What the Water Gave Me by Rocky41_7

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Chapter III

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Finduilas had gotten used to “Himil” also, and spent several days calling Nienor by both before she settled into the new (old) name. She had thought that sharing this might make Nienor feel better—less alone—less anxious—but it did not shift her melancholy in the slightest. When Finduilas asked if she knew anything about where Túrin was then, she insisted she didn’t know.

            Nienor was sleeping worse, and could only lay comfortably on her back. Finduilas heard her restless shifting as she herself was drifting off, and Nienor often slept late in the mornings. Not merely the depressed sulking of before, but sleep, as if trying to catch up on what she had missed overnight. It also seemed she was still crying at night.

            When Finduilas returned from milking the goats for Arnor early one morning, she took a peek at the bed by the hearth, where Nienor was sitting slouched and upright, but not moving. She seemed to be trying to gather herself.

            “May I help with your hair?” Finduilas asked. This time, Nienor wearily agreed and Finduilas sat cross-legged behind her with a brush. Nienor had thick honey-blonde hair with a slight curl and for a few moments, Finduilas simply delighted in running her hands through it and shifting the mass of it this way and that. It had been years since she had been so close with someone to allow for this.

            “What are you doing?” Nienor asked, the cranky note in her voice of a sleepless night.

            “Admiring you,” Finduilas said simply. “Such beautiful hair you have…is it like your mother’s?”

            “No, my mother had—has—dark hair,” said Nienor. “She says it is nearer in color to my father’s, but I would not know.”

            “I think you have a most regal crown of gold in your possession,” Finduilas said, laying Nienor’s hair against her back to brush it out. She took care and time, as they had no rush, and Elves never hurried in the estimation of mortals.

            “My mother and father used to do this for me,” she murmured as she gently worked the knots out of Nienor’s hair. Nienor braided it before going down for the night, but the curl ensured it was still tangled when she woke up. “And I would return the favor for my brother, when he allowed.”

            “Did you grow up together?” Nienor asked.

            “Yes and no,” said Finduilas. “We do not have children so near together as you. Ereinion was half-grown when I was born. I was still a child when mother left Balar and returned to Nargothrond with me.” A tender smile ghosted over her lips. “He would say I had done a terrible job, but he would smile, and let me do it again when next I asked.”

            “Then it has been some time since you saw him last,” Nienor said.

            “Oh, yes,” said Finduilas. “It has been many years now. I hope he is well.” She wondered if he was still in Balar, or if he had ventured elsewhere. She wondered if he was still alive. If I were a better sister, she thought, I would have sought him years past rather than lingering here. But she put that aside as she began to section Nienor’s hair. She clung to the thought that there was purpose in her meeting with Nienor. It was simply too coincidental to be other than fate! And it would have relieved Túrin, she thought, that Nienor was in the care of someone who would look after her in such a state.

            She began to sing softly as she wove a trifecta of braids into Nienor’s hair, twining them together at the base of her skull and down the length of her hair. Nienor said naught and held still until Finduilas had tied the end off with the string Nienor had been using for that purpose, and gave the braid a little tug.

            “All done,” she chimed. “Breakfast?”

            Nienor gave her head a shake, as though to dislodge water from her ears.

            “Yes,” she said distantly, making Finduilas wonder if she hadn’t drifted off. Smiling to herself, she rose up and flitted off to the kitchen. Breakfast was cold biscuits from the day before and one sausage apiece, with mugs of black tea.

            “Tomorrow, you will permit me to return your favor.” Abruptly, Nienor broke the silence by hitting her fist, fork in hand, against the table and giving this declaration. Finduilas blinked at her.

            “If you wish,” she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to insist it was not an exchange, but she held back. Nienor was not a woman who appreciated favors, that much had become clear, yet she had virtually nothing to offer in return. She had no money, no particularized skills, and her condition made physical labor out of the question. This was something simple and easy, something she could surely do without trouble. And the thought of such an exchange did not displease Finduilas; rather, there was a bright look on her face as they finished eating and found tasks with which to occupy themselves for the morning.

