I own nothing.
The streets of Sirion tended to go silent and empty not long after dusk. Apart from the occasional candle burning in a window and the still-open taverns and inns, there were very few up and about. The night was muggy and humid, as it often was. The flagstones gleamed wetly from the recent rains. As he walked, Eärendil was hit with the sickly-sweet stench of rotting vegetables, wafting out from a narrow alley and commingling with the omnipresent brine.
Eärendil liked Sirion best during the day, when the Sun hit the white-washed buildings and made them shine, when the Sun banished the main host of the shadows. But there was something to be said for the hush that fell over the city at night. It let him think. He needed to think.
Elwing's fingers, intertwined with his own, slackened a bit, and he looked over at her, brow furrowed. She was tired, he could tell. Elwing was much shorter than Eärendil, and even when he walked slowly, she had to exert herself to match his pace and not lag behind. She tired easily to start with, but he could see the sweat making tendrils of her hair cling to her neck.
"Do you want to turn back?" he asked her.
To this, Elwing shook her head languidly. All the same, her voice was clear as she replied, "I am quite well. I'd been wanting to breathe air unrestrained by walls."
Eärendil decided not to point out that the Havens of Sirion was a walled city (Albeit one whose walls were crumbling and completely caved-in in places, without the resources to repair them). But a smile worked its way up on his lips. "Are you not concerned, my Lady—" Elwing raised an eyebrow at his sudden turn of speech "—with the way it might appear to some, that we have been out, alone and for so long, at night?"
She smirked, an uncommonly devious look playing on her face, and made only more so by the flickering torchlight. "I can go anywhere I please with my betrothed, at any hour. Besides, unlike you, I do not have parents to risk offending."
"No, you just have the entire Sindarin court."
He had said this with a jaunty smile, but that smile of Eärendil's quickly evaporated, to be replaced with a frown. The Sindarin court had indeed been deeply offended when their Queen announced her intention to wed the son of the Queen of the Gondolindrim and her Mannish husband. Eärendil could not quite tell what offended them more, whether it was because he was the son of a Noldo or what the Sindar called a "Peredhel."
After the sack of Menegroth, the murder of King Dior, Queen Nimloth, and the Princes Eluréd and Elurín, Eärendil could, on some level, understand why the Sindar were opposed to the idea of Elwing marrying one who was kin to the Kinslayers. He understood it, but the thought still made his blood boil. Eärendil was not close kin to the Kinslayers. His grandfather had been first cousin to them, but even then, Turgon and the Sons of Fëanor had had only their paternal grandfather in common, having different grandmothers. Eärendil himself was not the close cousin of the Kinslayers, and glad of it, but the Sindar believed that even one drop of blood in common with the killers of their people was one drop too many.
What rankled more, however, was the implication that it was also on account of Tuor, of Eärendil's human blood, that the Sindar did not consider him worthy of their Queen. It had already stung before then, his status in the eyes of so many of the Elves. The Gondolindrim refused to accept Eärendil as his mother's heir. Turgon may have happily blessed the marriage of his daughter Idril Celebrindal to Tuor, son of Huor, but there were many in Gondolin, beside the King's nephew, who were not happy with it.
"The Lady has married far beneath her station," they said. "Even the mightiest of Edain Kings would be too low-born for a daughter of the Eldar. And look at the child of their union. Look at how he speeds to manhood. He will grow aged and decrepit, as his father has done. Do we wish for that in our next King?"
The Sindar felt the same. "Look at how he speeds to manhood," they whispered behind their hands, ignoring entirely the way their Queen had sped to womanhood just as quickly. Eärendil called it fate; the Sindar very much did not. What's worse, Eärendil knew quite well that their first King's daughter had married a Man, and that Elwing was a descendant of that union. He didn't know how the Iathrim court had reacted when Lúthien Tinúviel wedded Beren Erchamion (though Eärendil knew exactly how opposed Thingol had initially been to the idea), but he felt that if they had tolerated it then, surely they could tolerate it now. What, do I have to go cut a Silmaril off of the Enemy's crown too before they will accept me? Do I have to lose a hand and be killed?
"As I have said before, they will just have to be offended," Elwing remarked stiffly, adjusting her gauzy scarf with her free hand.
Yes, she had said that. Eärendil wasn't sure how Elwing had convinced her nobles to fall in line. He could never picture her shouting or making threats; Elwing was so quiet that he couldn't see her leveling threats against anyone, for any reason. He could quite easily imagine her giving the more recalcitrant lords and ladies a very specific look. It was a look he'd only ever seen on her face, that only Elwing could manage successfully. It was not a glare, exactly; it did not have enough passion in it to be a glare. The look was one of such utter disapproval and disbelief that anyone who had the misfortune to be fixed with it wilted and gave way almost immediately.
As it stands, I don't suppose that I should complain that she found a way to convince them.
They moved up the town, through the streets both wide and narrow, avoiding the alleyways as they could, as the smell of brackish water grew stronger and stronger. It was similar to the brine, but Eärendil knew the two well enough to differentiate between them.
"Ah, the shipyards," Elwing muttered when she saw where they were, the disapproval in her voice unmistakable.
