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The thing Arafinwë didn’t expect is that Alqualondë is loud.
Oh, not loud like Tirion, of course, not constantly echoing with the scholars debating in their lecture halls and the artisans tinkering in their workshops and some new play or symphony or spectacular always having its opening night just around the corner. No one makes a racket like the Ñoldor, as the Lord Aulë has told Dad on more than one occasion. And certainly it’s preferable to Valmar, which is so silent and serene it frankly gives Arafinwë the heebie-jeebies. He knows that disappoints Mom, so he always tries to do his best impression of Findis when he’s there, but it’s hard to project an air of blissful, detached poise when you know you could turn any given corner and run slap-bang into an unexpected Maia, or even worse, one of the Valar themselves.
Arafinwë thinks he possesses a suitable degree of awe and reverence for the Powers, but no, he’s not what you’d call crazy about their city.
Alqualondë, now. You would guess a place like that would be quiet, wouldn’t you? The silver harbor under the stars, the swan-haven of the Foam-Riders, the city of pearl where the Lingerers look back out over the great Sea and pine for their lost kin—all very dreamy and melancholic, the sort of place where every word spoken aloud should be in the key of a nostalgic sigh. But the thing is, the Sea is right there, and the Teleri don’t build in solid stone, or, indeed, a whole lot of solid walls, so no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you can hear the rush and rumble of the waves on the shore. In and out, in and out, to the point where Arafinwë keeps catching himself breathing to their rhythm without intending it, keeps surprising his heart trying to match that same beat.
There’s always music, too, echoing up from the quays or heard in snatches on the breeze, in those close Telerin harmonies that baffle the ear. Arafinwë is a passable musician by Mom’s exacting standards, but trying to parse those melodies deals a very final death-blow to his vague dreams of becoming a singer. Plus, as it turns out, all those beautiful white swans and gulls and whatever-they-are are noisy when they’re disturbed, which they have pretty consistently been since the Ñoldorin cortège entered the city.
Put it all together, and—
Arafinwë can’t sleep.
With a soft curse, he rolls over on his mat and tries to punch a lump out of his pillow. If only he could tell what time it was. This far north of the Calacirya, even the full bloom of the Trees is reduced to a distant, hazy glimmer, and forget trying to figure out which direction the Mingling is leaning. Maybe the Teleri can tell time by the stars, but to Arafinwë, accustomed to on-hand water clocks and bells in the towers tolling the hour and more damn light, the only time pronounced by the blue-black sky is "way too fucking late," which makes his body automatically assume the frazzled, stupid-tense state of severe sleep deprivation.
Fëanáro can probably tell time by the stars, a voice in his head whispers coyly. Fëanáro wouldn’t be having a total meltdown freakout his first night in a new city just because the stupid birds won’t shut up and Daddy’s not here to hold his hand.
Arafinwë curses again (louder this time), and tells the voice in his head that Dad can do whatever he wants on his own time and that laying relatively quietly in bed does not qualify as a meltdown freakout and that Fëanáro, specifically, can get fucked.
This whole trip was Dad’s idea, really. He got the invite direct from King Olwë—a friendly visit between sovereigns to catch up and discuss plans for expanding the harbor, how nice. Arafinwë would’ve been happy to mind the house in Tirion for a week, hole up in his bedroom with a pile of books and pretend to be out whenever he heard a knock at the door. But Mom’s in Valmar with Findis visiting relatives, and Lalwen’s deep in her first year at university, and Káno had just received word that he’d be riding in Lord Oromë’s train on a hunt—huge honor, can’t turn that one down—and Fëanáro is, of course, too terribly busy with wife and family and household and his several million personal projects to tag along on something as silly as a matter of light diplomacy.
(Not that Dad would waste his time by even asking.)
So it had been up to Arafinwë to ride at the head of Dad’s retinue to show a proper degree of respect for a brother monarch, even if said brother monarch has been Dad’s friend for literally thousands of years so you’d kind of assume they’d be above all the ceremonial stuff by now. It’ll be good for you, is what Dad said. You should get out of Tirion once in a while, and no, going to Amme and Atto’s in Valmar doesn’t count. You’ll like Alqualondë. And you’re old enough to make a proper entrance into society and start thinking about the duties of a prince, anyway. It’s your responsibility. It’s what’s done.
What Dad very audibly didn’t say: Why do you always have to make these things so difficult, Áro? Why can’t you just try a little harder? What’s wrong with you?
Why can’t you be more like—
A couple of options for how that sentence could end, all of them bad.
And now that he’s thinking about that, he observes with a sigh, there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep tonight. He kicks off his blanket, shivering in the mild sea breeze blowing through from the balcony, and pulls on the night-robe someone thoughtfully left folded at the edge of the sleeping platform. It might be a bit gauche to be found wandering Olwë’s halls in the middle of the night, but Arafinwë figures if he runs into anyone unexpected he’ll just tell them he got turned around looking for the star-viewing garden, or something.
That’s probably reasonable. Heaven knows this place sprawls.
He opens the screened door with a soft rattle and steps out into the corridor. Different quality of sound here, the wave-rhythm blurred into a faintly pulsing reverberant wash, mingling with the sound of late-night festivities carrying on in the distant south wing of the house, several halls and courtyards and covered walks away. No one nearby as far as he can tell, and that’s good, because even with his cover story in place he doesn’t really feel in the mood for a light chat. Yeah, he’s visiting royalty, and yeah, he’s new to the city, but after the welcoming banquet he thinks he’s had enough of being gawked at to last several ages of Arda.
He pulls his loose plait over his shoulder and twists it around his fingers, a trifle self-consciously. Lowers his chin as he passes one of the star-white lamps that illuminate the halls, trying to ignore the way his hair still gleams stubbornly yellow even in the pale light. The only way someone encountering him out here could fail to recognize him would be if they had a bag over their head. If the Powers really cared about him, they would’ve arranged for him to receive a robe with a hood.
At least the robe’s an unremarkable shade of dark blue, which is less of an eyesore than the formal red-and-gold he’d been subjected to at the banquet. Even as one of many, there’d been something about all that color in Ölwe’s serenely cool-toned halls that smacked of a humiliating gaffe. But, as usual, Arafinwë had probably been the only one worrying about that. Just his luck that he happens to be a prince (if only an unimpressive, teenaged, lastborn one), which means the full panoply on top of his stupid flashy hair, and just his luck that it happens to suit him so poorly. Dad’s Dad, naturally, and wears his title and his regalia with the ease you’d expect from thousands of years of practice. He stands out among the Teleri, but it’s with the eye-catching splendor of a great flame dancing in the night.
Next to him…well, to tell the truth, next to Dad, Arafinwë just feels fucking stupid sometimes.
The Ñoldor may not produce a lot of blonds, but they mingle enough with the Vanyar that golden hair isn’t totally unheard of in Tirion outside the house of Finwë. And Arafinwë takes after Dad in his coloring otherwise, like Findis, where Lalwen and Káno are both pale like Mom. On the bright streets of Tirion, lit by flame and forge-light and the glow down through the Calacirya, Arafinwë looks perfectly normal. Blends in, even, which is something of a relief, when you compare it to to Mom’s constant scrutiny and Dad’s mild disappointment and Findis and Káno and Lalwen’s needling at home.
The Teleri, he’s realizing, don’t go in for blonds. Plenty of black hair, plenty of brown, a good double handful of silver- or gray- or white-haired folk—but no gold. And Teleri tend towards bluish or grayish undertones to their skin, in rare cases even a faint flush of lavender. With his Vanyarin-gold hair and warm bronze skin, Arafinwë would probably attract only slightly more attention on the streets of Alqualondë if he were walking around with his head on fire. He feels gaudy here, almost vulgar, like a fat yellow marigold blooming in the middle of a stand of snowdrops.
He blows out an aggravated breath and fiddles with the end of his plait again. At least he’s of comparable height to the shorter Teleri. Another reason to dislike Valmar—the Vanyar are all so damn tall, and Findis and Káno didn’t have the courtesy to save any of that particular maternal trait for their two younger siblings. As if Arafinwë didn’t have enough of a chip on his shoulder about being the baby of the family. When (not if) he finally catches up to Lalwen in height, then they’ll see. Then they’ll all see.
A snatch of music reaches his ears, a burst of laughter from the far-off party. Arafinwë turns his back to the merriment. Hooks a right at the turning of the hall, then a left, then another left, more or less at random. Cuts through a garden, skirts an enclosed courtyard, crosses a little bridge arcing over a streamlet. Gradually the sounds ebb away, replaced by the hum of insects in the surrounding courts, the sleepy, sporadic calls of insomniac seabirds.
The murmur of the sea follows him, though, and no matter how many corners he turns, his racing thoughts do too.
Káno wouldn’t run from a perfectly good party. He wouldn’t wind up sneaking around a stranger’s house at fuckass hours of the night like some kind of creep, trying to hide from people, he’d pull himself together and introduce himself and actually have fun like he’s supposed to.
Well, Káno isn’t here (Arafinwë retorts, aware that he’s falling into the unattractive old habit of carrying on long, circular debates with himself), and maybe Káno would have the guts to crash an afterparty he wasn’t invited to, but unfortunately Arafinwë was cursed with a sense of common courtesy. Anyway, it’s not as if he can logic himself into having fun or behaving more like his high-spirited older brother, so why even try?
