Geese and a Violet by Himring

In the early years of Imladris, nobody could have said Naurthoniel did not pull her weight. Even though she had been embroiled in centuries of warfare in Beleriand long before the fall of Eregion, her skill with the dagger or the bow was still less than noteworthy, but she had much experience of sieges and defeat and desperate retreats. She knew all about failing supply lines and foraging and making do in a camp crowded with wounded and refugees. So she pitched right in, was here, there and everywhere in the valley, organizing soup, bandages, bedding to the extent they were to be had, while Elrond's dwindling forces laboured to fortify and defend the valley and keep it hidden.

And when the siege was lifted and Elrond decided to stay on in the valley, turning the refugee camp into a home for himself and such people as wished to remain, Naurthoniel still worked on tirelessly beside the rest. This, too, was something she had  known before, in the early days of settlement in Mithrim and in Himring, in Amon Ereb and Lindon, although most of those she had worked with and shared those times with were long gone. She had once taught Elrond some of what he knew and he still respected her opinion and listened to her, as he did to others.

Those who did not know Naurthoniel very well--and there were  few now left who did know her as well as that, outside the Halls of Mandos--believed she had taken events in her stride. But at last the day came when the Last Homely House was finished, all arrangements in place and all plans carried out. That evening there were celebrations in the newly completed Hall of Fire and many looked forward hopefully into a brighter future, ready to put past horrors behind them, at any rate for a while, despite knowing Sauron was still at large.

It was then Naurthoniel began to withdraw. She began to delegate and eventually to pass on tasks entirely to others, one after the other. At first nobody raised an eyebrow. They assumed she was taking a much-needed break. That was before they noticed she was talking less and less and that, if she was taking a break, she was not taking it around other people, slipping away by herself towards the farther reaches of the valley where few people came. Eventually it transpired that she had taken over minding Rivendell's flock of geese. Some of those who encountered her out there with her hissing stand-offish flock ventured the opinion that they were well-matched.

There was one of her former tasks that she clung to still. Every single morning, she was up early and in the kitchen, baking a trayful of cinnamon rolls. And when they were done, she insisted on taking them to Elrond personally.

At first nobody interfered. But as she gradually lost the mantle of her former authority and more and more people began to regard her as distinctly odd, they began to question her rights in the kitchen and the privileged access to Elrond that she defended so stubbornly, more by dint of ignoring anyone who tried to stop her than by argument, and at last someone dared to raise the matter with Elrond. They met an unusually sharp rebuke.

'Let her be,' said Elrond. 'You may have forgotten, but she kept house in the Hall of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain and the Gwaith-i-Mirdain are no more.'

And thus for a time--quite a long time--this became Naurthoniel's daily life: rising before dawn to bake, seeing Elrond long enough to make sure he was doing all right, pressing her trayful of rolls on him in lieu of things unsaid, then wandering off down the valley alone except for the companionship of her geese.

This morning had not started any differently. But as she waited patiently in front of the oven for the rolls to be ready, she felt a thought stir in her brain, a new thought perhaps, but as she tried to catch it, it flickered and was gone, like a fish in a murky pond. And as she mounted the stairs with her tray, on her way to Elrond in the breakfast room, she noticed the morning light, how it fell in through the windows and how she herself was passing in turns through light and shade and back into light again.

Elrond was alone in the breakfast room, keeping tryst, but it seemed the rest of the household had been slower to rise this morning. Naurthoniel carefully set down her tray of fresh-baked rolls before him as usual, but, as she did so, the scent of cinnamon wafted up and she spoke.

'Of course, we did not have any cinnamon, in Himring.'

She raised her eyes and saw that Elrond was listening--his face so intent that she could not help it, she went on speaking.

'Well, I guess we did, sometimes, that is, I can remember perhaps two or three occasions when we received a consignment of cinnamon from Cirdan, but it was precious. I would not have wasted it on a private breakfast, then, not even for Maedhros himself, I would have kept it for a formal banquet, with guests. That was during the Long Siege. There was none at all to be had, during the early days--and none at all in the time you were with us, as you know. An entirely false tradition, really--it was in Tirion that my cinnamon rolls were famous. Maedhros used to praise them extravagantly...'

She stopped, feeling abruptly that she had run out of breath, as if she had run a very long way.

'I know,' said Elrond. 'It is a good tradition nevertheless and the rolls are excellent. I am sure there could be none better in Valinor.'

'You are far too kind to me,' said Naurthoniel. 'You have been putting up with me all this time... I was not nearly good enough to you when you came to us, after Sirion, and don't deserve so much consideration.'

'I remember you as kind,' said Elrond. 'You did much more for me than you remember, probably. You were grieving bitterly for your cousin Ceredir, but that didn't stop you from taking care of our needs, mine and Elros's, as best you could. I can recall at least half a dozen occasions when you went without just so we could have a treat.'

Naurthoniel regarded him dubiously, but he really seemed to mean it.

