The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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Tireless, Grey and Fierce

LAST TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Anniavas started to settle into the tea gardens.

THIS TIME: Anniavas has a panic attack and unexpectedly makes a very new, very cuddly friend.

(it has been A Time lately in my life but here have a new chapter.

the only real chapter warnings are for Anniavas's continued PTSD)

“Did you leave your basket out to dry?” Echeleb asked Anniavas abruptly when he entered the greenhouse on the fourth day.

You weren’t there, a panicked voice exclaimed as tightness bubbled up from the inside of Anniavas’s chest.  He had been slow—too slow, much slower than the other two—and they had let him stay behind to keep picking while they went to get dinner.  Once he had finally finished, he had looked around to see where the final crop was stored.  Finding a few piles of dried leaves, he had put the basket with his tea leaves in them neatly beside the others, and now Echeleb was standing beside that looking puzzled.

In the harsh light of the setting Moon, confronted with the question, Anniavas began to realize that what he had taken for tea leaves the night before were shaped differently, older and more withered.  Different herbs, perhaps.  Stars, he had done something wrong—he had made a mistake—not even one full week, and he had already failed.  He clenched his fists, then went down on his knees, bowing his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “I—”

“You’re not in trouble,” Echeleb said hurriedly.  “It’s my fault, if anyone’s—I shouldn’t have left without telling you where the steam room was.”

It would be even worse if his failure rebounded on someone else.  A superior willing to take blame for their subordinate was precious.  “No, no,” Anniavas said.  “It’s my mistake.  It’s my fault.  I will tell, I will tell anyone—”

“Anniavas, calm down,” Echeleb said sharply.  

Anniavas sucked in a hurried breath and went quiet.  Frantically, he searched for some hint in his mind as to how to comply with such an order, but he found only holes.  Emotional control was something he had used to do, he was sure, but nothing remained other than that surety—not a single hint as to how.

“Damn it,” Echeleb said.  “Damn it.  All right, um…”

Soft footsteps.  Why was it becoming so hard to focus?  Focus, Anniavas ordered himself, but it was difficult for him to find sensory input beyond heat in his face and a loud wind in his ears and tightness tightness tightness in his chest—

A sharp scent, bright and fresh, with just a touch of ice.

“It’s all right,” Echeleb’s voice said.  “You’re not in trouble, Anniavas.  No one is in trouble.  Do you understand?”

You fool, command yourself.  The words spun away, but he held onto the scent.

“Breathe in.  Hold your breath.  Breathe out.”  Continuing to hold onto the scent allowed him to obey the instruction.  Again.  Again.  Again.  “Good.  Drink this.”

Something hot, yet still with that ice-fresh scent, was pressed to his lips.  He submitted himself to it, expecting it to burn raw down his throat, but it did not.  It was all heat and ice, none of the bite of a brew that would cling to his mind and drag him down and away from consciousness.

He was trembling.  There was a blanket around his shoulders, and someone was—touching him, on the upper part of his shoulder.  Away from the artifact embedded in his spine.  A slow, steady, round motion.  Like petting a dog.

“That’s right.  You’re doing fine.”  Echeleb’s voice, edged with controlled fear.  Anniavas blinked his eye slowly and found that Echeleb was the one holding a mug to his lips, that Dernodhos had a hand on his shoulder.  She clicked her tongue, then laughed her soft, cracked laugh.

“Yes, all right,” Echeleb said, as if answering something that Anniavas could not hear.  “I’m not used to having other people working with me like this.  Anniavas, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you panic.  I was surprised.”

Had he panicked?  It was an unpleasant sensation, like freefall without wings.  Worse than sneezing.

“Actually,” Echeleb continued, voice companionable, “Dernodhos remembers someone telling her that in Aman, they did let the tea leaves wilt, sometimes.  Wilted, maybe even crushed.  It changed the flavors.  We hadn’t thought of it.  We don’t know what that might taste like, what the differences might be.  Maybe you could test it for us?  Different conditions.”

Anniavas nodded.  “I—I like testing things,” he said hesitantly.

