Picking Up The Pieces by Grundy  

Food and Thought

Tindomiel led the way to a pleasant little dell several minutes’ walk away. A mix of taller fruit trees and birches kept it pleasantly shaded from the full midday sun. The ground sloped gently down to a small stream that burbled cheerfully. It was as idyllic a spot as he could have wished for his first meal in freedom.  

Four packs were scattered around under the trees, most likely marking where their owners had slept the night before if Maeglin had to guess. A large blanket had been draped over a convenient branch to air.

Tindomiel pulled it down, and with Tasariel’s help stretched it out on an even patch of ground. Then she dug through one of the packs, eventually coming up with a set of simple wooden plates and cups. Anairon was not idle – as soon as the girls had the blanket down, he began setting out food. Califiriel continued down to the stream to retrieve several bottles, where they had been left in the water to keep cool.

“You are the steward?” Maeglin asked Anairon tentatively. He could not match the Falathrin dialect, not yet at least, but he did his best to speak clearly enough for the other man to understand.

While he knew their names, he was keen to find out more about who they were and whence they came. He hoped he might do that without having to answer much about himself – and if he were very lucky, perhaps he might hear some news of his kin into the bargain.

Tasariel found the question hilarious, dissolving into giggles. But Tindomiel didn’t seem to think it odd.

“Actually, he’s a prince,” she told him with a smile.

“Says the princess,” Anairon muttered in Noldorin.

Tindomiel would have continued as though she hadn’t heard him, but Maeglin looked from one to the other in bemusement. She sighed and explained.

“He just happens to be amazingly good at cooking. It’s his craft. So it’s kind of silly for the rest of us to get in the way when it comes to the food. He gives new meaning to the phrase ‘eat like a prince’ – you’ve heard it before, right?”

Maeglin had, though in his experience it had generally been used in moments of great exasperation by either his cousin or his great-aunt while insisting he’d been in his workshop too long, it was time to take a break, and they would not take no for an answer. He doubted that was what she meant, though.

“We’re grateful Tindomiel doesn’t try to cook very often,” Tasariel added mischievously, saving him trying to decide how to respond. “I mean, unless you like peanut butter and sardine sandwiches…”

Maeglin had no idea what peanut butter was.  He knew sardines were a type of salt-water fish, but they were little more than a word to him, unavailable in land-locked and isolated Ondolindë.

“That is not a tasteful combination?” he said uncertainly.

Tindomiel looked mildly annoyed at being the butt of the joke as the other two girls laughingly assured him it was most definitely not.

“Tinu is the only one who eats it,” Tasariel explained with a snicker. “Or doesn’t think it’s disgusting! We can’t tell if it’s that she likes the combination of Lindarin and California, or if her tastebuds are just wrong. Though we suspect the latter – her sister thinks it every bit as odd as everyone else!”

“Says the person who likes that revolting Vanyarin cauliflower mess,” Tindomiel grumbled. “Whatever I got from the Vanyar, I’m happy to say wasn’t their tastebuds.”

“Grandfather’s cauliflower casserole is delicious,” Tasariel retorted with some heat. “How you can turn up your nose at it with some of what you eat…”

“Surely each of us have some favored dish most others do not care for,” Maeglin offered, hoping to keep the peace. He could not stand a quarrel just now, even if he was not a party to it. He would also prefer not to see Tindomiel upset.

He had concluded that she must be a child of mixed parentage, just as he was himself. Lindarin and Vanyarin, perhaps?

He was greatly puzzled by California, though. The beginning sounded Noldorin. He had noticed it shared a root with one of the girls’ names. But he was unable to place the full name. If he was understanding it correctly, it was a Noldorin name, signifying a bright northern land. He’d never heard of it. Perhaps it was someplace in Aman?

“Yes, Tinwë just has more of them than most people,” Califiriel said mildly, pre-empting any further quarrel between her sister and their friend. “If you spend enough time with her, you’ll learn.”

