Lalwen had been a sought-out, wanted summer child, born at the noontide of paradise, once the matters of succession were long since resolved on account of her older brothers, brought into this world for no other reason than joy and delight, and so they named her 'Desired' and 'Laughing Maiden', and that name had served her well once, back when she used to roam the hills.
But now summer was over, and she had little left to laugh about.
Now she went about in silver armor, her long, dark curls tied up behind her back, marching forward in a resolute stride, a look of grim severity on her face.
Like many in her city, she had not had a sense of the temperature rising, little by little, until it was well-nigh near the boil.
She did not always walk about with a sigil-carved shield, looking behind her at every turn;
Visiting her brother had not always involved telling a passphrase to a guard.
She did not use to carry a sword concealed underneath her cape.
There was a time when she never would have believed the news she was now hurrying to share –
"Beware!" it was said to her, "Small love has the proud son of Miriel ever had for the children of Indis. Now he has become great, and he has his father in his hand. It will not be long before he drives you forth from Tuna!"
The source was nebulous at best; She never doubted this and so believed that she had never lost sight.
But greater than her suspicions was her concern for her brother, who was sure to bear the brunt of the assault, as he ever had for so long as she could remember, taking the blows in her stead, and that of their other sister and brother who would prefer to stand aside.
Well, she wouldn't.
Sure she had considered that the rumors could be wrong, and so she thought herself in control of her fate; But greater than the embarrassment of being mistaken was the terror she would feel knowing that she had failed to stop a real and potent threat.
She could not afford to proceed with caution, she thought, not when the price of being wrong could be so high.
She would not have known to weigh the price of being wrong in the other direction; It was an unknown in this yet untarnished land.
The son of Miriel and his unforgiving scorn, however?
That was very known to her indeed.
This is why she made the choice to conceal the source of the warning from her brother – For his own good, she thought, so that he might heed it.
Had he known then that the tip had come from Melkor, he might have dismissed it out of hand.
…
Arafinwe had a very bad feeling about this.
In fact, it had been a long long while since he didn't.
After the fact, it would seem all but obvious that a seer of his caliber would be left with a constant throbbing in his third eye just in advance of the second greatest cataclysm that would ever comes to Valinor's shores, but while he was in it, the bothersome sensation was so persistent so as to cease being a useful signal and end up being just a distraction that was best numbed out with potions and draughts.
It's not that he wanted to avert his sight from the truth – or so he told himself – but the two eyes in his face were more than enough to tell him that things were bad.
He felt the knot in his gut growing ever tighter as he watched his brother and sister coming at each other with blades.
It was just a friendly sparring match of course, though all the other warriors on the training grounds stopped their works and gathered round to see this particular match, for there was nothing else like it to be seen.
The prince and princess swept forward like winged beasts, leaping to great heights and crossing blades up in the air, assaulting each other from above, below, from every possible angle.
Their brother stood at the sidelines like everyone else, a swish of formal robes in an anthill of armored warriors, a ray of gold I a sea of dark heads. He wasn't observing them for the first time – he could tell how their work, condition, and technique had gotten deadlier.
He wouldn't call it better – though even he needed all of his attention to follow the speed of their blows. Nolofinwe was greater in strenght, but Lalwen was faster.
His stern face was glistening with sweat by the time that he overpowered her – she wore a ferocious grin as she picked herself up the ground. This match she had lost when her shoulders touched the ground, but in a real fight, she might have continued, or so she thought.
She would not yet have known that a real enemy might not be so generous as to grant her that chance.
Pleased herself despite her loss (for her brother's position was absolute in their camp, or more so yet to his admiring sister), she called out to her younger brother on the sidelines: "Not bad, huh?"
Her face fell along with most of her energy when she actually took in his face, restrained in disapproval, but heavy with unease and very far from pleased.
She trailed after Nolofinwe as he cleared their spot, leaning on his sword here and there, his breathing still elevated as he asked what was basically a somber version of the same question.