'I should not have left you to go to Ost-in-Edhil,' she said then. 'Especially not if you remember me like that. I felt, even then, that I was deserting you.'

'But how could you have resisted, Narye?' said Elrond, using her old name, the one they had used in Beleriand. 'There was so little for you to do in Lindon, by then, except to try not to tread on anyone's toes and avoid offending people by being Feanorian!  I wasn't at all surprised when, after that visit to Eregion, you chose to stay.'

Elrond put his hand over hers, on the table.

'I'm just so glad you're still here, Narye,' he said.

She considered the surprisingly sane and well-balanced person sitting before her and just how many people in his life he had already lost. Then she squeezed his hand. She did not feel she had the right to, but someone should, even if it was just her.

'I'm not leaving, Elrond,' she said firmly.
 

And Elrond smiled, as if she had given him a great gift.
 

He had really been afraid of losing her, like the rest. The discovery overwhelmed her just a bit, so much that she found she needed to go away and think about that.

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It was her geese who let her know that a stranger was approaching. Not that any seemed alarmed, but the flock was gradually shifting from leisurely foraging to watchfulness, drawing closer together. Naurthoniel, sitting in the shade of a rock, was alerted, observing their change of mood, and concluded that they had not noticed any predator nearby but were reacting to an unfamiliar arrival. She stood up and gazed  along the valley, towards the House.

A few weeks had passed since her conversation with Elrond in the breakfast room. There had been no great changes yet, since then, but she and Elrond had spoken a little longer in the mornings and she had even had a word or two beyond the absolutely necessary with the kitchen staff. And she was beginning to consider that she might want to change more than that.

She spotted the arrival the geese had alerted her to and realized that the sight was not as unfamiliar to her as to her flock--and yet it was a sight so entirely unexpected that she had to look again and keep looking to make sure that this was not just some chance resemblance and that her eyes were not deceiving her. But it was Huntress who came walking up the path along the shore of the Bruinen in her accustomed easy stride. Surely, that shape of head, those shoulders and hips, that easy gait could be duplicated anywhere among the Sindar, but not all of them together! She could not be mistaken, not even though it was all of an age since she had last seen her.

Naurthoniel stood quite still. It had been such a long time. A great many things had happened in that time... She remembered how Huntress and she had first encountered each other, in Mithrim, before the rising of the Sun. Naurthoniel had still been reeling inside with shock and with guilt at events before the arrival of the Noldor in Mithrim and had only just begun to learn the ways of Middle-earth and of the Sindar. She had not trusted the Sinda, at first, being painfully aware of her own, recently revealed untrustworthiness. But Huntress had become a trusted friend--so very close--before they parted in fear and pain.

And now Huntress, whom she had thought lost, as utterly as the rest of Beleriand, was here. But there was no counting on it that Huntress would still wish to be considered a friend, not considering all that had happened after their parting. Naurthoniel stood unmoving. Huntress reached the point on the path where the Bruinen was closest and turned off the path, coming closer.

Naurthoniel could not read her expression. The geese had picked up on Naurthoniel's  uncertainty and anxiety. The gander closest to Huntress reared up his long neck and emitted a menacing hiss.

Naurthoniel came out of her frozen state and made a soothing, clucking noise to quieten him.

The corner of Huntress's mouth twitched.

'Oh,' said Naurthoniel, clenching her hands before her stomach, as if to hold the emotions in. 'Oh, Huntress, you are alive!'

'I am', said Huntress. 'If you were so worried I might not be, you could have inquired, you know--come looking for me, even.'

'I couldn't,' said Naurthoniel, simply. 'I stayed with him right until the end, you see.'

And might have followed farther, even, if Maedhros himself had wished it. She remembered how, at the last, he had begun to look around for her, for them, as if out of habit, and clearly stopped himself. And seeing this, she had understood that he feared that if he allowed himself to say farewell to them, it would not be a farewell, that she and Celvandil and perhaps others would continue to follow him as they always had, regardless. She had let him go without protest, then. He had left with Maglor, without another backward look, and she had followed Elrond as Maedhros had wanted her to.

'I thought you might have,' said Huntress.

They were silent for a moment.

'What happened to you, after the Nirnaeth?' asked Naurthoniel, then. 'Did you ever reach Mithrim?'

'I did. I had to go round about, in the end, any more direct route proved impassable, too beset with danger. It took me a long time and I had to sell many of the pearls from the necklace Maedhros had given me on the way. When I finally got there, I found Annael, but my own kin had gone. I stayed with Annael until he left, too.  Later, at the Havens, I found some of my kin again who had survived and, when they decided to board ship and go south, giving up Beleriand for lost, I went with them, for it seemed to me that, having left them and found them again, I could not let them go into the unknown without me. And so I came with them to Edhellond.'

'I'm glad you found your kin again, Huntress! And I grieve for you, to hear that there were some who had died in the meantime, ' Naurthoniel responded. She had not known any of Huntress's kin well, but she thought others among the followers of Feanor might have known them better, although none as well as Huntress, of course, who had shared their life in Himring from start to end. There was an older relative, some kind of uncle, probably, she thought, that Ceredir, her cousin, had mentioned. She would ask about that later, if she could.

