Chapter 50

August 21st, TA 3020

"And then he said: why didn't you tell me to do it?"

The woman let her sturdy arms fall in exaggerated dismay, splashing water over all her neighbor.

"Aaand that's how Curwen murdered her husband," Beylith concluded with a roll of her eyes, wringing out her dark auburn locks as she clambered out of the stream to sit upon the opposite bank, her pasty calves bathing in the current. Even as she lounged stark naked on the grassy slope, she remained as spry as one of the sparrows that chirped at each other from across the brook.

"Well, I sure wanted to. I work my butt off – in the stables, the kitchens, throughout the entire house while feeding a bairn of his and rising another –" the one named Curwen enumerated with the fingers of her right hand, the left resting upon a wide, dimpled hip, "and he just swaggers back, stinking of horse, wearing his simpleton face…and has the gall to ask me why the roof's leaking!"

Hiding her smile behind her hair, Mehreen turned to glance at Ahlam, who was resting beside her, warming her skin after a quick and vigorous wash in cold water. Even in the middle of summer, the stream ran as bitter as ever, its chill prickling Mehreen's skin like the needles she was still so unskilled in using, so that she and Ahlam had rubbed themselves all over in haste and with many a hiss before waddling out to perch upon a small boulder.

"Oh, look who's here!" Beylith called out, nodding towards the woods in Mehreen's back.

Turning around, Mehreen watched as two newcomers made their way towards the group, winding between the ropes that had been stretched between the trees surrounding the stream and upon which their garb had been hung out to dry. In a way, she was back in the harem – in the very heart of it that was the hammam, for no place was as utterly feminine – listening in to gossip and grousing through eucalyptus-scented mists. Here the air smelled of pine and the pungent odor of homemade soap, of cattail and warm grass, and all that hung in it was their smallclothes, but the mood was just as decidedly cheeky.

"Eadrun, Leoflith. You know everybody, I think."

As the two women's stare wandered along those gathered in and about the stream, their expression shifted when their eyes met hers. A frown and a questioning gaze in Maerwena's direction later, however, the matter was deemed resolved.

As for Mehreen, she released the breath she'd been holding, both relieved and surprised it'd been that easy.

Up until the last moment, she hadn't known what to make of the invitation. Is it a trap? she'd wondered, albeit dubious about what the matron had to gain in devising such a scheme. Only Ahlam's quiet joy upon hearing about Maerwena's offering of peace had persuaded Mehreen to give the woman a chance. Now, as she shivered and purred with pleasure in turn depending on whether the breeze blew her way or not, all the while listening to the women's harmless banter, Mehreen was glad she'd come.

The two women undressed, shedding their clothes to wade into the water, giggling at its coldness. The stream wasn't deep nor very wide – a mere mountain rivulet that joined waters with the slightly wider creek irrigating the washery, further downstream. In times long past, the riverbed must've belonged to a much larger torrent, which had bitten off a sizeable chunk of stone in its efforts to reach the Anduin. What now remained was a shallow pool of clear turquoise water, bordered by bubbling falls on one side and a build-up of moss-eaten driftwood on the other, so that the two women had to squat until they were immersed to their necks, their long, blond hair fanned out on the surface.

"Ooh, is that the ring?" Beylith suddenly cooed from the other bank. "Let us see it!" The older of the two blonde women blushed, and raised a glittering hand to the light. "Come closer!" Beylith insisted and, as cheers of enthusiasm erupted all around, she engaged in a tour of the assembly, her fingers splayed out before her. For an instant, Mehreen wondered whether she'd come their way at all; yet the woman did so with grace, stopping to let Mehreen and Ahlam admire the jewel.

"It's very elegantly crafted," Mehreen complimented her, only to have her blush a deeper crimson.

"Fengel made it himself," the other woman piped up from the middle of the stream while rubbing her hair with a sliver of soap. "Isn't that so, Eadrun?"

"He's learning jewel-craft from Berendir," Eadrun primly nodded, lingering in hopes of another artless flattery and, though the ring was but a simple band of silver, almost unadorned save for a wreath of vine, Mehreen readily gushed over its beauty. "He says it pays better and that someday, he might even find a place in one of the guilds, in Pelargir or even Dol Amroth."

"Only that's so very far," her friend lamented. "However shall we see you then?"

"Well, someone at least's got a sound mind," the sturdy-armed woman proclaimed, hauling her bulk onto the shore beside Beylith. She rubbed her arms and legs with vigor, swiping the water off her skin before plopping down onto a grassy hillock. "Pelargir may be farther, but it's less expensive than Minas Tirith, where a one-stall stable in the First Circle costs as much as an entire house in Lebennin."

"Still, it's so very romantic. Now everyone knows you belong to him."

