Shades of Gray
A/N #1: Wow... This chapter really grew as I was writing it. I believe I'll just cut it in half and make two chapters out of it. And guess what? Now that they're talking, they won't shut up. -sigh-
DRUIDGIRL, you make me think too much. If my brain shrivels up into a raisin, I'm blaming you and sending you all of my homework. Gah... Lemme think. No, her mother was an orc, and her father was an orc, so she is technically one too. But she isn't the same... kind of like a subspecies or a hybrid of the two. Like... when she was conceived, for whatever reason, the Valar I guess stepped in and undid most of the damage that Morgoth inflicted on the elves that he captured all those years ago. As for all the rest, I'm afraid to say anymore because it will give away the plot :). And then my plot bunnies will become very angry and chew my leg off again. Sorry! But it is amusing though, that I would see this review just after writing about Haldir's idea of orcish elves and elvish orcs... I guess even he doesn't believe that she's a full orc. Which I guess is true... But she might as well be. And then again, she wrote herself into not talking about Haldir as an elf. You'll see.
And as for the rest of you, flattery will get you everywhere. *cough*
Chapter 5: A Matter of Trust
AKA: Anatomy of the beginning of an elvish/orcish friendship -OR- Do you really want her to trust you with her words?
~*~
"I believe you should stay here for now, and out of sight," said Haldir, shifting his eyes over Erashnak's orcish raiment. "Raising everyone's attentions will not do us any good. I shouldn't be too long..."
Erashnak gave a slow nod, her eyes flickering past the elf to stare at the snatches of white she could see, dancing on the other side of a particularly thick belt of trees whose leaves had caught a wind that she couldn't feel. Farther beyond that she thought she could see distant patches of the mellower green tones of forest clearings as they yawned up at the buttery afternoon sunlight. It felt as if she was standing in the evening when morning was no more than a hundred yards away.
Giving her a quizzical look Haldir hesitated for a moment, anxious about leaving the orc alone so close to an elven village, before turning around and starting toward the light with purposeful strides. It was a smaller settlement to be sure, with none of the mysterious beauty of Caras Galadhon. A farming village - supplier of meat and grains and vegetables both to itself, and to the larger cities that lie further in the deep wood, where farming land was scarce. It was more like the dwellings of other elven lands, with few talans save for those of the Guard, and many more ground houses. But it was not without its beauty, and a mortal would think it much a tribute to the crafts of the Eldar. But then, few have seen the city where Galadriel dwells. It was a fortunate thing - he shouldn't have any trouble finding a horse at all.
Blinking for a moment at the sudden light as he emerged from the trees, he suppressed the desire to glance back at the wood to make certain that she was out of sight. But Erashnak was cunning, he had learned as much, and he knew that she would remain unseen. So it had been when they had come across an outpost. The orc had melted into the forest as if she were but a breathing piece of shadow and earth while he confronted his brother in arms, gathering what news he could and giving as little as he could get away with.
With a smile and a nod to the mingling elves around him Haldir set his course toward the stables that the warden had spoken of, forcing his steps to a leisurely pace as he wove about the beautiful streets and the buildings about them. It may not have been the village proper, but the area seemed to be somewhat of a market, full of colors with a faint drift of music bleeding into the soft speech of the elven crowd. After many a turn and polite nod, a long, low, calmly ornate building came into view near the proper entrance of the land. It was a stable, no doubt, exactly where the guard had said it would be. In the distance he could see the stable master, deep in the work of brushing a fine tawny colt to a glow, and his strides became more purposeful.
"Haldir?"
The elf stopped, nearly spinning around as he heard his name being called out behind him. A woman just slightly shorter than himself and the exact image of his mother was hurrying toward him with graceful steps, her long halo of silver-gold hair caught in the wind. She stooped a bit as if to get a better look at him, and then continued on with the most beautiful smile he had seen since...
He almost frowned, thinking that it should be his mother's smile that he was thinking of, but it was most definitely not. No, the large, warm, easily attained smile that was the gift of almost every member of his family was not what was in his mind. It was the subtle, elusive smile of Erashnak, a smile that seemed to shift the worlds together in a confusion of her own emotions. But surely he was just caught up in his latest task - what he might laugh to call the taming of an orcish elf. Or something along those lines.
"Haldir! It IS you!" she exclaimed, and he couldn't help but laugh at her excitement at seeing him. "I knew it was you from the moment you walked into the village, strutting about as if you were nothing more than a farmer's son. I haven't seen you since before you became a Captain, do you realize? That is far too long! Whatever brings you here?"
She quickly dropped her basket as she caught him in a warm embrace, and Haldir let her infectious smile spread on as he held her out at arm's length and lifted an eyebrow at her mischievous blue gaze.
"I might ask the same of you, Luinhuinë. What force on this earth could drive you from the deep wood, cousin?"
Luinhuinë let her smile fall from its full strength to a softer, fond grin, clasping his hands in her own. "You know that we make our summer home here, Haldir. The deep wood might be wonderful in every way, but one must crave for freer air at least once in a while! It is fresh here, and so bright, not so dark and mysterious and the inner cities. But the weather is harsher, what with all of this wind, and we do take to the forest again when the winter comes to stay. You are lucky that we are still here, for all of this fair weather."
"Lucky indeed," he chuckled, as yet another gust of cool wind blew a lock of hair into her face, which she hastily swept away.
"But that still does not answer as to why you are here, my elusive little cousin," she said, folding her arms in less-than-mock demand.
Haldir looked over his cousin, the eldest daughter of his mother's sister and so very dear to his heart. They had nearly grown up together, they and their siblings, a right pack of little terrors, and some of them still upholding the name. He trusted her nearly as much as he trusted himself, he decided, being sure to imitate her expression.
"I was sidetracked on a mission, and I need to borrow a horse and be away," he said, giving a mild inclination of regret and hoping that she would let the subject drop and not go on with her shrewd little wiles. But it was not to be.
"Haldir, I dare say you could travel nearly as swift as a horse and arrive not far behind, even should you be going the full way back to Caras Galadhon. What is the hurry to do with, then?"
Haldir squared his shoulders with a disapproving glare set on his face, though it did nothing to quench the sparkle of mischief in her eyes. "You know that I simply cannot lie to you, do you not?" he asked, ignoring her exaggerations.
"Yes," Luinhuinë said, shifting her weight to one leg with arms still crossed in that unbelievably stubborn stance that all women seemed to posses.
"Then you would help me with a secret, would you not?" said Haldir, beginning to see the many positive possibilities of the situation. Yes, he was very lucky. Very lucky indeed.
"And what would that be...," she drew out, the look on her face spelling out very clearly that she was already well bought.
Haldir smiled. "You see, the mission on which I was sidetracked involved a strange movement of orcs. We staked out their encampment, only to find that there was an elf among them."
Luinhuinë's eyes widened with terror and delight. Haldir hesitated, amazed at how easy it was to forget that they weren't a feral band of elflings anymore.
"And?" she prodded, a fain light in her keen eyes.
