The Beautiful Ones by Elleth

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Chapter 1

(Dess = Indis; Kalrê is an OFC.)

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"Elî and Kêmî made us," said Istajê, one of the Tatjâi visitors, reciting the traditional tale that marked all the Kwendî as kin despite their differences. "Kêmî formed our bodies from the ground, but it was Elî's starlight which we beheld first that loosed our tongues and lit our minds to give us life that is different from the animals of the forest. It is why we cried her name first."

"That is so. But we would not have come into being in the first place if not for their love," affirmed Kwessê with the fine golden hair, who was rubbing reedmace tubers into flour by the fire. Dess handed her a basket to catch the excess that began spilling from the saddle stone. "They made us because they wanted no mates except each other, and yet wanted children. It is why some of us are as they are." She put her handstone aside and grinned at Dess, who grinned back. "Maybe some got a little more of Elî and Kêmî's love than we others, and that is why we want mates with wegî and they want mates who have peñû," Kwessê said, and glanced at the broad back of her husband by the other fire. He seemed not to notice. It was not something that was often spoken about openly – but the Tatjâi appeared to be untroubled, laughed, and continued speaking.

"We call them sjatsî," said Ruskê with the strange hair, another of the Tatjâi, and she and Istajê unconcernedly began to speak of matters and new words that related to what they had discussed. At the other fire, the men began to stir and look across, and Târî raised an eyebrow and glared at them. She could not very well chide the visitors, although some of the women had begun tittering among themselves.

"This is private! Off with you! Go and brag about how the fire baked your clay to greater hardness! We aren't prying into your affairs, don't pry into ours!" she said to the men, Minjâi as well as Tatjâi visitors, who had been listening, and they rose, muttering. "Sit in your huts, we have matters to discuss that are not for your ears. Talk about the things Elî and Kêmî did to make you different from us! " They rose muttering, but when the men had gone, she turned back to the visitors. "Let us speak more openly now.

Dess grinned to see her mother send the men away, and stayed a little while to listen. Then, red in the face, with the Tatjâi words still churning on her mind, slipped to her feet as well, though she did still not follow the men into the huts, and instead sped past the guards on their posts at the edge of the village and down into the forest until she found whom she had sought. Hiding a giggle, she slid behind the trunk of a large pine and waited until Kalrê had finished mapping the standing stone to determine the next strokes of her brush.

Dess jumped from her hiding place.

Kalrê's brushstroke went awry, a smudge over the rock painting's face, and the bowl of ochre pigment spilled.

"Dess! You are hopeless! Distracting me from my tasks all the time! What are you doing down here in the forest alone? Would you have the Rider take you away?"

"There are guards above us," she said and pointed up the slope through the trees, to the huts on the hilltop, "Târî's brother Ingô, and others, too, like Ilwê who always keeps near him. But nothing will hunt us while they keep watch, even though I have no spear like you." Dess grinned. Kneeling behind Kalrê on the pine-needle carpet, she regarded her friend's work upon great rock rising from the forest floor – it proudly displayed tall figures with spears and flowing hair, beautiful but terrible, apart from the last of all, with the smudged face.

"And none of the Rider's... things will dare cross this." It was only the third stone in the fence that Kalrê had painted, but already they showed the beginning of a host marching to protect the outer borders of the settlement, many more people than lived on the hill, perhaps as many as had gathered to erect the stone fence – all the settlements of the Minjâi had come together, and even some of the Tatjâi had come to show them how to shape the stones, pull them upward, and anchor them in the earth.

"I hope they won't dare; else the work will all have been in vain. But they never did before; I do not know why it should be different now." Dess began to play with the braided string across Kalrê's shoulders that held her clothes up, having her half-turn, and put her paint and brush aside as she leaned into the touches.

"I wanted to tell you - there were visitors these won't keep away, though – and shouldn't," Dess said. "From the dwelings of the Tatjâi on the hill in the north. That is why I came to talk to you - they brought Târî dough, and recited the tale, and for some of us they had new words that I wanted to share with you."

Kalrê's eyes lit up. "Then let us go back, so we can talk in the light, and I will fetch new colour. And you can tell me of their words."

