Sweet Water and Gold by Elleth

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Chapter 1

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Visitors are coming, the bird fluted. They are close, they are close, they are close. Go go go go go go.

The brambles hardly shuddered when the nightingale alighted on the bush. It flitted away again when Nellas put aside the flower-wreath she had been weaving and climbed to her feet. Her company were already gathering their packs, aware that she had received a message that meant moving on. Lhingand, the marchwardens' leader, gave her an inquisitive look.

"Visitors," explained Nellas. "Close by." It did not happen often that anybody entered the Girdle unannounced, and Nellas regretted having to leave the clearing. It was a friendly place as the borders went, full of dappled yellow sunlight through a copse of oaks by a brook – but perhaps, she thought, the nightingale had been so urgent for a reason; perhaps Beleg had found Túrin and moved him to return.

"Oh please, please," she said, picking her bow and bedroll from the grass. Annuidh's dark brows crinkled, and although Nellas quailed every time that happened, she couldn't blame the other woman. She had served long and faithfully, often in the northern parts of the Girdle rather than this far south in Nivrim, and she had seen a string of losses that would leave anybody with a hardened heart. Beleg had been the latest and most grievous.

"Just think," Nellas said to her, beaming, and Annuidh finally gave her a half-smile in return. She and Beleg had been close friends before he had vanished, and even though Annuidh had before admitted that she did not dare hope for his return, sometimes she did not seem to mind indulging Nellas. Or perhaps she held a little bit of hope after all.

There was another nightingale's trill, further off in the forest, harder to understand both for the little bird's urgency and the distance. West, west, west, go go go go go go, quick!

"Quickly," Nellas said, already beginning to ascend the closest oak, for the brook ran wide and marshy, and the nearest crossing lay leagues to the north, but the tree's limbs stretched far across the water and entwined with those of the trees on the other shore.

"Wait up, marten!" Lhingand was laughing, and the rest of the company joined in. She felt blood rush hot into her face, but this was one of the talents none of the others could hope to match – they all were good climbers, but they all came from Menegroth and were at home among the roots of trees more than they were in their boughs. And she liked the nickname.

They moved west as swiftly as the trees permitted, and before long the mists and snares of the Girdle were about them, forcing the party to slow and tread with care, lest they themselves should become emmeshed and lose their way. The light was dimming swiftly towards evening when Lhingand, who had taken the lead of the group, signalled for them all to stop. Ahead beneath the branching arms of a mighty oak, half-hidden in the long grass, lay two women - mortal women - sleeping beside the ashes of a campfire in what seemed to be utter exhaustion. They were not Túrin and Beleg, but Nellas thought her heart must stop.

"A flower in the grey North," she heard herself say, speaking words from a messenger's mouth eagerly repeated by Túrin in his boyhood. Did you hear, Nellas? And my mother's lot lightened! Perhaps they shall feel strong enough for the way here soon!

Túrin was gone, but they had come at last.

* * *

"We would not have made the journey even this far, if not for our kinswoman, the lady Aerin – ever our alms-bearer at need even at peril to herself. But I was too young, we were too poor to dare it, the winters too evil, the Easterlings pressing too close, the passes too perilous, so we tarried, and gathered stores with her help, but oh - I am glad to be gone! And glad to be found!" Niënor, sitting against the oak, gestured widely, and tore another chunk from the honey-loaf that Lhingand had offered them to regain strength enough to continue. Morwen had declined food and handed the loaf to her daughter, but gratefully accepted a water-skin, and by the looks of her – the lines of her face severe and hungry – this had been the case often despite their relative's support, and coming down Teiglin they had lost their way and wandered far along the western marches of the Girdle until their provisions were spent.

Nellas' eyes lingered on Niënor. She looked little like her brother, golden where Túrin had been dark, and there was a lightness on her where her brother had laboured under some gravity bearing him down, and briefly she wondered if this might not be the lost sister of his childhood, if this might not be Lalaith, or whom Lalaith might have become.

