Our Share of Night to Bear by Elleth

The last of the torchbearers vanished around a sharp bend of the cobblestone road between the narrow buildings, leaving an afterglow of fading, lurid light and whiffs of smoke behind them. The square with the dry fountain in the Weavers’ Quarter was plunged back into darkness, and in the moveless air the din of the passing host, the footsteps and clamour of voices, faded quickly. Almost it seemed like the strange murk that had wafted from the plain into the lower reaches of Tirion, licked them up and swallowed them.

The children that crowded by the fountain stood still, and the black air wrapped around them like a stifling cocoon.

The sounds that remained, echoing off the stone buildings that ringed the plaza, were heavy breathing and dry sobs that spoke of incomprehension more than any other emotion. The group seemed frozen in the aftermath of what had just transpired.

“Are Mother and Father truly gone?” a girl finally asked, the youngest of the remaining group who was able to speak, and she dug little, soft nails into the back of her sisters hand. Her older sister cursed, and as if that had broken the spell of silence on the place, the infant in her arms began to scream, a high, hungry wail. Calassë’s face, which had been hardened in angry resolve before, crumpled. She slumped down heavily onto the lip of the fountain next to the figure of a vine-wrapped woman gazing into the empty basin, and undid her shirt, slipping a nipple into the infant’s mouth the way she had seen her mother do it when she had still been there to nurse him. The noises out of the bundle of blankets quieted into the occasional greedy whimper, but she herself choked down a noise of pain when his gums clamped down and he began to suck, but no milk came.

“Írimellë,” she said to her sister, and the name fell flat, clattering like a shard of glass onto the stones. “They’re gone to chase the light. But they left you with me to look after you, and we’ll be fine until they come back. All of us.”

“When are Mother and Father coming back?”

“I said we’ll be fine. They’ll also be fine!” The words came out snapped, and Írimellë began sniffling again.

“You know there’s things in the dark that’ll get you if you make a racket! Stop crying!”

Írimellë tore her hand free and started down the road the host had taken, but her sister, with longer legs and longer steps, caught her in a matter of moments and grabbed the struggling girl fast around her wrist to try and drag her back toward the fountain. Írimellë screamed once, a high-pitched noise that didn’t form any words, and wedged her feet in between the cracks of the cobbles. Then she went limp, all the fight gone out of her, and dropped like a ragdoll when her sister let her go.

No one else spoke, but all twelve pairs of eyes were on the spectacle that Írimellë and Calassë presented, and slowly the remaining children crowded closer. No one else tried to follow the host. Many of them were familiar faces in the Weavers’ Quarter who had been born and raised there, but some had come running along the rabble host that had swept away their parents as it wound its way through Tirion like a swelling river and tore apart what it found in its way - families as much as storefronts, streetside shops and houses. Everyone, caught in some frenzy, had simply taken what seemed good to them, carrying off packs and bags and handfuls, tools, knives, swords, food, valuables - everything that had not been divided up already, everything they could get their hands on. Even wood slats had been torn off trellises along the walls, leaving ugly holes in the patterns, for makeshift weaponry or torches.

For a wild moment, Calassë herself thought to press the baby into someone else’s arms, leave Írimellë where she lay, and seize something useful out of the debris that littered the ground, broken glass and all, and do as her sister had wanted to. At least they had light. Or were going to have it.

Then she raised her eyes and looked at the other children. Their faces spelled out all of what she’d thought and felt since the Dark had come - terrified, angry, most of them looked hollow-cheeked and sleepless, though how much of that the gloom was, and how much had been there before she couldn’t say. Almost on impulse she drew Írimellë to her feet, and tucked the blankets closer around her brother against the chill in the air.

And as though her new responsibilities had been understood and accepted, it began to rain - thick, cold drops that burst on her skin and burned where they fell, and left a strange numbness in their wake where they ran down her skin. Calassë stood staring at her hand for a moment before her mind finally snapped back into thought.

Some of the children were whimpering, ducking their faces away from the rain.

They’d need shelter. And although many street-level windows where the host had passed were shattered, it was Lady Saminquirë’s house on the other side of the square that was easiest to get in; its windows yawned like mouths full of broken teeth with more darkness behind that Calassë was afraid to think about. But Lady Saminquirë had always had a sheltering hand for the Weavers, had even worked with Princess Írimë and spoken for them at the palace. And now that she was gone, Calassë hoped she’d not mind if someone else used her house when they so desperately needed it.

“There - inside,” Calassë said, pointing. She hurried over with her sister on her hand, lifted Írimellë over the splintered glass of Lady Saminquirë’s parlour window, passed her brother into the house, and then helped the others inside, last of all a girl nearly her own age who stood studying the drops on her tawny skin intently, before Calassë herself followed them.

Once they were out of the weather, she’d be able to think. Or sleep. Perhaps the light would have returned when she woke up, but somehow she didn’t believe that at all.

Chapter End Notes

The idea of the orphans of Tirions was what sparked this fic to begin with. It's doubtful whether the concept survived into Tolkien's later work, because even in the Book of Lost Tales I they are only mentioned briefly in parentheses. Describing the beginning exodus and leading up to Alqualondë, Tolkien writes:

Now having nigh as many maids and women as of men and boys (albeit many especially of the youngest children were left in Kor and Sirnumen [later: Formenos]) they were at a loss, and in this extremity, being distraught with sorrows and wildered in mind, the Noldoli did those deeds which afterwards they most bitterly rued [...].

Nerdanel weighed the hammer in her hand and slammed it home.

It was a heavy rock-pick; the wood of the handle had been worn smooth by constant use, but she had kept the head honed to split the marble blocks that were delivered to her workshop in order to break them down to size for her sculptures.

But now…

The marble splintered and flaked under the hammer’s edge. Fëanáro’s nose, or what remained of it, plummeted to the floor, and she ground the heel of her work-boot into it. Another strike, and one eye cracked. Again, and she tore a jagged gouge across his cheek. One of the intricate braids framing his face splintered. Again, and his right auricle chipped across the room, crashed into the window, and a starry web of cracks fractured from the impact.

At last, looking down, she found herself standing in the powdery debris of her husband’s ruined bust, her boots and the front of her frock covered in stone dust, some of it rising to tickle her nose. Finally, she also felt tears prick her eyes. Finally.

As though she had been waiting for the abating of noise from her daughter’s studio, her mother slid into the room. Nerdanel had only the vaguest recollection of being helped to her bed in the corner and being pressed into the pillows, or of her mother stoking the fire until it burned high and bright - for from the shelf across the room, her sons’ busts were staring at her. She thought of taking the hammer to them as well, and to her surprise found that it still was in her hand, her fingers clenched white around it. She could ruin Maitimo’s marble-smooth face, Makalaurë’s unkempt curls, Tyelkormo’s easy smile and Carnistir’s sardonic one, she could split Curufin’s face right from him as she had done with his father, shatter Ambarussa on the floor and cast Umbarto into the fireplace first of them all. Least of all, she could turn them away so their eyes were no longer staring at her, the glint of the firelight on glass an uncomfortable reminder of the way they had all held torches and gathered around their father; only Carnistir and Umbarto had exercised a little more restraint.

In the end they had still joined him, and Nerdanel had been forced to watch them sign their life away to a hopeless pursuit. The words of Aulë to Mahtan had still been tolling in her ears: It will in the end only lead Fëanáro and all your children to death.

The pillow under her cheek was wet, and new tears soaked it further. With a noise of disgust Nerdanel forced herself out of the bed, but before she had even crossed the room and reached for Umbarto’s bust, noise erupted in the house; someone hammering a rapid staccato on the front door with fists and feet, and then a storm of words made almost incomprehensible by weeping.

“ - took Tyelperinquar - gone from his crib while - my parents tried - hold me back -”

Nerdanel felt a new surge of bile rise. She had not seen Pelórë in the crowd before the gates, but her only daughter-in-law had the tendency to stand outside the center of attention, or blend into crowds despite her striking appearance, and neither had she seen Tyelperinquar or known what plans Curufin had put into motion to take him. What she knew was that he would have taken pains to conceal the child from anyone who might object.

Try as she might, she could not move herself to join her sister and mother to help comfort her daughter-in-law. She only needed to press down the door handle, but some impulse kept Nerdanel’s hand clenching, unable to move, and her feet rooted to the ground.

Outside her room, going by the babble of voices both Rainissë and her mother were still trying to calm Pelórë, whose words had failed entirely now, and her weeping had grown muffled in someone’s arms. Her mother, using the same gentling voice that she had always used on her children was talking intently over nothing of more consequence than trying to change Pelórë out of her wet clothes and wash the stains of the rain from her.

Nerdanel herself had barely reached her parents’ estate before it had begun to fall, and she hated to think of the long trail of people that must still be snaking through the city, for when she had turned from the gates after the messenger and begun the homeward ride toward the plains, hours ago, the folk of the city had still been preparing, and the city had been alight with torches like one of the beacon fires lighting the safest passes from Cuiviénen that Makalaurë had once wrought into her mind with his song.

But when the rain had begun beating down, it had done so incessantly.

The rain was not Fëanáro’s fault, this much even Nerdanel needed to admit, but if nothing else, driving them onward in it showed only the regard he claimed to have for the people he would be ruling. They merely were instruments to further whatever harm he could do. Whatever might befall Fëanáro, she felt not an ounce of grief for him - or so Nerdanel told herself - but the plight of the people, and of Pelórë, tore at her heart all the more.

She had long since turned back toward the ruined bust of Fëanáro. It was staring into the room with a faintly surprised expression rather than the customary arrogance of his features, but that recalled to mind only the times when he had looked on her behind closed doors and she had felt the most blessed in all the Blessed Realm. No more need for such reminders. She blinked away the prick of tears and hefted the hammer again to continue her work and reduce him fully to rubble, but her eyes strayed toward an untouched marble block on the workbench instead, intended for a commission she would now never have to finish.

Nonetheless she set to work: She was tired of weeping. The Weeper could do so in her stead.

Chapter End Notes

The implied confrontation of Nerdanel and Fëanor, as well as Aulë's counsel to Mahtan was taken directly from the Shibboleth of Fëanor, in particular the Legend of the Fate of Amrod in HoMe XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth. Not much is known about Curufin's wife; the notes to Of Dwarves and Men (likewise in HoMe XII) only state that his mother did not take part in the rebellion and remained with Finarfin's people in Valinor.

Calassë had been in Lady Saminquirë’s house once before, when she had just begun her apprenticeship with Mistress Lúlë, and the matron of the Weavers’ Quarter had been wanting to have a good look at her. She’d been pressed into one of the plush red armchairs that still littered the sitting room, and was served a cup of sweet red wine that rose right from her empty stomach into her head and loosened her tongue. After a while when all the questions had been asked and she had grown tired, the two women had left to conduct some other business, and she'd been allowed to stay in the long, low room beneath the roof where she had been content to watch the light of Laurelin slip over the wall paintings and gilded ornaments.

Now she dumped down a final pile of blankets and pillows she’d found in the maid’s chamber, as well as a little hand mirror inscribed with Lialmë’s name across the back, and looked around. Little of what she remembered had changed - if anything, Lady Saminquirë had come to enjoy opulence a lot more, and by some miracle the looters had not touched the upper floor of her house. Now the room lay awash in the light of candles and oil lamps set along the walls, and a low fire was crackling in the grate. She set her own candle down and turned around to find her little sister close behind her, clutching her own little candle-stub - close enough that she easily might have singed Calassë’s skirt.

“Írimellë, I told you twice already, keep a step back,” she said and crouched by her, prising the clump of wax from her tiny fingers. “I don’t want you lighting me on fire!”

Írimellë sniffled and stared at the floor. “It’s dark. I don’t like it when it’s dark.”

“I know,” Calassë said, ruffled her hair, and smoothed the dark locks down again. She hated the sense of helplessness that bubbled up in her throat. It felt too much like tears. “But as long as we stay in here, there is at least a little bit of light.” She didn’t like to think of the moment when their stash of candles and firewood ran out; for now the way they’d been set up - in front of mirrors and other reflecting things - made the room bright enough to blur the shadows into something soft-edged that felt cozy rather than threatening even with the dark staring in through the windows. Still, the other children had all huddled into armchairs or taken some of the blankets and pillows, and built themselves a nest on the floor where they’d curled up. None of them even looked glad that they at least had gotten out of the rain.

Írimellë piped up, “I want my candle,” but Calassë shook her head.

“Here,” she said, leaning Lialmë’s mirror against the wall and putting Írimellë’s and her own candle before it. “That way it is a little more light. And we should try and sleep a little now.”

* * *

Wrapped in a blanket on the floor, Calassë wasn’t sure how long she had slept when a boy’s voice made her bolt upright and straight into wakefulness, although it took her a moment to get her bearings.

