#narlote

“It’ll only be for a few hours,” Yavanna had promised Vairë when she dropped the kids off at the Halls of Mandos with Vairë and Námo. “I wouldn’t ask, but Aulë’s away in meetings today with some Noldor on a building project, and I have to oversee the grain harvest in the afternoon. I would ask Vána, but she has to help with the harvest too. But they’re much easier to watch these days, I promise! Nárlotë is old enough to practically take care of them herself!” Námo had just shaken his head and grimaced at that. Neither he nor Vairë had believed her for a second about how “easy” it would be, but they agreed to babysit the five of them anyway. The Valarlings even behaved until Yavanna left, giving her children strict instructions to be quiet and even helpful if they could manage it. 

But that good behavior ended soon enough after she’d left. Súlarië took Námo’s hand while jumping up and down excitedly and telling him about some pony she’d fallen in love with, while Vëanne ran in circles around him until she pounced on Vairë instead, and then Fanyarë started climbing Námo’s cloak to reach his head. (Aulë and Manwë both let him do that with them, there was now no hope of making him stop.) Then Námo had to oversee new arrivals in the Halls. Arriving was shock enough for them and he certainly couldn’t bring Yavanna’s children with him, so Vaire was on her own at first. They tried to have lunch, but of course Vëanne didn’t want to eat vegetables and instead decided to give Vairë a lecture on the internal chemistry of carrots and why you couldn’t feed them to some animals, but why others liked them. Then of course Narwë thought she was wrong about something (like Vairë had any idea who was right) and tried to correct her, which ended up in no one eating carrots because they just got thrown around the room instead. 

When she had that cleaned up Vairë went to shoo them outside (they had to cause less damage there, right?) but realized that she couldn’t find Fanyarë. The other four just giggled when she asked, until she finally coaxed the answer out of Súlairë and found out that Fanyarë had, for some reason, climbed to the roof. Nárlotë agreed to be helpful for once and got him down while Vairë herded the other three outside, so Vairë had reason to think that maybe, just maybe, Yavanna was right and Nárlotë could help take care of the rest of her siblings now. So when one of her Maiar came rushing out to tell her that they’d lost a certain color thread that they needed, and could she possibly pop inside for just one moment to see if she could find it, please? Vaire decided to risk it, and left two of her Maiar and Nárlotë outside in charge of the others. 

“Just STAY IN ONE PLACE UNTIL I GET BACK,” she directed firmly, and all five nodded with wide, innocent eyes that Vairë knew could be a trick, but she darted inside anyway. She’d be fast- what was the worst that could happen? “You know, mother DID tell us to be helpful.” Nárlotë’s wide, innocent eyes narrowed and gleamed as soon as Vairë disappeared. “Vairë told us to stay still!” Vëanne protested loudly. “Mother also told us to be quiet,” Fanyarë pointed out.

“We don’t have to move… much.” Narwë grinned, and was about to ask Nárlotë what they should do, but Súlairë chimed in first. “Námo’s Halls are so dark and gloomy, even the outside is plain! He doesn’t have any nice pretty plants or statues like we have at home. We should make some for him.” Vairë’s Maiar of course tried to stop them at this point, but the Valarlings were practically a swarm. They were impossible to catch, and just as soon as you thought you’d narrowed down the most chaotic and almost cornered them, another started doing something even worse and you had to chase that one instead. “Námo needs more butterflies around, he’s always so colorless with all that black he wears!” Vëanne called out gleefully, jumping in circles and summoning swarms of butterflies to flutter around the front gates of the Halls of Mandos. “He doesn’t need butterflies silly, he needs FLOWERS!” Súlairë disagreed, and dug her hands into the dirt of the formerly immaculate lawn. Thick, rubbery vines started sprouting, covered in multicolored flowers that spread up all the walls in sight. Meanwhile Narwë and Fanyarë were working together (the times Aulë and Yavanna’s children got along best was when they were working together to create mischief.) Narwë hammered the large, shapeless boulders that supposed to be there into statues that doubled as animal pens, neither of which were supposed to be there. While he did this, Fanyarë ushered in every animal he could think of, from rabbits to frogs to iguanas to emus and put them in the pens. If Vaire’s poor Maiar weren’t stressed enough about that, in the midst of that they realized Nárlotë had gone missing.

They didn’t have time to find her, though, because at that moment Vairë came out the side door (which was a challenge now that the doorway was entirely covered with Súlairë’s vines, and just sighed. “I WASN’T GONE TEN MINUTES-” She was cut off by the noise from the brand new emu pen (emus, really?!) mixed with her Maiar apologizing and swearing that they did their best, but those children are so fast...

Vairë didn’t blame the Maiar, of course, and had to apologize and then start exasperatedly explaining to the Valarlings what they already knew, which was that none of this stuff was acceptable. “Put those vines back in the ground this instant, Súlairë,” and, “Narwë if you can’t put those boulders back together then you’ll just have to spend the day making new ones and rolling them all the way back where they belong,” and, “Fanyarë send those animals AWAY we can not keep emus here under any circumstances. No, not frogs either.” She let Vëanne’s butterflies slide. They had dissipated a little, and honestly it would be amusing to see what Námo thought of them. She might even weave a tapestry of it… It wasn’t until this point that she even realized she hadn’t bothered to count to five and Nárlotë who likely was the most dangerous despite Yavanna’s assurance that Nárlotë was older and more responsible now, and was still missing. She couldn’t very well leave the other four alone, so they all set off in search together, Vëanne’s remaining butterflies lazily trailing after them. They finally found her a half a mile away. Vairë would have walked right past her except that Súlairë paused for a moment when they walked by a small tree (and it should have been a clue that Fanyarë didn’t try to climb it, because he usually climbed everything.) She stopped and tilted her head. Nárlotë burst back into her regular Valarling form practically sobbing, “Vairë I didn’t mean to do it, I promise! I was just going to grow regular vines but I gave them too much power and they got too strong, I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry, please forgive me!” At about the same moment Námo appeared, heading towards them and looking especially grim. “What did you do,” Narwë rolled his eyes unsympathetically, and Námo told them they had just better come and see for themselves, leading the whole troop back to the Halls. Nárlotë hung back nervously, Narwë and Fanyarë muttered about what she could have done, and Súlarië and Vëanne skipped along in the grass, seeming to completely forget everything that had happened while the odd butterfly swooped along with them. Námo opened the front door and let them inside, and Vairë froze. While Súlairë had kept her vines outside, apparently Nárlotë had been more ambitious. Hers had reached the inside of the Halls. The very front, where the tapestries on display had hung for nearly a thousand years. Until today, it would seem. Nárlotë’s vines had reached them and torn almost irreparable holes in the bottoms. Nárlotë had grown very small, and Vairë didn’t even realize until later that she herself had probably grown more threatening than the children had ever seen her. (Though of course, they were used to Yavanna, so how frightened of her could they be, really.)