Geese and a Violet by Himring

A Violet in her Lap

There is a small time skip here, but it is just a little further on in the same conversation.

"We?” asked Narye. “Are we staying together now?”

It was hours later. Huntress had made no show of leaving again and seemed to be expecting to return to Rivendell with her when the time came. And now she seemed even to imply she was going to stay on in Rivendell and that plan seemed to involve spending a fair amount of time with Narye...

“I had hoped.” said Huntress. “If you want to…”

She hesitated, as if casting about for words, seemed to give up on that, and suddenly bent and picked a violet from the grass just where she sat. Carefully, she laid it in Narye’s lap, then sat back and looked expectantly in Narye’s face, waiting for an answer.

Narye had not consciously clung to grief or mourning, before, but now  grief was retreating and  all of a sudden it felt as if some kind of feline monster was painfully withdrawing its claws out of her living flesh. It was disorienting, even frightening.

She thought of the men in her life that she had loved dearly, deeply, but without passion, and so intense was the turmoil of her emotions at this moment that she seemed to see them before her inner eye and it even seemed as if they spoke to her, her dead: Ceredir, Maedhros and Celebrimbor.

Ceredir, cousin closer than brother, saviour of her life at Alqualonde, who had taken it so much in his stride when she confessed to him that she had gone behind his back in Mithrim, sending messages and food to the Fingolfinians–Ceredir was as unruffled and equable in death: “If this seems good to you and you want it, Narye,  seize the chance! Why do you imagine I might object? You know I liked Huntress when I got to know her. What has my being dead got to do with it?”

Maedhros gazed at her sadly, but spoke gently as falling rain: “Do you remember, Narye, how you used to tease me for my vanity, when I feared you might have fallen in love with me and I would break your heart? O my Narye, I’ve broken your heart since in ways I could never have imagined, back in Tirion! But you know I never ceased wishing you well, at any time. How could I now want to hold you back from anything that might give you joy?”

Celebrimbor, who had known her from childhood and, even after bitter experience, grown to manhood, was still sometimes baffled by the failure of his parents’ generation to be wise or even use common sense, frowned and shook his head: “It is not like you to be this inefficient, Narye! It’s taken you how long to figure this out? More than a thousand years? Now don’t waste any more  time but go for it!”

“The answer is no?” asked Huntress, who had been watching Narye sitting immovably, as if stunned, for a long minute.

“Oh, no, no!” cried Narye. “The answer is yes!”

And she seized Huntress’s hand so abruptly and fiercely that the closest of the geese let out a startled honk and flapped her wings. 

Chapter End Notes

The three chapter titles all allude to  prompts filled.

This last prompt was a phrase from Sappho:

the one with violets in her lap (21A).

The SWG Matryoshka prompt for this part was: character receives something they always wanted (but, in this case, were too oblivious to realize!).