Lady Saminquirë’s sitting room. Their parents gone, and -

“- Thamnis said the King is dead, that’s why everyone left, and the Princes, too!” The boy who was talking ducked his face into the cushions of the armchair he was sharing with Írimellë to hide the tears running down his cheeks freely.

“What’s dead?” Írimellë piped, before Calassë could stop or distract either of them.

“It means you’re stupid and a baby if you don’t know!”

“Am not!”

“Are too! Baby, baby! Pityinkë, lapsë, winimë!”

“Not!” After that, Írimellë began howling in wordless fury and hurled her body against the boy who had been taunting her. The armchair tipped over and spilled them to the floorboards with a dull crash, in a mess of tangled limbs. Her brother, woken by the noise, began to yammer, and someone else in the room started crying.

Írimellë, who had by some luck fallen on top, began pummeling against the boy with two tiny fists, and although he - one of the newcomers rather than one of the Weavers’ children - seemed older than Írimellë’s three years, he looked so slight and hollow-faced that Calassë feared her baby sister would snap him in half if she continued hitting him. She pulled Írimellë away by the neckline of her shirt and into her arms, where she quieted and clung on, scrambling into her sister’s embrace and pressing a tear-wet face against her arm.

“When Mother comes back I’ll tell her!”

Calassë didn’t have the heart to repeat that their parents weren’t coming back, instead she nudged the curled-up boy with her foot. He peeked between his fingers and sniffed, and then muttered, “Didn’t even hurt, she’s just a baby,” though his voice threatened to spill over into tears, and it didn’t take much effort to gather him into Calassë’s arms as well. Írimellë pushed against him once.

“Now. Stop fighting or next we know you’ll not just just knock over an armchair, but the candles as well, and that would be very bad,” she said, straining to make her voice sound adult and reasonable, the way Mistress Lúlë had taught her to deal with buyers who came into the shop when she was alone. “And you, you need to tell me who you are,” she said to the boy. “I haven’t seen your face here before.”

“‘m Tavaron of the woodworkers. And Thamnis is my Ammë’s... she lives with me and my Ammë.”

“And your father?”

Tavaron shrugged his shoulders and pressed his lips together. “Don’t need one because of Thamnis, Ammë says.”

Calassë sighed. “Fine. But they went away and left you behind as well?”

Tavaron shook his head wildly. “We got hungry after it went dark and nobody in the city wanted to give us food because of - because Thamnis' name is funny, Ammë said, so we went with the other woodworkers. They said it's better where they're going, and that the trees here are all gonna die because of the dark – not just the Two – all of them! But then - " his face crumpled. "- they weren't there anymore! I lost them!" The words came out in a desolate wail. "I wanted to go with them to where it's better! Over the sea!"

“Shhh,” Calassë said, and by now even Írimellë was clumsily patting his hair. “I’m sure they’ll come searching for you when they can, but Tirion is very big and maybe they’ll be looking for you at your home first. Where do you live?”

She felt sick lying to him. Her own parents and those of all the others in the house had left without a proper goodbye, but the idea of his family returning seemed to be cheering Tavaron, and he wiped at his face. That only smeared more tears and snot over it, but some of the sadness cleared from his eyes. “Luvailin, by the timber-yard near the waterfall," he explained, hiccuping but trying to keep his voice under control now. "Thamnis cuts the trees, and then Ammë helps float the timber down to the sea and raft it to the Teleri towns for their ships and things.”

“We’re in the Weavers’ Quarter here, and you came all the way from the Shadowmere? No wonder you lost each other. It’s almost the other side of the city, and with the murk and the rain it’s -”

Tavaron bobbed his head, looking up at her through red-rimmed eyes. “But you’ll help me find them?”

One of the other girls spoke up before Calassë could answer. “Not while the rain persists.” It was the girl who had studied the drops on her hands, had helped light the candles, and who had been looking after the younger children while Calassë had kept searching through the house. In the light of the lamps around the room, Calassë could see, more clearly now than before, that she had wavy brown hair framing a sweet, round face, and her dress complimented the brown of her skin - but, Calassë realized, the gold-wrought brocade would need one of Master Yarcardo’s looms to weave.

Nothing that precious would ever have graced Mistress Lúlë’s shop. Only people in the upper city could afford such fine clothing. The girl spoke like them as well, her every word perfectly measured and pronounced with care. Lady Saminquirë had no family, but the she looked like she wouldn’t be out of place living in this house.

“What?” Calassë asked. “Why do you think you can give ord--”

The girl smiled, apparently unfazed by the rough tone, and crouched down by them. “My Atto is Mirimon Melindil of the Coiviengolmor; he suspected that this would be a consequence of Melkor’s actions. It is not only the pollution of Melkor and Ungoliant, but now that the Trees can no longer dissolve them, fogs are also drifting in from the sea. Both are mingling, and falling down as this dirty rain. It would be best if we did not expose ourselves to it.”

Calassë grit her teeth. They had not been hiding long - a few hours at most, she thought, although it was hard to be certain in the dark, and it felt like days, or what had been days before - but the thought of needing to take care of the children for much longer made her nervous. “Who are you, anyway?”

“My name is Máriellë Eruvandë, but everyone just calls me Máriel,” the girl said. “And you don’t have to behave as though you were solely responsible for everything. I am almost your age, I think, and we can cooperate again.”

“Mine’s Calassë, and how about you find your father instead, if he’s so smart? Why didn’t you stay with him?”

Máriel squared her shoulders. “Because I am old enough to take care of myself, and he took the opportunity to further his studies about our origins. He went with King Nolofinwë.” Something in her green eyes flickered painfully.

“Dumb Nolofinwë,” muttered Tavaron. “Thamnis says.”

“You don’t look sad,” Artaldë piped in, one of the baker’s twins from further down the city. She had curled up on the seat of one of the armchairs with her brother Armacil. “Aren’t you sad he’s gone? I’m sad my Ammi and Ata left.”

Máriel took a moment to answer, but she put on another smile and shook her head. “He and Amil were gone a lot. They went sailing with the Teleri to Tol Eressëa and to explore the sea, and with the chance ahead that the Exile offered he was very excited - and he was very worried for me, so he gave me a kiss and went away. I am used to solitude, so it is for the best.”

Calassë released Tavaron and Írimellë, who were both listening to Máriel, and climbed to her feet, but she couldn’t help whisper “liar” to Máriel. In response, the girl just smiled brighter, and sent her brown hair flying as she shook her head again. Some of the other children, like little Maitirno the dyer’s son, had crept closer during the conversation, and now he sat sucking a blue-stained thumb into his mouth, a habit he’d stopped years ago. Under the frazzles of dark hair hanging into his eyes, he looked as hungry as the rest of them.

“I’m going to go make food,” Calassë announced. She needed to get away, at least for a moment, from all of them. “And since Máriel wants to help so badly, she can look after you again while I’m downstairs.”

She only took a pause to see to the bundle of blankets she’d put down in a patch of lamplight. Her baby brother had fallen back asleep, so Calassë took a candle and closed the door to Lady Saminquirë’s sitting room behind her. Back inside, she could hear Írimellë starting to cry, and Máriel’s voice answering.

In the dark stairwell to the kitchen she made her way down with one hand on the wall. Shadows trembled before her as the flame whipped around in a sudden draft of cold air that made her stop with pounding heart, thinking of her warning to Írimellë about the things in the shadows that some of the others claimed they’d seen, and for a moment she found she couldn’t move, or breathe.

She pressed against the wall and bit down hard on her lips until the gust of wind abated.

Even then it took Calassë a moment to move on and peer around the stairwell wall before stepping into the empty kitchen. They hadn’t searched it before; because even from further away the stench of sour milk made her want to retch. It was strong even though the kitchen windows were smashed, and more of the fat, dark raindrops rolled off the glass shards that still clung to the frames.

Pots and pans had been dragged from their hooks and shelves; a sack of grain had split open and scattered across the floor. The single grains crunched like little pebbles under Calassë’s feet before she dropped to her knees and brushed some of them into a heap. Even though they were on the floor, and whoever had been in here before had dragged in dirt from the street, she thought she could wash them, and perhaps cook them in a stew if she found anything else, or at least make grain mash if nothing else was left in the pantry.

The pantry door hung askew in its angles and wouldn’t budge when she pulled, so Calassë squeezed through the gaps and inside. The stench of sour milk was stronger there, and the floor sticky; then her foot landed in something wet and soft that burst under her weight. It smelled like rotten apple.

Calassë gagged when the stench hit her nostrils, and almost backed outside again - but then her eyes lit on an array of spices - and an upended glass of fat white beans that the looters hadn’t taken. If she picked up all of them, even the ones that had gone crushed underfoot; she could probably make soup that’d feed them all; perhaps even her little brother would take it, only a little bit, to tide him over until they found him milk.

A cry of joy wanted out, but Calassë bit down on her knuckles to stifle it. A warm meal would be a happy surprise, even if she wasn’t the best cook; she set her candle aside, and crouched to brush the beans into her shirt from the shelves and pick them from the ground, careful not to step into the milk or the rotten apple again. Like the grain she hoped washing them would be enough, and soon the front of her shirt bulged out. Her mother would have scolded her for stretching the fabric, as she’d always scolded her or Írimellë or even their father, but instead of stopping she only dropped another handful of beans into her shirt and stuck her tongue out into the darkness in a moment of giddy defiance.

“You left us alone, so I’m an adult now, and you can’t tell me to stop!”

There was no reply, but she didn't care much and set to work.

Soon after, a dented pot was bubbling away over the hearth fire she’d managed to kindle. She’d drawn water from Lady Saminquirë’s private well in the garden that ran deep into the rock of Túna and hopefully still was sweet, but by the time she’d washed the grain and beans and poured the dirty water away, her arms were heavy from the weight of the bucket, and the skin from her scalp all the way down her back had gone numb from whatever Máriel had said was in the rain.

She yawned and tucked her legs under her and leaned against the side of the hearth where the wall was nice and warm, and even though her eyes were growing heavy she kept them trained on the fire. She’d had to cook at home when both her parents were busy, and it had never been very good, but Írimellë at least had always wolfed the food down without complaining, no matter if it was much too salty, and when they had meat, Írimellë had always picked the bits of it out with special joy. There wasn’t any of that left here, and Calassë hadn’t known half the spices in the pantry. They’d probably come with a caravan from the south of Aman to the markets of the upper city where the rich people went and she’d not used any of them, but at least the food would be warm and maybe a little comforting. They must all be hungry, and her own mouth was watering. The smell…

… was that of food that had burned. Calassë wrenched her eyes open and lounged at the fire, nearly tripping over her own feet because her legs were asleep. The pins and needles began when she knelt by the fire to stir the soup, to find that it wasn’t soup any longer, just a thick, starchy, brownish-grey mush, and black, burned bits floated up when she stirred harder.

She pulled the pot from the fire and blinked away her tears and the hot throbbing of her fingertips where they’d touched the metal.

Maybe the food could still be eaten - at least it would still be warm - so she ladled some into a bowl to try it, grimacing when the burned beans and grain slid down her throat with a taste that was both bitter and somehow differently awful. Calassë hadn’t even finished it when her stomach clenched and she pressed her fingers over her mouth to keep from soiling the kitchen, raced out into the garden and was sick into the flowerbeds. The flowers all lay wilted and yellow anyway, and she knelt in a puddle that made her knees go numb as well while more rain pattered down on her, and she tried not to cry over the taste in her mouth and because she’d ruined it all - the beans and the grain, and probably she’d not cleaned them well enough, and then she’d dozed and let the food burn, and if not even she could eat, she wouldn’t even be able to feed her brother eventually, like her mother said she might, if she tried, and wished for her body to do so enough.

She was still crying when she carried the pot outside and tipped it over in the same place where she had been sick, then she washed her mouth and hands and snuck back upstairs in the dark. Her candle had long since burned out, and the crack of light under the sitting room’s door made her never to leave again - but when she crept back in she saw that the others had gone back to sleep in their landscape of pillows and blankets - except for Máriel, who lay awake near the baby, and was stroking Írimellë’s head with a soft brown hand. She’d curled up against Máriel’s stomach the way she’d usually do with Calassë, and Máriel, taking one look at Calassë’s dirty knees and wet clothes, patted the blanket beside her.

In the soft light of the room her eyes looked wide with pity, but she didn’t say a word.

Calassë turned around roughly. There still was an armchair in the corner by the window that no one was sleeping in, and she curled up in that, staring past the curtain of droplets on the window into the night until her sight up the slope of the hill blurred, and the pale lamp of the Mindon and the golden light of the palace windows on the hilltop swam over the misted glass - she wasn’t sure whether with the rain or with tiredness or tears, but she closed her eyes anyway. They probably had all they needed there, food and comfort, and they were not alone. They’d be fine. As always.

She wiped the sleeve of her shirt over her face. She couldn’t do this. She’d never be able to take care of everyone. She’d never be able to take care of anyone. Nothing was going to be fine in Lady Saminquirë’s house.

