One woman's journey by Lyra

Tirion - Helcaraxë

The prompts used for this one:
1. Your character feels pulled in two different directions. As soon as you introduce this conflict, you can open your next prompt.

2. Your character meets with another character. That person changes their mind about something. As soon as you introduce this scene, you can open your next prompt.

3. Your character receives advice... and doesn't take it. As soon as you write the next 1,000 words of your story, you may open the next prompt, whether or not you have addressed this prompt yet.

4. Your character finds himself or herself in a situation when the usual rules don't apply. As soon as you finish this scene, you may open your next prompt.

Tirion - Helcaraxë

1.

„What are you, man or maiden?“ people asked, some in jest, some in affronted earnest, as she excelled in athletic contests. The fastest swimmer, the highest climber, proficient with a spear, an endurant runner: she was strong and fearless, unafraid of the pains of exhaustion or failure, ignoring the expectations of the older generation. „I am Nerwen*, of course,“ she replied, laughing, and accepted the victor's laurels yet again.

„What are you, Noldo or Teler?“ her uncle had asked, irritably, when she had announced loudly that she preferred natural beauty to any work of hands, thank you very much. She had flashed him a grin, and winding some strands of her golden hair around her fingers, quipped, „I am also part Vanya, you know.“ She would have been the first to admit that her Vanyarin heritage was superficial at best, limited to the high growth and pale skin and fair hair of her grandmother, but her uncle was known to think little of the Vanyar („bleached by overexposure to the Trees,“ he had once scoffed ). Knowing that, Nerwen had been unable to resist the chance to one-up him, and indeed, the look on Fëanáro's face was priceless.
It did not matter. She was both; she was neither.

2.

What am I, Noldo or Teler? The question had never bothered Nerwen until madness reigned on the piers of Alqualondë and she was swept in – like a shell on the tide, she briefly thought, but then she discarded the idea: unlike a shell or a piece of driftwood, she had made her own choice to follow her uncle's lead. What am I, Noldo or Teler? As her mother's kin fell upon her father's, Nerwen did not know whose side to take. What am I, man or maiden? Girt with sword and dressed in practical travelling gear, her hair severely braided back from her face, she looked more like her brothers than like the fisherwomen who had snatched up harpoons and tuna-knives to defend their ships. Nerwen's eyes met a Telerin woman's eyes, wide with fear even though her chin was set in determination. She almost snorted with disdain at the feeble grip the other had on the harpoon.

She was also part Vanya, Nerwen felt: She could not bear seeing a spear so inexpertly wielded². Before she knew what she was doing, she had crossed the distance between them, turned until she stood next to the other woman, put her own hands on the slender iron shaft. „Look, you need to put your hands further apart if you want to block a blow,“ she whispered, „otherwise the leverage will unbalance you. This is how you thrust -“ she slid her hands into a firm position, pushing the fisherwoman's sweaty fingers along - „and this is how to disarm an opponent.“ In the turmoil of battle, the unsettling darkness, the bewildered woman did not resist as Nerwen taught her the basics of Vanyarin spear-craft, betraying the secrets of her grandmother's kin.

It was later said that Nerwen had wielded her blade against her Noldorin cousins, protecting her mother's people by turning traitor on her father's kin. But she never drew her own blade on that day; she shed no blood with her own hands. All she did done was pass on some spear-lore as it appeared convenient; and when at last the battle ended and the last defenders of the havens ran for their lives, spears and bows and knives discarded, Nerwen felt tears sting her eyes, and her braids had come undone. But she composed herself, saluted the fallen, and stood with her cousins: A Noldo through and through.

3.

„Come back with me,“ her father said. „You have seen where this road leads. It is not too late to turn back. We have killed no-one, but we are complicit in my brothers' crimes; yet if we seek pardon now, we may yet be able to wash our hands of this whole ill-advised business.“
„If ill-advised it is,“ Nerwen replied, „then is that not because there was no better advice to be had? If this road has led to murder and ruin, is it not because no timely help was given? No, Father, I will not turn back; I will not ask for pardon because in the pursuit of a just purpose, evil has been done. The purpose is no less just; and those who will now judge us for evil are themselves responsible for it. At least we did not sit in silence while our world fell apart! At least we did not do nothing! If I turned back now, I would renounce every claim to that certainty: At least we did something. I would turn it all meaningless – Grandfather's death, and the slaughter at Alqualondë, and whatever great deeds lie yet ahead of my uncles and cousins. Go back if you must, and I wish you the best of luck, and that you shall be received with mercy; but I will go on.“ Her heart ached, yet she believed every single word.

Suddenly, her father was unable to meet her eyes. He clasped her shoulders, almost awkwardly – wishing to hug his little girl, while afraid of the woman she had become – without looking at her face. „Look after your brothers, if they let you,“ he said, „and good luck to you, too.“
Nerwen watched him retreat with the few followers who shared his desire to wash their hands.
Then she turned back. Towards the journey; towards the overwhelming majority of the Noldor.
The words of Námo were still ringing in her ears, ringing in the silence that had suddenly befallen the hosts of the Noldor, as if they all were lost in their own thoughts, slowly coming to realise what they had done, trying to figure out what to do next.