The golden-haired prince felt a particularly unpleasant pang of foreboding digging in between his eyes.
"I want no part in this, and you know it."
"And yet you are here with us."
Yes, yes he was. Though Arafinwe felt as of late that he was being tested. His sister, too, regarded him with expectant blue eyes, round and clear like her mother's, yet lined up into an expression she would never have worn.
"Look, Ingoldo - I'm not asking that you pick up a sword. I'm in need of your opinion, your judgment – yours was always the clearest of us all."
"That's a lot of faith that you're putting into me, brother. I wouldn't be so sure of this…"
Arafinwe was, after all, still here.
"I'm not even sure what you're so frightened of. If you keep going like this, you might as well ask Lord Tulkas if he wants to spar with you. I'm not sure what kind of enemy you are expecting."
"You do know," said Lalwen, not accusing but markedly sharp.
Arafinwe wanted to sigh. Or scream. Or cry.
"Feanaro is only one man. He's flesh and blood just like you. He eats, sleeps, and, believe it or not, once in a while he visits the lavatory. He's nothing so frightening as to merit this. As far as this nonsense goes, you probably surpass him in skill already. I've seen him going at it with his people; He's just hacking at wooden poles left and right with no thought of dodging. He doesn't know his limits – He's much too used to being able to overpower just about any opponent with that obscene strength of his. The only one who can come even close to giving him any real challenge is Maitimo. If he had asked me this same question, I'd tell him to try sparring with you for a change, but as things stand, I'd be much too worried that you two might end up skewering each other for real."
The rather grim warning was not what ended up sticking in Nolofinwe's ears:
"Then you've seen him? He's actually making preparations in secret?"
His sister's question was even bolder:
"Did you sneak into his hideout?"
To Aranfinwe, they both seemed frighteningly quick to assume the worst.
"I did no such thing."
Lalwen smirked: "Then he thinks you're beneath his notice, huh? It's an error he'll live to regret."
Nolofinwe's mind was elsewhere, however:
"Then he's flaunting his aggression in our faces. I can't believe he's dragging his children into it, too..."
"Yes. The same as you, brother."
The older prince restrained any displeasure he might have felt, but his steely determination did not waver for one moment: "I am defending myself, my family and my people."
"You see, brother, the problem here is that he thinks he is doing exactly the same."
Nolofinwe said nothing to this, but his sister did nor remain quite so calm, almost giving the voice of what went unsaid in the bristling tense air: "You can't be serious! Then what would you have us do instead, Ingoldo? Remain defenseless and turn our back until he sees fit to plunge a dagger in there? I think not."
Arafinwe's countenance remained sober. He didn't have much left to appeal to, nor much hope of succeeding, but this once, he made a valiant attempt at not shirking unpleasant duties:
"You don't know for a fact that he is going to do that. You don't even know where that whole story came from."
"I know enough. I hate to say this, brother, but you've been gone from Tirion for a long, long time. Our brother has… changed, as of late…"
Chastised just a bit, Arafinwe might have been willing to leave it at this and keep stewing in foreboding.
Lalwen was not:
"Changed Changed how? Oh cut it out! He's the same as he's always been. He's just saying the quiet parts out loud now that his fame has gone to his head."
"Even if that was true, Father would never allow it."
The princess was not so impressed:
"Oh, you think so? Look me in the face, Ingoldo, and take a look at reality. You're not a fool. When has father ever done anything to keep him from doing with us whatever he wanted?"
"This is different. This isn't just some… childhood squabble."
"Exactly! This is life or death, and still, he does nothing while that madman plots against us. When has the son of Miriel ever shown the slightest bit of care for us? When has he ever treated us with anything but disdain? He can't even be bothered to hide his loathing… You know as well as I do that he wants nothing more than to make it so that none of us ever existed."
Arafinwe narrowed his eyes, creasing his forehead into a deep dark frown.