Surprisingly, that line of thought doesn’t make him feel much better.
Also surprisingly, knowing that he’s sulking like his baby nephew Moryo is not making him want to sulk less.
Grumbling under his breath, he strides out onto an open breezeway, a starlit garden stretching off into the gloom to his left and a fountain whispering sweet nothings to itself down on his right. He turns his head automatically toward the soft chuckle of falling water—
Oh, fuck. Nope, that wasn’t the fountain whispering sweet nothings.
With a choked yelp, he wheels about and more or less sprints for the safety of the next covered wing, chin lowered to avoid making eye contact again with the couple he’s clearly caught in the middle of a romantic assignation. Robes coming off and everything. A long stripe of silver that’s either a light shawl over a robe of indeterminate color or a fall of pale hair against a bare chest.
They watch him go. He can feel them watching him go. The fountain covers a multitude of sins, but he’s sure he can hear a laugh in the air that jangles out-of-tune with the droplets falling into their waiting pool. Fuck Alqualondë, he thinks frantically. Fuck this place for real. At this rate he might as well just hitch up his skirts and keep running until he hits the Sea or collapses from exhaustion or—
“Fuck!” he shouts, his hands jerking up automatically to push away the cloaked stranger who’s just crashed into him, going full speed in the opposite direction.
She jolts back with one of those swift melodious Telerin words that Dad refuses to translate for him, which means Arafinwë is 100% sure it’s a swear. For several terrified heartbeats, Arafinwë thinks there’s nothing but a void under the stranger’s hood. He recognizes her hair first—silver-white as a swan’s wing under starlight, plaited into dozens of tiny braids. Her features start to come into focus against that paleness as his heart settles down. A round face, dark-skinned with a bluish cast; whiteless, wide-pupilled Telerin eyes, enlarged by their fringe of frost-colored lashes; the same smooth, low-bridged nose and solemn mouth as her father.
She’d seemed much more imposing at the welcoming ceremonies, standing all impassive at King Olwë’s side, enlarged by her formal garments and swan-feathered cloak. Here, alone in the hall, dressed simply in an undyed shift and an ordinary cloak of coarse cloth, it turns out she’s shorter than Arafinwë by a full head, bird-boned, almost doll-like. Say almost just because of the expression on her face, a comical sort of shock tinged with guilt that Arafinwë’s never seen counterfeited in paint or stone or clay.
“L—Lady Eärwen?”
“Oh—” She blinks several times. “You’re—you’re the Ñoldo prince. Right, you’re, uh—Finde-something. No, wait, I’ve got it, it’s—Aráta-finwë? Am I close?”
His dismay must show on his face. She offers a winning, if slightly desperate, smile.
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just, all those names at dinner—Ñoldorin all starts to sound the same after a while, you know? You’re the King’s son, obviously, I remember that.”
Her Ñoldorin is quite good, quick and fluent with only a hint of pull at the consonants. Much better than Arafinwë’s middling Telerin, at any rate. He blushes, and then notices himself blushing, which makes him blush harder. “What are you doing out here?”
“I live here. What are you doing out here?”
“I—”
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter, just—you’ll explain it to me later, won’t you?” She starts to sidle off back down the hall, casting a nervous glance over Arafinwë’s shoulder. “Much later. Tomorrow, even.”
“Wait, sorry, I think I’m missing something here.”
“Then I’ll owe you an explanation too. Later.” Her smile has turned, over the course of this exchange, into something more closely approximating the bared teeth of a trapped animal.
Arafinwë’s youngest sibling instincts stir in the back of his head, muttering suspiciously. He squints at her. “This isn’t some kind of prank, is it?”
“Do I look like I’m joking? Keep your voice down.”
“Why? What’s going—?”
“Shh, shh—oh, shit—”
Footsteps, voices echoing down the corridor, muffled with distance but moving closer. She seizes his wrist with startling strength and drags him into the nearest alcove, where he knocks his head on a hanging lamp.
“Ow!”
“Shut up,” she whispers, prodding him in the chest with a finger. “If anyone asks, you never saw me. Got it?”
“Can you please just explain what’s happening right now?”
“No!” she snaps, but then realizes she’s gotten herself into an unfavorable position—namely, that she’s now cornered in the back of the alcove with Arafinwë blocking the only means of exit.
A brief shoving match ensues. She’s strong for someone her size, and doesn’t seem to have compunctions about throwing elbows. Arafinwë remembers, belatedly, that she has brothers. It makes sense. He’s very familiar with her tooth-and-claw take-no-prisoners style, having used it (with no great success) on a brother of his own, not to mention two older sisters who aren’t above fighting dirty when it suits them. He’s just running the numbers on whether or not it’s an execution-worthy offense to pull the same trick on her Káno used to use on him and grab her by the top of the head to hold her out of kidney-punching range when the two approaching voices finally resolve into intelligibility.
His heart, not terrifically buoyant at the best of times, sinks straight down into his shoes.
“…just don’t know what to do, honestly. I mean, I guess I should be grateful he’s not a braggart or a bully or—”
“You worry too much. He’s a good kid, Finwë. Bit on the quiet side, but, y’know—polite. Respectful, and all that.”
“But, see, that’s my point—he behaves, but is it enough? Sure, his heart’s in the right place, but when Káno—Ñolvo, that is, our Káno, Fëanáro’s got a little Káno too—”
“That’s cute.”
“—anyway, when Káno was Áro’s age, you couldn’t get him to sit still long enough to lace up his boots, I remember one time he—”
“Will—you—fucking—move,” Eärwen snarls, thumping Arafinwë hard on the chest. Arafinwë barely feels it. His legs have locked up. Maybe it’s a heretofore undiscovered gift of prophecy awakening in him, maybe he’s just inventing improbable catastrophes as usual, but he’s just been visited by two horrible visions of the future. In one of them, he stays here in this alcove and dies by inches while Dad mocks up an itemized list of Ways Arafinwë Is A Total Disappointment in front of an audience; in the other, Dad catches him here in the hall and Arafinwë has to own up to the fact that, yes, he did in fact hear part of that aforementioned itemized list, and yes, it did maybe kinda sorta extremely hurt his feelings, but it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, reeeeeeeeeeeeally, he gets it, if he had kids like Káno and brilliant, inimitable, perfect Fëanáro he’d be disappointed in himself too.
“—and it’s not that he’s a hopeless case, either, he’s smart, he’s always been smart. If he would just apply himself—to anything, really—but all he ever seems to want to do is hide up in his room with a pile of books.”
“He’s a teenager. They all have their phases. He’ll have grown out of it before half a year’s passed, mark my words. And, hey, at least you don’t have to go around locking down all the windows so he won’t climb out and go running around town with who-knows-who. We should all be so lucky.”
“I wish he’d climb out a window once in a while. Break a rule. Step out of line. It’d show initiative.”
“I’ve been saying for a while you Ñoldor have a very strange idea of what constitutes good behavior.”
“But maybe I’m being unfair, too. Maybe I’m pressuring him too hard. Comparing him too much to his brothers. Just because the apple fell a little further from the tree doesn’t mean anything’s wrong, necessarily, does it?” A long pause. “Or, I don’t know. Maybe he just takes after Indis...”
It is not fine. It is really, really, really not fine. It is so incredibly not-fine that Arafinwë is wondering if it’s possible to eject one’s fëa from one’s body at will with enough force to catapult it instantaneously to the Halls of Mandos and, crucially, out of hearing range of any conversations in the immediate vicinity. And, sure, Mom would be sad, but she’d get over it, she’s got plenty of other un-disappointing kids as a consolation, and—
“AGH!”
—and he’s forgotten to guard his solar plexus.
Quick and deadly as an arrow seeking its target, Eärwen’s hand has darted out and jabbed him in the soft spot right below his sternum. Arafinwë makes a frankly humiliating noise and staggers backward out of the alcove, doubled over. Eärwen’s right on him, but she hesitates once she’s out in the open. Arafinwë’s already doing the math in his head: she can’t very well run right at the approaching conversationalists, but there’s no time to make an escape down the very wide, very unfurnished corridor. Her only hope would’ve been to take cover in the alcove, and that’s no longer an option.
“Ah,” Eärwen breathes, followed by a word in Telerin that requires no translation.
“…Áro? Is that you?”
The two of them freeze like startled deer as Dad rounds the corner with King Olwë at his side. Arafinwë isn’t sure what his face is doing, but it feels very bad. Next to him, Eärwen is endeavoring to melt into the nearest pillar.
“Hey, Dad,” Arafinwë gets out. Far too late, he manages to straighten up. He hopes neither Dad nor Olwë notice him rubbing his chest. He’s gonna have a bruise there later, he just knows it.
Olwë frowns at them.
“Eärwen? What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Attace!” Eärwen says, both too loudly and too cheerfully, to Arafinwë’s mind. She bobs a graceful courtesy to Dad. “And King Finwë, too? Good evening, Majesty, good evening. You’re both up late, aren’t you? You must’ve been talking for—”
“I thought you went to bed hours ago.”
“Oh!” Eärwen lets out a brittle, tinkling little laugh. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I was a little worn out. We had a long day today! Not that I’m saying you’re at fault, King Finwë, we’re happy to have you—”
“Your mother said you had a headache.”
