Part 07: A Heady Fragrance of Honey by Eilinel's Ghost

A Heady Fragrance of Honey | Part 07 of the Atandil Series

Still anticipating this to be at least a 25 part series because I do not know how to be remotely normal about these two. Thanks again for bearing with the slow burn.

------

As always, I am so very sorry to write YET ANOTHER piece that includes paragraphs featuring three separate individuals named Balan, Baran, and Belen. Please do, in fact, blame Tolkien entirely for this and pay close attention to everything between the B’s and N’s.

With that in mind:

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 (sister of Balan's deceased wife), Avina

See the end of the work for more notes and translations.

Read A Heady Fragrance of Honey | Part 07 of the Atandil Series

311^th YEAR OF THE SUN, LATE SPRING
Estolad
                                                         

---

                                          

It was pleasantly warm in the sun along the riverbank. 

Balan smiled as the light illuminated a mosaic through his eyelids. Anar’s touch was hot upon his skin, moving in and out of the clouds and thawing at last the frigid ache of winter. The months had stretched long and bitter since Yuletide, and Spring came over-late and feeble in her charge. But at last the chill subsided, the clammy air grew mild, the birdsong returned. 

And like a dam breaking, they spent every waking hour in the warmth, children careening through the fields with shrieks of laughter, the grown hardly more dignified as they were set loose at last to begin repairs about the village. There was much to remedy after the long winter and much yet to be built, and they sang as they worked. Most often these were simple melodies, a call and response falling into beat with the stroke of mallet or axe or plow or shearing blades, and Finrod learned them quickly as he worked alongside them. 

The Casári too had sung while they delved the halls of his city and Finrod was reminded of that long work, hoisted up on wooden planks that dangled from a system of ropes and pulleys, the low, resonant voices echoing in time with their hammers, songs drawing tune and substance from the rocks about them. Indeed, he had become convinced the rocks themselves sang in kind as they progressed ever further. The Casári teased him for idleness, so often had his own chisel fallen silent as he listened rapt to the music that swelled around him. Gundin, their chief craftsman, had at last reprimanded him as Finrod swung suspended beside the wall, his hands hovering motionless in the midst of a half-completed carving. It is the work of every hand which makes the music, Felak-gundu. If you lay the one to rest, the other falters as well, for it is not a performance but a part of the making. After that, he had managed better, merging the two into one action and finding his own work all the better for it. Even now, two centuries later, he heard their song whenever he walked his halls, footfalls awakening the melody once more to echo in his ears: the sonorous bass of Dwarven voices a heartbeat through the caverns, the percussive chime of the chisels and picks, his own voice wandering through the midst, starkly out of place and yet woven perfectly into the whole.

If the Casári songs were stone, then the Atani’s were earth. Course, rich, filled with that bright, burning, ferocity that infused every aspect of their lives. Every morning Finrod was awed by their capacity for it, every evening dazed by how brightly they had burned. At night he would look on, mystified, as they slumbered in a deeper oblivion than his own kind knew. Some nights he would sit at rest in the hut and watch over Balan and his sons while they slept, his heart straining between a piercing joy and the terror of death’s foretaste. They were so still in those moments, so lost to the world around them, but he could not look away from their resting visages. Belen, who always looked younger than his eighteen years, could be mistaken for a child yet as he lay curled against his father’s back with his legs draw up beside his stomach. Baran’s face too lost the firm resolve it bore throughout the day—a leader born and not made, as his father had named him—and his youth peered through as he slept. Even Balan seemed little older than his sons as he slept at their sides, his face relaxed into a near mirror of his eldest. The only apparent mark of age showed in the brush of grey at his temples and scattered throughout his beard. The rest of his face had eased into a childlike vulnerability, no longer creased with the cares and tension the days had folded into his skin. In these clandestine studies, Finrod caught a glimpse of what he must have been as a young man and was stung with regret that he never knew him as such.

He carried those visions with him throughout the days and saw the Atani ever with that vulnerability lingering behind their expressions, even as they frowned and sang and heaved new beams into the burgeoning village. How he loved them, these perplexing, fragile creatures.

