Be All My Sins Remembered by Marchwriter

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Chapter 3: A Candle in the Wind

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It was far past the hour for petitioners or his captains or even Edrahil, whose absence of late had been both apology and reprimand, when the knock came. Two taps, a pause, two more taps. If a man could long for and dread a thing at once, it was such a knock at such an hour.

Not yet dressed for sleep, Finrod lifted his head, just a fraction, from the map and its gratuitous use of dark ink. How harmless those flat lines, traced by a cartographer’s pen, appeared on parchment. The winding road to Aglon and back might have been conquered in a day and with little fanfare from this vantage point.

Yet the smeary shadows stalking the top of the map from end to end — though rather less to scale than the rest of the world (none dared venture near Angband for detail’s sake) — had very real counterparts, indeed. And very small and rather forlorn looked the bastions along Sirion in the west and Himring in the northeast. How vague and empty the lands between.

He rested his finger on the pulse of the road he and his knights would ride on the morrow. North to the Crossings of Teiglin. Then East across Iant Iaur. The bridge was still well-kept, if memory served, despite its unfortunate location under the very eaves of Taur-nu-Fuin, whose bristling black lines lacked the dismay of reality here in the safety of his own halls. He traced it over and over as if, with the next passage, he could redirect his fate to a safer, saner course and so steer clear of the decision he had no wish to make and could not avoid.

The knock came again. A little louder this time. Even now, his visitor did not enter without permission. The thought brought a painful little smile to Finrod’s lips even as it relieved him. Some things still stood. Yet Finrod had never kept him waiting long. On other nights — too many other nights, he admitted — he had oft received his visitor even before that first knock, unshod, hair unbound, eager to commence with his folly.

Kisses begun tentatively in the moonlight above Ringwil gathered breath and potency in the darkness of Nargothrond’s deepest chamber. Under the coaxing of a calloused hand riding his flank, he could dismiss Edrahil’s dire pronouncements as the clamoring of the overcautious (or envious).

Morning light, of course, had always reasserted his sanity and his avowal that the next night would find him determined to set a very different course…Edrahil’s words clamoring in his ears: You may be the one to send him to that death. Can you do that? Now, the decision had come to him, willing or no. And delay would make it no easier.

At his summons Bëor stepped into the chamber and eased the door to behind him.

He had put on his jubilee finery. The surcoat of blue and white — a gift well-bestowed—accented the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his hips. Above his breast, picked out in gold thread, glinted the sigil of the House of Finarfin. His hair, now grown long in the fashion of the Eldar, was swept into a queue at his nape that a simple tug might unravel. He had even sheathed a little ornamental dagger at his waist.

For all the world like a promise of one last night’s grace.

Yet instead of sprawling — as was his wont — across the divan where many of their trysts had begun (that dark head scribing a slow serpentine curve down) or leveling a look of heated intent from the shadow of his hair, the Man stood very straight, just out of arm’s reach. Only his thumbs, hooked in his belt, betrayed his discomposure, worrying the leather under his fingers.

Finrod leaned back in his chair, the muscles in his neck and shoulders creaking. “My colors become you.”

“I hope so.” But the words were bereft of sultry invitation. “I have missed you of late.”

It was all Finrod could do not to round the desk between them and beg forgiveness. Instead, he heard himself say, “Matters of some import have required all my attention of late.”

“Matters such as the assault upon Aglon, perhaps? Your ride north?”

Only a trusted few had been apprised of Maglor’s request. “How did you hear of that?”

“Lurking at keyholes,” came the unabashed reply with at least a trace of Bëor’s old mischief. “Close quarters do not make for well-kept secrets.”

“Duly noted.”

“Particularly amongst those who have a vested interest in your welfare.” Bëor’s eyes lowered, fingertips skating absently over the scrolled leaves of Finrod’s secretary. “I swore to follow you.”

The taste of moonlight on his lips.

“I remember.”

Bëor’s rucked brow and steeled jaw rode the line between earnest and aggrieved. “As your vassal, I swore. And I had presumed — perhaps wrongfully — as your friend.”

The hurt in his tone knifed Finrod between the ribs. “Of course, we are friends.”

“And yet you would ride alone into peril.”

