A/N: First off, I honestly feel bad for having abandoned this story - especially whenever I get a notification of that people are still clicking follow and favourite for it. I really appreciate it - you are wonderful readers! I just haven't written fanfics for months and months and I was never good with multi-chapter works. However, I've had this draft of Chapter 7 waiting on my computer since 2015. I felt I should share it, especially since I do have ideas on how to continue (and finish) this story - I even have an unfinished draft of Chapter 8. One day I'll finish the fic, I'd really like to think so! So here's for now. Thank you, sincerely, all of you who have asked me to keep going!
The plot so far: To be allowed rebirth, Celegorm and Curufin have to do good deeds in the human world. Gwenniel, a mortal teenagegirl from Finland chosen to be their hostess, couldn't be more thrilled to meet the princes she's admired ever since she read The Silmarillion. Too bad things go sour: when Eärendil (along with the Silmaril) crash-land in the nearby forest, Gwenniel is reminded of that sons of Fëanor will always be bound to their Oath. But more urgently:
"Celegorm crossed his arms, tired of circling around the blatant truth: "Gwenniel, you should probably learn the truth: Eärendil crash-landed because some dark thing disrupted his course, throwing down Vingilótë, and that thing may or may not be (but most likely is) an Enemy after the Silmaril. So will you tell us where we get material for a boat?""
Chapter 7 - Shipwright at work
Late that evening, Eärendil was sitting on the veranda with a warm mug of tea in his hands, looking at the sky. The sky was light, but if he looked north, he thought he saw some stars, although they were soon covered by the shadow of a cloud. Having spent ages on his divine voyage up high, it had been so long since he had last seen the stars from this perspective, and even though this earth was now so different and strange, he found it fascinating. Yet he could not get the weight off his chest. Somewhere up there, where the air was now turning into a serene orange and lilac, was a threat without a name yet menacing enough to toss him down here... down here where Men ruled and preferred metallic shapes on wheels to good honest ships.
Thus the mariner mused, his brow in a frown, until his thoughts were interrupted by the door opening. Gwenniel was standing in the doorway, already dressed in nightgown. Her eyes looked tired as if she had just woken up suddenly, and she said something to him before gesturing him to follow.
She led him inside and to a small room in the basement with not much more than a small couch in it. Dim light flowed in through a small window up on the low wall, but the girl lit up more light by pressing a button in the wall beside the doorway. She continued talking about something in her strange native language, while spreading the couch into a bed in one pull and taking out some pillows. (He did not understand it, but she was apologizing for, despite her promise, having forgotten to make Eärendil a bed.) Eärendil said nothing, but realized what she was doing, and stepped forward to help her with the duvet, which she seemed to have troubles with. She smiled faintly at him, looking a bit exhausted. Who could blame her, Eärendil considered. The past day had been full of stressful revelations.
As they had tucked the duvet into its cover, she said something again, then sighed. Eärendil still had few guesses of what she was talking about, but he had come to understand, or to assume, that this was now to be his bed for during his stay. Gwenniel stepped back, said something more, and sighed again. How bleary indeed she looked! Before she turned around, Eärendil made a small bow: "Le hannon," he said.
Gwenniel glanced back at him with a small smile. "Le hannon," she repeated. "Le hannon – thank you."
"Thank you," Eärendil said after her, realizing what it meant. "Thank you, Gwenniel." The girl smiled again, before going through the door, looking now a bit less bleary.
A fair summer morning a few days after their return from the forest, Gwenniel's breakfast was interrupted. With a bowl of muesli in one hand, the other one loosely hanging a spoon, she stood up to look out from the kitchen window as she had heard a small truck parking outside the house. Her immediate panicked assumption was that yet another Noldo was being dumped into her life, but then she realized from the appearance of the truck, that it was no Elf it was delivering. Quickly pulling on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she went outside to receive the delivery.