The village had begun taking shape as the springtime moved forward. Additional huts filled the space within the palisade and rows of thick wall posts had been planted at one end, forming the skeleton of what would become the Hall. Fields had been tilled, lambing and kidding were mostly finished, and several donkeys had foaled. Finrod was delighted by these tiny additions to his charges and lavished even more attention on the herd than before, until Baran shooed him away, protesting that he would ruin them for all usefulness with such coddling.

As the urgency of tasks lessened, he and Balan fell into the routine of ending each afternoon beside Celon, stretched at ease among the new grasses and heather, talking aimlessly or lying in companionable silence. Every day they lay closer, as though by accident, until they were accustomed to take their places side by side, arms touching lightly as the golden light washed through the meadows, dancing a mosaic through Balan’s closed eyes.

“Gods all, I’m hungry.”

“Thou art ever hungry.” Finrod’s laugh rippled quietly through the grass.

“I’ve lived a winter through on dried herring and roots.” Balan stretched his arms up to rest under his head. “Of course I am.”

“And salt pork, and preserved cheese, and the bread of my people, and—”

“And the fields do not yet yield, and I tire of what lives kept in barrels or hung from the beams.” Balan opened one eye to squint at him through the sun’s glare. “I’m an irascible old man, Nóm. Indulge me in my complaints.”

“The fields yield.” Finrod rolled to the side, grinning as he rummaged through the grasses and uprooted a flowering plant. “Only thou art petulant in thy choosing, vinyamo.” He drew out his knife and shaved away the outer rind from the tuber, then cut it free from the stalk and held it out to the other.

“More roots.” Balan feigned distaste, but took it and ate. The flavor was clean and peppery, refreshing in the afternoon sun, and he enjoyed it despite his grumbling.

Finrod turned back, shifting the grasses aside in search of a second, and instead found a little cluster of snowdrops. “Nieninquë!” he exclaimed and drew his fingers over the tiny, white petals. “I thought these had all gone for the season. When I was young, I would lie full days amid their first blossoms in the hills and meadows of Valinórë, nigh intoxicated upon their scent…” He plucked one flower from the cluster and turned back, drawing it down over Balan’s face to rest beneath his nose. “Like a heady fragrance of honey…”

“It is rather.” Balan smiled and his face twitched as the leaves tickled against his skin. “It reminds me of wildflowers in mead. We’ll add yarrow and lavender to it in the summer months—you’ll like that, I think.”

“Mm.” Finrod lay back in the long grass and set the snowdrop to his own face as he watched the clouds drift overhead. He breathed deeply and his senses filled with the fragrance of life; the flower resting beneath his nostrils, damp earth fresh and teeming with the new season’s vigor, heather plants crowning a nearby hilltop, the scent of the man lying beside him. He smelled of sweat and of sunlight upon skin, a sweet aroma mingling with the snowdrop blossom and the memory of golden springtimes.

It was a pleasant scent, earthy and homey. He was embarrassed now to recall how off-putting he found it only the summer before, even as his own kin clearly did now. They are passable company, certainly, once you’ve passed the pungency. The Ambarussa had found their quip nearly as amusing as the seething glare it earned from their cousin when they visited in the midwinter. Very well. They needn’t lie in the bright sun with the warmth of him against their arm, watching the sun in her merry dance through the heavens or feeling the silken nieninquë upon their skin. These were his pleasures. Finrod smiled at the thought and basked in the warmth of it, content.

“What are you grinning about?” Balan asked, watching with amusement as the various expressions moved over the other’s face.

“Is there not reason enough? The world is warm, Yavanna’s song abounds in the soil, in the grasses of the fields, and thou art beside me—the threads of friendship woven together despite all purpose of the Dark. Of course I smile.” Finrod shifted his arm to rest across his forehead, shielding the glare and dangling the snowdrop between his eyes and the sun, the light playing through the petals.

“Norolinda pirucendëa,
lendë tanna Nieliccilis,
sana wendë nieninquëa,
yan i wilyar antar miquelis.
I oromandi tanna lendë,
ar wingildi wilwarindië,
Losselië telerinwa,
táli lantalasselingië.”