"And so we had to be cautious. But as it turned out, she became separated in the attack, and I was forced to follow her. A swift little thing, her, fleet as a forest doe. But she is injured and worn, beyond much that I have seen before. Without a horse it would take us perhaps three days to cross a distance that should take little more than one. Though she seems to be better off at the moment, I doubt it very much that she will last much longer," said Haldir, careful to avoid anything that might press the matter beyond his will. He had a very realistic idea about how easily his cousin's lips spoke.
"Oh," said Luinhuinë with sympathy, suddenly the lady of her house and fond playmate no longer. "Then I dare suppose she is in a horrid state. We'll take her to the house, and see her well cared for, and you with a horse if you won't stay the night. Such a dreadful thing to happen! You should have said something at once... I'll send a few handmaidens with the orders for fresh clothing and a bath... And our supper must be to impress. What else must we do?"
"Perhaps not to impress - I doubt that she could handle anything too rich or too sweet as of yet. Even an apple seemed to be a bit much for her, and I dare say that you could serve onions and grit and she would be well enough impressed."
"I think not," she said, lifting her eyebrows at such a notion. "But I will see if the menu might be calmed a bit. And you can expect no grit whatsoever in my house, whether you be there or not, Haldir. Sometimes I think you tease too much."
Haldir ignored his cousin's insults yet again and gave her a warm embrace, kissing her brow. "You are the most wonderful, Luinhuinë. My luck has never faired so well."
Luinhuinë gave a sly grin, eyeing her cousin like an older sister. "Yes, I know," she said, turning with a wave of her hand as they walked back toward the market and her patiently waiting handmaidens, deep in conversation. Her excitement was harder to ignore, though Haldir was soon to be having second thoughts. But it was his cousin's house, one of the safest places to introduce Erashnak to elvish life. Everything would be fine...
He could only hope that his good fortune would hold out.
~*~
"You can come out now, Erashnak," said Haldir, glancing around as if blind. He simply couldn't believe she could hide so well, and suddenly found himself wondering if she was still there.
Then came a slight movement to his left, so close he almost jumped, and then she was there, eyebrows raised.
"I can't believe you," he said, "you can make yourself blend in as if the forest has been your home from the dawn of all time. How you became so wickedly cunning I hesitate to ask."
Erashnak clasped her hands behind her back, nearly laughing - at him, he realized. There is that feral look again, thought Haldir, praying to the Valar that all of these women would never gang up on him, though he wouldn't mind watching if they attacked another.
"So now we are leaving again, I suppose," said Erashnak, inclining her head. At least she seemed to trust him with her words now.
"No," said Haldir, and she stared at him with widened eyes once more.
"Please don't look at me as if I've told you that the sky is orange, Erashnak. Or black, rather, with that scowl," he smiled, and Erashnak thought it was one of the most evil smiles she had ever seen, though it didn't strike as much fear in her as she had thought it would.
"No, I was surprised to meet my cousin here, a fine and wonderful woman, and she has insisted that we at least stay for a meal, and that she be allowed to have her handmaidens attend to you. Her eldest son is an apprentice healer, at that. And I fear that we will both fair better once you are clean and... more properly dressed."
"Clean..." Erashnak let the word roll off of her tongue, a look far from pleased adorning her features.
"Yes, I understand the implications as well, but I swear that you will feel much better afterward. And you will be more presentable to Galadriel, not to mention more presentable to every living elf and more."
"My life's very goal," she said, her lips curving in her own evil grin. But it was gone soon after, her stomach already churning with anxiousness. Her. In an elven city. "I've never even seen an elf before. How can you expect me to just walk into a city full of them?"
"And what am I, a dwarf?" he said, crossing his arms. "And it isn't a city, it's a village, and you will only be in it for a moment until we can get you to Luinhuinë's house. There won't be so many people there, and it will give you a chance to become used to a number of elves before we reach the city. You will be fine," he added then, frowning at her bleak expression.
"I still don't know why I should trust you," she said slowly, and he nearly shivered at the intensity she could convey in a single glance.
"Perhaps because I am the only one left for you to trust anymore... You may think you do not have a choice in the matter, and it is true that you really don't, in the end. But if you don't trust me, then trust that if you were going to be killed, you would already be rotting. Elves do not make prisoners of orcs."
Erashnak glared, but inclined her head, allowing for him to go on.
"And as for that, no hissing, and no snorting, and absolutely no orchish. You must be especially careful of that. They think you are an elf who had been stolen as a child."
"They think I am an elf?" she said, a look of pure shock and disbelief written on her features.
"You do look very much like one, you know," said Haldir, growing nervous at the expression on her face.
"I know what I look like," she snapped, "but no one has ever thought of me as an elf before... I always just looked like one to my people. I can't even imagine..."
"Yet again, it seems that I am forgotten. But if you agree to the terms, then put on this cloak and be sure that it covers you well. The last thing we need is to have an elf dressed like an orc walk through a village so close to the outskirts," said Haldir, handing her a long cloak when she gave an unfeeling nod.
Erashnak swept the cloak over her shoulders and set the clasp below her throat, lifting the hood to mask her face. And once again she was surrounded by the scent of Haldir, though it seemed more comforting than frightening now. He was right - he was the only one left for her to trust. She had no choice.
"Perfectly mysterious," he sighed, knowing that there would soon be just as many questions asked about the hooded figure as there would have been about Erashnak without a cloak. "Follow closely - and remember our agreement."
Erashnak wrapped the loose end of the cloak around herself in reply, assuring that it would not fall open. Well, everyone will know she's a woman, thought Haldir, massaging his temples for a moment before striking off toward the light once more.
The forest melted away, and sunlight broke over Erashnak in warmth and beauty. It didn't take but a moment for at least a dozen elves to come into view, and at first she crowded closer to the relative familiarity of Haldir, feeling like an ant caught between the hammer and the anvil. But then the bright colors of the market and the soothing voices of elvish instruments came to her senses, and Haldir was forced to take her by the arm to make her keep walking and not veer.
"I thought you were afraid of the elves?" he grinned, enjoying the sparkle in her strange eyes and the entranced smile on her lips as she elbowed him angrily in the ribs when she couldn't pull away.
But the struggle was soon forgotten by Erashnak as she stared in awe, taking in the sight and smell of the village as if it were a fine wine. It was alien, but intoxicating, and she felt lost for where her eyes should turn first. Lingering scents that she couldn't name drifted about the calm, ageless beauty around her, and she wondered what that color was called that that man was wearing, and what was that instrument whose voice was floating in the breeze like the wind's own melody, and how did that woman make her hair twist that way in such an ornate braid...
"Era?" whispered Haldir, tugging on her arm a bit less than gently. "You have to keep walking. It isn't far. And perhaps when you look slightly more elf-like we might take a walk through the market if you wish."
Erashnak jumped to attention, staring at him with the most surprised look he had ever seen. Had he just used her nickname, the name that all of her family had used since she was a baby? How had he...
"But we have to get to the house, first," he said, his smile growing lopsided with sarcasm. "Then perhaps we can make a deal."
"Y-yes," said Erashnak, her voice wavering for a moment. Best just walk and think later...
She let Haldir lead her past the thick of the village, at war with herself as to whether she should snatch back her arm or just let him keep it. Deciding that it wasn't worth seeing that look on his face again, she let him drag her where he would, her every motion a bit overly subdued. But that didn't stop her from looking.