Niënor winked at her. "You up there, you were staring," she said. "Am I so strange?"

Nellas found herself grinning in return, perched on a branch above Niënor. The feeling it gave her – some unexpected, giddy tickle of joy – made her want to vanish higher into the boughs where nobody but the birds would see her behave this way – but birds carried news as swift as they flew. Perhaps rather not hide among them. "I only ever heard of you in messages, and Túrin and I long wondered about you when he was young," she said instead.

"You know my brother?!" Niënor's voice was a cry of delight. She was ill-named, Nellas thought, and at her joy even Morwen lifted her gaze.

"We were companions in his boyhood," she said. "The Queen bid me watch over him and we became very fast friends, before he was -" Lhingand cleared his throat and gave her a warning look.

"Nellas. Stay your tidings, for now. The King will command you to speak them, if they ought to be spoken," Lhingand said. Nellas bit her tongue, to hold it one way or the other – she knew that if he turned his back, she would want to stick it out, and usually nobody would mind, but they had guests now, and it didn't befit either him, or her.

When she looked down again, Morwen had returned to quiet conversation with Annuidh – they seemed much akin in heart – and Lhingand was speaking to his cousin Lalphir, but Niënor was doing just the thing Nellas had been thinking of doing. Her tongue was long and pink and breadcrumbs still clung to it when she stuck it out at Lhingand's back, and the image was so comical that rather than burst out laughing and risk Niënor's discovery, Nellas raced up the tree into the canopy and flattened herself against the bole, muffling peals of laughter against the bark, rough and pitted underneath her lips. Let the birds gossip!

There came a rustle, and the heavy breath, the scrambling, laborious climbing that Nellas knew no Elves – not even the ones from Menegroth – would allow themselves. Niënor was coming after her, although this high up the branches bent precariously under her weight.

"I could see that you wanted to do that. Well, someone had to. Dour as a Dwarf, your commander." Mischief glinted in Niënor's eyes in a way that it never had in Túrin's, even though he had been far younger, and Niënor was nearly a woman grown, but Nellas supposed that she hadn't had much in a way of childhood and now, knowing she was safe, would gladly linger in the youth she deserved to have.

"Have you ever even seen a Dwarf?"

Niënor shook her head, and Nellas again failed to stifle the rush of laughter.

* * *

Flower-flower-flower-fair. She she she she is!

Nellas bit her lip. The nightingale was not the same that had brought the tidings of Morwen and Niënor's arrival, and indeed there was something about the small bird flitting like a grey mouse among the branches of the evening forest – perhaps the cadence of its voice – that set her hair on end, and she rubbed both hands up and down her arms. One of the Queen's messenger birds.

"Yes. A flower in the grey North, that is what the messengers said, and they spoke true." Nellas shoved some fallen leaves aside with her foot, and gestured to the nightingale, watching as the bird hopped to pick the stirred-up insects. "Why are you telling me now that she went to live at court?" There was not a little bitterness in her voice. It was hard to forget the rush of joy first seeing her, hard to forget how Niënor had lingered by her on the inward journey, always seeming to want to speak, but Lhingand had been watching them with sharp grey eyes and nipped any conversation in the bud.

Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait-waits.

"She is waiting for me? Then tell her that she will need to come to me. I went into Menegroth only because Túrin and Saeros could not speak for themselves. Niënor can. I am returning to the borders soon, but before that I will be in my house by Esgalduin if she wants to find me."

The bird bobbed its head forward and spread its tailfeathers. A glint of the setting sun through the trees lit it in a peculiar red, and it was gone in an instant, leaving only the branch bouncing in its wake. For a moment Nellas considered chasing after it, to question it further, but not even she could fly through the branches quick enough to keep pace with the winged messenger. If it had wanted her to follow, the Queen would have told her so.