"Nonsense. Eadrun belongs to no-one but herself. If a ring equaled to faithfulness, and the absence of one meant one was up for grabs, I bet that half-elves wouldn't be so rare."

If Maerwena was the undisputed queen of their little gathering, Godwyn, the cook, was her trusty lieutenant. Sitting on a stone at Maerwena's feet, she waved a dismissive hand before it returned to worry a long, grey hair that sprouted from a mole on the right side of her chin, surveying their subjects with a fond sternness.

Pausing in her washing, the younger blonde gaped. "I wonder how the elves go about that. Do they just…ask each other?" Pondering her own question, she quickly reached the following conclusion: "That'd be terribly awkward. Can you imagine asking one of them if he's taken?"

Mehreen, who couldn't envision anything more impossible nor more mortifying, yet whom the subject interested above all else, pricked her ears.

She'd still not been able to put what knowledge Bruiven had shared with her regarding elven customs in terms of braiding to use, if only because said customs were as subtle as their inventors. There were, it seemed, braids for everything, from the house one belonged to one's rank, age, and trade, and only a discreet motif weaved into one of those tresses would indicate what Mehreen truly wished to know.

Beylith snorted. "You mean something like 'good day Lord Legolas, lovely weather we have! Are you, by any chance, single and willing?'"

"Oh, that one's definitely taken," Godwyn declared at once over the chorus of snorts and gasps, "though I've heard it's a real sad tale. The woman he loves has left him, or so they say."

She'd lowered her voice, eliciting a round of 'oohs' of compassion, to which Mehreen promptly lent her own voice, dismayed by the thought that kind, if distant, Lord Legolas had been thus spurned.

In Harad, a woman must be either very brave or very dissolute to leave her husband, and the grounds to do so, so severe that a lifetime of poverty and shame became preferable to living under the same roof as him. In turn, many a man would have preferred death to dishonor, avenging the latter before choosing the former so that such tales were ofttimes told in hushed voices and with reprobation, like a caution to any woman foolish enough to even think of leaving.

"Maybe he'll find another? I mean, it's not like he hasn't got the time to get over her…."

"He can't, Leoflith, you daft girl. Elves only fall in love once in their entire lifetime."

While wondering what'd happened to Lord Legolas' nameless beloved and trying to guess what unspeakable thing he might've done to make her flee, Mehreen found her thoughts wandering into the deep, dangerous waters surrounding another elf.

"And what about Ell…Lord Elladan, then?" she blurted out before her upbringing could rein in her curiosity, and blushing as fiercely as Eadrun upon feeling their stares upon her skin.

"That one?" Godwyn scoffed. "The world'll freeze over before he ties the knot, though it sure would do him good. He's been awful tense, lately, if you get my drift."

Something about her tone had sent the gathering into a wistful silence, punctuated by covert giggles and hooded stares. Perhaps it had something to do with what that book he'd lent her had mentioned, in those few passages about a man's humors and the need for their release…?

Despite the sheltered life of a Sheikh's daughter, Mehreen was no stranger to the idea of 'laying with' a man – a husband, necessarily – though the image carried little excitement, imbued as it was with the rigidness of duty and the homely habit involving long shifts and chamber pots. "It's the same as for horses," Marussia had once told her, taking pity on Mehreen's confusion, and the girl she'd been had spent an entire afternoon watching her brothers' steeds tied down in the courtyard through a mashrabiya window, but all they ever did was mill about, swatting at flies and looking bored. Even her father's wives hadn't appeared all that thrilled with the act, be it before or after his visit to their bedchambers.

Tentatively, Mehreen tried to conjure the image of Elladan crawling under the shivering veils of a canopy bed.

Oh.

She squirmed upon her stone, a fulgurant languor piercing her at the memory of his half-naked body in the middle of that very stream, the leather of his leggings riding low over the chiseled muscles of his stomach. Elladan's weight upon the edge of her bed, back in the Houses, combined with the heat that had emanated from his skin, and the way he had of looking at her….

"Ah, that one. Were I not married…."

"You know it doesn't work like that," Beylith elbowed her neighbor. "Besides, it's not like he'd choose you, anyway."

"And why not?"

"Let's say that during my service in the Houses, I've treated boils prettier than you."

The burst of hilarity her words provoked came as a distraction Mehreen was most grateful for.

Pressing her legs together so as to keep herself from trembling, she bit at her lip until it hurt. Her cheeks burned – in fact, her entire being appeared to be aflame and, for an instant, Mehreen thought that the One had finally decided to smite her for her wantonness. A wantonness which, outside the bonds of marriage, robbed men of their right to a certainty regarding their bloodline, as Lalla Nafiyah wouldn't have failed to remind her.

