The Leafless Winter by StarSpray

---

Two

---

Inside, Nienna’s home was open and airy, and not quite grand enough to be called a hall. Elwing saw no Elves as she followed Olórin through the wide corridors, past windows open to the winds off the hills and off of the water, but there were many Maiar, some clad, most not. Those who did take on an Elven form were dressed in grey, like Olórin, and all of them smiled kindly at Elwing and greeted her warmly. It was quiet, but just at the edge of hearing there were voices singing—gentle songs, like lullabies whose words Elwing could not quite make out. The air smelled of lavender.

“What goes on here?” she asked Olórin.

He did not answer immediately, tilting his head slightly as he seemed to consider the question. “You have been to Lórien,” he said, half a question.

“Yes,” said Elwing. “Many times.”

“This place is a little like Estë and Irmo’s gardens. It is also a little like Mandos. It is a place for healing.”

“I thought that was the purpose of Lórien,” said Elwing.

“Oh, it is. And it is also the purpose of Mandos, though most people who have not been there like to forget it.” Olórin glanced at Elwing and smiled. “You are skeptical—that’s all right. You have not been there.” He stopped and turned to her. He raised one hand, palm up. “Here you have Irmo, the master of dreams, who works most closely with Estë his wife to bring rest of both hröa and fëa to the weary and the hurting. And here,” he raised his other hand, “is Námo, who presides over the dead, who have no hröa, and can focus solely on their fëa. And here,” he spread out his hands to gesture to the whole of their surroundings, “dwells the sister of the Fëanturi, where go those whose hurts are not of the body and run too deeply for Irmo to heal, but who yet reside in the realm of life and so cannot find what rest and healing Mandos offers. Now, that is not all that occupies my lady,” he went on, lowering his hands and beginning to walk again, “but that is why you are here.”

“I see.” Elwing fell into step beside Olórin again. She had thought herself healed—happy, all old hurts healed over. Scarred, maybe, but not painful. Then Námo had released not one but three of Fëanor’s sons, and all of a sudden it was like she had only just washed up on the shores of Alqualondë, sunburned and tattered.

“Here we are.” Olórin stopped before a door and pushed it open. Inside was a fairly large chamber, a combination bedroom and parlor, with comfortable seats gathered around a hearth, and a large bed stood against the opposite wall; a wardrobe stood just by the door. The walls were of the same pale stone as the rest of the building, and the floor was wood, also pale, as were the furnishings. The bed linens were died various shades of light blue, and the upholstery was all in shades of green. The only dark colored things were the canopy hangings over the bed, which were of a much darker blue. The windows looked out over a pleasant garden, from which the scent of lavender came, as well as grass and other herbs. “I hope you find everything to your liking. There are clothes in the wardrobe there. If you wish for anything, you need only ask.”

“Thank you,” said Elwing as she stepped into the room. “But what—what am I to do here?”

Olórin shrugged. “I cannot say for you, my lady. Few who come to stay here know precisely what they need before they find it.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Olórin bowed, and left her alone. Elwing dropped her shoes by the door and went to the windows, which stood open. The stars twinkled gently overhead in the gloaming. It seemed strangely quiet, and Elwing couldn’t think of why until she realized that no one was singing. Almost anywhere else in Valinor where there were Ainur or Eldar gathered together, there was music. Here there were only crickets, and the whisper of Ekkaia on the stony shore. Elwing sank onto the cushions of the window seat and gazed up at the stars, letting her thoughts wander.

Time seemed to pass slowly there, or perhaps it was only that there was nothing happening, nothing really to look forward to. It was a place of quiet contemplation and solitude and, of course, grief. Sometimes Elwing heard someone weeping as though just around the corner, but she never saw them—one was not found here if one did not wish it, much like in Lórien. Once or twice she heard laughter in the distance, brief and startling. Always, under everything, was the quiet sound of the sea.

Elwing grew so used to solitude that she was shocked the morning that she stepped out into the garden and found another person there—a man, seated cross-legged on the pale grass beneath one of the slender mallorn trees that grew there. A few leaves had fallen, and he held one in his hands, twirling it gently by its stem. It glinted in the sunshine like the golden threads woven through his dark braids. Elwing knew Fingon by sight, of course, though they had been introduced only briefly after he had returned from Mandos and she had happened to be in Tirion. Upon seeing her he rose and bowed. They exchanged polite greetings and pleasantries, dancing around the natural curiosities of why the other was there at Nienna’s house.

