A Settlement by Elleth

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness.

- A Settlement, Mary Oliver

* * *

It was spring in Brethil.

The beeches still stood bare, but below among the past year's leaves, early flowers had crept from the half-frozen loam. The nights still brought regular frosts and left the carpets of snowdrop and niphredil standing with crowns of ice along their petals when Nellas set out on sentry duty below Amon Obel in the mornings.

Lúthien's Spring the season had been called, when she had still been living among her people - for Lúthien had been born early in the year, and the early flowers were regarded as heralds of her arrival in the world.

Nellas breathed deeply of the crisp air. Although one hand always lay between the horn and knife on her girdle and she was watchful for any enemy that might dare its way this far into the forest, she enjoyed the solitude of the early mornings, one of the rare chances she had to move freely beyond the walls of Amon Obel. Niënor's fears of being found out, of having the curse she had barely escaped after Túrin's death return to haunt her, all too often sequestered her away - by Niënor Halad's order if need be, when there was no other way to restrain her.

Nellas banished the thought of the past night's argument. Even holding the Headship of the House of Haleth, Niënor had no power to order the cough and fever that swept through the town into submission, leaving Nellas as one of the few who still could run sentry rounds and Captain Manthor gratefully sent her out - as an Elf, had not contracted the illness, and would not. No one had yet died, though the beds of Brandir's former house - now a healing ward - were full of ailing people, even some of the far-out woodsmen. Perhaps one of the salt traders had carried the malady to them, or from them, in the spring chill. Nellas liked the idea better than Niënor's fear that it came from the North, brought by some ill wind out of the Enemy's fortress much as the sickness that had claimed the older sister she had never known.

Lúthien's Spring indeed. The name all itself reminded Nellas what a plague mortality was, and the scores of the sick made her hunger, sometimes, for her own people. More than once she had caught herself staring into the distance from the height of the chieftains' barrows to where the central forest of Doriath lay east of Sirion, and where her family still lived - her mother and father, and Gellorn, her younger brother who must be on the cusp of adulthood. Most of all she missed her language, the dialect of the Guest Elves of Arthórien that pattered like raindrops on beech-leaves; she could not hope to find anyone who spoke it among the Haladin and their strange transition between their own language and the Sindarin of Doriath.

She bore it, all the same. The missing and the strife were hard, but, harder still - because it ran inexorable even when aught was well - the illnesses, and the growing-older of the mortals, the withering and the dying. She did for Niënor's sake, even though her wife was by no means exempt from it. Worry and hardship were aging her far before her time. Niënor would pass her thirtieth year a little later in the spring, but already first fine silver hair lay among the rich gold of Niënor's braids.

Nellas let go of a deep sigh when she reached the final part of her scouting route, a steep drop where the limestone rock of Amon Obel formed a cliff falling away into the lower forest at its feet. It must have been the fight of the past evening that left her so gloomy, and she took another moment of reprieve before turning homeward to deliver her report to Manthor.

Before she made to leave, something gave her pause. Despite the early hour, sudden singing soared from between the oak trees below in a handful of voices. A moment of seeking, and she could make out one of the singers if she saw past the maze of bare branches just right. Her customary cloak of sun-yellow silk - a little absurd in the circumstances - was hard to miss, and it was her voice lifting the swine-herding song of the Haladin women above its lively mortal rhythm.

Nellas felt heat flood her face. She was a half-wild Guest Elf, not one of Thingol's refined courtiers from Menegroth that Niënor still grew equal parts wistful and resentful over, and the women of Brethil had long since grown accepting of her and taken her into their midst despite their superstitions, for all they claimed she had one foot in the otherworld.

With Finduilas, it was entirely different.

After all, few of Nellas' qualities had turned to be very far out of the ordinary - aside from her speech with birds and beasts that none of them could do, many Haladin women knew how to handle bows and arrows and could scale trees with an almost elven dexterity. That Niënor Níniel the Beloved loved her deeply despite their differences only earned her more favours and kindness. Haleth herself, it was known, had not only preferred the company of women and recruited her guard from them, she had also loved one, and as the foremother and name-giver of her people, they were not unfriendly to the thought, although it did not rule out the petty jealousies of everyday life. Niënor, who was wildly popular, stirred more than one heart. In Túrin's wake Niënor had been elevated into her new station by the Folkmoot over Hardang through the grace of her father's Haladin descent, and ruled them well, although some thought she was letting the people go soft, preferring caution over open war and never entering the field herself.

But Finduilas - Nellas looked at her with more than a little envy, and as much admiration, and often thought that she, with half her ancestry across the sea, was what many expected an Elf to be like. No matter how busy she should be - and Nellas would have thought to find her trapped by work in the healing ward - she was always eager to lend a hand where she was needed. She was nearly as beloved on Amon Obel as Niënor herself was, having come into town before either of them, and whatever else she did - even herding swine in the forest in the morning - she never ceased being a princess who filled her surroundings with light and cheer, golden hair unbound except for the slender golden circlet that kept her locks from her face.

Next she looked, the shining figure below in the trees had ceased both work and song, lifted her head into the thin beams of the young sun, and raised an arm to wave to Nellas atop the cliff.

Finduilas, erstwhile of Nargothrond. She had come into Brethil on a bier and near death from an orcish spear, and it had only been Brandir's healing arts that had saved her life from slow death and blood poisoning. How he had done it Nellas could not say, but she was glad for it. In gratitude, Finduilas herself had since taken an interest in the healing arts, although no one had been able to revive Brandir after the day the dragon came and Túrin's last deeds had all been bloodshed. Finduilas set out to at least carry on Brandir's legacy.