"Oh. I... I think it would not do to share them by the fires." She laughed a little, and rubbed her hands over her cheeks, which were growing hot again. Even though the men were probably still in their huts, it would not do to banter them around unconcerned.

"Just what kinds of words did they bring? Was it that Tatâ's and Tatjê's son again? He always brings words that make you flutter." Kalrê's lips drew into a pout, and she rocked back, crossing her arms.

"Don't be bitter, Kalrê, please? You make me flutter. And it was not him, it was Ruskê who brought them, little Mahtô's mother with the strange hair, and Istâjê."

"Well." Kalrê was still pouting, but her heart was not in it. "Now let me hear, what words are they?" She was not yet entirely consoled, Dess knew, but she was not really angry either, because she knew that Tatâ's son wouldn't steal her.

Dess leaned closer. "They are private words. There is skelnâ, and it is this." Dess tugged on the braided string. It unravelled easily, and before Kalrê could voice protest, her garment slipped down her body and pooled in her lap. But when Dess' warm hands followed the path of the clothing, cupping what they had not long ago learned were called tiuksû, Kalrê's surprised silence gave way to a breathy hmmm, a sound that she often made, especially when Dess taught her new words, and now that her fingers were busy teasing a tyetsê, that little nub mothers used to feed their babies, it soon gave rise to delighted laughter.

"Dess, you are unbeliveable! Distracting me from painting, for your little games!"

But although Kalrê was protesting, there was no heart behind it - Dess was learning singing and word-shaping from her father when he emerged from his mind-seekings, but even so she had a talent for finding exactly the right ways, good ways, interesting ways to fill words with life, and if she could not find those, she made songs, finding instead a melody to make the words, sometimes awkward and unwieldy on the tongue, beautiful. Some said that Dess' voice made the branches stir on trees, because it shone like the stars on the water, and that it had even woken some of them, but Dess always shook her head at that and kept her secrets.

"Do you see now why we cannot share them openly?" she asked. Kalrê nodded. Dess' warm lips – for all of her was warm, and soft, and inviting – brushed over her ear, and her hands, as soft and gentle as the rest of her, travelled over the muscles of Kalrê's stomach, each line and ripple in the skin, and then beneath the folds of the garment in her lap, her nose in Kalrê's golden hair.

"And this, this---" her fingers squirmed and wormed a little further, and Kalrê gasped, arching up, "--- this she called sjatsê. Perhaps because it is as a cleft in the mountains Kêmî made, and sometimes it is in those places that the ground is soft, and wet, from hidden springs..."

Kalrê was shivering with delight; her voice shook a little,"... perhaps we ought to find Ruskê and Istajê, to thank them. I like it better than the old word. That already has a place, here." Kalrê's fingers touched Dess' lips.

"You mean peñû?" Dess pressed a kiss to her friend's hand, dragging her lips, soft and parted, over her fingers to Kalrê's open palm.

"And what do you think, the old word and the new, peñû upon... sjatsê?"

"Dess!" That was something they had never done before. That perhaps they ought not be doing yet, foregoing an announcement. But, Kalrê, laughing, pulled her down onto the forest floor.

It was not long before Dess, silver-tongued, golden-voiced, had indeed demonstrated that her idea was nowhere near as strange as it had seemed. Kalrê, sprawling on the pine needles, was giggling her way through the little kisses Dess lavished onto her, but then flung out her hands, one to grasp Dess' head and push it down, the other far enough for her fingertips to drag through the dregs in the bowl of red colour, dig into the earth, and claw there as she bucked and twisted. Dess flicked her tongue into the warm, wet cleft, where Kalrê seemed to like it most, once more. Kalrê, it sounded, swallowed her laughter when other sounds came out instead, little moans, in time with her hips bucking and Dess trying to elicit more: Tiny licks here, soft nibbles there, flicking her tongue just so.

And then, breathing heavy, quick, shuddering puffs of air, Kalrê tensed up, relaxed, lay still. There were pine needles in her wild hair and a flush over her cheeks, her neck, and down her chest. Dess, who wiped her lips and moved up, likewise dipped her fingertips carefully into the colour that still remained in the bowl of red. A dab on Kalrê's nose, a stroke each on her cheeks, light as a caress, a line over her neck along the flush shimmering on her skin, and around each of her breasts. Her body was moist with sweat.