“You’d need yeni to learn them all,” Tasariel muttered, unwilling to give over so easily. “Especially since she keeps adding to the list...”

“That’s everything,” Anairon broke in. “That is, unless any of you have something more squirreled away you haven’t told me about?”

His glance made it plain the words were directly only to the girls, but Maeglin still felt rather embarrassed to be coming as an empty-handed guest.

The other man had set out a variety of cured meats, cheeses, relishes, a small crock of butter, and two loaves of bread. Two of the bottles Califiriel had brought from the stream looked to be water, while the color of the liquids in the other two left Maeglin unsure whether they were wine or fruit juice. Juice he might try, but wine was out of the question – he wanted to keep a clear head.

It didn’t look much like a prince’s table – or a princess’s, for that matter. His uncle would have insisted on far more, even for a simple picnic. Itarillë might have accepted it as a first course, but the lack of dessert would have been disastrous, tantamount to deprivation in her eyes.

But Maeglin found the simplicity of it comforting. He wasn’t sure why. Good, hearty food, simple though it might be, was far more appealing to him at the moment than any of the elaborate dishes that had featured in his uncle’s hall.

The girls sat around the blanket. There did not appear to be any set places or order, nor did they direct him as to where he should take a place. So with nothing indicating he should not, Maeglin dared to seat himself between Tindomiel and Califiriel. He waited politely for the girls to serve themselves first, as had been the etiquette in Ondolindë.

“Dig in,” Tindomiel told him wryly, switching back to Doriathrin. “It’s just us having a normal lunch, not a tea party in Tirion. When there’s no proper grownups around, anything more restrained than ‘you snooze, you lose’ counts as good manners.”

Maeglin nearly laughed at the gentle dig at Noldorin formality. Fortunately, he noticed Anairon rolling his eyes in time to catch himself. The other man might not have understood the words, but he clearly grasped the sentiment. And if the girls had not been merely jesting, Anairon was a prince of the Noldor. Perhaps Maeglin shouldn’t have wanted to laugh anyway – he was also a prince of the Noldor, for all the good it had ever done him.

He would have liked to speak, but he had done as Tindomiel suggested and was enjoying the taste of his first meal in freedom far too deeply to talk. In fact, he rather thought another round of weeping might be a possibility, embarrassing as that would prove in front of folk he had only just met. He had forgotten what a joy eating could be.

He doubted he would have been able to keep up with the conversation and concentrate the food at the same time in his present frame of mind, even if the dialect had been familiar to him. So he focused instead on the almost too thick slice of ham Tasariel had cut for him when he would only have served himself a much thinner one, the slightly salty tang of the cheese, and the hearty rustic bread.

It was not until he had finished – long before the other four, who he realized with a start were all younger than him, though they were confidently out alone without so much as a bow or sword in sight – did he try to rejoin their conversation, or think of asking any questions.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to begin. If he asked about their origins or families, it would invite similar inquiries about his – and he didn’t want to confess to them that he was someone they wouldn’t have welcomed had they known who he was.

He cast his mind back to what they had been doing when they noticed him.

“You are here to collect berries?” he asked, hoping that would draw some information from them without opening him to questions he would rather put off. He chose to speak in Noldorin, as that seemed to be a language all four knew, even if it was not the two younger girls’ first preference.

“Mostly berries, but we’ve also got some herbs and spices…” Tindomiel grinned. “We’re not actually after anything in particular. It’s not like we were sent, so we’re making it up as we go. Anything really to keep us busy and away from our elders while things cool down.”

“Cool down?” Maeglin replied in confusion.

The weather was perfectly pleasant. Though it did not seem to be high summer yet, it was already as warm as the hottest days of the year in Ondolindë.  

“Yeah…”

Tindomiel was an adult, and too mature to scuff in the dirt with her foot or fidget as an elfling might have. But her face was quite expressive. It conveyed clearly that there had been some misdeed, and that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to explain everything to a person they had only just met.

