"You know my mother well," the girl under the desk said, arms wrapped around her knees.

Elrond did not look down. It was painful to look down: Morwinyon was a carbon copy of her mother at that age, or so he assumed. She looked enough like an adult Laeriel that he felt safe in that assumption.

"Yes," he agreed, tallying up how much wine Mirkwood was willing to spare.

"Could you tell me about her?"

Elrond blinked. "Your mother?"

"Yes," Morwinyon said. "Would you tell me a story?"

Elrond sat back and made himself look down. Morwinyon looked back at him, small and young and with Laeriel's eyes.

"I will tell you a story," he agreed, looking quickly away and putting pen back to paper. "I will tell it as your mother told me.

"Once, in Menegroth, safe inside the Girdle of Melian, there was a woman named Laeriel Glingaerien, who was raised by her grandmother. I knew her as Lairë…"

"I suppose she comes by it honestly," Erien said, looking dispassionately down at her daughter's body.

Glingaerdir could not quite summon the fury he wanted over his mother-in-law's callousness. His week-old daughter squalled in his arms and the flickering torchlight of Menegroth's caverns kept making his wife look as if she still breathed when he knew she did not. He said tiredly, "Could you pretend for a moment that you have something like a soul?"

Laeriel let out a particularly piercing shriek and flailed more than he felt a newborn should. He held her closer: she only fussed more.

"I could pretend many things," Erien replied. "Laindes is well out of it."

She watched him try and fail to soothe Laeriel for another moment before reaching to take the baby. Glingaerdir let her and tried not to feel as if he should not have.

"Best if you take care of the arrangements," Erien told him without looking up from her granddaughter. "I make the people here nervous."

Glingaerdir thought that was an understatement. Erien had pronounced her daughter's Sindarin name perfectly for the first time in his hearing. She usually gave it an archaic Quenya lilt or called Laindes by her Quenya name entirely. He had always suspected Erien was capable of flawless Sindarin: Laindes would have been happy if everyone forgot her lineage, but Erien never stopped reminding people by accent or manner that she had been a Noldorin Queen, and she did not show any evidence of shame. Still, she did not usually challenge the ban on Quenya directly. She did so now as she murmured over Laeriel in her mothertongue.

"Not to worry, Lairë," Erien murmured. She did not bother translating the name Glingaerdir had given Laeriel correctly – she had been vocal on her opinions of his choice from the moment he had chosen it.

Laeriel's eyes blinked open. They were dark as Laindes' had been, as dark as Erien's were and as his were not. Erien gave her a finger to hold onto and Laeriel gripped it in a tiny fist.

"Yes," Erien said, as if Laeriel's infant noises were intelligible. "I have you. Not to worry at all."

She looked up, raising an eyebrow when she saw Glingaerdir still standing there. He turned on his heel and left.

Laeriel had calmed the moment Erien took her from him.

"Lairiel!" Erien called. Laeriel did not wince at her grandmother's refusal to say her name quite right.

Goldor had less practice. He went stonefaced every time Erien slurred her s's into th's, or called Laeriel 'Lairë' as if it was a slip of the tongue and not a deliberate reminder of Erien's history. Still, it was better than most other inhabitants of Menegroth: even those that had decided to forgive Laeriel the accident of her ancestry would ask quietly how she was dealing 'with that'.

"Do not mind her," Laeriel said. "She will not say another word against you."

Goldor's face softened. "I am sorry it took a fight to make it so."

Laeriel shook her head - Erien had given in more out of surprise than anything, she thought, that Laeriel had disagreed at all. To Erien it had only made sense to point out that Goldor was a common Sindar boy, and no match for her granddaughter, who should have been a princess. She had done so in Goldor's hearing.

Laeriel had replied that noble Noldor were near extinct, and that those who did live had an upsetting tendency towards kinslaying, and that her love affairs were just that - her affairs. They had not spoken when Laeriel escorted Goldor to the door and bid him goodnight, and they had not spoken for two weeks after.

"My father did not want me to marry Caranthir either," Erien had said finally at the end of it. Laeriel did not point out that Erien's father might have had a point: neither response nor lack of it was an apology, but it was as close as either of them was willing to give.

Now Goldor took her hands and kissed the back of each and let her go reluctantly. Laeriel slipped back into the suite of rooms she and her grandmother shared.

"You have need of me?" she asked when she joined Erien. She asked in Quenya: it had reigned as the language of the house since Glingaerdir died, even if Erien still did not use it around others. Her grandmother was in the study that had been her father's bedroom.

Her grandmother smiled at her, as she smiled at no one and nothing else. "How went weapons practice?"

"It went well," Laeriel said.

"Of course it did." Erien often said proudly that Laeriel had inherited her uncle's gift with weaponry, which was another reason no one in Menegroth could be comfortable around her: no one who spoke with pride of their granddaughter being like Maedhros Fëanorion even in skill could be loved by Sindar, never mind that he was actually Laeriel's great-uncle.

She also said Laeriel got it from both sides of the family. No one thought she meant Glingaerdir, who had been a poet and a gardener, and who everyone said did his best to make Laindes laugh. Erien's swords hung over her bed. They were as obviously well-used as they were well cared for.

"You have need of me?" Laeriel asked again.

Erien tapped her fingers on the table, eyebrow raised in mild reproof. Quenya was a language built on roundabouts and beauty: usually they would wind back around to the original subject naturally. Only emergency was reason for abruptness, Erien had told Laeriel once.

"What will our relatives say?" she had asked.

"I do not see any of them around," Laeriel had replied.

Laeriel had never been skilled at winding around.

Now Erien sighed. "You have something you need to return to?"

"I was speaking to Goldor."

Erien's smile stiffened, if only barely. "He seems nice enough."

Laeriel raised both her eyebrows but said nothing.

"Why not take him with you?"

Laeriel blinked. "Take him with me where?"

"If you would take a letter for me to Andiel, in Calendor? She has agreed to make something to my specifications."

"Something?"

Erien smiled at her again. "A surprise."

"You do not like me to leave," Laeriel pointed out. "You say it is not safe."

"If I keep you here," Erien said, eyes going blank, "all you will want to do is leave."

That was not true, but Laeriel did not argue the point. She did want to see Calendor. "I will ask Goldor tomorrow," she said, and allowed her grandmother to kiss her on the brow before she went to bed.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is where we go super silmarillion-y y'all. Buckle up, and as always, feel free to ask if something pops up that makes no sense and you don't feel like figuring out which version or notes I pulled from.