, I have never wed,” she said.

            “Now that I can scarce believe,” said Himil. “Unless it be a political matter for the princess of Nargothrond.” She had still not let go the notion Finduilas had meant to keep her identity from her.

            “Nay, we marry not the way you do, for land or title. I could have. I…I was affianced, once.” Finduilas wasn’t sure why she volunteered that. Himil’s hands paused where she was raveling wool for another round of socks.

            “Lost?” she guessed.

            “Now, yes. Before…for a time.” Finduilas had been so distracted with Himil’s struggles of late, it had been some time since she thoroughly considered her own, and now the memory of Gwindor pierced her to the core. “At the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, he was captured.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I insisted he would return. My father beseeched me to give up hope, pleaded that I clung to a dead man, but I would not relent. And then…he did. He returned, he walked right up to the front gates! With a Man!” She sat back on her heels, looking straight ahead. “He was so wearied from his years of slavery in Angband that none recognized him, but I knew him immediately.”

            “You lost him to Glaurung after that?” Himil guessed.

            “Yes, but…I had left him, before.” Grief and guilt and the unhappiness of wishing for reality to be other than what it was bubbled up in Finduilas’ breast. “You will think poorly of me if I tell the truth.”

            Now Finduilas was shocked to hear a laugh from Himil.

            “We shall see,” said she. “Though I doubt you will tell me something to make me cast you out from me.”

            “When Gwindor returned he was…different. He was not the person I had known before. That is…he was himself, yet…changed.” She twisted her soapy wet hands nervously together. “I wished so much to care for him,” she said, still looking forward. “To heal his hurts and make him whole again. I believed that I could do it. But Angband…perhaps it is unreasonable to expect one to ever be as they were before setting foot in such a place. And I…a great deal of time I spent with his Mannish companion, Agarwaen.” She worried at her lower lip with her teeth.

            “Ah.” There was a knowing note in Himil’s voice that made Finduilas turn her head to look at her. “The heart wanders,” Himil said with a shrug. “Far from the first are you to find over the course of an engagement that your feelings have changed.”

            How quickly she guessed!

            “It was terrible,” Finduilas objected. “To tell him after such suffering that I no longer wished to wed him! How I cut him! And he knew at once I left him for love of Agarwaen, his friend.”

            “Was he wroth?”

            Finduilas sighed and wiped her hands on her thighs, looking forward.

            “Nay, more wounded than wroth. ‘twas he told me to follow my heart, even if it lay no longer with him. He tried to warn me, but I listened not; I cast my lot in with Agarwaen and never did he return my affection. I reminded him of his sister,” she said, turning again to give Himil a bittersweet smile. “His idea it was to build a bridge to the entrance of the city that we might march our troops out more quickly, and across this bridge came Glaurung, and he slaughtered half the city, and drove the other half out as slaves to Angband. There I would be also, if those Orcs had not been set upon by the Haladin and thus chosen to slay their captives rather than risk losing them.”

            At the mention of this senseless act of cruelty, Himil’s jaw clenched, but she spoke not on it. Never anymore should the folk of Beleriand take surprise at the cruelty of Morgoth’s minions, and yet still the heart rebelled to take such things quietly and without shock.

            “If Gwindor I had heeded…” Finduilas smiled again, bitterness overtaking the sweet. “But to linger on such thoughts is to invite despair and death. It is done now.”

            “The fall of Nargothrond was nigh on five years ago,” said Himil. “You have been here since?”

            “I have, but such time seems less to me, I imagine, than to you,” Finduilas said. Himil shrugged.

            “Perhaps. Time may seem to pass quickly for us as well. Sometimes it seems a trick of the mind, how it can pass without notice, and in surprise you look back and see how much has gone.”

            “A gift, I think,” said Finduilas. “In chains, every minute that passes is a terror, an agony. One may lose no time there.” It was something she had thought of frequently regarding Gwindor and Gelmir since her own brief experience as a prisoner of Angband. To spend years in such fear and agony—she could not imagine it. “Here…with tasks, and company, and plans to make…perhaps it is a gift to lose time.” Himil studied her carefully.