Nellas shuffled a foot on the ground. If Niënor did mean to seek her, then she'd best be where she had claimed to be. And in truth she was looking forward to it.

* * *

Niënor came after sunset. Nellas, from her perch on the roof where she had been watching the rising stars and humming to herself to calm her nerves, heard her step from a far while off, hurried and breathless. She came to stand before the beech that harboured Nellas' house – itself little more than a talan open to the sky with adjustable screens against the wind and a roofed chamber around the trunk of the tree to shelter her in winter. Niënor lingered on ground, her white dress shining in the dusk. For a moment, perhaps, she was looking for a ladder and finding none, and then began to climb the tree on her own. Nellas heard its leaves rustle in surprise to find a mortal in its boughs.

"Nellas? Is anyone here?"

"I am here, higher. On the roof!"

A shuffle, and Niënor's head peeked over the edge, grave-eyed, and her mouth drawn into a thin line, an age away from the careless young woman Nellas had met in the Girdle.

"You are looking much like your brother tonight. He had such grim moods, often." Nellas reached out a hand to help Niënor up, and she sat on the edge, her back turned.

"My mother and I stood fast together. Always. We had to, in face of the life that we lived in Dor-lómin, and if not for her and the lady Aerin, and the paths to Doriath opening, I would be the wife of a man named Lorgan of the Easterlings now. It would have eased my mother's lot and that of the thrall-folk, and it might have given me the way to learn much enemy counsel, but rather than that, we ran towards the promise of my brother, and now she grieves that he is not here."

"No, he is not here. But you are safe within the Girdle, and the Queen allowed you to stay, didn't she?"

"Yes, she did us that honour. But now my mother grieves, and I have been told that you often followed his steps, watching over him unseen at the Queen's bidding even when you no longer walked together. She told me that you testified in his favour when..." Niënor sighed. "Will you tell me of him so I can lighten my mother's mood?"

"There is very much I can say, but very little of it will make a grand tale, and less a happy one."

"Then just tell me something!" Niënor's voice rose. "My mother sits in her chambers and pretends that she is not mourning him although all with eyes can see that it is so!"

Nellas came to sit beside her, dangling her legs over the edge, and ventured, "You do not need to feel guilty for not mourning him. Nor angry."

"I am not." Niënor kept her head turned away with an air of careful avoidance, so that her hair fell forward and obscured her features, but there was a gulp in her breath that Nellas had heard in her little brother's voice when he had lost his footing in an unkind tree and fell hard upon his arm.

"Then you are hurt?"

"How dare he not be here?!" Niënor cried. "My mother would have been so glad to see him! I do not miss him – how should I miss him, without knowing him? But I would have been glad to know him! Labadal, I must have begged him for tales of my brother a thousand, thousand times, and he ever told me what a great heart Túrin had."

"He had a great heart. But a great heart means many things, being great in love, and great in wrath, and great in weeping, but like your mother and my friend Annuidh he was reluctant to share it openly. Leaving your Dor-lómin had wounded him deeply, and your mother's delay more so. And now you come to me to help set aright a wound that he inflicted. I do not know how. We have not found him, and the world is wide."

Niënor's silence endured, only her breath giving away the struggle she was fighting, and Nellas sat beside her, waiting. There was time. Niënor would speak, or aught else, when it was right, and at last, when the stars hung bright overhead and the voice of the river was almost asleep, she sighed and leaned into Nellas' arms, her body growing cooler in the night's chill.

Nellas held her until she slept.

* * *

Lhingand's warm breath stood in a white cloud before his face. Autumn was waning fast, and the frosty grass crunched under his boots as he approached the tree and peered at Nellas from the ground. She had fled high into a pine and perched on the thinnest branches that would still hold her, where he, being heavier, had no way to follow. The tree's resin clung to her fingers and its needles prickled on her skin.

"I will not go. I cannot go. It was my purpose to go with the marchwardens for a while, but having fulfilled it my new purpose is here with Niënor."