“Calassë?” she thought she heard Máriel whisper once, but she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and didn’t reply.

Chapter End Notes

Tavaron's remarks about Thamnis and his Ammë should be fairly straightforward; the references to them talking strangely and the "dumb Nolofinwë" remark are based on the fact that his family has their allegiance with the House of Fëanor. In ordinary Quenya Thamnis' name would at that point have become Samnis, but they have maintained Fëanor's th-s Shibboleth in his absence.

Coiviengolmor was coined after the attested Lambengolmor, the Loremasters of Tongues, i.e. linguists. The Coiviengolmor are the Loremasters of Life, biologists.

"and wished for her body to do so enough" - references the idea from the Laws and Customs that Elves have a greater mental control about the physical aspects of their bodies than humans do, and whether or not this is factual within the fictional world, I decided to adapt it as a belief, at least (any more info on this would be a spoiler for future chapters, my apologies for the vagueness).

Finally, I'm sorry for the delay in this update; the chapter needed more revision than I'd expected, but thank you all so much for your enthusiasm about the prologues, and your patience waiting for this. Next week we'll look in on Nerdanel and how she's doing.

No one had come to disturb Nerdanel while she had been working.

Deep in concentration, she was not sure how much time had passed while her chisels turned and turned across the surface of the marble. Only the dark continued to press relentlessly against her window as though it sought entry. She ignored it, in favour of Niënna’s face taking shape underneath her veils of stone, fitting thin copper pipes left over from commissioned fountain ornaments inside the hollows of the small statue, fashioning the ornate headdress, carving a hidden hollow for water into the top of the statue’s plinth that the pipes would dip into. When she finally exchanged her finest tools for a piece of sanding paper, unclenched her fingers and straightened momentarily, something in Nerdanel’s back popped, and a wave of vertigo washed through her. Her lips and tongue were parched, the skin of her face itched with stone dust. Her head was throbbing and swam with the sudden movement.

Nerdanel steadied herself on the edge of her workbench, sighed, and shook her head to clear it.

She had been crafting too long. Summoning herself back out of immersion always came with its aches and pains especially when she had foregone rest on an intricate project such as this, but exhilaration had always made it bearable. She had trusted her craft and the joy of creation, but now - her studio still looked like the site of a slaughter, with Fëanáro’s bust the casualty, and his remnants mingling with the chips and flakes off Niënna’s marble block. Her statue, perhaps a cubit high, sat hollowed-out and unpolished on the workbench before Nerdanel, awaiting still finishing touches and the water she would need to weep. The fire, which she had neglected to stoke, was dying, and casting little more than a meagre, hopeless glow into the grey shadows of the room. And outside the windows where a breathtaking vista should stretch westward awash in gold and silver light, was the darkness lurking, and a chill was radiating out of it.

And still, interminably, the rain splattered down.

Nerdanel tried not to think of her youngest sister, who was out leading the remaining Yavannildi to harvest what grains might still be salvaged from the dark. The ride to her parents’ estate had been harrowing enough; she did not want to think what it must be like in the fields. The dark had been so pervasive that some vast, boundless thing might have swallowed the world. Terror had driven her, so much that when the summons came for Yavandilmë, Nerdanel had nearly refused to let her go outside, and relented only at her father’s stern command.

The sandpaper she had still been clenching in her hand fell back onto the table. She wanted her family around her, not a statue whose only commiseration would be contrived through trickery, and which had given her none of the relief she had expected. Nonetheless she poured water into the plinth from a pitcher by her bed, and set Niënna upon it, both hiding and tightly sealing the mechanism. Then she turned her back on her studio.

By the time she was entering the kitchen, she was rubbing at her eyes. Stone dust from her apron made them water and the room blurred, but it was doused in warm light, candles glinting halos off the windows and the burnished copper of the pots on the walls. A bowl of infused athëa sat on the table and spread the fragrance of applewood and warm honey that mingled pleasantly with the scent of her mother’s cooking herbs strung up above the hearth to dry.

Most importantly, the room was not empty. Rainissë, who was in the middle of it all, was sitting at the table with bent back and slumped shoulders, her head sunken onto the massive tabletop and her red hair fanned around her. She was sound asleep.

A sandglass sat by her hand, running nearly empty.

Nerdanel joined her sister at the table, turning her back to the dark outside the windows that hid orchard and vegetable garden. She counted under her breath while the final grains of sand slipped through the neck of the glass into the lower portion.

She turned it. The sand began to trickle again, and she breathed easier.

“Rainë,” she said softly, and touched her sister’s shoulder. “You fell asleep.”

Her sister’s arm shot out. Nerdanel barely evaded and caught it by the wrist. Rainissë startled awake with a cry, twisted herself loose and was on her feet before she was fully awake. Only then she halted, and her eyes focused on Nerdanel. She sat down again with a sigh, her hands flat on the table.

“Did I miss a lot of time?”

“None at all, I just turned the glass,” Nerdanel answered softly. “They have not yet started tolling the hour again?”

“Nothing while I was awake. Neither in the village, nor Valmar. How would they know what the hour is?”

“It feels as though it ought to be near the Mingling, but of course we cannot be sure,” Nerdanel said, squeezing Rainissë’s hand. Her sister, usually vivid and indomitable, had become a shadow of herself, and the splutter of her words that couldn’t come fast enough, usually, had been pared down to the barest necessities. She pulled her hand away from under Nerdanel’s, hugging it close around herself.

“Don’t touch me. I know the fault is not yours, but - you were the one who brought him into this family. I cannot. Not right now.”

They had had that argument many times, a broken and abortive chain of accusations that led them nowhere. “Yes,” Nerdanel said, and sighed. “Yes. But he has brought too much strife into our family for us to continue it, has he not? Please stop this, Rainë.”

When her sister jerked her head away and did not answer, Nerdanel rose from the springy chair that had been trampled under years of bouncing feet chasing around the table - her brother’s and her sisters’ and her own, and those of her brother’s children. Her sons had come knowing their wildness would be allowed here when at the palace it had only merited frowns from Finwë. Here Fëanáro and Mahtan themselves had sometimes joined the hunt with her, provoking a cacophony of shrieks and laughter that she sorely missed.

“Where is everyone?” she said to break the silence that hung between them, but it seemed she had underestimated her sister’s anger. Rainissë turned accusing, turned red-rimmed eyes on Nerdanel before huddling in on herself again.

“You know where Lavassúr went. He’s with your husband. Mother is looking after Isimë because I’d rather not burst into tears having to explain to my daughter why her father left us - at least… not yet. Pelórë has been asleep since after she came here, or at least she refused to leave her room. Martúro is in the other wing with his family, I think. Yavandilmë is still in the fields. The apprentices went home. And there is no talking to Father. He went to the forge.”

“He is not working,” Nerdanel said to push past the sting of the words, puzzled that her father of all people would choose to sit idle, but there had been no sounds from the forge, nor light spilling from its windows onto the lawn. Mahtan was happiest when he could put his hands to work on one of his many crafts. “There has been no noise.”

“Don’t pretend you are surprised at that, Nerdanel! I am not half as wise as you, and still I think I see more clearly! Don’t you think he’s bitter over what happened? Don’t you think he feels betrayed? And don’t you think he fears for us now that widowhood is in our future? Lord Aulë - ”

“- has done nothing to hinder us but giving Father his advice. Had we wished to set forth…”

“We are glass-blowers, Nerdanel, and Lavassúr was no more talented than I! What use would we have in the fight against Moringotto other than to swell the ranks of those that will bash themselves to pieces fighting a Vala in all but name? Perhaps Lord Aulë should have done more! Perhaps they all should have! Moringotto cast them into darkness once before and yet now that we depend on them, the Valar are not moving a single finger!”

The thoughts rang unpleasantly familiar to Nerdanel’s own, and she thought with a pang of Niënna’s statue sitting in her craft room. She pushed them away. “Then why,” she asked instead, quietly against her sister’s tirade, and sat again, “did you remain here, as idle as we all?”

Instead of snapping back immediately, the anger seemed to begin bleeding out of Rainissë after that question. She sat wordless for a moment, as though composing herself for more words. Nerdanel’s hand itched to touch her shoulder, rub her back, but knowing her sister often disliked touch, she held herself back.

Sadly and in a low voice, Rainissë answered:

"Because I know which of the two is the greater folly. While you are still trying to support Fëanáro, aren't you? To absolve him and hold him not guilty of the rebellion. Why do you keep holding on to this man, Nerdanel? I have seen you happiest in the years after you left him; why do you keep clinging to him? You left him. I wish you had never invited him to begin with, or that Father had never taught him to make swords... I wish Moringotto had slain him rather than the King, I wish you had never born his sons. Why did you not go with him?"

Nerdanel fought the impulse to rise and leave, struggled to shut away the hurt that bloomed up sharp-edged inside her. She was glad that Rainissë had not witnessed her at the gates of Tirion, how Fëanáro had been looming over her armoured and tall and imperious. And yet, underneath the mire of anger and hurt that had swallowed the man she loved and turned the clarity of his fire into something stinking and impure, he was telling her that he loved her still, loved her as much as he hated her choices.

Were you a true wife, as you had been until Aulë cozened you, you would keep all of them, for you would come with us.

Any notion she might have had of following him to convince him to turn homeward, and more than that, convince her sons, had turned her hope to ashes seeing their closed faces, brushing against their closed minds, apart from Umbarto’s that gaped afraid and wide-open…

“Perhaps I tried, she snapped, again blinking against tears. “And perhaps I stayed where I thought my help would be welcome, trying to understand why it all happened,” Nerdanel said, momentarily training her gaze away from her sister into empty air. “I do not know, not even knowing that Moringotho’s -Moringotto’s - hands moved the pieces… I do not know how all we built, how Aman itself could fall into Darkness so fast.”

“You are still trying to understand him? Then I have nothing more to say to you.” Rainissë unclenched her hands, both balled into fists on the table before her, and even in the flickering candlelight Nerdanel recognized smudges of blood oozing where her sister's fingernails had broken her skin.

“Let me see that, Rainë, please.”

“Dont.” She jerked her hand away from Nerdanel’s touch. “Please leave me alone, Nerdanel, I... I cannot in good conscience be in your presence now. Nor call you sister.”

Rainissë had - had always had - a tendency to lash out in ways that hurt when she was upset or afraid, but knowing that she did not truly mean it did nothing at all to soften the blow of her words. If Rainissë rejected any further attempt at understanding or explanation, as Fëanáro himself had, Nerdanel did not know what to say to her. More than any physical blow, it sucked what remaining breath and strength she had from her, and Nerdanel felt herself sag deeper into her chair.

“Is there anything that I am able to do to make -” Nerdanel began, hating how close to tears she sounded, but caught herself, reconsidering before she turned back to Rainissë against better instinct. “No, there is no way I can make amends. But there is one thing,” she added, “two things I would like to show you. I would like you to have one of them. Afterwards, decide what you mean to think about me and about us, and I will abide by it.”

Without looking back to see whether her sister was following, she rose and left the kitchen for the workshop wing of the house. Nerdanel paused at the door to her studio, listening for her sister’s light steps behind her. Nothing.

The room had grown cold and dark. She set to clearing out the warm ashes from the fireplace and rebuilding the fire, which had guttered out completely. Distress made her fingers shake so much that only the third strike with the fire steel caused the tinder to catch, and it took her longer still to coax the flames high and bright. When they were finally burning, Nerdanel retrieved the small effigy and kneeling set it on the floor before her, close enough to the fire for the heat to filter into the marble. In the flickers of the fire, the edges she had not smoothed away stood out in stark shadows, giving the whole figure a shifting, half-alive appearance.

“What did you mean to show me?”

Nerdanel jumped.

She had no longer expected Rainissë to follow at all, nor to come so quietly. After a brief look to see that she wore shoes, she gestured for her sister to step into the room. Debris from Fëanáro’s smashed bust still littered the ground, and the bust itself sat on the table where Nerdanel had left it, staring, still, with the surprised expression in what was left of its face.

“That is the first thing,” she said, gesturing at the cracks webbing over the marble. “Even trying to understand him… words cannot do justice how I feel about him now, but faced with him, this is what I could not help doing.”

“I...,” Rainissë stammered, moving closer and digging her fingers into the gouge over Fëanáro’s cheek that Nerdanel’s hammer had torn, “I wondered what you were doing. Mother and I heard noises from your room, and sometimes I… forget how much you rely on your art as… this.”

Rainissë wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back on her heels, still regarding the bust. In the light from the fireplace, Nerdanel could see her teeth glint where they dug into her lower lip, her sister’s typical contrite behaviour even though she would need time to admit it aloud.

“Yes,” Nerdanel said softly, lowering her gaze. “Thank you. I try to understand. I do not approve.”

