all the daughters of my father's house (and all the brothers too) by Chestnut_pod

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all the daughters of my father's house (and all the brothers too)

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The spear thrusts into her belly. Out spurts blood, and nameless gobbets of flesh, and screaming.

Finduilas dies on Haudh-en-Elleth. Someone else is born.

The Men wrench the spear out of her with a horrible sucking noise. The blood and the cries and the chunks of gut, and Finduilas, are buried on Haudh-en-Elleth.

Someone else walks away, and keeps walking. The spear serves for a staff.

–

As lady of Nargothrond, Finduilas was as the snowdrop, nodding and delicate and tinkling like bells, swaying in the breeze, eternally evanescent.

Her chair beside the throne never fit her. It was for Finrod’s sister, who never sat in it. She herself was a substitute for his never-spoken-of betrothed. Then it was for Orodreth’s wife, dead and martyred for it, her lineaments sketched in Finduilas’ face. But Finduilas was taller.

She baked bread, as was her duty, but her loaves did not seem to carry a man as far as they ought to, as though the sponge knew her hands were those of a stand-in, ill-fitting puppeteers manipulating a ghost-queen. In Aman they had princesses: Finduilas was not a princess. She was a lady. A lady was what she was called by Gwindor, by Túrin, by everyone. It fit as well as her coronet and the stone-carved chair.

These are the things ladies are, in the songs that are told of Finduilas and Niënor, her mirror: Love. Beauty. Laughter. Inconstance. Haunting. Sorrow. Screaming. Silence.

In fact, the tales are not told of them. They are merely there.

Many songs are written of Gil-Galad. Centuries after his death, Hobbit-children learn to sing of him.

–

While walking, the one born from Finduilas’ wound picks at their hair. It comes out in chunks: it was matted already by Orc-filth and fear. It grows back slowly, finer than it was.

Gil-Galad wears his hair shorn close like a Man, a man among Men. Cut that way, it shines silver for its shortness, the way an ice-bear’s fur shines white. It goes some way to putting the Grey-elves at ease, perhaps beneath their conscious notice. To the Elves of Balar, it merits a name: Starlight, they say. Star of radiance. Star of glory.

The person who steps onto Balar’s shore needs a name; for the one bestowed at birth is lost and disavowed.

On Balar, short-cropped hair is a sign of mourning. During the War, fashions change, and it is a sign of soldiering. In Lindon, it signifies nothing. It is the hair of the King.

–

In the story most commonly told of Finduilas, she speaks once, of love. Then she is not heard again until she screams and is not heard, again. Her last words are reported secondhand.

While the afterbirth of Finduilas walks across Beleriand to Balar, they moan and cry and scream and talk. They keen in pain at the slow-closing hole in their belly and shriek at the stars’ false comfort. They squeal with half-controlled laughter. They say all the things Finduilas should have said when it would have changed anything: I release you. A bridge is a fool’s idea. A man may not speak of the glory in honest bravery when he skulks beneath another’s name. A woman may not speak of betrayal when she has betrayed.

They ruin Finduilas’ voice of bells and babbling brooks, which she did not use in its moment. When Gil-Galad steps onto Balar, he has lost an octave to the unvoiced failures ripping themselves free.

The King’s voice carries over battlefields and through courtrooms. It is low and pleasant to the ear. The King speaks, and the world hears.

–

The King uses the spear. It is not the weapon of Orodreth, who had none in particular. It is not the weapon of Finrod, who at the last used his white teeth, nor of Finarfin, who was born before the sword.

It was the weapon of Indis, for on the Journey, and afterwards in Aman among the Vanyar, spears were the woman’s weapon. They give reach. They block the door of the home and keep the wolves from the children.

Finduilas never touched one before it pierced her. Finduilas never used one before becoming king and scion of kings.

–

If men and women were truly so different, no one would have to try so hard to keep them separate. No lace net of restrictions: the difference between baking and cooking. The unspoken gradations of hair, of shoes, of occupations.

There was not very much to do in Aman.

Whether Sindar or Noldor, the Elves cannot address Gil-Galad any differently than Finduilas: there is no distinction except in the suffixes that make a thing an agent. So, Finduilas is Gil-Galad, but Faelivrin is Ereinion.

In time, Westron differentiates: there is she, and there is he. But the Men cannot tell Elves apart, in their own careful hedging against sameness, neither on Balar nor later, in Lindon. The Men have their own ideas, and the Elves are outside them.

Gil-Galad is an Elven king. The bread given from his hands is filled with virtue.

–

Gil-Galad has no spouse. Gil-Galad’s dynasty dies in the shadows of Mordor.

In Aman, much fuss was made of remarriage. It was betrayal, faithlessness, infidelity.

In Aman, and in Middle-earth, men say: women’s hearts are fickle. Finduilas knew this to be true.

In Aman, and in Middle-earth, three remarriages, or as-good-as, are known among the Elves: Finwë, Caranthir, Finrod. Their devotion is a by-word, even unto death and the uttermost darkness.

Gil-Galad is more constant than Finduilas, constant unto death. He has no spouse to hold in troth. Instead, he weds kingdoms of Elves and kingdoms of Men; he is the midwife and chaplain of the Last Alliance. Gil-Galad wears the crown of the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth for a hundred generations of Men, longer than all his antecedents put together. He is a good king, a just king, true to his allies and his friends.

In the end, he is true to those who are not true to him. He dies beneath the searing hand of Sauron, but he cannot be so very angry, after all.

No one is reborn from him on that side of the Sea. Where he dwells, none can say.

–

In the Halls of Mandos and the House of Nienna, there is healing for all wounds of the spirit and body.

Finduilas died of a spear wound that pained Gil-Galad all his life. Finduilas died of a broken heart. Finduilas vanished beneath the king, her blood staining the haft of his spear. But Finduilas is not a wound, neither of the spirit nor the body.

Neither is Gil-Galad.

For the second time, someone new walks out of a tomb — for Mandos’ halls are sepulchers. Their hair is cropped close to the skull at the sides, glinting silver, while gold shines from the longer locks at the crown of their head, precluding the need for any other circlet.

The person who steps onto the green mound before the doors of the Halls needs a name; for the one bestowed at birth is lost and disavowed, and the one granted to the king is gone with kingdom and crown.

The path to the friends and family who wait is long. Gold and silver in the sun, the healed one begins to walk, feeling the lack of a staff somewhat, but singing in a low, pleasant voice. Down the path, they are heard.