I own nothing.
Her daughter's eyes follow her around the room. Her Nerwen's eyes are on her always.
Eärwen noticed it first when her daughter was in her infancy and had only the name Artanis to call herself; unlike many mothers of Aman who have always known what to call her children, Eärwen had no such premonition with any of her five. Artanis would lie on her back in her cradle, or sit up with her tiny hands on the rails. She would stare intently at whoever entered the room, one after the other. When she tired of others, her gaze would always fall on her mother.
The slender wisp of a girl does the same thing the infant did. She picks someone to watch, and does so intently, glinting green eyes wide and watchful. Oftentimes, Eärwen will feel the hairs on the back of her neck start to prickle and stand on end, and she'll turn, and there will be Nerwen, watching her.
"Do you want something, sweetheart?" she'll ask her, putting down a book or a vase or whatever it was she was holding, or simply letting her arms fall to her side as she looks down at her daughter, trying not to feel unease.
Nerwen will shake her head, and answer her in her uncommonly husky, just as uncommonly clear voice. "No, Mother," and she'll glide away without a sound, into the next room or outside.
Alone, Eärwen is left to wonder.
She vaguely remembers the sentries of her infancy, before Lord Ulmo called the Teleri gathered on the coast to congregate on Tol Eressëa. They would stand at the borders of the encampment, staring out into the east, keeping watch for orcs or other beasts of the enemy. They watched also for survivors of the other groups of the Ellalië who had been lost on the way to the Sea, but had finally found their way back to their kinfolk. At times, Eärwen expects Nerwen to sound alarms or cries of joy the way those sentries would, for she looks so like them. Are you waiting for danger in the grass, my girl? Are you expecting me to turn into a monster before your very eyes? Or have you lost somebody? Are you waiting for my face to turn into theirs?
It doesn't seem entirely natural to Eärwen, that her daughter should have such an expression in her eyes when she lives in a place where there is no danger. Nerdanel's watchfulness is more natural; she, at least, is trying to understand the others around her. In Nerwen, Eärwen can determine no such motive. In fact, she can determine no motive at all. Her daughter's mind is a mystery to her.
What can it forebode that Nerwen watches others so intently, as though trying to peel back the layers of their skin and look in upon their minds? What can it say that she watches them as though waiting for them to turn wild? Eärwen does not know what to make of this side of her daughter, her already mysterious, difficult-to-know daughter. You wouldn't have been out of place on the shores of Endóre, my girl.
But there's another sort of look Eärwen will catch on Nerwen's face when her daughter thinks she's not looking. She'll come, and find Nerwen sitting by the window, staring into the outside world. The look she wears then will be frustrated, longing, wanting more but not knowing what or why. Eärwen stands at her side and strokes her daughter's hair, saying nothing. That look, she understands.
Nerwen, Artanis—Galadriel
Ellalië—the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves
Endóre—Middle-Earth (Quenya)