She looked up when she heard Rainissë crunch over the splinters of marble from Fëanáro’s bust, and could have sworn she was grinding her heels in. She seemed to have discovered Nerdanel’s most recent work, and came to kneel by her sister. Nerdanel shifted aside to give her space, but just then Rainissë seemed not to mind.

Uncaring for the heat, Rainissë reached out and touched it, and even over the crackling of the fire Nerdanel could hear her sister’s sharp intake of breath, could hear the clacking of the fine teardrop-shaped pearls of smoky quartz that formed Niënna’s crown and cascaded down her back, as Rainissë ran her fingers over them and the near-translucent marble veil that covered the statue’s face, clinging to the stone skin beneath as though it were wet with tears.

Rainissë’s voice caught. “Niënna? She looks like…”

“Endurance in Hope... at least for now. I would like you to have her. Perhaps she will be a comfort to you, if you set her near a fire.”

“I wondered,” said Rainissë, “and it… doesn’t make it hurt any less, but they are doing what they are meant to do, are they not? And if we were not doing what is our task…”

“... then we would not be here.” Nerdanel said. “I try to remember it. It is such a simple idea, and far too hard to live by. I do not like to think that we are so caught up in the fate of the world, but… why else would we be here if not the purpose behind our lives?”

“I think… there is more than only one. Don’t keep Niënna hidden here. The people in the city may need some reminding of their own.”

“You think I should go back to Tirion?” Nerdanel asked, surprised by the suggestion. “I will not effect much there… it must be nearly empty now, with as many people in the streets and preparing to go as there were when I was on my road home. Barely anybody will have remained. Even Arafinwë of all of them was leaving.” She shook her head. “And I do not trust her tears will send the message they need. Qualmë-Tári is not who they need reminding of. And if any of Fëanáro’s supporters remained… I do not like the thought.”

“Qualmë-Tári? Nerdanel, what -”

“Wait,” Nerdanel said, and her word was punctuated by a sharp hiss. Neither of them had paid Niënna any attention. Now, in little volume at first, but swiftly growing into fat drops, tears began to roll from beneath the creases of Niënna’s veil, down into the fire where they extinguished the cinders closest to its edge.

Rainissë looked at her strangely from the side, and Nerdanel held still under her sister’s gaze as though pinned by it.

“No, I think that’s precisely what they need reminding of. Fëanáro may have gone and taken whom we love, but he will not win out when his fire founders. They may come to their senses and turn back. Or find healing… another way,” Rainissë said and slipped an arm around Nerdanel’s middle, drawing her close. “And we will be here, and endure that, too.”

“Yes,” Nerdanel said dully. “I hope so.”

Chapter End Notes

Nerdanel's Niënna statue is based on an invention by Heron of Alexandria, ancient Greek polymath who (among many other inventions) also created weeping statues allegedly used in ceremonies with burnt offerings. The air in the sealed chamber will heat near the fire, and pressure will force the water upward through the ducts, making it look like the statue is weeping.

Were you a true wife, as you had been until Aulë cozened you, you would keep all of them, for you would come with us. A slightly altered line from the Legend of the Fate of Amrod.

Qualmë-Tári: One of the names of Niënna as per the early conceptions in the Lost Tales. It translates to Mistress of Death.

Her parents were faceless.

No matter which way Calassë ran around them as they walked steadily away, her bare feet slapping over cobbles and then over marble until they hurt as they neared the lower eastern gate of the city, no matter how much she screamed at them to stop and look at her until her lungs burned and her head ached from holding in the tears that would make her mother scold her if she had eyes to see and a mouth to speak, they didn’t react. There was only the sound of calm murmuring, murmuring that grew steadily louder.

When she woke, with her head and heart throbbing so hard she thought she’d split apart, it was Máriel's precocious voice that resolved itself into a stream of words somewhere nearby. Calassë looked up, tried to find her bearings in the strange room - Lady Saminquirë’s sitting room, she remembered - low, stiflingly warm and reeking with woodsmoke from the fire and the already-breathed air, the absurd collection of red plush armchairs - and in the middle of it all Máriel was seated in the middle of the floor by a candle that gave off pitifully little light, cross-legged with a heavy tome on her knees. The other children had come to sit in a half-circle around her.

Calassë felt an ugly stab of jealousy seeing that peaceful scene, and especially seeing the book that Máriel read from with such ease; an old thing with Sarati running down the pages, not even the simple tengwar that still gave Máriel problems.

“... the darkness of Middle-earth beneath the innumerable stars, faint and far. Then she began a great labour, greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda. She took the silver dews from the vats of Telperion, and -”

Calassë coughed. Her throat was dry. Máriel’s head snapped up, and she couldn’t help feeling a little satisfied that she’d maybe startled her.

“Hello, it’s good you’re back awake. Won't you come join us? I'm reading them of the Awakening just now. You scared Írimellë with your dreaming, and Artaldë wanted to know where our parents were going.”

A wave of shame bloomed up in her chest and rose hot into her face. Her sister was sitting close to Máriel and was tracing her fingers over the paper; she hardly looked scared. "Away. So that's not the right story for this time, is it? Especially not now." Calassë said. It came out louder than she’d wanted, and there was a bite in the words. If she’d wanted that she wasn’t sure, but she knew she didn’t want Máriel to have everyone’s love, with Calassë herself being only a stumbling block and an ugly shackle on her leg. Her mother had called her that often.

“Oh. Why is it inappropriate?”

“It's inappropriate because I'm saying so. I found this place, and if you want to stay, you'll listen to me. That goes for all of you, is that clear?”

There were demure nods all around the circle, but Máriel held her head up stubbornly, and shut the book with a forceful thud, but did not let go of it. “I'll read them something else next time,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet. “I don't want to go out into the dark alone.”

Calassë had not expected that. The rush of her heartbeat throbbed loud in her ears.

“Well, you can stay. Just read them something else.”

She leaned back against the armchair and closed her eyes again, to the sound of pages rustling. It would be much easier to kick out Máriel, but for some reason – maybe because the children ringed around her like around someone they adored – she was reluctant to, even if it meant another mouth she couldn't feed.

And maybe, just maybe, they could go outside together.

If they went and scrabbled through the houses around, perhaps they'd find enough food to last them a little while. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled, and there was a hitch in Máriel's voice, which had begun with another story, a ridiculous morale thing about the Avari that had stayed behind. She wondered how the author of the story would know all that, or if it just was a stupid invention to make the parting easier to deal with. She supposed her family would soon find out, at least. And there came the tears again. She was growing tired of those. As the oldest she couldn't cry all the time, so she dragged her sleeve over her face again - it was soiled anyway - and sat up straight in her armchair, looking out at the city. The palace, which had been brightly lit before, was now dark as well, and only the lamp up in the Mindon still shone through the misty, rain-stained window against the backdrop of the low, wet clouds.

Her brother, wrapped in a pile of blankets, made a noise; a tiny, thin sound that barely even still sounded like a baby's voice any longer. It was more like a newborn cat's, like the sounds of the litter of kittens Írimellë had discovered in the hayloft of the Yavannildi's estate the past summer, when they had helped Mistress Lúlë deliver cloth for their new garments, and to help reef their windmill's sails after the old ones had worn away. They'd been allowed to explore, and Írimellë had come back with three tiny kittens, their eyes still closed and the mother cat trailing after her with anxious noises, before they'd put the babies back into their nest, and the mother cat, with angry looks from her bright green eyes, had begun grooming them vigorously.

Her brother mewled again, and it was Máriel who was on her feet first, giving Calassë an imploring look.

“I didn’t even ask yet - what is his name?” she asked, and Calassë could only shake her head vaguely. Her parents hadn't given him one yet, and every time they had tried in the four weeks since he had been born, they had been driven apart yelling at each other over it, with the baby's loud wails in the middle. She'd slept at Mistress Lúlë's house more than once, even though there seemed to be a lot of anger everywhere, and even Mistress Lúlë, usually so kind and gracious, had argued with her maid over a lot of very little things – the shade of blue of the dresses they'd wear for the festival upon Taniquetil, a sauce being too watery, the state of Mistress Lúlë's herb pots that were already rankling down the walls from the windows. But at least they'd been quiet enough for Calassë to pull a pillow over her ears and try to sleep. Not so here. Especially not with Máriel around.

She shook her head again and wiped a strand of hair off her cheek. “He doesn't have one. They couldn't agree on anything. I've been calling him Toron when I needed to call him anything. He's only a month old, he doesn't understand yet.” Her voice made a horrible gurgling sound, like all the tears and snot of crying she couldn't let out were flowing down her throat to choke her.

“It's fine, it's fine. I'll just call him Toron, then, too. It's a good name for now,” Máriel murmured. "But do you know what to feed him?" She took up the baby and rocked him in her arms, pacing the room, and in passing she stroked a hand over Calassë's hair. “It's obvious that you didn’t have any milk for him, the time you tried to feed him.”

Calassë wanted to bat the hand away, but for a moment she allowed herself to let the touch be, and the next Máriel was past her and began singing softly.

She sang like a lark, low and sweet and lilting. Of course she did.

“Don’t,” she murmured, but Máriel did not hear her. “We need to do something more than just sing. That won't feed my brother, and if he sleeps any longer it'll be the Lady Míriel's sleep soon.”

Máriel’s song had stopped. “Then what do you suggest we do instead?” came Máriel's voice, now anything but sweet, verging on tears herself.

“I don't know! What do you do when our parents are gone and the Trees died, and it's dark and cold and my brother is starving because I don't have anything to feed him and -” something hitched funnily in her throat, and then the tears came for good, and then her brother was in her lap and Máriel’s arms went around her, holding tight with unexpected strength. She smelled faintly of parchment and dust and her hair tickled Calassë’s face.

“It is going to be fine,” Máril whispered.

Calassë shrugged her shoulders and drew her arm over her face, hoping that her voice wouldn't fail her entirely. “We'll give him water so he has something to drink, and go into the city when the rain's stopped. There must be other people there. Maybe the Lady Írimë didn't leave. She always looked out for the Weavers, that's why we named Írimellë after her. And then she'll know what to do. Or we'll see what we do, if she's left as well. Then we'll just fend for ourselves. But we also need to find food soon,” she said and then paused, feeling Máriel’s hold slack around her, although she didn’t yet draw back.

“There… wasn’t any in the house. I looked.” She stared down at her brother’s face. His eyelids were already drooping again.

Máriel pulled back, crouching before the armchair, and gave her a long look that put Calassë in mind of her mother wanting to scold her, but being too tired when she had dragged herself home from the market or where else in the city she had been working, and found something she didn’t like - the food there was, or that there was too little food left for her because she and Írimellë had been so hungry.

Except that Máriel clamped her lips together and didn’t say a word, but her pretty eyes with their long lashes flickered here and there instead of looking at Calassë directly as though she knew about the lie and didn’t want to admit that she did.

“Maybe you can help me look. You’re smart,” Calassë added. “When the rain stops.”

“It stopped quite some time ago,” Máriel answered, giving the windows a glance. “You were asleep, and you seemed like the rest would do you well, so we resolved to let you sleep until you woke up on your own. I am sorry if I woke you with my reading.”

Calassë shook her head. “I wasn’t that tired anywa--” she didn’t get to finish the word, and her mouth opened wide in a yawn. Heat rushed into her face.

Some of the children who had crowded closer giggled, quiet and quick as though they didn’t quite dare. Even Máriel’s lips twitched.

“--anyway. And we still need food.”

“Going as a pair seems like the best idea,” Máriel suggested after a moment. “Now that the rain has passed, the air should be clear, and nothing bad will happen to us. It just is dark now, and there should be no problem finding something.”

“But what about Melkor?” a voice piped up. Little Quiquillë, herself not much older than Írimellë, looked at the rest of the group. “My Amil said he ate up the Trees and now he’s wanting to eat us up as well…” Her face creased.

“You’re very sweet,” Calassë said to the little girl, and forced a grin. “And I’d like to eat you up as well, but it’s really safe out there. The Valar chased him away. No one’s going to eat anybody here.”

Víresso, one of the older boys, snorted, and opened his mouth.

“Shut your trap, Víresso,” Calassë snapped. He was few years younger than Calassë who had somehow tricked his way into the favour of a lord in the upper city who had arranged his schooling with the lord’s own children. Since then, Víresso had started behaving like he was something better than the other people from the Weavers’ Quarter. He talked a lot like Máriel, when he talked at all, but at least Máriel didn’t sound like she had a weaving shuttle sticking up where it hurt.

“I know a solution,” Máriel piped in, smiling at Víresso in a way that made Calassë doubt her mind. Víresso smiled back.

“Víresso is going to stay here as protector. There will not be many people left in Tirion. If they become as desperate as we are, then they will begin looting where it makes the most sense, and that is the houses of the rich. This is a rich house, but I am certain Víresso should be able to defend everyone while Calassë and I will be finding us provisions that last us until we have decided what more to do about our situation.”

