Eversummer
TA 2940, July 7th.
"Why so nervous, Firekeeper?"
Jumping as a startled deer would, Aínwar glanced up at her sudden visitor. The honey-haired elven woman — Nüllewen — stood at the end of the table, a book in her arms and a detached smile on her face. It was rather strange, seeing her fully clothed and in a crowded, public setting such as the library, especially after having not seen her once after their even stranger encounter in the bathhouse.
Nobody had ever approached her in the library, and she often found herself wishing for company — but now, with Nüllewen looming above her like a hawk converging on its prey, she felt even more vulnerable than before.
"Do I look nervous?" she asked sheepishly.
"Your foot," Nüllewen said, amused. "It was bouncing."
Indeed, it had been.
Aínwar pressed her fist to her knee and forced it steady, the sharp edge of her nails cutting into her palm like hot iron. "I didn't think I was being so obvious about it. Is...is there something I can do for you?"
"Not at all," said Nüllewen, delicately seating herself in the opposite chair. "I often see you alone here and thought you would like the company. I mostly come alone too, although not for anything as ambitious as that—" She nodded at Aínwar's book, then held up her own. "My interest lies mainly in military formations."
Of all the things, Aínwar hadn't been expecting that. "But I—"
"Have never seen me leave for the border in armor?" Nüllewen said jokingly. "That's because I'm captain of the calvary, the mounted forces. But I'm sure you have seen few horses around here…it's a small unit, indeed, and far more prominent in lands like Imladris and Lothlórien, where the surrounding valleys are suitable for equine strategies. But it is an important one nonetheless, and I like to keep my mind sharp."
Aínwar had never seen evidence of stables in Mirkwood. The Matron Mother, in her stories of how horses bravely carried their masters into war, had described them in great detail: prancing beasts with flowing manes, graced with godly winds that gave them exceptional speed beneath their hooves.
"Have you ever ridden before?" Nüllewen asked.
Not exactly, Aínwar thought.
Once, when she was teaching herself to hunt, her arrow had gravely missed its mark and failed to slay the elk she had been targeting. Cursing, she had pursued it with her dagger and, like an idiot, jumped upon its back. The elk had spooked and galloped away, and though she tried to hold on, its gaits had been so jarringly uneven that she had fallen off before ever having the chance to stab the damn thing.
"I haven't," she admitted. "But I'd like to see one very much. Where are they kept?"
"There's a way through the dungeons. I'll show you myself. And though I adore my horses and would never imply they are a lesser type of beast, I cannot promise they're as magnificent mounts as…say, a dragon."
Aínwar laughed. "Now where do these ridiculous rumors keep coming from?"
"They call you 'dragon rider,'" said Nüllewen with mock seriousness.
"I'm sure they also say I wear armor and ride them into battle like some kind of warrior princess, don't they?" Aínwar exclaimed. "Honestly. Dragons are proud to a fault, you know. Most of them would eat me alive if I even dared to ask for such a favor. Like I said in the bathhouse, I'm nothing worthy of gossip, and I meant it!"
"Yes, well…" Nüllewen's smile faded, and their brief levity quickly turned to uncomfortable silence. "Speaking of…I wanted to apologize for our unusual meeting in the bathhouse. I didn't mean for you to see any animosity between the captain of the guard and myself. We have a long and complicated history. But it's a private matter. One she should not have displayed for all to see…especially you."
Aínwar had no idea how to respond. She loved Tauriel dearly and couldn't help but think this apology sounded more like an accusation.
"And, of course, it should've been about you from the beginning," Nüllewen continued, leaning forward with her hands folded, "and shouldn't have so quickly sidetracked to King Thranduil. I want to know more about you, I honestly do...but I cannot help concerning myself in his affairs."
She also wanted to point out that this conversation was, somehow, already making its way back to Thranduil, but again said nothing.
"Him and I have been close confidantes for many years, and…well, many young and impressionable ellith often visit from other kingdoms and get…ideas." Nüllewen was still smiling, but her eyes had grown tight and wintry. "Many of them wrongfully assume that she will be different, that she has the beauty to bewitch his eye. And though Tauriel loves our king deeply and faithfully, as do all his subjects…I fear that, in her misdirected care, she promotes the false hope that there even is a chance at the crown."