Obviously the delivery wasn't another batch of Elves. After Eärendil's suggestion for how to get material for the new boat had been rejected (his idea having been hewing trees in the forest, which Gwenniel had deemed as possibly illegal and certain to raise suspicions), they had ordered the planks ready cut from a local hardware store and paid for it with some of Gwenniel's graduation-money. It would be the easiest not to mention the quickest way, as long as Eärendil didn't make any complaints on the quality of the wood... He had not been allowed to come to the store, or anywhere public, as his unfamiliarity with the local customs combined with the language barrier would have caused too much suspicion.
A young man in baseball cap had stepped out from the truck and started heaving the delivery into a pile by the driveway. He wiped his brow and looked up.
"Oh. Hi Gwen!"
Gwenniel's eyebrows raised first in surprise, then in recognition, when she realized the young man carrying the planks was a former classmate of hers. No one she'd been exactly friends with, but still someone she knew well enough from her classes. (At on point she may or may not had a crush on the guy, but that was besides the point…)
"Um, hi, Robby!" she said, still slightly surprised. "So, I didn't know you're working at..."
"Yeah, at my dad's company, earning some cash before my Conscription period later this year... civil service for the next twelve months," Robby shrugged with a grin. "So... you... enjoying summer?"
"Yeah..." Gwenniel replied slowly and unconversationally. Then she mentally kicked herself. "Hey, let me help you." She walked over to grab as many planks as she could balance.
"Sure, but some might have splinters, so be careful..." the boy said, before looking over her shoulder. "Morning!" he greeted.
Gwenniel spun around with the planks in her hands (Robby had to dodge). Celegorm had walked up to them, eyeing their work with bleak interest. "Morning," he replied in a casually dull way.
"Um, this is..." Gwenniel felt the need to explain to Robby. "...um, a friend from abroad, who's staying with us..."
"Yeah," said Robby. "I remember him. He was at the graduation with you, right? But didn't you say he was your cousin or something..?"
The girl smiled to hide her embarrassment. Of course – the friend-from-abroad-alias was what she had told her actual relatives. "Well, he's a cousin from abroad," she said quickly.
"Right," Robby said with a bright smile. Luckily he wasn't the questioning type. He quickly put the last planks on the top of the small pile, gave Gwen a paper to sign, and after she had paid him, he gave them one last wave and drove away.
Gwenniel turned to Celegorm. "Well?"
"Well what?" Celegorm replied. "Nice save there – 'cousin from abroad'. So he was a friend from your school? To whom you'd told about us?" His voice had a slightly accusing tone.
"Well, Robby asked, so I answered, okay? If you didn't want to be introduced, you should've stayed inside," Gwenniel grunted, then squinted at her fingers. "Damn it... I think I got a splinter after all."
Going back inside to look for tweezers she found Eärendil trying to figure out how to place the now empty muesli bowl into a dishwasher and other mysteries of modern technology. She tugged his sleeve and pointed out the window. "Planks", she said.
Eärendil's face brightened when he noticed the pile on the yard. "Thank you," he nodded.
So they began their building that very same day. Or rather, Eärendil began to build the boat, and Curufin occasionally offered a less than helpful tip on how he should improve his working while Celegorm stood nearby, arms crossed, eyeing the work like a teacher eyes a kid in detention (with a sense of both duty and boredom). Gwenniel had cast them a few glances from the window, but did not join them. For one thing, they were always speaking Sindarin which she could not understand; for another thing, she didn't really feel like spending time with them. Instead she pulled out her phone to check her e-mail... whereupon a reminder struck her like a lightning bolt. She rushed outside, barefoot, to the Elves, who looked up when they heard her coming.
"I just remembered," she said breathlessly. "Mum and Dad are coming home this Saturday."
"And now you tell us?" Curufin said, looking at her. "From your expression I assume that you do not wish for your parents to see us working on the boat in your home?"
Gwenniel twisted her hands. "Well, I'd prefer if they wouldn't have to be let in on... this mess with the Vingilótë," she admitted. "I'll have a hard time enough to explain why Eärendil is here. I don't know... I don't want to come up with a false identity, so should I just wait until they come back or send an email to warn them in advance."