A murmur went around the circle of children. Víresso crossed his arms and looked unhappy now that he understood he had been duped, and seeing Máriel grinning, Calassë would have liked to hug her - just quickly, but hug her anyway, even as little as she wanted to leave the house in the dark.

She’d do it for Írimellë and for Toron.

Írimellë turned dark eyes on her, and Calassë squirmed under her little sister’s look, although the little girl said nothing. “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I’m able,” she said. “And Víresso will be looking after you, so you won’t be alone.”

Still, when she and Máriel got up to leave, she thought that Írimellë was trying not to cry.

Chapter End Notes

Toron simply means 'brother'.

The excerpt on the Awakening of the Elves that Máriel was reading toward the beginning of the chapter was of course taken from the Silmarillion.

Anairë sighed and turned the envelope between her fingers, reaching across the kitchen table toward Nerdanel. “Just take it. Indis sent me not to bring you to any judgement, but because she wants your help.”

“I know that Indis never bore me any grudge for Fëanáro’s actions, but would my help be desired by others now? My ties to the royal house are as void as yours are, or at least that is what will be said by the people who remained here, if any did, and more than that, even with all your goodwill you cannot claim I am completely innocent in this. If I had done more to sway him… tell me again why I should do so much as sit in council, even if a seat were offered to me.”

“Wallowing does not become you, Nerdanel.” Anairë’s mouth crooked in a mirthless smile; the dimming candles in the kitchen served only to cast it into deeper shadow. They had sat long in discussion already, Nerdanel had turned the sand-glass once, and her mother moved in and out quietly; leaving with a bowl of stew and returning it untouched, instead brewing a teapot’s worth of sage infusion and motioning a hand over her breast, mouthing ‘Pelórë’. Nerdanel nodded. Without Tyelperinquar, weaning tea would do her well.

The conversation with Anairë stalled at those moments, and Nerdanel returned to worrying at her sleeves. Anairë watched her through narrow eyes, and although the dispute with her sister not long ago had given her a clarity of mind regarding Fëanáro and the finality of their parting, it had done little to resolve anything else, and nothing at all to dim her grief. And if anything, Anairë bringing a summons from Indis revealed the threadbare excuse that there was nothing for her in Tirion.

Anairë cleared her throat. “At least try and pull yourself together. Our situations are not so different, but now is not the time to indulge in that grief. The Old Goat was the one who instigated it, but they all made up their own minds to follow, even Lavassúr.”

“Why are you still using that name? This is not one of your jokes.”

“It is not a joke at all,” Anairë retorted. “Indis is calling you to your responsibilities in the city. If you feel guilty, as you seem to be doing, then find a way to make up for it. Whether or not you deserve that blame is something you can decide later. What you need now is a purpose before you turn into a shadow, haunting the mist and...”

“... dropping vain tears in the thankless sea,” Nerdanel added, quieter. “I did not know you were there.”

“Nolvo asked me to come away with him, but… he did not want to hear what I had to say. I never truly had a place in his disputes with the Old Goa- Fëanáro, and that is all his leaving was about. He gave his promise to follow, and if not for that damned pride he takes in his propriety and honour… he claimed he did not want to abandon his people, but neither did he want to listen to me saying that if he stayed, or at least delayed, their minds would clear and, most of them would also remain, and the city would be rid of dissidents.” She paused and huffed out a breath, running a hand through her hair. The ride from Tirion had dishevelled her crown of braids, and in her agitation she mussed her hair further. “Will you take the letter or should I go all the way back to Indis and tell her she has to make do without you?”

Nerdanel had been the one to spot Anairë coming through the dark and silent land after the rain had subsided and then ceased entirely. First she had been a dancing blue light, her silver-netted lamp swinging while she rode, then a shape on a horse, and finally revealing herself as her sister-in-law as she came trotting into the lights of the courtyard. Martúro, who had in the stables with Lúcessë to tend to the horses, had caught her when she slipped, drowsy after the ride, and when her brother hurried into the house with their guest, his wife flitted before him and opened all the doors to let them through.

Anairë had recovered quickly with a brief rest and warm food to revive her, but daring ride through those conditions showed that she had not come not out of concern only, but as Indis’ messenger and stubborn as always in her support. And Nerdanel knew Anairë was right to ask, as shrewdly blunt as she always was, and took the letter from her fingers.

The golden wax seal bearing Indis’ personal crest she removed from the envelope without breaking it, as absurd as such pomp seemed in these circumstances, and unfolded the stiff paper to the view of Indis’ calligraphy. Usually perfectly measured and elegant in a manner that had always angered Fëanáro for the skill and grace she drew out of the signs he had devised, it appeared shaky and unmeasured now, and the writing was smudged in many places as if by a careless handstroke on the wet ink, or indeed sometimes as though some liquid had been wiped off the paper and blurred the letters.

She cleared her throat and began to read.

Dear Nerdanel,

The city lies in shambles, as you well know. As far as we were able to estimate in this grief and confusion, only near a tenth of Tirion's population remained, and less than that of all the Noldor. They are left steerless, without bearings, without family, and in many cases without any support at all. But even so, they are many, and they have many troubles: Food-stores run low already; we have distributed what we could to those that came to the palace. I dearly wish we had more healers, for the fumes that came with the dark caused many of the waiting to grow drowsy, or even to swoon and faint, and they lie trapped in dark dreams that we cannot at this point undo. I have sent for Ilwë to lend her skill to us, if Ingwë is willing to rule without her by his side at this point, for, as you are likely aware, Estelindë has swayed the other heads of the Envinyatari toward departure with her, and they in turn swayed most of their followers. Much like them, Mirimon took the Coiviengolmor with him nearly to the last man.

At least the Yavannildi under your sister’s guidance are already greatly aiding us: They recruited many hands to harvest their Lady's wheat and fruit before they rot, and will help refill the granaries to at least continue providing for the people. Without them we would surely face starvation. In all this we have at least been fortunate that this calamity befell us at harvest, when we are not entirely at the mercy of depleted stores.

Nonetheless, it would be premature to speak of order, laws or economy as long as we have no plans. I have pleaded with the Valar in the Mahanaxar, at the bidding of the Valandili not least, and although they cannot now actively aid us, they have taken steps to ensure that such things as still live will not die in this darkness: the Lords Manwë and Ulmo ordained the rain to wash away the fumes, and the Lady Yavanna will purge it from the earth once their counsels are over. Until the dark may be ended she put her Sleep upon her domain: it waits its turn until this evil may one day be redressed. Their minds the Valar assure me are on pursuits that we are not comprehending, or not yet comprehending, although they shall in the end work to favour the Children. I have also sent messengers to the Amanyavari in the north-west, Faniel among them to translate. Undoubtedly their experience of continuing their life of old in such darkness as Aman offered before this will prove of worth to us; they may know of resources that we lack or have wilfully forgotten. I pray that their passage through Mandos softened their hearts toward the Eldar since the Sundering so many years ago.

In all else that must be done, I dearly need your voice - but I must warn you, also: The factions within the Council, such as remain, are both torn and hardened. The Valandili are struggling to hold on to their support and faith. Few who support your husband and his ideas remained, but those who stayed did so reluctantly. Some have taken the sides of either of my other sons, some support the House of Finwë in a strange idea of entirety, thinking that such divisions are idle now, when in truth any of that support is idle now that none of my sons remain. But their ideologies at least are easier to steer than the many who seek first and foremost their own interests, be they influence or whatever gain they hope this situation may yield. Believe me when I say that I would have been glad to dismiss them if we did not need all minds that have not yet succumbed to grief.

Please come soon. Findis (with Elemmírë, as they refuse to be parted) is with me also - Lalwendë departed, following her brother as she has done in all things. Irissë, Artanis and Elenwë are gone, and I do not yet know Amarië's whereabouts, although if she left then it is against her family's bidding and permission. Eärwen will join us again soon; she has ridden to Alqualondë to see if any harm came to her home and family in the Darkening, and she also will bring aid from the Teleri when she returns.

But let me reiterate, Nerdanel, that we need you, also. Knowing what you have lost I cannot bring myself to order you here, but I implore you. Anairë, should you choose to come, will accompany you, and we will ease the plight of our people as well as we may, lay the foundations for whatever new world awaits, and pray for light to return swiftly.

Indis

Toward the end, the words blurred before her eyes. Nerdanel let the letter sink and blinked her tears away. She glanced up at Anairë instead, clearing her throat uneasily. “I know the letter should compel me to go to Tirion, but if what she writes is true… my sister is outside in the fields. How do I know that she was not also affected by the darkness? And there is Pelórë, too… I cannot leave here now.”

Anairë nodded matter-of-factly, almost as though she had expected such an objection - perhaps she had. “Only Pelórë? Did Ravennë leave with Carnistir? I understand you would rather stay, but consider this: If she is fine she will return to Tirion to deliver the grain sooner than here. If she is among the unwell… you read the letter. The healers that remained are in Tirion, so her best chances lie there. Everyone’s best chances lie in Tirion now. You can move something there.”

“Perhaps - but even so, Indis sounds very composed,” Nerdanel heard herself say, even knowing that the mask of power and control was one that Indis often assumed whenever a situation threatened to slip from her grasp. She had never been so outwardly composed as when Fëanáro had won some victory over her in their petty war, and when she had farewelled Finwë before his departure to Formenos, she had been impeccably composed, bowing only to let her husband set the crown upon her immaculate coiffure.

Finwë. Nerdanel felt new tears rise to try and choke her. Until that moment she had not allowed herself to think of him at all, had shut away the knowledge that he was dead. Dead, like starvation, it was a word that rolled oddly off her mind and even more strangely off her tongue, relegated to history texts describing how Cuiviénen had snatched away the lives of many in many different ways, and hushed childhood recollections of Queen Míriel’s demise.

Anairë sighed. It was not quite exasperation, but she had always been an impatient woman who had drawn energy from that very trait, but now was rapidly nearing the end of her own composure. “If you do not want to come, say so, but you cannot read that letter and claim that Indis is unaffected. If not before, then she cracked when she assembled a honour guard to bring Finwë back to Tirion; if he is to be laid to rest anywhere then not unkinged, but rather in his city. And… I understand if you would rather take time to prepare yourself, but - we do not have that luxury. The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can begin rebuilding - unless you think there is something that we ought to take from here - if your family has perhaps grain to spare...”

“We brought in harvest the week before the festival,” Nerdanel said in a low voice. “And the head of the Yavannildi resides in our house; we could not very well hamster our grain to ourselves. We have kept as much as we think is necessary, the rest she already has,” Nerdanel said.

“That is good to know.” Anairë seemed a little heartened by the prospect, and pushing back her chair she rose. “You ought to dress warmly,” she said. “It is growing cold without the light. That, too, is something Indis will need to take into account. She will need your counsel. Why were you so reluctant?”

“Very well,” Nerdanel said with a sigh, against her misgivings and the fear that had been growing in her. “Rainissë also thought I should go to Tirion, and perhaps it would be unwise to ignore the same thing said thrice… I do not want to come - there is something ill that this darkness yet holds in store for us, and I do not know what it is. I would rather not go into it - but I will ride to Tirion with you if we make haste.”

Anairë gave her an odd look and crossed her arms against the flicker of uncertainty plain in her eyes. “We will make haste no matter your premonition. Is there anything further that you can say about it?” The unspoken question was clear: Is Moringotto returning?

Nerdanel shook her head. “So far it is only a feeling. Perhaps it is instinct, perhaps I am simply afraid and it is nothing at all.” She coughed. “I have my prospecting gear in my studio, that is the warmest clothing I have, and there is something there that Rainë thinks I should take into the city; a statue of Niënna. Help me pack.”

“Gladly.” Anairë breathed a sigh of relief. “It took long enough to convince you.”

Nerdanel ignored her remark. She rose and regarded the dark for a moment. Through the gleam of light that still persisted in the kitchen and reflected off the window-pane, the bare twigs of the orchard trees reached like bony fingers, but they were grasping at a host of stars sharp and far between the torn clouds.

Chapter End Notes

I hope most of the info-dump is clear enough on its own, but there are a few terms from my worldbuilding that could do with explaining.

Envinyatari: The healers' association, taking its name from Quenya envinyata-, to heal/renew. Aragorn took his royal name from the same verb.

Valandili: 'Friends of the Valar', a political faction in Tirion's council.

Amanyavari: 'Avari of Aman'. Not all Avari refused Mandos' summons as per the Laws and Customs: "Concerning the fate of other elves, especially of the Dark-elves who refused the summons to Aman, the Eldar know little. The Re-born report that in Mandos there are many elves, and among them many of the Alamanyar [...]." Alamanyar is an earlier term for Úmanyar, Elves that did not depart for Aman on the Journey. I don't think it beggars belief that not all of them wanted to remain dead, and since the return to Middle-earth was difficult if not impossible, they would have had to settle somewhere in Aman. However, with their bitterness toward the Eldar, it makes more sense to me that they set up independent communities far away from Eldarin or Valarin influence.