"Little more than a month with the girl and there are murmurs already that it is not a purpose you have found, but a love, Nellas – if you truly love Niënor, come back to the borders with us and do not return here. You yourself know best how deeply Túrin hurt you; it will be the same again one way or the other. Do not shirk your duties; they will spare you much pain, for she will not linger here long. Like Beren she is mortal, and like Lúthien you will only come to grief. "

"Does one rule out the other, love – and purpose? I am not Lúthien, and will only come to Mourning! Leave me, Lhingand, and trust me. You are a dear friend and you know that my heart is not easily fooled. I do not want to part in anger!" But, Nellas thought, although she held her tongue after her outburst, perhaps it was too late for that. Her stomach felt like it was filled with the icy water of Esgalduin now on the brink of winter. That the marchwardens had lingered so long had been a surprise in itself, and she wondered if it hadn't been the Queen's staying hand.

"It is going to be a fell winter out," he said. "Will you at least wish us well?"

"I do wish you well."

Lhingand waited for another moment, perhaps hoping that she would change her mind after all, but Nellas made no move to come from the tree. "You will be sorely missed, Nellas. Should you decide to find us, you will find us in Nivrim's winter lodge."

Finally, he departed, and by the time he had vanished into the trees, Nellas caught a glimpse of gold from the corner of her eye, an unmistakeable shade even among the autumn colours of the forest. Crouched among a bed of yellowed eagle-fern not a far distance away was Niënor stirring from her hiding place, and a nightingale flitted about her.

She rose and ran, and before Nellas had descended the pine, the bird was by her, fluttering and fluting. Go go go go go go. She dropped the last distance to the ground, landed lightly, and took off after Niënor, not caring that the forest tore at her bare feet.

They were past Hírilorn and in sight of the bridge by the time Nellas caught up with her, and seeking only to stay her with a touch to her shoulder, Nellas instead found Niënor turning to fling herself into her arms with a cry, where she stood, shivering.

"Forgive me, I do not know why I ran. I heard too much that was not intended for my mortal ears."

"You heard all that you must hear, I think. All things in this forest happen for a reason."

Niënor pulled back to look in Nellas' face."'Mourning', you said. Perhaps my mother was wiser than she knew, giving me my name with more reason than she purposed. Some say that the women of the House of Bëor have a sight. My mother may – she is wiser than she allows to show clearly; the cries of witch-wife and worse have made her cautious, and it may well be that that is why she still lives. Why we still live."

"That is wise in itself," said Nellas. "And some among us do have the same sight. I do not know if I do, but I do not need any sight to know my heart, and some of yours. As soon as we met it was plain to see, short as though our time together has been yet."

"And it will always be short for you, won't it?" asked Niënor bitterly. "Mourning daughter of Morwen, indeed. Would that I had been named something different."

"Do you not have a custom from the Goldin, to choose a new name when it befits, or accept one as a gift or token of love? Túrin told me this once, long ago." When Niënor nodded cautiously, Nellas continued, with a smile, "Then I will give you one, when I find the right one."

* * *

Winter came blue and silent, apart from the winds through the forest, but soon a track in the snow led from the gates of Menegroth to Nellas' house. The snow quickly hardened into ice under their footprints, while Niënor and Nellas warmed their frozen hands, held entwined by a fire, and they pulled clumps of ice from each others' hair, remnants of their laughing fights in the snow.

Niënor leaned closer, wrapping her arms tighter around Nellas under the blanket she had brought as gift, woven herself in those evenings when she had chosen to remain in Menegroth with Morwen. It fit around them both easily as long as they lay close together. The day they had spent half playing, half with the woodcraft that Niënor said she was hoping to learn and that Nellas was eager to teach, following the tracks of deer through the snow, guessing at their speed and purpose and number.

Nellas took another deep draught of her warm honey-brew, and by the time the light dwindled she gave in to drowsiness, trusting Niënor would still be with her when she woke. But feeling a soft touch to her face she opened one eye.