The melody moved slowly, each note drawn out and varied into a songbird’s warble, and his voice seemed to split and counter itself, becoming both principal and accompaniment in a way that defied Balan’s grasp. Nóm had sung much throughout the winter to ease the long hours, but never yet had Balan heard this manner of music from his lips. It was both joyous and melancholy, spilling over with deep, unsated longing.

The words ran together so that Balan could not discern them, but neither did he ask for any translation. He preferred it this way, the syllables new and strange again as they brushed over him in the other’s voice, once more the mystery and promise of discovery.

Finrod’s voice wrapped about the song like a caress. He had learned it as a child when Lalwendë would fetch him and bear him west of the Pelóri, dowsing him in the Trees as she dubbed those excursions. For seeming thyself a sprig of Laurelin, thy son is kept far too much in the twilight. The chide was tossed at Arafinwë half in jest when Lalwen first collected her nephew from Alqualondë, setting him before her on the stallion and carrying him back the way she had come. Finrod remembered how the wind streamed through their hair as they galloped and the distinct feeling, passing through the Calacirya, that the Light too rushed in upon them with that same vigor. She would lift him down from the horse’s back and sing of Niéle as they walked through the valleys beneath Tirion and he perched upon her shoulders, his tiny hands playing in her hair, raven black and echoing with a golden sheen.

Ever after those wanderings with Lalwen, the melody sprang unsummoned from his tongue whenever his feet passed through the meadows about Túna. Amarië teased him for it on the times she joined him—was he a child yet? And so he sang it all the more, teasing in return, and greeted her at every meeting with “Norolinda pirucendëa lendë tanna Nieliccilis” until the opening notes of Niéle were nearly an epessë between them.

He realized with a start, here in this distant field far from the meadows of Aman or the jests of those once beloved, that he had not sung it since the day of darkness, lifting both voice and goblet in greeting when Amarië joined them at the banqueting tables, clad in flowing white and green, a twist of flowers woven into her hair. The song had been too bound in that pain, of the dark and of loss, that his tongue had foresworn it till now. Now, when once again it tripped from his lips without thought and ran dancing through the sunlight. “Ar wingildi wilwarindië…” he sang again.

“Foam-fay?” Balan at last let his mind trace the pattern of the words as well as the music of them and his voice cut in through Finrod’s meditations.

“A water nymph.” Finrod rolled onto his stomach and looked down at Balan where he lay beside him. “It was also one of the names my father’s folk had for my mother’s people—and he for her.” Then he laughed and looked out over the rippling water. “He called her wingildi; she called him pánë. Páni are a kind of sea birds that fly far across the waves and the mariners of Alqualondë would tell how they fluttered along in the wake of returning vessels, weary too from their own journeys. My mother teased that he followed her the way a pánë would trail the swan ships. And so he said she was the beacon guiding his way back to land, the steady point in the tossing sea.”

Balan was quiet as he looked up at the other’s profile, the sun’s light spilling through the mussed hair. The ache, grown familiar over the winter months, pressed again at his heart, beauty and longing mingling and threatening to spill over into words. He took a breath and allowed a small transgression. “I think thou art very like her.”

“I?” Finrod looked over at him with an eyebrow lifted and he laughed again. “Nay, I am the image of my father, though for good or ill will yet be seen. I’ve long since lost what beacon might have called me back as he.”

“Nay, thou art the beacon.” Balan held his eye for a moment longer, then his courage wavered and he shifted his gaze once more to the clouds. “So I see thee, at least.”

Finrod watched him for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then he reached out and traced the snowdrop gently along Balan’s face from hairline to chin and he smiled. “Have a care, then, where thou art led. Thou hast seen already where my wandering brought me.”

“And I have seen thy remorse.” He shifted so the other’s shoulders blocked the sun and looked up at him, reciting as his own father had, “The path of penitence sets thy wandering aright.”

“Mm. But I am not penitent.” A smile of mischief split Finrod’s lips. “Not when exile has led me to thy people—to thee. How can I regret that, melotornonya?”

“Melotorno?”

“One very dear to the heart, deeply loved,” Finrod said quietly and hope sprang in Balan’s heart as the grey eyes looked down at him with affection. “I think in your tongue its meaning would be ‘one whom love has made a brother’.”

“I see.” Balan tried to keep his face from falling at the added words. 

“It is an approximation. I have no word for what thou art to me.”