Finrod’s chair grated against the flags. He could guess the intent behind the careful words, and he was loath to own himself unequal even to their unvoiced plea. He poured a glass of malmsey from the board, more out of a desire to occupy his hands and eyes than the fortification of his courage. Tawny as dirt at the bottom of the glass; tainting the sides with a coppery stain like old blood.

He downed most of the glass in a swallow. Bitter on his tongue, the tannin strong in the back of his throat with notes of the grave, of earth churned up in the wake of bloodshed.

“It is not your fight.” He swirled the dregs at the bottom of the glass. He could not meet those beseeching eyes.

“You told me that my people would be safe. Now I learn that Orcs threaten the Pass just north of their dwellings, scarce leagues away. How is that not my fight? What else would you have me do? Hide behind your gilded walls? Wait with the maidens and children, cowering behind the skirts and charity of the Eldar?”

Yes, Finrod thought but did not say. I would have you safe.

Bëor’s stare bored between his shoulder blades. “Even now, you count us as lesser. Younger, weaker. You lie to us because you think we cannot understand. You love us — but only a little — according to our measure among the mayflies.”

“That is not so.” Even to his own ears it sounded false. “You are new come to the guard. I would not see your skill taxed so soon against such an enemy.”

Others did not have such consideration, whispered that treacherous voice in his mind.

“I am not new to the sword,” Bëor insisted, taking a step closer. “Or to Orcs. I can help you. You need me.”

“Damn you, I am trying to protect you.”

“I did not ask to be protected! I am not a child, Finrod.”

“No. You are not. You are mortal.”

Bëor’s carriage softened a fraction. “You cannot spare us from Death, my friend. It is our fate.”

“Perhaps,” Finrod said, laying down the glass rather harder than he meant to. “Even so, I would counsel you not to chase it.”

Bëor, however, was watching his face with hawkish intensity, undeterred by his circling. “Were you even going to tell me? If I had not come, would I have awoken tomorrow to find you gone, the sheets cold and stale?”

It was too close to the truth to admit aloud.

“As I said, I have had many matters on my mind,” Finrod said, stalling for time to think and collect himself. “Besides, there is honorable enough work here. I cannot leave Nargothrond undefended whilst I am elsewhere.”

“You have men enough to stand at ramparts staring out over empty grass. When I swore my fealty, it was no braggart’s boast nor a tyro’s desire to prove himself. It was in earnest.” He took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I would not have you fight alone.”

That is why I would not have you by my side. If you fall…defending me…I will not be responsible for your death. But his courage had not been made to utter those words aloud. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, too desiccated to form words.

Bëor’s warm hand brushed the arc of Finrod’s cheekbone, slid under his hair to cup the back of his neck. It was a warm hand, unafraid of hard labor or long toil or death. A hand that had plucked harp and heart strings with equal mastery. And Finrod yearned to lean into it but could not. A flame burned beneath that hand. A fire that would burn too bright and too hot — and reduce him to ash if he let it.

“No.” He drew back, chill sweeping his nape as Bëor’s hand fell away. He lit a taper on the desk.

His lover made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a sigh like a cat that’s been dashed with water. “So that is your answer. A Man, I suppose, is only a base creature, after all. Best suited to kneel for your lust, but not to stand at your side.”

Volleyed like an arrow from a bowstring, the remark spun Finrod round, provoked at last beyond forbearance.

“I could have you clapped in irons for such insolence,” he snarled, hands furling into fists at his sides, wrestling against the urge to seize the man and shake him until his teeth rattled. “You think you have faced the Enemy, rash boy. You know nothing of him. Or of what his Orcs will do to every man, woman, and child if they breach the Pass. Your wounded pride is the least of my concerns, and you truly know nothing of me if you think otherwise. You would serve at my side. What need could I possibly have of you?”

Bëor stood before him as stalwart as a sapling clinging to a mountainside under the onslaught of a storm. White to the lips, his face did not change, but beneath, something desolate and proud and wholly itself still burned, unquenched.

Finrod’s anger faded as quickly as it had flared, leaving him weak as if he’d been bled and not a little ashamed. It was not like him to lose his temper. Too many things of late had been unlike him. This conversation could not continue.

“Go, Balan. You are dismissed.”

To his credit, the Man inclined his head jerkily in obeisance and murmured. “As you wish. Lord.”