His pale lips pressed together into a thin straight line.
"That I will believe, but there's nothing in this world that could convince me that he would ever act against father."
Nolofinwe scoffed at this: "Is he not acting against father right now? All this riling up the people with this absord talk that we would all be better off if our people had never followed him out of the wilderness? Father has been very… patient with him up until now. He likes to see the good in people. He feels sorry for him. Guilty for displeasing him, even. He's not looking at this with sound judgment. For his good as well as that of our children, we must take this into our own hands!"
It was not just that prophetic headache that made Arafinwe feel like the world was spinning.
Overwhelmed as he felt, he kept the mastery of his own person, restraining whatever he might have felt or thought from showing on his solemn features, condensing it all into one single, bitter question:
"Say, with the way that you're talking of swords, mastering them, having them made… aren't you worried that they're going to be used?"
His words fell on deaf ears.
...
Arafinwe passed Feanaro in the palace just a few hours earlier, with his head held high and his sons in tow. The missus was conspicuously absent.
Arafinwe took stock of their procession, sticking to his corner, keeping out of their way. They just passed him by, like he wasn't even reflected in their eyes – the eldest of the seven looked severe, the second, deeply concerned; Most of the others could not hide their smirks, or the sense of hostility radiating off in waves.
They had changed their clothes, but the grime sticking to their boots betrayed where they had been.
Arafinwe knew better than to try talking to any of them.
Across from himself, in another door arch bordering the same central passageway, Arafinwe spotted his two younger sons and his nephew Findekano, still often seen as an inseparable trio even now that Angarato had a family of his own to mind.
He didn't need foresight or mind-speech to suspect that the thoughts running through their minds must not have been too different from his own.
Here was a cause that did not seem lost yet – he made sure to smile at them, to say some words of reassurance, maybe, insofar as he could do that without lying.
"I just don't get it!" confessed Angarato morosely, "We'd been hoping that we could all hit the town for old time's sake while Eldalote is taking Artaresto to see her parents, but now we've got this whole… situation… after we came all this way! Carnistir has been insufferable the whole time, and now Tyelkormo and Curvo won't even talk to us, just because their father told them to… what are they, children? Didn't he have Russandol when he was barely of age? At this point they're barely older than him. Curvo's got a kid of his own. Shouldn't they have learned to think for themselves by now? How can they do this to us? Didn't our friendship mean anything to them at all? How can they spread such lies about us!"
"Now let's not get ahead of ourselves." cautioned Findekano, ever the open-minded one. "We don't know that they did. Russandol swears he knows nothing of this, and he's nothing else if not a man of his word. At least, I don't know why he would lie. I think deep down he knows this whole thing is nonsense…"
"Does he? He sure doesn't act like it..."
"That's exactly what concerns me. As he tells it, we're the ones doing the plotting as far as they've heard. Even Turukano and I were named as conspirators – That's why Uncle Feanaro wants them to stay away from us. I don't think Russandol ever really believed it, but he came to me demanding an explanation." admitted Findekano. A rare glimpse of sorrow broke through his sunny, diplomatic demeanor, "Something really doesn't add up here. - if we didn't spread it, and they didn't, either…"
"You sure he's not just screwing with you? That would seem to be the simplest explanation if you're asking me… I know it sucks. We didn't expect Tyekormo and Curvo to turn on us either, but, their actions speak louder than words... "
Findekano seemed… uncertain, in his uncles' estimation. He saw the arguments, but he was still reluctant to decide on any condemnation.
"It feels like we've been away for long…" mused Aikanaro, who had been observing the debate in silence, with a troubled, pensive look on his face. "...though it hasn't been that much longer than usual."
Arafinwe did what he could to smile and present his usual calm, unperturbed self now that his sons and nephew were probably counting on his familiar solid presence more than ever:
"This is all troubling indeed – but I don't see why it should stop you three from enjoying your day off. You have worked hard you deserve a reprieve from your duties."
