I own nothing.
Behind him, the bonfires still burn. The Falmari dance around their fires, drink their sweet wine and eat their good food. In front of him, the sea ebbs and flows, the foam flecks against his bare feet and shins. Faint silver light glitters all around him. However, Telperion's light has never seen so strong in Alqualondë as it is in Tirion. The sky is nearly black. If Arafinwë looks up and out over the sky, he can name all of the stars with ease, and for the first time, he understands why the astronomers come here to do their work.
It's so much more peaceful here.
Sometimes, it amazes Arafinwë how long these raucous seaside festivals of the Falmari's can last. It is probably a good three hours past the Mingling of the Lights, and this particular festival has been going on since Laurelin had just begin to wax into her full glory. Certainly the Noldor have festivals as well, and certainly they can get raucous, but Arafinwë can not remember them ever lasting more than a couple of hours. He is still growing accustomed to festivals that last more than half a day.
Himself, Arafinwë has no energy left in him for dancing or laughing or singing. He is in his forty-second year, still a child by the standards of the Calaquendi, and perhaps that accounts for his weariness, but neither does he wish to sleep. Arafinwë is quite awake, sitting on the damp sand, staring off into the white-capped dark waves.
"Here, I brought you this." Arafinwë jumps when Eärwen sits down beside him, holding out a flask and hitching up her skirt so she can sink her feet in the wet sand, and let the tide wash over her white legs. She looks at the startled expression on his face and laughs. "The Lindar and the Vaniai haven't mixed much since before the days of the Great Journey. You're rather distinctive, for your hair if nothing else."
"Oh." Arafinwë can't decide whether he's thankful that she considers him distinctive, or disappointed that it's his hair that's distinctive. Either way, he's glad for the fact that it's too dark for her to see him blushing. "Thank you, Eärwen."
He accepts the flask and uncorks it. Bringing it to his lips, Arafinwë recognizes the sweet scent and heady taste of the apricot wine being served up on the dunes, and takes a deep draught of it, letting it wash down his throat.
Eärwen elbows him in the ribs. "I'd like some too, you know. Just to water my throat, you understand." There's something about Eärwen's speech that amazes Arafinwë, and it's not the occasional strange word of Telerin that crops up in her speech. She just speaks so roughly for a princess. Findis does not speak thusly, nor does Indis or Anairë. Even Lalwen is better-spoken. Probably the only woman in Arafinwë's family that he knows of who speaks as roughly as Eärwen is Nerdanel, Fëanáro's wife.
She takes a quick swig and hands it back to him. They sit in the sand in silence, the party thriving at their backs. A crab scuttles across the sand in front of them, buffeted back and forth by the waves. If Arafinwë strains, he can hear the cries of sea gulls over the singing and laughing of the revelers.
Finally, he looks at the one who sits beside him. Eärwen leans back on her shoulders, silver hair gleaming faintly in the weak light of Telperion. Her deep blue eyes survey the endless waves, the endless horizon, and Arafinwë wonders what she has been told of Endóre, what she thinks of when she looks out at the horizon. He wonders if she thinks of her lost kin.
Something else occurs to him, and Arafinwë hesitantly asks, "I'm not keeping you here, am I?"
Eärwen smiles slightly, shaking her head. Then, she dips her head a bit and laughs under her breath. "Well, my father told me to watch over you to make sure you didn't get dragged off into the bushes by some amorous young maiden—" and once again, Arafinwë is deeply grateful that she can't see him blushing "—but I am not tired. Not enough to want to sleep."
"Oh."
A soft breath of wind murmurs in Arafinwë's ear. He trails his hand listlessly through the surf. Eärwen just keeps staring out over the water, looking for things in the silver-dark sky that Arafinwë can not even begin to fathom.
His eyes turn to her, as they have done often these past few months. King Olwë set his oldest child to watch over Finwë's youngest when he first came to the court of the Falmari, to observe, to learn of the world beyond Tirion upon Túna. As such, Arafinwë has been in Eärwen's company far more often than he has been in the company of the other Falmari. Even then, he often catches his eyes and his thoughts turning towards her when there's naught else occupying him. She is many years and decades his senior, of an age with Fëanáro or older, but still, his thoughts turn to her. At such times, Arafinwë feels… He's not sure what he feels, just that it's a little unsettling to have his thoughts turn thus, constantly.