            The next day, Nienor made good on her promise. She sat behind Finduilas on the bed and spent a long time brushing out her hair until it fell in a flaxen sheet of silk down her back. She had worn it quite long in Nargothrond, but her rescuers had cut it short to keep it out of the way during her recovery. Now, it was nearly the length it had been before, the longest hairs reaching down to the base of her spine.

            “What made you love Túrin?” After so long in silence, Finduilas startled a little at the abrupt question.

            “Túrin? Ah, well…” Finduilas poked around her sore heart. “His spirit was radiant,” she said at length. “Despite the air of such grief and tragedy he carried with him, he had still hope and purpose. Despite his mistakes, he pursued still the doing of good. It did not always play to his favor, but he never surrendered to despair. And in his heart, he cared for others. He could often be proud and sometimes thoughtless, but he rarely meant to do ill.”

            Nienor was silent again, her fingers still at work in Finduilas’ hair, tugging lightly here and there in a way that made shivers go up Finduilas’ back, and she was almost sure she felt Nienor’s fingertips tracing the shell of her ear.

            “Did you ever meet him?” Finduilas asked quietly. Nienor yanked clumsily at her hair.

            “How did he escape Nargothrond?” she asked and a cloud drew over Finduilas’ heart.

            “I am not certain,” she murmured. “As I was led away, I saw him and I called out to him, but he neither spoke nor turned…it was as though he heard me not at all, though I was not a stone’s throw from him…he stood before Glaurung and in his eyes was a senseless look…it may be some dragon spell was about him then and for this he heard me not…” She remembered the scene, remembered screaming for Agarwaen, for Túrin, until her throat felt raw, and how he stood unmoving before the dragon, not even turning his head to see her led away in chains with the other prisoners of Nargothrond’s former populace. She bowed her head a moment, before realizing she was making Nienor’s job difficult and straightening up again.

            But then, something else occurred to her.

            “But how did you know he had escaped Nargothrond?” she asked.

            “Finished,” said Nienor, jerking more purposefully on Finduilas’ braid so that it pulled her head back. “Time for breakfast.”

            “Nienor! I had thought Túrin lost to the teeth or claws of Glaurung! Have you news that he lives?” Finduilas scrambled to her feet to follow Nienor.

            “I heard word in Brethil,” said Nienor as she gathered plates, in such a tone as Finduilas guessed she would grow angry at further questioning. “But that was a long time gone now. As I have said, I know not where he wanders now. I hope it is someplace warm.”

            “Your brother and mine,” Finduilas murmured, sensing there would be no more pursuing this topic at that time. “Perhaps they have found each other even as we have,” she suggested with a slight smile, hoping to turn Nienor’s mood around. She was ever so changeable, and like to sink into a funk at the drop of a hat, and Finduilas often struggled to note all of the things which portended a sour shift in Nienor’s mood.

            “Perhaps they have,” said Nienor, closing the conversation.

***

            Finduilas woke in the night and Nienor was gone. Finduilas did not usually wake so; Elves were heavy sleepers when they went down, but something pulled her to waking and when she felt the other side of the mattress was empty and cooling, a chill ran through her. She hurried to her feet and grabbed a cloak, making a quick check of the loft to make sure Nienor was not in the house. Out the front door she went, the ground cool under her bare feet, looking this way and that, but saw no sign of her.

            Before she tried her luck in town, she went around back, and there she found Nienor out behind the shed, slumped on her knees in the grass, bathed in the moonlight, her hair frizzing free of its nighttime braid.

            “Nienor!” she cried, running to her, trying to keep her voice low so as not to wake Arnor and Hild. “Nienor, what are you doing?” As she approached, she saw the gleam of a knife in Nienor’s hand, but Nienor did not fight her from wrestling it free to cast it aside into the grass, well out of Nienor’s reach.

            Nienor tipped her head back to look up at Finduilas and there was such a deep miasma misery in her eyes that for a moment Finduilas thought she understood Nienor’s wanting to end her own life.