"Haldir!" exclaimed a very pleased voice, and Erashnak snapped her eyes toward the slender figure who was coming toward them. "You took so long I was getting worried..."
Haldir ignored her concern, turning to Erashnak.
"This is my cousin Luinhuinë, partner in mischief since we were hardly old enough to walk. She has been kind enough to insist, command, and insist again that we take advantage of the courtesies of her house. She isn't as evil as she appears," he smiled, and Erashnak could hardly help but return the expression, though she really didn't feel like it at the moment. "Luinhuinë, this is Atalante."
"You are welcome here, Atalante, though I fear your escort may have to go and try to find shelter elsewhere. Perhaps the stables, or a nice pigsty... I hear that the byres are very comfortable as well..."
Obviously she had said something amusing, because Haldir laughed and Luinhuinë's warm smile became even larger. But as for Erashnak, they might as well have been speaking elvish, which they were not. Haldir must have explained at least that much, she sighed. Only bits and pieces of their conversation made sense to her, but she thought she could catch the general drift and decided to act on it. Luinhuinë may have been an elf, but at her present attitude she was rather appealing.
"Thank you for your kindness," she replied, and Haldir's eyebrows shot up at the kindness of her own words. This he hadn't expected. "But do not be too cruel to Haldir - he should be shown the same kindness that he has shown me. Perhaps you have a cellar that he could find room in..."
This time it was Luinhuinë who laughed, and Haldir's face was so full of mock abhorrence (and less-than-mock annoyance) that she had to look down at the ground for a moment to keep herself from laughing as well. It was a dangerous situation, these two women getting along so well and setting the score against him, thought Haldir.
"From now on I will not believe a single word about fear that comes out of your mouth... or any word, for that matter," he whispered in her ear, and she was forced to suppress a snort.
"Your cousin is very much like you, and I am not a complete dotard," she tried to snap, a hard thing to do as a whisper, especially while fighting off the infectious laughter of Luinhuinë. They were very much alike indeed, and even she was surprised that she had been caught up in their fun, even if she had been a bit more serious. It is a strange world...
"Come, before our insults attract too much attention. This way," said Luinhuinë, and Haldir gave Erashnak a strangely playful glare before he turned them to follow her. They act like children together, Erashnak smiled. Like brother and sister. Obviously the years did not lie as heavily over them as she had thought.
Soon they found themselves before a grand and beautiful house, not as large as their house in the deep wood, or so said Luinhuinë. But still, to Erashnak, it was a very large building. It was not in a tree, mallorns being scarce so close to the borders, but a ground house that seemed as if it had grown up from the earth, encompassing tree and stream with beauty and grace. Not as grand as more official houses, said Haldir, but it seemed grand enough.
Luinhuinë's house was home to much of her extensive family, some of whom stayed in the winter and some of whom did not. There were several others living there that were not related, but close friends of the family. But there was no doubt that Luinhuinë was the lady of the house, and one could tell even by the simple way that she accepted shouts of greeting as they neared.
"I fear my husband is away," said Luinhuinë with an apologetic smile, "but I am certain that he would extend his fondest greetings to you and a good word to take back to your house and kin as well."
"And when he returns, you will be sure to give him my thanks," said Haldir. "It is really too bad that he isn't here. I think you would have liked him, Atalante. Another sly, terrible friend of mine."
Erashnak sighed, shaking her head more to clear it out that at Haldir. The two cousins might seem as if they were just another part of her new view of the world, but they were not, she remembered suddenly, realizing that Haldir too must live in a grand, large house of kin and friends. Perhaps he was even the lord of it, for all she knew. Obviously they were both of the higher circles among elves. And that dreadful, empty, anxious feeling was beginning to gnaw at her stomach again. This wasn't her place. It wasn't where she belonged. But, she found herself realizing, one day soon it just might have to become her place. She didn't have many choices left to her.
Luinhuinë was swift to pull Erashnak away from her gawking at the beauty of the house they had entered, and the orc hardly kept herself from starting away with a yelp. The elf might not have been a far cry from Haldir, but Erashnak was by no way even that comfortable around her new acquaintance. But she forced herself to calm, remembering their deal.
Soon she found herself in a room made entirely of large squares of smoothed stone all around, the air moist with steam and the scent of sweet flowers. It lowered Erashnak's tense awareness at once, and she felt lost in her battle to regain it from the soft atmosphere about her.
Luinhuinë unclasped her cloak and threw it in a pile to be washed. Her eyebrows lifted and her eyes widened for a minute as if she hadn't actually believed that Erashnak would be dressed as an orc. Erashnak, startled by the sudden movement, simply stared back. Suddenly the elf seemed to snap back to reality and pointed to a basin of steaming water and a pile of thick cloths and towels.
"Strip all of those filthy clothes off, and see if you can't get off some of that grime before we have you soak in a bath for a while and see what we can do about your hair."
Erashnak stared at her for a minute, not quit understanding what was going on, and pointedly ignoring the word 'we' for the time being. But the fragrance of the air was too calming for her not to obey, and the orc did as she was told. Luinhuinë had left for a moment, leaving Erashnak alone to tackle the dark smudges of dirt and clots of blood that adorned her pale skin, being careful to avoid cuts and bruises with a gentle touch.
By the time that Luinhuinë returned, the water in the basin was near black.
"Good," she said, her warm smile annoyingly infectious. Suddenly Erashnak knew what the elf had meant by 'we,' as several elf-maids followed her into the room. Erashnak had never felt so timid and exposed. "Into the bath," said the elf cheerfully, and so it was into a large tub of hot water for the orc.
Erashnak grimaced with discomfort at first - there was no such thing as hot water in Moria, though the water might have seemed only warm to the elves. But after a time her skin grew used to it, and it slowly began feeling more and more pleasant. The handmaidens soon attacked her skin and her hair with sweet-smelling soap, but she was feeling too drowsy in the warmth to mind all that very much, vaguely wondering what was wrong with her mind at the moment.
Luinhuinë stood back, glancing at the pile of orcish clothing with little less than disdain before she turned her eye to Erashnak once more. Now having a good reason to watch her and not be considered rude by anyone but herself, she found her eyes unconsciously evaluating her cousin's new charge.
She was short, strangely so, shorter than any of the elves that she was used to. Her eyes could hardly be level with Haldir's chin, and he himself was not exactly an alarmingly tall person. But her hips and shoulders were quite broad - a human would think hers a body very desirable, well-formed for child birth, but only indecision lit in the elf's mind. She had never met an elf who was anything more or less than tall and thin, though she certainly wasn't well fed. Where stronger curves were made by stronger bones, the softer curves of a woman's body were just not there. And she was appalled to see the overwhelming discoloration of bruises that covered the girl's skin, darkening it to a wretched appearance that was almost beyond her, traced with the thin, or not so thin, lines of angry red cuts. She puzzled over this for a moment, never having seen the effects of true poverty so close, and understanding none of it.
