Chapter Three: In the Gardens of Lorien
I was lying on my back, and I could feel warmth shining on my face. It was very comfortable, but I had an odd feeling that I was supposed to be doing something. Could I have overslept? Overslept for what? I opened my eyes. The light was dazzling and I put my arm up over my face to defend my eyes, then lowered it gradually as they adjusted. I was lying on a sward of grass. Not far away, a fountain tinkled merrily. The light and warmth was sunlight. It was beautiful.
Where was I, and how had I gotten here? I sat up, feeling oddly light headed.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Findarato," said a voice from my left. I turned my head to look. There was a person there, smiling in welcome. Findarato, that was my name, wasn't it? Yes, that much I remembered. Welcome back to the land of the living... I'd been dead? I remembered a grey empty place, and solemn eyes that looked at me and requested that I explain my actions. Mandos. Lord Namo. Yes, I had been dead. I looked again at the person, and realized from the glow that he was a maia.
"My name is Olorin," the maia said. "You are in the gardens of Lorien, and I am one of Lorien's followers. I'm here to help you adapt to being alive again. How do you feel?"
"Al... Alive," I said, struggling with the word. I smiled. Yes, being embodied again was very good.
"That's good," Olorin said. "Especially when you consider the alternative."
I laughed. "Indeed," I said slowly. My tongue was not cooperating very well. "I must agree with you there!" We both laughed again.
"What happens now?" I asked. "I've never come back to life before."
"I should hope not," said Olorin. "Lord Namo is disinclined to keep giving bodies to people who persist in getting themselves killed every hundred years, you know."
"I will try not to break this one then," I answered.
"I'm sure he'll appreciate that," Olorin answered. "As to what happens next, you're going to be staying here for the next week so that you get some peace and quiet in which to become reoriented without all your relations fussing over you, and away from all the politics."
Politics? Which ones? Lorien was in Valinor, so... And I'd been gone. Middle-earth, Beleriand, Nargothrond and after that, a darkness... I had been in Mandos for how long? "What year is it?" I asked.
"Year 533 of the sun."
What year was it when I died? I didn't remember. Not that remembering would make much difference since I knew nothing of events here in Valinor since I left.
"I brought food," said Olorin, opening the picnic basket sitting beside him. "The newly returned are usually hungry, I understand."
I didn't feel hungry until he started taking out the food, but once heeded my stomach started complaining loudly. Eating was nice but rather stranger than it should have been. The tastes seemed familiar, but I couldn't name the food until I ate it. I kept dropping things unless I paid close attention to the motions of eating and drinking, and even with care I managed to spill most of my cup of apple juice down the front of my robe, and dropped one particular pastry three times running. The white robe I was wearing was no longer so white.
"Your hroa lacks many of the ingrained motion patterns your fea expects," Olorin explained. "You're probably going to have to relearn how to walk, too."
"Thank you for warning me," I said. "I begin to see why they give us time in Lorien before returning us to the company of other elves."
"Yes, it makes it easier on all concerned."
"Do you help all the newly returned elves?"
"Only some of them. There will be many more returning soon, so they are going to have to expand the number of people helping them. Do you remember why you were let out so early?"
I thought back to the empty great place and my memory of Namo. Those memories were terribly vague. "No," I said.
"You volunteered to teach those who will be fighting Morgoth about Middle Earth's peoples and customs, as well as about how to fight the enemy. You also volunteered to be a lightning rod for unhappy Teleri - to remind them that not all Noldor who went are monsters, and that they are not the only ones who have suffered." Olorin cocked his head at me and smiled. "Bravery aside, this seems like quite a difficult, not to say an unpleasant task. Do you have a special reason to want to come back so badly?"
I thought back. I had many reasons to want to return, including wanting to reconcile with and apologize to my mother and help my father, but... "The main one is named Amarie. You wouldn't happen to know anything about how she is? Lord Namo didn't tell me."
"Amarie," Olorin said. "The young Vanya lady with a taste for metaphysical arguments, songs of power, gardening, and that appallingly noisy invention of Maglor's, the dronepipes?"
I nodded. "There can't be two people matching that description. The rest of it possibly, but not the dronepipes." Olorin remained silent, so I asked "How is she?"
"Do you mean 'is she well?' Or 'has she given up on me and married someone else?'"
"All or any of the above," I answered.
"She is well. She still plays the dronepipes, by the way. It wasn't just a phase, and her parents have finally given up attempting to dissuade her. She still wears a silver ring on her forefinger, which is what I think you were really asking."
I blushed, and looked at the ground. "It is good to know," I admitted.
I stayed in Lorien for the next week. Being alive again was wonderful. There were so many things I had forgotten. The way sunlight breaks into rainbows on insect wings, and turns dewdrops into flashing gems; the way the sky looks as dusk deepens, the sound of a brook or a friendly voice. How it felt to laugh or sing. Simple things, but utterly absent from Mando's grey halls.
I also met Glorfindel, who had come back at the same time I did. I had not seen him since he was a young adult in Nevrast, and he had changed greatly in that time. Hardly surprising, for so had I. We liked each other well, which was fortunate as we would be working together to prepare the elves to fight Morgoth. Warfare. Ah well, I could have chosen to stay in Mandos.
Walking proved quite as difficult as Olorin had suggested it would, but I improved quickly and by the end of the week I could do most basic things without mishap. This was fortunate, as it was time for me to meet my parents and I would rather not be helpless to look after myself in front of them. My mother had been having enough trouble accepting that her children were responsible adults at the time when we left. If she saw me in the state I was when I first arrived, she might never stop mothering me.
I worried over what they would say to me, and I to them. I had not seen my mother since I left her in Tirion. Unlike Finarfin, I did not turn back after Alqualonde. What must she have thought? In some ways, orcs of Morgoth seemed less daunting than facing my mother.
A/N: For those who wish to know, the dronepipes are better known in our world as the bagpipes.
