Winterlights by Elleth

Turuhalmë Garland

Ficlets from here on in are for the 2014 run of Femslash Yuletide.

Prompt #1: Trimming the Tree: Aerin visits Morwen and Niënor, bearing both gifts and demands.

Through Morwen’s broken garth-fence and past the red-berried holly bush, Aerin comes in thick, green, fur-lined wool, and on a leather string she pulls a sled piled high with food and firewood. While she shakes the snow off her shoulders and knocks, Morwen sits by the window and debates - let her in and have some precious heat escape, or send her and her charity gifts away - but Niënor flies for the door and yanks it open. A gust of wind sweeps in, bearing snowflakes all the way into the hall.

Morwen draws the green cloth shawl closer around her shoulders. That, too, is a gift of Aerin’s, threadbare after five years of nigh-constant wear. She rises eventually, when the runners of the sled scratch over the wooden floor, despite the ache work and weather put in her bones, and sits Aerin into the guest-chair by the hearth with little ceremony except the ordinary, the curt question: “How much time?”

For what they have together is precious, and Morwen rations it the same way she rations all of Aerin’s gifts, as much as it rankles to rely on them. Aerin, with her gold-red hair, always brings some warmth with her that Morwen, despite her grief and widowhood, has begun to crave.

"Plenty," Aerin says, touching frozen fingers to Morwen’s cheek. "Lorgan summoned Brodda and his band of vultures to a feast and council. I feigned an illness, and he knows that even if I lied, running in winter won’t get me far, so he let me stay. We have three days."

Morwen doesn’t smile, but she breathes on Aerin’s fingers to warm them, and sees Aerin’s mien relax, mirroring her own. Shifting Niënor - who has since pilfered an apple from Aerin’s load of gifts and crams it against her mouth with both hands - up onto her hip, she says, “Aerin… you are of course welcome to stay here if you wish, for that time.”

"Only," Aerin says with a look at Niënor, "if we teach her how to trim the holly and weave a Turuhalmë garland."

"We won’t have wood for the log-drawing; there will be no need for decorations," Morwen objects. "She will sting herself."

"Niënor ought to learn our traditions, and her fingers will heal," Aerin says. "I will see to the log."

Morwen has never been one for the festivities. They have always been Húrin’s proclivity, but for the sake of their children she relented while times were good, before the war. Now, with Lalaith in the cold earth and Túrin gone, and Niënor, unhappy last-born, used to nothing except the silent observance of the longest night, she’s reluctant to allow something brighter, for fear that that, too, will be taken away.

She knows that Aerin knows this, also, that her condition would be futile if Morwen refused to let Aerin remain, refused to let her warm body sleep in Húrin’s place as so seldom happens, refused a comfort for herself that is both undeserved and unfaithful.

Aerin also knows that Morwen is worn thin, and as reluctant to refuse as she is to accept.

"Very well," Morwen says, relenting after a long pause, and presses her lips to Aerin’s warming fingers, closing her eyes.