“She—I told her I was going to bed early, that’s all—she must’ve just assumed—”
Arafinwë’s stomach turns over as he watches Eärwen fumble. Sure enough, she’s doing that cornered-dog smile again, which tells him more definitively than words ever could that 1) he absolutely interrupted her in the middle of something illicit and 2) that as soon as Olwë works that out, she’ll be so, so, so fucked.
And it looks like Olwë is right on the verge of that realization, too. His expression goes stern and cold as a sea-cliff in a storm. “Eärwen…”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Arafinwë says quickly. He shoots Eärwen what he hopes passes as a casual glance, widening his eyes as he does it—play along. “I was walking the halls, and I—I must’ve woken Lady Eärwen up. She was kind enough to come out and check on me.”
“Eärwen’s rooms are over in the east wing,” Olwë points out, deflating a little.
“Well, yeah—like I said, I was walking to try and wear myself out, but I ended up getting sort of lost, so she offered to show me around for a bit until I settled in. That was really thoughtful of you, my Lady. I didn’t even realize you weren’t feeling well. Thank you.”
“Oh, of course,” she says, right on cue. She hitches up that inscrutable doll’s smile she’d worn at the earlier ceremonies. “It's my responsibility. You’re a guest in our home.”
Apparently, her father’s not wholly immune to the expression, because his glare softens by a fraction to see it. Only by a fraction, though. “Hmm,” he says. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. She was just telling me about the—” Arafinwë scans the hall for a likely art object. “The, uh, your wall hangings there.”
“Oh, the tapestries, right! It’s interesting, did you know that cloth’s not actually woven? It’s made from tree bark, if you can believe it, what you do is you wet it and then pound it down really thin—”
“Only I noticed I’d dropped an earring.”
“Right, right—so I was helping him look for it over here, because he thought he missed it by the alcove…”
“And we’d just found it when you came around the corner,” Arafinwë adds, because his hand has just jumped to the gold hoop that is quite conspicuously threaded through his earlobe where it belongs. “So. You know. It all worked out.”
“You’re very out-of-breath,” Dad observes. “And I thought I heard shouting.”
Olwë’s eyes go sharp again. “We did hear that.”
“That was just—um—”
On some distant mental level, Arafinwë kicks himself hard. He’s got to be the dumbest of the entire kindred of the Ñoldor, bar none. He doesn’t even know what he’s throwing himself on a sword for, and he’s probably never going to know, considering that Eärwen’s most likely going to run for it first chance she gets without bothering to enlighten him. But he’s in this now, and if he backs out he’s going to get them both in even worse trouble, and somewhere along the line it seems his mind has made itself up that he’s not going to stand here and twiddle his thumbs while someone else gets chewed out. Not even someone he barely knows, not even if that someone just socked him in the chest a minute or so ago.
So fuck it, he thinks, and pulls a rueful little smile onto his face, and loads up his voice with a double helping of sheepishness, all the better to distract. “You know me,” he says. “First night in a new place. I’ve been off this whole time. And I couldn’t sleep and all. So when I missed my earring, I just—I dunno—I kinda freaked.”
Dad sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Áro…”
Arafinwë knows that tone of voice. Damn, damn, damn, he was hoping to just get off with a few laughs and a typical Áro, but he’s laid it on too thick and now he’s fucking blown it. “I know, I know, I know—”
“I get that it’s an adjustment, but you can’t just fly off the handle about a thing like that—this isn’t home—”
“It was one slip, it’s not like I meant to embarrass myself in front of anyone—”
“—and you’re not some nobody, you have to think about decorum, and how this reflects on the family, and—”
“I did—I mean, I do—”
“It really isn’t a problem, Finwë,” says Olwë in a gentle undertone that makes Arafinwë wish he’d just started scolding too. “He didn’t do anyone any harm.”
“Olwë, I know you think you’re helping, but I can handle this.”
“There’s nothing to handle, you don’t have to handle anything!” Arafinwë’s voice cracks a little with righteous indignation, which sends a jolt of horror arcing through him, but at this point he’s getting a full-on Dad Lecture in front of royalty, so, sure, he might as well walk all the way backwards through puberty while he’s at it, because this isn’t going to get less humiliating. “I’m going back to bed now, I literally don’t know what else you want me to do!”
“Obviously there’s nothing to be done now, but I think you and I need to have a talk about this later—”
“What’s there to talk about? I screwed up, it was one time, I won’t do it again, conversation over.”
“See, it’s that kind of dismissiveness that worries me, it’s like you don’t even care about your responsibilities as a—”
“How does that make any sense? If I get too worked up, I’m in trouble, if I don’t get worked up enough, I’m in trouble—”
“You know what I mean. And I do not appreciate the attitude, by the way.” He smooths his hand over his face, and as he does it he mutters something under his breath. Náro never—something something something. Or was that Ñolvo never? Either way, it makes Olwë frown and nudge Dad and say come on, Finwë, and it makes Arafinwë’s guts feel like they’ve turned to ice.
Maybe those words just slipped out in a moment of frustration, sure. Maybe Dad’s just embarrassed that this is happening in front of a friend, or a brother-monarch, and is letting that make him defensive and mean. Maybe he’s still feeling the effects of Olwë’s very good wine from dinner. All those excuses rush through Arafinwë’s head in about half a second, clawing for purchase on the inside of his skull, before they’re swept away by the much louder and much stronger thought of: who cares why he said it like that? Whatever the case, he still said it.
And he wouldn’t’ve said it if not for you.
“I’m sorry,” Arafinwë says, knee-jerk, and then the floodgates are open. He doesn’t even quite know what he’s apologizing for—the attitude, or for being obtuse, or for making a scene in front of other people, or for being Dad’s absolute last choice to bring on a trip like this, or for not being refined like Findis or smart like Lalwen or popular like Káno or perfect in literally every way like Fëanáro, or maybe just for being born in the first place. Maybe all of it at once. All he knows is that Ñolvo never and Náro never and if he doesn’t make this right, right now, he’ll have lost something he can’t ever get back once it’s gone. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry! I fucked up! How many times do I have to say it? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”
“That’s enough, Arafinwë, you’re making a scene. We’ll discuss this tomorrow. In private. Good grief.”
That nebulous something slips a little further out of reach. Arafinwë can feel the fear-sweat clinging cold to his shoulder blades and down his back. Fix it. Make it right. Do it now. “I know, I know, I just—I’m sorry—it was stupid, I know it was stupid, but—”
“It wasn’t stupid, though.”
Arafinwë blinks, comes to a dead halt with another sorry frozen half-formed on his tongue. Eärwen is looking at him, a gentle frown tugging at her lips. “It wasn’t stupid,” she repeats. “You just—had a moment. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, imagine how I’d act if you dropped me in the middle of Tirion with no map. I’d be running around screaming like a crazy lady. I’d be a mess.”
“That’s—I don’t think that’s—” Arafinwë fumbles the unexpected intervention for a few seconds. Finally manages, “I—I don’t think you’d freak out like that. Not like I did. You wouldn’t.”
“I bet you anything I would. I’d take off and wouldn’t stop until I’d run myself out of town or gotten so lost no one would ever see me again, I just know it.”
“It wouldn’t be that bad. All the streets are on a grid, the only way you could get really lost would be if you tripped and fell into someone’s cellar by mistake.”
“And they say you can’t even hear the Sea from there. Brr. How do any of you deal with it?”
“You—well, no, you can’t, but there’s other—I never thought of it that way, I guess…”
He trails off. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Dad and Olwë exchanging some sort of Meaningful Look, but when he wrenches his gaze away from Ëarwen’s face they’re both watching him instead, Olwë with visible relief, Dad with mild bemusement, like Arafinwë’s an exotic bird who’s just landed in the courtyard at home or a new metallurgic technique he doesn’t quite understand yet.
Arafinwë isn’t sure what to do with that expression, so he coughs and looks down to fuss at the skirts of his robe. At least the public scolding seems to have been averted. Eärwen, a little more discreet, laces her fingers together and bounces her hands against her thighs a few times, but doesn't offer a follow-up.
“And that’s all you were doing,” Olwë says after an uncomfortably long silence, the suspicion in his voice smoothed down to a wary fondness. Right. Arafinwë had nearly forgotten that was why they were having this conversation in the first place. “Having a walk. Showing our guest around. Helping him—ah—settle in.”
“That’s all,” Eärwen replies at once.
“Nothing else.”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
“I don’t think I would’ve been up for anything more exciting, honestly,” Arafinwë adds, for whatever it’s worth. “This was—it helped. It helped a lot.”
“The earring thing aside,” says Dad.
“Yeah. Naturally. Aside from that.”
“And we found it, anyway,” Eärwen says, somewhat unnecessarily. “So all’s well, and all that.”
“Right.”
And then they all lapse into silence again. There’s an odd smile hovering about Olwë’s lips that Arafinwë would almost call sly, if there were any way to make that make sense. Dad is still blinking owlishly at him. Eärwen, meanwhile, is so quiveringly tense at his side that it’s a wonder she’s not humming like a plucked string. No one else seems to have noticed that yet, but it’s probably best not to push their luck.
“Well—I’m kinda wiped out,” Arafinwë says, faking a slightly ostentatious stifled yawn. “I should probably turn in and try and get some actual sleep. Sorry to make a fuss, your Majesty, I really didn’t mean to bother anybody.”
