It was a week later when the party returned to the main camp of the clan. Alia, Burin's wife, greeted them with crossed arms, though most of her ire seemed focused on Caro. Her younger brother had a broken arm and a sheepish smile.

"Don't be too hard on him, Alia," Kíli said. "He managed not to die."

Alia fixed him with a narrow glare and said, "Presumably he was being careless."

Morwinyon did not want to admit as much to the woman in charge of the day-to-day running of the camp and clan. Caro was younger than her own twins and had been excited to go out with a scouting party. She did not want Alia to decide that he was still too young to do so regularly, not when he wanted to go so badly.

But Caro had been careless. He should have called for them earlier.

"Only a little," Theron temporized. Morwinyon still did not fully understand how Dunedain counted kin - she knew Theron was related by blood only distantly to Alia, but they counted each other closer through a web of marriages that Morwinyon could only squint at. Dís was better at untangling it all, and Tari and Angion, having grown up around it, could follow it easily. Kíli and Morwinyon usually shrugged and accepted what they were told without inquiring closely.

Alia raised an eyebrow at him and turned to Morwinyon. "Helir brought in another book. My girls are sure it's Quenya, but they can't translate it."

"I will collect it as soon as I have seen my children," Morwinyon promised, laying a hand over her heart. Alia's face softened at the gesture, as it always did. She had told Morwinyon once that it was endearingly sincere.

"Perhaps after I bathe, though," Morwinyon added, and Alia laughed.

"Get on with all of you," she advised, grabbing Caro's shoulder on his uninjured side. "I'll take care of this one."

Morwinyon and Kíli headed for Dis' tent. Once the Dunedain had lived in cities and towns throughout Gondor and Arnor, and rangers had been few and respected. Now they were all rangers, whatever age they were and however respected -or not - they remained. Now they lived in tents and moved regularly, searching out orcs and all manner of other things. There was a military precision to the camps, even the parts sectioned off for families and young children: everyone learned early that it was best to be prepared.

Dis, as the matriarch of their little family, techncially had possession of the tent and was charged with offering hospitality or giving Alia notice when they had room for wounded or travellers from other clans to stay. She and Tari and Angion were so often at the travel-forge the clan took with them, and Morwinyon and Kíli were so often out with scouting or raiding parties, that they often hosted such Dunedain. The latest had arrived while Morwinyon and Kíli were out, but she nodded at them at the entrance, where she sat taking care of her weapons.

"Moireen," she introduced herself, which made Morwinyon bite her lip. That was probably a variation on her own name - many Dunedain names were, in some way or another, variants on Quenya. "No tragic story for me - just a message delivered and a wait for the reply."

"Morwinyon," Morwinyon replied, since by Dunedain custom it was for her to introduce male family members to women who may or may not want to know them - or maybe it was because she might not want the women to know her male family members? Dunedain. "This is Kíli."

Moireen nodded, and said, "There's wash water, though it isn't warm. Lady Dís said you might be back today."

No one had told the Dunedain that Dís was a lady. It was simply assumed. Morwinyon could not say she blamed them.

"My thanks, my lady," Kíli said, smiling winningly. Morwinyon rolled her eyes. Kíli was still an accomplished flirt, no matter that it never went further. It could have, she had reminded him on several occasions - nobody would blame him for moving on from a relationship that had not even been an engagement - but he had laughed and said with great melodrama that his heart belonged now only to his family.

But he still flirted shamelessly.

Moireen smiled just as winningly back and said, "How could I resist, when you'll surely be more handsome clean?"

Morwinyon took the opportunity, as Kíli laughed, to bathe first.

Tari was hammering away at something when Morwinyon arrived at the forge, so she sat to wait. Dís was arguing with someone some distance away, and of Angion she saw no sign.

When Tari finished, she turned to her mother, wiping sweat from her brow with cloth. It smeared soot and dirt across her face and a little bit into her hair, making the golden strands a little darker. The only real sign of Noldorin heritage in either of her children was the lack of eyelid crease and general shape of their eyes - though only Tari had inherited Morwinyon's dark, almost black irises - and of course, their height. They were only an inch or two above five feet, but they were still taller than most dwarves.

Though Morwinyon supposed Angion could blame her for his lack of beard. Tari's had grown in along the sides, with a slight wisp at the chin, but Angion's face remained smooth.

"I'd hug you," Tari said in Khuzdul, "but you seem to be clean, and I am not."

Morwinyon laughed and pulled her in anyway. Tari returned the embrace easily, which Morwinyon counted as a parenting success.

"Are you done for the day?" she asked her daughter. "Where is your brother?"

"Nion is off talking to Rinna again," Tari said, voice slightly muffled. Morwinyon released her. "I can be done for the day. Grandmother has been muttering under her breath since he left."