Curufin nodded thoughtfully. "Tch. You can say he's been sent here to keep an eye on my brother and I," he said at last, though his face was in a deep frown as he was clearly displeased by the idea of having to introduce Eärendil of all people as his babysitter. "The boat can be hidden."
"Speaking of which, how long do you think the building will take?" Gwenniel asked.
"Eärendil here thinks three weeks, because there is a lot more preparations to be made in a sailboat that is going to have to go all the way across the Straight Road to Valinor."
Hearing his name, Eärendil looked up with a smile. He had been working on the ends of the planks, shaping them so that they could later be interlinked at the prow. He looked very much in his element, working with his hands on something boat related. Gwenniel gave a slight smile as well, but she also twitched a bit.
"I don't really know what's going on," she began. "I mean, I do – there's an enemy of currently unknown identity going after Eärendil and the Silmaril." She sighed. These days she sighed quite a lot. "It's just that I keep wondering whether that enemy is going to come here," she said, waving her arms to indicate 'here'. "To Earth, or to Finland, or even... even here to my home."
"I'm not going to lie: anyone in Eärendil's proximity runs the risk of getting in the way," said Celegorm matter-of-factly.
"I'm not worried about me, nobody cares about me," the girl shrugged. "Well, some do, but they'd be okay eventually, and I'm okay dying a hero. I'm thinking about my family. And especially my friends who wouldn't even have the slightest idea of what's happening."
"If this plan succeeds, everything will be okay," Curufin pointed out. "However," he added very gravely, "you are not going to die a hero. It is not as fun as you seem to think it is, and you are not a warrior of the First Age no matter how many books you have read."
"Hm, so you're trying to protect me now," Gwenniel said defiantly, raising an eyebrow and straightening her posture. "If you think I will just stay behind and wait for you..."
"I know we said you should be held responsible for your own actions," Celegorm said suddenly, sounding rather cross, "but we will do our best to keep you from getting involved. For your own safety, because you have zero experience, are we clear?"
The tone of his voice implied that his conscience would not suffer the least no matter what he had to do to keep her out of trouble. Yet Gwenniel was unable to take him sincerely, partly because of the comment about her lack of experience and partly because whenever she looked at him, she remembered the flare-gun in the forest. "My safety, you say," she frowned. "You say, you out of all people. Very well." She left them. It seemed to her that these days she could not spend five minutes with them before getting annoyed.
"Always starting drama now," Curufin reproached his brother, in Finnish in order to keep Eärendil outside of their discussion. "Could you keep down, as I am quite frankly sick of it. If she annoys you, just ignore her."
"I would if I could, you don't know how awkward it is to be around somebody you have shot at," Celegorm snarled back, not in Finnish simply because he didn't care. Eärendil looked up at the comment.
"Shot? You are quite the horrible person, you know," he said as if disgusted.
"And you think yourself an angel, I presume?" Curufin sighed. "No wait, of course you do, Manwë's little favourite."
"You all have terrible tempers. Even her. She is troubled as it is, and although I do not know what you were talking about, I saw that you weren't helping her."
"She is troubled because that's just how she is," Celegorm said grumpily. "The best way to help her is for you to keep working on your boat and do your thing with the masterplan." He was rude when he was grumpy. Or perhaps not as rude as blatantly honest about everything.
So they stayed in the backyard the whole evening, working. Even the Noldor eventually lended a hand. It was not a friendship, it was a truce caused by a mutual enemy and the prospect of getting nearer to everybody's individual goals. Only late at night did they stop working. Eärendil went straight to his bed, the most weary of the three; Curufin curled up with his journal and a pen, and Celegorm flopped onto the sofa. He was slightly cheered up by soft paws patting up to him and a wet nose sniffing his fingertips.
"Hello there," Celegorm greeted the dog and scratched his back just in the right spot. "Sorry I haven't taken you hunting lately anymore..." he muttered. "There's been some issues and a lot of other work to do."
The dog was not like Huan – nobody was like Huan – but it was wise enough. It looked at Celegorm with sad brown eyes. "You are upset," it said. "You look and smell upset."
