#azruphel

I wrote several fics/ficlets involving her (the first is here), but my favourite is probably the last, about the interplay of language and trauma after the Downfall. It was written nearly eight years ago (!!), but I’m still fond of it.

[Read Where Demons Hide]

"What are you doing?" Lossebeth hissed.

Azruphel has a brother and a sister, I think. Her sister is older and her brother younger, but they were always closer to each other than to her. They do love her, they just don’t have much in common with her, and find her a bit overpowering. Her family is aristocratic and wealthy, and though her parents intended for her to be more of a courtier, they don’t especially mind—they’re happy enough to indulge all their children’s whims. (Azruphel is perpetually annoyed that they regard her entire career, spanning decades, as a whim.)

Zâira nênud. Longing is upon us. The words, her words, echoed in Azruphel's mind as the winds bore their ship away. Agannâlô burôda nênud. Zirân hikallaba. Êphal êphalak îdôn hi-Akallabêth! She firmly closed her mouth on them, ears filled with the sobbing murmurs of the Nimruzîrim about her.  Elvellyn, she told herself. Elendili. Never again Nimruzîrim. Her name, her mother's lullabies, the chatter of her brothers and sisters and cousins, the annotations scribbled into her books, they were all drowned in fire and blood now. She sat silent in their corner of the ship, Uilian's dark hair swinging in front of Azruphel's eyes, obscuring her vision. She grasped and ungrasped Lossebeth's smooth hands, then grasped them again.    It was countless hours later when she spoke again, reaching with her free hand towards the shivering figure on Lossebeth's other side.    "I'm glad you lived," she said in Sindarin, less to Catairë than to all of them. Another set of hands brushed theirs. Raveccë's? Lossebeth's arm slid around her waist.   "Thank you," she whispered. As if Azruphel had saved her.    Is that a light down there? Lômizôr had demanded, stalking about Azruphel's office like they owned it, or like the two of them were friends. Silly child.   Azruphel just caught the bright gleam of Catairë's hair before the lamp was extinguished. Her companion was a shadow, a little taller, a little darker. There was only one person it could be.    A moment later Lômizôr was turning to the window, pressing their face against it.   I saw nothing, said Azruphel, in her sternest professorial tones. But the moon is bright tonight.   They'd all done their part.   She wondered if Lômizôr had drowned with, with Númenor and their lord. It would be suitable enough, and yet she suspected not. They had not attended any sacrifices for months. Perhaps they had left for the colonies like Minalsaphîth; perhaps even now Lômizôr wept for Sauron. She rather hoped so.   Uilian's hair moved; she was resting her head against Azruphel's temple. Now Azruphel could dimly make out Catairë and Raveccë.   "The storm's gone," Raveccë murmured. "The wind must have blown us a long way from--"   "Which way?" said Lossebeth, alarm raising her low voice. She'd never had any sense of direction; to her, they could be sailing to the doom that lay west as easily as the lands where their kin dwelt along the shores, eastward.    Azûlada was on her tongue. Azruphel said, "Rhuven." Aftewards, she heard her mother tongue often enough. There were a few others who had fallen in with the Faithful in the later years. From the moment that they stepped on land again--Lossebeth stumbled and would have fallen if Uilian had not caught her, before Azruphel could--they caught the familiar chatter of the Númenórean language, from mariners, farmers, even some of the colonial lords. Months later, when they stumbled across Minalsaphîth, she greeted Azruphel in cheerful Adûnaic, and stared when Azruphel replied in Sindarin. In fact, though Adûnaic surrounded them still, and though Uilian and Veccë slipped back and forth easily enough, Azruphel had not breathed a word of her own language since the winds thrust them from Númenor. Not in her waking hours, at any rate. Even hearing it, often as that occurred, seemed to twist her gut; on the few occasions when she allowed her lips to silently shape the words, she had to rush away to throw up her breakfast.  Many times, she would find a hand pushing her hair away: sometimes Uilian, most often Lossebeth. She hated the pity in their eyes, but their cool hands soothed her, their soft Sindarin endearments, the strength of their arms helping her up.  She rested afterwards, and one day woke to Lossebeth still beside her, reading quietly.   "Lossebeth?" Azruphel struggled upright, legs swinging down. It was a hard thing, she thought, living on. She must do better than this.   "Shall I call you Aeriel?" said Lossebeth, gently mocking. "If you wish." Once, she would never have dreamed of taking a Sindarin name. But then, she would never have dreamed that she would count Elf-friends as her own, lie for them, spy for them, flee with them and watch as everything her people had built burned and drowned. Build a new land as one of them. Adûnaic was for the mariners, the builders, for Minalsaphîth's relief and Lômizôr's lamentations. Not her. Lossebeth took her hand, face grave. For a moment she looked Professor Inzilbêth of Arminalêth once more. "I think," she said, "that we've had enough of that."