Kalrê, at yet another intimate touch, cracked open silver-shining eyes. They caught the starlight filtering between the trees. "Dess?"

"I am now an artist, too," Dess said, sweetly. "You are my tale. I made all this happen. Even your khôn - that it beats so fast, that was my doing too. Here, this." Dess slipped her hand over where Kalrê's heart was throbbing underneath her skin. "That is the last word they brought."

"Hmmm." It seemed she had no objections. "Ingenious, you all are." Kalrê nestled close, her face upon Dess' shoulder while her hand began to stray. "Though I wonder what the watchers think they heard."

"Two wendî's voices," Dess said and grinned. "The rest isn't their business." And it shouldn't be, she thought, when Kalrê showed her just why she had made such movements and noises.

A short while later they returned to the hilltop, hands linked. Some of the women chuckled about the flush on Dess' face and the lines on Kalrê's skin disappearing underneath her re-fastened clothing.

"See Elî and Kêmî walk among us," someone called. Dess flushed, but she joined in the laughter when Kalrê called out a loud, clear, "Ele!" with her face not lifted to the sky as was custom, but turned toward Dess the same way the first couples had awoken looking at one another, and it warmed her more than a fire did in the midst of winter, knowing what it meant.

"Ele!" she replied, laughing. Together, they looked up at the sky.

They began gathering food for Dess and Kalrê's betrothal feast during the autumn turn of stars, when, usually at its most abundant, it suddenly turned scarce. The feast could wait, they agreed, but even though all hands sought to gather what they could to last the snows instead, roaming ever wider, they found little – fruit had withered on the branches all around the lake, roots dried in the earth, and what few crops the Tatjâi were growing failed without apparent cause. The animals fled, the nets of the Lindâi came from the waters slack and empty, and the forest grew still and ominous.

The Rider and his ñguruki, the word went among the soothsayers and the wise, were to blame – seen clearly in the veiled stars and the growing darkness from the north. Dess' father walked with a troubled look on his face and spoke of the Rider more often than not. Târî sat with Dess and the other women making clay likenesses of Elî and Kêmî to show they were not forgotten, and perhaps even to call them. Dess, where no one could see, made a figure of Kêmî of her own, and painted her with dabs of red. Kalrê painted more stones, one by one, the whole fence around the border. Dess begged to accompany her to painting and to gathering pigment, and was given leave – it was not safe to go alone, and fear and grief frayed tempers into strife and argument: Five had already vanished, leaving the village of five handful and three in dire straits: Pherenê, their chief toolmaker and her best student had been among them, two hunters had not returned, and a child had strayed too far into the forest. They made for fewer mouths to feed, but without someone who knew the secrets for splitting flint just right, or how to cook birch pitch to fix shaft and spearhead, how were they going to make more hunting weapons? And without hunting weapons ---

"What will we do if we find nothing to eat?" Dess poked at the bones rising sharply underneath Kalrê's skin when she had thrown off her shift to wade into the brook coming from the Óroto-Karanî and scrape at the thick red crusts that clung to the rocks. They already had a skin full of the ochre clumps that they had to carry between them to share the load, but Kalrê had thought of something more. This red colour the water couldn't wash away, she hoped, while so far a heavy rain would often leave the fence nearly blank of its protective host, and required her to start anew. The rains, too, had come more frequent recently, always rolling in terrible gusts from the north, extinguishing even the fires in the huts when the water seeped in thick drops between the weft-and-fur roofs, drenching all their possessions until they mouldered in black spots and stank. It was the Rider's greedy touch. Some had even begun calling him Mailikô for it.

