Note: When quenya is used in thought it is indicating a term from middle earth that is also present in Thedas. All names are the Quenya version due to it being Maedhros' native language.
Slow editing continues, now with additional removal of contractions! Nelyo doesn't use them but I wasn't thinking about that at first, so edits to fix that. Probably need to check the last chapter again.
The quendi do not sleep deeply compared to the atani; fighting orcs who only move at night has made you sleep lightly even by those standards. It is not surprise then that you awake several times during the night, green tinged visions of great wolves and dragons haunting your sleep or changing shifts arousing fear of an ambush.
Despite this you still arise significantly before any of the others. Your hopes of rest curing you go unfulfilled as your thoughts remain dulled and your limbs remain heavy. You decide to head for a nearby river to clean yourself. The water is much warmer than it had been in the area of Himring which is a welcome relief.
During you bath though everything hits you at once. You failed. The Silmarils rejected you; judged that all you had done to reclaim them made you unworthy of possessing that had sworn to retrieve. The black despair that drove you to cast yourself into the earth rises once more, threatening to have you plunge your head into the water until you drown.
You cannot say how long you stared at your reflection, too filled with sorrow to weep. The despair does not pass or diminish yet still you hold yourself back. It is not rage nor pride that stays you, which is a welcome change from the fading days of the first age.
Instead it is concern that keeps your head above water. You and your brothers swore yourself to the void if you failed to uphold your oath. Thus far you have assumed that you are alone, but are you? Are your brothers in this world? Your father? Or are they on one of the other worlds you passed by? Resolve steels your heart as purpose fills you once more.
You will find them or in failing prove to yourself that you are alone. You need to learn the local language, figure out what is wrong with you and learn all you can of wherever it is you are. For now, this camp is your best chance to acquire the knowledge you need.
Once that is done you can begin your search, or perhaps begin to form a new kingdom; the resources available to a monarch would aid you in whatever you decide to do. Besides which, knowing your brothers and father as you do, if they are here, they are almost certainly going to be in some kind of trouble.
If they are not here, you will still need a powerbase to figure out a way off world. Even if this world proves to be a place you cannot leave, you were born to lead; simply fading into the background will never be an option for you.
With your goals set firmly in mind you dry off and dress. The best cure for the dark despair of failure is keeping busy, in your experience. For the next week you will focus on learning the language. You should also ensure that you continue to earn your keep until you can ascertain what you are to these people and what treatment that entitles you to.
Getting yourself a language teacher was both more and less annoying than you were expecting. Shortly after you had finished cleansing yourself and had resolved to go hunting, you met Merrill again. She looked terrible; her hair was messy, she had bags under her eyes and overall seemed to be in dire need of some sleep.
Despite this she seemed to have plenty of energy as she grabbed your wrist and began to pull in the direction of camp. You simply stood still and allowed your greater might and mass to put an end to her attempts to drag you around. Part of your resistance came from concern for setting the precedent of letting people drag you around physically, but the greater part was caution, you have no desire to be out of control of your own movements or to be off balance.
With your immobility firmly established Merrill pointed in the direction she was pulling, pointed to you and mimed talking. It took a small amount of miming back and forth to establish that Merrill was taking you to a language teacher. You felt satisfied, it appeared learning this language would be a much less annoying prospect than you first anticipated.
It turned out to be the most humiliating experience of your life. You have been brought to an area with a number of benches and have been provided a flat rock, a sheet of tree bark and what appears to be a stick from last night's fire. This is understandable in itself; a nomadic tribe is unlikely to have vast reserves of ink and well-made paper.
The true humiliation stems from those who surround you. Children, extremely young children. Loud, immature children who enjoy laughing at your stumbling attempts at speech.
As you choke back your pride and try to focus on the lesson you have to repeat a reminder to yourself. It is not a slight, it is merely a practical solution even if it feels like a slight, like your intelligence is being questioned. You have to learn the language or you cannot do anything else, just ignore the laughter.
The lesson is made notably harder by your clenched teeth.
The teacher is, much like the female you met yesterday, akin to an atan of advanced age. Grey hair, somehow lifeless compared to the silver sometimes seen among your own people, and wrinkles that distort the markings on his face.
He does seem to be a passable teacher; he has a number of actual papers with drawings and writing on them. He will point to a picture and say the word aloud and the class repeats it.
You do notice surprise when he realises that you are catching up with the children around you inside of an hour, possibly even by your relatively light accent. You are uncertain why he seems to think you are an idiot, this is not the first language you have learned and it is unlikely to be the last.