Despite all of her years in the waste, alone and far from the influence of darkness, Aínwar was no stranger to cunning. Dragons quite enjoyed their games of tongue and venom.
She knew a snake when she saw one.
"Allow me to make it clear, then," she said with what she hoped came off as syrupy sincerity. "I have my own subjects to serve, and once my business is done here, I shall return to what is rightfully mine. I have no desire to claim faraway lands, and I certainly have no interest in the throne of Mirkwood."
Nüllewen looked relieved. She touched Aínwar's hand…but her skin was cold and hard, much like stone.
"Very good, then. I'm glad for your honesty," she said, giving a smile that rivaled even Darothil's in its mischievous enthusiasm. "So with that under the rug, I want to know who makes your bounce your leg like that? Who has captured your heart so ardently? Don't tell me it's that lieutenant of the guard who's always following you around."
"Captain," said Thranduil airily from behind her.
Aínwar had never seen the color drain from someone's face so quickly. In the split second before Nüllewen acknowledged the king, a flash of realization and outrage passed over her face…and was very quickly replaced by the straight, emotionless visage of one sworn to serve.
"My lord," she said, leaping to her feet. "I was just—"
"Teaching our Firekeeper about military strategies," Thranduil said, looking at her book. "Clearly."
"Yes, my lord."
"Anything else?"
At that moment, it occurred to Aínwar — and only once seeing them stand beside each other — that they fit the part of king and queen beautifully. Both were pale of skin, matching in long, lustrous hair, nearly equal in height, and courtly in composure. She could very easily see Nüllewen stationed upon a throne, glimmering in robes of royalty, commanding all who stood before her. They were a perfect pair…but in image only, perhaps, for as she looked upon them objectively, she caught the way Thranduil's eyes narrowed. How Nüllewen, though her chin stayed jutted forward, fidgeted with the fabric at her sides.
Aínwar felt a pang of pity for her, because she recognized this scene — this power play — all too well, and it was not yet dulled by the past.
"She offered to show me the stables," she said. Nüllewen's hazel eyes slid over, her stare as subtle as a club to the head. "I would love to meet the horses sometime."
Thranduil faced her, the harsh lines of his face softening ever so slightly. "Is that so?"
"I can't ride," she pointed out. "Isn't that the primary means of long distance travel here? And I'll be most disappointed if I've come all this way to never experience the joy of feeding an apple to a pony."
His dark brows lifted. "Well, we must think of the ponies." Then he turned to Nüllewen, whose face had since become stiff and unreadable. "In that case, you're to teach our Firekeeper to ride competently. We'll arrange this later, as her time is already fully occupied by…other pursuits. For now, you're dismissed. She and I have business to attend to."
The muscles in Nüllewen's jaw flexed but, without another word, she bowed and left.
Thranduil waited until she was long gone before curtly asking, "What did she really say?"
"We spoke only of horses," said Aínwar, busying herself with opening her book. She looked up expectantly. "Shall we begin now?"
"I can't believe I ever thought you were capable of deceiving all the elven sovereignty of Middle Earth," he said, exasperatedly pinching the bridge of his nose, "for you are, in fact, a terrible liar. Very well, then. Have it your way."
Aínwar scooted forward, happy to be rid of the subject — for now, at least. "So where should we start?" she asked.
"Ah, ah," said Thranduil. He tossed down a much smaller book, a fraction of the size with many pictures on the cover…even she could tell that it was meant for children. "This first."
x
The next time Thranduil looked up, it seemed that the entire world had moved on without them: the library had since emptied, the only signs of life being the dim lanterns and the scratch of a quill from a writer a few desks down. It must have been well past midnight, and though Aínwar averted her eyes, even through the darkness he could see how red they had become.
Within the day, he had managed to cover the common tongue and its entire phonetic alphabet, and though she struggled, Aínwar had successfully translated a few simple words. After having skimmed a few chapters of her book, he was beginning to think that this was an effort far more herculean than he had assumed. The language was archaic and the letters were very small. He imagined that — even for him, a skilled and efficient reader — it would have taken weeks, perhaps even a few months, to reach the last page.