"Your lips are sweet," said Niënor, pulling back from the kiss with high colour flushed in her cheeks and her eyes a little glazed from the drink. In the light of the fire, she glowed. Nellas smiled and burrowed closer, relishing the softness of her skin.

* * *

"But I do not need high purpose, and if loving you is not enough of one then I do not know what is," Niënor said. The paper crinkled in her hand, a missive from Lhingand reminding Nellas of her duties, and requesting aid. She dropped it from the house into the host of spring-flowers that carpeted the ground in blooms around the still-bare beech, and Nellas did not move to pick it up from among the wood anemones and golden eranthis.

"It is more than enough," Nellas said. "Remember - before he left, Lhingand told me that we were not Beren and Lúthien, but I do not think we need to be. Small deeds or purposes are not any less worthy than the great ones. I will report to the Queen to let her decide, but I think she will let me stay, even if all others frown. I do not care."

"I will stand with you," said Niënor, rising to clasp Nellas' hand. "And I certainly would not frown to see you stay. Even though we may keep company with Queen Melian and the ladies of court, Menegroth is not my home and will not be. Nandwen and Mírian are kind enough, and the Lady Galadriel has done much to make us feel welcome, but it is with my mother that my home is, not here – and she still is bitter about Túrin's absence, her moods are often dark – there are times I believe she is unhappy that I am so often with you, 'casting in my lot with the Elves' as she puts it. I... I cannot blame her, but I am Niënor now more than ever, apart from the times I come to be with you. Sometimes I do not want to carry the burden of it all; not my sister's death, and not father's captivity as my mother believes, and not Túrin's vanishing. I know what she did for me, and that she sacrificed much to keep me safe. But I am not only that. I am not only my mother's grief. Lalaith, you said Túrin told you, was like a flower in the meadows, but I was kept gated in the garth and even the servants we still had were permitted to rove more freely than I! And all flowers growing there were trod underfoot over soon or long."

"There are flowers in the forest, too," said Nellas, already descending the boughs of the tree. "Even yellow ones. And they bloom the year round, apart from winter, and I will show you all of them, if you will come with me?"

* * *

After much consideration, the Queen had permitted Nellas to be released from duty, to return to her life as it had been before, warding the creatures of the wood rather than the borders. The forest swelled with birdsong as the year rolled on, and foremost of all the nightingales in a constant choir. Let the birds gossip, indeed.

Nellas was making good the promise she had given in early spring, and guided Niënor, clad in a shift of sunlight-yellow silk, through the forest to golden anemones, a clearing of daffodils nodding their heads in the warming wind, the three-leafed suckling clover that crept across the ground with its myriad tiny yellow blooms. In summer they came to a stretch of forest razed by fire that harboured slender candles of melilot whose honey-fragrance would grow sweeter when they withered. Niënor looked at Nellas strangely when she explained it, but when Nellas' swift fingers wove a wreath of it to set on her hair, she did not complain.

"Do you often do this?" Niënor asked, "Simply whiling away a season or more just wandering?"

Nellas looked at her quizzically. "Some settled as I did, but wandering is my family's way, and that of many others of Denithor's people who came to dwell here. They wander the forest without any one abode, and I did the same until your brother's coming."

"Would that I had been born an Elf," Niënor said with a soft smile. "I am glad you settled, or we might never have met, but wandering with no heed for danger, I would not mind doing so all my life. When the Edain wandered, it only ever was to flee."

Nellas sighed. "But there are dangers in the forest as well. We have not met them, because I did not guide you to them, but at times the darkness from the north stretches forth into the forest and rouses trees that will become unkind to all that meet them, and the unwary especially. The stags we saw the past night may trample you, the fox may bite... even some plants may do you harm. The berries of Arum's Staff taste sweet, but you would pay dearly for eating them..."