"What are you thinking of when you look out at the sea?" he asks her suddenly, bolder than he ought to be and not caring. Courtly manners in any court in Aman, even the relatively lax one of the Falmari, tells that a nér, even a prince, should not ask a nís, be she commoner or princess, such a probing question if they are not married, betrothed, or close kin.
Eärwen stares at him, eyebrows raised, and suddenly Arafinwë's not so sure of his boldness. She stares at him for a long time, so long that Arafinwë feels as though her eyes are burning holes in his skin. The gloom in the absence of most of Telperion's light means that while Eärwen (presumably) can't tell when Arafinwë's blushing, he can't make out much of her face either. He has no idea what she's thinking; he can only hope he hasn't offended her.
"I am thinking," she says, never taking her eyes from his face, "of my kin across the sea. The family I haven't seen in a very long time, and the family I have never seen."
Arafinwë blinks, astonished at how close on the mark he was, when he had wondered what she thought of. But something else about her explanation catches his attention. "Eärwen… What do you mean when you say 'in a very long time'?" She cracks an amused, twitching smile, and it hits him that Eärwen is indeed older than Fëanáro. Much older, probably. "You were not born in Aman?!" he blurts out.
She throws her head back and laughs, so loudly and brightly that some of the revelers stop in their dance momentarily to stare at her. "You seem surprised," she chokes out, between the giggles that make her shoulders shake.
"P-perhaps just a little," Arafinwë stammers, mortified. "You really do not seem as though you've ever lived anywhere else."
Truly, she does not. Arafinwë knows people who made (or perhaps more accurately, survived) the Great Journey, his parents, Nerdanel's, and Lalwen's husband Mercandil among them. Not everyone adjusts to life in blissful (or so it's said to be blissful; Arafinwë knows otherwise) Aman with the same speed and ease, but with each one, there is the same mark. When Arafinwë looks at them, he can see the shadow of a dark starlit sky behind the reflected light of the Two Trees. But there is none of that in Eärwen. When he looks into her eyes, all he sees is the gold and silver light, and his own reflection.
After a moment, Arafinwë is greeted with a soft look and a gentle smile. "You're sweet to say so," she murmurs. "But I was born in Endóre. My brothers were born here, and if you ever meet them, you'll likely be able to spot the difference right away."
"What is Endóre like?" Arafinwë asks, voice oddly hushed. This is not a question he has ever asked his parents; he's not sure it's a question they would ever answer. But Arafinwë would be lying if he said that he was never curious about the unseen lands across the Sundering Sea, where so many of their kin still wait for ships that will never come.
Eärwen scuffs the wet sand with her bare foot, uncaring of the sand clinging to her calves. "The trees were tall and dark, as was the sky. The sky was dark as pitch, and I'll say that that the stars seemed much brighter and closer than they do here."
That's not exactly what he was expecting her to say. Arafinwë manages not to exclaim plaintively "That's all?!" He may not be counted an adult, but he knows not to show disappointment when another has confided in him. He doesn't want Eärwen to feel that he is ungrateful and stop being open with him. Without a word, he stares down at his feet, suddenly burning with questions he wants badly to be answered.
"You must understand, Arafinwë." His gaze snaps back to her face. Eärwen brushes sand off of her bare arms before continuing. "I was very little when we made the voyage across the Sea here. I was born after the Host of the Lindar—or what was left of us," she remarks with an uncharacteristically bitter smile, "had gathered on the shores of Endóre. Papa and Uncle Elmo were always arguing about what to do. Papa still believed that Uncle Elwë would find us eventually."
Elwë. That's a name Arafinwë has heard before, if only in the histories and occasionally in his father and uncle's stories. He was the original ambassador of the Nelyar to Aman, a good friend of Arafinwë's father and uncle, the Tatyar and Minyar ambassadors. Olwë had not originally been set to be King of the Falmari; that fell to Elwë, his older brother. But Elwë had gone missing in Endóre, and had not been seen since, another casualty of the perils of the March, or perhaps of some other malice. Arafinwë wonders what Olwë must have felt in those days, to have leadership thrust upon him without warning. He does not think that he himself would cope very well in such a situation.