            “You should have let death claim me,” she said, and her voice sounded off, as if she had been drinking. “There are none who aids my family and yet lives. There is nothing good to come of us but is turned to rankest misery. I will be the end of you, Finduilas.”

            “No!” Finduilas exclaimed.

            “Never should I have left Doriath,” Nienor went on, tears welling in her red-rimmed eyes. “I went for love of Túrin, and my love destroyed him.” She made a choked noise in her throat. “Mablung I deceived and Morwen I defied to give aid to my brother, and all that I was warned of came to pass: I was no help, and I became endangered and so required aid of others, and Turambar’s life in Brethil I wrecked to ruin…” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “And I cannot escape it! I cannot escape!”

            She doubled over, wrapping her arms around her belly.

            “I didn’t know,” she whispered, shaking.

            “Túrin loved you,” Finduilas objected. “He would not blame you for—”

            “Ah, yes, he loved me! Twice beloved, and never more wretched!” Nienor’s shoulders quivered and tensed. “He saved me and ruined himself in doing so!”

            “Túrin…Túrin saved you?” Finduilas said. “Or Turambar?”

            Nienor snapped her head up, her eyes wild and fey, her face wan, still trembling.

            “I didn’t know,” she whispered again. “Never had we looked on one another’s faces and Glaurung spoke to me and I forgot…I didn’t know…” Nienor’s eyes did not leave her face as Finduilas processed everything Nienor had ever mentioned about her brother and her husband. In one horrible moment, with Nienor’s help, Finduilas twisted the kaleidoscope just right and all the pieces she had been puzzling over for months fell into place into such an appalling picture she wanted to erase it. Perhaps seeing something there she feared, Nienor flung herself at Finduilas, grabbing at her shift, knotting her fingers up in the fabric. “I didn’t know,” she sobbed. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know…” She was then crying too heavily to speak further, pressing her face against Finduilas’ legs.

            “He called himself by so many names,” Finduilas murmured faintly, slowly sinking down into the grass to make Nienor less the penitent supplicant. Nienor hunched over, loosening her grip on Finduilas, and went on weeping as though she meant to fill in a new river.

            “I didn’t know,” she choked out again.

            Wordlessly, Finduilas embraced her, and Nienor let it happen, slumping into Finduilas’ arms. She did not keep track of how much time passed with Nienor crying against her breast and insisting she had not known the man she wed was her own brother Túrin. They sat in the stiff grass until Nienor had cried herself out, until she had lain so long against Finduilas her hiccupping had stopped and her breathing had returned to normal and there was room to think.

            “This was not your fault,” said Finduilas quietly, at long last. “Túrin would find no blame with you.”

            “Of course not,” said Nienor bitterly. “He would find it in himself. Preferrable would it be if he blamed me.”

            “Glaurung ensorcelled you,” said Finduilas. “Perhaps Túrin also.”

            “When I came to Brethil I remembered nothing,” Nienor confessed in a whisper. “The first thing I remembered was being in the woods, alone, and hiding, until Turambar and his men found me. The women in the village taught me to speak anew, as if I were a babe. Turambar, he nursed me back to health but even so, when first he asked for my hand, I refused. I was told, even! Brandir warned me that Turambar was in truth Túrin, son of Húrin, but the name meant nothing to me then,” she said, digging her fingers into Finduilas’ shift.

            “After Turambar slew Glaurung outside the village, I looked on his wasting form and he exhaled his last breath in all the malice with which he had lived, and so my memory was restored, and I saw what we had done. ‘Worst of all his deeds thou shall feel in thyself,’ he said! Túrin is dead, you see,” confessed Nienor at last. “Slain by Glaurung. I meant to make an end of it, of all of it, of our whole family’s wretched story. A kindness that he is gone, that he need never know the horror of our marriage bed. Misery, misery, misery! And to cast it on all who come near!”

            Finduilas said nothing, only held her.