Faniel is the third daughter of Finwë and Indis in early concepts of their descendants; it's unsure whether she survived into Tolkien's later ideas. She did for me, at any rate.

Pelórë is my OFC, Curufin's wife and Celebrimbor's mother. He, Caranthir, and Maglor were married as per Of Dwarves and Men; Ravennë is my name for Caranthir's wife.

Finally, my apologies for the delay in posting this. I'm fighting off a nasty bug and spent most of yesterday asleep, including the time I'd planned for editing and posting this.

This chapter contains non-graphic animal death (for food purposes) toward the end.

---- 

Máriel’s hand was digging into her shoulder. She had pushed past Calassë out of the house at first, and then quickly fallen behind, looking with wide eyes at every shadow and jumping at the slightest gust of wind. Calassë couldn’t blame her, but Máriel’s nervous prattling started grating on her nerves, especially now that her voice was echoing in the cavernous bakehouse.

"Where is everything? Why is there so little food left?" Máriel asked, and gave a quick glance at the open door looming dark behind them; in the darkness it made very little difference where they were. It seeped into every corner, like spilled ink. "You can't have carried off everything in their pantries as provisions." From the wall, the ovens grinned black in Máriel’s lamplight.

"They didn't," Calassë said, thinking back, and tucked the painted clay bird-pipe further into her pocket. It was Írimellë’s favourite toy, and passing by their house she’d picked it up with a stack of cloth diapers for Toron, who had grown fussy and irritable after they had fed him some water just before leaving Lady Saminquirë’s house.

"What they didn’t loot and couldn't carry they gave away to share with others. Everyone would need food on the journey, and the people who had more gave to people who had less. Elerrínon - that’s the father of Artaldë and Armacil - himself gave my parents bread before they all went. Didn't your family do that?" asked Calassë.

"Oh. Of course they did," Máriel said, but she was glancing to the side and shifting uneasily, and then turned to peer into the ovens, scooping out crumbs with her fingers and licking them off noisily.

“Leave some for me!” Calassë reached in as well; her hand came away with sooty fingertips and very little else. Her stomach clenched. Now that they were searching rather than wallowing in their sadness, she noticed more and more how hungry she really was. She hoped the children under Víresso’s care kept being sad a little longer. It was easier to deal with than the hunger.

Behind her, in some dark corner where empty sacks of flour lay, something rustled.

Máriel and Calassë shared a look and crowded for the door back into the street.

Máriel, when she'd caught her breath and claimed her knees had stopped shaking, suggested looking into the gardens instead of the houses, but in this part of the city with its narrow streets and houses tight on tight there were only a few belonging to the houses of the richer merchants, and they grew flowers more often than anything edible. Calassë couldn't think of anyone keeping chickens or rabbits, either, not in this part of the city - most everything came from the upcity markets.

“It’s too quiet. And it still smells odd out here,” said Calassë, skirting another ice-crusted puddle and clutching the pillow-case she’d meant to use as a bag closer to herself while Máriel knelt and watched as the blue light from the crystal lamp in her hand brought out the sharp edges of the ice. She didn’t seem to care that the air stank like a mixture of leather and old apples, and something sharp underneath that like the stench from a tanner’s shop from further away, or that they’d still not found any food - any food that could still be eaten, at any rate.

“Rats are large, and they’re still fat. I think we should try and catch some of them,” Calassë said. “Can’t you build a trap?”

Máriel looked up from the puddle and grimaced, maybe to keep from crying. Her breath stood in an odd white cloud before her mouth. “We should keep looking. Some of these houses must have provisions that were not raided. Besides, rats are not... well, I do not think they’d make suitable meals.”

“I’d rather eat rats than starve! I haven’t had anything real since before our parents left! I don’t even know how long ago that was!”

Something funny flickered over Máriel’s face then, and she climbed to her feet. “But you did. You went into the kitchen to cook, and when you came back up your knees were dirty and you smelled of vomit. What did you do - gorge yourself to not have to share, and then retch it all up again? I didn’t say anything because the children do not need to be subjected to us fighting and you looked so miserable - and they are afraid already. But that is what happened, is it not?”

Something crept up the inside of Calassë’s throat - wanting to cry, wanting to turn and run. Her cheeks burned. And if she turned and ran - Máriel didn’t know her way around the lower city, probably, and with all the twists and turns they’d taken all the way down to the Bakers’ Lane leading to the east gate and the great stair into the upper city, Máriel’d never find Lady Saminquirë’s house again if Calassë managed to shake her off.

But then she thought of finding her way back without the lamp Máriel was holding, and trying to explain to the others where she had gone, and being all alone in the dark, and that rooted her feet to the ground better than anything else could.

She drew the sleeve of her shirt over her eyes and sniffed loudly to clear her nose.

“I’m not disgusting. I fell asleep, because of the rain. It made me drowsy. And the food burned and I was scared you’d scold me, so I tried to eat some to see if it still was good, and it wasn’t. That’s why I was sick!I didn’t have anything else either!”

“Oh,” Máriel said again, and at least she looked like she was sorry, even though she did not say it in words, staring down at the dirty blotches on Calassë’s knees, and then back up at her face. Máriel’s own shone almost white in the glare of the lamp; the blue washed out any other colour and especially the warm brown of her skin.

“Perhaps we should reconsider and go to the palace after all,” Máriel said after a pause that hung heavy between them, craning her head toward the light that was hanging over the hilltop of Túna, although where they stood, the houses leaned too close for sight of the palace itself, and Calassë looked at them and their dark windows with a queasy feeling in her stomach all of a sudden.

“I wonder how much light they have there.”

“The Mindon. And probably more, judging by the glow that started coming on again. They’ve probably woken again up there,” Máriel replied.

Going there was tempting, almost as much as the idea of leaving Máriel alone. Finally real food, maybe even palace food, the soft white bread that Princess Írimë had sometimes commissioned the bakers to give out to the lower city, or even venison. As if on cue, as if she had been having the same thoughts, Máriel’s stomach growled, and Calassë couldn’t help the giggling that came up - and then she shook her head.

“We can’t. We’ve been out too long already, we should be going back. The east stair’s nearby and I counted it once after Víresso and I made a wager. It’s almost six-thousand steps into the upper city. It’ll be a long time to climb up and back down and if we do then we should take everyone. For now, we’ll find something here. Can you build a trap?”

“You are very insistent on subsisting on rats,” said Máriel. “But… no.” She bit her lip. “I never learned anything like it. But a trap would not be very efficient. It may be easier to simply gather stones and hunt that way. I read about it in a treatise about historical hunting methods in Cuiviénen before we learned to manufacture weapons.”

Soon they had found enough stones in flowerbeds and on the roadside, round ones that lay comfortably in their palms, and they had descended into the narrow alleyways between the houses where the refuse was stored before it would be cleaned away. Calassë stepped around a crate of spoiled things and tried not to breathe too deep; despite the freezing air everything stank and made her want to gag. Her mother had always warned her and Írimellë that they shouldn’t play in such places, and again as before in Lady Saminquirë’s kitchen, Calassë felt defiance bubble up in her chest, and she gripped her stone tighter. If her parents hadn’t left...

Something skittered in a pile of leaves ahead of them.

“There!” Calassë whispered and pointed.

Máriel straightened from a crouch and brushed a cobweb from her forehead, instead leaving a smudge of dirt that she rubbed away with an irritated expression. The lamplight danced wild and blue across the mildewed walls, and in the glare a large rat with a naked tail bounded away.

Máriel threw her stone. It clattered off harmlessly on the wall - another miss - while the rat squeezed through a gap in the masonry and into safety.

Calassë didn’t even know what half the words in Máriel’s curse meant, but she was too busy being relieved seeing something that perfect Máriel couldn’t do to be all upset that they had missed another chance at food.

While Calassë still stood, Máriel was already underfoot again, squeezed past her, and out of the narrow space into the narrow courtyard that the surrounding houses shared. Calassë could hear her call out - a high-pitched cheer that set Calassë’s feet moving. Máriel turned to her with shining eyes that took Calassë’s breath away for a moment, the lovely green of them alight from within.

Against the back wall of the courtyard under an overhanging roof stood a rickety wood-and-wire shed, and within it, a flock of fat pigeons huddled together, crooning and sleepily cocking their heads at the light from Máriel’s lamp. A sack leaned by it, more than half empty and about to topple over, but Calassë stuck her hand in to feel many small, cool beads roll against her fingers. She cupped her hand and withdrew it.

A pile of tiny, round grains lay in the center of her palm.

“That’s millet!” she said, and closed her palm around it, and feeling the little grains crunch against one another a realization came to her. “It’s not just bird-feed! It’s something to eat! And it’s dry; the rain didn’t get to it! We can eat this!”

“They must have forgotten about it when they left, just as they forgot about the birds, or they might have made use of it and set them free,” Máriel added, eyeing the closed door to the wire cage while her face began to change from the satisfied look of having found the courtyard into a happy, even carefree expression. It suited her much better.

“How many should we take?” she asked, grinning widely. “Just imagine - these are not squabs, and my father would be sorely disappointed - he braises them with plums and herbs - but we could make a soup, or a stew, or - shh! What was that?”

Whatever Máriel had heard, it made her start back against the wall, and Calassë felt herself yanked along into the shadow, then Máriel hastily fumbled the lamp shut. “Someone’s coming, there’s someone there, listen,” she whispered frantically, and her hand clenched the front of Calassë’s shirt, pulling the fabric taut. Her hand was warm through the fabric. Calassë winced, and tried to listen over the harsh breath Máriel was trying to keep quiet.

Steps.

There were heavy, quick footfalls coming their way at great speed, or at least sounding nearby somewhere. Once Calassë’s eyes had gotten used again to the lack of light and could see the glow briefly lighting up the alleyway they had come, the source became clear. There were no other noises, so the steps echoed in the empty streets more loudly than they otherwise might; they were coming up from the east gate toward the stairs, once even the sound of someone falling heavily onto the stones, a woman’s voice uttering a muffled cry, and then the steps thudding onward again, up the stair to the palace.

Máriel ducked out of their hiding place, and pointed. The courtyard had a clear line of view up the east stair to the hilltop, and a white figure, with a globed Fëanárian lamp wildly swinging in her hand, was beginning to make her way up, stumbling and bent, obviously at the edge of her endurance. Above her, the palace and its domes and spires were all lit up in warm light and the Mindon vaulting up into the air behind it shone its beacon eastward with a steady white flame. The clouds had cleared and now stars crowded in the sky as they had never done even during Telperion’s hours.

“What do you think that was?” asked Calassë, tearing herself away from the sight while the woman continued stumbling up the stairs. “And who?”

Máriel rolled her shoulders. “A messenger, I suppose - judging by her hair she must be either a Vanya or a Teler, so perhaps from Taniquetil or Alqualondë. We might find out if we followed her.” Something in her voice hitched, although she tried to hide it. “Perhaps she is a herald, and came to announce that they are returning. We should follow her.”

“No,” said Calassë. “I really don’t think so. They won’t. They’re gone. But we promised the children we’d be back soon. And the pigeons, what about the food? I’d rather they didn’t have to stay hungry.”

“But if they are returning…”

“They’re not and you know they’re not!”

Máriel’s face twisted into an unhappy grimace, but she bent and picked something up from the ground that at a closer look turned out to be the splintered end of a broomstick, and hefted it in her hand to swing it downward with enough force to make a whooshing sound.

“Then I would rather not waste more time,” she said, clipped. “I think this will do to make it quick for the pigeons.” She glared at the dovecote, but was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, took a step, and stopped.

“Once we’ve had food, we’ll go, too,” Calassë decided, and hoped that it sounded comforting. It was obvious that Máriel was uneasy about the thought, and although Calassë didn’t like to think about killing either, she didn’t want Máriel to have to do it, so she took the broomstick from her hand as they neared the cage. “Our parents won’t come back, and it’ll be better at the palace,” she added, to take her own mind off it. “We can’t stay in Lady Saminquirë’s house forever. But first, food.”

Máriel swung the hatch open, and reached for the first bird, cupping both hands around its body and pinning its swan-white wings to its sides. The bird rucked its head and gave an uneasy coo.

“Hold it tight.” Calassë squeezed her eyes shut and swung, but then Máriel shrieked, and there were wings in Calassë’s face and the stench of the dovecote, and the pigeon fluttered up and away. The broomstick slipped from her hand and clattered onto the ground.

“Máriel!” She yelled and rubbed a hand over her face before daring to open her eyes again. The pigeon Mariel had held was gone and tears were pouring down her face.