"I guess you're right…" judged Angarato, "In any case, my in-laws are expecting us for dinner by the first silver hour. I don't want to tell them that we spent all this time sulking when they ask us about our days."
But once they had left, Arafinwe couldn't stop thinking about his nephews' words, which had been troubling indeed.
...
"I for once don't see why Tyelkormo and the others would do this. I just don't believe it." confessed the princess Irisse, bouncing her legs as she waited for her soon-to-be-playmate to finish that one-more-chapter she'd wanted to read before going out.
"Of course you don't." replied her cousin Artanis, clapping the book shut, "You and your brothers are all horrible judges of character. One day, it shall become your undoing."
This she spoke with such certainty that she considered the topic all done for, and swiftly moved on to the next as she tied her riding boots:
"Did aunt Lalwen say where she's going to pick us up?"
By the stables, as it would turn out. Their outings together had been something of a long-calcified ritual, dating back to when the ladies had been little girls languishing with their playthings while their older brothers went in and out the palace and its various rooms for plenty of important work, too young to go out on their own – at the time, Lalwen had offered to go with them them, acting much as if her presence was but a convenient excuse for the girls to be allowed to go wherever they pleased, and it was under her tutelage that the girls had learned to love the woods and the hills.
Of course, it was long, long ago now that the younger princesses had ever thought of themselves as little girls, or since those outings had long since morphed from a measure for the amusing of children into pleasant togetherness on a more even basis.
Even so, in these uncertain times, the young princesses might still find some relief in this remaining regular occurrence remaining unchanged, even if a certain proud platinum blonde would not admit this even to herself until she was a very different, much older person far removed from everyone she had known in those early days.
But this older, wiser person would remember Lalwen as she had been once the last splinters of her good cheer had come off on the ice, and struggle to determined how much of what became a hollowed mask, in the end, had still been genuine on this occasion.
High on horseback, on their way from the stables, the three ladies happened to pass the king as they rode past the gardens, not all too close honestly, but so distantly as to be outside a mortal's range of sight, and the king himself certainly did see them.
His granddaughters would remember him sitting at the dinner table, engrossed in some intense conversation with his eldest son, patient but exhausted in the face of his many emphatic gestures, and then, the king standing up and waving, looking to get their attention with some sort of casual greeting.
His daughter must have seen him, but she made no answer – she just kept riding forward, suddenly strange and cold, saying no word to the younger ladies.
They would remember this differently, the elder – if only by a few months – recalling the instant where the mood around her suddenly turned cold, and the younger, hiding behind hate to stave off the fear and dark foreboding that gripped her heart… fighting down unseemly frustration at her cousin's confusion to reassure her later from a place of benevolence.
Princess Artanis had never liked her uncle. He was unfriendly and catty, and overly opinionated, something to be endured rather than welcomed – besides, she'd often had the feeling that he was looking at her as some kind of thing, a fascinating research sample maybe, lacking all of the warmth that one would expect a man to show towards his family members.
But what began as an ordinary bad impression had since coalesced into something more, some worst possible feeling, like an ugly blotch of dark ink that followed him wherever he went, ominous chains following to the future, like the Ouverture of a darker theme.
She looked for rational justifications in her mind precisely because she could not put it into words – something tainted, something discordant… a rotten black heart full of thorns.
…
"See father? They're definitely plotting something!"
"Your sister probably just wasn't paying attention, dear."
"I'm telling you, something's going to happen. Something big. I've been feeling it for a long, long time now…"
"...since you started working on the Silmarils?" guessed the King… it was probably for the best that his son was to absorbed in his own argument to register that sad, tired look in his father's eyes.
Or perhaps, he did notice.
"Long before that. It's the reason I created them in the first place. I feel it with everything that I am. If it's not the Valar, or that woman, it's something else, but I am certain. More certain than I have been of anything in my life. And I for once don't plan to sit and wait here until it comes."