But overall, she wasn't entirely unpleasant to the eye. Her own eyes were an astonishing pale shade of watery gray-blue, like nothing she'd ever seen before in all the long years of her life. One could not tell where white ended and color began, it just flowered in from the black that centers every eye, a blue like deep water. Like looking down into the depths of a limestone spring at the vast caverns below that could never truly be seen. They were the kind of eyes that bore so much more than the tiny surface window could show. Deep, endless wells. There was something feral about her eyes, and about her every feature, and something powerful.
Her lips had a pleasant curve of a beautiful shade, full enough to be pretty. Her hair was a color too strange and vague to be considered unbeautiful. For all of her particularities, she seemed of a normal structure, not deformed or permanently marred in any truly noticeable or terrible way, with skin an alluring shade, not so pale as it was dark, or perhaps not so dark as it was pale. Definitely not the most beautiful creature ever born, thought Luinhuinë, but in a world dominated by fair beauty, it was the exotic who caught the men's eyes. Young, ambitious men most often, the ones who always seek the different, the ones who draw gazes. And the one she knew as Atalante was definitely this - exotic was the only true word that could be used to describe her. A very rare, exotic thing indeed.
"I'll be right back with something fitting for you to wear," said Luinhuinë. "It might take a while to find something that suits you. Do a good job with her hair, mind. I simply can't wait to see what it looks like clean and dry."
With that she was gone, and Erashnak sighed. They must have thought that she had nits or something along those lines, for they had been scrubbing her scalp through several layers of skin and she was hanging by the last thread of her patience and her sanity. It seemed very much like the entire world had gone upside down, and she had a good mind to have a word with Haldir whenever they decided to free her from their clutches.
~*~
"The orcs grow bolder everyday," said the elf who was sitting at Haldir's right. "And stranger in their deeds," he added then.
"Yes," said the elf on his left, "it makes one wonder just what they think sometimes... though I doubt very much that I would like to know."
"Indeed," said Haldir, though his mind was not on the word. Actually, he would quite like to know what they thought about and why they acted as they did... no doubt a stem from the idea that Erashnak had planted in his mind - perhaps they underestimated the orcs in many things.
"It makes me wonder why the girl was with them. Has she told you? She didn't seem so relived as she did cautious, even fearful. Do you think she might be touched in the wits?" asked another elf, sitting somewhere toward the right.
"No, I believe, is the answer to both questions. Her wits are perhaps a bit too sharp, and she hasn't told me much of anything. She was raised by the orcs, though. I know as much, and no more."
It was true - Haldir did know that she was raised by the orcs. As a daughter, of course, not a slave, but they most certainly didn't need to know about that.
"I suppose -" began the elf on the left, but he was cut short by the arrival of Luinhuinë, and Haldir sighed at his rescue. "Greetings, milady," the other elf ended instead, and she smiled.
"Greetings in turn, I assure you. But perhaps you would wish to see the subject of your conversation once more before supper? Come here, Atalante! You don't have to be shy," she added in the common tongue.
Shy, thought the orc in disdain as she looked at herself in Luinhuinë's fine silver mirror. The creature who was gazing back at her was so frightfully elf-like that she didn't quite know what to do with herself. Sighing, she turned away and walked toward the elf's voice.
She could smell the lingering fragrance of flowers on her skin as it mingled with her own familiar scent. But now the scent of her mother, of her family, and even of Haldir, was gone. She felt cut off from her own word, placed in this clean, pretty world as suddenly as she could blink, even before the pain of losing her old world had worn away. And now she was a 'subject,' a thing for people to look at with extremes of before and after. She felt so empty she wondered if she would ever be full again.
As she turned into the light Haldir felt his eyebrows raise and knew that those of his company had raised too. The strange hooded creature that they had known, and the orcish elf, or elfish orc, that he had known, was gone. It was an elf maiden who stood before them, strange and drawing to the eye, inviting stares of evaluation, though most definitely not intentionally.
She was clad in a modest dress, pure white with no decoration, its long sleeves falling in flared waves. Even the neckline was simple and clean-cut. But Erashnak had felt uncomfortable even this exposed, though Luinhuinë had wondered why. The sleeves cupped her shoulders well enough, and the free-forming dress was more modest in neckline and waist than most elves would have preferred. But her hips and shoulders did fill it out nicely.
Erashnak had been surprised that there was only one skirt to the dress, being used to many more layers in her clothing. It felt like she was wearing nothing more than one of those sheet-things wrapped around her. In her opinion it wasn't much better than walking about naked, though Luinhuinë had laughed at this. But she had to admit, she felt so light and... well... pretty, that she couldn't help but smile.
Her hair had been braided intricately in elvish fashion, a bit more ornate than he was used to, Haldir noticed, and it flowed down her back in a cascade of pale, vague darknesses and lights. It wasn't wavy or straight like most elvish hair, but almost straight. He hadn't noticed that her hair was so many different lengths, full of the cuts and pulls of the years, and the ends curled ever so slightly, with a bit of fine texture. It caught the sunlight as it poured through the open balcony doors and took up a dull golden sheen. Very strange, just like the rest of her.
Erashnak stood straight, with her shoulders tilted back even as her hands were clasped before her, as Luinhuinë had told her to. In this stance Haldir could see the outline of the bottom of her ribcage against the fabric of her dress, and several ribs as well. And there was a pointed boniness about her hips and shoulders too, he noticed, and a gaunt darkness about her cheeks, but he returned her smile without letting himself linger on it for too long. Her skin was naturally dark, and yet pale at the same time. It was strange, yes, but alluring. He feared she would find herself too strange and mysterious for her own good.
Luinhuinë said that the supper would be served very shortly, and the men got up to join her at the table. Haldir was a bit wary to approach Erashnak's wicked, strained smile, but found himself walking toward her anyway.
"I'm going to kill you," she breathed between her teeth, "very slowly."
Haldir laughed, ignoring her scowl. "Whatever for?"
"For not being forced to go through that yourself, you murderous elf!"
Haldir chuckled again. "No, but I suppose you would have much rather sat here and defended yourself, of course? But don't even bother to tell me that you don't feel better. I can see the opposite on your face."
"Really," she nearly hissed. "They scraped off so much clotted blood that I turned the water pink, Haldir. And might I add that bruises and scrubbing do not go well together in any atmosphere? And I won't be able to touch my hair for a week, the scalp is so sore."
"You're exaggerating. But I'm glad you feel that you can come and complain to me," he smirked.
"I have to complain to someone," she murmured, and thought more than once about kicking him in the shin.
"But you do feel better?"
"Yes......." she sighed at his prodding. "It does feel nice to be able to walk about without a cloak on, and I do think I like this smell..."
Haldir laughed, and she stared at him indignantly.
"I was being serious."
"And that, Era, was why it was so amusing."
Erashnak's eyes widened again, now certain that he had used her nickname. She hadn't known that they were so - close. But then again, he was the only elf who knew that she was not. It had only seemed natural when he had learned this, but now she realized that it was not natural at all. She had put a great amount of trust in him as soon as she told him her name. In fact, he was the only living being who even knew her real name. And though he might take full advantage of it at times, it was obvious that he trusted her.
'Why?' asked that little voice in her mind, and she shook her head that she didn't know the answer.
~*~
A/N #2: And there you have it, my fun with adjectives and metaphors chapter. You like?
