Our Share of Night to Bear by Elleth

Prologue I: Desolation

In the Weavers' Quarter of Tirion, a group of children left in the wake of the exodus of the Noldor must begin to fend for themselves.

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 [...].