            “Perhaps the world will be kind, and I may yet die in the birthing bed,” she said, her voice thick with loathing. She drew away from Finduilas then, her small hands curled into fists. “You see me now,” she said. “You see that I am wretched and you should have left me to die.”

            “I see that you are hurt,” said Finduilas softly. “Which I knew already.”

            “Would that my brother had loved you as you loved him!” Nienor cried. “Then all might have been content! You would have done him right!” Finduilas hesitated, but then placed a hand over Nienor’s.

            “I still believe ‘twas fate led me to you,” she said. “Perhaps you were meant to meet with someone who had loved Túrin as you did.”

            “’tis a cruel fate, to ensnare you with me,” said Nienor. “When you have done no wrong.”

            “I have not thought so,” said Finduilas.

            “Our time together is perhaps young yet,” warned Nienor.

            “It would please me greatly if that were so,” said Finduilas. “For I have no desire to be parted from you.”

            “Oh, miserable kindness! Why do you insist on clinging to me? Why not let me go?”

            “I think you are worth saving,” said Finduilas. “But let it not be said I have treated you unfairly.” She rose to her feet and retrieved the knife she had cast away, laying it in Nienor’s hand as she knelt before her again. “If your life you wish to end, let it be done without interference. I would not keep you here in such abject suffering if there is nothing worthwhile in your life. Not so heartless am I yet.”

            Nienor looked at the knife, and at Finduilas, and at her bared wrists, angry red with tiny specks of blood where she had pressed the blade before, and clutched the handle until her knuckles went white.

            “Not heartless,” she ground out. “Yet you took me from death’s embrace and now you have stolen my resolve and condemned me to this life.”

            “Nienor,” Finduilas pleaded. “Never have I meant you anything but kindness. Do you truly believe otherwise?”

            “What am I meant to do!” Nienor cried, looking up at her, for even kneeling, she could not look Finduilas straight in the eye. “What future exists for me? What peace? Tell me there is some, and mayhap then I will leave alone the knife!”

            “Come with me to Balar,” said Finduilas, taking Nienor’s hands gently in her own, careful of the blade. “Help me find Gil-galad.”

            “You will cover small distance dragging a newborn babe along with you,” said Nienor.

            “I have waited so long for your coming, I may wait a while more,” Finduilas said. “When the babe is old enough to travel, we will go. Perhaps we will be slow. But we will go. Wish you not to see the ocean?”

            Nienor stared down at their knees.

            “Will you come?” Finduilas asked. “Will you help me?”

            Nienor flung her arms around Finduilas’ shoulders, not thinking to release the knife first, so that Finduilas had to dodge sideways to avoid having her face cut, and she stiffened under this considerable affection. She reached out to return Nienor’s embrace, but already Nienor was pulling back.

            “You are a queer sort, Finduilas Orodrethiel,” said Nienor. “Yet I…” She trailed off, twisting her hands together, looking away. “I would go with you, if you mean it truly,” she said softly, her eyes darting back up to Finduilas’ face. “For now I think in your absence I…I would be rather at some loss.”

            The corners of Finduilas’ mouth turned up. She put her hands on Nienor’s shoulders, then eased into a very light, delicate embrace.

            “Oh good,” she breathed. “Good. I was not wholly certain I could leave without you.” Nienor huffed.

            “How foolishly you speak,” she said, but she leaned into Finduilas. “I suppose it must be so that you drew me from the water, which makes me your responsibility.” Finduilas laughed.

            “I should be more careful pulling women out of rivers,” she said, sitting back to look at Nienor with a teasing glimmer in her eyes. “Or perhaps I should look for more.”

            “Nay!” Nienor struck her in the arm with a closed fist. “Is one not sufficient for you? Greedy Elf!” Finduilas laughed again.

            “This is fair…my one keeps me quite busy.”

            When the suffocating weight of the moment felt past, Finduilas stood up and offered Nienor a hand up. They put the knife away and returned to bed, though both women were so keyed up that they slept little and rose early, awash in the hopeful energy of a new direction.