After the lesson is done you decide how you will approach further lessons, if only to end this humiliation sooner. Whether to skip out on reading and writing or to focus on the language as a whole.
Contrary to what many would expect you never regretted losing your hand. You had often wished you had two hands but never wished that the actual loss had never taken place. This was primarily because it had been the only way you could have escaped Thrangodrim, but losing your hand had also been a useful shift of perspective.
It taught you that the path of true mastery dwells in the foundations of a skill. When you had to relearn to use your sword with your off hand, revisiting the very basics allowed you to improve beyond what you had initially been capable of.
You have no intention of attempting to learn the language of the Dalish without committing to learning it properly. You could maybe accept neglecting your literacy in the language, but you refrain. You are going to be doing research into this world and you need to be able to pick out what is important yourself. Further, relying on someone else to do your reading is both humiliating and risky.
You trust your brothers more than anyone in this new world and they would definitely have taken the chance to mess with you. You resolve to throw yourself into the language as you would into any other skill. You refuse to accept anything other than the absolute best from yourself.
To your surprise the children prove extremely useful in your efforts to learn. Their language is simple and straightforward by virtue of their age. Sharing their class also means that you both have a point of similarity to serve as an introduction with them as well as ensuring a base of shared knowledge to ensure you actually learn something.
You frequently end up following them around repeating words they say or trying simple sentence structures. You are certain that you are the subject of no small amount of childish mockery; but as often as they laugh at you, they make a game of helping you learn.
To say you are grateful would be a gross oversimplification of the complex mix of gratitude, annoyance, pride, satisfaction, humiliation and joy that you feel about the whole situation. You suppose it is fortunate for them that you have a soft spot for children, Moryo would likely have scared them all off with his temper by now.
The children are not your only avenue of practice. The teacher, Paivel, seems surprisingly willing to take time away from his other tasks around camp to help you learn faster. You think you saw Merrill talking to him which might have something to do with it, but you do not know enough about the relationships and power structures of the clan to say for certain.
The source of this helpfulness aside it is extremely helpful in getting you from single words and childish sentences to something that, while simple, does not make you want to take a vow of silence to preserve your dignity. You ae not quite there yet but you will be.
This extra training has also finally revealed what was going on with those bizarre sounding words you have noticed. It is another language called Elvish. Unfortunately, it seems that it is not only a dead language but a largely lost one. No one here is fluent in it and they simply sprinkle the language of 'humans' with Elvish. You contain your disappointment and make note to research these humans at a later date.
Once you are free of the harrowing ordeal that was your first language lesson you set about acquiring the necessary materials for hunting. The first thing you will need are clothes that do not stand out or jingle. This proves to be more annoying than difficult, requiring more than a few miming sessions interspersed with newly learned words for clothing.
Your efforts succeed in the end, securing you a pair of drab olive pants and a tunic. Neither fit you quite right as you are head and shoulders above the height of most of the creatures; the Dalish according to your language lesson. With clothes secured you need to find a place to leave your chainmail and cloak.
A few moments thought has you handing them to Merrill. Since she is clearly struggling to stay awake you drag her to her wagon point to her bed and leave your armour and cloak under it. You would prefer a locked chest only you had the key to but unfortunately that was not an option.
Now to secure a hunting weapon such as a bow or a spear. Despite your already impressive and ever improving skill at miming the local armourer seems unwilling to part with any of his weapons. Undeterred you begin fashioning a crude spear out of a knife and one of the straighter sticks you managed to find.
You are cursing your relative lack of skill in crafting when one of the Dalish approaches you. It is one of the two who tried to help you back to camp, a female with green eyes that stand out from dark skin and black hair. She begins by pointing to herself and saying "Auriel".
Several heartbeats pass in shock before you burst into laughter. Your failed communication yesterday showed she does not speak Quenya so her name meaning 'day' is likely a coincidence. This fails to quell your mirth, as does her surprise and confusion.
Eventually you do calm down and make a mental note to explain yourself once you have a better grasp of the language. Once she recovers from her surprise and you from your laughter, she invites you to join her group. Made up of approximately half of the hunters you saw yesterday, they appear prepared to go hunting themselves. It seems your miming to the craftsman paid off after all.
The group provides you with a bow and quiver at your insistence, which proves to be an excellent decision on their part. You blame yourself for how close the expedition came to disaster.