"Look around you, Feanaro!" the King, who had not thought of sitting down yet, stretched out his arms in a semi-circle to gesture far and wide at his surroundings – the fresh grass, the great branches of white that could be seen poking through the white marble towers from the town square, the whole wide sky awash in golden light.
"What thing of that sort could possibly happen here?"
"You know better." said the prince, asserting it to himself in disbelief. "You know this place isn't safe. You and I must know, even if everyone else were led astray, and all the world against us. You used to live free before you ever even knew of this place, or have you forgotten that as well?"
With a drawn sigh, the king crumpled back into his seat, his voice suddenly quiet.
"I've only told you the parts that were worth remembering. You don't know what's out there – and I'm glad that you don't know. I'm glad you didn't have to know. And no matter what went wrong along the way, or all the things that didn't turn out like I imagined them, I will never regret coming here. If I hadn't come here, I could never have had you, nor your brothers and sisters. And I would never choose a world without you exactly as you are, no matter how imperfect the circumstances through which you came to be.
Before you curse this place, I just want you to consider that the very light you would renounce is shining out of your eyes this instant. You wouldn't have been as you are if this world were without flaws, or if we'd never come here. "
Far from comforted or enlightened, the prince left this conversation disturbed. But he said to himself that he was not trapped, not while he still had possession of that which he had stashed away in his vault. Which made it ever more vital that it should remain in his control.
…
(Arafinwe too, thought of telling his father of his foreboding, but he didn't see how further panic was going to be helpful in this situation;
He simply didn't know enough. What little he could gleam was too vague, too heavy on the fabric of time.
Could the thing even be avoided? Would flailing to prevent it just make it happen quicker?
Lalwen and Nolofinwe didn't seem to feel anything – they seemed to take after their father in that regard. How enviable, to be free to move and choose as one might without feeling the constraints of inevitability.
Arafinwe didn't know if Findis knew anything. It had been long since they'd had the time to speak and meet.
The life of a high priestess was a busy one, far more than the leisurely affairs of a Third Prince who was 17th in line.)
...
The children of Indis met again in a corner of the royal palace – well, almost all of them.
"Where's Findis?"
Nolofinwe sighed deeply as if he would have preferred to forgive and forget the absence that had now been brought to the forefront of attention by his own remaining sister. "She says, I quote, that 'she will have no part of our plotting'." The Second Prince's view was more sympathetic than anything else: "I don't know what she's heard… it's been long since she has been to Tirion. She doesn't know what's going on down here."
"No wonder!" spat Lalwen, "She's always thought herself too good for us, hasn't she? She can stay up there for all I care. Who's to say that she wouldn't rat us out to the Valar if she didn't like what we were talking…"
"So this unfounded suspicion has gone to your head as well?" remarked Arafinwe, his voice tinged with sadness.
Though present, he was lingering near the cloth that hung across the door arch, painfully aware that the remaining three of them no longer presented much of a unified picture.
Even between the ever-inseparable middle two, he could sense the growing impatience that rung in each of Lalwen's pacing steps and Nolofinwe's somber reluctance to agree with her words quite as readily as she did with his. His discomfort was particularly palpable each time she criticized their father, but what he might not admit to himself in the inner depths of his heart might be a different matter altogether.
He stuck to safer territory then: "What of him speaking openly in the town square? Is this unfounded too?"
Arafinwe wondered how long it was since either of those two had been comfortable with saying any of Feanaro's names. In public, Nolofinwe would still make a show of referring to him as 'our brother', but increasingly, it was becoming just that, a performance, because he felt their father would expect him to, and because he felt somewhere that the brother in question should be more ashamed of not doing the same – a display of generosity from a position of righteousness atop just enough of a genuine wish remaining for the true reality to keep picking at the scab.
He didn't think that Lalwen ever had any positive feelings towards Feanaro whatsoever; She's never had the need to cling in desperation, with far worthier options around. If any bond remained, it would be a dark and blackened thing, dangling nowhere on the other side.