***

            The time of Nienor’s delivery drew near. She often rubbed her belly with a wince, which Finduilas knew came from the kicking and stretching of the child inside. While helping Nienor dress, she had seen little hands and feet pressed against the inside of Nienor’s womb, and she could not help but be fascinated and touch her fingers to them in return.

            “They’re giving a greeting,” she cooed, awed by the sight of what were undoubtedly tiny fingertips.

            “If only they would do it more subtly,” Nienor groaned, pressing both hands against her lower back.

            Finduilas resumed the few chores Nienor had picked up since her arrival, until she saw this gave Nienor nothing to do but fret and feel the aches in her body, and then she renewed Nienor’s chore list with things that could be done mostly seated. She began to ask Hild and the others in the village about the local herblore. She remembered the healthcare she had received, and she was determined Nienor should have better. She had made studies of the healers in Nargothrond and had seen the delivery of a few babies there—she was confident she could translate that knowledge to a Mannish patient.

            “Have you settled on a name?” Finduilas asked her as she braided Nienor’s hair one morning. This question—which would have been among the first posited to any Elven parent-to-be, and usually answered with a lengthy explanation—she had held back on, uncertain what upset the thought might cause Nienor.

            “If she is a girl, I had thought perhaps to name her after my sister,” Nienor said thoughtfully. (Finduilas knew by then that Men could not tell what sex the babe might be before its birth and had to plan equally for either.) “But I think it would be ill luck.”

            “I knew not you had a sister.”

            “She died very young, before I was born,” said Nienor. “Mother said her name was Urwen, but that Túrin as a child named her ‘Lalaith’ and so everyone else called her this as well. She said Lalaith was a cheer to be around. I think the loss grieved her greatly the rest of her life, though she never said so.”

            “I should imagine so,” Finduilas murmured. “The loss of a child…” Such a thing was an unimaginable tragedy among Elves, and incredibly rare. She had heard of it in only a few instances, and in most cases, it was followed very quickly after with the fading of one or both parents in the throes of their grief. To hear how often Men and Dwarves lost children—for Men, it was almost expected that one would lose a child at some point—seemed an unfathomable pain.

            “But perhaps it is unwise to name a child after one who died young. If it is a boy…” Nienor made a short noise that might have been amusement, or something darker. “I would have thought to name him for my father, but that seems to call some terrible luck down on him. Perhaps Bregeben, or…perhaps Fuindir…”

            “Your family seems to have a tradition of rather grim names,” Finduilas said.

            “Better to look directly on your fate than pretend otherwise,” said Nienor. Finduilas thought it was better to give the child a hopeful name, but what did she knew of the traditions of Men?

            As she had feared, being made to speak on the name of her future child sent Nienor into a funk and the conversation trailed off. Finduilas wanted so intensely to say something else to fix it, but she was trying to teach herself she could not always talk Nienor out of her pain. There were times it was better simply to let her feel it; there was value to knowing the shape of one’s grief.

            “Sometimes I think of the children who died in Nargothrond,” she admitted very quietly. “Those who were too little to be of use as slaves were slain, even babes in arms.” She shivered to remember it, to hear the screams of their parents as Orcs tore children from arms and put them to the blade or bashed their heads against the walls or tore at them with teeth. She wondered at times, how many parents had perished of this treatment of their children before they could be clapped in irons. A lump swelled in her throat and she tried to pull herself from the memory, but her hands had gone atremble and clumsy on Nienor’s hair.

            Suddenly it seemed, Nienor turned and put a hand over Finduilas’, looking up into the Elf’s teary eyes.

            “I understand Elves are much affected by the death of children,” she said cautiously. Finduilas gave a quick nod, sniffling. “Though I believe there is not a thinking creature who could be unaffected by such sights as Morgoth sacking a city.” A few tears spilled over Finduilas’ cheeks.

