Late summer of the year 509, Gondolin:
It was one of the hottest days so far this summer, and Maeglin felt herself longing for the cool comfort of the tall trees in Nan Elmoth, which blocked out the sun completely. Really, why did her uncle have to build Gondolin in white marble, so the light was reflecting and the streets becoming unable to walk on without any foot protection?
"Maeglin!"
She stopped walking at the sound of someone calling her name. It was Glorfindel, the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower.
"What is it, Glorfindel?"
The heat was not the only thing to make her irritated today, Idril had also managed to get words from a trusted palace maid that Turgon probably had started planning to try to arrange a marriage for his niece behind her back. Or at least playing matchmaker in the hope of pushing Maeglin towards a candidate who Turgon found suiting for being her husband, but someone Maeglin herself had a very different view on. In fact, Idril's spying maid even had found out that Glorfindel was one such candidate, being trusted by the King himself.
"You have been absent from the plans to celebrate the Harvest Festival later this autumn. Surely you can not be that busy in the forge, when the whole House of the Mole can fix the heavier work…"
"My father taught me to be a blacksmith and my skills will go rusty if I do no work. How can I see my parents in the eyes if I ends up in the Halls somehow and they learn about that?" Maeglin replied in a icy tone, knowing that Glorfindel was not one of those people who thought of Eöl as a good husband to Aredhel. Judging by his badly hidden reaction at the mention of her parents, she had struck right.
"S...still, you are a royal princess, the niece to the King! Surely you would rather spend your days with embroidery and with daughters of the nobility…."
By the stars above, he really could not hide his Vanyar origins and their views on how a daughter of high social status should act. Especially a lady of royal blood was hoped to become an example of good behavior, and it was another area where Maeglin crashed awfully with her cousin Idril. Not that any fault laid on Idril, they got along well enough but their personalities simply was different.
"Silk will only get dirty with soot or getting burned in the forge if I wear it there. And I have difficult to find a fitting subject to talk with the noble daughters about. Besides, I am perfectly fine with not entering courtship either"
Apparently it was a foreign thought for him about that a unwed lady in her age had no plans to marry, especially as Idril would celebrate eight years of marriage just next year, and Eärendil most likely was a result from the honeymoon with Tuor.
"Surely you can't be serious about refusing to become a wife and mother! You are one of the most sought-after maidens here at the royal court, anyone who marries you will become related by marriage to the royal family itself..."
"NOT EVERY SHE-ELF WANTS TO BE WED BEFORE SHE TURNS 200 YEARS, YOUR OBSOLETE IDIOT!"
Now it almost turned into a shouting match between them, and people was bound to notice soon if they did not manage to fix their disagreement quickly.
"Alright, you seem to need a talk with your uncle."
Before Maeglin could protest, he grabbed her wrist and and started to pull her along towards the royal palace.
"Do not touch me!"
Then a stone was thrown from somewhere from above, from a roof, and flat out knocked Glorfindel so hard in the back of his head that he was forced to let go of Maeglin as he fell forwards. She took the escape to escape, and ran off in a different direction as a slightly stunned Glorfindel sitting up on the street. Then a second stone was thrown at him, straight in the face.
"Ow!"
A shadow was hinted between two roofs above him, but as Glorfindel was bent down to avoid blood from his bloodied nose on the clothes, he did not notice it.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
However, Maeglin had a good guess to who that had thrown the stone on Glorfindel and deliberately took a longer walk along the streets, even stopping at her favorite bakery to buy some fresh bread buns, and then even a few fresh fruits at a fruit stand at a smaller market she passed.
"Might as well give him some small reward for the help, even if he did disobey our request to not leave the chamber…" she thought, thinking of person she had to keep secret from Turgon no matter what.
Soon enough, she arrived Rog's home. Maeglin had been here enough many times now that the house maids did not question why she went straight to a huge chamber with a associated garden where they had placed him at Rog's home. As she had almost expected, the male Elf was resting against the tree as if asleep. But his deeper breath betrayed that he must have been running across the house roofs to get back here before her.
"I know that it was you who threw that stone earlier….Rûsa."
In response he opened one eye, revealing half of the black eyes which was, if possible, a even deeper black than her own. But the shape of his eyes revealed that his lineage was from a different Avari clan than the one Eöl had been born into, the same with the dark red hair Maeglin had never seen on a Elf before.
"He...hurt you…"
It was nothing else than a hoarse whispering, but there was a reason for it. The almost fatal fall four months earlier, had damaged his throat, not helped by the horrible slave collar of iron around his neck either. Even right now, there was a red mark around the throat, showing just how tight the slave collar had been against his skin.
And Maeglin could not blame Rûsa for thinking that Glorfindel might turn violent against her, being a slave in Angband meant that he had witnessed a lot of violence against both himself and his fellow slaves, so there had been a very good reason for his instinct to prevent something from happening to her against her will.