You were too busy sorting through your arrows looking for the ones with metal heads rather than stone or fire hardened wood. Due to your distraction, you did not realise where the group had wandered until you heard the roars of bears. Your warnings come just in time to send the group scattering away from the charge of the first animal.
You, however, do not run; your search had yielded an arrow with an iron head. You are out of practice with a bow, but the target is almost on top of you. Proving that you truly never forget how to shoot, you draw the shaft to your ear and bury it up to its fletching in the bear's eye. The second bear is then brought down by a combined effort from the entire group.
You do not recover your arrow unfortunately and for some reason the group decides to carry both the carcasses back to camp rather than processing them in the forest. They are probably scared of more bears, the cowards. This situation makes you reflect on whether or not you want to continue to accompany these amateur hunters.
The walk back from the hunt is unsurprisingly quiet. Even an unsuccessful ambush has a significant impact on the morale of any group. On your part you do not feel like celebrating despite the significant gains that you have made today.
You could have avoided this. You are a veteran of the War of the Jewels, yet you allowed the group to wander into hostile territory. Nothing went wrong this time, but it so easily could have.
That you are not the hunter of the family is no excuse, you decided to join this hunt and it was your responsibility to bring everyone back safely. You look at those around you, memorising their faces with the ease of long practice.
You will not be making this mistake again; you will spend the next month training them if that is what it takes. When you are done with this they will know where all the bears are if they are so scared of them.
It is actually somewhat amusing; you had once thought you were finished with the duties of the eldest brother when the twins came of age. Naturally your brothers quickly proved to be incapable of staying out of trouble without you so that thought was completely wrong. Now it seems that you will need to do for these children, compared to you anyway, what you did for your brothers.
Your arrival back in the Dalish camp causes no small amount of excitement. Cooks scramble to fetch the large cauldrons or a plethora of smaller pots. There seems to be some disagreement about how to prepare your kills.
While they are busy with that you and the other hunters begin to skin and prepare the carcasses. For the Noldor, and all the quendi of Valinor, the butchering of an animal is a contemplative, silent affair. Oromë and his followers revealed to all quendi that animals had language and they could be spoken to. It made the act of killing one to eat a serious matter, one that must be weighed against each individual's conscience.
Yavanna and her followers had not enjoyed the same success with plants but did manage to prove that even vegetarians had to kill something to eat. You have never had a problem with eating meat, animals ate each other all the time, but you did still feel the need to acknowledge the reality of doing so.
The Dalish clearly do not share this custom, in fact they had the opposite reaction. There were cheers, excitement and general elation as you began the butchering process. Even the hunters seemed to get into the spirit of what was apparently quite a successful hunt.
You still feel that it is disrespectful to the bears, but it does make you smile to see the children so happy. Even if some are laughing at you again. You make a mental note to change out of your blood covered clothes as soon as possible.
Your further hunts during the week, while not quite so dramatic, are similarly successful. As the week passes you notice that people seem less wary of you generally. There is a greater sense of inclusion and people other than Merrill end up sitting near you during evening meals.
The culmination of this increased closeness comes on the penultimate day of the week. You notice one of the older warriors, part of your hunting party, staring at you. Naturally you return the stare.
He seems to be looking for something in your gaze. Several minutes pass, neither of you wavering before he nods to himself and returns to his food. The next day you notice that he is paying much more attention to you than the rest of the party. He even follows your lead a few times, copying what you are doing or showing you something he found. It seems you have gained a follower.
In the few moments of peace you manage to achieve, you dedicate yourself to the study of the language that surrounds you. Self-study is a difficult task at the best of times, which these are not. Self-study in a new language when no one else speaks your own is the kind of challenge that impresses people.
It is therefore something you have done many times. Truth be told it reminds you of the days during the siege of Angband, learning Sindarin to soothe Thingol's fragile ego or studying Khuzdul to try and see what was exciting Findaráto about his caves and the short people he had met in them.
You spend all your free time wandering around trying to solicit conversation, however simple. You listen to how people speak and take careful note of frequently used words. It is a combination of investigation and traditional study that is truly invigorating. Spending a week doing anything will slowly improve your proficiency in it this language is no different.
At this point your command of the language has graduated to being able to manage relatively simple conversations. Mastery will soon be yours!
You consider if you should leave the tribe once the week ends. Ultimately you decide to stay. You know enough of the language to get by, but without money or any idea of where you are going it will be far too dangerous. You will leave eventually, but it will be when you are ready and not a moment before.