Kalrê interrupted the gloom of her thoughts. "We will find something to eat; there will be a hunt of all the clans, even those of Morîkwênô and Nûrîkwênê are joining us, and they will all together work to bring us better spears and arrows," Kalrê said. "And the second and third Minjâi villages have more toolmakers than we do. Perhaps one will marry here; we are the first village after all, and they all came from us," she explained while she stood knee-deep in the icy water, and scraped away at the rocks. The water churned red around her, clung, red, to her legs and washed downstream in a red flood. "It will be no hardsh---"

"Are you bleeding?" Dess cried after staring in horror for a moment. She drew her hand from the water, where she had dabbled among the rocks and sand hoping to find water snails or clams, or at least a few of the crayfish that Târî loved and all would welcome in such times of scarcity, but there was nothing in the brook either.

"No, no, it is the stuff from the rocks. Use your head!" Kalrê laughed, but Dess climbed to her feet and ran, as fast as they could carry her, back to the settlement. For reasons she could not explain, she was near tears, the kind that stung her eyes and would not stop, until her father caught her in his arms and had sung a song to quiet her. Dess lay in the darkness of the hut, with her face to the wall, and did not rise even when she heard Kalrê speak with Târî at the door. Her head hurt, and so did her heart, and she couldn't say why she suddenly remembered Kalrê's rapid heartbeat underneath her fingers.

Kalrê left eventually to prepare the ochre for painting, after she had drunk some fragrant brew of herbs with Târî and set a bowl of it next to Dess, for ther to find when she 'woke'. Dess couldn't have said what had upset and startled her so, but she could not shake the feeling that it must have been an ill omen of sorts that she had failed to understand. Her father looked at her for a long time, and then looked away, leaving the hut when someone outside called his name.

"We are still waiting for the Lindâi scouts to return," Kalrê said a few days later, working earnestly and quickly on the drawing of the spear-men on the rocks. She avoided looking at Dess, who hovered close behind her shoulder and felt like Olsê's irritating dog begging for a scrap of food. "The Minjâi and Tatjâi are all with us again, and they found very little, but the Lindâi walkers think there may be herds on the plain west of the mountains, unless the Rider went there as well. They have seen them before, and they say there are animals there that are larger than the deer and boar of the forest, and larger even than bears! Kine, and great beasts that bear a single giant horn on their snouts, and ones they call andambundâi - high as Kêmî's trees, large as a boulder, and full of hair! And a nose like one of our arms, but many times as long!" Kalrê's eyes shone when she eventually turned to look at Dess after all. "I would love to see one – and if we managed to hunt it that would be meat for all of us all winter!"

Dess, quite against her will, started laughing. "Fancies! The Lindâi walkers tell all sorts of stories, and some come from their minds, not from the world! We can't eat stories, and if there animals that really are as large, then we can't keep all the meat all winter – you know that the Rider touches the dead meat we keep too long, that and all else! If we could even hunt them at all, if they are really so large!"

"Did you listen? We will be many! It is going to be the same great gathering as when Iminjê-Târî made your mother Târî before all the clans!"

"Of course I remember! I was very young when my mother became Târî, but I remember." Dess felt her lips pucker into a pout, but she scooped new pigment into the bowl Kalrê held out to her all the same. "After all, Mother was honoured for being the first-born of the Quendi that day, before my grandmother passed away into the forests to seek for Imin whom the Rider took."

"You are still very young, or at the least you behave it," Kalrê said. Her voice took on a teasing tone.

"You are not so much older! Six years only!" Dess protested, feeling, all of a sudden, how her anger surged. "I will choose my own name come spring; are you out to mock me? And I am old enough to be betrothed to you - and old enough to change my mind. There is Tatâ's son, and I hear that he has grown handsome." If Kalrê would mock her about her age, she could reply with the one thing that always made her jealous.

It seemed that she had gone too far this time: Kalrê looked stricken for a moment. Her beautiful face hardened into something strange and unkind, only for the blink of an eye, then she cast the newly filled bowl onto the floor where it shattered, and the pigment spilled like blood. Kalrê began walking up the hill with swift, stubborn steps, and her long braid, garlanding her head in the fashion of a betrothed woman, unravelled at her insistent tugs, swaying down her back in golden waves before she disappeared from view.

Dess touched her own hair. It remained in place; the three elaborate rosettes above her brow were perhaps a little mussed, but she would do her best to keep them orderly to show Kalrê that she had no intention of betrothal to another, not ever. Another moment of deliberation, and she dashed after Kalrê. It began to rain that instant, in thick, plodding drops that soon caused rivulets of dirt to run downhill and made the path slick and slippery underfoot.