Olwë waves a hand at him. “No, no, no, no. No harm done. You had a bit more excitement than you’re used to today, you were anxious, you got lost, it happens. Your father ought to tell you about how he carried on when he was first brought to Valinor—”
“You had it secondhand from your brother, so don’t even start—”
“—who told me about it in great detail, and I’ve got a good memory, so I can assure you it’s a great story.” Olwë smiles and, to Arafinwë’s great surprise, offers him a teasing wink. “Just ask him about it sometime. If nothing else, it’ll take your mind off the jitters.”
“All right, thank you, Olwë, very helpful—”
Dad elbows Olwë until Olwë chuckles and moves off down the hall. Dad, however, hangs back for a second. A tension lingers around the corners of his mouth, in the line between his brows.
“…Yeah?” Arafinwë says, fully expecting him to pick up his scolding right where he’d left off.
Dad’s frown deepens. Wheels turning in his head. His gaze moves between Arafinwë and Eärwen, Eärwen and Arafinwë, back and forth, back and forth. It’s very unsettling.
“You’ve had a long day, Áro,” he says at last, slow, like he’s still working the concept out for himself. “Just—get some sleep, all right? I’ll see you in the morning.”
Arafinwë opens his mouth to retort so am I still in trouble or what, but stops his tongue just in time. Unless he’s much mistaken, that was almost a peace offering from Dad, and at this point he should really start considering almosts wins in and of themselves. Redirect. “Y-yeah. Okay. G’night.”
“Lady Eärwen.”
“King Finwë.”
Eärwen drops another courtesy, her relief only evident in the swiftness of the motion, down-up like the head of a pecking bird. She seizes Arafinwë by the elbow. “This way, this way—it’s no wonder you couldn’t find the north wing by yourself, you walk through three sand-gardens and start thinking you’re going in circles and before you know it you’ve walked yourself halfway to the Sea, totally understandable—”
“I was figuring out the sand-gardens,” he protests, uncomfortably aware as they walk off that they’re still doing a bit and that they still have an audience. He’s felt Dad’s stare burning a hole in the back of his head enough times to recognize it at range, although it seems to be a good sign for their subterfuge that Dad’s just watching them go and not giving chase. “I would’ve known if I’d walked through the same one twice.”
“You say that, but I know how it is with those things. It’s the rocks, see, you have to memorize which rocks are in which garden, and in what pattern. And then keep an eye out, because they change them every couple of weeks.”
“That seems—” Excessive, bordering on malicious is probably a little much. “—complicated.”
“You get used to it. But I guess that’s easy for me to say, since it’s my job to plan out half those arrangements. Mom’s are harder for me to keep straight, but you learn to watch for…”
She starts rattling off a list of desirable attributes for the handpicked stones. Apparently the constant rearrangements of the sand gardens have something to do with a ceremonial acknowledgement of the boundary between the realms of Ulmo, Ossë, and Uinen, and the kingdom of the terrestrial Valar. Unironically interesting, under other circumstances—they certainly don’t have such a close relationship with the Sea and its monarchs in Tirion, and there’s something pleasantly meditative in the idea of a construct that’s never quite fixed, ever shifting, ever being reworked—but Arafinwë’s only listening with about half of his brain. The rest of his attention is split between detecting any signs of pursuit and resisting the urge to scuttle for cover.
It’s a good minute before he realizes Eärwen’s stopped talking and her death-grip on his elbow has gone loose, and he only notices that because all the blood suddenly comes rushing back into his hand and forearm. He swallows a curse and flexes his fingers to work the pins and needles out.
“They’re not following us, are they?” Eärwen mutters.
Arafinwë risks a glance back over his shoulder. “No. No, I think we’re good.”
“Keep moving. Just in case.”
Eärwen releases his arm, her pace slowing from its frenzied speedwalk to something more relaxed. She turns to Arafinwë, her eyes very wide.
“That,” she whispers, “was fucking amazing.”
“It—was?”
“Fuck yeah, it was!” She grins, bright and genuine and much less disturbing than her fake-polite-please-don’t-notice-how-terrified-I-am smiles. “Ahh, I thought I was so screwed. I could’ve sworn Dad was about to start spitting fire, I nearly pissed myself—but then you jumped in! And you didn’t even hesitate, either, you were stone cold, you barely blinked…”
Arafinwë’s not sure he’d characterize himself that way, but he’s also not immune to the compliment, so he keeps the objection to himself. Eärwen pushes her hands through her mass of braids and lets out a shaky chuckle. Then, her smile of relief fading: “You didn’t have to do all that for me.”
“What? Oh—it’s fine, don’t worry about—”
“No, no, you stuck your neck out for me. You almost caught your own scolding, I heard your dad just then.”
“It’s fine, it’s like—he wasn’t going to scream at me, he just lectures, it’s more boring than anything, really—”
“But you don’t even know me. I was being such a dick to you back there, right before they caught us. And I—” She winces. “I punched you. Sorry. I maybe panicked, a little.”
“It barely even hurts anymore.” (A lie, but a harmless one, at this point.)
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. I’m just glad you didn’t get in trouble.”
“Well. Okay. I guess. Thanks. Thank you, Arta—” She stops, scoffs at herself. “Fuck’s sake. You’d think I would’ve at least gotten your name after all that.”
“Arafinwë Ingoldo,” he says automatically, with a much-too-formal bow that nearly makes him trip over his own feet. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Uh, again.”
“The pleasure’s mine, son of Finwë. But, uh…” Eärwen makes a face at him. “Ingoldo? Really? Oof.”
Arafinwë can feel himself making the same face right back at her. Ah, yes, right on cue, here come the looky-loos to have a gander at the peculiarities of the family Finwë. Somehow, that never seems to get less awkward. He should really have some kind of form speech prepared to deal with the usual questions by now. Next time, he tells himself. “Yeah, it’s—my mom’s Vanya, I’ve got the, y’know—” He gestures at his hair. “And I’m the only one in the family who, so she kinda overcompensated, with the—it’s a whole thing.”
“No, yeah. I’d heard about—I’d heard.” Eärwen sucks her teeth, but tactfully doesn’t comment on what exactly she’s heard.
“I know it’s stupid, I don’t really use—Áro’s fine. Or Arafinwë, or whatever, if that’s too—”
“Not Ingo?” A hint of dimple appears at the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, no. Please, no.”
“I don’t know, it’s kind of cute. Ingo. Innnnnnngo.”
“No, I’m serious, only my mom calls me that, please don’t—”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I like Áro.” She offers a little bob of the head, which is much classier than what he’d done. “Eärwen of Alqualondë. May the blessings of the Valar blah-di blah blah, and all that.”
Arafinwë snorts. “Wow.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want the full formal introduction with titles and benediction? Because I’ll do it, and that’s a threat.”
“That’s probably not—”
“Here, hang a left.”
She takes him by the arm again and steers him down a side corridor, narrower and plainer than the one they’d just been walking. The sound of the Sea is a little less muffled here, and a breath of moving air that carries the fragrance of saltwater and wrack brushes the hair back from Arafinwë’s brow.
“Think you can find your way from here?” Eärwen asks.
“Um—”
“There’s a garden up ahead. Walk straight across it, and then when you get up to the main house again, keep to the left as much as you can. You’ll be tempted to cut through the middle courts of the main house to save time—don’t do it, you’ll get lost again. It’s easier if you just follow the outer wall all the way around. It’s all windows and open walks along that side, anyway, so unless you really fuck up you can’t lose sight of it. So then you just keep walking for a while with the wall on your left until you hit the big carving of the lady riding a dolphin—”
“Oh, wait, I remember that one. It’s kind of, um—I wouldn’t’ve called it riding, what she’s doing.”
“I was trying to keep it clean, but yeah, exactly. That one. Go past her, cross the bridgeway, and then you’re pretty much there. Second pavilion down on the right, you can’t miss it.”
“Okay, but—where are you going?”
“Out, obviously.” She raises a pale eyebrow at him. “What, you didn’t really think I was just gonna tuck you into bed and say nighty-night, did you?”
“…Fair.”
“Thank fuck Dad didn’t try to walk me back to my rooms himself,” Eärwen mutters. “Like, I would’ve gone out a window if I’d had to, but I would’ve been really screwed if someone looked up from the street and saw me climbing down the outer wall on a knotted-up bedsheet. And he probably would’ve woken Mom up, too, and told her to keep an eye out, so I’d have to wait for her to fall asleep before trying again, and by the time she did it wouldn’t even be worth trying to get down to the beach and back again.”
That doesn’t seem to have been for Arafinwë’s benefit, but it’s too tantalizing for him to ignore. “The Sea’s all the way on the other side of the palace.”
“No duh it is,” Eärwen says impatiently. “But no one ever watches the west-facing gates.”
So it’s an established misdemeanor. Interesting. Not what he would’ve expected, either, not from the demure and elegant swan-maiden of the welcoming ceremonies. It’s also, really, none of his business. He ought to just say his good nights and let her go wreak havoc and sucker-punch people elsewhere before he’s further implicated in whatever she’s up to. But as Eärwen steps back, her mind clearly already straying towards its destination, an unexpected surge of curiosity rears up within Arafinwë and sinks its teeth into him. His mouth is open and the question is on his lips before he can even consider second-guessing himself.