All the air sucked out of the chamber with the punctuating clap of the door, leaving a hollow emptiness in its wake. Finrod squeezed his eyes tight shut, pushing away the uncustomary ache.

Letting out an unsteady breath, he went to his trunk, the lid cracking against the footboard. Buried within lay his father’s corslet, its mithril scales all a-glitter, the belt studded with diamonds. Only this one had survived the Ice. The harp had been left behind. The wraps and furs and jewels of Túna.

Only these things remained: the sword, the armor.

He lifted out the heavy mass of scales and spread it upon the bed, the ghost of a man on his sheets. That was all that ever survived. The world he now knew was not made for tenderness. And it did not allow for such luxuries as love.

He blew out the tapers and slipped into his cold sheets, alone.

A grey wind swept down the Pass of Aglon to meet he knights of Nargothrond as they thundered up the causeway, ducking their chins against the bitter lash that had shaped and sharpened the walls of the ravine.

The wind dropped once within the courtyard, but the late-season chill deepened, if anything, as a harried-looking messenger rushed out and greeted them with a courtesy more perfunctory than formal.

“My Lord. You are expected. Your men may proceed to the garrison. If you will follow me.”

“Edrahil, see them settled,” Finrod said.

“If…that is your wish, my Lord,” Edrahil said.

In the presence of others, Edrahil unfailingly presented the face of a dutiful captain, but even for a dutiful captain, he had lingered close since they departed Nargothrond. Suffocatingly so. Better to face a room full of kinslaying kinsmen than another instant of that half-pitying, half-apologetic look Edrahil kept casting over his shoulder when he thought Finrod wasn’t looking.

“It is,” Finrod prompted.

The knights of Nargothrond in ranks three deep, their backs straight as their spears, wheeled off with martial precision. The hindmost had forgotten to doff his hood. Young, perhaps, and green to the courtesies of court. They seemed so few. Hardly a storied army though each was valiant and would fight beside him to the last if he asked it of them.

He hoped he would not have to ask.

The messenger led him on, and despite the grimness of his surroundings, he could not help admiring the craftsmanship, the warren of corridors and slitted windows, the sloped ramps in place of stairs.

Four of the seven sons, absent only the two youngest and the darkest, were assembled in a wide hall. At the head of a long table stood Maedhros with Maglor at his shoulder. Gone were the merry huntsmen he had ridden beside in the woods what felt like ages ago (though Maedhros could never be deemed ‘merry,’ exactly).

From polished cuirass to the curved blades belted at their waists, these were warriors primed for war.

The only fair head among them, Finrod could not repress a sense of isolation — the apartness a deer cut from the herd might feel — all the more compounded by the wolfhound that circled and sniffed at his heels, a low gnarl of suspicion rumbling from its throat.

At the sound, Maedhros raised his head, an eyebrow cocking. “I near thought the guards were spinning me an idyll when they reported riders at the gate. Can it be Nargothrond has prised open its purse strings at long last?”

Maglor detached himself from his brother’s side and took Finrod warmly by the arm. “Glad we are to see you none the worse for wear. We heard tell you found some misadventure after our last parting.”

“None the worse for wear,” Finrod echoed, not entirely truthfully. He said no more, hoping that the matter would be passed over for others more urgent, but Celegorm, ever the lover of gossip, leaned across his forearms and fixed Finrod with a gimlet, almost prurient, eye.

“These Atani, we hear much rumor but little of substance… Are they of a measure with the Belain’s dire pronouncements? Are they fearsome? What sort of fighters do they make?”

“They are a hardy folk and very valiant,” Finrod said. “Accustomed to…an unfettered life.” Even such paltry explanation as that felt like an admission of s secret.

I would follow you, the shadow of Bëor’s voice reproached him.

“Is that so? They must be comely, at the very least, to have so…enamored you.” Celegorm flashed him a smile that was all teeth. “So how many did you bring with you? We have need of chaff. The Enemy has brought threshers enough.”

Finrod was hard pressed to still his hands from threshing chaff of a very different sort. His back and legs ached with days of hard riding; he had slept scant hours in the last fortnight, and a weariness that had nothing to do with physical fatigue had settled like a black shadow across his soul as the miles lengthened between him and Nargothrond. And while distance and activity had blunted the sharp edge of his separation from Bëor, he resented Celegorm’s pressing fingers into an open wound, unknowing or no. His temper, already at its limit of late, was dangerously fraying.