            “Perhaps it is,” she agreed unexpectedly. “Need you help with the floor?”

            “No, no! Stay right where you are, I will ask no such thing of a woman in your condition,” Finduilas said, grabbing the brush and getting back to her scrubbing. For a few minutes it was quiet, with only the sounds of Finduilas’ brush on the floor and out the window, Arnor talking indistinctly to a passing neighbor.

            “We have stories about princesses who wind up scrubbing floors,” Himil said, looking at Finduilas as she worked over Hild and Arnor’s floor.

            “Yes? How do they usually end up so?”

            “Why, the curse of a wicked witch or an evil stepmother, of course,” said Himil.

            “Stepmother?” Finduilas asked. Himil paused, considered, then said:

            “The wife of your father who is not your mother.” Finduilas blinked at her, then determined this must be some cultural aspect of Men. It seemed that, being so susceptible to death, they needed be open to marrying more than once.

            “Stepmothers are evil then?” said Finduilas.

            “Nay, not one and all. But in the tales, she is usually jealous of her husband’s children, not wishing them to be favored over her own, or desiring for any boons to them to go to her children instead, so she may banish a disfavored child or trick them into wandering the woods at night or some other such thing.”

            “Terrible!” said Finduilas. “What happens to the child?”

            “Oh, the stepmother most often has a comeuppance, and with her wickedness revealed, is cast out, and the poor princess returned to her rightful place.”

            “Tell me one.” Finduilas paused in her work to look at Himil.

            “A story?” said Himil.

            “Yes, one of your tales about a lost princess.”

            “They’re only children’s tales,” said Himil.

            “I should like to hear one all the same,” said Finduilas, and she found she was entirely genuine. Himil was quiet, twisting the wool, and Finduilas thought she would refuse. Himil often refused Finduilas’ requests, but she kept making them, just in case this time might be different.

            “Once upon a time,” Himil began in a tone that suggested this beginning was known to her audience, “there lived in a castle on the hill a princess, the most beautiful woman in all the land, and they called her…” She fumbled.

            “Faelivrin,” suggested Finduilas softly.

            “And they called her Faelivrin, and she was beloved by all who met her…”

***

            It was becoming difficult for Himil to climb into the loft. Finduilas often went after, to anxiously watch Himil climb up ahead of her, just in case she might slip. When Finduilas spoke to Hild, she agreed Himil could not keep sleeping there for the remainder of her pregnancy. Instead, they brought the bedding down and established the bed in front of the hearth, on the floor.

            “This is not necessary,” Himil objected as Arnor pushed the furniture aside and Hild helped Finduilas bring the mattress and bedding down from the loft. “Your sitting area will be unusable! I have no trouble with the loft.”

            “We’ll work around it,” Arnor assured her. “This will be safest for everyone.”

            “It won’t be for long,” Finduilas reminded her.

            “Perhaps several months!” Himil argued.

            “Precisely—not long,” said Finduilas cheerfully as she stepped precariously down the ladder with her end of the straw mattress.

            Himil muttered something darkly about Elves, but seeing that she was outnumbered and outgunned—and wrong—she went to sit on the back step and shuck corn until the work was done. When she came back in, Finduilas could tell she had been crying again. It happened often at night, and she was never sure if she ought to say something. For now, she allowed Himil her illusion of privacy. She tried her best to improve Himil’s mood during the day instead.

            Himil sat on the bench which now walled in one side of their mattress. Trying not to step on the bedding, Finduilas joined her.

            “Do you…wish to talk at all?” she asked.

            “My feet hurt,” Himil declared. Finduilas doubted very much that was the source of the tears, but it was something easier for Finduilas to fix than whatever complicated and painful relationship Himil had had with her husband or her past. She filled one of Hild’s soup pots with water and put it over the fire, checking the temperature with her fingers every few minutes until it was piping hot—but not so hot as to burn (assuming Men burned at roughly the same temperature as Elves). She coaxed Himil through her objections to sticking her feet in one of Hild’s cooking pots, and despite her initial protests, the mother-to-be sighed and sank back into her seat as she lowered her feet into the hot water.