"... and still, the forest invites such wishes for elvishness. There are wonders here that I would not have dreamt of in Dor-lómin, there is you – that is reason enough to wish."

Nellas squeezed Niënor's hand, her warm skin, and the swift pulse rushing away to its end beneath – and bounded to her feet with the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. Niënor's eyes, blue in this light and growing wide, followed Nellas' restless movements. She forced herself to breathe evenly, not let Niënor see her grief, too. Her lover had enough grief to carry already. Love had its purpose. They had their purpose. It was too early to spoil their time by grieving.

"We should go on. There is much I want to show you – the forest is wide, and time is short."

"It is months until winter, Nellas," Niënor laughed. "Even the summer solstice is weeks away, I think, although I lost count a while ago."

"That is not long. Niënor – please?"

"Sometimes you are strange – but how can I say no when you plead with me like this?" Niënor's eyes continued to linger, but if she understood Nellas' troubles, she said nothing of them, and Nellas secretly was grateful, soon reaching for Niënor's hand again when they wandered on.

* * *

Stonecrop-flowers carpeted the hills about Menegroth like a sky full of suns. Yellow nettles hid tiny droplets of nectar to suck out, and twoflower violets kept to the shades of southern Region, where Nellas and Niënor rested, leaning on each other and sharing a meal. Niënor brushed crumbs of waybread off her hands, and pointed down a slope into the distance, to a brook flowing broad and sluggish toward Sirion in the sunlight, with reeds and blooming yellow carpets along its banks.

"What is that flower?" asked Niënor. "I do not think we have seen it before."

"No, we have not. That is... it is your name, I think," Nellas said and smiled to herself, leaning in to leave a gentle kiss on Niënor's cheek. "It fits you, but wait until you see."

* * *

"Ninglor," said Nellas. "Water-gold. Would you like the name?" They were wading through the shallow regions of the brook, and dragonflies whirred about them in a cloud of flashing colours. Further off among the beeches and holly-trees on the other bank, standing tall and silver-stemmed as canvas for the ninglyr everywhere, a nightingale was singing. "Sweet water rather than tears of mourning, and gold for your hair."

Niënor did not answer. She was standing in deep thought among the blooms, still crowned with the melilot-wreath and hitching the skirt she wore above her knees.

"Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, I think would like to be Ninglor to you." Then, with a jubilant cry, she ran through the water toward Nellas, and with a splash they both went down, laughing. When they came back up for air, the water had plastered Niënor's hair to her head so that it lay like a smooth golden coif around her, her dress clung to her body, and the wreath was floating away downstream. Nellas barely sputtered out, laughing through a mouthful of loamy water, "Ninglor!", and already Niënor was lunging after the wreath with a laugh of her own.

Nellas splashed an armful of water after her, and pounced.

"Ah! But do not think I will ever let go of this!" Niënor cried and laid the wreath, now trailing tattered blooms, on the bank before wading back into the deeper water where Nellas waited, ready to spring again. "But Ninglor, not Melilot, I will be, to you only. Mine aren't your burdens to bear. They are no one's when I'm with you, if you let them go. That is why you acted so strangely, is it not? But we can shed all that for a while. I will be your Ninglor."

* * *

They returned to Nellas' house when the nights grew chill again, and Niënor, with her skin burnished golden from the summer sun, seemed to take away the light from the wood when she went into Menegroth to announce her return. The leaves seemed to hang lank and browning, and even Nellas' beech appeared sad and unwelcoming, the house deserted.

Only when Niënor emerged again several days later, the weather seemed to improve and the light to return, leaving the forest standing in autumn-gold. She was carrying a small bundle wrapped in ornate cloth that she pressed into Nellas' hands with a bright smile. Within, when Nellas sat and unwrapped it, was a box of golden wood, and on its lid, inlaid with gold leaf, a ninglor in flower.