            “It was our home,” she whispered. “It was safe. They should have been safe.” Nienor looked at her almost pityingly. She ducked her head and wiped at her eyes and was surprised to feel Nienor’s hand on her upper arm. Nienor said nothing, but kept her hand there until Finduilas had gotten the better of herself again and then sat patiently while Finduilas finished her braid.

            Later, when Finduilas came in from churning butter, she saw that someone had placed a bouquet of flowers in a tin cup in the center of the table and for a few moments she stood and admired it and how it brightened the room. She took one of the flowers and tucked it behind her ear and tried to think more of the beauty of the flowers than the horror of war.

***

            It was late summer when the baby came. Hild went for the midwife while Finduilas stayed and pressed a cool wet cloth to Nienor’s forehead and allowed Nienor to hang onto her arm as they walked circles around the house. When Nienor needed a rest, Finduilas helped her lay down and let Nienor pillow her head on Finduilas’ lap, while she sang to her Elven songs of strength and well-being.

            Finduilas had laid out the herbs she had gathered earlier and ran her hands up and down Nienor’s upper arms, willing the power of her song to lessen Nienor’s pain and make the birthing go smoothly.

            Nienor did not say she was afraid, but she clenched her teeth so tightly Finduilas could see the rigid knot of muscle at the corners of her jaw, and she squeezed Finduilas’ hand until it felt like she might crush her fingers. Still, when the midwife arrived, the woman was surprised at how calm Nienor was “especially on round one!”

            Finduilas gathered she was not thrilled to be sharing her job with an Elf, particularly not when Finduilas insisted her methods were better, but they kept at it, coaxing Nienor to the crowning until she screamed at them that she didn’t need any more “bloody encouragement!” Finduilas tried to get her to drink a cup of tea, but she wouldn’t have it, and she could see Nienor was on the verge of tears.

            She put Nienor’s head in her lap once more and rubbed lightly at her temples, and scratched her nails gently through Nienor’s hair, and talked about what she remembered of the Havens of the Falas and Balar from her youth, and how beautiful was the sea, and how fresh the air, and how kind was Lord Círdan.

            Nienor wept anyway, but it was quick and quiet, and shortly overtaken with howling as the crowning began. Finduilas sang for her, through the midwife telling her to stop making such a racket when Nienor was trying to focus, and put all she had learned of healing into steadying Nienor’s body. She had not brought her this far to lose her now; she would not even consider it!

            The birthing seemed to take so much longer than those Finduilas had seen in the past, but she allowed this may not have actually been the case, merely an effect of nerves she’d never had going into it before. Nienor seemed to wail for hours, clawing at the sheets and at Finduilas’ hands with breaks in between where she was too tired to cry. Finduilas wanted to shout for joy when the midwife announced the shoulders were delivered and that Nienor was past the hardest part, but she kept it to herself, knowing Nienor had more work still ahead of her.

            It wasn’t much longer that the baby was free. Hild and the midwife saw to cleaning it and wrapping it up while Finduilas stayed with Nienor and tried to make her comfortable to wait for the passing of the afterbirth.

            “A girl!” the midwife declared as she swaddled the child. Finduilas looked up from where she was smoothing out Nienor’s soaked blankets to smile brightly at her. Nienor simply looked exhausted. The midwife crouched to hand her the baby, but Nienor barely opened her eyes to look on the child, and made no move to take her from the midwife’s arms.

            “Amlugnod,” she said wearily, unable or unwilling to summon the energy even to sit up. Finduilas wanted to protest at naming the child something so sinister as Dragon Bound, but given what a trial it had been to get Nienor even to this point, perhaps it was best not to start off by critiquing her name choices. And after all, ill-fated names did run in the family. Finduilas would simply have to think of an appropriate nickname for her.

            When the afterbirth was done, the midwife and Finduilas made as quick work as they could of clearing away the soiled sheets and blankets and replacing them with the fresh ones lent by neighbors. Finduilas sat half-beside, half-behind Nienor so that she could hold her upright while Nienor held the baby.