Fingon was not made for diplomacy or dancing around sensitive topics, however. “May I ask what brings you here, Lady Elwing?” he asked.

Elwing clasped her hands, letting her sleeves fall forward to cover them. “Three of Fëanor’s sons have returned from the Halls,” she said.

For a moment Fingon was silent, mouth agape in his shock, eyes opened very wide. “Three—I had not heard this news,” he said finally, almost breathlessly. “Which ones?”

“Curufin, Celegorm, and Caranthir,” said Elwing. “They have been to see my father, and one came to speak to me.” She saw disappointment war with hope in his gaze. “You were friends with them once, were you not?”

“They are my cousins,” he replied. “I was closest in friendship with Maedhros…I do not expect he will return for a very long time.”

Elwing looked away. “I beg your pardon, but I cannot be sorry for that.”

“No,” Fingon said quietly. “I expect not. I wish—” He sighed. “He was not always as he was when you saw him. I am sure you have been told that before, but it is true. Once he was great and brave and noble, a good friend and a loving brother.”

“I am not sure I can truly believe that. How can one fall so far?”

“Too easily,” said Fingon. Grief gathered like dark clouds behind his eyes. “I was not there to see it…but I think perhaps it was the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. I have seen great and terrible change wrought by grief and despair, and we had pinned all of our hopes on that battle.” He smiled, a small and brief and sad thing, and added, “Of course, our hope had not yet been born then.”

“I too have fallen to despair,” said Elwing. This seemed to surprise Fingon. “Yet I have slain no kin.”

“I offer no excuses,” said Fingon. “There are none, though I might wish it otherwise. They were all my friends in our youth—Maedhros best of all. When I speak of missing him, I do not speak of the Maedhros that you knew.”

“Does that make it easier to forgive him?” Elwing asked.

“No,” sighed Fingon, “it makes it harder.” He tilted his head back, gazing for a moment around them in the garden. “Will you walk with me, Lady Elwing?” He offered his arm, and Elwing took it. They wandered down the nearest path. The day was sunny, with only a slight chill to the breeze that came off of Ekkaia. Their conversation turned to Nienna’s home and its comforts and oddities, and to the differences between Ekkaia and Belegaer.

At last, Elwing got up the courage to ask Fingon why he had come to Nienna’s house. His smile was rueful and wistful. “I am grieving that which never was,” he said. “But also, the shock of it has worn off and songs are being written and sung in Tirion of Gil-galad and his last stand in Mordor.”

Oh. Of course. “I’m sorry,” she said. The words were wholly inadequate, but she wasn’t sure what else to say. “Do they often sing them before you?”

“Oh yes,” said Fingon. “It isn't always remembered that he is my son—I think that comes out of the terrible confusion and chaos of the last years of Beleriand—and the rest of the time I know it is meant as a compliment to me and to him. But it is still hard. My own uncle Finarfin knew him better than I ever did.” He glanced at Elwing. “For that matter, you knew him better than I.”

“Not very well,” said Elwing. “He kept to Balar, mostly, and when he did come to Sirion we rarely met outside of official business. But he was very kind to me when I was a child. And he did a great deal for my own sons, after the War of Wrath—Elrond especially.” And he had died we well as one could, when one died in battle. He had taken Gorthaur with him, and that was no small thing. Elwing had not forgotten Númenor. “And what of your lady wife? I have not heard any news of her lately.” She had known Glingaereth even less well than Gil-galad, for she was hardly ever even on Balar, instead spending her time riding out on patrols, keeping orcs and other fell creatures at bay. Elwing didn’t think she had ever heard what had happened to her after the First Age.

“She remains in Middle-earth,” said Fingon. “That is also why I am here, to steel myself against her continuing refusal to sail. I won’t be one of those that stands upon the shores of Eressëa for ever gazing eastward.”

“I have been one of those,” Elwing said. “Though I gazed west rather than east. I do not recommend it.”

“Our last parting was not a happy one,” said Fingon. “I refused to let her ride to battle with me.”

“The Nirnaeth?” Elwing asked. He nodded. “Surely she has forgiven you that by now.”

“I hope she has.”

There were many reasons someone might choose not to sail. It might just be that Middle-earth was Glingaereth’s home, and she did not wish to leave it. Elwing could certainly understand that, though the home of her own childhood was long drowned, and only Ulmo and the creatures of the deeps could wander now the remains of Doriath or of Sirion—unrecognizable now, surely, crushed by the weight of water and of time.