“Hast thou not?”

“None. Thou art a new thing, strange and utterly indescribable. I’ve no language yet for thee.” He tossed the snowdrop down onto Balan’s face and lept nimbly to his feet. “All this talk of páni and ships has left me longing for water.” He slipped his feet from his boots and ran toward the river, calling back over his shoulder, “Come along then, thy beacon is a backward sort and will lead thee from the shore and not toward it!” 

Balan rolled onto his stomach and watched incredulously as the other disappeared down the bank. “Wingildi!” he called after him, laughing. “It’s hardly been thawed a month, you fey creature!” He pulled off his own shoes when naught but a splash came in answer and made his way down the bank. The rocks beside the shore were reassuringly hot and he set his tunic upon them, resting it beside the other’s garments where they lay cast aside in the sun. Shirt, breeches, rings, belt…Balan felt his heart lurch as it was all accounted for. 

He had seen him once before by accident, when they dwelt in Ossiriand beside the banks of Thalos. Balan had risen in the night to relieve himself and while walking back to the encampment saw the other lit by starlight through the trees before him. Nóm had waded into the river till it reached his thighs and held a bowl in his hand, ladling water over his outstretched arm with solemn precision. As he filled it again and poured it out over his hand, over each finger, Balan could hear bits of his voice drifting over the water in a gentle, somber rite. It must be a ritual of his people, Balan realized, and retreated as quietly as possible, never certain whether the Elf had been aware of his presence or if he passed unmarked. But he had lain awake the remainder of the night, hounded by the memory of the other’s skin, burnished silver beneath the stars; the sound of his song rippling slow and solemn over the water; his own growing desire that left him dizzy and hopeless.

The voice came to him again across the waves, only now it startled Balan from his meditation rather than summoning him to it. He sang a comic tune Bel used for working, shuffling the words about to fit his purpose, and Balan laughed as he watched him glide through the water.

“O, why do you tarry?
The water is merry,
the earth has awakened!
O, still you are waiting—
are your feet made of clay?
Balan, come, come away!
O, why do you tarry?
The water is merry!”

And with that last, he dove beneath the surface and let himself twist weightless through the swift current. Balan had been right, it was almost unpleasantly frigid. But it reminded him of the Pools of Ivrin after winter’s passage, swollen with the snow-melt and fresh rain, and plunging into their depths had been a yearly mark of Spring’s return. Celon, he reflected, would serve instead this year. 

By the time he surfaced, Balan stood waist-deep in the water, watching him as though he were a madman. “It may as well be ice!” he called out and Finrod saw the gooseflesh standing across his skin.

He grinned and swam back toward him. “Step in further, thy body will accustom itself. Tis only the first shock that accosts thee. There, now another. And one more, just here to the right.” 

Balan moved forward as directed, but on the last step the ground fell away beneath him and he plunged down into the full depth of the river with a yelp. He surfaced and a steady stream of profanity rushed out of his mouth as Finrod laughed beside him, hovering in the water, his eyes alight with mischief. “Gaitch,” Balan spluttered at last and lunged at him, catching hold of his shoulders and shoving him down beneath the surface. He felt him slip away even as he submerged and looked in vain at the water about him to chart the other’s path. 

“Here!” Finrod emerged behind him, hardly a sound as he broke the surface, and Balan twisted around in time to feel the hands grasp his shoulders and plunge him beneath the waves once more. He emerged several yards distant, laughing now, and Finrod slipped away as he lunged after him, intent still on vengeance. It was like chasing a minnow without a net, Balan thought while he kicked through the water, always just out of reach and darting at impossible angles whenever he neared. 

They splashed and shouted like children as the chase continued, and Finrod felt light with a joy he had known seldom since the Darkening. The water welcomed him in her embrace and enfolded Balan too at his side, the pair of them wrapped together in weightless flight through Uinen’s tresses. It was bliss.