With an effort of will, he swallowed back his rising bile and addressed himself to Maedhros instead. “Speaking of, I was given to understand matters were somewhat urgent. Yet you would rather fritter away time with idle questions.”

Maedhros quelled Celegorm with a stern look.

“Indeed. We have sent scouts to espy the Enemy’s numbers. Only one has returned and with little news of use. Either their woodcraft has improved or some other baleful power conceals their numbers and movements.” He plucked up his plumed helm from its place on the table and fitted it over his telltale hair. “I leave for Himring tonight. Maglor will come with me. Curufin and Celegorm and your men will fortify the Pass here. With luck, we will be able to drive them off ere we ever have need of you.”

Finrod found this rather optimistic. The Enemy had ever hedged his numbers and his strength, the better to take his foes unawares. But he agreed. Maedhros unexpectedly caught Finrod’s arm with his remaining hand as the others filed out to fetch their horses and ready their men.

The Fëanorian’s eyes glittered with a fey light. “I feel it in my bones. This is the first onslaught before the storm, Findaráto,” he intoned. “He is testing us. If we fail here…”

“We will not fail,” Finrod said. The grip was on his arm was tight, almost painfully so, yet he did not shrug it away. “You are not alone in this.”

“I am glad you have come,” Maedhros said, and then he was gone.

As the footsteps of the brethren faded down the corridor, Finrod moved to the hearth. High in the corners, the shadows had grown thick and deep. What was more galling?

Glad, Maedhros may be, but not enough to set them to work. No, they were to be left behind and man the walls until something should happen. He felt a swell of sympathy for Bëor — almost as much as relief that the Man had not come.

Too often had Fëanorian pride exceeded its grasp, and he liked it not at all that Maedhros would lay all his hopes on the cavalry. If the Enemy were smart, they would avoid Himring at all costs, and there were open places, many of them, where a clever and sure-footed foe might come down on Aglon’s outworks…

“Someone ought to take a look around,” he addressed the wolfhound who had stretched its belly toward the comfort of the fire.

The wolfhound’s ear twitched, as if to say who? You? But it did not lift its head from its paws.

“It may be no hardship for you to lie in idleness, but I cannot if I may be of service. I have arts Maedhros does not that will conceal me and may reveal their numbers or, at least, their location, which gives us the advantage,” Finrod argued, aware that he was debating with an animal who, as a general rule, would not argue back. “And besides, it’s only a look around. If Maedhros is right, all I do is risk wasting a little time.”

And if he’s wrong? The wolfhound looked at him with a half-lidded yellow eye. That would make you a reckless fool as well as a faithless one, wouldn’t it?

“You know, you would make a very fine pelt for my dais.”

To this, the wolfhound made no reply.

He stole out of the little eastern wall gate into a sallow twilight.

The encroaching night had drained most of the color and substance from the earth, erasing texture and detail, but Celegorp’s sentries up on the wall were likely as keen-eyed as his hounds. Plucking the shadows from the crenellations above him and the arch of the gate behind, Finrod drew them around his shoulders and over his hair like a mantle. Soft as a wraith, he moved across the thin stretch of open field and so down into a grove of fir trees, picking his way, his footfall leaving no trace, his breath no sound.

With the outworks fading into the dusk behind him, he kept the thin song of a stream on his right, the heavier darkness of the firs on his left as they rose up the crags. Despite his glamor, he felt exposed, the edges of the ravine scowling down at him from on high.

And the wind…

It funneled down the pass relentlessly, achingly. It struck him like the edge of a sword. It flung grit into his face and eyes, groped under every stitch of clothing with its insistent, chilly fingers. Not since the Ice had he faced such nagging, relentless discomfort. A low hum among the stones rose note by note to a shrill wail like an animal screaming in pain. Grimly, he ducked his head into it and tightened his grip on his sword hilt, his hands sweating in spite of the chill.

A footbridge spanned the stream a few yards on. And it was there that Finrod nearly stumbled over one of Maedhros’ sentries, lying facedown on the riverstones with a black pool under him.

Finrod’s heart picked up and slammed hard against his throat and ears. He swept out his sword and turned in a full circle, every sense straining. But for the wind, all was quiet. Quickly, he bent. The riverstones were still damp with the sentry’s blood. A star-shaped gash was all that was left of one eye, and a terrible jester’s grin, far too wide, split the lower half of his face.