“I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I’m -” she hiccuped, and then her knees gave way and she slumped to the floor heavily, but continued babbling, and her voice was fast rising from a whisper to a yelp. “You’d have killed it like Melkor killed the King, he just smashed his head, I could not, I don’t want -- ”

"Shut up, you're going to scare them, shut up shut up shut up!" Calassë whispered frantically when Máriel’s words seemed to stir the rest of the birds from their drowsing. She wanted to scream that Máriel was spoiling everything but she couldn't raise her voice, so she dropped to her knees, grabbed Máriel by the shoulders and shook her, to and fro, until Máriel's mouth clicked shut.

Máriel stayed quiet after that, but twitched away from her touch when Calassë reached out to touch her hair the same way Máriel had done for her.

“It’s fine,” Calassë said, even if she did through clenched teeth. “I won’t hurt you.” Hearing the flutter of more wings through the open hatch- another pigeon gone - she reached for the broken end of the broomstick again, squared her shoulders and got up.

“Look away,” she said, over the feeling of her stomach churning at the birds going limp and dead because of her. “I’ll do it on my own.”

By the end of it, Calassë had stuffed three dead white birds into the pillow cover with shaking fingers. Máriel had kept her sight stubbornly away into the eastward dark, and at some point her tears had stopped, even though her face still gleamed wet. Calassë rubbed away the soft down feathers that clung to her sweaty palms and nudged Máriel’s shoulder with as much gentleness as she could muster. “Could you take the millet? Máriel? Are you coming?”

“That sound?” Máriel asked instead of rising. “Can you hear it?”

Calassë had been so focused on the birds that she hadn’t registered the rushing sound that was growing steadily louder from the east, like a storm rolling in from the sea.

“Wind?” she wagered and strained her ears to hear if there was more to it.

Máriel, her eyes blown wide and dark, shook her head. “Not merely wind. If you listen closely… there is screaming.”

The horses had been skittish ever since they had left Mahtan’s homestead. The air smelled of fall as it had towards the end of Nerdanel’s last visit to Formenos. There, where the light had always been weaker, Yavanna had decreed the trees habitually lose their leaves to rest at certain points of the year, but nearer to Tirion the withering evergreens shedding their foliage onto the road was enough to unsettle her.

Hísimë’s hoof sunk deep into a pile of dead leaves, and docile though she usually was, the horse yanked her head up, nearly tearing the reins from Nerdanel’s gloved hands. Beside them, Anairë’s horse nickered and danced. It spoke to her skill as a rider that Anairë easily gentled Morilintë and turned her from the distraction and back onto the road toward the distant city.

Almost immediately Hísimë gave a call of distress and followed, and Nerdanel breathed a sigh of relief. The long, slow ride toward Tirion through the cold had frozen her bones and muscles, and she doubted she would have been able to hold herself on horseback had Hísimë continued to dance. Nerdanel patted her neck, murmuring reassurances.

When they had caught up with Anairë, Nerdanel pulled the shawl from the lower half of her face, and for a moment her breath stood in a white plume in front of her mouth before dissipating. The cold air stung at her lips and nostrils. “Thank you,” she said to Anairë over the clop and crunch of the hooves. “I thought she would throw me.”

“It is a trick Írissë taught me - herd instinct is the surest way to get them to follow along,” Anairë answered. It seemed the significance of her words did not occur to her until a moment later, when her lips tightened in the shadow of her hood, and her eyes caught a hard glitter of starlight.

Nerdanel herself felt her throat tighten, but rather than give in to the new onrush of grief tried to breathe it away, pulling in lungful after lungful of cool air. It did very little, apart from spreading the ache of the cold through her body. Coming from within, it was not kept off by the expedition garb she wore, thick wool and fur-lined leather that had served her well when she and her father had gone prospecting for gems and metals in the Pelóri, often near the snow line. But then, the cold there had also not been a match for what they were facing now, streaming in from the void behind the open sky.

“You do not think they went of their own free will after all?” Nerdanel asked against her better wisdom.

At first the ride continued in silence. Nerdanel did not press Anairë, who had turned her face away, for an answer, and Anairë did not give it until they had passed from the open fields stretching on either side into one of the many farming hamlets that littered the road.

“Truly?” said Anairë as they passed through the shadows cast by the unlit houses against the starlight. “I know what I said before, but… I do not know. You know how Nolvo became when Finwë passed him the crown, and the strain that put on us…”

Anairë let the words peter out, pushed her hood back, and ran a hand through her hair until her fingers caught again in the braided crown at the back of her head, then tugged them free with a noise of frustration. “...but nothing short of Moringotto’s influence - not even Fëanáro, not even Finwë’s death - could have brought forth that. I was afraid of him, Nerdanel.”

Nerdanel nodded. Trying to oppose Fëanáro she had been afraid of - for - because of - Fëanáro as well, as much as she had been angry, and although he tended toward a placid, often mellow personality, there were times when his brotherhood with Fëanáro became regrettably obvious. Nonetheless it hurt.

“And that would leave him no free will in whether to leave or stay... I do not know if it was so simple, Anairë. Moringotto sought to deal Aman the heaviest blow he was capable of, and that included spreading his poison. I do not think we would have this conversation if we were unaffected and saw clearly, but Nolofinwë - and Fëanáro, for that matter - I do not think their decisions came from outside themselves. Even láta, their minds would have had to be broken first to force Moringotto’s will upon them, and he was more insidious than that. When Fëanáro was questioned, that was revealed. His trickery woke something in them that made them fall, but buried though it may have been before… it was theirs. Else I cannot in good conscience believe that the Valar would be content to let them go with so little attempt to sway them. They are certainly not victims only.”

Nerdanel passed the last building while she spoke, and emerged into the open field again. The exposure made her shudder, and a sudden gust of wind sweeping from the Calacirya with the distant odour of sea salt did nothing to ease her mind. She had ridden this road many times when the Trees still shone, and the width of the plains stretching until sight’s edge had always woken an odd, boundless joy in her; now Hísimë’s nervous whickering struck her to the bone, and every sensation in the dark did likewise. She wished now she hadn’t heeded her mother’s suggestion to leave her lamp unkindled and try and adapt to the darkness after the return of the stars: it had been their natural way of living for years upon years in Cuiviénen, after all, but for Nerdanel it lacked all the comfort her mother had promised, and with Hísimë continuing to skid about, she had now no hand free.

She looked forward to being on the causeway up to Tirion soon; it began lifting from the plain toward the foothills and the city not far ahead. Perhaps then the horses might calm.

“Spoken like someone who had time enough to reconcile herself with their loss,” Anairë’s voice said from behind Nerdanel, coolly, picking up the thread of the conversation again after a bout of silence. “Morilintë, what is it? Go.” She clucked her tongue, but still the horse would not move, her eyes wide and rolling with the whites showing even in the dark, her ears playing to pinpoint something neither Nerdanel nor Anairë were able to hear.

Anairë sighed and dismounted, and, laying a hand over Morilintë’s eyes, attempted to lead her forward, to no avail. The horse pulled backward into the shadow of the houses, and stood there panting, when at last another distant howl of wind came from the direction of Tirion, stronger than the first, and sent dead leaves skittering from the wagon ruts like a nest of mice across the pavement. Hísimë continued to fight. Nerdanel finally relinquished the reins from her aching hands, and Hísimë crowded into the same corner Morilintë had found.

Anairë said, after a moment of concentrated listening, her head tilted toward the distant tumult, “There are voices in the wind - a voice, at any rate. A woman’s.”

The next gust swept from the foothills, strong enough to slam an unfastened window-shutter against the wall of the house. Hísimë tossed her head. The brine-smell of the sea hit them both in the face once more, and when Nerdanel had dismounted and fumbled the lamp affixed to her saddle alight in time to see Anairë blanch as realization came to her.

“That was the Lady Uinen’s voice! Have you ever considered how they would cross the sea? Nerdanel, they must have swayed the Teleri! Eärwen!” she cried, all her restraint suddenly abandoned in favour of the restless energy that was such a vital part of her. “I must get to Alqualondë, Morilintë won’t budge, give me your horse! I cannot let her go!”

With frantic motions, Anairë dismounted and began to fumble with the straps that fastened Morilintë’s saddlebags. The blasts of wind continued, and if Nerdanel had not grabbed her reins, she was sure Morilintë would have bolted. Anairë’s fingers were shaking as she tried to fumble open another clasp; Nerdanel wrapped her free hand around them and held until they stilled.

Anairë stood, trembling, her dark eyes on Nerdanel’s face.

“Anairë,” she said, willing calm into her voice despite the fear for Alqualondë - the isolation of the Teleri had grown in recent years, and Olwë himself had renounced the Unrest, saying that he and his people were content, and their loyalty to the Ainur of the sea unwavering. Nerdanel swallowed the unease that the memory invoked, hoping the tremor in her voice would go unnoticed. “Eärwen is sensible. You know that she would not leave you.”

For a moment it looked like Anairë’s mouth opened and she wanted to object, perhaps once again invoke Nolofinwë and the change that had come over him, or Arafinwë claiming the lordship his marriage into Olwë’s house had granted him, but she seemed to think better of it, and the pinched look of worry that had drawn her face into a grimace relaxed, and she relented, briefly and warmly leaning in to wrap Nerdanel in her arms. But even then, not all the tension had gone from her body - and Uinen’s screams continued to rush down at them with the wind.

“Trust you to help ground me,” Anairë murmured into Nerdanel’s shoulder, and then pushed herself away, to fix the straps she had worried loose. “Eärwen loves me, in a manner that Nolofinwë has never done… she rejected Arvo, even, as I did Nolvo. For one another.” She sucked in a heavy breath.

“Some of us long suspected,” Nerdanel said, although Anairë’s voice was tinged with regret, and bit her lips. She did not begrudge Anairë and Eärwen their bond, and whatever the nature of it was was not hers to question, especially not at such a time, but that Nerdanel herself should again find herself bereft alone out of the three of them stung. She mounted Hísimë again when Anairë was ready for departure.

“You should not let her wait. Whatever -” she swallowed around her heart pounding in her throat, and willed away the taste of bile that rose at the thought - “whatever happened at Alqualondë to grieve the Lady Uinen, I am certain Eärwen will be watching for you. I will go to the palace alone and tell Indis, if she does not already know.”

“I hope -” Anairë began, but her words faltered as her eyes fixed onto the road. On the causeway not far distant, a globed light was swaying toward them in a runner’s hand, but the dark figure’s gait was stumbly and unsteady; the netted lamp swinging wildly with every movement.

“That is a Fëanárian Lamp!” Nerdanel finally succeeded in driving Hísimë from the sheltered corner into a gale of wind, and as though she sensed her rider’s renewed will and urgency she plunged forward into a gallop toward the runner. Anairë was following not far behind.

The distance flew by.

Hísimë had barely skidded to a stop on the smooth pavement that Nerdanel dismounted and headed forward through the last stretch of darkness with a cry of recognition. The heavy boots, the white shift, the blonde hair now matted by sweat and the braids torn both by the storm and what must have been a relentless race.

It was an ill omen, at best.

“Estelindë? Estelindë! Are they well?”

She was the last person Nerdanel had expected to find. She herself had asked her friend to accompany Fëanáro and her sons to Formenos; they all trusted her, having known her from their very first breaths. Often it had been Estelindë’s hand that had coaxed them to breathe in the first place, and it had taken no request of Nerdanel’s for the Master Healer of the House of Finwë to accompany them into Exile; although she had renewed her own oath to Nerdanel to watch over them all, if she could.

Estelindë said nothing, merely stopped and swayed on her feet trying to suck in enough breath to fill her lungs; her face shone with sweat and tears, her narrow eyes bloodshot, and she reached out an arm to steady herself against Nerdanel’s shoulder, her fingers digging through Nerdanel’s garb with painful strength. The lamp slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor but did not shatter; the netting protected the crystal within from the impact. It rolled over the stones, momentarily dipping everything into a sharp blue light.

“You have --” Estelindë gasped. Her throat was so parched that the words were nearly unintelligible. “Nerdanel, you have -- to Alqualondë. They’ll -- take the ships, by force --” she sucked in another breath, doubled over and coughed painfully until her voice returned and she rasped, “they wouldn’t listen, you need to come at once, perhaps you can still -”-

Words couldn’t describe the weight of dread that settled onto Nerdanel, and she pulled Estelindë back upright. “You ran all the way from Alqualondë? Estelindë, what are they doing, how did you come here? Are they safe?”

“From the - encampment. My horse - bolted halfway. But - they were thr-” another cough, and Nerdanel wished she had a flask of water or some of the honey that Estelindë’s mother made to ease her friend’s speech, but she also knew that if Estelindë, even with her history of self-sacrifice, had put herself through this ordeal to deliver her message, she wouldn’t stop to take the slightest thought to herself, Master Healer though she was.

“- threatening violence in their council, Fëanáro, Tye -Tyelko and Curvo -- Olwë did not yield the ships; so the boys - they’re oath-bound to obey, they must have done - the storm, they wouldn’t listen to - me, but they - they will - to their mother!”