This seemed to be the right thing to say, to his surprise.  The frantic apology that he had given earlier—that had agitated Echeleb, for some reason, even though Anniavas was accepting responsibility for his own mistake.  Cautiously, he sorted through his mind, trying to compare all these reactions, but he found nothing.  He shook his head, blinked, and sorted a little more evidence into a growing pile of suspicion that he had no idea how to behave in Himring.

“I can devise tests,” he said.  “I am very good at devising tests?”

“Good,” Echeleb said.  “Good, that’s good.”

Dernodhos patted his shoulder, then poked Echeleb between the ribs.

“I know, I know,” they said, then laughed ruefully.  “A learning experience for everyone.”

* * *

Three weeks after beginning his work in the tea garden, Anniavas was carefully skirting around the outer wall and considering what other experiments he could set up, when he heard a soft noise that sounded like a creature crying.  His mind immediately presented him with a list of options for the source, in order from most to least threatening, but before he could actually grasp even the first entry, it vanished again, slipping away beneath the surface.

He cursed in frustration and tried to decide what to do.  He might go in search of one of the warriors or guards of Himring, but if it was a bad threat he did not really have enough information to forestall it.  The cry came again, soft and lonely, and Anniavas thought about Finno fighting off a dark creature for one lowly thrall, thought of the Lord of Himring himself coming to sit at that thrall’s bedside.  What if it was just someone too small and too sad, out here in the cold at the dying end of autumn?  What did his life debt to Finno and the Lord of Himring dictate that he should do?

He cursed again and made his way in the direction of the sound, which turned out to be coming from a gnarled bramble bush to which still clung a few tufts of browning leaves.  Underneath the bush, tangled up in the thorns, was a lanky but very small grey puppy with awkward tufts of fur growing in around its jowls.  It had probably tried to shelter itself from the rain earlier and gotten trapped.  It was young to be all the way out here by itself.

Anniavas immediately went to his knees in the mud in front of the bush and began to crawl toward it.  Most animals thus trapped would growl or try to flee or bite, but the puppy apparently had very little survival instinct, because it instantly stopped crying and started wagging a tail that seemed too long for its scrawny form.

“You are terribly stupid,” Anniavas informed it, delicately working to remove the spiny tendrils twisted around its neck and legs.  It repaid him for this insult by liberally kissing his hand.

After a few minutes of work, he was able to extricate it, and he was then faced with the question of what to do next.  The puppy was not injured, but it was very young—maybe not even weaned—and it should be returned to its mother.  But its mother was probably in the kennels with the rest of the hounds, and thinking about approaching there still made Anniavas tense up, heartbeat echoing madly in his ears.

The puppy contributed to his dilemma by moving from licking his hand to licking his face.  Anniavas sighed.  “All right,” he said, after a long moment.  After all, he could hardly let himself be controlled by a nonsensical physical reaction.  Already, he was beginning to learn that many of his reactions were both mysterious and useless in Himring.

Get over yourself, he instructed himself, which was a phrase that Echeleb employed often, although more usually when Anniavas was being overly particular about the conditions of one of his experiments.

It took surprisingly little time to walk over.  By the time he arrived, Anniavas had the oddest feeling that he was floating.  The puppy was wriggling happily in his arms.  Reaching the door, he heard the sound of dogs barking and almost turned right around, but he was saved by the simple fact that his legs continued walking forward.  Awkwardly, he pushed the door open one-handed and stood in the ambience of the stables, with the warmth and smell of animals all around him.

It twisted everything up inside him.  A hundred different memories tried to rise to his mind and evaporated instantly, rainbow soap bubbles that could not touch reality without destruction.  He heard himself make a little noise—the puppy must have heard it as well because it immediately starting wriggling and whining and yelping at the top of its little puppy lungs.

A moment later, another Elf came around the corner of one of the horse’s stalls. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had hair the color of frost-rimed wheat and grey eyes, and he was wearing a stained tunic and leggings, which were covered in dog hair.  He stopped when he saw Anniavas.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Reading the question within the question, Anniavas answered, “I just came to bring this back.”  He lifted the puppy, which immediately began to whine.

The Elf’s stern countenance melted a little.  “Thanks,” he said gruffly.  “Mama was starting to worry.  I thought she was around here somewhere, but I guess she got out?”