That’s some pure unfiltered Ñoldorin bullshit, whatever way you slice it. So take that, maybe he takes after Indis.
“…Okay, sorry, I have to ask. What is going on? Is it, like—it’s not a—”
An embarrassing thought occurs to him. He flounders for a second as he tries to work out whether it would be worse to just blurt it out or to give up in the middle of his sentence like a coward. Luckily, she’s quick on the draw, and just snickers at the look on his face.
“Was I trysting, do you mean?” she purrs. “Was I going to meet a lover?”
Arafinwë chokes on his own spit, which makes Eärwen laugh harder. She has a pleasant laugh, high and sweet and unselfconscious, less like the Telerin pipers out on the shore and more like the seabirds that gather around them to duet. It’s nice enough that Arafinwë almost forgets to feel stung that he’s once again wound up the butt of a joke, and when he finally remembers, she smiles at him, playful, conspiratorial, folding him into the joke like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and the ache fades to nothing at once.
“Okay, okay, okay, I’m sorry, that was mean,” she says after a bit, when she’s gotten her breath back. “But you should’ve seen your face, it was like there was a live fish trying to get out of your mouth.”
“Hey, if you wanna talk about faces, that thing you were doing back there with your dad where you showed every single one of your teeth at once was kinda—”
“I will punch you again.”
She feints at him, and he mimes a dodge, and then they’re both giggling like children. As nice as her laugh is on its own, it’s somehow even better to laugh with her.
“No, but in all honesty—you’re right, as it turns out,” she admits. “I was going to meet a guy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“But it’s not what it sounds like. Well, not entirely. There is a—someone. I’ve been seeing him for a bit. He’s the son of one of Dad’s seneschals, he’s really—sorry, not that you care—”
“No, no, like, congratulations. I hope he’s nice.”
“Thanks. He—he is. Nice. I mean, he’s fine. But it’s nothing serious, between us. We’re just having fun. I’m allowed.”
“Well, yeah. Of course you are,” Arafinwë says, nonplussed.
“Um.” A fragile undercurrent there in her voice. Her hands stir and settle, two little dark birds, before she catches herself and goes on, “I’ve—we’ve—been meeting up with some friends at the beach just north of the harbor. My brothers too, when they can get away. We’ve all been working on this project together. A secret project.”
“A secret.”
“Top secret. Drop-dead, swear-on-your-life secret. You know.”
Arafinwë is reminded, amusingly, of Lalwen. She gets just like this when she’s on one of her research tears and is desperate to monologue about what she’s learned at anyone willing to stand still in her presence for more than three seconds, but is also trying to play it cool on the off chance Findis hears her and declares her topic of interest lame little-sister shit, not that Findis would put it in those words. At the moment, though, there’s no one else around to hear them—certainly no Findis, with her very particular taste and her inborn right as eldest sister to decide which of her siblings’ hobbies are inoffensive and which are cringeworthy.
Which implies, of course, that Eärwen is afraid Arafinwë is going to declare her big secret uncool. Arafinwë can’t help it—he makes a show of considering for a second or two while he basks in the novel glow of that distinction. He’s never been permitted the role of tastemaker before. It feels pretty good, if he’s being honest.
At the same time, he does want to know what’s going on.
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“Promise?”
“I literally just lied to your dad’s face about it.”
“You did do that.”
Eärwen twists one of her braids around her fingertip, her brow furrowing as she thinks. Then, very quickly, like she’s trying to outrun her own nerves: “We’re working on a way to make boats move. An easier way, so no one has to get stuck paddling or rowing or poling or anything. A new way. No—a better way.”
Her dark eyes flash with a sudden fervor. Arafinwë blinks. “And your dad’s upset about that? But that’s—I don’t know, that sounds—”
She blanches at once and turns away from him. “It sounds complicated, yeah, I know, and like a lot of work, and I’m sure all you clever Ñoldor with your universities and your workshops and whatever else you have in Tirion could’ve figured it out a lot faster than we did, but, whoops, we had to work with what we had—”
“No, no, it’s not like that. I was gonna say it sounds kind of—awesome. Honestly.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah, like, I don’t know that much about boats, but you can see right away how that’d be useful—”
“Exactly!” She perks up again so quickly it’s a little frightening. “It’s stupid that we haven’t figured out a fix for this already, an idiot could tell we’d be better off. See, if we just had a way to move the boats, anyone could—say—cross the bay to Eresseä on their own and get back, or go south when the seasons change, or whatever they wanted. And it wouldn’t matter if you couldn’t paddle or row or anything, either, you could just go. Ugh, just imagine that! My parents and all the older folks lived on Eresseä for ages and ages, before Ulmo brought it up out of the East, even, and now no one ever stays there for more than a few days—I’ve only ever been there a few times, myself, it’s just not convenient. But if we had an easy way to get back over, not just the grown men and women, kids too, everybody, we could go there all the time. We could live there again. No one would have to be stuck in Alqualondë if they didn’t want to be. And another thing, too—”
Arafinwë could’ve sworn Teleri needed to breathe every now and again, but Eärwen seems set on proving him wrong. He’s not really sure what he’d do if she passed out on him, though—she’s not all that big, but despite all his lies to Olwë, he’s got no idea where her rooms are, and he’s aware it’d look pretty bad if he walked up to someone with an unconscious princess in his arms and asked for directions.
Yep, better intervene. “Right, yeah, but can’t you just use the swans to get around?”
“The swans are really more for special occasions. And, sure, my dad can rustle up enough of them to travel in state when he needs to, but not everyone can, and anyway they’re little bastards if you don’t know how to handle them. Believe me, I know.”
“I thought you all really liked the swans.”
“I mean, they’re pretty, and they are strong, which is good when you need to get somewhere fast. But they also bite,” Eärwen says grimly. “And Ossë’s not always around to make them behave. So the more time we can spend just looking at them, and the less we spend actually having to deal with them, the better.”
“…Oh. That makes sense.”
“Right. But, no oars, no paddles, no wings—how do you move the boat, then? So…oh, you’re gonna like this, it’s so cool…” She spreads her hands with a delighted grin. “So we made our own wings.”
“Which means…?”
“I had this idea—this was back at the end of winter, almost spring, right, and that time of year we get these gales all up and down the coast that almost knock you off your feet, they’re that bad. Mom and my brothers and I had been staying down south at the winter palace, and we’d been planning on heading home, but there was a storm brewing, a real monster one, too. That meant we were stuck there until it blew over, because of course the swans don’t like to haul the boats in weather like that. Ossë doesn’t care that they’re his swans when he gets in a mood, either, so he could really hurt them if we risked going out on the water when it’s that rough. They might be little bastards, but no one wants that.
“Anyway, we were running around the inner courts, trying to help Mom save some of the plantings, and I was out there thinking, like, ugh, we could be home right now and I could be holed up in my room under about a million blankets instead of out here in the wind and wet if the swans hadn’t gotten all nervous yesterday—which is mean to the swans, I know, I just said we didn’t want them to get hurt, but I was in a bad mood—”
“I mean, I would’ve been too. We don’t get weather like that at home, but no one likes a storm. Except Ossë.”
“Except Ossë,” Eärwen agrees. “Which is kind of his whole thing, so you can’t really blame him for it, but I wasn’t really being logical at that point. I was just cold and uncomfortable and the gardens were going to be a huge mess no matter what we did, and we’d been down at the winter palace for weeks at that point, and I just wanted to be—oh, anywhere else in the world. Anywhere at all. And the fact that we were just stuck, with nothing to do but deal with it—you know the feeling.”
Innocuous remark, but it raises a bit of a chill down Arafinwë’s back that has nothing to do with the light, salt-scented breeze. To be anywhere else in the world, anywhere at all. Sure, he knows it. He’s only been feeling it all his life, every day, every time Dad looks at him slantwise, every time Mom sighs at him. “Yeah,” he says, without elaborating, and holds his breath until she eases back into her story.
“Well, after a while the weather got too bad for us to make any difference, and we were all soaking wet and freezing and miserable, so we gave up and ran for cover. And as I was heading inside there was this flash of lightning—I’ve seen a lot of storms, but never anything quite like that, it lit up the whole courtyard for a second like a star had fallen down—and I turned around without thinking, I couldn’t help myself. Just before everything went dark again, I looked up and saw one of the banners along the outer wall flapping like crazy, all white and silver against the sky, and I thought…I just thought…”
She trails off, her gaze unfocused, the lines of her face falling into a soft, wondering expression that makes Arafinwë’s heart skip a couple of beats.
“You’ve seen how a flag moves in the wind, of course,” she continues after a bit. “The way it pulls against the pole at the corners like it wants to come free. And when it’s a flag, it almost always does just get torn loose and blow away. But I was standing there, watching that banner, wishing I were at home, wishing I could just fly back like a little bit of cloth on a breeze—and the pieces just kind of, I don’t know, came together in my head. What if, right? What if the banner were strong enough not to tear loose, and what if you secured it so all that pulling was actually hauling some weight, and what if you could move it so instead of getting thrashed around by the wind you were really—how do I say this—you were controlling the pull you got out of it? What then?”
“Then,” Arafinwë replies with a smile, “you really would have your own wings, it sounds like.”
