The Welcome of the Alders by AdmirableMonster  

"And Morgoth sent out his spies, and they were clad in false forms and deceit was in their speech; they made lying promises of reward, and with cunning words sought to arouse fear and jealousy among the peoples, accusing their kings and chieftains of greed, and of treachery one to another. … Therefore if any of his captives escaped in truth, and returned to their own people, they had little welcome, and wandered alone outlawed and desperate." ("Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin")

Her feet are knives that stab her legs.  She has walked too far, from Ladros where her people dwell, but they will not have her there.  She did not weep, when they turned her away, and she could not protest.  Now she rubs one weary hand across her itching face in a ceaseless motion that becomes more painful with each repetition.  At least it focuses her buzzing mind.

The air is cool and clear, outside of the mountain’s cavernous walls.  She has never tasted air so clean.  She can feast her lungs on that while the rest of her body starves.  At least she will die free, not chained as she was born.

She does not realize she has left the dusty road until she comes to herself with soft mud between her toes, swaying on her feet as blue waters lap at a flower-covered shore.  The wind whispers through the trees.  She sits, then lies on her side and rolls slowly to her belly to put her face in the clean, cool water.  After she has filled her belly, she crawls up onto a bed of soft moss.  Her eyes slide shut.

Sharp hunger wakes her, a pleasant meaty aroma hanging in the air.  Her mouth waters.  She opens her eyes to see a stranger watching her.

“Good, you’re alive,” they say.  They are a pale, dusty, dried-grass color all over, from hands to hair; at first she thinks they are covered in clay, but when they reach out to hand her a bowl full of stew, their hand is clean.  “I have no patience with some of those Arafinwean idiots.”

She doesn’t understand half the words, only good and alive—their accent is strange and she only knows a few words of her mother’s tongue.  But those words and their frank, straightforward tone of voice tentatively establish their positive intentions.  Certainly more so than the folk who ordered her from their village.  The sharp implements and harsh words needed no translation there.

“Oh,” they say, after a moment, and they shift from the fluting, delicate tongue to the far more familiar harsh, guttural tones of Angband.  “Are you a born-thrall?”

There is no help for it.  She nods and begins to devour the stew as quickly as she can, in case they should decide to take it away in the face of this revelation.  They’re slim, but she’s stunted, and every joint and muscle aches after her hard escape and harder journey.  The meat is lightly-spiced and tender; she almost bites her own lip when it falls apart unexpectedly in her mouth.

“Just asking so I know what tongue to speak,” they say.  “I was in Angband, too.  Now I am pledged to the lord of Morgoth’s greatest enemy.”  They grin.  “I’m Echeleb.  What’s your name?”

She shrugs.  Her name matters no more than her past.  All that matters is the clean cool breeze caressing her tangled hair, the play of agonizingly bright sunlight in joyous dappled ripples beneath the surface of the lake, the soft moss and the trees rustling above her.

“Oh,” says Echeleb.  “You really just got out, didn’t you? Can’t you talk?”

Again, she shrugs, opening her mouth to point to the ruin of her tongue.  It healed badly, but she survived.  Used to talk to much, now she doesn’t.

“Fuck.  Sorry.  I guess you don’t know a sign language yet, either.”

Curious, she tilts her head to one side.

“Like this.”  They move their hands in unnatural, purposeful shapes.  “You can make meaning with your hands.”

That is an idea.  She likes that, insofar as she likes anything right now.  Echeleb seems prickly but safer than anyone else she’s met out here in the wilds.  If she’s lucky, they’re a chestnut—pointed casing, soft inside.  No.  She doesn’t like that metaphor.  She’s seen too many insides in her time.

“Are you still hungry?” they ask.

She’s too tired to decide if the question is a test.  She nods.  Apparently, it’s not; they ladle another few hearty scoops into her bowl. 

“The alders knew you were here,” they tell her conversationally.  The second word is in her mother’s language; they gesture to the tall trees shading the banks and the water, luscious flat leaves and pendulous seed growths like nothing she has ever seen.  “They didn’t think you were dead, either.  And I figured if they were wrong, you might like to be one, so I waited around, even when the Arafinweans started whining.  It’s getting late now, but we can camp out here and find our way back to them tomorrow.  They’ll send us on to Himring right away, they don’t really like escaped thralls, but they won’t interfere with Maedhros.”

She doesn’t understand all their chatter, even though most of the words are spoken in the language of Angband, but as they speak, she understands more and more that they do not mean to do her harm.  Maybe that’s why they’re doing it.

She finishes her second bowl of soup; her stomach is full and her body drooping with weariness again.

“Come here, the alders will shade us and hide us through the night,” Echeleb says, patting a spot on the moss at the base of a particularly thick-barked tree.  “They would never betray me—I am one of their own.”

This easy familiarity with the trees is not something she understands, but she has sometimes encountered it in the captured thralls of Angband.  Usually in Angband all that is left is to mourn the trees, and now that she sees them, she understands why.  They are magnificent.

Obeying Echeleb’s instruction, she sets down her bowl and crawls sleepily over to the hollow.  Laying her head against the cool moss, she imagines she can hear whispers in the earth, the roots of the trees speaking to one another.  To her.

Sister, they sigh in welcome.  Dernodhos.

Chapter End Notes

"Dernodhos," which is from Chestnut_pod's name list, means "tough hawthorn."

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