A cry of pain or rage or joy — so close, Finrod startled backward, half-believing the slain sentry had made the noise — rent the night. A red light had appeared from nowhere on the other end of the bridge, and by its fell radiance, Finrod could see the monstrous faces of the Enemy though he was certain they had not been there a moment ago.

At least a score strong — the vanguard, most likely. They were large, leathery, and red-eyed, their faces twisted into animal-snarls, their fangs sharpened for blood. The Orcs thumped across the footbridge, the wood groaning under their weight. A runnel of sweat pooling at the back of his belt, Finrod drew his shadow-mantle tighter about him as they approached. Focusing, he looked off into the trees on his side of the stream.

As if on cue, the Orcs looked too. They shouted and jostled and pointed. A flicker of light — starlight, fey-light — flashed again and vanished amid the trees. With cries and howls, a full quarter of them went dashing off into the trees.

One, however, did not. An Orc chieftain, larger than the others, snuffed the air once and turned bright red eyes on Finrod.

At once, his head exploded with pain, black wings battering around inside his skull. And a Presence, a roaring dark wind that twisted at something inside him. He staggered, half-falling, aware that his shadow-mantle had fallen to rags about him. He tore his palms on sharp river stones.

The black chieftain roared, and they were on him.

He barely snatched up his sword before the first blow clanged against his cross guard, sending shockwaves up his shoulders. His hearing dimmed, and his vision centered, focused, his periphery alive. Faces, hands, legs, arms, necks. He hewed at them until his sleeves sagged, heavy and wet, and his blade smoked with black ichor, channels searing down the blue steel. His hands slipping in their leather gauntlets. The stink of blood and animal sweat, adding to the cottony taste of adrenaline singing through his veins.

But he was tiring, and they kept coming.

He slipped in the slick of blood and lost his footing and went down into the shallows of the stream. Before he could rise, an iron boot thumped into chest. All breath heaved from his lungs, and icy water drenched his gorget. His blade rang on the stones and was kicked out of reach.

The Orc chieftain’s notched and blackened blade hovered a hairsbreadth from his chest. He gazed up the jagged blade and breathed once. In. Out. He would not look away. If he must seek penitence at Mandos’ hands soon, he, at least, would not look away.

Lips drawn back in a feral snarl, red tongue lolling, the Orc hefted the blade in both hand and plunged down.

The black blade notched on the stones. The Orc stiffened, breath hitching as on a laugh then he dropped to his knees and fell in the stream. Something dark fluttering at the edges of its corpse and vanishing into the night.

Bëor stood above him, sword blade streaked with black ichor, eyes alight with a fell fire. He was wearing an elven cloak with the hood thrown back.

Finrod could only gape as the peal of a horn richocheted off the flanks of the Pass and Maedhros’ cavalry charged into the fray.

Finrod pulled his bloodstained cuirass over his head, the gambeson catching where a few of the links had pierced it, and let both fall in a pile of clinking rings. His under tunic clung to him, ripe with sweat and the grime of the battlefield. What he wouldn’t do for a good wash. Something hot to take the ache from his bones.

They had won. For now. But it was a taste of things to come. Of that much, Maedhros had been right.

He sank onto his pallet and tossed an arm across his eyes, his mind empty of anything but the desire for sleep. He was coasting on the edge when a shadow fell across the mouth of the tent.

“In or out,” he called, kneading his brow.

Edrahil ducked under the flap though he stepped no farther than the threshold. He was filthy as Finrod, but he still stood firm, steady as ever he had been.

Finrod remained where he was, unable to summon the energy to sit up or move. “Edrahil. Glad I am to see you on your legs.”

“And you, my lord.” He said nothing more.

“If you like, you can take root there. Though I would think after chasing the enemy’s tail halfway back to Angband, you would—”

“I was too far.”

“What?” He lowered his arm, the better to see his captain whose face wore an implacable expression.

“I was too far away. I swore I would stay by your side, and I could not. You might have died, and I was not near enough to save you. That is the cold truth of it.”

Finrod hauled himself to half-sitting though his body protested the movement.

“Yet I did not. There is no blame here, Edrahil.”