"A gift for you. I made it myself; I told you once, Labadal taught me to whittle wood when I was young, but I could not make it while we were in the forest, with you seeing. It was meant to be a surprise."

"It is surprising. And it is beautiful – but you did not need to give me anything."

Niënor smiled and shook her head. "You spent all spring and summer wandering with me. It was the least I could give you in turn. Open it."

Inside the box lay a pendant, round and likewise golden, but inlaid with clear crystal – and within it, a ninglor petal, framed by golden hair.

"You would have me have this, too?" Nellas said, astonished. Her heart was beating high in her throat and her face heated; undoubtedly she'd be shining like a brand among the autumn leaves. Niënor laughed and gathered Nellas into her arms to kiss her.

"I would have you have this. I commissioned it off one of the dwarven craftsmen currently plying their trade in Menegroth, but the idea was mine, after I spoke with Queen Melian and learned ninglyr stand for light, and for constancy: She said that once they grow roots in one spot, they will remain. I would be that constant to you, as long as I may. I know you also wish it, and... it may in the very end be more than merely a fruitless hope."

Nellas smiled, although her throat felt tight with something unnameable. "It's a long time until the end."

Epilogue

The song of the nightingale transformed itself, growing deeper, richer, fuller and into true words, and then it was Melian, stripped of her regalia and clad only in a grey feather-cape, coming from the forest toward Nellas. Around Melian was – had always been – a certain light, but even in the cloudless night of Doriath in spring, when the skies hung scattered with a riot of stars, the dark seemed all the deeper outside that shine.

"Morwen is gone and Niënor intends to follow her mother? Why hasn't she told me?" asked Nellas, rocking on the balls of her feet.

"I know you wish to stay her, child. Do you not think I would have wished to stay my daughter, and yet instead let her pass through the Girdle safely?" A sorrow lay on Melian's face, and her eyes looked beyond ordinary sight. "And there are Powers upon Niënor greater than me. The one in the North I can strive with, at least here in my own realm, but even then cannot entirely contain – remember how Túrin came to grief. This is the reason I had such a close eye upon you these past years, and permitted you such freedoms. Love lived and given freely ever is the truest weapon against the Dark, but it is not always enough, and even that may be turned to evil purpose."

Nellas' throat tightened, and the words came out painfully, hoarse. "I remember. There was an evil will on Saeros that day, and on Túrin too, even though he acted for love of his mother. But they were both hapless in truth. So the King said in his judgement."

"And often change is brought by the simplest things, such as a maiden in a tree minding her own true heart most of all. Once, and perhaps again. But remember, Niënor's going into doubt and danger may bring both grief and joy, and more beyond it that even my eyes cannot see."

"But is that her own will, or is there something else that drives, her, too?" Something within Nellas screamed in protest at the thought. It cannot have her, not my Niënor, not my Ninglor, not her also, not yet! she wanted to yell in the Queen's face, but her tongue lay numb in her mouth, and suddenly Melian's eyes were hard as stars with grief and pity.

"Be that as it may, Thingol is gathering marchwardens to follow Morwen come morning. Mablung will lead them, but there will be some of your old company with them. Niënor would be safer in their presence, but not welcome."

The glimmer in those star-like eyes sent a searing flash through Nellas' mind. Again she felt a scream rising in her; not grief this time, but the oddest twist of joy that sent her heart racing and yet clenched her stomach painfully.

"Please, my lady, please, will you at least send Ningl- Niënor to me for a farewell?"

Melian smiled sadly at Nellas, and was gone in a flutter of grey shadow.

* * *

"You are taller than I am. You must go in the back and keep your cloak about you and your hair covered, or they will see it is not your own gear. Reveal yourself only when it is time to bring her back, I think."

"I will," said Niënor. "I have come when you bid me, and I will come to you again as soon as I have convinced my mother to return."