He caught Balan about the waist and pulled him down, as he had done countless times when chasing his brothers or cousins in the waters of Alqualondë, and it was the very disjointedness of that juxtaposition which at last shattered the illusion. Truth crashed across his senses like a blow and he reeled as it rushed over him with the river’s current, inescapable in the intimacy of skin pressed hard against skin, a tangle of limbs, the sudden illumination of desire pounding through every vein. He froze beneath the water, his face caught against Balan’s chest, his own chest resting against the other’s abdomen, the bare hips; arms twined about him yet in the snare. No, in the embrace…

Finrod felt the other struggle against him with an increased urgency and it dawned on him he had no notion how long he had held him beneath the water. He released his grip abruptly and surfaced, spluttering.

“I might have known thou wert half fish as well.” Balan’s voice greeted him, caught between laughter and gasping for breath. “Nearly drowned me.” He sent a handful of water cascading into Finrod’s face and moved back, treading water just out of reach. 

Finrod managed a laugh as he shook off the water, though it sounded forced and discordant in his own ears. He could not take his eyes from the other and stared at him as though learning his face anew. The dark hair, nearly black, glistened in the sunlight and unkempt waves had begun rising again through its length it as he bobbed above the water. A smile split his face, merry as a boy’s, and laughter lines sprang out across his skin, honey-brown and shining, deep and rich as a ripe acorn. He longed to reach out and trace his fingers over the beauty of that flesh, to set his lips to the tip of the cheekbone, along the length of the clavicle.

“Nóm?”

Finrod started from his reverie and shook his head. “Forgive me,” he said with a strained smile, “thou judged aright and I heeded thee not—it is too cold yet for this.” 

Balan watched in surprise as he turned abruptly and swam back toward the shore. It must have been the water, he mused as he followed him toward the rocks. He should not have jested of drowning. They were not far from the tributary where the memories accosted him at the Longest Night and perhaps this was another of the same making. He pulled himself out onto the shoreline, shivering as the breeze heightened the water’s ice, and dressed quickly as the other had done. Balan had sacrificed his tunic as a towel, but it was a relief to wrap even the thin cloth of his undershirt and britches back about himself, tempering the chill. He crossed the few steps to stand beside the other. 

“I’ll leave thee in peace,” he said, reaching out to rest his hand on Finrod’s shoulder, “to quiet whatever memory it is that accosts thee.”

Finrod looked up at him in surprise, and his blood flowed down like fire from the other’s touch.

“Only promise thou wilt reach for me,” Balan added, “should company be a solace.”

“I will,” he managed as Balan pressed his shoulder briefly, then retreated back up the bank.

Finrod sat frozen on the crag, the river chuckling as it ran along beside him.

He was a fool. How had it gone unseen for so long? All the elements had been there for months, only he must have deliberately held them fractured to avoid acknowledging the picture they formed. How had he deceived himself so thoroughly that it needed the shock of nakedness to break apart his own ignorance?

He felt the hot rush down his spine again at the recollection.

That it was returned, he did not question. He could look back now and see everything arranged in its full image, he could trace the careful dance they both wound through this past year; every word, every silence, every touch ringing through with that steady truth. How had he been so blind?

A man with a wife. His mind reeled at this. No, he corrected himself, a man with a dead wife. Mortality must alter even that bond since that very wife had been another’s first. Esrid was gone, not returning, and Balan clearly did not consider himself bound. It was no different than his own grandfather, he reasoned wildly. Unremitting death must nullify the union and leave each party unyoked.

Unremitting death. 

He was suddenly dizzy. The same mortality that set him free set Balan also on the far edge of a chasm, and Finrod dared not look toward its depths. He felt the precipice yawn out before him and his own precarious balance, his mind racing. It was impossible. Oh Eru, why have you sundered your Children? It must be impossible.

He reached down and filled his palms with water, dousing his face to still the reeling thoughts. Not enough. He knelt beside the bank, fetching one handful after another to wash over his eyes, red with unwonted tears, to cool his cheeks, burning under this knew knowledge. Then he faltered, paused. He leaned down and submerged his face once again, lingering beneath the surface as his mind flew back to the discovery, the touch of Balan’s skin, the press of his arms about him, his leg hooked behind Finrod’s knee. 

He pulled his face from the water with a gasp, then his lips moved against its surface in a kiss, all desperation and passion.

Had there been no looming difference of kind, he knew he would have scorned all propriety and cast himself to the other’s mercy, even there upon the sunlit riverbank, bound one to the other upon the ground amid the lingering nieninquë. And in his mind, the taste of Balan’s skin was as the fragrance of snowdrops crushed beneath him, sunlight and honey, dizzy and intoxicating.

