[TW/CN: Some instances of internalized victim-blaming on Aerin's part; mentions of rape]
I own nothing.
Aerin of Dor-lómin had never cared for winter. It took first her father and then her mother by cold, had claimed her sister in an accident with a local pond years ago. Winter had been a signal for hardship for as long as Aerin could remember, and she had disliked winter and its herald, autumn, for nearly as long. It seemed amazing, sometimes, that the Nirnaeth had not taken place in winter, and that it had still been summer when Dor-lómin was overrun by the Easterlings.
Her 'wedding' had taken place in autumn, though. The winter that came after it was doubly harsh, and the winter of the following year was harsh and wearing for many of the women of the House of Hador.
"And you've all enough firewood?" Aerin asked the women gathered before her. All were women of her own people, mostly fair-haired, though some had ancestry from the Bëorians and the dark hair to match. None bore the features of the Easterlings; the few women who had come to Dor-lómin with the Easterlings would not have come to her for aid, for any reason. They were gathered in Brodda's house near the threshold, while one of the Easterling women, Medda, tended the hearth.
"We have firewood, Aerin," Thínel assured her. Her brow was furrowed, though, as she went on, "It's food we're worried about. It'll be hard going this winter, won't it?"
Aerin bit back a sigh, bit her lip and nodded. The harvest had been bad this year—same as last year, and every year since the Nirnaeth. Most of the crops withered and rotted before they could ever make it to the granaries or the tables. The livestock, cattle, sheep and goats, were sickening and dying off more quickly than they could be replaced. Even wild animals were difficult to find, and those that could be caught had little meat on them.
It wasn't enough for Morgoth to shut us up in Dor-lómin, the Edain and his loyal dogs together. He'll see us all dead before too long.
"I'm sorry," she said instead, feeling the all-too-familiar sense of helplessness seep into her bones again. "You'll have to make do."
"Can't you speak to Brodda?" Faeleth pleaded. "He takes twice as much food for his own followers as what's given to the rest of us!" Medda looked up from the fire, eyes narrowed. Aerin flinched; some of the Easterling women could be trusted not to bear tales back to Brodda, but Medda was not one of them. "You yourself haven't—"
"Speak to Brodda?" Aerin cut her off. She stared at each of the women in turn, catching their reluctant gazes until they were forced to look away, and Aerin laughed hollowly when the last of them looked down at the ground. She ran her hand over her right arm, wincing as she did so. "I think you all know that there is nothing that can be said to change that man's mind."
"You would know," someone muttered, but the speaker would not come forward, and the stares of the Hadorian women as they left was more stinging an accusation than anything hidden in their words could be. Aerin's mouth always ran dry in the face of their accusations.
Likely because I was too much a coward to resist that man's advances long enough for him to lose interest. Most of our women at least had to be dragged into marriage come the spring, and subdued with blows. I, so petrified with fear, stumbled into marriage without a word of protest made, Aerin thought bitterly to herself. She gathered the shares of wheat she had been permitted—permitted!—to distribute to her people in a wicker basket. I should have given Thínel and the others their shares of grain now—it might have quieted their scorn, at least somewhat.
Aerin stepped out of Brodda's house, blinking against the sun. The autumn sky was a pale, dazzling blue, brightness and cloudlessness belying the pall that had long ago settled over the town. As Aerin was making her way towards the first of the houses she was planning to visit, a group of children came barreling past. One knocked into Aerin, setting her off-balance and nearly up-ending her basket.
"Be careful!" she called after them, torn between a smile and a frown.
The tallest of them turned back and shouted a laughing apology. "Sorry, Lady Aerin!" His blue eyes sparkled, and his words, spoken in Taliska, were heavy with the accent of the Easterling Incomers.
What smile there was on Aerin's lips died off of it.
-0-0-0-
There were many things that to Aerin's mind made her world a marred and troubled one. Her parents, sister, Húrin, Huor and Lalaith were all dead. Túrin had been sent to Doriath. Rían was gone. Morwen and little Niënor sat in a dark, crumbling house, and Aerin could only aid them by surreptitiously handing off provisions to Sador or risking a visit when Brodda was deep in his cups and unlikely to think anything of her absence. Aerin found herself bound in marriage to a loathsome man, a man she could dredge up neither love nor respect for, a man she feared, a man who marked her skin black and blue or broke her bones when he was in even the slightest of ill tempers.
The sight of those children was another reminder—the world is marred.
The Easterlings had a custom, that weddings could only take place in spring and summer. Aerin's forced marriage to Brodda in autumn had drawn more than a few whispers, and more than a few among the Incomers looked askance upon it. There were those who went so far as to say that Brodda's haste in taking Aerin for his wife was the reason the marriage had yet to produce any children.
Well, they were partially correct. Aerin would never bear children, not to Brodda. He wanted heirs? He'd have to have them off another woman or spin them out of thin air; Aerin would never let him have any child of hers.
Brodda had taken Aerin to wife in the autumn, but the rest of the Easterling men occupying Dor-lómin had waited until the following spring before taking their unwilling Hadorian brides. The first children of those unhappy unions were born the winter after the Year of Lamentation, seven years ago.
Aerin could imagine what history would make of this, if there came a day when the sun rose again and Morgoth and his evils were wiped from the face of the earth. The minstrels would sadly sing of the defilement of the House of Hador, of how its men were slaughtered and its women were made broodmares for a new generation of Morgoth's Easterling thralls (And remember me as the craven who stood dumb with terror when Brodda the Easterling despoiled her house and took her for a bride). But what would anyone, the minstrels, the loremasters, the people, say of the children who had been born of those unions? What part would they play?
There were so many of them now, it seemed. Some of the children, the boys especially (the Easterling men tended not to take any interest in their daughters, and left them to their mothers), were growing into tyrants as many of their fathers were. That was certainly true. But there were just as many children who were not the image of their conqueror fathers in their manner. There were those among them who counted themselves Edain, who listened to their mother's tales in secret, loved the Powers and despised Morgoth.
The Easterlings were Morgoth's thralls, bound to fight for him whenever he demanded it, and the child of an Easterling was considered an Easterling as well, no matter who their mother was. There would come a day when, whether it be by Morgoth, the Powers or both—if we even live to see such days—when these children would be called upon to fight. Aerin's stomach began to churn.
Even if I had been wed to a kinder man, a worthier man, I would not wish any child of mine to be born into such a situation. They'll be set against one another by the distant gods, and our cousins outside of Hithlum will deem all those without the fair hair of our house to be enemies, no matter which side they choose.
As though from miles away, she heard the children laughing, the only ones living who still could.
What future is there for them?
The world is marred. This, Aerin has known. And Aerin of Dor-lómin, for as long as she could remember, disliked the winter. It always seemed a dark, desolate time to her, but fearful now, as well.