Nellas bit her lip and avoided Niënor's eyes, her fingers hooking the fastenings of the marchwarden's garment that she had not worn since Niënor's coming. It fitted Niënor ill, the mail chafing and the grey fabric straining over her breasts and hips, but it would have to do. It would only be for a short time. Nellas, at last strapping a belt over Niënor's tabard, swallowed hard. Her chest felt constrained by some iron grip, cold fingers reaching even for her heart.

Her own hands shook and were clumsy. The leather strap slipped from the buckle and she hurriedly redid it. Niënor looked on, biting her lips.

"You are pale. Are you well? Nellas?"

"I am well. I only worry for you going beyond the borders, but if you must, even in secrecy, then I will at least see to your safety as much as I can."

"My mother willing, we will not go far. How would I ever want to leave you for long? But... I cannot let her go without at least attempting to move her to return. Or see her folly to the end if she insists to seek my brother after all."

"I know you would not be parted from me, not by choice. You are as you told me once – of the House of Hador: Quick to wrath and laughter, fierce in battle, generous to friend and to foe, swift in resolve, fast in loyalty, joyous in heart. And blood ties are not cut so easily. I do not know why, but I think you will find him."

"He will no longer be at Nargothrond. And you remember the qualities of the House of Hador," said Niënor. "And since you do, how do you doubt that I will return?"

"I do not doubt your heart, Ninglor." Nellas rose to tiptoes to kiss her. "Or else I would not have given you this gear, even though a gift was long since due. Will you take it as my bride-gift? I ought to have paid it when there was better chance, but I have nothing better to offer."

"I will. I do. I had long since hoped for you to pay it, but I was not sure if you meant to, and I was happy enough without it." She touched the pendant, on a leather band around Nellas' neck." Will consider this my bride-gift to you, then, too?"

"I have done that for a long time, although I was too shy to speak it," Nellas said, fastened the warden's cloak around Niënor's throat with the silver oak-and-acorn clasp of Nivrim, and pulled the hood up, hiding her bright hair.

"There, a true marchwarden of Nivrim. Go now, quick, unless you want to delay past their departure. Be careful. And remember, oaks are for endurance and constancy, too."

Niënor went swiftly, speeding away into the forest. Nellas sat and gathered Niënor's blanket to herself. There was a flutter of wings, and a nightingale perched on the platform, watching Nellas from dark eyes.

Gone, the nightingale said sadly, only once.

Nellas clenched her hands around the pendant, and hoped.

---

Chapter End Notes

The quote "a flower in the grey North" and the moniker "witch-wife" for Morwen have been taken from the Children of Húrin, and the description of the House of Hador can be found in the Later Quenta Silmarillion in HoMe XI, The War of the Jewels.

Nivrim: A region in southwestern Doriath, west of Sirion, notable for its oak-trees.

Nellas' talan with the sliding screens is based on the description of them given in the Lothlórien chapters in LotR.

Goldin: Doriathren word for the Noldor.

"melilot whose honey-fragrance would grow sweeter when they withered": Melilot actually does that. It also seems that Tolkien himself was going for the same symbolism; Melilot was the name of Thingol's daughter in early versions of the Lay of Leithian, and I may have found the shout-out hard to resist. All other flowers listed in the fic also exist in central Europe, and could conceivably grow in different environments that Doriath might offer. "Yellow Nettle" refers to a plant with the common English name, Yellow Archangel, as such not really fitting into Middle-earth (and "Yellow Vala" sounds quite stupid), so I went for a descriptive name instead.

Arum's Staff is simply the plant known as Arum, but considering that this is also a Sindarin name of Oromë, it seemed to fit to add something to it, so I took inspiration from the German name Aronstab, also containing the element for 'staff". It is highly poisonous.

Denithor: The Doriathrin name of Denethor according to the Lhammas.

Ninglor: literally "water-gold", a Sindarin name for the Yellow Iris, and one of the few existing flowers having an Elvish name. The significances of constancy and light are derived from existing symbolic/heraldic traditions concerning the same flower.