“Airë Manwë, rehtië nín…” Finrod’s voice tore a hoarse whisper through the birdsong and he gripped his face within his hands. “Vanwa nányë...”

And then without hesitation, his memory brought him again to the meadows of Tirion and the blossoming nieninquë, only this time it was his father who walked beside him.

“Love is choosing,” Arafinwë had said, a stern undercurrent to his words. “A marriage is for the life of Arda, my son, it is not a thing of whim or fancy, nor yet always of passion. It is chosen companionship and chosen partnership. Thou art fond of her?”

“I am. Of course I am.”

“Then be bound knowing that, and the rest will come in its time. It is a good match, Findaráto.”

“I know it is. And there is love, atar, only…” Finrod’s voice had trailed off as he realized he could not possibly articulate to his father this gnawing doubt that made him hesitate. Since his youngest days, he had known little of what it meant to be a prince of the House of Finwë. All his childhood was passed in the carefree twilight of Alqualondë, excepting the occasional formality of court, or when they joined his kin for the First Gathering of Fruits. He had been shy and reserved on those visits, fearing the inevitable teasing from his cousins when he spoke out of turn or was ignorant of a custom. Cullingwincë, they called him. Little goldfish. It was not until Turukáno befriended him that he felt part of the royal house, and not until Angaráto was born that he had the courage to assert it—ensuring his brother never felt the same uncertainty of place as he.

Ever after that early friendship, he had imitated Turukáno in everything. It was a way of passing for competence until he gained his own, of knowing the ways of Tirion before he dwelt there in his adolescence. Torn between his father’s expectation of distance and Tirion’s expectation of knowledge and poise, he mimicked first the one and then the other till each was pleased with his performance. He followed his cousin’s studies, learning swordsmanship alongside Turvo’s intrigue for the art and dance of it, he studied architecture, learned the planning of cities, mastered the dialogue and form of court. Then alone in the night he would read philosophy, he would slip out on quiet days to wander through the hills and greet the fauna and new growth, he would sing beside the streams and laugh as he watched children chase and play. Then he returned to Alqualondë and donned the old facade, taking up the mantle of his father’s mediation, the calm analysis of ethics and theology, and the light banter of Olwë’s court.

So engrained in this pattern had he become that when Turukáno courted Elenwë, Finrod found himself quickly following suit and setting his own attentions on her sister. It came naturally enough—she had been a student of philosophy and he was drawn immediately to the conversations they shared, discussions and theoreticals that bored his cousin when he tried to engage him. But Amarië was versed in all of these and her mind sharp and eager, finding the same intrigue and challenge in these debates that drew him ever back to the study. It was not long before they sought each other out independently of Turvo and Elenwë’s visits, and soon the expectations of all around them were clear. 

But this had brought the crisis. Finrod had followed in his cousin’s steps for so many years that he was left wondering whether he loved Amarië indeed or whether he merely enjoyed her company and had moved forward in imitation of Turvo’s marriage. Would he have chosen this for himself without his cousin’s leading? Or was this little Cullingwincë flittering again after the other’s example?

“I will wait yet awhile,” Finrod had said at last, his eyes straying to the far mountains to avoid his father’s gaze. “That I might know with certainty.”

“There is never certainty, Ingo.” Arafinwë’s voice was gentler now and he smiled at his son as he lapsed into the affectionate address. “But that is not a fault. Tarry in pursuit of it and thou wilt wait all thy days.”

Finrod had tarried, and so he had lost. 

But he sat now, an exile beside a far off river, and felt in his bones a certainty he had not known hitherto. There was no question anywhere in his soul as to the veracity of his affection. He loved him, this strange and unexpected mortal, with a ferocity and passion that left him shaken.

He had been governed all these years by the expectations around him, seeing himself ever through that lens alone, till all others saw him through the same. Until Balan, new and baffling and utterly other, had shattered through the mirage and handed his own self back to him through another’s eyes. May goodness dwell in your household.

“And health be the drink at thy lips,” he whispered to the water.

“Nóm!”

“Nóm, there are horses!”