"Papa wanted to stay on the shore and wait for Uncle Elwë; Uncle Elmo wanted to turn back and look for him." Eärwen twists a lock of her hair in her hand. "They argued about it constantly. Eventually, however, they ran out of time to argue.
"Lady Uinen and Lord Ossë were often among us. When I went down to the shore to play, Lady Uinen would sit me in her lap and tell me stories about Aman. But finally, Lord Ulmo himself came. He bid the Lindar to come upon Tol Eressëa, and said that he would ferry us to Aman to be with our cousins."
She sighs heavily, eyes downcast. "Uncle Elmo would not go," Eärwen says quietly. "He said that he would not leave Endóre without knowing what had happened to Uncle Elwë. Papa tried to persuade him to come with us, but he refused. He took his followers and left to look for Uncle Elwë.
"It… It wasn't a good parting. Mama and Aunt Lindarë were sisters; they cried for ages when it came time for Uncle Elmo's followers to leave. My cousin Galadhon was still young. He was older than me, but he was barely half-grown at the time. Papa was afraid he'd be killed in the wild; he tried to convince Uncle Elmo to let Galadhon come with us, but he wouldn't. So they left.
"Papa was one of the last of us to come upon the Isle. He just stood there on the shore, watching my uncle and his followers leave. He stood there, watching until they disappeared over the hills."
For a moment, Eärwen looks… She looks very tired. So tired that even in the darkness, Arafinwë can see it. Tired and weary, as she recalls the days of her youth, watching half of her family go one way, as she went another. How does it feel to lose one's family, even if it isn't into death? How did Fëanáro feel? Arafinwë wonders dully, scuffing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. He did not even know his mother, but still, how did he feel?
Then, the shadow of weariness leaves Eärwen's figure, and she fixes him in a piercing gaze. "I'm curious about something, Arafinwë."
"What is it?"
That serious expression never leaves her face, and her gaze grows only more piercing yet. "Papa told me that he had given you the opportunity to go back to Tirion and visit your family for a while, but you wouldn't go. Why is that?"
Why indeed?
Arafinwë stares out on the white-capped dark waves, comparing them in his mind to mountains. Each of them is a mountain he would need to climb in order to be ready to go back home just now.
Finwë has sent all of his children to the foreign courts to learn, in their time. As far as Arafinwë knows, Fëanáro is the only exception to this—he instead took an apprenticeship under his future father-in-law to learn smith-craft. Findis went to Oiolossë to live with their mother's family, and learn under Ingwë and their Aunt Sildalinquë. She was the only one who did, and at the first opportunity to come home, she did. Arafinwë does not know much, but he knows that Findis was never really accepted amongst the Vanyar, always held apart as a half-Noldo, her dark hair and gray eyes telling the tale of her paternity. He also knows that the sheer lack of privacy grated on her deeply. Nolofinwë and Lalwen both came to Alqualondë instead, to learn amongst the Falmari, but they quickly came home too—they never felt at home anywhere but amongst the Noldor.
And yet, Arafinwë is not like his siblings. He has been here for months without once visiting home, and he does not feel one ounce of homesickness. Arafinwë has dwelled amongst the Falmari for months, and not once has he felt the desire to go home, or dwell once more amongst his kin.
When Finwë told him that he would be sending him to learn amongst Olwë's court, Arafinwë leapt at the opportunity. His father was surprised; none of Arafinwë's older siblings had been so eager to leave home. Nolofinwë, Findis and Lalwen were surprised as well; Arafinwë does not know Fëanáro's reaction, for he did not see him at all before leaving. Only Indis seemed to understand. She nodded, and wished him well in her quiet way.
Go and learn, my Ingalaurë. Go and be happy.
Now, after months upon months, Arafinwë does not wish to go home. He thinks he would be content to stay here for the rest of time. After all, why is he needed at home? He is a lesser son of a King; no, he is the least of Finwë's sons. He is the third son of a King, not the heir, not even the back-up heir. Why would they need him at home? Why would he want to go back to that troubled place?
Yes, Tirion upon Túna is a troubled place. Or perhaps it is not the city that is troubled. He grimaces, a heavy tug upon his lips. No, it is not the city that is troubled, it is my family.
