Chapter 38: Separation Anxiety
Note: After next week it's likely I won't be dropping as much per week. I lost the lead I started this with due to some personal stuff and it's a bit hard to keep up this pace at the moment. That said, I still hope to have this finished sometime in July. Chapter lengths will continue to vary as needed to keep important parts of the narrative together. Next week will be a nice, big chunk to mark the end of the elves' presence in the East. Thanks for reading!
C/W: Trauma processing
(~***~)
When Angharad's family had disappeared into the forest for half a day she had struggled through her morning practice session. They were going through a new sequence as a group that she had already learned from Jade Fox months ago. The other children were taking no longer than normal to learn a new routine, but the young elf was showing increasing signs of impatience.
One of her teachers pulled her out and asked Neng Ren to speak with her. Perhaps it was not too surprising that being reunited with her family would take some adjustment. The sweet monk was a good person to talk to if you had such a struggle.
"What is it, Anhe?" Neng Ren asked her. "It has been months since you last lost patience with your classmates so badly."
The child picked at a bit of dirt under her fingernail, avoiding his eyes.
"My family had to go into the forest today. They wouldn't tell me why. They promised to come back in time for the midday meal, but it scares me when they leave," she admitted quietly.
"That makes sense," Neng Ren told her. "From what you've told us, parting from your parents so young is especially painful for your kind. Do you think they won't come back?"
"Not really. I can feel them too, a little. I know they're not so far away. They wouldn't lie and they wouldn't leave me. But I still feel afraid. It doesn't make any sense," she said, frustrated. She'd tried to convince herself not to be scared without any success.
"It does to me," Neng Ren said warmly. "The heart doesn't always listen to the mind. Have you tried breathing with it?" he asked.
"I forgot to try that when I was with them," she admitted. "It's like I'm a different person with them and with all of you. The day I fell, I was still so young inside that my grandfather tossed me in the air like a baby and I loved it. It would embarrass me now. Sometimes I think Angharad and Anhe are two different people. I don't know how to be Anhe with my family, and I don't want to bring Angharad to practice." She was struggling to find a good explanation for how she felt.
Neng Ren thought quietly for a few moments. "There are some places where you are with both sets of people, like when your grandfather comes to watch you practice. He'll get to know Anhe. He hasn't tried to toss you here, has he? He's taken what you've learned seriously, as far as I can see. You and your mother are sharing chores today, did you know? Maybe you can bring Anhe with you then."
Angharad let herself smile. "I know. She was excited when I told her you'd asked her to help with dumpling day now that it's the nuns' turn again. She wants to learn how to make them for people in Valinor." It was a funny thought to Angharad. What, would they eat them with forks? That was all wrong.
"You've done that a few times now when the nuns were shorthanded. See if you can be the same today as you were then," Neng Ren suggested. "Bringing your two selves together doesn't have to happen all at once. Try to be kind to yourself. What happened to you was very hard. The fear is like any other feeling. You remember what we say about those?"
"Emotions are like storms. If you wait it out, the weather will change," Angharad recited dutifully.
Neng Ren nodded happily at her. "Exactly. Do you want to go back to practice now?" he asked.
Angharad shook her head. "I don't think I should," she admitted. She was on edge still, and she didn't want to yell at her friend again. "Could I maybe go sit with Ginnar while he's working?" If anyone could understand, it was him.
"I don't see why not," Neng Ren told her. "I'll walk with you," the monk told the girl. He escorted her to join her friend, who looked a little confused when she arrived, but found her a seat. He handed her a bag of white stones and a polishing cloth and showed her how to clean them. The monk left the two companions chatting quietly.
He told Fahai about it later that day. The abbot was not surprised or overly concerned about the girl. It would take her some time. What interested him was the elves' sudden need to go into the woods. Why?
(~***~)
The next months at Temple Mountain continued along the paths that had been set at the visitors' feet. Angharad trained with her group, with Thranduil watching on and voicing his opinions without reservation. He had nothing else to do, after all. Legolas and Lossrilleth got roped into some chores, but his granddaughter had seen to it that he was exempt.