“We’re to fetch you back!”

Avina and a cluster of children came tumbling down the bank, breathless and bright-eyed as they clambered toward him. 

“There are so many horses, Nóm!”

“Can we ride them? Like when you carried us on Váya?”

“I want to ride on my own!”

“You can’t ride on your own, Avi, you’re as small as the rest of us.”

“I’m taller than half of you, and stronger than all of you.”

“Vatta said none of us could ride without—”

“One at a time,” Finrod interrupted, laughing. “I cannot follow a word of it till you tell me what has happened. Are my kinsmen here?”

“With a whole host of horses!” Avina stepped forward as the self-appointed representative. “Why have they brought horses? Are these your shoes?” She held up the discarded boots they had collected from the top of the bank.

“Yes, thank you.” Finrod smiled as he took them from her and slipped them onto his feet. “The horses are a gift.”

“A present!”

“Who are they for?”

“Do we get horses?”

Finrod laughed again and lifted Avina up onto his shoulders. “Come along and you shall see.”

❈ ❈ ❈

It was a dozen horses, not a host; and the Ambarussa had sent them by two young grooms rather than attending to it in person. The Atani had gathered in a murmuring cluster about the little herd, though they kept a distance between them and eyed the proud creatures with wariness. Balan broke off as Finrod came into sight and jogged toward him.

“Nóm!”

Finrod felt a flash of adrenaline at the other’s approach and distracted himself by lifting Avina from his shoulders and setting her loose upon the ground. “They’ve traveled with better time than I expected. Ilcamo, Ravandë!” He lifted his hand in greeting and walked toward them with a welcoming smile, Balan trailing beside him.

“Heru Findaráto.” Ravandë greeted him with a formal bow and proceeded at once into a swift exchange as she presented Finrod with a sealed scroll.

Balan attempted to follow the Quenya, but it was a transactional conversation filled with etiquette and technical negotiations, neither of which he had learned in the past year’s study. He contented himself with standing at the other’s elbow, stealing glances at the restless creatures as they shifted about beside the skeleton beams of the Hall. They were magnificent. He had become accustomed to horses during their sojourn with Esrid and Estreth’s people years before, but these were of another kind entirely, sleek and majestic and nimble in every movement. It was nearly a mirror, Balan mused as he watched them, little particulars in these creatures that set them apart from their kindred in the East even as Nóm and his people were set apart from Balan’s own. 

“I thought this must be your doing,” he said as he walked with Finrod toward the waiting horses after the formalities concluded. He had shifted back to Taliska in the presence of strangers and was smiling, though utterly baffled. “What are they for?”

“For you,” Finrod replied in the same, and then wondered once again how he had remained oblivious for so long. The gift was extravagant. “Is it not the joy of a liege to provide gifts to his people?”

Balan’s laugh was incredulous. “Aye, it may be, but…” he broke off as they reached the foremost and his voice was awed. “Gods all…look at them!”

Finrod reached out and ran his hand over the nose of the nearest, a shining black stallion standing a full hand above the others. “Aiya, Elmorë, cenital mára ná.” Elmorë whickered in reply and Finrod smiled, guiding the horse’s head toward Balan. 

He reached out tentatively and mimicked how Finrod ran his hand along the jawline, smiling in surprise as the horse took a step toward him and nosed at his shirt.

“His name is Elmorë,” Finrod said quietly, “star-night. See how his coat glistens as he turns? Tintallë herself might have kindled it for all its beauty. I remembered him from my brief stay with my cousins ere I found you and thought you would find him a good companion.”

“Nóm…” Balan’s voice was husky as he held back the full emotion while others were gathered close. “He is beautiful beyond words.” Then he looked about the little herd again with incredulity. “They all are and this is a kingly gift. But, Nóm, I’ve not the first idea what to do with them.”

“Estreth will teach you,” Finrod said and nodded toward where she stood at the edge of the gathered crowd, her face unreadable as she watched the horses shift about. “She has that knowledge in her bones, I believe. Which brings to mind…” He trailed off and slipped through the animals until he found the one he sought.