Although she did not like to admit it, reluctant even to do so to herself, Nellas was glad for Finduilas staying in Brethil. She could have gone down Sirion and rejoined her mother and other kinsfolk at the Havens of Círdan as some of her surviving handmaidens had done, and Nellas wondered why she was so reluctant to depart. They did not interact very much, or indeed speak very much at all rather than eye one another from a distance, and this was not question she dared ask for fear of upsetting her. Indeed, they moved around each other with what the other women had remarked was uncharacteristic shyness for them both. But Finduilas was a constant in the swiftly-shifting world of mortals for Nellas, and she was glad for her presence.

It was a comfort. More than that. It had been Finduilas who had brought Niënor into Amon Obel when she had gone to honour her fallen companions, and found her upon the Mound of the Elf-Maids of Nargothrond who that had been slain before the men of Brethil could intercept and now lay buried at the Crossings of Teiglin. Niënor had been witless and speechless, and it had only been under Finduilas' loving care that Niënor had found her speech and self again. Nellas had been the last of the three to come into town as one of Mablung's company to warn for Glaurung, and a vague sense of guilt for both her lateness and intrusion had never left her. Túrin had loved them both, and they had both loved him in their own way - why would they not love each other?

Sometimes she almost hoped they would. That they had. Or that they did.

For sometimes she imagined that the golden hair falling on her face when Niënor came and kissed her in the nights was not Niënor's at all, but by morning light she could dismiss it as wishful thinking, as the wish for a lover who would not grow old swifter than it took an elf-child to grow to maturity, a wish for the lack of grief awaiting her in a handspan of years when Niënor would pass beyond the world. She thought if they had loved before - perhaps it might assuage some of her own guilt over these unfaithful imaginings.

It was Niënor Nellas loved, and had loved since they had met in Doriath, and would gladly bear any grief for, but she found it impossible to turn her head away from the Princess. Below, Finduilas gathered up an acorn to toss to the pigs, lifted her head, and caught Nellas still looking. She smiled, in between two beats of the song, and turned back to her work.

Nellas' stomach fluttered, and she hastily turned to go. Her report was already overdue.

On the way back into town, the song still rang in her ears.

* * *

It was spring in Brethil.

No longer Lúthien's Spring, when everything hung on the edge of frost and fading and mortality, but the full life of the early year. Plants and birds both had awoken, and the apple trees before the Halad's hall stood in snow-white flowers, promising a rich yield come harvest. They sailed down into Niënor's hair while she tilled the earth and plucked fresh shoots off the herbs in her garden, and Nellas watched her from the branches above.

A little later, while Niënor had had to surrender her gardening work for sitting in council, Nellas made her way to the healing ward with a basket of herbs to deliver. She let herself into the healing ward, called out a greeting and smiled at Ighin, a Drúadan woman who lived on Amon Obel and served as a healer herself, changing a bandage on her young charge's arm. The fever had abated without great losses when the days turned warmer, and the girl - a trainee of the guard herself - was the only patient there for the moment.

Ighin waved Nellas through. She crossed the hall of the beds with her basket to deliver to the back rooms where the healers created the salves, poultices and potions necessary for their work. With the ward largely empty, the windowed rooms were unoccupied as well, although Nellas could hear movement from the adjacent library, soft laughter that was nothing if not expectant, and then quiet steps coming her way.

"Ah, you brought the herbs! I am glad, thank you! We were waiting for them already; Beredis out there is due some comfrey - the poor little one, two weeks in training and a broken arm already. Niënor spoke to me a few days ago, she said she would have some for me."

There was a faint flush over the face of the Princess as she moved through the room, closed the doors behind her so they had privacy. Finduilas took the basket from Nellas' numb fingers, brushing warmly along her hands, and all she could do was not to open them suddenly to drop the basket and spill the contents.

Nellas felt a pang of jealousy, once again, that Niënor and Finduilas remained close. She had known Niënor from her youth, had taught her all about the wilds of Doriath, had loved her first. It was made no better that Finduilas lived her by-name, the glimmer of the sun on Ivrin's pools - and her presence alone was enough to drive the heat into Nellas' face. Much of her golden hair was hidden away under the customary headscarf all healers wore, and it gave her a calculating look, her clear, light eyes had a shrewd look to them this close.

Finduilas laughed softly, and Nellas wondered.

"And there was something else - Niënor was… well, not troubled, but I saw you watching me, lately - and she, I hope I do not impose saying something so intimate between the two of you - she even heard you say my name when you lay together. She knows you well, Nellas. I know you argue often, over her fears, and that you hate her mortality. She dreads that you seek someone to supplant her, someone who is as fair and will not fade as she does, and I promised that I would speak with you. Who else but me would understand? I loved Túrin once, and I hold your wife very dear in my heart, also. They are much alike, although she is more joyful by far - and more fearful than he is."

"I seek no one to -"

Finduilas smiled again, if she had ever stopped, and Nellas felt her gaze drawn to that mouth, to Finduilas' lips. Her protests died, anything from her own insignificance to her love for Niënor only, reading the question on her face.

"What are you saying? That you planned to - ?"

Finduilas smiled, all sweetness and warmth. "I am saying nothing - it is too swift for that, and you have had no say. I merely planned to try asking - shall we try and heal her fears, the three of us together - shall we attempt this settlement?"

Nellas did not trust her voice, but she trusted herself to nod - and to close the distance between them, finally, meeting Finduilas' lips halfway.