Aínwar, on the other hand…
Still, he noticed with mild surprise, she kept working. He had offered to escort her to bed hours before, but her only response was a vigorous shake of her head, her eyes remaining glued to the alphabet chart before her.
Thranduil pointed to the children's fairytale he had handed to her earlier. "Read this sentence, if you would."
Rubbing her face with the back of her wrist, she dutifully leaned over and focused. "M…" she began, falteringly. "Mef—"
"That is not an 'm', but a 'b,'" Thranduil corrected. "You see the tail and how it swoops downward, like so?"
Aínwar pursed her lips. "Be…bef…befo…"
She cut herself off, thinking again, but he did not force her answer. He enjoyed how she navigated her learning, like commanding a ship through treacherous waters. A few times now, she had lapsed into a concerning silence, so long that he worried she had fallen asleep with her eyes still open…only for her to, minutes later, exclaim the answer as if she had just happened upon it.
"Before—" she said quietly, still deciphering the last half of the word. Her pupils contracted. "Beforehand…there were…no — none — left."
"Very good," said Thranduil, leaning against his seat. "Congratulations. That's one whole page you've read."
"That is one more page than before," she said optimistically.
Thranduil watched as she turned the page and immediately began reading — or, well, attempted to. He could see her lips fluttering, working out the sounds in her mouth. At first, he had thought that giving her a fairytale would diminish what confidence she had, but as it turned out, she adored the pictures and said she found them very helpful.
The small book was a reimagined telling of Ëarendil and his wife Elfwing's journey as they sailed from Valinor, across the Sundering Seas, and back to Beleriand. Although the names and events were altered to be more fitting for fainthearted children — and Thranduil was pretty sure that, in the end, the Black dragon was not slayed, but befriended and made an ally — it was still a charming story, he thought. Completely false, and he certainly wouldn't have taught this timeline of events to his own son...but charming nonetheless.
But he hadn't ever heard of Zenta'ganna either and, before meeting Aínwar, would have rejected her existence entirely.
It certainly made him wonder.
And although she hadn't quite made the connection yet, Thranduil saw how she loved the pictures. The current page was accompanied by a painting of a ship riding upon stormy waves, its captain braced against the harrowing waters at the helm. She ran her fingers over the sea foam and the cloudy skies, recognition faint on her face…but soon, she returned to the text, never forgetting her true goal.
"The…the water…the water was…sevar—"
"Severe."
"The water was severe," she said, playfully meeting his eyes. The joke wasn't lost on him, but he only maintained his stoic expression, which made her laugh. "The water was severe, but through…through the clouds…the light…the light of…the sun…was…the light of the sun was…"
Aínwar frowned, truly befuddled. She leaned forward, teeth pressing into her bottom lip as always…he watched as her hair swept over her shoulders and curled upon the page in wisps of midnight black; watched, even closer, as she whispered to herself, lost in her made-up language of half-formed words and wavering syllables.
"The water was severe, but through the clouds, the light of the sun was—"
"Beautiful," said Thranduil, eyes never having left her.
Aínwar beamed at him. "Well, thank you, Elvenking," she said dramatically, "although I must admit, I have never been called beautiful by a man of such — oh, wipe that insulted expression from your face. I know you were only reading from the book."
Thranduil, on the other hand, wasn't quite sure if he was.
She frowned again. "I never expected the word to be spelled like that. Be—be you…beautiful…well, that just makes no sense!"
"You've lived with the dragons of the north, yet are confounded by spelling?"
Her gaze roamed over the shelves, trying to scale the knowledge within. A faint ghost of a smile fleetingly passed over her face.
"Nobody understands better than me that I still have a great many things to learn, my lord," she said, gesturing at the library and the five stories of books behind her. "We only know what we know, and the few things that we don't…but when we don't know what we don't know — well, that is an ocean deeper than any between here and the Undying Lands, I imagine. One with a bottom I'll never see, unless I claim the Firekeeper burden as mine alone and live forever, as the elves do. The idea appeals to me more and more with every passing day."