"Oh, leave her alone. Eru knows anyone here would dream about spraining an ankle if it meant having those hands…what?" Godwyn huffed as Maerwena pursed her lips in disapproval. "We all do, and she who denies it is a liar. Even good old Meldis is one of us on that front, and Eru knows she's an uptight one."

Excusing herself in a low voice, Mehreen stumbled into the stream on wobbly knees and, allowing them to finally give up under the weight of her sins, sunk underwater. Her skin was seared by the cold and her ears rang, yet she clenched her teeth against the pain, hoping to banish the longing that had nested inside her chest, and whose name she dared not say.

The water pressed against her eardrums, crushing her lungs as she ran out of air. Mehreen emerged, gasping and spluttering, and pushed her sodden hair out of her face in time to hear the young woman ask:

"Well, what's love to you, then, if you're so clever?"

And Godwyn, cackling: "Oh, that part's easy. It's when you clobber him with a frying pan and still hope he lives."

oOoOoOo

"It was nice," Ahlam said afterwards, as they were peering over the clotheslines to check no-one came during that short, thrilling moment in between pulling their sodden shifts off and donning their sun-warmed dresses over bare skin. "Belonging somewhere again."

Mehreen turned to steal a glance of her pensive expression as she tied the lacings of her gown, wondering at Ahlam's use of past tense. "Yes," she conceded, "it's a bit like being back home."

"Only home is here, now, isn't it?" Ahlam mused as she unwrapped the cloth she'd wound around her hair to keep it from growing dry. She exchanged a short nod and a smile with one of the other women, who'd joined them by the lines – a gesture as casual as it would've been impossible but months ago. "It seemed such an odd place in the beginning, with odd people and their odd tongue, but now it feels like that's how it all should be. I used to think I'd never get used to it, but…." She hesitated, fumbling with her belt like a child learning to tie it for the first time. "You're happy as well, aren't you?"

"Oh, Ahlam, of course I am." Laying a hand on her friend's shoulder – for that's what Ahlam had become, after all – Mehreen peered into her lowered eyes, suddenly anxious in turn. "What makes you worry so?"

"I'd just thought about what you used to say, when I heard the others speak. There was so much you once wanted from life: a loving husband, children…and now, well…."

"Dreams change," Mehreen murmured, dropping her hand to resume her lacing. "Who's to say I would've seen a single of those wishes fulfilled, back in Harad? I mean, look at Lalla Zahra. She's never had her children, had she? And Lalla Laila…I doubt she ever saw my father as anything more than a means to an end. Besides," she added in a low voice, "I've done enough harm through wishing as it is."

"If you ever wanted to leave, I'd follow you. You know that, don't you?"

"Oh, Ahlam, I've no intention to leave. Why would I? And where would I even go?" Throwing her hands into the air, Mehreen laughed despite the gravity of Ahlam's tone. "It's not like there's much of a demand for women of my…talents."

And, so as to fully reassure Ahlam regarding her wellbeing, she offered her friend as bright a smile as she could manage, before patting down her skirts to mellow some of their rigidity. Something rustled in one of the pockets, and Mehreen reached into the folds to pull it out.

It was her old map, which she'd forgotten before washing the dress. The paper was brittle under her fingers and, as she unfolded it out of habit rather than curiosity, the lines she'd once drawn out in ink appeared all faded and blurry, as though showing a place she'd not been to before…much like the one she'd ventured into while thinking of Elladan. An unknown feeling, born of an affection which had started out harmless enough before growing out of hand. Now Mehreen was lost, and in dire need of a new map to see what it was she was staggering into.

It'd been the memory of the haunted look in Elladan's eyes that'd left her raw and wanting for more. His begrudging kindness when he'd handed her her mother's book, and his way of making her feel important. No-one else had remembered her like that before, nor done something without another purpose than to please her. And if the thought of sharing a bed had Mehreen quivering with longing, it was another form of intimacy she now craved – that of the heart. To find Elladan unguarded once more, vulnerable and so very poignant in his insecurity. To be the one he sought in such a moment. To help him don that armor of his once more, adding a padding woven of her own flaws to keep it from chafing at his pale skin.

A dangerous ambition, yet one Mehreen could no longer quell without smothering a little piece of herself in the process.

When she'd been little, she'd once asked Lalla Ishtar about the sea. So often had she been cautioned against wandering off too far, too deep or alone, that she'd ended up wondering why grown men, who should've known better, still chose to venture upon such a treacherous, implacable thing. "It's the call of the void," Lalla Ishtar had answered in a riddle, and it'd taken Mehreen until now to understand what it meant.

There was a depth to Elladan that called out to her, and if Mehreen still lingered in that daunting, nameless place, it was because she hoped he'd be in there with her.

Then she'd still be lost, but she'd no longer be afraid.

A.N.: a 'mashrabiya' window is a type of projecting oriel window enclosed with carved wood latticework located on the upper floors of a building.