A/N #1: Wow... This chapter really grew as I was writing it. I believe I'll just cut it in half and make two chapters out of it. And guess what? Now that they're talking, they won't shut up. -sigh-
DRUIDGIRL, you make me think too much. If my brain shrivels up into a raisin, I'm blaming you and sending you all of my homework. Gah... Lemme think. No, her mother was an orc, and her father was an orc, so she is technically one too. But she isn't the same... kind of like a subspecies or a hybrid of the two. Like... when she was conceived, for whatever reason, the Valar I guess stepped in and undid most of the damage that Morgoth inflicted on the elves that he captured all those years ago. As for all the rest, I'm afraid to say anymore because it will give away the plot :). And then my plot bunnies will become very angry and chew my leg off again. Sorry! But it is amusing though, that I would see this review just after writing about Haldir's idea of orcish elves and elvish orcs... I guess even he doesn't believe that she's a full orc. Which I guess is true... But she might as well be. And then again, she wrote herself into not talking about Haldir as an elf. You'll see.
And as for the rest of you, flattery will get you everywhere. *cough*
Chapter 5: A Matter of Trust
AKA: Anatomy of the beginning of an elvish/orcish friendship -OR- Do you really want her to trust you with her words?
~*~
"I believe you should stay here for now, and out of sight," said Haldir, shifting his eyes over Erashnak's orcish raiment. "Raising everyone's attentions will not do us any good. I shouldn't be too long..."
Erashnak gave a slow nod, her eyes flickering past the elf to stare at the snatches of white she could see, dancing on the other side of a particularly thick belt of trees whose leaves had caught a wind that she couldn't feel. Farther beyond that she thought she could see distant patches of the mellower green tones of forest clearings as they yawned up at the buttery afternoon sunlight. It felt as if she was standing in the evening when morning was no more than a hundred yards away.
Giving her a quizzical look Haldir hesitated for a moment, anxious about leaving the orc alone so close to an elven village, before turning around and starting toward the light with purposeful strides. It was a smaller settlement to be sure, with none of the mysterious beauty of Caras Galadhon. A farming village - supplier of meat and grains and vegetables both to itself, and to the larger cities that lie further in the deep wood, where farming land was scarce. It was more like the dwellings of other elven lands, with few talans save for those of the Guard, and many more ground houses. But it was not without its beauty, and a mortal would think it much a tribute to the crafts of the Eldar. But then, few have seen the city where Galadriel dwells. It was a fortunate thing - he shouldn't have any trouble finding a horse at all.
Blinking for a moment at the sudden light as he emerged from the trees, he suppressed the desire to glance back at the wood to make certain that she was out of sight. But Erashnak was cunning, he had learned as much, and he knew that she would remain unseen. So it had been when they had come across an outpost. The orc had melted into the forest as if she were but a breathing piece of shadow and earth while he confronted his brother in arms, gathering what news he could and giving as little as he could get away with.
With a smile and a nod to the mingling elves around him Haldir set his course toward the stables that the warden had spoken of, forcing his steps to a leisurely pace as he wove about the beautiful streets and the buildings about them. It may not have been the village proper, but the area seemed to be somewhat of a market, full of colors with a faint drift of music bleeding into the soft speech of the elven crowd. After many a turn and polite nod, a long, low, calmly ornate building came into view near the proper entrance of the land. It was a stable, no doubt, exactly where the guard had said it would be. In the distance he could see the stable master, deep in the work of brushing a fine tawny colt to a glow, and his strides became more purposeful.
"Haldir?"
The elf stopped, nearly spinning around as he heard his name being called out behind him. A woman just slightly shorter than himself and the exact image of his mother was hurrying toward him with graceful steps, her long halo of silver-gold hair caught in the wind. She stooped a bit as if to get a better look at him, and then continued on with the most beautiful smile he had seen since...
He almost frowned, thinking that it should be his mother's smile that he was thinking of, but it was most definitely not. No, the large, warm, easily attained smile that was the gift of almost every member of his family was not what was in his mind. It was the subtle, elusive smile of Erashnak, a smile that seemed to shift the worlds together in a confusion of her own emotions. But surely he was just caught up in his latest task - what he might laugh to call the taming of an orcish elf. Or something along those lines.
"Haldir! It IS you!" she exclaimed, and he couldn't help but laugh at her excitement at seeing him. "I knew it was you from the moment you walked into the village, strutting about as if you were nothing more than a farmer's son. I haven't seen you since before you became a Captain, do you realize? That is far too long! Whatever brings you here?"
She quickly dropped her basket as she caught him in a warm embrace, and Haldir let her infectious smile spread on as he held her out at arm's length and lifted an eyebrow at her mischievous blue gaze.
"I might ask the same of you, Luinhuinë. What force on this earth could drive you from the deep wood, cousin?"
Luinhuinë let her smile fall from its full strength to a softer, fond grin, clasping his hands in her own. "You know that we make our summer home here, Haldir. The deep wood might be wonderful in every way, but one must crave for freer air at least once in a while! It is fresh here, and so bright, not so dark and mysterious and the inner cities. But the weather is harsher, what with all of this wind, and we do take to the forest again when the winter comes to stay. You are lucky that we are still here, for all of this fair weather."
"Lucky indeed," he chuckled, as yet another gust of cool wind blew a lock of hair into her face, which she hastily swept away.
"But that still does not answer as to why you are here, my elusive little cousin," she said, folding her arms in less-than-mock demand.
Haldir looked over his cousin, the eldest daughter of his mother's sister and so very dear to his heart. They had nearly grown up together, they and their siblings, a right pack of little terrors, and some of them still upholding the name. He trusted her nearly as much as he trusted himself, he decided, being sure to imitate her expression.
"I was sidetracked on a mission, and I need to borrow a horse and be away," he said, giving a mild inclination of regret and hoping that she would let the subject drop and not go on with her shrewd little wiles. But it was not to be.
"Haldir, I dare say you could travel nearly as swift as a horse and arrive not far behind, even should you be going the full way back to Caras Galadhon. What is the hurry to do with, then?"
Haldir squared his shoulders with a disapproving glare set on his face, though it did nothing to quench the sparkle of mischief in her eyes. "You know that I simply cannot lie to you, do you not?" he asked, ignoring her exaggerations.
"Yes," Luinhuinë said, shifting her weight to one leg with arms still crossed in that unbelievably stubborn stance that all women seemed to posses.
"Then you would help me with a secret, would you not?" said Haldir, beginning to see the many positive possibilities of the situation. Yes, he was very lucky. Very lucky indeed.
"And what would that be...," she drew out, the look on her face spelling out very clearly that she was already well bought.
Haldir smiled. "You see, the mission on which I was sidetracked involved a strange movement of orcs. We staked out their encampment, only to find that there was an elf among them."
Luinhuinë's eyes widened with terror and delight. Haldir hesitated, amazed at how easy it was to forget that they weren't a feral band of elflings anymore.
"And?" she prodded, a fain light in her keen eyes.