I am Aínwar, the ninth of us, and there is only one like me, she had said to him once. It felt like so long ago, Thranduil thought. Like it had happened in another Age entirely. You will never see another, unless I bear a daughter…which I shall in time, otherwise this power may never depart from me. Firekeepers cannot maintain their immortality once their ancestral powers are cast to another. My mother gave me a swift birth, and then she, like the seven before her, floated as dust and returned to the stars.
"You don't intend to have children?" he asked.
"Would you? If a duty as significant and dangerous as this would pass to your son at birth, would you have even considered his conception?"
"That's the importance of lineage, especially one of royalty," Thranduil said. "If I were to be slain in battle, to whom else could I entrust my kingdom?"
"See, that's the thought process of Middle Earth folk. You want your legacy to live on forever, because there's much to show for it: the strife of your family's history, the wealth that you have created, the importance of elvenkind…but the Firekeeper clan has nothing. Nothing but this horrible burden. To bear a daughter in my circumstances — it would be selfish. It is selfish. My predecessors, they…"
She trailed off, eyes stormy.
"I cannot fault them for, after so many centuries of living with these hardships, to wish for its end. It's our curse to inherit." She laughed darkly. "I've always wondered if my mother was relieved to know someone else would take her place. That a baby would grow in cold solitude, trying to understand her place in the world. Trying to grasp the scope of her task, with no chance of failure — all alone."
Thranduil didn't speak for a long time. He briefly thought of all the times he had seen her laughing in the dining hall or receiving a praising slap on the back in the training room.
"But you're not alone," he finally said.
"A blessing for which I'm eternally grateful," she said, the affection in her voice plainly and genuinely evident. "The years of loneliness, I…" She endeavored for the right words. "I didn't realize how much it hurt until I came here. And I always knew that I had something to protect. It was abstract. Impalpable. But now, it's someone. Tauriel and Darothil, and others too — very real people I care about. I believe that, if my predecessors had someone to care about too, they wouldn't have been so hasty to see the stars again..." She sat up, abruptly reinvigorated. "I believe that's the longest you've ever let me speak," she said with a perky, lopsided smile.
"As it turns out, sometimes you have very interesting things to say."
Aínwar stifled a laugh into her hand. "Only you were the last to figure out! You were far too busy putting your own words into my mouth."
"Ah, and as it turns out," he repeated humorously, "I can be an insufferable bastard sometimes, no?"
"Now, I never said that!" she exclaimed with feign shock, even going as far to place her hand over her heart. "Maybe I said a glamorous git, but nothing like 'insufferable bastard.' That's simply not my style."
"What did I call you once? Irritatingly imprudent?"
"Irritatingly impertinent," she corrected. "You have such a way with words."
"I'm not the one who came up with glamorous git."
"Finally," said Aínwar, grinning, "I've wrestled a compliment from the Ice King himself."
"Is that what they're calling me now?" Thranduil asked, pretending to be insulted.
Somehow, he was enjoying this very bizarre and very terribly acted game with her. Nobody spoke to him like this…except for Elyón, maybe, and she never appreciated any level of sarcasm he exhibited with her.
"No, no, no. That is what they called you last month."
Thranduil tried to suppress his own smile, but ultimately failed. "Choose your next words wisely, Firekeeper, or—"
"Or what?" Aínwar challenged with a suggestive tilt of her head. "Or else I shall be thrown in the dungeons? Come now, Elvenking, surely you are more original than that. So what? You will feed me to a troll? Bind me as your slave eternal, forced to attend to your every command? Make me wash Darothil's dirty socks? On second thought, that is a terrifying idea. Please don't make me do that."
And she shook her head naively, having no idea what effect she had just stimulated within him — his mouth had gone dry as the sands of Haradwaith at the sick and provocative imagery of…owning her. And though it stirred a deep, lurching sensation in his chest, he immediately refused the idea. Not from perverted shame, he realized, but because he could not bear to see a woman as dignified as her restrained by any chains — figurative or not.