"You burnt your skin again in the sun by running after me, that is what happens if you do not stay in the shade," Maeglin scolded gently at seeing that Rûsa's pale skin had gotten a painful red tone from the merciless summer sun. Opening a pocket bag in her belt and picking up a jar with cream she used herself because she had inherited Eöl's sun-sensitive skin, she started to spread out the soothing cream over his face. As always, the V-shaped scar on his left cheek stood out, not because of its size but because it was hard to not notice.
"...thank….you…" Rûsa managed to whisper, barely audible. At least he was slightly less suspicious against her now, or that violently aggressive against the unknown Elves as he had been in the first few weeks after being saved, a sad side effect of his horrible life as a slave.
After wiping off the cream from her hands with a rag she always carried along if she needed the cream, Maeglin gave him the small basket with bread buns.
"You need to eat more, even if you have added in weight since we saved you in the ravine," Maeglin explained, mentally shuddering at the memory of how malnourished Rûsa had been under all that poorly-fitted armor and threadbare rags to clothing,"Please do not follow me this time, I will go straight home to my own home."
He did not say anything, but Maeglin could see in his eyes that he had understood. Speaking a basic Sindarin had helped him understand what they said to him, especially after that he first had spoken a almost incomprehensible mix of broken Sindarin and the other languages spoken by the slaves in Angband.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Rog returned home a hour so so later. By that time, Rûsa had fallen asleep on top of the bed instead, curled up into a ball with his back against the wall as if expecting a attack.
"I hope that he have not been out running on the house roofs again. His climbing is dangerous, not only for the risk of that he could be found out by someone who would bring him to the city guards, but also because of the damage he suffered…"
One of Rûsa's legs remained almost straight even in the sleeping position, the right leg. It had been ruined in the fall because of that the warg had fallen over him first somehow before rolling further down into the river in the ravine where it had died and the metal brace around the whole shin, fixed over knee and around the sole of the foot, had been a attempt from Rog to stabilizing his ruined leg once it became clear that Rûsa refused to enter the Halls of Mandos yet.
"At least he does not feel like we are trying to keep him in a cage like a wild animal…"
That was a small comfort, at least.
Once he had checked on his "special ward" as the code name for Rûsa was, Rog sat down in his office and wrote a letter to Salgant where he made a list of what the food for Rûsa should be this week.
A lot of people dismissed Salgant as a food-lover who ate too much, but in reality he was a gourmet and he had not been afraid of, with some help from Rog, trying to find out the best food to give their unexpected guest. He only hoped that Salgant had run into Glorfindel, the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower could be pretty careless with his comments about Salgant's body weight and as a result, was not one of the people Salgant exactly would call a friend.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
At the same time:
In fact, Salgant had witnessed what had happened between Maeglin and Glorfindel, and currently was busy in giving his fellow Lord a scolding without sweetening the words.
"...and for Eru's sake, do not touch Maeglin without her consent like that! What if someone of her own workers from the House of the Mole had seen it and believed that you were about to harm her for screaming at you?! And the King and Princess, how do you think that they would react at someone accusing you for acting in a inappropriate manner towards Maeglin?"
Glorfindel wanted to protest that he had not done anything improper, but the mention of Turgon and Idril made him quiet. For all of that he always tried to act like a gentlemen, Maeglin was one of the few ladies in Gondolin who had never been charmed by him, and sometimes even gave him a look as if he was just a bug on her working boots, unworthy of being close to her.
"Maybe if she stopped working in the forge and actually started to be around other noble-born ladies more often, she would not be viewed as being so difficult to even offer a simple dance to…"
This time, Salgant forcefully reminded Glorfindel of that while he was plump, not all of it was overweight from eating too much and actually muscles. Being shoved backwards, it was the second time this day that Glorfindel landed in a less than graceful manner.
"Watch your mouth, or you will find out that even a pretty flower will be crushed without mercy if someone does not care where they step."
This was one of things Salgant hated about Gondolin being shut off from the outside world: sometimes ugly rumours could be created and spread by people who suffered from boredom, using only a tiny bit of fantasy to slowly start something horrible that could affect innocent. Maeglin was already viewed in a less than good manner as a possible wife, for reasons out of her control.
"You can forget to be allowed inside my eating places for food, then," Salgant commented, referring to the restaurants and pubs he owned across the city. To be ported from them, was a sign of his displeasure and the staff would really obey the orders from their master.
"What?!"
But Glorfindel did not get to protest, as Salgant turned around to return home, more or less ignoring him. He had a secret meeting with Rog and Maeglin again about Rûsa this evening, and he wanted to be a welcoming host for them at the time they arrived.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note:
According to the timeline on Tolkien Gateway, Idril and Tuor married in the year 502, and depending on how the pregnancy with a Half-Elven child works for a Elven mother, Eärendil could have been born anywhere between 9 to 12 months after the wedding, and he is mentioned to be born in spring 503
The idea for Rûsa's ruined leg comes from this:
houkakyou/art/LotR-S-Rhimlan-451213876