But Nerwen felt that she had got the right of it: Their cause was still just. Not that she particularly cared about the Silmarils – though their light would have been a pleasant relief from the perpetual darkness that made Varda's stars feel distant and cold - but she longed for the freedom of their ancestral lands, the wide plains and natural mountains, long rivers and deep valleys of Middle-earth. And Moringotto had to be fought. Her Grandfather had to be avenged, and the world had to be made safe from Moringotto, and the Valar were not going to do it.

Alqualondë had been a regrettable mistake, to be sure. But now, it gave them all the more reason to press on: To put these dear-bought ships to good use; to invest some value in the slaughter, as a horrid but necessary stepping-stone on the road to victory rather than the awful result of poor planning and reckless haste. It would serve nobody – not even the Telerin dead – if they turned back now.
She said so out loud, to fill the silence left by Mandos' prophecy and her father's departure, to rekindle her own heart and the hearts of her brothers. She spoke out to reassure their people, fretful and unhappy without the lord they knew, with darkness behind and ahead of them. Her words fell on willing ears; she saw people nod, saw backs straighten and shoulders squared. She regained some of her cousins' respect, even (although she would have said that she did not care for it).

They continued onwards, towards great deeds - and perhaps, towards a fair end.

---

Towards betrayal, as it had turned out; towards doom. The ships, wrested from their rightful owners at such a price, had burned soon after. The Noldor, briefly united by the shadow of slaughter and the threat of doom, were divided again, and this time the rift went deeper. Not a few now regretted that they had not followed Arafinwë to seek pardon. But Nolofinwë never once considered that option.
„I swore to follow my brother wherever he led,“ he said resignedly, „and although it is clear now that he does not care for my allegiance, still he has it. But you others, who are not bound in this manner, are free to do as you wish: To accompany me across the Ice, or turn back, or try and find some other way.“
His own children had been by his side at once; his brother's children had followed quickly.
„We are all bound by the same doom,“ Findaráto had pointed out reasonably.
„We cannot turn back with our work undone,“ Angaráto had said.
„There is no other way,“ Aikanáro had agreed.
There had been no need for Nerwen to add anything. They had packed whatever useful things they had or could find – most of their provisions had been transported on the ships – and then they set off, across the treacherous ice.

4.

It felt as though her lips had frozen shut. She tried to speak, but she could barely form words against the resistence of the icy flesh. In the beginning, it had hurt: Her nose and lips and ears had stung as if squeezed and twisted; needles had seemed to embed themselves in her cheeks and hands. Her toes had felt as though a horse had stepped on them repeatedly. By now, there was no more pain; everything was numb, dull, perhaps dead. Speaking was an immense effort.

But she had been asked a question, and if people turned to her for advice and struggled to voice their thoughts, spending the precious warmth of their breath and the strength it took to make their frozen mouths move, then was it not her duty to make the same effort and respond? Findaráto was too far ahead to help with the decision; at any rate, he was as much trying to find his feet as his siblings were. Besides, these people had turned to Nerwen, not to anybody else with their question.
What do we do with the dead?

What could they do with the dead? Elenwë had disappeared in the boundless waters between slush and shelves of ice; they had not been able to retrieve her, either dead or alive. But people were now falling asleep and not waking again, or dropping dead out of exhaustion; and their next of kin, bereft and confused, wanted to know what to do.
Instinct demanded that the dead be honoured in some manner: Some kind of burial seemed indicated, but there was no way of digging graves in the ice. Nor did they have firewood enough for cooking, let alone a funeral pyre. Casting the dead into the tombless sea, on the other hand, felt cold and disrespectful.

„Should we carry him with us?“ the children of a frozen scholar asked her now. „Until we can bury him?“
Nerwen shook her head. „We cannot burden ourselves with the dead,“ she formed through her stiff lips. „While people draw breath, no matter how faint, we carry them; but when people die, we leave them behind.“
Their eyes were angry, but they accepted the wisdom behind her words, nodding despondently. „And Father's books? Should we leave them with him, as a tribute?“
Again, Nerwen replied in the negative. „Take them along. He needs them no more. We need the paper. We need the leather. Take his clothing; take everything.“ She had to look away, hoping that she would be able to hold back her tears; they would freeze in corners of her eyes, glueing her lashes together. She swallowed hard, but she went on, giving voice to the awful truth.

„Whatever the dead have that we can use, we will take. They need nothing. We need it all; we need everything.“

Chapter End Notes

* Nerwen: Galadriel's mother-name literally means „man-maiden“.

² Yes, I'm apparently obsessed with the Vanyar as spear-elves. It makes them so much more interested!