Our Share of Night to Bear by Elleth

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Chapter VII: Heart-to-Heart

With their immediate needs taken care of, Calassë and Máriel find themselves trying to tie up loose ends.

“... 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.

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