Her answering grin is quick as anything, though there’s still something a little distant around its edges. You get the sense she’s still seeing that banner flying, somewhere, somehow, a pale wing before the storm. Arafinwë can almost see it himself, when she makes that face.
“Elulindo swears it was his idea, but if he tells you that, he’s lying, I told him first at dinner that night. He was into it, though, and so were the others, and once we got back to Alqualondë we got to talking with the harbormaster’s son, and he brought some other folks around whose parents keep their own swan-boats, and we talked to some of the kids around here, people who wouldn’t blab, and we got a vessel together—a little one, and it’s rough, but it’s seaworthy…and here we are.”
“That’s amazing. No, I’m serious, that’s—I never would’ve thought of doing something like that. It’s so simple, but it’d really change everything. I bet you’ll be—making landing, or, or dropping anchor—?” Or whatever you’re supposed to say when it’s boats. “—on Eresseä any day now.”
“Ah. Um. Any day now is a little optimistic.” Blessedly, she opts to let the boat terminology slide. “It’s not perfect yet. Obviously. We’ve got the banner set up so it catches the wind—it’s not as big as you’d think it would need to be—and it gets the boat moving and all, but it’s tough to steer and keep the boat in the wind at the same time. And having a big pole in the middle of the boat makes it sort of top-heavy, so when it’s too windy the whole thing tends to turn over, and that’s not great. But it could work. It will work. We just need a little more time to figure it out. To teach ourselves. To—to learn the wind.”
Arafinwë likes that, he thinks. Learning the wind. Not just controlling it, shaping it like stone or clay or steel, or breaking it like a wild animal brought to heel. It reminds him of the really old songs Mom used to sing him on hot summer nights when he couldn’t sleep, with their hypnotic, repetitive melodies and their half-intelligible Old Quenya and the name Cuiviénen, Cuiviénen woven through in a constant refrain. All the Eldar had been learning the world, back then. The sky, the water, the trees, the stones, all of it. The wind, too. Maybe this is more of the same. Another part of Arda for the Eldar to learn, and to keep learning anew.
It’s kind of beautiful when you think about it that way, even if it does sound suspiciously like something Mom or Findis would say.
“…with me?”
“Huh? Sorry—” Arafinwë shakes his head a little as his brain catches up with his ears, and then has to take another embarrassing second to make sure he’s actually heard what he thought he heard and isn’t just making shit up. “Sorry, you said—you wanted me to come with you to—?”
“To the beach, yeah, to come and check out the boat! It’s not like you were actually going to just go back to sleep, right?” (She’s right, in that he was probably going to lay awake fretting for another few hours, but it’s not like Arafinwë’s going to admit that.) “It’s so cool, I promise, and no one will mind having an extra pair of hands on deck. Oh, maybe you can help us with the flipping issue, you people are good at that sort of thing, right? And even if you can’t, it’s okay, the water’s not that cold. You can swim, can’t you? Do Ñoldor swim?”
She cocks her head expectantly at Arafinwë. Several thoughts jostle for space in his mind—of course Ñoldor can swim, we might not live next to the Sea but we have rivers and lakes and things, and the flipping might be a weight distribution issue, how wide is the boat, and wait, so you actually want me to come? Like, you want me to come? Áro the afterthought? Are you sure you’re not just saying that to be nice?
And Eärwen is still smiling at him, which feels important. It’s a really nice smile, and those spooky-dark Telerin eyes are honestly kind of beautiful when you think about it, like two still pools reflecting the pale fires of Varda, and she’s funny, and she’s smart, and she’s cool, cooler than anyone Arafinwë’s ever hung around with at length, and she’s not a member of his insane, infuriating, complicated, overwhelming family, and—
“Actually,” he says, “I should probably stay here. Just to give you an alibi. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them we ended up circling around and I saw you back to your rooms before turning in. Throw them off your trail. Right?”
Eärwen stares at him, a little crease forming between her brows. Disappointment, Arafinwë realizes. How odd.
“I guess so,” she says slowly. “But—you’re sure?”
“Your dad seemed really suspicious.”
“Ugh, I knoooooow.” She rolls her eyes to the high heavens, so hard you can actually see slivers of white at their edges. “You’d think I was grabbing armfuls of rocks and jumping into the bay or something dumb like that. We’re not stupid, we all know Ossë’s unpredictable. That’s why we’ve been going out in groups, so if something goes really wrong one of us can run for help. I tried to explain that to him, but he just got mad and said Eärwen, if I catch you running around with those kids one more time, you’re going to be grounded for the next three Ages of Arda, see if I’m joking. And then he made this face—he always makes this one face when he’s telling us off, it’s—”
Her impression is unflattering, but not inaccurate. Arafinwë has to stifle a snort of laughter. “But, honestly,” she goes on, “what does he think I’m going to do? Get swallowed by a whale? Commandeer a boat and take off across the sea? Fucking disappear?”
“Well,” Arafinwë begins. Catches himself. If it’s not cool to ask a princess about her love life, it’s definitely not cool to remind her of her own tragic family history. She’s right on his heels again, though, and to his surprise she bows her head and twiddles the silver bead at the end of one of her braids.
“That was kind of a shitty thing to say, huh?” she mumbles.
“I wasn’t going to call it shitty. And it’s not like you said it to him, anyway.”
“To be clear, I, um. Sort of did.”
“Okay. That’s—not great.”
“Maybe not quite in those words.”
“Worse words, or better ones?”
She grimaces without looking at him.
“…All right. Yeah, not super good.”
“It’s not that I forget about Uncle Elwë,” she says quickly. “Really, it’s not. And I know Dad misses him like crazy. I hate to see him so sad, and I hate how the smallest little thing will get to him, there, in that place, just when you’re not expecting it. And I know I should miss Uncle Elwë too, because he’s family. But I just—can’t. Not in the same way. I never knew him. How can I miss someone I never knew?” Before he can even reply, she’s already glaring at him, her jaw set and her shoulders hunched. You fairly expect her to throw up her arms to block a punch just to cap it all off. “Go ahead, then. You can call me an asshole for that.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
She twitches a little. Whatever blow she’d expected, evidently it wasn’t that one. “I’m—you don’t—don’t you think there’s something wrong with me for, for—”
“Of course not. You can’t control that. You can’t make yourself miss someone. It’s sad, and you can be sad for your dad, but if all you’ve got to go on are stories, and someone else’s memories…”
“I—yeah. No, that makes sense.”
“And that’s your dad’s brother, too. So it’s harder for him than it is for you.”
“That’s true. I mean, an uncle. Not that—like I said, he’s family, it’s not like an uncle isn’t family, it’s just—”
“Right, but if something happened to, say—Elulindo. It’d be different, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have any trouble missing him.”
That’s a bit of conjecture; there are definitely days where Arafinwë wouldn’t mind if Káno or Lalwen or Findis vanished into thin air. It’d mean fewer headlocks for him, fewer pranks at his expense, a little more peace around the house. But saying that out loud would kind of undercut his point, not to mention it feels like an obscure sort of win on Fëanáro’s behalf to say fuck siblings, am I right, so he keeps it to himself. At any rate, Eärwen seems to take it at face value, because she catches her lower lip in her teeth and nods.
“If I’m being honest, that’s what I really forget. To miss him. I shouldn’t say it’s easy to do it, but the way Dad talks about him, it’s like he’s still alive out there. Like one day he’ll just turn up and apologize for taking so long.”
“Maybe he is. Maybe he will.”
Eärwen scoffs a little. “What, by the grace of the Valar?”
“Sure, if you like. But I was thinking more—maybe he’s out there on the other side of the Sea still, building boats and wings just like you are, learning the wind. Maybe he wants to come home as much as people want him to come home. Maybe he’s trying. It just takes time. Like it’s been taking you time.”
“Huh.”
A pause. Not an uncomfortable one, just a gently held breath as they both turn that idea over in their heads. It takes Arafinwë a second to realize that Eärwen’s giving him a sidelong glance out of her dark-on-dark eyes. “You’re an odd duck, you know that?” she says.
That must be some Telerin idiom. He hopes the implications aren’t as disparaging as they sound. “Um—how so?”
“It’s just, I kinda thought the Vaniai were supposed to be more—I don’t know. Enthusiastic, I guess, about the majesty of the Powers enthroned and the unknowable workings of Our Father Above and all that.”
“Well, I’m only half Vanya.” He hesitates, then adds, “The unenthusiastic half, apparently. Sorry to disappoint.”
That gets a smile out of her. “Does anyone ever tell you you’re too nice for your own good?”
“Yeah,” Arafinwë admits. “Often. And it’s usually my siblings saying it. After they’ve gotten me to do them a favor.”
“That’s kind of sweet, in a weird way. All my brothers ever call me is brat.”
“Oh, well, I get plenty of that too.”
“Mm.” She fiddles with her cuffs. “I—shouldn’t have said that to him, probably. To Dad.”
“I mean. You know. I can see why he might be upset. And why he might—overreact, a little. It’s close to home. And losing something like that—or someone—”
“Yeah.” Her lips quiver, just for a moment. “It’s like—he’s standing in a shadow, sometimes. And I can’t get it off of him. So I try like crazy to get him to just step out of it, to take one step to the right and then he’ll be in the light again, but he won’t move no matter how loud I yell, and…” She shakes her head, lets out an exasperated ugh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve—you didn’t need to hear all that. It’s stupid. I’m being an idiot.”
