"Eärwen, sister, you really must do something about all this bindweed."

"Do something?"

"I believe one pulls it up and burns it. Not that I do such things myself, of course."

"Anairë! Bindweed is a beautiful flower!"

"And a noxious weed."

The malinorni of Arafinwë's garden were grown very tall, their golden tops whispering in the wind above the protection of the garden wall. No bindweed could have damaged them now; but there were other, smaller trees from which the offending, open-throated, ivory trumpets blared defiance. The sight was repulsive to Anairë's eye.

"Artanis says there is no such thing as a weed. All plants have an equal claim to life in their proper places."

"Trust me, Eärwen, the proper place for bindweed is not in your garden... It must be nice to have Artanis home again."

"Well," Eärwen replied, a little hesitantly. "It is lovely, of course, but - I believe she will need a little more time to settle in. She does brood rather around the house."

"Ah, she sounds like Findekáno! He is insufferable whenever Fëanáro takes Maitimo away."

"...And she does seem to take up rather a lot of space."

.~.~.~.~.

He kissed her. He could never get enough of kissing her. He loved to bury his face within the waterfall of her dark hair, the inheritance of a Noldorin grandmother, and to lose himself within the exquisite fragrance of it. Losselótë's hair smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine. He loved, too, simply to sit and watch her: the perfect grace of her movements, her way of tossing back her hair in almost an impatient gesture and then turning her deep grey eyes on him with a look of softening love.

The House of Fëanáro had made their camp on the dark sand of a beach, north of Alqualondë. Very little light filtered around the mountains in this place; and yet, so long as there was enough to show him the pearly gleam of his wife's skin, Curufinwë could not have cared less for the darkness.

As he lay at her side, he would sometimes wonder if something so utterly perfect as Losselótë could actually be true and be his. Was it not possible that he would wake into some Day and find she had been nothing but a dream of Lórien?

Then he would lift himself on one elbow and look at her face by the starlight. He had discovered that that tiny movement, or perhaps his very scrutiny, would often bring a glimmer of wakefulness into her darkly liquid eyes.

When, sleepily, she whispered words of love to him, the pure clarity of her voice was sweeter than any music in Aman. It struck silver against his ear, like the call of the lómelindë who sings in darkness.