"I'm tired. I'm weary," Celegorm corrected the animal. "And yes, I am a bit annoyed. I like you, though, because unlike humans, dogs make sense."
"Yes we do," the dog agreed contentedly. "It's because we don't over-complicate things." They remained in a comfortable silence, one scratching the other, the other merely nodding sleepily. Animals, Celegorm decided, were the best simply because they were not thieves of jewels or of love, did not plot or create teenage angst, and generally were just so easy to understand and sympathise with.
Gwenniel's parents returned the day they had planned. They took the news about Eärendil staying with them with some concern, but did not forbid it. After all, Gwenniel had said it was for the best and only temporary. Curufin did not know how two adults could be so calm about strangers camping in all of their guest rooms for such an indefinite time. It wasn't like convincing a teenager to let her idols bunk under the same roof, it was convincing two grown-ups to provide bed and breakfast for a bunch of strangers that in mysterious ways had befriended their daughter. He supposed that Gwenniel had played some good-girl act to convince them of that everything was all right. (In some ways he was right.) Flipping through his calendar, noticing how the summer was already halfway through, he also supposed Gwenniel's parents expected them all to move away by the time Gwenniel herself would move out for University, a time that drew all the nearer as September approached. Good thing Eärendil was doing well with the boat. They could hardly take the project with them when they moved wherever Gwenniel would be living during her university studies.
Eärendil was doing well with the boat, wasn't he? He spent each day doing it, very meticulously. Curufin wasn't much into the maritime, but he did appreciate good craftsmanship when he saw it, and Eärendil definitely put care into what he did. He wasn't too bright when it came to some things (this was Curufin's personal opinion), but he was a perfectionist when it came to the ship. It annoyed Celegorm that the process was so slow, but then again Celegorm had never done much handicraft besides the arrows he used to make to himself and to Aredhel and Amrod and Amras.
Thinking of Aredhel, Amrod and Amras sent Curufin back on a trip of nostalgia. There had been good times, there had been bad times, but at least they had belonged. Here they were trapped in a strange world full of mortals, who seemed unaware of everything that had passed when the world was young and Elves still lived in Middle-Earth. Well, not completely unaware (as there were some accounts from later Third Age that had gained reputation), but yet mostly blissfully ignorant of the sacrifices made by the heroes of the Elder Days. Of the House of Fëanor and their deeds and fates. Of the Silmarils.
Silmarils, silmarils, jewels bright: soon Curufin and Celegorm would hold one in their hands again. Curufin smiled at the thought.
Eärendil had indeed been working hard with the boat. It had to be durable. In spite of the quality of the material, which was far below Valinorean standard, the boat would need to hold all the way to Valinor even if something would attack it. Eärendil's calculations indicated that an attack on the sea and the Straight Road could not be as fatal as the one in space had been, but he needed to be sure. All of Middle-Earth's fate was on his shoulders - and the Fëanoreans would have his head if he failed.
Some two weeks into his work came the day he despaired.
Gwenniel was dozing off in the garden when Eärendil approached her. A finger tucked between the pages of a book lying on her chest, she looked sheepish when she opened her eyes to squint at him standing in the sunlight.
Now, how to explain... Eärendil cleared his throat and tried his best to understood even though he knew his skills in her language did not allow him to express himself as well as he hoped to: "I need your help, Lady Gwenniel," he said. The girl nodded slowly, allowing him to go on. "I have a problem. A big problem. You see, I went to the forest the other day..."
"Sorry, what?"
"The forest. I went there to see my Vingilótë, or what is left of it. And as you may know, I hid the Silmaril in the forest, so I went to see it as well."
"I see."
A moment they were silent as clouds moved across the sky, hiding the sun. Then Eärendil took a deep breath. "This is a delicate matter. Please, never tell to Celegorm and Curufin." The girl nodded and tucked her book away. She had understood that something serious was going on.
"Tell me," she said, forehead creasing. "What is it?"
"The Silmaril is no longer in the place where I put it," Eärendil admitted.