Anairë pushed forward, ashen-faced, while Nerdanel still tried to process Estelindë’s words and implications - her husband had threatened Nolofinwë before, but her sons, to bloody their swords - her mind, repulsed, wrenched from that thought.

“No! If that is what they have turned to, then there is no swaying. You saw us at the gates!” Nerdanel replied at last, pressing Hísimë’s reins into Estelindë’s hands, and stooped to pick up the fallen lamp. “I could not sway Fëanáro then, and if - this - has already begun he will be swayed by no less than force used against him - ask others to restrain him, but not me!”

“Nerdanel,” Anairë said, “you can’t mean what you are saying there; the Teleri --”

Nerdanel closed her eyes and shook her head. There was bile rising in her throat, her mouth so dry her tongue stuck to it and became a heavy, clumsy thing. Her sons would not… but their father...

“No! I tried and failed in less desperate circumstances. What makes you think I could have an effect if it is already too late, if they were past listening to begin with? Take Hísimë, Estelindë; go back, try to save whom and what you can, but I am no healer, or miracle worker, and I must wash my hands of this!”

“Please! I swore an oath -- to you to -- keep them safe in Exile, and now you will not even -- aid me?”

“What can we do? We have no weapons, no armour, nothing; I will not step in front of him when he is intent on murder!”

“If you even refuse the att--” Estelindë forced out loudly, promptly doubling over into another raw coughing-fit. Spittle flew from her lips; Nerdanel recoiled.

“- the attempt - the blood of the Teleri is on your hands, too! Theirs, and that of your family!”

“If Uinen grieves it is already too late! You were not fast enough, we tarried too long, but I am not - none of us - is the one who wield their swords! The fault is not ours! You know that, Estelindë! You held to your own oath, I know you tried - but you are the one who must go back to them. Save who can be saved, go! I am ordering you!”

The next moments passed in a blur of Nerdanel pulling the wrapped statue of Nienna from the horse, Estelindë hesitating, inclining her head, for the blink of an eye Nerdanel thought Estelindë might spit at her, this time deliberately - but instead she swung into Hísimë’s saddle, Anairë followed suit into Morilintë’s, and the two of them thundered past, back in direction of the city.

Nerdanel remained behind, still clutching the statue and the lamp that Estelindë had brought, standing in the storm as though a blade of lightning had struck her to the heart.

How long until she began making her way, foot by numb foot, to the city gate, she could not say. It still was dark, and the wind bearing Uinen’s screams had not abated.

Chapter End Notes

láta: "Open", in particular referencing an elvish state of mind when it comes to thought communication (ósanwë-kenta). When a mind is closed, no one, not even a Vala, is able to do anything short of breaking it; openness is necessary for manipulation like Morgoth's.

“... yes, my Atto owns a book on avian anatomy, and I even read it, but that does not make me proficient in gutting and dismembering birds!”

“Owned,” said Calassë over the wind that still came screaming in great gusts down the fireplace into the kitchen. It sounded almost like a person - Máriel had claimed it was, and rolling in from the sea it could be none other than the Lady Uinen, but Calassë tried not to listen too closely. It unsettled her.

She gave Máriel a look. “He left just like everyone else.”

The words made her feel sorry almost at once, when Máriel’s head snapped up from the pot they were going to boil the pigeons in. Máriel’s face had been pinched and unhappy since they’d started on their way back, the whole time, and it hadn’t been until they’d reached Lady Saminquirë’s house that she’d let go of the broken broomstick she’d picked up where Calassë had left it and clutched it awkwardly along with the millet sack Calassë had asked her to take.

Calassë had been happy to leave the dead pigeons aside for that time, instead making a flavourless gruel of millet and water - but even with nothing to sweeten it, she felt like she was serving a feast to the waiting children. While they ate she let Toron suck gruel off her finger bit by little bit. When he was sated and dropped off to sleep again, she took what was left for herself, and even though it was no longer very much, even that made her feel full, and for a moment warm and content. She had dozed what seemed like a brief while - not long enough for the wind to stop raging outside - with Írimellë curled against her, before Máriel had woken her, saying that they ought to take care of the pigeons before they spoiled, or before the children felt they needed to watch something that was bound to be bloody.

Now Máriel looked like she was going to cry again, and jerked away from the hand Calassë stretched out toward her. Feathers from the plucked birds still clung to her fingers; the three dead pigeons lay naked before her on the table, next to a gleaming knife. It made her feel queasy to even look at them now, and Máriel, it seemed, no less.

“Sorry,” Calassë murmured. She couldn’t really blame Máriel, not after she’d shaken her like that. Not after all that had happened.

“You keep doing it. You treat me as though you enjoy see me being humiliated, several times now.”

“I don’t!” Calassë said, loud enough for Máriel to jump. “But you’re acting as though everything is fine and you can do it all, no matter what - and now you’re talking like it’s still light and your father didn’t leave, and -”

“Shut up! Or at least consider what you’re doing, yourself, as though you were so very useful! The children depend on us, and someone needs to designate a direction unless you want everything to fall apart! We’ve had food, we still have more millet for later, but beyond that? It’s short-sighted. And since you seem to be unable to, I tried that, only to find you continuously mocking me!”

Máriel huffed. Her lips had grown very thin and her voice high-pitched with anger, and if her words hadn’t been meant to sting, then Calassë might have laughed about how much she looked like an angry sparrow.

“Well,” she said instead. “Since you’re so great, why don’t you stay here and designate? You can sit around and behave like you’re everyone’s queen! I’m just a weaver’s apprentice, and even Mistress Lúlë told me to stay behind!”

Something twisted in Máriel’s pretty face.

“Were a weaver’s apprentice,” she said. Her voice was dripping with something nasty, and even though Máriel was half a head shorter, she somehow managed to look down on Calassë. “See? You are also doing it. We are not truly so different; I wish you stopped acting as though we were! The dark levels all, at least that part of Lord Fëanáro’s speech was true.”

“It doesn’t, though, it doesn’t mean we’re not different! Where were you when it went dark? I bet it was somewhere important with your fancy family.”

“In Ilmarin,” Máriel said. Her anger had passed like a puff of wind, now she only seemed tired, and very careful with her words. Her voice had quieted; almost she was mumbling.

“My Atto was invited. The Coiviengolmor had just opened a leadership position that he was intended to succeed to after the festivities, and it was a way to honour him. Except that... the light dimmed. And we sat on Taniquetil in... this isle of light while the plain below just... foundered. It was like... diving. The light of the Trees could only penetrate so far into the water, and that is where most life was. My Atto calls -- called it the euphotic zone, and even the Teleri don't dive deeper than that, and it felt just like the time we went to Alqualondë to farewell my Atto off for one of his expeditions to Eressëa, and my parents' friends taught me about the sea - diving headfirst into the water from their boat, and seeing there was this immense darkness below you just waiting to swallow you up - coming for us. Like a wave. And that doesn't do it justice at all.” She paused and coughed, suddenly appearing worried, glancing out the windows. “And you? Where were you?”

Calassë rolled her shoulders and shook her head, staring at the floor just so she wouldn’t need to see Máriel’s face. Her cheeks grew hot.

“Nowhere. Outside. We always celebrate with all the neighbours, and the other people living in our house. We gather some things from everyone. Even Írimellë gave some eggs she'd gotten as a reward for running errands at the market, and we had a whole hog for roasting on the last festival day, and we were just starting to eat when the darkness rolled in, and the fire went out just as the Trees did. I think - I don't know. I think we tried to continue at first. We tried to rekindle the fire. Sometimes the lord Ossë sends mists from the sea that dim the light, and Lámaicon, he thought maybe he was sending them from the Outer Seas this time, because it was coming from the west, not from the east. And we had some of the pork after a while, and then we went home to wait for the Elder King to blow away the darkness, but I think we all knew that was something else, and my parents started fighting, and Írimellë was crying, so I took her and left and went to Mistress Lúlë so we could sleep. And on the way there I noticed the hog was gone from the fire pit. We'd just left it on the spit, we hadn't thought about it much more after it went dark, and someone had toppled everything over, and – things just got worse from then on. People used the darkness to steal. Someone smashed in the windows of Mistress Lúlë's shop, so she and Lady Saminquirë and some other ladies of the guild went to the palace to complain and came back with the news that they needed to go to the Máhanaxar instead, because that's where the King was, and where the Valar were sitting in council and maybe she could find out more. They came back telling us that they were hunting for Melkor. And some... thing. And that they'd done it. And... then things continued. I think. And next was that everyone began to talk about leaving, and my father said -- he said -- and my mother, she gave me Toron and told me I had to look after him because they were going to find out what had happened, and it was too dangerous for us children, and I'd have milk for him soon because that happens when you have a baby that needs nursing and -”

She sat down heavily on the cold kitchen floor and rubbed her hands over her face.

Máriel came to sit next to her, and slid an arm around Calassë's shoulders. Her skin was cool even through the fabric of her dress and Calassë’s own shirt, but the touch made her want to lean in all the more. It made her feel, maybe, a little bit safer.

Máriel continued: “Seeing them prepare for the hunt was a... revelation on why we call them Valar. They are Powers, in more than just name. The Elder King in his wrath – and the Lady Varda. She stood with a star in her hand, one of the few lights existing at that point, and she rode ahead as banner bearer, blazing her light against the darkness for the host to see by and a threat to Melkor, and the hooves of Nahar struck fires as the Lord Oromë rode into battle,” Máriel said. “And we watched from Máhanaxar where everyone had gathered as they sped off into the north. Lady Varda's star was the last we saw of them before the darkness came between. Seeing all that it was hard to believe that they failed to apprehend Melkor and were forced to return empty-handed, but they will bring him to judgment yet. It is not a question. They will yet; our parents will be safe, and perhaps when they recognize that, they will allow us to follow. Or they may see reason and return.”

“We’re still different.” Máriel’s hand was warming on her shoulder, and it took Calassë all her strength to pull away. Instead she drew her knees up and rested her forehead on them. It was unfair. She had hoped that things would turn better once they had food - now, instead, the brief contented spell had worn off and a dull, dim feeling had taken its place, leaving her only with more energy to be upset.

“Being different may not be an entirely bad thing,” Máriel said. “If we do not continue to make it one. We both have different sets of knowledge and if we pull together we may be able to overcome this. Look,” she added after a moment’s consideration, with her voice hitching into the sort of brightness that came with someone trying very hard to find a positive spin on a situation. “We already have the birds, and the water is boiling. And you plucked them; you knew how. I did not.”

“Only because I helped Mistress Lúlë make pillows sometimes, when someone commissioned them from her, and we needed feathers for the stuffing.”

“If that’s such a great difference, that isn’t a bad thing.”

“It is if we go to the palace. Because they’ll all go falling over themselves for you, and you’ll be… you again. And I’ll be on my own again with Írimellë and Toron.”

“Is that why you’re stalling? I thought you were, even after you suggested we go there, but I couldn’t tell why.”

Calassë looked up and shrugged, and over the feeling of helplessness she said, “I didn’t think about it. I know we need to go there, and I think I want to, but… Víresso is like that. Since he started his schooling in the upper city he has been treating everyone like he hates them just for being lower.”

“I don’t hate you.” Máriel murmured, and turned toward Calassë fully. “I’m not Víresso, and I promise I will not abandon you, or treat you as lesser. As long as you do the same.” The light of the hearth-fire shone on her dark skin, lit up her eyes into a golden green, and played shadows over her parted lips.

Calassë suddenly found it hard to breathe; her throat went tight.

“I don’t hate you either,” she said. It sounded thin and low and terrible in her own ears, something that Írimellë would say, rather than her, and there still was so much about Máriel that made her words feel hollow, and that made her hate how quickly Máriel had become so important - and she could not even tell how. She knew, though, that she did not want her to leave. “Can we stay together, until this is over?”

Máriel shook her head, and Calassë stomach gave a funny, frightened lurch.

“Not just until this is over. If you would still like to stay with me then, you are welcome to.” She hesitated, briefly. “If this is ever over. In some ways it may never be. Unless the Valar rekindle the Trees at the very least everything will remain changed.”

Calassë leaned toward her. What she wanted to do she was no longer sure, afterwards, but Máriel mirrored the motion easily, and halfway their faces met, Máriel’s nose brushing over her cheek and ear, awkwardly nuzzling, before her fingers came up under Calassë’s chin and tilted her head just right.

Máriel’s lips were warm, a little chapped and rough where she had worried them with her teeth, and she drew back from the kiss far too quickly. If she hadn’t lingered, looking ready to run and disappear out into the night in a fit of terror, Calassë would have wondered whether it had happened at all, or if some figment of her imagination was playing a trick on her - but even so, her hand found Máriel's wrist and closed around it.

Chapter End Notes

Máriel's descriptions of the Valar rushing into battle to hunt for Morgoth and Ungoliant are very much inspired by the Book of Lost Tales.