through sorrow to find joy; or freedom at the least

she spared no time in serving herself from the bowls of honey and oats and fruit. and such finely carved plate ware they were, intersecting pieces of wood smoothed and fit together with perfection, oiled not simply for the beauty of the grain but for the practicality of making such ware last longer. her father had told her stories of his life in thargelion, how beautiful the dark lake and tall towers and finely appointed halls and rooms. how elegant their clothing, expertly crafted as all things were beneath the hands of the noldor. it was one of the many tells that however much she had been raised in their customs and ways that arya stood apart from them, for her embroidery was abysmal, her teachers all at a loss for how to improve her. they had eventually given up when they saw that she could at least stitch tears in her clothes and her own flesh back together with competency, if not grace. it was only a slight sting, though one that made her practice all the harder at her other studies.

she savored the taste of the honey and oats mixed together, warm and sweet, and considered the options he presented. there was no need for an immediate response, the silence between them settling with calm familiarity. she noted briefly, and with some small bemusement, the strange flash in his eye of remembering something both comforting and painful, but asked not of it. some things were told only in due time, and now was not such a time. 

as the scent of the tea filled the air, she pulled her knife from her boot. its handle was carved from ash, taught in its making by morifinwë, and she thought perhaps it was time to learn how to carve from bone. she took a fruit from her bowl and peeled it with the dexterity of a man twice her age, deftly avoiding the sharp edge with her thumb as a single rind fell into the bowl. she sliced a piece of the dark red fruit and ate it, contemplating. 

“ culúrien asked to continue my studies with medicinal plants. if i practice my letters during those lessons by transcribing can i not craft a new blade with you this afternoon? we can practice taliska while we carve. ”

she looked up at him hopefully, even as he served them both their tea. the smell of it was inviting, now that the tart bite of the fruit had left her mouth dry. she rinsed her fingers in the small, shallow bowl at her elbow and tucked the loose strands of her hair behind her ears. her father had that same distant look to his eye again; it made her sad, somehow, her young face filling with concern. still, she asked not of it and only waited for his answer.

Briefly his lips curled into a smile, but the briefness of it was no testimony to a matching brevity of the emotion it displayed. Saving in his angers, which were sudden and fierce and hot, Morifinwë did not tend much to demonstrative emotion, nor did most of his folk -- at least as compared to humans, who had always seemed to him to wear all of their thoughts so openly upon their faces that ósanwe was barely required to read them.

Oh, but the elves did feel with a depth that might shock those who knew only the seemingly distant exteriors. They loved and hated with equal fervor, they desired and repudiated, they yearned and they dreamed. Their loves could be of a terrifying depth and strength; their drives obscure yet all-consuming and compelling. Nehtarincë, raised among them, was yet not of them; she could understand them better than perhaps any other of her race, and for all her running hoyden-wild in the woods before dawn, she had a quietness to her and a patience and a discretion which was quite nearly elven.

She seemed so normal to him. He wondered what another human would make of her. He wondered if his brothers had been right, and he ought to have handed her off to be raised by her own kind. There were no other children in the elves’ camp; elves did not marry nor procreate in times of war, and the days since the breaking of their leaguer had been a time of war unending and tears unnumbered. 

There were no other children; and his little killer had no mother and no amilessë, no mother-name of insight or of foresight. The healer Culúrien, slender and kind, had helped to raise her; and in smaller ways so had many of the others, particularly Caranthir’s own folk -- those sworn to him of all the sons of Fëanáro. Perhaps some of them, too, wished to remember better the valor of the Haladin than the betrayals of Ulfang’s people.

“No,” he said finally, shaking his head, decision made. He sorrowed, somehow, to see her perched here so still and so quiet and sad as she looked at him. She should have been a child in the flower of childhood, running wild in the freedom of that state of being and not trammeled by the concerns of her elders, so heavy as they were for even his own broad shoulders to bear.

A scowl forms at the… title given. He was not the first nor the last to latch onto other words when talking about her and he would not be the last to annoy her by doing so. He did not have the honour of naming her, even if it was a title. She glances up to him, annoyance clear in each word spoken

   “Probably for the same reason why you were given your name.” in all reality, she could have spun the question back at him. Why were they given names? But that would only make them walk around in circles “Names carry weight, weight that is not always welcome.” 

His head tilted. An elf with no name seemed to him... no elf at all. From their very earliest days, the Quendi had been the naming folk, the folk who spoke with voices. Before they had been named the people of the stars, their first love had been words. Names. The Quendi were those who gloried in language; and the Noldor, of these, were the kindred most prone to it still. His father’s written tongue was a thing of grace and beauty and sweet logic; each of Caranthir’s brothers bore a fathername, a mothername, and some, an epessë. 

Names were important, and heavy things; that much of what she said, he could understand. But to deny that weight, to set it aside rather than bear it proudly...?

He had asked for this, he has to remind himself of that. Fingers fluttering pensively before himself, Dorian considers what is being berated with half a mind – though said so incredibly succinct. Part of his selection is chosen not by himself, but by the Herald. Unfortunately. 

“You know, I’m certain you could put your talent of spotting such discrepancies to better use than on abusing one mage.”

“However,” he jested as if offended – and yet all but challenged, “if you’re so keen to right some of them now, certainly anyone enjoys a little manhandling. I would hardly object.”

Caranthir stared at the man for a second, then laughed sharply. “If you think that this constitutes abuse of you, mage, you’ve led a sheltered sort of life indeed.” He made a gesture with one hand, complicated and graceful. “My father was the greatest craftsman of my people. I cannot look at... flawed creations, seeing their flaws, and leave them to sit.”

The ghost of a smile. “He’d rise from death itself to chide me, else.” 

noldo, noun, singular -- the ‘ethnicity’ or kindred of elves to which caranthir belongs. the plural is noldor. the descriptive adjective is noldorin. caranthir is a noldo. the feanorians are noldor. this embroidery style is noldorin.

quendi, noun, plural -- the original name of the first-awakened elves for themselves, meaning ‘those who speak with voices.’ the singular is quendë. the descriptive adjective is quenderin.

quenya, noun, singular -- ‘speech’ or ‘language.’ the original word used before the elven tongues diverged into dialects; related to the above (quendi) in etymology.

eldar, noun, plural -- the name given to the elves by the Vala Oromë, meaning ‘folk of the stars.’ the singular is elda. the descriptive adjective is eldarin.