Some of the older students eventually asked Angharad if her grandfather had any thoughts for them as well. When she relayed this, the old king agreed after only a short pause. Why not? Thranduil had decided for himself. He'd fought with plenty of humans. He could give them a few tips.
Three weeks later he found himself grabbing a practice sword to go after an older student, showing the boy what he meant where language failed him. A human fighter who failed to capitalize on the raw strength of mankind was wasting opportunities. Once the boy stopped gaping at the blonde giant towering over him, he had a productive lesson. In years to come he would become a master of the Iron Hand.
Lossrilleth and Legolas got permission to use the practice court in off hours so she could work on her weak points and learn to throw daggers. Legolas asked Angharad if some of her teachers might be willing to help, so her mother could try practicing with a variety of opponents. The monks were hesitant at first, due to their vows regarding contact with women. But Legolas explained, (vaguely because his daughter was translating,) why this was needed. Finally, three advanced masters who felt up to the task of keeping their own minds composed agreed to help, on the condition that her husband would always be present. Lust was a very difficult feeling to balance – some guardrails were necessary.
When everyone finally got comfortable, the elf lady made good progress. The masters became invested in her success; when they found they cared for her as they would for any student, they also found they could no longer think of her solely as this creature called a 'woman.' Bright Snow was Bright Snow, and Bright Snow needed to get better at improvising. They threw every unfamiliar weapon they could find at her until she could finally think on her feet in real time. [1]
(~***~)
Before long Lossrilleth and Angharad started being asked to do chores together with the nuns almost daily: they were a small group at Temple Mountain, so they could usually use a hand. As the monks and nuns were kept strictly separate, a few more ladies who could assist were welcome.
Lossrilleth surprised her whole family with how willing she was to do even the most menial work. Angharad came to her one day with a look of disgust, reporting that they had been asked to help with the annual chore of cleaning out the compost pit beneath the women's outhouse. The girl looked at her mother hopefully, thinking the elf lady might go with her to find a way out of the revolting chore. [1]
"Right. Do you think we could borrow some old clothes? It sounds like a dirty task and we have nothing to spare," Lossrilleth told her daughter, already beginning the process of tying up her own hair.
Angharad huffed in disappointment. "Is there nothing you will refuse to do, nana?" the girl grouched, following suit and re-doing the high bun that she wore for practice. "You said you worked in that other place – what did you do?"
"Yes, I did. I helped sell houses. Not big fancy ones, just regular people's homes. It involved a surprising amount of cleaning. You would be surprised how filthy some people can be," Lossrilleth said offhandedly. She noticed her family looking back at her with blank faces. "Oh, never mind. Shall we get going? The job that takes the longest to finish is the one you never start."
The young mother had been approaching these tasks practically for a reason. While she was unsurprised that Angharad had gotten a bit clingy with them, and she wished to soothe her fears, she felt that if she also acted anxious, it might make them worse. She wanted to foster a sense of safety and confidence in her daughter. So she tried to show the girl what she knew her battered soul needed evidence of: her parents were going nowhere. Life would go on, as mundane as ever.
She could see this approach working when Angharad was doing chores with her, or practicing under Thranduil's serious eye. But the girl kept getting stuck in this young, skittish state when she was with her father. Legolas understood her fears of separation only too well. No one knew the gravity of her parting better than he. He wished to offer her every comfort he could to soothe her pains. So he continued to offer pronounced reassurances to her when they parted or reunited, whether she asked for them or not. In the evenings in their room, Angharad could routinely be found clinging to her father while the elves told stories and sang songs to settle the children down.
Lossrilleth finally approached Thranduil about it. He had noticed the difference as well. After some honest discussion, she decided to try to speak with Legolas. Late one night while Angharad and Ginnar rested under the old king's watchful eye, the young couple went outside, finding a place to speak out of the wind in an unlocked minor shrine to Guan Yin.
"What is it?" Legolas asked his wife "Surely you are not suggesting something untoward before the image of Nienna?" he teased, thinking she was trying to connect as they did from time to time to bolster themselves. But Lossrilleth was unresponsive to his jest.