Their talk turned away from Middle-earth and its griefs to Valinor—the ways it had changed since Fingon’s youth, and the places that he loved and the places that Elwing had visited. Eventually their path led them back to the entrance to Nienna’s home, where they parted. Fingon disappeared inside, and Elwing turned back into the gardens, wishing to remain in the sunshine for a time. She came to a fountain carved carved in the shape of flowers, water pouring out of their centers, and sat on the lip. When she trailed her fingers through the basin, the water was cold but not frigid.

“Good afternoon, Lady Elwing.” Olórin had reappeared, absent one moment and there the next. “Are you in need or want of anything?”

“No, thank you.”

Olórin sat with her by the fountain. “Spring comes slowly to this part of the world,” he remarked. “In the vales and meadows of Yavanna and Vána the flowers are all in bloom now, under a bright and warm sun.”

“And I should be there to enjoy them rather than here?” Elwing replied.

“Well, I think you would be happier there. Tell me, are you still angry?”

Elwing opened her mouth to say yes, of course she was, but then she paused, and thought for a few moments. Olórin waited, patient and still, with naught but kindness in his dark eyes. “No,” she said finally. She raw edges of the wounds the Sons of Fëanor had reopened with their return were starting to close, she thought. It would never be easy to see them, or hear them spoken of, but she thought perhaps it might be bearable—for those three, at any rate. The others, Maedhros most of all, were another matter. “But I do not think I can forgive them.”

“That is between you and your own heart, my lady,” said Olórin. “But know that it is your burden, and they shall go on with their lives whether you forgive or no. It is only a letting go of the past, not any obligation to allow them into your future.”

He left her then, and Elwing remained by the fountain for a while longer, watching the water ripple and flow, and thinking of Sirion, and of Doriath, and of her sons. Elros was long dead—that grief grew easier to bear with time, for he had chosen his fate and went to his rest in easy contentment—but Elrond lived yet, in his hidden mountain valley far away. By all accounts both of her sons were kinder than she was. The tales no one liked to tell when they knew Elwing could hear said that love had grown between them, her children and Maglor Fëanorion.

“Elrond would forgive them,” Elwing said aloud, and only then noticed that she was not alone. Nienna had come, and was seated quietly beside her, a comforting presence even when unnoticed. “He did forgive them, if the stories speak truly.”

“So he did,” Nienna said. “He is wise, and in his wisdom, kindhearted.” She laid a hand over Elwing’s, where it was clenched into a fist on her lap. “Have you spoken of what happened to you? To anyone at all?”

“Yes…yes, of course. I told my tale many times when I first came here.”

“You told the tale of your people,” Nienna said. “But what of your story? If you can, speak to me of it now.”

“But surely you already know,” Elwing protested.

“I have not heard the tale from your own lips,” Nienna said. “Only you can speak to the hurts that lie upon your heart.”

Elwing began to speak, hesitantly at first, but then it was as though someone had unleashed a flood and the words and the hurts and the anguish spilled out of her, like the torrent of the Sirion rushing down to the Sea after the spring rains. Tears flowed, too, and through it all Nienna sat in silence, never interrupting, never questioning, only listening as no one had ever listened to her before. At last she came to the end, hoarse and spent. Nienna rose then, and leaned down to kiss Elwing on both her cheeks, and then her forehead. Elwing closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was alone.

She went to her room and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, not waking until the next morning. Sunshine and a light breeze came through her window, carrying the sweet scent of niphredil. Elwing could not recall when she had last felt so rested. She rose and went to the window, looking out at clear skies; beyond Nienna’s home the hills were covered with purple and pink heather, glowing in the morning sunshine. As she leaned out to breathe in the sweet spring scents, Olórin came by, carrying a basket of freshly cut flowers. “Good morning, my lady!” he said.

“Good morning!” Elwing replied, smiling at him. “A good day for flying, I think.”

“Indeed!” Olórin looked up at the sky, eyes crinkling with his wide smile. “A very good day, I should say.”

“I thank you for your kindness, and please thank your mistress for me,” Elwing said. She swung herself out of the window, not bothering with the door, or with shoes, and simply for the joy of it she took a running start before leaping into the air, wings unfurling in a moment’s thought. Behind her she heard Olórin’s laughter, and beyond him the whisper of Ekkaia on the rocky beach. The sun was warm upon her wings, and she felt lighter in the air than she ever had before, as though she left a great burden behind her.