            “May I?” Finduilas asked from where she knelt before Himil.

            “May you what?” Himil asked. Her eyes peeked open. “Touch my feet? That will bother you more than me.”

            So Finduilas dipped her hands into the water and withdrew Himil’s feet one at a time to rub as much of the soreness out of them as she could. Himil let out a long, trembling breath and tipped her head back over the back of the bench. She groaned when Finduilas’ fingers dug into the softness of her arch and sighed blissfully as each foot was returned to the water. There were tiny tufts of pale hair on her toes and the tops of her feet that Finduilas couldn’t resist running her fingers over as she massaged, alternating between feet until the pot had grown lukewarm.

            “Do you feel better now?” she asked.

            “I feel not worse,” murmured Himil, eyes closed, which was very nearly a positive statement. She would say no more after that, so Finduilas left her to rest and occupied herself with scrubbing the pot.

***

            Finduilas went into town with Arnor for wood to patch the shed and Himil was left behind with Hild. The woman did not give her a choice about assisting in the jarring of some jams, which Hild declared was light enough work it ought not trouble a pregnant woman even as far along as Himil. The heat of it was another thing, and in no time Himil’s hair was stuck to her cheeks and forehead and neck with sweat, which pooled under her arms and at the hollow of her throat and under her tender breasts. She resented not being left alone on the bed and she was irritated with Finduilas for leaving and not being there to intervene—the Elf would have done the job cheerfully, she was sure. Finduilas had never turned down a task asked for by either of the couple who owned the home.

            “I know you are not yet so feeble!” Hild said, grasping Himil’s hands to force her to stir more vigorously. “Come, or all the jam will be lumpy come fall!”

            Himil jerked back, not trusting herself not to say something rude if she spoke, and flounced over several feet away to lean against the wall and cross her sticky arms over her belly, scowling.

            “Tetchy, are we?” said Hild. “A bit of work will take your mind off—”

            “Oh, leave me alone!” Himil snapped. “As if stirring jam be enough to take my mind off my back and my feet and everything else which pains me!”

            “Two months you’ve lain on that bed while that Elf flits about you like a wood fairy all but plaiting your hair with gold and here you gripe about a few hours’ work?”

            “It’s hot,” Himil said, and flushed with how like a whining child she sounded. What would her mother have said?

            “Come here, then.” Hild waved her away from the wall, and when Himil came, Hild took a few pins and wrapped Himil’s hair up off her neck. “That should help. Help me with this pot and we’ll have a rest.” Embarrassed with her outburst, Himil complied and made no more fuss until the last of the strawberries had been jarred and set aside.

            Hild brought out cheese and bread and beer for lunch, and they sat on the front step and caught the breeze. Himil peeled off her shoes and stockings and sighed, leaning back on her hands, as the cool air washed over her feet.

            “Pregnancy in summer is always a curse,” said Hild. “My youngest was born in midsummer and I never forgave Arnor for it.” She gave a rusty laugh. Himil said nothing, but accepted another slice of bread from Hild. “At least you’re young.” She knew already that this was Himil’s first child. Still, Himil did not reply, but after a long pause filled with the rustling of grass and the distant call of a bird Himil couldn’t name, she asked:

            “Has Finduilas been with you since she came here?”

            “Mm…” Hild made a noise of confirmation. “We had the room, we volunteered. She was in a bad way when they brought her in.” Hild’s face turned grave and she shook her head. “No one thought she would live. Seemed the right thing to do, at least to give her a comfortable place to die.”

            Finduilas had suggested before her situation had been serious, but Himil could not resist the chance to pry without upsetting her.

            “She was so far gone?” she probed.