'Edhellond, the port of Copas Haven, in the south?' she asked now instead. 'Is that where you have been, since then? But you are here now.'

'News came south concerning the fall of Eregion,' said Huntress, 'although it was not known you were there--I only learned that here in Rivendell. People grew restless and talked about the bad times returning, although Sauron's armies had passed us by. Then Elrond's message arrived.'

'Elrond sent a message?'

'It took some while to reach me,' said Huntress. 'There are few now on this side of the sea who ever knew what name I went by among the followers of the Sons of Feanor and fewer who cared to remember.'

'His message was addressed to you?' said Naurthoniel, startled. 'If anyone had asked me, I would not have vouched for it that Elrond knew who you were.'

'Is that so?' Huntress regarded her quizzically. 'You must have talked more of me than you remember, then, in his presence.'

'You were not forgotten among us,' said Naurthoniel. 'But, after Doriath, few would have believed that you wished to be remembered by such as we had become.'

'Perhaps I was not sure myself, of that, for a while,' said Huntress. 'But when Elrond's message reached me, I thought it was sent, not only on your behalf, but with your knowledge, and I found myself glad to hear my old name again.

I have spent more time of my life apart from you and yours than with you, and now the time that Himring stood seems short, almost--shorter than it seemed when I lived there with you. And yet I find I am still reproved by some for my Noldorin ways, they say, that I learned in in my irresponsible youth. There were few, in Edhellond, who  asked what it was like to live as a Sinda among the followers of the Sons of Feanor in East Beleriand and even fewer who were willing to listen to my answers. And I have found that some things I heard said about the House of Feanor made my blood boil, despite myself.

The message said I was needed and so I came.'

'You came to Rivendell for my sake?'

'That I did.'

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"We?” asked Narye. “Are we staying together now?”

It was hours later. Huntress had made no show of leaving again and seemed to be expecting to return to Rivendell with her when the time came. And now she seemed even to imply she was going to stay on in Rivendell and that plan seemed to involve spending a fair amount of time with Narye...

“I had hoped.” said Huntress. “If you want to…”

She hesitated, as if casting about for words, seemed to give up on that, and suddenly bent and picked a violet from the grass just where she sat. Carefully, she laid it in Narye’s lap, then sat back and looked expectantly in Narye’s face, waiting for an answer.

Narye had not consciously clung to grief or mourning, before, but now  grief was retreating and  all of a sudden it felt as if some kind of feline monster was painfully withdrawing its claws out of her living flesh. It was disorienting, even frightening.

She thought of the men in her life that she had loved dearly, deeply, but without passion, and so intense was the turmoil of her emotions at this moment that she seemed to see them before her inner eye and it even seemed as if they spoke to her, her dead: Ceredir, Maedhros and Celebrimbor.

Ceredir, cousin closer than brother, saviour of her life at Alqualonde, who had taken it so much in his stride when she confessed to him that she had gone behind his back in Mithrim, sending messages and food to the Fingolfinians–Ceredir was as unruffled and equable in death: “If this seems good to you and you want it, Narye,  seize the chance! Why do you imagine I might object? You know I liked Huntress when I got to know her. What has my being dead got to do with it?”

Maedhros gazed at her sadly, but spoke gently as falling rain: “Do you remember, Narye, how you used to tease me for my vanity, when I feared you might have fallen in love with me and I would break your heart? O my Narye, I’ve broken your heart since in ways I could never have imagined, back in Tirion! But you know I never ceased wishing you well, at any time. How could I now want to hold you back from anything that might give you joy?”

Celebrimbor, who had known her from childhood and, even after bitter experience, grown to manhood, was still sometimes baffled by the failure of his parents’ generation to be wise or even use common sense, frowned and shook his head: “It is not like you to be this inefficient, Narye! It’s taken you how long to figure this out? More than a thousand years? Now don’t waste any more  time but go for it!”

“The answer is no?” asked Huntress, who had been watching Narye sitting immovably, as if stunned, for a long minute.

“Oh, no, no!” cried Narye. “The answer is yes!”

And she seized Huntress’s hand so abruptly and fiercely that the closest of the geese let out a startled honk and flapped her wings. 

Chapter End Notes

The three chapter titles all allude to  prompts filled.

This last prompt was a phrase from Sappho:

the one with violets in her lap (21A).

The SWG Matryoshka prompt for this part was: character receives something they always wanted (but, in this case, were too oblivious to realize!).

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Winds blew ever cold;
on my wrist your stained fingers
remained hesitant.
Only my wrist remains warm,
here in the south among kin.

Chapter End Notes

This was written for a prompt at kimaracretak's commentfic meme "Bring her bleeding heart to me" in February 2021. The prompt was a very open prompt for Silmarillion dark femslash by Zdenka. How dark this poem is debatable, but "stained" alludes to the Kinslaying.

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