He watched as she yawned and stretched her arms above her head and, unable to find a comfortable transition into another topic, he said, "The hour is late. You should get some rest."
She smiled guiltily, but didn't protest once as they gathered their belongings.
The walk was agreeably quiet. A few elves lingering into the night wished them both sweet dreams — yet, other than that, neither Thranduil nor Aínwar ventured to break their silence. They walked side by side, unhurried. And as they approached their living quarters, he could have sworn that every member of the staff gave him different looks of equal implication. Rolling his eyes, he bade them all a pleasant but firm, "Good night," at which they snickered, but said nothing.
As he closed the doors behind him, he felt an unexpected lurch of unease in his chest, and could not explain why.
Aínwar turned around, painfully oblivious. "Will you be going to bed?" she asked, her voice suddenly intruding his physiological disrupt.
Thranduil became overwhelmingly aware of…well, her. All of her. Before, she had lurked in corners and drifted along the walls, her presence as thin as a wraith. Now, she stood in the center of the foyer, looking perfectly consonant with her surroundings. Like she belonged there. Like she had always been there, an ethereal apparition manifested. And perhaps one would find that less unsettling, to have their apparitions finally brought out of the shadows…
Under different circumstances, perhaps. But for many years — far too many — these halls had been forlornly dark and desolate, the silence oppressive. Now he was finding himself blinded by her light, deafened by her thunder, electrified by the crackling atmosphere she unintentionally pulled along with her — right into the safety of his own home.
He did not know if he wanted her gone or not. To leave at once and relieve him of the pressure…or to stay forever, illuminating all of the dark places he had long ago sacrificed to the ghosts of his past.
And Thranduil was not ready to face them.
Not yet.
"I still have some letters to write," he said, facing away, occupying himself with unbuttoning his coat…wanting to look anywhere but at her. "I will retire to my study for now."
"I didn't steal you away from your duties for too long, did I?"
"You didn't steal me away. I offered my time." His words were met with nothing but prolonged silence, and thus he was forced to turn around, wondering if she was still there — and she was, mouth wide open, as if she had just been on the verge of speaking. "I have much to do, so if there's anything else you must say, do it now."
Aínwar clutched the book a little tighter. "I—I can't thank you enough. For your help today. The answers still seem so far away, but…with you, I feel that they're closer now. And…I…I just wanted to know…if I would see you again tomorrow, as well?"
Thranduil raised his brows. "Learning to read in a day would be quite the feat."
She exhaled into a smile. "Then I'll see you. Tomorrow."
x
The following morning, the Elvenking and the Firekeeper met again.
Alîa served them breakfast and they ate together, while Thranduil evaluated what Aínwar could recall, from basic punctuation to vowels. Though she tripped over her words and could recall less than half of the fundamentals, she was rewarded with another elusive smile and pledged to work even harder that day.
This arrangement became routine, and very quickly their time was dominated by — and wholeheartedly dedicated to — one another.
While he wouldn't consider her to be particularly booksmart, he greatly admired her work ethic. She was eager to make guesses and always volunteered to read what she could, even if he hadn't asked it of her. And her focus was downright impenetrable — she nodded vigorously as he taught, with her eyes intently secured on his…and more than once, he found himself glancing away, pretending to check her work.
Only one time did he look up from his teachings to see her attention wandering. He trailed off, mid-sentence, seeing how she dreamily stared at the world beyond the library. In that moment — her chin in hand, lashes fluttering with the onset of late afternoon sleepiness, brown skin warmed by the light of sunset…she looked like a painting.
One morning, after reviewing the rules of tehtar, she asked him about his chores as king.
She fully expected him to launch into talk of "I do this," or "I do that," but what she received instead was a beautiful and emotional telling, filled with words like "hope" and "dream," and very much of "I feel…" — none of which went unnoticed by Aínwar, who found it all so poetic.
Another morning, when the entire kingdom seemed to shake with a warm summer thunder, Thranduil asked her about her childhood.