Balan watched as a chestnut mare followed him away from her companions to stand before Estreth. He could not hear what passed between them, but he saw Estreth’s eyes and remembered the stories his wife had told him of their childhood on the plains. How Nóm had come to know of it he was uncertain, but it was the first time in these sixteen years since Esrid’s death that he had seen full, unreserved joy on his kinswoman’s face.

He turned back toward Ilcamo and Ravandë, his hands held palm upward in the custom Finrod had taught. “Please convey to your lords the deep gratitude of my people,” he said in Sindarin. Their converse with Finrod had been in Quenya, but as a condition of learning Balan had sworn not to use it with any others lest his people too fall under the judgment of Thingol’s ban. “We are indebted for this kindness.”

“Your words are honorable, hildor,” Ilcamo replied, “but it was a purchased exchange, not a benevolence. The lord Felagund paid for the herd in full. Your debt lies with him.” 

Balan dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I thank you nonetheless,” he said, then returned his attention to Elmorë.

“A dear price it was, if I heard aright,” Ilcamo added to his companion, shifting to Quenya for a supposed privacy. “The stallion alone was a king’s ransom.”

“As he should be,” Ravandë’s voice was curt. “Elmorë is a noble creature and I chafe to see him passed to uncouth keeping.”

Balan held back a smile as he marveled again at the creature before him. “You won’t resent me, will you, night sky?” he murmured in his own tongue as he stroked the velvety nose. “Uncouth as I am?” Then there was a rumble of hooves and he looked up to see Estreth ride past, galloping out toward the meadows, hair streaming behind her and her face lit with delight. A group of children ran behind her calling out cheers and pleas to be carried along until she passed beyond earshot, and then they lingered in a little line at the edge of the village, watching her in awe. 

“I doubt a gift has ever brought such joy as that,” Balan said to Finrod as the other returned to stand again at his side. “I’ve never seen such happiness about her.”

“I feared it was a presumption on my part,” he replied, then laughed quietly. “It was, she told me in no uncertain terms; but of my many, the one she would find easiest to forgive.”

Balan laughed in turn and ran his hand once again along Elmorë’s head. “Aye, easy indeed.”

Finrod looked over as he stood in the sunset’s flush and his heart ached with the sight of him. He could not take his eyes from those hands, so sturdy and gentle as they passed over the horse’s coat. Oh to take them in his own, to kiss the palms as Balan had kissed his in the dead of winter, only his lips would burn now with that confession he hid even from his own insight. To let those hands move across his own face, the fingers tracing a line, firm and steady, beneath his jaw as they did to this creature he bestowed. Let me bear thee as well, he longed to say, come to my arms and let me hold all time and tide at bay. 

It was impossible. He could not shelter him any more than he could hold a tide back from the shores. The doom would come despite any love and it break whatever grip was laid. It would unmake them.

Love is choosing. His father’s voice echoed in his ear and with it he felt his heart shatter.

“Balan,” he said, and his voice seemed to come from outside himself, “I must return to my own people.”

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya, S = Sindarin T = Telerin
Casári: [Q] dwarves
vinyamo: [Q] youngster, young one
nieninquë: [Q] snowdrop
epessë: [Q] after-name or nickname
pánë: [T] small gull, petrel
melotornonya: [Q] “love-brother” (meletorno + -nya)
Airë Manwë, rehtië nín: [Q] “Holy Manwë, save me”
vanwa nányë: [Q] I am lost
atar: [Q] father
cullingwincë: [Q] little goldfish
Aiya, Elmorë, cenital mára ná [Q] Hail, Elmorë, it is good to see thee.
heru: [Q] lord, master
hildor: [Q] term for the Men: after-comers, followers

The Nieninque song is a poem from “A Secret Vice” that Tolkien wrote in 1931:
Tripping lightly on the point of her toes,
thither came little Niéle,
that maiden like a snowdrop,
to whom the air gives soft kisses.
The mountain dwellers came thither,
and the foam-fays like butterflies,
the white people of the shores of Elfland,
with feet like the music of falling leaves.

TALISKA INVENTIONS
For the most part, all faux-Taliska is loosely inspired by or modeled on Germanic-Gothic
- gaitch: swine
- Vatta: father

MISC NOTES
- Turvo: likely nickname for Turukáno, based off the ones we’re given canonically for the sons of Fëanor.