"And so we had to be cautious. But as it turned out, she became separated in the attack, and I was forced to follow her. A swift little thing, her, fleet as a forest doe. But she is injured and worn, beyond much that I have seen before. Without a horse it would take us perhaps three days to cross a distance that should take little more than one. Though she seems to be better off at the moment, I doubt it very much that she will last much longer," said Haldir, careful to avoid anything that might press the matter beyond his will. He had a very realistic idea about how easily his cousin's lips spoke.
"Oh," said Luinhuinë with sympathy, suddenly the lady of her house and fond playmate no longer. "Then I dare suppose she is in a horrid state. We'll take her to the house, and see her well cared for, and you with a horse if you won't stay the night. Such a dreadful thing to happen! You should have said something at once... I'll send a few handmaidens with the orders for fresh clothing and a bath... And our supper must be to impress. What else must we do?"
"Perhaps not to impress - I doubt that she could handle anything too rich or too sweet as of yet. Even an apple seemed to be a bit much for her, and I dare say that you could serve onions and grit and she would be well enough impressed."
"I think not," she said, lifting her eyebrows at such a notion. "But I will see if the menu might be calmed a bit. And you can expect no grit whatsoever in my house, whether you be there or not, Haldir. Sometimes I think you tease too much."
Haldir ignored his cousin's insults yet again and gave her a warm embrace, kissing her brow. "You are the most wonderful, Luinhuinë. My luck has never faired so well."
Luinhuinë gave a sly grin, eyeing her cousin like an older sister. "Yes, I know," she said, turning with a wave of her hand as they walked back toward the market and her patiently waiting handmaidens, deep in conversation. Her excitement was harder to ignore, though Haldir was soon to be having second thoughts. But it was his cousin's house, one of the safest places to introduce Erashnak to elvish life. Everything would be fine...
He could only hope that his good fortune would hold out.
~*~
"You can come out now, Erashnak," said Haldir, glancing around as if blind. He simply couldn't believe she could hide so well, and suddenly found himself wondering if she was still there.
Then came a slight movement to his left, so close he almost jumped, and then she was there, eyebrows raised.
"I can't believe you," he said, "you can make yourself blend in as if the forest has been your home from the dawn of all time. How you became so wickedly cunning I hesitate to ask."
Erashnak clasped her hands behind her back, nearly laughing - at him, he realized. There is that feral look again, thought Haldir, praying to the Valar that all of these women would never gang up on him, though he wouldn't mind watching if they attacked another.
"So now we are leaving again, I suppose," said Erashnak, inclining her head. At least she seemed to trust him with her words now.
"No," said Haldir, and she stared at him with widened eyes once more.
"Please don't look at me as if I've told you that the sky is orange, Erashnak. Or black, rather, with that scowl," he smiled, and Erashnak thought it was one of the most evil smiles she had ever seen, though it didn't strike as much fear in her as she had thought it would.
"No, I was surprised to meet my cousin here, a fine and wonderful woman, and she has insisted that we at least stay for a meal, and that she be allowed to have her handmaidens attend to you. Her eldest son is an apprentice healer, at that. And I fear that we will both fair better once you are clean and... more properly dressed."
"Clean..." Erashnak let the word roll off of her tongue, a look far from pleased adorning her features.
"Yes, I understand the implications as well, but I swear that you will feel much better afterward. And you will be more presentable to Galadriel, not to mention more presentable to every living elf and more."
"My life's very goal," she said, her lips curving in her own evil grin. But it was gone soon after, her stomach already churning with anxiousness. Her. In an elven city. "I've never even seen an elf before. How can you expect me to just walk into a city full of them?"
"And what am I, a dwarf?" he said, crossing his arms. "And it isn't a city, it's a village, and you will only be in it for a moment until we can get you to Luinhuinë's house. There won't be so many people there, and it will give you a chance to become used to a number of elves before we reach the city. You will be fine," he added then, frowning at her bleak expression.
"I still don't know why I should trust you," she said slowly, and he nearly shivered at the intensity she could convey in a single glance.
"Perhaps because I am the only one left for you to trust anymore... You may think you do not have a choice in the matter, and it is true that you really don't, in the end. But if you don't trust me, then trust that if you were going to be killed, you would already be rotting. Elves do not make prisoners of orcs."
Erashnak glared, but inclined her head, allowing for him to go on.
"And as for that, no hissing, and no snorting, and absolutely no orchish. You must be especially careful of that. They think you are an elf who had been stolen as a child."
"They think I am an elf?" she said, a look of pure shock and disbelief written on her features.
"You do look very much like one, you know," said Haldir, growing nervous at the expression on her face.
"I know what I look like," she snapped, "but no one has ever thought of me as an elf before... I always just looked like one to my people. I can't even imagine..."
"Yet again, it seems that I am forgotten. But if you agree to the terms, then put on this cloak and be sure that it covers you well. The last thing we need is to have an elf dressed like an orc walk through a village so close to the outskirts," said Haldir, handing her a long cloak when she gave an unfeeling nod.
Erashnak swept the cloak over her shoulders and set the clasp below her throat, lifting the hood to mask her face. And once again she was surrounded by the scent of Haldir, though it seemed more comforting than frightening now. He was right - he was the only one left for her to trust. She had no choice.
"Perfectly mysterious," he sighed, knowing that there would soon be just as many questions asked about the hooded figure as there would have been about Erashnak without a cloak. "Follow closely - and remember our agreement."
Erashnak wrapped the loose end of the cloak around herself in reply, assuring that it would not fall open. Well, everyone will know she's a woman, thought Haldir, massaging his temples for a moment before striking off toward the light once more.
The forest melted away, and sunlight broke over Erashnak in warmth and beauty. It didn't take but a moment for at least a dozen elves to come into view, and at first she crowded closer to the relative familiarity of Haldir, feeling like an ant caught between the hammer and the anvil. But then the bright colors of the market and the soothing voices of elvish instruments came to her senses, and Haldir was forced to take her by the arm to make her keep walking and not veer.
"I thought you were afraid of the elves?" he grinned, enjoying the sparkle in her strange eyes and the entranced smile on her lips as she elbowed him angrily in the ribs when she couldn't pull away.
But the struggle was soon forgotten by Erashnak as she stared in awe, taking in the sight and smell of the village as if it were a fine wine. It was alien, but intoxicating, and she felt lost for where her eyes should turn first. Lingering scents that she couldn't name drifted about the calm, ageless beauty around her, and she wondered what that color was called that that man was wearing, and what was that instrument whose voice was floating in the breeze like the wind's own melody, and how did that woman make her hair twist that way in such an ornate braid...
"Era?" whispered Haldir, tugging on her arm a bit less than gently. "You have to keep walking. It isn't far. And perhaps when you look slightly more elf-like we might take a walk through the market if you wish."
Erashnak jumped to attention, staring at him with the most surprised look he had ever seen. Had he just used her nickname, the name that all of her family had used since she was a baby? How had he...
"But we have to get to the house, first," he said, his smile growing lopsided with sarcasm. "Then perhaps we can make a deal."
"Y-yes," said Erashnak, her voice wavering for a moment. Best just walk and think later...
She let Haldir lead her past the thick of the village, at war with herself as to whether she should snatch back her arm or just let him keep it. Deciding that it wasn't worth seeing that look on his face again, she let him drag her where he would, her every motion a bit overly subdued. But that didn't stop her from looking.