He listened as she described the first time she ever climbed atop a dragon's back. The dragon, she mentioned, was an old fellow who never realized she was there and proceeded to waddle far away, a scary ride from which Aínwar could not dismount. And he found himself genuinely laughing, having just realized that she was a very good and charismatic storyteller.
They never left for the library that day.
Nobody ever came to the door and disturbed them. Maybe it was Elyón's doing. Or maybe the rain had the same effect on everyone else, causing a magical lethargy that had them feeling like they were in some sort of awakened dream.
Eventually, they began seeing each other outside of the library. Aínwar could be found hovering more and more frequently in the throne room, fascinated by his daily interactions with merchants, criminals, and even a few other odd ones…she witnessed him bless a marriage once, which was most interesting. And Thranduil would linger around the training room to see her progression under Darothil's tutorage, and afterward he showed her what he had noticed and nobody else hadn't.
When the throne room quieted, she sat on the stairs and practiced reading aloud until his attention was once again commanded by others. Sometimes, she joined him in the study as he attended to written duties, where a wonderful, comfortable silence befell them for hours at a time. She started taking books from his personal collection and reading to him, although she stumbled — at first, only a few sentences in an hour, and then a paragraph in a few minutes.
Aínwar started writing too. When she had that figured out, albeit with very terrible handwriting, she began leaving notes for him to discover.
He found them everywhere. They started as quotes from history books that she liked, formal and mechanical. But then she began writing her own thoughts about random things, such as the weather, a new fruit she had tasted, or the shape of the clouds. Once, he found a small slip of paper in one of his boots, which he quite specifically remembered saying: What are those screaming bugs outside?
For some reason, he saved that one.
In the privacy of her soul, Aínwar endured many changes all the while.
Most of all, she experienced a sort of joy she hadn't yet felt. She found it in the most unlikely places: in washing Tauriel's hair, and listening to Darothil's laughter, loud and hearty; in their jokes at the dinner table, which seemed to get more out of hand every day; within the bead of sweat on her brow as she learned to wield the longsword, the sound of Thranduil's voice as he read with her…and in the thoughts before she fell asleep, glad to not be alone.
Although these were welcome changes, they frightened her more than ever before — for she loved them and often found herself wishing for time to stop, so that she might exist with them forever.
Obviously, such things were impossible.
She did notice, however, that while it never stopped…time did have an interesting way of slowing down in the presence of the Elvenking, especially when they exchanged their goodnights. They always went to bed at the same late hour, for both of them loved the nighttime and all its otherworldly beauty so much they could not be parted from it…or, even worse, from each other.
Thranduil would stand at his door, and Aínwar at hers. Most of the time, they were exhausted and kept their goodnights brief — but, sometimes, there was a long delay. His eyes might linger a little too long, or she would intend to say something, then stop…but he never asked. She thanked him on many occasions — and always remembered to, every time.
Thus, the summer eventually gave way to autumn. From the library, they could see the trees changing to a glorious display of reds and yellows, spreading over the top of the forest like a sea of wildfire. Once, he was delayed by talk of business with Esgaroth, and saw her standing at the wall of branches, a longing expression on her face…like a princess locked in a tower, guarded by…by…
…a dragon, he shamefully realized.
For the first time ever, Thranduil thought that he wanted to make Aínwar happy.
On an evening of cloudless skies, he insisted they abandon their studies. She laughed as he guided her back to their quarters, through a corridor once locked, and together they stepped onto the west-facing balcony, where the sunlight beamed down and set the entire forest alight with color. Here, there were no branches or roots to obscure the view, and the air was fresher than the caverns below.
He watched as her eyes lit up, slowly but surely, until they gleamed like freshly polished gold. She gripped the iron railing and leaned over, a smile spreading over her face. Her dress billowed in the wind, and though gooseflesh erupted all over her shoulders, she only breathed in the bracingly cold air like she had been underwater her entire life.
"What do you think?" he asked, almost hesitantly.
"I…I've never seen anything like this," she whispered.
He verbally agreed, but when she glanced back at him, his eyes were only on her.
Wanting to see her smile again, that same night Thranduil paid a visit to Darothil, who would be soon leaving for Esgaroth.
TBC