Arafinwë's family is pierced clean through with anguish and frustration. There is Fëanáro's resentment against them all, tempered only for their father, and to a far lesser extent (and far more fitfully) for Findis and Nolofinwë. There is his poorly-disguised disdain for Indis, whom he views as inferior to his mother in every way. But there's more than that.
Finwë still grieves for Míriel Serindë, though he hides it well. He is too soft on her son as a result, perhaps over some guilt for Míriel's death and his own remarriage. Arafinwë wonders at times whether Indis does not resent that nís—he suspects that he would, in her place.
Indis herself struggles with her own feelings of ineptitude and uncertainty, stung by her step-son's enmity. Restive she seems at time, as though held fast in a cage of her own making. And always just a touch sad.
Findis, Arafinwë suspects, would likely be glad to be well-shut of the lot of them if she did not bear her family the love that she does. She values her solitude above all else, and allows few to see past the quiet mask of her face. His oldest sister confides in no one.
Nolofinwë strives after Fëanáro, wanting his love and acceptance, never seeming to realize that he will never have the former in full measure, the latter will be out of his reach forever, and even if he were able to grasp both, it would be part and parcel with Fëanáro's resentment. Anairë, his wife, is rather like Indis their mother. Quiet and anxious, straining against the bars of the cage she built for herself.
Lalwen has quit the palace to live with her base-born husband. Nolofinwë is the only one in regular contact with her.
Maitimo, Findekáno and Turukáno are too young (and it feels odd to call the first two of those 'too young', considering that the former is nearly a full decade Arafinwë's senior, and the latter is hardly any younger than he) yet to be caught up in grievances of their own, but Arafinwë is sure that they will be overtaken before long. It's only a matter of time.
And him? Arafinwë just wants a way out, and now that one has fallen into his hands, he is loath to let it go.
This place… This place is so much better than what he left behind. Arafinwë is just a foreign prince, the third son of a King, unimportant, unneeded for schemes and grudges and worries. The air is clearer here. He can breathe without feeling some weight constricting his chest.
And there's her. Inexorably, Arafinwë's eyes turn to Eärwen, as they do so often these days. To her expressive face, her arms and slender hands, her long, bare calves.
He thinks he could stay here forever, if he was allowed. However, Arafinwë knows that he will not be, so all he can do is put off the inevitable, for however long he may.
"It…" He pauses, searching for the right words, not wanting, even now, to give too much away. "It… It is much more peaceful here, I find." And maybe there is a bit of room in his heart for boldness, for Arafinwë adds, with a tinny laugh, "And if I had to go back to Tirion, I would not be able to see you again, so there's that as well."
Eärwen makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, perhaps a note of surprise. "Is that it?" It may be Arafinwë's imagination, but there's something expectant in her voice, like she's waiting for him to say something more.
But that will have to wait for some other time. Arafinwë nods silently, and smiles. She smiles back at him. The wind catches her hair, and it shimmers, star-like, in the gloom. They sit in companionable silence, the revelers at their back, and the yawning sea in front of them, the foamy waves lapping at their feet.
Arafinwë, Ingalaurë—Finarfin
Fëanáro—Fëanor
Nolofinwë—Fingolfin
Maitimo—Maedhros
Findekáno—Fingon
Turukáno—Turgon
Falmari—those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'
Calaquendi—the Elves of the Light; the Elves of Aman, especially those who have seen the light of the Two Trees (singular: Calaquendë) (Quenya)
Lindar—'Singers'; the name the Teleri of Aman use to refer to themselves (Quenya)
Vaniai—the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'
Endóre—Middle-Earth (Quenya)
Nér—man (plural: neri)
Nís—woman (plural: nissi)
Nelyar—the third clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen; the precursors of the Telerin Elves: the Falmari/Lindar, the Sindar, the Nandor, the Silvan-folk and so on.
Tatyar—the second clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen; the precursors of the Noldor
Minyar—the first clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen; the precursors of the Vanyar
Oiolossë—'Ever-snow-white'; the most common name amongst the Eldar for the mountain (and city of the same name, in my canon) of Taniquetil; I have, however, made it a name more commonly used by the Teleri and especially the Noldor, to explain how the Elves of Middle-Earth came to call the city by the Sindarin translation of this name, 'Amon Uilos'