Rinna was the clan's horsemistress, and fifteen years Angion's senior. She thought Angion was adorable, like one of the foals she reared. Morwinyon knew Rinna did not mind him trailing after her, because Morwinyon had asked.

"It's always nice to have such willing help," Rinna had said, grinning. "Also, the sooner he gets to know me the sooner he'll get over me."

Morwinyon did not think Rinna was so odious that acquaintance would make her less desirable, but she did know that Rinna preferred to romance women. Perhaps that was what she had meant?

"Dís often mutters under her breath," Morwinyon said. "Would you like to help me write out Helir's newest find?"

Tari did some muttering of her own - she had not taken as well to either elvish language as her brother - but she still went.

"I never learned much Quenya," Moireen said apologetically, when Morwinyon offered to let her look over the book. It was tattered and stained, but still mostly legible in all but a few places. "Our lorekeeper wasn't as good at is as he might have been, but he said nobody much spoke it anymore either."

Which was, along with their delivery of Theron, one of the reasons the clan had welcomed Morwinyon and her family so much. Fluency in Quenya was a prized and rare thing in the clans, who were clinging to the tattered remains of Numenorean culture with the grim determination of drowning men who had found something to hold onto. Technically Alia's clan did not have a lorekeeper - lorekeepers were too precious to send out with scouting parties, though they of course would defend the camp - but Morwinyon had unofficially and mostly accidentally assumed the role. It was, she felt, the least she could do for the descendants of her mother's cousin.

Sometimes she wondered if she should go back to Mirkwood, if only to take the books she had read on Numenor and her history and customs back to the Dunedain.

"Would he like to come here?" Morwinyon asked. "Or I suppose I could travel, if you need him at home."

Moireen laughed. "Maybe he will send his apprentice - when he has one. He is young still."

How young was he, if Moireen, who seemed to be about Tari's age, called him that?

"Am I too young to learn Quenya, then?" Orta asked plaintively. Her elder sister flicked her on the ear, and Tari intervened before there was an actual fight. Orta and Meli were a contentious pair.

Tari took the girls off to run out some energy and probably to pester her brother. Orta and Meli enjoyed it almost as much as she did, and all of them, Morwinyon was sure, enjoyed escaping Quenya lessons.

"The message I brought," Moireen said when they were gone. "It did call for you specifically, along with the clan. Your knowledge of the old ways is known and appreciated. There is a meeting of the clans, and they wish to discuss precedent and inheritance."

"I am not as conversant in current inheritance practices as I am old ones," Morwinyon said carefully, for Moireen should have known it. Inheritance was presided over by the clan leader, who made adjustments if necessary or someone was shown to be unfit for a hereditary position. Morwinyon could spout ancient inheritance and lineage all she wanted, but matters of current law were still in the hands of Alia, and they would be even if Morwinyon was officially invested as lorekeeper.

"It is old ones they want to talk about," Moireen said, looking at her as if she was imparting more than the information she had actually given.

Morwinyon waited. She had noticed that if she did so while looking steadily at people they either assumed she knew more than she did or became uncomfortable enough to tell her things they might otherwise not - or, in this case, just be clear with the information.

Moireen said, "There is some discussion of the heir of Isildur, and his suitability - or not - to rule all of the Dunedain, and not just those who are of Arnor."

"I was not aware he had put himself forward," Morwinyon said carefully. She knew in the abstract that there was an heir of Isildur's floating around somewhere - her father had mentioned one staying with Elrond - but she was not sure if that was the current one or the previous. They all seemed to have one heir and no spares lately, from what she could tell.

"He hasn't - not exactly. But someone has proclaimed him at Rivendell, my clan leader heard, and she believes her source - Aragorn, son of Arathorn."

The latest one, then. Morwinyon was sure Thranduil had called the one he spoke of Arathorn.

"If he is who he says, he has the best claim," Morwinyon said. "But no one needs me to tell them that."

"No," Moireen agreed. "But my clan leader says, she would first need proof that he is who he is said to be, and then she would need proof that he is worthy to lead the Dunedain, or if he would fall to the same weakness as his forbearers. Maybe, she says, it is time for the Dunedain to put less stock in the line of Isildur, when it is so clearly flawed."

"I would not know," Morwinyon pointed out. "I have never met him - he is not of this clan, though I think his mother rode with us for a time, before."

Moireen waved that away. "Others who have ridden with him will attest to his character, or not. My clan leader wants to know his other ties, that might lead him to put others above his own folk, maybe. He was at council in Rivendell."

"Everyone was at council in Rivendell, probably," Morwinyon said.

"He was raised there," Moireen said. "My clan leader wants to send someone there, to speak to those who know him, and to speak to those who would know his allegiances."

Morwinyon realized, with a sinking feeling of dread, or maybe guilt, in her stomach, what Moireen was saying.

"Your clan leader wants me to go to Rivendell," she said.