“It wasn’t anything terrible,” she said reluctantly.

Maeglin could barely keep from laughing. He’d heard that before. Whenever Itarillë said it, it generally had been terrible. At least, it had been terrible by the standards of polite Noldorin society. (He wasn’t sure she could actually do anything truly terrible, and suspected the same applied to Tindomiel.)

Tindomiel sighed, taking his reaction for skepticism.

“It really wasn’t. My parents won’t care and my grandparents will get over it,” she assured him. “The grandparents who would care in the first place, anyway. It was just the better part of wisdom to give them time for the getting over part without me and Airo underfoot.”

A snort from Anairon’s direction suggested that he either disagreed with her logic, or possibly that it would take considerably longer than Tinomiel was implying for their elders’ outrage at whatever she had done to die down.

“I’ll grant you that clearing out was probably a good idea, but Mother won’t get over it that quickly if she finds out,” Anairon told her. “And really, it’s more like when she finds out. You know Linyaríma is one of her good friends.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Tindomiel sighed. “But do you really think that prat is going to tell his grandmother what happened to him? He’d have to come up with a plausible excuse for why we did it. No one would believe it was for no reason, not even Linyaríma! All right, she might believe I would, maybe, but not you. And I don’t think your mother would buy any story he’d invent. She won’t have the slightest sympathy if she finds out what really happened. Your dad definitely won’t. Especially since it’s not the first time...”

Maeglin couldn’t miss the resentment in her last words.

“Not the first time he was an ass, or not the first time we cut him down to size for it?” Anairon asked absently, most of his attention on the multi-level sandwich he was constructing.

“Either. Both,” Tindomiel answered with an irritated wave of her hand. “Anyway, I don’t want to go back for a while, because even if your parents haven’t heard about it, I’d rather not run into Mr. Poop. Because if I do…”

“You’re going to slip and call him that at court one of these days,” Tasariel snickered. “I really hope it happens sometime when we’re there to watch. I’d like to see his face.”

“It would serve him right,” Tindomiel sniffed disdainfully. “So would anything else I’d do if I have to deal with him again any time soon.”

Anairon looked slightly alarmed at that.

“What did this ‘Mr. Poop’ do?” Maeglin asked in some bemusement.

“Unfortunately, he’s properly ‘Lord Poop’,” Anairon sighed. “More’s the pity. We’d have a lot less trouble from him otherwise. He likes to spread rumors, the kind that put him on far more intimate terms with certain ladies than he really is. It’s become a habit with him – a very annoying one.”

His tone suggested he didn’t disagree with Tindomiel’s general approach to the problem, only to how far she might carry it without a moderating influence.

“I don’t see why he does it,” Tindomiel grumped. “It’s not like it’s going to accomplish anything. Even if half the city assumed that rubbish was true, and I don’t think many of them do, it wouldn’t make any difference to what I think about him. And that’s what counts. Ada’s not about to make me marry a ner I can’t stand based on some stupid whisper campaign. Or even suggest I take him seriously.”

Maeglin frowned at that. He’d been on the wrong end of a rumor or two in Ondolindë.

He also wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t add Anairon’s comment earlier about Tindomiel being a princess to Lord Poop and work out that someone was trying to insinuate himself into the royal family. That too was a problem he’d seen before, though directed at Itarillë rather than himself. He’d chased more than one persistent unwanted would-be suitor away for her. He would be more than happy to do Tindomiel the same service.

He shook off that sundream before he could get himself into trouble. In the first place, she already had Anairon, who should be well able for it. More importantly, Maeglin knew he was hardly better than the noble youth Tindomiel spoke of so disdainfully. He was sure that neither Prince Anairon nor Princess Tindomiel should be associating with the traitor of Ondolindë. He could only hope the pair would deal more leniently with him than they had with Lord Poop whenever they found out.