“Don’t say that. You’re not an idiot. And I don’t mind. All you’re asking me to do is listen. Anyone can listen.”
“Yeah, you’d fucking think, and yet—”
Eärwen exhales hard through her nose and blinks up at the ceiling. And if her limpid eyes have taken on a new sort of shine—well, Arafinwë’s got just enough decorum left in him to ignore that.
“Family’s tough,” he offers.
“Don’t I know it.”
They both go quiet. Arafinwë thinks, unbidden, of the white statue in the corner of the garden at home: its hands expressive in their stillness, its blank eyes still showing something of the keenness they must’ve held in life. Thinks of the way Dad will go out and just look at it, sometimes, when Telperion is in full bloom, his own hands folded behind his back and his expression unreadable. The way he seems like a different person when he does that—not a king, or a father, just a man. A man who’s known love, a man who’s known loss.
A man, perhaps, with only one son, and no disappointments to burden his heart but the vague thought of what if.
“You shouldn’t have to live in that shadow, is the thing,” he finds himself saying. “You’re allowed to just—do stuff because you want to. Like, you shouldn’t drown yourself, obviously—”
“Great advice.”
“—but it’s your life. Your dad wants you to be happy. I’m guessing he does, anyway. He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s not,” Eärwen allows, a little grudgingly.
“And I’ll bet he cares about you enough to come around on the boats eventually, if they’re this important to you. Like, winning some stupid fight about sneaking out against his own flesh and blood? It’s no contest. He’ll choose you. Of course he will. He just needs time to work that out for himself. To figure out that it’s not really you he’s fighting.”
Eärwen gives him a long look, her eyes quite opaque, ice over deep, dark water.
All she says, though, is, “That’s some real diplomacy there. You’re going to be one hell of a king someday, you know that?”
And there goes his blush again. In his head, Arafinwë recites a little formula of gratitude to Varda for the forgiving nature of deep night and starlight. “No, no fucking way. I’m at the back of the line for that, the only way a crown’s ending up on my head is if Dad’s house burns down with everyone inside but me.”
“Uh-huh,” Eärwen says, unconvinced.
“And I’d be terrible at it, anyway.”
“You think?”
“I know.” He tries for an airy, dismissive laugh that comes out more sad than anything. “You heard my dad just now. No initiative. Doesn’t apply himself. Not really king material.”
“I guess not.” Eärwen frowns and tugs on the end of one of her braids. “But. I just. That was kind of—he shouldn’t talk about you that way. Even if he and my dad are friends. Even if he didn’t know you were listening. There was no reason for him to say all that.”
“He wasn’t wrong, is the thing.”
“Still doesn’t mean he gets to talk shit about you behind your back.”
“Well, he is my dad,” Arafinwë protests weakly, not quite sure why he’s bothering. “He just worries about me. Like he worries about all four of us.” Oops. Slip of the tongue. “All—five of us, I mean.”
“Huh. He’s got a funny way of showing it. No, let me guess,” she interrupts, before the words are even out of Arafinwë’s mouth. “It’s a Ñoldor thing, right?”
“I think it’s an our family thing, to be honest.”
“Hm.”
“Don’t—don’t say anything about that.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
Well, that’s definitely a lie. “Look, it’s not about me, really, it’s—”
Eärwen cuts him off with an impatient gesture. “Yeah, yeah, I got it, it’s not his fault, and he’s your dad, and you love him, whatever. But here’s what I think—you shouldn’t have to sit around waiting for somebody to choose you. You’re allowed to decide you’re done waiting. And if I can do stuff just because I want to, so can you.”
“That’s not really what I was saying before.”
“I’m adapting it for a new audience,” Eärwen says primly. “Artistic license. I’m allowed. I wanted to. Someone just told me I could do whatever I wanted, actually, so—”
“Okay, now you’re just fucking with me.”
“I also wanted to do that. And you’re changing the subject.”
“Am I?”
“Everything’s got a flip side. You can wait, but you don’t have to. You can let someone choose you, or you can say actually, you should’ve done it sooner, or differently, or something. You can be the one who chooses. You can.” She gives him a sly look. “See, I can give advice too. Unless the real Ñoldor thing is for thee, but not for me?”
She’s as hard to argue with as Lalwen. Harder, maybe, since he can’t get himself out of her rhetorical traps by tackling her and then running for his life. “I—fine—okay,” he concedes. “You’ve got a point. I guess.”
“How gracious of you to say so, your Highness.”
“But I get to decide when I’m done waiting. Right? That’s my choice too. Not anyone else’s.”
Eärwen shrugs. “Hey, it’s your life. Wait until the End of Days if you want. Knock yourself out.” She pauses, considering. “But, if you want my opinion—”
“Ah, there we go.”
“I’m just saying, maybe you shouldn’t take too long making up your mind about it. It’s a big world out there. You could be anywhere you wanted. Anywhere in the world, anywhere at all. And if the alternative’s being stuck at home, waiting around while you figure out whether it’s worth it or not to wait around more...” She shakes her head. The beads at the ends of her braids clink together with a sound like tiny bells. “I don’t know. But in the meantime—at least build some wings, yeah? So it doesn’t take you so long to get where you’re going, when you go. Just in case there are people waiting there for you, too.”
Arafinwë finds he has nothing at all to say to that.
Eärwen doesn’t seem interested in gloating over her scored point, though. She doesn’t seem interested in doing anything in particular, in fact. If Arafinwë hadn’t been standing here talking to her this whole time, he might take her for a particularly avant-garde statue from the gardens somehow misplaced in the middle of the hallway: white shell, black wood, two gems of uncertain color for eyes.
“Well,” she says at length.
“Yeah.”
“I should probably—they’ll miss me down at the beach. And it takes a second to get there on foot, and all.”
“No, yeah, you mentioned that. You should go. I’ll cover for you, like I said. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Eärwen takes a hesitant step back. Her inkdrop eyes flit searchingly over Arafinwë’s features: cheekbone, lips, tip of the left ear. She seems to be having a hard time looking him dead on, though, for some reason.
“Hey, come find me tomorrow, okay?” she says. “I know there’s, like, a thousand different audiences on the schedule, and my dad’s probably going to want to take your dad down to the harbor for presentation to Lady Uinen at high tide, and you won’t want to miss that, and presumably you’ll have to eat at some point…but. Um.” Her slim dark hand stirs against the white cloth at her collar, and for one unhinged moment Arafinwë considers reaching out and laying his palm over it. “I do really think you’d like what we’re doing with the boats. And I would really appreciate a second opinion on it. So. If you can get away. If you’re interested.”
“I am. Truly.”
“Good.” She steps back. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Áro.”
“See you then. And thanks. For—walking with me. Talking with me.” His own hand comes up to smooth down the front of his night-robe. “And not punching me too hard.”
She gives him one last smile, very bright against her blue-black skin, and then she’s off, so silent you’d think her feet don’t touch the ground. Flicker of white from the tail of her cloak as she passes from the corridor into the adjacent covered walk and hops the railing, a fluttering like the wing of a bird. Faint rustle of shrubbery.
Silence, but for the distant rush and murmur of the waves.
Arafinwë doesn’t run after her, exactly, but when his palms hit the railing his breath is coming fast and his heart is jumping with something more pleasant than its usual half-anxious half-ashamed jig. Nothing, for a second, just the dim velvety blue of a starlit garden—and then he spots her again, a pale shape moving off near the wall. White cloth, the suggestion of motion where her limbs must be, a heavy, swinging cascade of silver braids as she bows her head to undo a latch or pick a lock on the gate.
There’s no reason for it, but Arafinwë could swear that just before she slips out and disappears for good, she looks back at him. And there’s no reason for this—but Arafinwë finds himself raising a hand in farewell, hoping she can see his little gesture across the garden, in the dark.
Maybe she notices, maybe she doesn’t. And then she’s gone, anyway, so it’s all moot. But at any rate (he thinks, with a soft laugh), if she did look—at least she’d be able to see his hair.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“I was thinking—it might be nice, maybe, to spend more time in Alqualondë.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“If we’re not busy, I mean. And—it doesn’t have to happen immediately. In a season or two, if there’s nothing going on at home then. Maybe even next summer. Uh, if it’s okay with King Olwë, of course, and he doesn’t mind putting me up for a bit. And if I couldn’t stay with him, I could get my own place, I wouldn’t mind that, I was talking to Nelwë at dinner the other night, and he said a friend of his—”
“One thing at a time, Áro, please…”
“Sorry.”
They ride on in silence for a few minutes. Well, the two of them are silent, anyway. The long tail of Dad’s retinue stretches off down the road behind them, all hoofbeats and horse-breath and the chatter and clamor of lords and attendants and hangers-on and someone starting up a marching-song way down at the back of the line. It almost makes you miss the seabirds.
“You really liked it that much?”
“Yeah. I think it’s nice.”
“Hmm. It’s funny. Olwë’s a friend, and I’m not going to go around telling him how to conduct his affairs or anything, but—to be honest, I’ve always found Alqualondë to be kind of sleepy. Dull, even, if we’re not mincing words. It’s a nice place to visit, but if I had to stay there much longer than a fortnight I’d start climbing the walls.”