"Haldir!" exclaimed a very pleased voice, and Erashnak snapped her eyes toward the slender figure who was coming toward them. "You took so long I was getting worried..."
Haldir ignored her concern, turning to Erashnak.
"This is my cousin Luinhuinë, partner in mischief since we were hardly old enough to walk. She has been kind enough to insist, command, and insist again that we take advantage of the courtesies of her house. She isn't as evil as she appears," he smiled, and Erashnak could hardly help but return the expression, though she really didn't feel like it at the moment. "Luinhuinë, this is Atalante."
"You are welcome here, Atalante, though I fear your escort may have to go and try to find shelter elsewhere. Perhaps the stables, or a nice pigsty... I hear that the byres are very comfortable as well..."
Obviously she had said something amusing, because Haldir laughed and Luinhuinë's warm smile became even larger. But as for Erashnak, they might as well have been speaking elvish, which they were not. Haldir must have explained at least that much, she sighed. Only bits and pieces of their conversation made sense to her, but she thought she could catch the general drift and decided to act on it. Luinhuinë may have been an elf, but at her present attitude she was rather appealing.
"Thank you for your kindness," she replied, and Haldir's eyebrows shot up at the kindness of her own words. This he hadn't expected. "But do not be too cruel to Haldir - he should be shown the same kindness that he has shown me. Perhaps you have a cellar that he could find room in..."
This time it was Luinhuinë who laughed, and Haldir's face was so full of mock abhorrence (and less-than-mock annoyance) that she had to look down at the ground for a moment to keep herself from laughing as well. It was a dangerous situation, these two women getting along so well and setting the score against him, thought Haldir.
"From now on I will not believe a single word about fear that comes out of your mouth... or any word, for that matter," he whispered in her ear, and she was forced to suppress a snort.
"Your cousin is very much like you, and I am not a complete dotard," she tried to snap, a hard thing to do as a whisper, especially while fighting off the infectious laughter of Luinhuinë. They were very much alike indeed, and even she was surprised that she had been caught up in their fun, even if she had been a bit more serious. It is a strange world...
"Come, before our insults attract too much attention. This way," said Luinhuinë, and Haldir gave Erashnak a strangely playful glare before he turned them to follow her. They act like children together, Erashnak smiled. Like brother and sister. Obviously the years did not lie as heavily over them as she had thought.
Soon they found themselves before a grand and beautiful house, not as large as their house in the deep wood, or so said Luinhuinë. But still, to Erashnak, it was a very large building. It was not in a tree, mallorns being scarce so close to the borders, but a ground house that seemed as if it had grown up from the earth, encompassing tree and stream with beauty and grace. Not as grand as more official houses, said Haldir, but it seemed grand enough.
Luinhuinë's house was home to much of her extensive family, some of whom stayed in the winter and some of whom did not. There were several others living there that were not related, but close friends of the family. But there was no doubt that Luinhuinë was the lady of the house, and one could tell even by the simple way that she accepted shouts of greeting as they neared.
"I fear my husband is away," said Luinhuinë with an apologetic smile, "but I am certain that he would extend his fondest greetings to you and a good word to take back to your house and kin as well."
"And when he returns, you will be sure to give him my thanks," said Haldir. "It is really too bad that he isn't here. I think you would have liked him, Atalante. Another sly, terrible friend of mine."
Erashnak sighed, shaking her head more to clear it out that at Haldir. The two cousins might seem as if they were just another part of her new view of the world, but they were not, she remembered suddenly, realizing that Haldir too must live in a grand, large house of kin and friends. Perhaps he was even the lord of it, for all she knew. Obviously they were both of the higher circles among elves. And that dreadful, empty, anxious feeling was beginning to gnaw at her stomach again. This wasn't her place. It wasn't where she belonged. But, she found herself realizing, one day soon it just might have to become her place. She didn't have many choices left to her.
Luinhuinë was swift to pull Erashnak away from her gawking at the beauty of the house they had entered, and the orc hardly kept herself from starting away with a yelp. The elf might not have been a far cry from Haldir, but Erashnak was by no way even that comfortable around her new acquaintance. But she forced herself to calm, remembering their deal.
Soon she found herself in a room made entirely of large squares of smoothed stone all around, the air moist with steam and the scent of sweet flowers. It lowered Erashnak's tense awareness at once, and she felt lost in her battle to regain it from the soft atmosphere about her.
Luinhuinë unclasped her cloak and threw it in a pile to be washed. Her eyebrows lifted and her eyes widened for a minute as if she hadn't actually believed that Erashnak would be dressed as an orc. Erashnak, startled by the sudden movement, simply stared back. Suddenly the elf seemed to snap back to reality and pointed to a basin of steaming water and a pile of thick cloths and towels.
"Strip all of those filthy clothes off, and see if you can't get off some of that grime before we have you soak in a bath for a while and see what we can do about your hair."
Erashnak stared at her for a minute, not quit understanding what was going on, and pointedly ignoring the word 'we' for the time being. But the fragrance of the air was too calming for her not to obey, and the orc did as she was told. Luinhuinë had left for a moment, leaving Erashnak alone to tackle the dark smudges of dirt and clots of blood that adorned her pale skin, being careful to avoid cuts and bruises with a gentle touch.
By the time that Luinhuinë returned, the water in the basin was near black.
"Good," she said, her warm smile annoyingly infectious. Suddenly Erashnak knew what the elf had meant by 'we,' as several elf-maids followed her into the room. Erashnak had never felt so timid and exposed. "Into the bath," said the elf cheerfully, and so it was into a large tub of hot water for the orc.
Erashnak grimaced with discomfort at first - there was no such thing as hot water in Moria, though the water might have seemed only warm to the elves. But after a time her skin grew used to it, and it slowly began feeling more and more pleasant. The handmaidens soon attacked her skin and her hair with sweet-smelling soap, but she was feeling too drowsy in the warmth to mind all that very much, vaguely wondering what was wrong with her mind at the moment.
Luinhuinë stood back, glancing at the pile of orcish clothing with little less than disdain before she turned her eye to Erashnak once more. Now having a good reason to watch her and not be considered rude by anyone but herself, she found her eyes unconsciously evaluating her cousin's new charge.
She was short, strangely so, shorter than any of the elves that she was used to. Her eyes could hardly be level with Haldir's chin, and he himself was not exactly an alarmingly tall person. But her hips and shoulders were quite broad - a human would think hers a body very desirable, well-formed for child birth, but only indecision lit in the elf's mind. She had never met an elf who was anything more or less than tall and thin, though she certainly wasn't well fed. Where stronger curves were made by stronger bones, the softer curves of a woman's body were just not there. And she was appalled to see the overwhelming discoloration of bruises that covered the girl's skin, darkening it to a wretched appearance that was almost beyond her, traced with the thin, or not so thin, lines of angry red cuts. She puzzled over this for a moment, never having seen the effects of true poverty so close, and understanding none of it.