Eärendil ignored her, rushing forward up the scaffolding to his nearly-finished ship, beaming just to be able to see her.
He had received sufficient instruction from Círdan and Voronwë as regards to shipbuilding to begin building one of his own. Vingilot, or Vingilótë, as his mother insisted on referring to it (in proper Quenya, she would say, and not the strange amalgamation of Sindarin and Quenya used by so many of the Exiles) was constructed from white birch wood and was, in Eärendil's eyes, the most beautiful ship that had ever been constructed. It was also due to be finished in two weeks.
Eärendil had been deeply enamored of the sea and of sailing since he first laid eyes on the former, so many years ago when he and his family came to Sirion as refugees. Since he had laid eyes on the deep blue sea, he had longed to travel, to see distant lands, to look upon the depths of the sea. Over the years, that longing never abated, never ceased, never waned. It only grew stronger, even as other wants and needs and desires came into conflict with it, and now, even now, when he was betrothed to the one whom he loved, due to be wed soon, it was so strong that he could taste it upon his lips. So strong that it was like a living thing.
His eyes turned towards another ship, newly-finished, smaller and sleeker than Vingilot. It was the ship his parents had built, Eärrámë. (But not for sailing, no. For the final voyage of an aging Man who could no longer tell past from present, not properly, and kept calling him by the names of childhood friends who were all long gone. Eärendil needed to think about that, still.)
"Well, I am glad to see you love the ship so." For once, when she spoke of his ship, there was no acid in Elwing's voice. He turned about and saw her making her way slowly up the scaffolding, clutching her long pearl-gray skirt in one hand, and clinging to the rail with another. At the top of the steps it was a large leap to the platform, and Eärendil held his hand out to aid her. "You've driven Lord Círdan nearly to distraction these past few months over it, after all."
"You are still sure you don't wish to accompany me on Vingilot's maiden voyage?" Eärendil tries hopefully.
Elwing snorted indelicately, folding her slight arms across her chest. "Certainly not. You may love your ship, and the sea, but I very much prefer to have my feet on solid ground, thank you."
"I won't let you drown, Elwing."
"Oh, I've no doubt of that, love," she murmured resignedly. The wind blew her glossy black curls into her face and she brushed them out of her eyes irritably. "But I might drown anyways. The sea is not a hound or a stray cat that can be tamed, Eärendil. I wish you would realize that."
"I tamed it well enough when we were small," Eärendil protested. Some of his fondest memories of his childhood, after the Fall of Gondolin, was of sailing his coracle in the shallows, Elwing sitting in the craft with him and giggling despite her tremors at every ripple of the ocean, and Círdan, or Voronwë (or both), sitting on the sand watching them to make sure the tides didn't pull the coracle too far out.
Elwing smiled gently. "A coracle made out of reeds is a far cry from a ship such as this. Besides, I have my duty to my people. You know that."
Eärendil nodded, willing to concede the point. The Sindar were already disgruntled enough with the idea of their Queen marrying him. It was profitless to tempt their wrath any further by drawing the Queen away from her people, possibly for months at a time.
They lapsed into silence. Elwing's hand fluttered at her throat, fingertips running over her skin as though she expected to find something else there. A soft, winding breeze played through Eärendil's hair, softly caressed his skin. He turned his eyes westwards, towards the sea. The sky was spangled with stars, the only map a mariner could ever truly rely upon. But on the horizon, the westward, horizon, there were the glimmering lights.
"You know," he said softly, "when I was little, I would pretend that those were the lights of a city on the shores of the Undying Lands."
It was a silly thought, and Elwing was well-aware of that. "Eärendil, those are the lights of Balar," she pointed out, frowning. "The Undying Lands are far too distant for us to see anything of them from here."
"I know, I know." Eärendil stared out past the lights, towards the fathomless black of night. "But you hear the sailors talking sometimes, and they'll say that if you're on the sea at sunset, and can't see land in any direction, there will be this flash of light just as the sun disappears. It's supposed to be the light of the lamp of the Mindon Eldaliéva in Tirion upon Túna."
Elwing fidgeted with her sleeve hem. She was staring out as well, but with little of the love Eärendil bore in his eyes when he stared out at the sea. There was a straining look on her face, frustrated and uncomprehending (Like she was trying to see what he saw when he looked upon deep blue waters). "That sounds something like legends I've heard from the Edain living here in the city. Something about strange creatures with the upper bodies of Edain men and women, but the lower bodies of fish?"
Eärendil nodded. "Merfolk, or sirens." His tone was distant, far-away, as he explained the story to her. "Sailors say they sit on rocks out in the ocean, and sing sweet tunes to lure you to your deaths."
Elwing fixed him in her piercing gaze. "Do you think," she asked him quietly, "that perhaps something like that has happened to you?"
The thing about Elwing was that she had a habit of asking questions that were both deeply personal and utterly uncomfortable. She asked questions that could stop a man dead in his tracks, silence him completely. Eärendil was no different. He stared at her, trying to find something to say, wanting so badly to deny it, but no matter how he searched, he could not find the words.