“…That’s fair.”
“Honestly, I’m a little surprised to hear this from you, after how your first night in the city went. You seemed really put off the whole place.”
“Well—it was just a night. ’S not really fair to judge the whole place based on one bad night.”
“True.”
“Everything was good after that. I liked it when they took us down the coast on the swan-boats. We don’t have anything like that at home.”
“Mm. No, I suppose we don’t.”
“It was cool. And the swans were pretty well-behaved.”
“They were, weren’t they? I’d heard from Olwë they’re inclined to bite.”
“I heard that too.”
Another long silence. Arafinwë bites his lip and finger-combs a knot out of his horse’s mane. Bides his time. It galls him to take a page out of Mom’s book, but he’s seen her tease concessions out of Dad enough times to know how it’s done. Dad’s too inquisitive, is his problem. A classic Ñoldorin foible. Can’t leave an unresolved question alone for long. You just have to wait for him to take the bait, just wait, just—
“What exactly were you thinking about doing in Alqualondë? Hypothetically.”
Got him. “Hypothetically. Um. Well, I could stand to work on my Tel—er, on my Lindarin.”
“There’s Telerin courses at the—”
“At the university, yeah. But immersion’s best for languages. Everyone knows that.”
“Náro learned it at home.”
“Maybe,” Arafinwë says carefully, “I want to do things differently than Fëanáro.”
Dad gets that melancholy twist to his mouth that he always does when he hears them say Fëanáro’s name like that, an expression that inevitably forecasts a long conversation full of why can’t you just and he tries, really, he does and but we’re a family. And once they’re in that conversation, they won’t be out of it until Dad’s extracted a half-hearted promise from Arafinwë that he’ll make an effort, for real, this time, I sweaaaaaar, and then Dad will be maudlin for the rest of the ride, and Arafinwë himself will be embarrassed and surly and not inclined to chat, and by that point they’ll have lost the plot completely.
He does his best to wrench the conversation back on course. “Plus, maybe, I was thinking about studying vocal—”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” Dad says, perking up. “In fact, I’ve been talking to Náro, and he was saying little Káno’s been taking an interest in choral composition lately—maybe next summer, the two of you could—”
Well, there goes that plan. “I don’t want to go with Kánafinwë,” Arafinwë says firmly. “I’m not babysitting.”
“It wouldn’t be anything like babysitting, Áro, you two are almost the same age.”
“Dad, I’m twenty entire years older than him.”
“And you two are so alike.”
“Not that alike.” Which is true, in that it’s already quite evident that Kánafinwë has a better ear, better tone, and a better command of improvisational craft than Arafinwë, and yes, Arafinwë is bitter about all that. Arafinwë decides against pointing out how deeply humiliating it would be to spend a summer getting lyrical rings run around you by your own kid nephew, however, because all that’ll do is provide the impetus for a different but equally depressing argument. “Look, Dad, the thing is, I—I kind of wanted to go alone.”
Dad chews that over for a second. “Alone,” he repeats.
“Y-yeah.”
“Without a proper plan, or any direction, or any of your family there.”
“I wasn’t going to make trouble, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Arafinwë says, faintly offended.
“No, no, of course not. That wouldn’t—well, it wouldn’t be like you, would it?”
This in gentle, melancholy tones that suggest it would be a welcome change if Arafinwë were to suddenly develop a habit of getting into trouble. Arafinwë is forcibly reminded of the statement I wish he’d climb out a window once in a while, and he’s already started to splutter in indignation before he considers that might not be a good look given the circumstances.
He swallows it down. Considers his options. That’s not Dad’s spoiling-for-a-fight voice or his Dad Lecture voice, so that’s good, but Arafinwë will be damned if the concession he has to make here involves hanging around with any of his nephews. Careful, careful, careful. If he misjudges the next words out of his mouth, he could wind up stuck with Kánafinwë all summer, or worse, fucking Nelyafinwë—
Dad gives him a long, even look.
“This isn’t about a girl, is it?”
Arafinwë nearly bites straight through his tongue.
“What? No!”
“It’s okay if it is—Olwë’s daughter seems nice, a little flighty, maybe, but she’ll settle—”
“It’s not about Eärwen—Lady Eärwen, I mean—”
“—but I should remind you that you’re not yet of age, and neither is she, so I can’t in good conscience sanction any kind of—”
“Dad!”
“—not to mention, your mother would flip—”
“Daaaaaaaaaad.”
Face burning, Arafinwë nudges his horse into a trot, but of course Dad’s sleek chestnut mount keeps pace easily. “All right, all right, I’m sorry!” Dad says, laughing that clear resonant laugh of his that always makes everyone around smile with him. Always makes Arafinwë himself smile, whether or not he wants to. “No need to run off on me like that, you know your old man, always joking around…”
“Were you joking?”
“No, here, look—I’ll talk to Olwë, I promise. I will. See what he thinks. If he’s onboard, then—”
“Really?”
“I’d have to discuss it with your mother first, too. Otherwise she’ll assume we’re just throwing you out to starve on the streets, and you know how she is when she's stuck on an idea like that.” A breeze catches Dad’s black hair, sending it streaming out like a banner behind him. “It’s not about the girl, fine, I get it. But even if it’s not—I like Olwë’s kids. You should be around folk your age, and if you don’t get on with your nephews, you could certainly do much worse than the three of them…”
He trails off, considering. Arafinwë holds his breath and tries not to let that last statement rankle. Remember how Mom does it. Let him come to it himself, just let him think, let him—
“In a season or two,” Dad muses. “Like you said. It’ll give you some time to put together a plan for your time there—and it’ll give me a chance to pitch it to your mother. She’ll probably have seven different reasons why she needs you at home before the words are even out of my mouth. You know how she worries.”
That…seems like a bit of an unfair characterization of Mom, who does worry, but no more so than Dad himself. But she’s not here, and Dad’s the one he has to win over right now, and, besides, it’s not as if she’d really be hurt by something she didn’t even hear Dad say, right?
(Very faintly, in the back of his mind, he hears Eärwen’s voice. He shouldn’t talk about you that way. Not behind your back. But, let me guess, it’s a Ñoldor thing, isn’t it?)
(It’s a family thing, right, he told her that. But, may he be forgiven for even thinking it—he’s so fucking sick of being led around by the nose by family things and Ñoldor things. Of being shaped by them, molded by them. Of not letting himself wonder if any of it even really matters to him, when you get down to it.)
(And if he’s just going to get written off over and over again as substandard, no matter what he does, from now until the end of forever…)
(See, I can give advice too, says the little Eärwen in his head with a smirk. And, wait, when exactly did she take up residence in there?)
“That’s—that’s fine,” he says, wrestling down the complicated stir of emotion in his own heart. Later, later, he’ll think about it later. “I don’t mind. It makes sense to talk it over with Mom first, really. She should know what’s going on. And it’s not like Alqualondë’s going anywhere, either. I can wait.”
“And, let me tell you, I’m grateful for that. Someone in this family should understand patience, and it sure isn’t gonna be your brother. Either of your brothers, I should say. And your sisters are on thin ice some days too…”
Arafinwë forces a laugh that must pass muster, despite how weak it feels on its way out, because Dad offers him a quicksilver, boyish grin that makes him look very like Káno and almost makes up for this entire conversation. “Besides, your mother will want the full dossier on the Princess before she lets you spend a whole season in the girl’s house. We can’t have her thinking I’m matchmaking you behind her back, now, can we?”
“No one’s matchmaking anyone, I told you there’s nothing going on, we’re just friends—!”
“Kidding! Kidding! You know I kid! Here, look—race you to the ridge, all right? Last one there has to explain what’s going on with the Princess to your mom—”
He’s off before Arafinwë can say you’re changing the subject or that shit hasn’t been funny since I was ten or even wait, no fair, you’ve got a head start, and then, of course, there’s nothing in the world that’ll stop him short of Fëanáro throwing himself under the horse. Dad’s always been a bit of a sore winner that way. Arafinwë sighs and spurs his own mount into a half-hearted gallop, well aware that there’s no world in which he closes that distance, but equally aware that he’s got to at least look like he’s trying. You’ve got to put your best foot forward, he knows this. You’ve got to put in an effort. You’ve got to be adaptable. It’s the Ñoldorin way.
Whether or not it’s his way, too—he can at least pretend it is, for a season or two, if it’ll get him out. There, see, he tells the little Eärwen in his head. Building wings. Just like you said. Happy now?
The light-on-water flash of her imagined smile isn’t quite as arresting as it had been in person, but it’ll have to do until he sees her again.
Arafinwë’s horse wheels a little at some unevenness in the track, and as he reins him in, he looks back down the slope—past the rambling queue of the retinue, past the hills and grassland and dunes, all the way out to the silver glisten of Alqualondë still visible at the edge of the black and featureless Sea. He closes his eyes. He can hear his heartbeat dimly over the pounding of his horse’s hooves, tom-tom, tom-tom. Can hear a high plaintive sound somewhere high above, the crying of a seabird that almost breaks to the clarity of an elvish voice.
He draws in a deep breath, holds, releases. Feels his heartbeat calm and slow, feels it settle to a new rhythm.
Very far off, only just audible if he listens as hard as he can, he can hear the sound of waves on the shore.