            “How fare you?” she murmured to Nienor. “Is aught…amiss, that you can tell?” She was not familiar enough with Mannish physiology to know if she ought to be looking for signs of illness besides what might show in an Elf.

            “All I wish for is sleep,” Nienor sighed, leaning against Finduilas. “First, though, she must eat.” Finduilas rubbed her side comfortingly and Nienor let her eyes slide shut, Amlugnod still held up to her breast. When the babe began to slouch in Nienor’s grip, Finduilas put a hand under her head and gently returned her to a position where she could feed.

            It was not, in the end, the longest birthing Finduilas had ever partaken in, but it was the one over which she felt the greatest triumph.

            In the days after, all the guests and well-wishers Hild and Arnor had thus far kept at bay broke through the dam and streamed through the house with gifts and advice and village gossip, eager for a look at the latest stranger in Hild and Arnor’s house and her new baby. Finduilas tried to soothe her that they didn’t gawk half so much as when Finduilas had been the newcomer in town, but Nienor was not overly comforted, so Finduilas played interference between Nienor and the guests—ever the gracious and amicable host, and ever able to restrict their time around Nienor and the baby without it being remarked upon.

            Even Arnor and Hild’s daughters, with their own children in tow, stopped by with hand-me-down clothes and toys, recommendations for the new mother, and food prepared for the household.

            “Good to see life in the house,” said one as Finduilas walked her back to the road one evening. “When I left—I was the last out—I worried Mother and Father might be lonely. I know you came to us in a bad way—but it gladdens me that you ended up with them. Good to see the loft getting use again.” She smiled and gripped Finduilas’ shoulder in a way that would have been awfully presumptuous for a fellow Elf.

            “How I wish to be a bear,” Nienor groaned as they lay down for bed that night.

            “A bear?” Finduilas asked with amusement as she whipped her hair into a simple three-strand braid for sleep. “Why a bear?”

            “Then I might sleep all winter.”

            Finduilas laughed and settled down. Between them, Amlugnod was already asleep, though it wouldn’t last—Finduilas knew she often woke Nienor in the middle of the night, wanting food or a change or the comfort of her mother’s touch. She ran a finger lightly around the curve of the baby’s tiny ear.

            “Perhaps you should attempt it regardless,” she said.

            “If my fate were mine alone…” said Nienor. She sighed and focused her attention on the baby. “Often,” she admitted very quietly, “it feels I choose a much harder path. Is there not something alluring in sleep, in death?”

            “When life seems very difficult, yes,” Finduilas said. “Is it not a relief to set down a heavy burden?”

            “And I have only picked up another,” said Nienor, chagrined.

            “But you will not carry it alone,” Finduilas insisted. “We shall share it, and then it will not seem so heavy.” Nienor’s eyes flicked over to Finduilas.

            “For what do you offer me so much of yourself? No obligation do you have; no repayment do you owe me. Rather, it is I in your debt. Yet still you reach your hand out to me.”

            “Because I wish to,” Finduilas said simply. “For I was in need and others took my hand. For Beleriand bleeds with the violence of Morgoth and to take even one life from his relentless parade of death is a victory. For I have seen great suffering and I may not end it, but I may ameliorate it in this one small way. For I enjoy you and your company.” She smiled. “And I would stay beside you, if it is your wish also.”

            “It is my wish,” Nienor said quietly.

            “Then your question is answered. Now rest, Himil. Much of it have you earned.” She reached over and squeezed Nienor’s arm. Nienor caught her hand as she drew back and held it a moment before letting go and settling down for sleep. Finduilas remained awake a while more, watching mother and baby rest with the peace in her heart of feeling she had achieved some goal, some hope she had been reaching for since she first drew Nienor from the Teiglin.

            Perhaps Nienor might finally have some peace of her own.

---

Chapter End Notes

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Fanart recs:
- Finduilas by croclock
- Finduilas/Nienor by nisiedrawsstuff
- Nienor and Glaurung by url-okay
- Nienor sleeps in Finduilas' lap by Alackofghosts