"Legolas, I know you wish to soothe Angharad's fears of being parted with us, but I worry the way you are doing it is only making them stronger. You should see how different she is when you are not present – truly I wish you could see her. She has grown up so much. She acts it with me and with Thranduil now. I asked him and he agrees," Lossrilleth told him.
It was rare that Legolas became angry with his wife, but he felt it now.
"You spoke with my father about this before me? Truly?" he asked, a sharp edge to his voice. "It is the two of you who are not being gentle enough with her. You were tender with her the first night here, but mere weeks later you offer her almost no warmth when you part or return."
"That is unfair. I am not cold with her either. I am simply acting as if it is normal for us to do something separate, a few buildings away, for a few hours at a time. Because it is. We cannot follow her, or each other for that matter, around Valinor for every moment until the Second Song."
"You do not know what it means to have these bonds, especially as a child, and to become separated, Lossrilleth. You do not know. She needs all the comfort and kindness we can give her. She will tell us when she is finished with it, not the other way around."
"That is why I asked your father before I spoke with you. To ensure I was taking the fëa bonds into account properly. To be honest, in the last two years, I have wondered at moments if you overestimate what is necessary to keep them healthy."
"And he agreed with you?" Legolas's voice was rising uncharacteristically. "Of course he did. As if he would know what a child needs after a sundering, or how married people should care for each other! He is so cold that he withstood my mother's absence for millennia before he returned to Valinor, which he almost did not do at all."
It was painfully clear to Lossrilleth that this was not about what had happened to Angharad. It was about what had happened to Legolas. She took a calming breath and made sure her voice stayed low and even, refusing to join in his upset. She could feel how raw this was for him and it pained her, but it was not hers.
"Not quite. He thinks we are both partially right and partially wrong. He pointed out to me that some married elves spend centuries apart by choice and have no difficulty when they come together again – but only after their childbearing years. We are not in that stage yet. This does require extra attention until we are, I hear you. It does not require that we spend every moment in each other's presence or share every thought we have."
She continued, "And yes, she does need all the affection we can give her. But she also needs to know that we are confident that a return to normalcy will be possible when we get home."
A hurricane of defensiveness and anger was surging through Legolas. But his wife was pointing to what was beneath that for him, as only she could now. It was a hurt so old and so deep he could not remember what life was without it. It had only grown worse with every terrible parting.
"Is it possible?" he asked, his throat tight.
"I believe that it is," she replied kindly. "Come here," she said, offering him her arms. He was not ready. This confrontation felt too much like a rejection, so he had retreated into himself. She tried again.
"Believe me when I say I am delighted to be with you when we are together. But I have also noticed how it pains you now to be alone in a room without she or I. I do not say this because I want to be free of you, but because I want you to be free. You will suffer until you can be happy in your own company again. You have been so before, have you not? Thranduil said you used to disappear for a while sometimes when you were younger, just to enjoy the solitude in the forest. Do you never miss that?"
"I have not thought of that in at least a thousand years," Legolas admitted, finally letting her close enough to touch him. He accepted her embrace, resting his chin on her forehead. "It was a good forest before the blight came."
"Angharad is not like me, though," he continued. "She is still young. She is not even separated from us yet. Perhaps I should seek comfort in my own company again, but surely she needs for us all to be together?"
"She should not spend a week alone in a forest, no. But the hurt she has suffered is very like yours and she knows it. She is looking at you to understand how to live in the world with this wound. Is what you are doing now what you wish to show her?"
Legolas had a sinking feeling that his wife was speaking a hard truth to him. Had he been addressing Angharad's pain, or his own? He looked out the small window of the shrine room at the moonlit forest at the edge of the temple grounds. He wondered if he should walk into it and wait for the jagged edges this conversation had exposed to smooth out again.
"You do not have to go this moment, meleth," Lossrilleth whispered, following his eyes. "But you can if you wish to."
After a silence that spanned several breaths he replied, "Not just yet. Stay here with me a while longer. I would speak with you."
"About what?" she asked.
"Anything," he replied. Anything else. "I have been thinking – does the other world have a name?"
"Oh," Lossrilleth said, surprised. She thought it over. Maybe the more scientific name? "I suppose you might call it Terra. Or you could use the very old name, Gaia. But Gaia was really the goddess of the earth, more so than the place itself."