“She’s very adventurous, it seems,” Anniavas returned.  To his surprise, his voice was quite steady.

For some reason, this made the Elf scowl, but the next thing he said seemed unconnected to the expression. “Come on, let’s go give her back,” he said.

Anniavas had expected to be free of the responsibility as soon as he found someone else, particularly the kennel-master.  He didn’t want to, but his body obeyed the order, carrying him forward.  It wasn’t until they came in sight of the smaller wooden enclosures next to the horses’ stalls that he had to halt.  The sound of barking had intensified, the pat-pat-pat of paws padding on the ground as the dogs woke up and got ready for the day.

He had the terrible and disorienting sense that he was not standing, that he was not in control of himself, that something huge and terrifying was stalking him, waiting to sink its teeth into his throat.  He had half a shard of memory of—the unexpected pain, the sudden inability to move, the dizzy, awful feeling of being shaken by something stronger and more terrifying than he was.  Any moment now, that pain would return.  Any moment—

A tiny pinprick went through his hand instead, nothing like the all-encompassing agony he expected.  He looked down.  The puppy was chewing experimentally on his finger.  Anniavas sighed and let it explore for a little longer before removing the finger and scratching it behind the ears.

“Over here,” said the kennel-master, gesturing to one of the smaller stalls, from which emanated a series of little squeaks and tiny attempted barks.  “All her sisters and brothers are in here with her mother.”

All of a sudden, Anniavas was reluctant for a very different reason.  The puppy wriggled and then went still in his arms, nosing at his chest.  “All right, little one,” he said.  “Time to go home.”

“You’ve had dogs before,” said the kennel-master abruptly as he knelt in front of the open door of the pen.

“I don’t know,” Anniavas said without thinking.  “I don’t remember.”

“They know.”  The kennel-master jerked his head at the dogs.  All the puppies had looked up and were cheeping at Anniavas and his new friend.  She yawned when he set her on the straw-strewn floor, then sat down on his foot.

“Oh,” said Anniavas.  An unexpected lump had risen in his throat.  Maybe the kennel-master was right, as inexplicable as that seemed.

“I used to have a dog, too,” said the kennel-master, and Anniavas looked over to see that his face had gone as stony as the Lord of Himring’s sometimes did.  There was a resemblance, too, in the shape of the heavy brows, the set of the determined mouth.  “But he…” a pause.  “Well, I lost him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anniavas, which didn’t really seem to be enough.  He stroked the puppy again.  “Go on,” he told her softly.  He looked back at the kennel-master.  “You might be right,” he said, doubtfully.  Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, all this did seem somewhat familiar.

“Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“No,” Anniavas agreed.

The kennel-master grunted.  At Anniavas’s feet, the puppy finally started waddling back towards her siblings.  As this was what he had been intending by forcing himself all the way into the kennels, he was frustrated to find that he wasn’t happier about it.

“You know, she’ll probably want to see you again,” said the kennel-master.

“I don’t like dogs,” Anniavas protested.  It hadn’t been raining outside, had it?  His face was cold and wet.

“Listen,” said the kennel-master.  “I don’t usually give advice, but if there’s a dog that wants you, don’t turn your back on her.  No matter what else has happened to you.”

He had to use both hands to wipe off his face.  “I work in the lower west tea garden.  It’s quite simple to come by the kennels on my way to or from the dormitories.”

“Good.  Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”  Pause.  “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“For bringing her back.”

Oh.  “You’re welcome.”

He hovered awkwardly until the kennel-master gave a grunt of acknowledgment, then realized that the kennel-master himself seemed awkward.  Perhaps this was a new situation for both of them.  After standing for another moment, he made himself turn and hurry away.  He was halfway back to the wall when he realized he could have kept going and reached the tea garden in less than half the time.  Now he would have to rush, or he’d be late.

Chapter End Notes

chapter title from Huan's description in (one of the versions of) The Lay of Leithian: "a wolfhound, tireless, grey and fierce"

Not sure if I remembered to mention it, but the names Melweril, Echeleb and Dernodhos are from chestnut_pod's wonderful Name List. "Melweril" means "dear rose," "Echeleb" means "silver thorn," and "Dernodhos" means "tough hawthorn."

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