PROLOGUE
Standing on the precipice of an ancient grotto, tucked away in the expansive palace of Amon Lanc in Eryn Lasgalen, a tall elleth toed off her satin slippers and waded into the glassy waters, her light silken dress pulled up to her calves, her green-grey eyes reflecting each shimmer of blue and purple from the grove and stars above, rippling over the water currently swallowing her ankles.
She had always enjoyed being barefoot more so than with boots or slippers laced onto her lithe feet – she was a dancer, after all. A light smile graced her freckled face as she recalled her childhood and the days spent dancing in the sun, her nana and baba regaling her with songs of the ancient Valar and Maiar. At one time, she was considered the most beautiful dancer in all of Arda, but, alas, her days of dancing were over.
How was she to know as that young hên the great years and great sorrows ahead of her, leading her to this very spot, this very grove? With the nightingales' song twinkling in her ears like the beads her nana used to braid into her hair - to add to the percussion of their belled bracelets and anklets - clinking together to the lively sounds of her baba's pan flute and her mother's lyrical voice, leading her step by step, kick by kick over knolls and hills and festivals alike, she smiled over her many triumphs and losses among her long life.
She was begotten in the middle of the Second Age, to her fair headed baba, Abonthendir to most, and her beautiful nana, the dark-haired beauty, Celoniel. They were nomadic Avarin elves, the last of a dying culture, roaming Arda and performing with their small caravan of families and their children. Her earliest memories were of the sea, through the lush green lands of Gondor, then the plains of Eriador, and further winding up and around the mountains of Arda and
Hithaeril, they named her, for her eyes as grey as the sea mist near Edhellond, where she was born. Upon her collar was placed a sea pearl, nestled in the dip in the bone there, hung on a small silver chain - a gift from her parents at her coming-of-age. She grew quickly to be as tall as a tree and lithe as a deer. She could leap and fly like a white gull and glide and turn like a swift ship upon the sea. Her brown-black hair grew long and thick down her back and often flew free of the braids her mother desperately tried to make her remain still long enough to put upon her head.
Her formative years were simple and filled with love, laughter, and music. But, alas, as her family journeyed across Arda, the roads became more and more treacherous and the people and life on the road more unforgiving. A dark power was defiling the air and boiling unrest across the entire West of Middle-Earth. As her baba received more and more rumors and warnings of a Necromancer and servant of Morgoth, Abonthendir decided to settle the nomadic family to the newly founded stronghold of Imladris to the north.
On their long journey through the Misty Mountains, however, the small caravan was attacked by goblins and her dear baba was lost, protecting Hithaeril and her pregnant mother. They hastened to Imladris where her mother's fëa was nearly lost to the Waste. It was only her newborn sister, Cíwil, which saved her mother from her grief. Hithaeril, however, poured her young heartache and anguish into her craft of song and dance, quickly gaining notoriety among the small community of elves. It was here where her mother allowed Hithaeril her first nell-molif - her first bell - a nomadic Avirin custom in which by the time she was well-versed in the dance, her wrists, ankles, and belt would twinkle with the number of bells attached to them.
Baby Cíwil grew to be fair-haired and small, and every year as she grew to look more and more like Abonthendir. Celoniel slowly regained her strength and devotion to both her youngest and oldest, swearing to continue Abonthendir's legacy even as he rested in the Halls of Mandos. She gathered her sister-in-law, her family, and multiple friends to reestablish the caravan and travel across the wood of Eryn Galen, as it was called then, performing just as they had with Hithaeril's baba, and it is there that our star-crossed tale begins.