"Terra, interesting," he said. He had decided he would try the woods later, but it would be better for him if they could talk first, as the friends they were beneath all these ties of souls and blood.
"Can you explain something to me? How would you sell a house? Who owns a house? It would be the liege lord of a place, surely? Did you assist a kingdom in land acquisitions?" he asked. He had been confused about what she'd said her work was ever since she'd answered their daughter's question.
"Oh, uhm," Lossrilleth stumbled. She hadn't realized sharing that fact would cause her to trip over so many forbidden topics. Democracy, private land holdings, capitalism… how to skirt around these…
He watched her struggle. "Terra must have been very different from how Arda is now," he observed. There was so much she could not say. Lossrilleth nodded at him, still not sure how to approach this.
"Do you think we would like it, if we could visit your old home – before the storms and such?" he asked.
Lossrilleth blinked a few times. "No? Well, the world as a whole, no. Probably. But you might have liked the place I grew up better than most. I was lucky to live there most of my life. It was beautiful."
Lossrilleth looked at Legolas, who seemed to be letting their serious talk marinate. That conversation was over for now, she decided. She'd see what he did with it. His curiosity about her past was calming them both down. Very well, then.
"It was called Green Mountain," she said, translating the name of her home state. "Would you like to hear about it?"
"Yes, very much," he agreed. Elizabeth of Green Mountain on the world called Terra. The more he knew the more curious he became.
They spoke for a while, then Lossrilleth returned to their room alone. Legolas walked to the forest and stood among the trees, looking up past the bare winter branches at the stars. Being there by himself was distinctly uncomfortable, he found. He had not noticed this so plainly until his wife had pointed it out to him. She was right – he used to enjoy his own company. There was nothing in what he knew about the fëa bonds that should prevent that from still being true. Legolas sighed, his breath steaming in the cold night air. This was going to take some practice.
When he finally returned to their room, everyone was resting. Angharad was lying on his pallet, barely in reverie as she waited for his return.
She lifted her head when he approached and whispered anxiously, "Ada where were you?"
Legolas sat down on the mattress next to her without rushing. "In the forest. Your grandfather is right, it is pleasant to walk in at night. I might start to do the same from time to time," he told her.
"It is very late, Angharad. There are barely three hours until dawn. Let us rest," he encouraged her.
"Can I stay on your side tonight?" she asked. His long absence, especially after her mother had already returned, had made her nervous. But something felt a bit different with him. He seemed calm.
"If you wish," Legolas replied, finding a sliver of mattress he could lie down on that she did not already occupy. "But if you kick me again, this time I might kick you back."
Lossrilleth was facing away from them, smiling as she heard her daughter giggle and settle down.
(~***~)
Footnotes:
[1] The best information I can find pointed me to the name "Xuebai" which could be 'white snow' or 'bright snow' as the translation for Lossrilleth.
[2] Some explanation may help you understand how gross/not gross this chore I included is. Maybe not, but who knows, you might find it interesting. Fun facts with Fishing4Stars! With proper maintenance, traditional Himalayan composting pit toilets use a simple rotation system. Temple Mountain isn't canonically Himalayan here, but I'm borrowing some knowledge from other contexts.
Each block of toilets is built doubled: so you have pit A with holes above it and right next to it is pit B with holes above it. Users throw dirt into the hole after every use to facilitate proper composting and help with smells and pests. At least once a year, you switch which pit is being used, and which pit is sitting fallow to allow its contents to compost.
I have helped empty a pit that has been allowed to sit and compost for a year. It is not nearly as gross as you would think. If you like to garden, it is very much like the manure-based commercial composts you might buy at a store. It has an odor, but it is not, well, fresh waste. It's aromatic dirt, but it's definitely dirt. So this is a gross job, but if you cover your mouth and wash before and after, it's not comparable to cleaning out a fresh pit latrine. For full nerdiness, I'll further note that, in an ideally hygienic system, compost derived from human waste would not be used to fertilize food for human consumption. It is perfectly safe for grains grown for animal consumption.