But overall, she wasn't entirely unpleasant to the eye. Her own eyes were an astonishing pale shade of watery gray-blue, like nothing she'd ever seen before in all the long years of her life. One could not tell where white ended and color began, it just flowered in from the black that centers every eye, a blue like deep water. Like looking down into the depths of a limestone spring at the vast caverns below that could never truly be seen. They were the kind of eyes that bore so much more than the tiny surface window could show. Deep, endless wells. There was something feral about her eyes, and about her every feature, and something powerful.
Her lips had a pleasant curve of a beautiful shade, full enough to be pretty. Her hair was a color too strange and vague to be considered unbeautiful. For all of her particularities, she seemed of a normal structure, not deformed or permanently marred in any truly noticeable or terrible way, with skin an alluring shade, not so pale as it was dark, or perhaps not so dark as it was pale. Definitely not the most beautiful creature ever born, thought Luinhuinë, but in a world dominated by fair beauty, it was the exotic who caught the men's eyes. Young, ambitious men most often, the ones who always seek the different, the ones who draw gazes. And the one she knew as Atalante was definitely this - exotic was the only true word that could be used to describe her. A very rare, exotic thing indeed.
"I'll be right back with something fitting for you to wear," said Luinhuinë. "It might take a while to find something that suits you. Do a good job with her hair, mind. I simply can't wait to see what it looks like clean and dry."
With that she was gone, and Erashnak sighed. They must have thought that she had nits or something along those lines, for they had been scrubbing her scalp through several layers of skin and she was hanging by the last thread of her patience and her sanity. It seemed very much like the entire world had gone upside down, and she had a good mind to have a word with Haldir whenever they decided to free her from their clutches.
~*~
"The orcs grow bolder everyday," said the elf who was sitting at Haldir's right. "And stranger in their deeds," he added then.
"Yes," said the elf on his left, "it makes one wonder just what they think sometimes... though I doubt very much that I would like to know."
"Indeed," said Haldir, though his mind was not on the word. Actually, he would quite like to know what they thought about and why they acted as they did... no doubt a stem from the idea that Erashnak had planted in his mind - perhaps they underestimated the orcs in many things.
"It makes me wonder why the girl was with them. Has she told you? She didn't seem so relived as she did cautious, even fearful. Do you think she might be touched in the wits?" asked another elf, sitting somewhere toward the right.
"No, I believe, is the answer to both questions. Her wits are perhaps a bit too sharp, and she hasn't told me much of anything. She was raised by the orcs, though. I know as much, and no more."
It was true - Haldir did know that she was raised by the orcs. As a daughter, of course, not a slave, but they most certainly didn't need to know about that.
"I suppose -" began the elf on the left, but he was cut short by the arrival of Luinhuinë, and Haldir sighed at his rescue. "Greetings, milady," the other elf ended instead, and she smiled.
"Greetings in turn, I assure you. But perhaps you would wish to see the subject of your conversation once more before supper? Come here, Atalante! You don't have to be shy," she added in the common tongue.
Shy, thought the orc in disdain as she looked at herself in Luinhuinë's fine silver mirror. The creature who was gazing back at her was so frightfully elf-like that she didn't quite know what to do with herself. Sighing, she turned away and walked toward the elf's voice.
She could smell the lingering fragrance of flowers on her skin as it mingled with her own familiar scent. But now the scent of her mother, of her family, and even of Haldir, was gone. She felt cut off from her own word, placed in this clean, pretty world as suddenly as she could blink, even before the pain of losing her old world had worn away. And now she was a 'subject,' a thing for people to look at with extremes of before and after. She felt so empty she wondered if she would ever be full again.
As she turned into the light Haldir felt his eyebrows raise and knew that those of his company had raised too. The strange hooded creature that they had known, and the orcish elf, or elfish orc, that he had known, was gone. It was an elf maiden who stood before them, strange and drawing to the eye, inviting stares of evaluation, though most definitely not intentionally.
She was clad in a modest dress, pure white with no decoration, its long sleeves falling in flared waves. Even the neckline was simple and clean-cut. But Erashnak had felt uncomfortable even this exposed, though Luinhuinë had wondered why. The sleeves cupped her shoulders well enough, and the free-forming dress was more modest in neckline and waist than most elves would have preferred. But her hips and shoulders did fill it out nicely.
Erashnak had been surprised that there was only one skirt to the dress, being used to many more layers in her clothing. It felt like she was wearing nothing more than one of those sheet-things wrapped around her. In her opinion it wasn't much better than walking about naked, though Luinhuinë had laughed at this. But she had to admit, she felt so light and... well... pretty, that she couldn't help but smile.
Her hair had been braided intricately in elvish fashion, a bit more ornate than he was used to, Haldir noticed, and it flowed down her back in a cascade of pale, vague darknesses and lights. It wasn't wavy or straight like most elvish hair, but almost straight. He hadn't noticed that her hair was so many different lengths, full of the cuts and pulls of the years, and the ends curled ever so slightly, with a bit of fine texture. It caught the sunlight as it poured through the open balcony doors and took up a dull golden sheen. Very strange, just like the rest of her.
Erashnak stood straight, with her shoulders tilted back even as her hands were clasped before her, as Luinhuinë had told her to. In this stance Haldir could see the outline of the bottom of her ribcage against the fabric of her dress, and several ribs as well. And there was a pointed boniness about her hips and shoulders too, he noticed, and a gaunt darkness about her cheeks, but he returned her smile without letting himself linger on it for too long. Her skin was naturally dark, and yet pale at the same time. It was strange, yes, but alluring. He feared she would find herself too strange and mysterious for her own good.
Luinhuinë said that the supper would be served very shortly, and the men got up to join her at the table. Haldir was a bit wary to approach Erashnak's wicked, strained smile, but found himself walking toward her anyway.
"I'm going to kill you," she breathed between her teeth, "very slowly."
Haldir laughed, ignoring her scowl. "Whatever for?"
"For not being forced to go through that yourself, you murderous elf!"
Haldir chuckled again. "No, but I suppose you would have much rather sat here and defended yourself, of course? But don't even bother to tell me that you don't feel better. I can see the opposite on your face."
"Really," she nearly hissed. "They scraped off so much clotted blood that I turned the water pink, Haldir. And might I add that bruises and scrubbing do not go well together in any atmosphere? And I won't be able to touch my hair for a week, the scalp is so sore."
"You're exaggerating. But I'm glad you feel that you can come and complain to me," he smirked.
"I have to complain to someone," she murmured, and thought more than once about kicking him in the shin.
"But you do feel better?"
"Yes......." she sighed at his prodding. "It does feel nice to be able to walk about without a cloak on, and I do think I like this smell..."
Haldir laughed, and she stared at him indignantly.
"I was being serious."
"And that, Era, was why it was so amusing."
Erashnak's eyes widened again, now certain that he had used her nickname. She hadn't known that they were so - close. But then again, he was the only elf who knew that she was not. It had only seemed natural when he had learned this, but now she realized that it was not natural at all. She had put a great amount of trust in him as soon as she told him her name. In fact, he was the only living being who even knew her real name. And though he might take full advantage of it at times, it was obvious that he trusted her.
'Why?' asked that little voice in her mind, and she shook her head that she didn't know the answer.
~*~
A/N #2: And there you have it, my fun with adjectives and metaphors chapter. You like?