“You are wrong, my lord.” He stood very straight, a soldier steeling himself against some final blow. The words came soft, slowly, almost wrenched. “I was wrong. He came for you.”

Finrod opened his mouth to interrupt, but Edrahil held up a hand. “I feared…he would prey upon your good heart. That he sought only his own glory, the safety of his own people but…he had wrought a change in you. He brought you back to life.”

“I would have fallen today if not for him.”

“That’s not what I mean. Though it is true.” The rigidity bled out of Edrahil’s shoulders, and he slumped onto the bunk beside Finrod, their shoulders brushing. “I am glad, Ingoldo. Truly. That you love someone. You just could not love me.”

Finrod dropped his gaze to his knees. “I am sorry, Edrahil.”

“You know I shall follow your banner whithersoever you lead. Though to my own folly, perhaps.”

Finrod took that beloved face between his hands and pressed a fraternal kiss beneath that dark hairline. “They call me Wise. But I will never understand the greatness of such a heart as you possess, sadron. That you remain by my side despite my many follies.”

“Many, many follies,” he agreed and disentangled himself, but gently. “You are a good man, Ingoldo. And a worthy one. If this is but a taste of the enemy’s wroth to come, best not to squander what precious peace remains to us.”

A single lamp burned within the tent on the edge of the army’s encampment, its flame unwavering enough that the silhouette within was cast in full-fledged relief against the canvas.

A figure was seated within, chin bowed almost to his chest, utter weariness evinced in the bowed shoulders, the hands resting listless on his knees. He still wore hauberk and boots, fouled with the battlefield, though the laces of the latter, at least, had been picked loose.

Finrod hesitated with his fingers against the flap. As clearly as one of his visions, he could see a road unfurling before him, forking. One path led straight on, its stones neat and laced together, neither branch nor tree to overshadow it. The other was overgrown, patches of it hidden behind brakes and brambles. Its destination, unknown. The tug of both warred in his heart. Whichever one he pursued, he could not turn back after.

His feet made the decision for him before even his mind had made itself up. He cast back the canvas flap and ducked inside.

Bëor’s head snapped up at once, his expression flirting somewhere between contrition and defiance. Neither sat easily on his face, and both were overshadowed by an exhaustion of body and spirit that made Finrod ache in sympathy.

He did not speak. This was not a night for revelations or avowals, and words were uneasy things: too easily misinterpreted or misspoken.

Actions would have to serve.

He knelt on the beaten grass at Bëor’s knee and eased first one foot then the other free of its confining leather. The hauberk next, Bëor struggling with unwieldy limbs to unthread himself. It tumbled beside the cot in a heap of rings.

Slowly, Finrod worked the tips of his fingers under the hem and peeled him out of the sweat-stained linen. There was a bowl and a pitcher of water lying beside the lantern, and Finrod made good use of both, wetting a rag and wiping the color of blood and bruise from the bronze skin, his fingers skating over flesh, feeling where it hurt and drawing it out.

Bëor took a deep breath, his ribs expanding under Finrod’s touch, and that breath did not hitch with pain.

Finished, Finrod carded his fingers through the dark hair, tipped up the reluctant chin until Bëor’s gaze met his. Those grey eyes snared him more surely than a candle flame, their brightness unbearable.

I am the moth, he realized — drawn inexorably toward the brilliance and warmth of the fire. For what else was there, but this? Cold, insistent examination, which would leave him forever on the periphery of things, witnessing, but never really seeing, never touching or tasting or feeling. Too long had he held himself aloof, in ice encased. And in the warmth of Bëor’s steady gaze, something deep within him eased its frozen grip and let go, a new thing, verdant and lush, pushing up through brittle soil.

He buried his hands in that dark mane to hide their tremors, drew Bëor to his feet and into his embrace. Bëor’s lips against his were dry and warm though the press of teeth, the swipe of a tongue sparked an answering conflagration in Finrod’s belly. In that moment he stood a heartbeat’s distance from his imminent destruction and his greatest. Even if it consumed him utterly, it would be a sweet ash.

When they drew apart at last, he stroked the bristled jaw with his fingers, Bëor’s breath damp and rapid against his cheek, their faces scant inches apart.

Finrod bent down and snuffed the candle behind its glass, wreathing them in the ghost of wax and smoke.