#iminye

Gilrin cannot sleep: not for lack trying, you understand, but something isn’t right and so she slips out of her bed and wanders into the little room that connected her bedroom with her brother’s, her sister’s and her parents’.

She is looking for some water, she thinks, but all thoughts something to drink are promptly lost when she sees her father, sitting in an armchair in front of the dying fire with his head in his hands.

She stands on the worn carpet, rather unsure of what to do, but then she decides that if they bothcan’t sleep, they might as well both not sleep together and she resolves herself to step forward.

“Atta?” She asks softly, gently prodding at his shoulder.

Maglor looks up in surprise. “Oh, Gilrin, what are you doing out of bed?”

“‘can’t sleep.” She tugs at the edge of her night dress as Maglor softly rises and guides her gently back to her room.

“Come on, back into bed. I’ll sing you something to help you sleep.”

She crawls under her blanket and pulls it right up and turns over in bed to look at her father expectantly.

He sits on the bed next to her – she feels the mattress depress where he does – and he begins to softly stroke her hair as he starts to sing some song about a girl in the middle of great snowy pine forest somewhere in the middle of winter.

She doesn’t end up hearing the end, falling fast asleep long before she can.

+

“Gilrin, there you are!”

Cellin pulls up her skirt at the sight of her daughter in the low hanging tree, tucked among some of the highest branches, and begins to climb up after her.

“Elrond said you were helping him with making name places. Why on earth did you disappear to come out here?”

Gilrin looks her mother right in the eyes as she heaves herself up onto the branch beside her. “I wanted to see the sun set. This is the best place to watch, you can see right down the valley. Look, you can see the lake and the light reflects off it beautifully. And it froze last night so…”

“So you wanted to see how it would look when frozen?” Cellin sighs but to her credit she does not move nor make any suggestion that they leave at all.

Gilrin swings her legs to keep her toes somewhat warm as they both watch the sun crawl further and further down the sky until it touches the horizon and suddenly, everything is alight in reds and oranges and purples.

The low hanging clouds are dyed thousands and thousands of individual colours that are reflected off the icy water far belong, chucking hundreds of fractalized lights back into the sky. It brings out the softest gasp from Gilrin’s mouth and her hands itch to be able to…to touch this or…or to set it down somehow so that other’s would be able to feel like this as well.

She leans against her mother’s shoulder as the colours begin to die and Cellin’s arm wraps around her as she does.

“You could ask Erestor, very politely, if he might teach you to paint,” she says, a little off-handedly and Gilrin realises she must have been thinking a bit too loudly.

She looks up and Cellin smiles back.

+

Gilrin squeals in laughter as her feet nearly give away under her again. Her sister, standing opposite her and keeping her upright, smiles and gently urges her to take a step forward.

It’s a very strange feeling, skating on the ice, but not one Gilrin finds she hates.

And she feels perfectly safe. Gilloth had assured her that the ice was perfectly strong enough for the both of them and she has Gilrin’s hands in hers and that gives Gilrin the assurance that she won’t be allowed to fall.

“Yeah! Well done ‘Rin!”

Gilrin looks shakily over her shoulder to grin at her brother and her feet nearly slip out from under her, her stomach swooping as she attempts to steady herself against Gilloth.

It earns her another smile from her sister and an apology from Nelladon for distracting her. Not that Gilrin was actually holding it against her brother.

“Oh, this is…ooooh, this is fun.” She breathes heavily from holding her breath as they slowly glide further and further from the shore.

Gilloth begins to take her hands away but Gilrin grips tighter.

“No! No, I am notdoing this without you. It will be decidedly not fun if I’m on my own.”

Still, somehow Gilloth untangles their hands and skates languidly back as Gilrin tries to grab for at the same time as catching her balance which somehow ends in her skating forward and then-

“Oh, oh!” She laughs breathlessly as her legs begin to stop shaking and she begins to get the hang of gliding on her skates. “Look! Look, I’m doing it!”

She looks up and sees Gilloth smiling proudly and she can hear Nelladon’s cheers of congratulations from the shore and she laughs, again, because there’s no other way for her to show just how happy she is.

+

Gilrin takes a bite of her toast as she watches her youngest brother finish raking up the last of the autumn leaves that have piled up in the orchard.

It’s quiet, this early in the morning, long before the sun has really got above the horizon. During winter, Gilrin has found, people much prefer to stay inside and stay warm rather than come out into the brisk chill of the wind and revel in the stillness of…well, everything.

Nothing moves in Winter and maybe that’s the point. It should really be a time curl up and be still, to recover, which is remarkably difficult when stillness brings out a great deal of irrational fear.

She takes another bite of toast, quite thickly layered in sweet honey, and makes a face as how sweet it is.

“There.” Belegur stands back, leaning against his rake. “Done.”

“Good, it’s getting cold out here.” Gilrin pushes the last bit of toast into her mouth and jumps down from her perch on the low, stone wall.

Belegur gives her a fleeting smile as she loops her arm into his.

“You know, it’s nice to be back for the winter. I kinda missed this place while I was in Rohan.”

“Despite how much you used to complain about being trapped here forever?”

He bumps his shoulder against hers affectionately. “I was twenty, you don’t bring up what someone said when they were twenty against them.”

“I do.” Gilrin nods very seriously before her smile breaks back onto her face. “I’m your very mean older sister who remembers everything you have ever said ever and I will bring it up at any inopportune moment.”