He chose to ask the hard question:
"So, what do you intend to do?"
Nolofinwe spoke at last, like a glacier finally moving.
"...father is calling the lords into assembly to discuss the matter."
"Finally!" quipped Lalwen.
"So, do you want me to proofread your speech?"
"Actually, I was thinking to dispense with that altogether, and speak with father myself before the event. Let him know that he can count on me, at least. And yourselves, if you will pledge yourselves to our cause. Lalwen's already given me her yes. So what about you, brother. Can I count on you?"
It was a certain, leaderlike speech, a broad invitation, like asking was merely a matter of formality – but there was still a question there, and not without reason.
Arafinwe was, more than anything else, alarmed:
"-Before the meeting? That's a breach of protocol. If Feanaro finds out-"
But Nolofinwe would hear none of that:
"I think we have all done rather enough catering to his whims. I must do what is best for our house and our people, no matter what he says."
"There are other ways to do this."
"Then what would you propose I do? Let him go on and on with his clever tongue until he's swayed all the lords to his heresies?"
"You're more popular with the lords than he is - they are by no means guaranteed to follow his lead. Besides, tensions are high throughout the city right now, this is not the time to needlessly provoke him…"
"Provoke him?! Is it a 'provocation' now if I want to speak to my own father in my own house? Don't you and I have as much of a right to be here as he does?"
"Of course not – but the assembly is a delicate situation… If you act on your own like that, you will just confirm everything he thinks."
"Which exactly why we have no time to bother jumping through Curufinwe's ridiculous hoops-"
That was the point when something shattered, silent yet deafening.
"Yes. Yes it is ridiculous." conceded Arafinwe, his voice not yet raised. But it was steadily getting there, and this was a very strange thing to witness.
Even his own brother had only the vaguest notion of what his angry voice even sounded like, but now that he heard it, he'd never forget.
"Yes," he began, gaining traction with every word, "It's farcical, idiotic, and above all things inane. Sometimes you do have to do ridiculous things. All the things that you're too good for. Sometimes you have no choice but to bend and fawn and grovel. Sometimes you have to go and make yourself the buffoon and do without your pride, your self-importance, and your daily pinch of adulation, along with everything else you think is so more important than anything else, no because you love it, but so that for the low, low price of compromising your dignity, we might actually keep this entire city from descending into riots – unless that is not, in fact, what you want!"
"Ingo...-"
"You don't get it, Ingo." shot Lalwen, "He's not gonna suffer us no matter how much we dance to his bloody tune – he hates us just for existing, and he's not gonna be satisfied until we're gone from this world!"
"This is not about Feanaro-" the youngest retorted, hands actually clenched into fists – and then, becoming aware of himself, he unclenched them, and he surrendered. "You know what?! Fine! Do what you will. You can have my support or whatever, I'll do whatever you want. That's what all of you are gonna do anyway, no matter what I say. Do as you please! Do what you cannot leave be! Go ahead and do it!"
This would be the only time in all the life of Arda that Lalwen and Nolofinwe had ever seen their younger brother lose his bearings.
…
Later that day, princess Lalwen would do her best to make sure that her brother understood at least one thing:
"I am always on your side, you know that? I've been on your side from the day I was born."
But Nolofinwe was not reassured.
He kept thinking about the words of his brother.
The younger one of course – the only one who counted for much these days.
...
Long now the scholars would wonder whatever it was that went through Prince Nolofinwe's heart when he found the infamous sword pointed straight at his chest.
Anguish and betrayal perhaps? Immovable courage? Some indescribable rending of the heart at the sight of a sin that had never been committed before?
The truth of the matter was that he was in no place to feel much of anything – most of his consciousness was taken up by racing calculations:
'What are the odds that he'll actually do it?'
'What's the chance that anyone will intervene?'
'What sort of damage could he do with that weapon?'
'How might he react if I reach for his arms?'