            “Aye, in a very bad way,” Hild emphasized. Her normally soft mouth turned down in a hard frown. “Those animals of Morgoth’s…nay, for animals were never so cruel…you know when our warriors set upon them, they slaughtered their prisoners to a man rather than risk their escape? Ours had meant to free them; by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. Finduilas, they said, the Orcs pinned to a tree with a spear for sport. She was near dead when they found her…bleeding out, fading in and out…she’s tougher than she looks though…she had kept enough strength to give them a message, though it meant little to us.”

            “What was it?” Himil asked.

            “Eh…it was something about the Mormegil. I remember that much. Arnor might remember the full thing. Not much; not enough to tell us who she was. But that she managed anything at all!”

            “The Mormegil?” Himil whispered. “Finduilas knew the Mormegil?” Hild shrugged.

            “I thought it best not to ask,” she said. “Anyway, that girl has a way of talking circles around an answer she doesn’t wish to give. You won’t see until much later she never answered your question. Mayhap Elves are just that way.”

            Himil said nothing else and returned to jamming with Hild free of protest. After, she bathed with a cloth and a bowl of water, and sat barefoot on the front step, waiting for Finduilas to return.

            In the evening she came, strolling up the dirt road with the sky a vivid purple behind her head, the fading sunlight only half illuminating her face, and she was lovely in the breathtaking, ageless way of the Eldar, the eternal unchanging beauty of a diamond. When she drew near to the front path and saw Himil on the step, she waved.

            “Had a long day?” she asked as she approached. “You look rather tired.” She looked frazzled.

            “Did you know the Mormegil?” Himil blurted out. Finduilas stilled all at once.

            “Did Hild tell you what I said?” she asked. Himil flushed.

            “Did you?” she insisted.

            “I did, though I rarely called him by that title,” she said. “Rather, he was—”

            “Túrin,” said Himil. “My—my brother.” Finduilas’ eyes flew open.

            “The sister!” she exclaimed, the basket falling from her grip. “’tis you? All this time? Túrin’s own sister?” Himil looked away from her, pulling at the hem of her dress, and then nodded curtly. A kind of awed smile touched Finduilas’ face. “He spoke often of you, though he never gave your name,” Finduilas said softly. “He never stopped wanting to see you and your mother. He loved you very much.”

            “I know,” Himil muttered, ducking her head.

            “Now I know we were meant to meet!” Finduilas exclaimed. With no concern for her basket, she cast herself down on the step close by Himil, knees bumping together. “It must be. I can think of no greater service I might have rendered Túrin than to keep his sister well. He would be glad to know we had met, I think.”

            “Did you know him well?” Himil asked, looking up, unable to resist seeking information about who Túrin had been before his ill-fated meeting with her.

            “Ah, you didn’t know? He was with us in Nargothrond for a time,” said Finduilas. “’twas he that returned with my fiancé, Gwindor.”

            “Oh,” said Himil. “Agarwaen—was Túrin?” Finduilas blushed delicately.

            “Yes,” she admitted freely. A wry smile crooked her mouth. “’twas your brother with whom I had such ill luck in love.” She laughed. “Now to meet this sister to whom I compared! I hope you find it not an insulting comparison.” Himil was astonished at the lack of bitterness in Finduilas’ voice; she seemed only pleased they had met. The Elf tilted her head, still smiling. “There is a likeness of spirit in you both, if not in face. Túrin was also very proud,” Finduilas added pointedly.

            Himil looked away; she considered herself well aware of her flaws already. That she could do little to remedy them did not mean she was ignorant of their existence!

            “Would you tell me your name, then?” Finduilas asked gently, turning to face Himil more directly. “I should call you by your proper name.”

            “I’ve grown accustomed to Himil.”

            “Still…I should prefer to call you by your true name, if you would permit it.” The Man breathed deeply and rubbed her damp palms against her knees. She looked at the road, and then the horizon, and then she lifted her chin to look at Finduilas and said:

“I am the daughter of Húrin Thalion and Morwen Eledhwen, and my name is Nienor.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Fanart recs:
- Turin teases Finduilas in Nargothrond by akita-sensei
- Finduilas' Death by ragartstuff
- Stealing Kisses by alackofghosts
- The Accursed by croclock

On tumblr | On Pillowfort | On AO3