1213

"Amma," said a small voice. Two small hands clasped themselves around Indis' leg.

"What is it, selde?"

"Do you love me?"

"Yes," Indis said, lifting the child into her lap. It was beginning to be a stretch; Írien Lalwendë was more solid than she looked. "Yes, my darling, of course I love you!"

Lalwendë peered quizzically up into her mother's face. She revered Indis' loveliness and grace as she would a Valië, unaware that the promise of great beauty was already apparent in the unformed lines of her own face. It was not quite the same kind of beauty. Lalwen at ten Years was an exuberant, round-cheeked, almost chubby urchin with a mass of tangled hair of an exquisite deep honey colour.

They were all lovely beyond measure to Indis. Lalwen was the baby of the family. Nolofinwë - the second oldest and second youngest, his mother's darling, Lalwen's private god, Findis' partner in crime of his older sister and the irritation of Fëanáro - grew more like his father every Year. Only his eyes were of Indis: a deep and uniform grey.

Findis, the firstborn, her name a weird combination of Finwë and Indis, was dark-haired too, belonging to a different school of beauty again. A strange child, Findis, not shy, never shy, but reserved to the last degree and fiercely independent. Seeming always several Years older than she actually was, already becoming a focus of male attention, she would as soon have flown around the palace atrium on wings of gold as she would have gone around asking people if they loved her or not.

"Amma?"

"Yes, Lalwen?"

"Are you sure you love me?"

"Yes, little bee."

Indis loved her children fiercely, tenderly, madly. Later she would look back on this time, while they were still subject to her authority and never far from the circle of her arms, as the golden summit of her life. And yet they were only the crown of the many blessings that had fallen to her lot. She was much loved, not only by her husband, who doted on her publicly, but by most of the people of Tirion, for her naturally regal bearing made her an excellent queen.

Though she was still young, her adolescence in Tirion and on Taniquetil had come to seem almost as distant as her childhood in Middle-earth, eclipsed by the delights of the present. Sometimes she would stand by the Mindon, gazing up at its height and trying to imagine herself inside, lying on her bed and dreaming of all that she now possessed. There had been no warden since her parents' departure for Taniquetil; the office, indeed, had never been more than ceremonial. Even during Rilmo's time, the lamp had really been maintained by three servants, who now did their job just as well without him.

As for the city of the Vanyar on Taniquetil, it was as it had been from its beginning, beautiful and unchanging almost as the halls of Manwë that overshadowed it. Since Indis' return to Tirion, the only events of note to occur there had been the marriage of her cousin Ingwion and the birth of his little sister, Ilmarien, a playmate of Nolofinwë's, though she was nearer in age to Findis.

Indis often contemplated the fact that, if it had not been for that one meeting on the mountain, she would probably never have left the house of Ingwë. This filled her with confusion and a vague sense of the need for her to make the most of her impossible good fortune, never feeling resentment for such little unavoidable things as the presence of Míriel's tapestries on every wall of the palace, for example.

So when they made love, if ever Finwë cried out the name of another, she pretended not to hear, just as she pretended not to see Fëanáro's continued dislike for her. It made little difference, after all. Her stepson was married now and had a house of his own.

Finwë was one of the many in the city who had felt, not affronted, but faintly bewildered by this marriage, bearing in mind his son's extremely young age and the fact that his proposed bride was neither highborn - her father was a coppersmith - nor beautiful.

Indis for her part could see no mystery in Fëanáro's choice. What mattered most to him were his twin obsessions with exploration and the crafts of the hand, both of which the young woman shared in full measure. As for looks, well, Nerdanel of Eldamar-outside-Tirion was not ugly; she was merely not immediately beautiful or pretty. Nor, seemingly, was the girl herself troubled by her appearance. She looked out at the world without shame or artifice. Indis liked that.