'Could I find any way out?'
Every motion in that moment was deliberate, every rise of his chest so controlled as not to brush that dangerous tip, consciousness condensed on keeping perfectly still.
To think that for a moment, he'd had his case in the bag, that his rival had very much done him the favor by showing up fully armed and waving his sword around like a lunatic, like all he needed to do was bow, not look like a raving lunatic, and let everything else gracefully demonstrate itself.
He'd felt this prick of instinct traveling up his spine like something was distinctly off when His Highness The Crown Prince did not immediately storm off in a rage, but he'd dismissed it, all the same, resolving that at the very least he would certainly be the one leaving with his dignity intact.
Then, on the steps of the palace, he found himself rudely seized by the arm and brought to a point where the chance for every single kind of inviolacy would find itself in question.
Never had he felt so aware of every precious fiber in his body.
He could smell his assailant's sweat, every single flushed pore, a twisted knot of brows, that reasonable facsimile of what could have passed for his father's nose right next to the wild white eyes of some strange woman who wasn't his mother.
Now that he had seen this, he figured that he'd never run the risk of fearing any other thing ever again.
Calm.
Keep calm now.
Don't do a single thing that could have provoked him;
Master yourself. Don't respond.
Breathe…
The other one blinked first, pulling back his weapon, sauntering off straight through the scandalized crowd completely shameless, like one who just mercifully stopped short of exacting the fullness of his rights.
As for Nolofinwe, he went to do that which he always did when he needed someone to make sense of the world for him.
He went to seek his brother.
...
He expected no solace from his parents in the palace.
He was long gone when his father followed out to the stairs, coming face to face with the crowds in the central town square from which the news had already spread beyond all help of control.
…
Part of him was not even sure if Arafinwe was even going to take his side.
Family was supposed to stick with you… allegedly… and his younger brother had always been on the fence, always telling him what he ought to do better or how he wanted nothing to do with 'your quarrels'.
He considered I-told-you-sos. He did weigh the possibility that he might have truly, irrevocably done it now.
But the news had traveled quicker than his body – guess a certain someone shouldn't have invented the Palantir then if he didn't want the news of his misdeeds traveling out.
When the gate at Arafinwe's temporary residence was unsealed, the golden-haired prince came tumbling out just inches after the lock bolt, clasping his arms right around him like he used to do it as a little boy. Even in this same moment, he shivered from the sheer horror and wept hot tears of relief.
Of course he did – this was what a brother was supposed to do, this was the normal, expected reaction to learning that a loved one had only just escaped the clutches of danger.
Once his stay here was known, they just all came pouring in – Lalwen was next, gripping him fiercely to hide her rage-contorted face behind his shoulder. The kids all practically got in line, and even Arafinwe's seemed to feel the need to at least touch his hand or grab his shoulder.
Anaire, whom few things could daunt most of the time, just wept endlessly into his chest, running her hand over his chest, arms and face again and again as if to smooth over a crumpled piece of clothing. Turukano kept stressing over what to tell his daughter whose keen eyes must have certainly taken in the turmoil of the adults around her despite Elenwe's valiant attempts to soothe her.
By the time Laurelin reached its zenith, then Queen came running with her ornate shoes held in her hands – it seems like no number of her subjects had been able to restrain her from running all the way through the town on her bare feet, having torn out and discarded a number of heavy lop-sided hair ornaments on her way, tearing the seam of her robe.
She pulled all three of her present children close to her at once and refused to let go for an inordinately long time.
All throughout this Nolofinwe was still somewhat numb, focussed largely on doing and concerned with bringing the queen some cloth so towel off her feet, but all this was just to an arbitrary cushion to stave off thinking through the implications for the city until he was reasonably calmed down.
Even so, they must all have been aware that the world they had known could never go back to the way it had been before.
(At no point had Nolofinwe ever where his father might be – he'd assumed straight away that he would be otherwise indisposed.)