"Wait!" Dess cried and wiped a frazzle of wet hair from her face after she had slipped the second time. "Wait!" This was not what she had intended; she could not even really say when their conversation had taken this ugly turn. Perhaps it was the Rider's presence in the forest that slowly drove them all to madness. It was high time they went hunting.

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Chapter End Notes

Glossary:

Elî: Star(s) – a hypothetical form that refers to Varda.

Kêmî: Earth – a hypothetical form that refers to Yavanna, borrowed from the Book of Lost Tales (where it is taken to mean Earth-Lady) and adapted. How the early Quendi knew about these two prior to contact with Oromë will be explained in the course of the story.

Târî: A title; Queen.

Minjâi, Tatjâi, Lindâi: Old clan names respectively for the Quenya forms Minyar (first clan, the Vanyar), Tatyar (second clan, the Noldor being a part of these) and Lindar (third and most numerous clan, the Eldarin part of whom yielded the Teleri).

Wegî: the plural form of early wegê, manhood, vigour

Peñû: the dual form of peñe, lip – context should make clear which ones are being referred to.

Sjatsî: the plural form of sjatsê, cleft

Skelnâ: adj., naked, unclothed

Khôn: Heart (the physical organ)

Wendî: plural of wendê, maiden

Ele!: Legendary first outcry of the Eldar upon seeing the stars after their Awakening, apparently meaning something like "See! Look!"

Óroto-Karanî: Red Mountains, the Orocarni mountain range east of Cuiviénen.

Ñguruki: At that point not referring to Orcs or Uruks (though the latter word is derived from this one as far as I know); rather generally meaning any greater, malicious creature that posed a danger to the early Quendi, often in league with or corrupted by Morgoth. This particular form is a correlation with the stem NGUR, horror.

Andambundâi: plural of andambundâ, elephant, literally translating to long-nose, so I considered it safe to use for a mammoth, or the Middle-earth equivalent of it, as well.

Mailikô: Greedy One, a name for Morgoth.

A note on breasts and nipples: I tried to use (or, uhm, repurpose) attested words in the Primitve Elvish dirty talk (file under: things that I never thought I'd write), but given the scarcity of that word-list it wasn't always possible to use the appropriate words.

Tiuksû: The dual form of tiuksê, which in turn is comprised of TIW "fat, thick", plus an adjectival suffix -kâ, plus a nominal suffix -sê, "something that is made by the action denoted by the stem" (Ardalambion). I chose to use this to mirror the origin of English breast, PIE *bhreus- "to swell/sprout" – there also is the stem TUY, swell, sprout, bud, and other similar words (eventually yielding Quenya tuilë "spring"), but both seem to be related, at least semantically – e.g. a bud is a swollen thing.

I was initially looking for a way to reconstruct tyetsë, Qenya "breast, teat" for "nipple", but didn't manage that with the roots available – linked as it is to smallness, little babies and suckling in Parma Eldalamberon's Qenya Lexicon, the only available root in the same direction is TIK "small", yielding *tik(k)â, 'little' and *tiksê as a noun going by the same formation process as above. There exists a Quenya word tixë "dot, tiny mark, point" from this root, so I am sure the process is not wrong, or not entirely so (since an actival suffix seems a bit strange here, but there are several other and more appropriate uses to -sê), but it is not the right word (unless the possibility of PE > Q initial k > t change as in kyulumâ > tyulma also works in other positions, and something could be built from that). Any attested Quenya stems for babies listed are related to vinya, "new" rather than their smallness, or come from a root LAP yielding lapsë, "babe". It seems, however, that Tolkien did go for homophony with the supposed real-world etymology of tit/teat, which likewise seems to harken back to the meaning "to suck" from an unexplained origin, as well as small things (such as the birds of the same name) from a Northern Germanic direction. So rather than reconstruting a primitive form (which would probably have ended with me throwing my books across the room), I assumed a root TYET (then yielding tyetsê in Primitive Elvish and tyetsë in Q(u)enya) that is denoting something to do with suckling babies somehow.