A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray  

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Twelve

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Daeron hated the fall. Not the beginning—that was always beautiful, especially in these woods full of oak and ash and maple. But the later months, as the days grew short and cold and all the brilliant colors faded to browns…it was as though the whole world was fading, and it made him keenly aware of his own danger. It helped a little to have things to do—to have a routine that required him to get up in the morning, that would not allow him to just huddle under the blankets all day no matter how much he wanted to. 

He was so tired, though, and as the days dragged on it just got worse, and his heart ached more and more, until one morning he tried to get up and just couldn’t. The thought of leaving the warmth of his bed was unbearable, and he couldn’t make himself remember why it was important that he did not just go to sleep and not wake up again.

Was this how his father had felt? Daeron kept his eyes closed and tried not to think about his father—or his mother, whose body he had never seen, whose grave he had never gotten to visit—and failed. He kept thinking he heard their laughter somewhere in the distance, and he couldn’t quite tell if it was a dream or a summons.

“Daeron?” Lossenol’s hand was warm and dry on his face, callouses catching on his hair as he brushed it back out of his eyes. “Daeron, what’s wrong?”

“Mm…” Daeron opened his eyes with effort. “Just…tired.”

“This seems like more than just tired.” Lossenol’s brow furrowed, pulling on the skin around the scars across his left eye. “You’ve been off for days. Are you hurt? Should I try to find a healer?”

“No—no. Just…” Daeron managed to sit up, but he felt so heavy—heavy and empty at the same time. “I’m sorry.”

“You said this time of year puts you on edge,” Lossenol said after a moment. In spite of what he had said before, he was not stupid, and Daeron should have realized that he would make the connection. “This seems worse.”

“I’m…” Daeron rubbed his eyes. “I have suffered bouts of this—whatever it is, for many years now. It’s been getting worse, especially at this time of year. I don’t—” know why I didn’t succumb to this fading years ago, he couldn’t make himself say.

“Is there anything that helps?”

“Not really. It…will pass.” Hopefully. Maybe. It felt worse than ever that year, after everything that had happened. He’d started dreaming of the orcs again. 

“Hm. Come on, get up.” Lossenol pulled him out of bed, and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. “Just come sit by the fire. You don’t have to do anything, but you’ve been alone every other time, and now you aren’t—that will help.”

“But—”

“Come on.”

A very short while later Daeron found himself seated by the fire, which crackled merrily on the hearth, with a cup of something steaming and sweetly herbal in his hands, while Lossenol told Eluréd and Elurín that they could comb out and braid Daeron’s hair for him that morning. “I really don’t need—” Daeron began, but there wasn’t any getting out of it, and he just had to surrender to four small hands pulling a little too hard on his hair as they wove crooked braids into it. As they did, Lossenol began a simple Quenya lesson, mostly just teaching them new words, while he did something with some animal skins that he had been treating over the last few weeks. Daeron knew very little about turning furs or skins into something usable, but Lossenol was determined that they would all stay warm that winter. 

Daeron just sat and sipped his tea and watched the flames, letting the chatter wash over him without really listening to any of it. He thought of the food stores they had set aside, and wondered if they would be enough. They had run out of the twins’ lembas long ago, and that was something Melian had never taught Daeron. It was the province of queens and matriarchs, at least in Doriath, and from what he had learned of the Noldor it seemed the same traditions had held true in Valinor. 

It was another argument in favor of sending the twins with Medlinel and her people, but that chance had passed, and Daeron thought it would take a lot more than another lean winter to make them agree anyway. It wouldn’t be as hard as the last winter—they were safe enough from orcs, he thought, and they had a far sturdier shelter now than the flet had been. Not to mention, Lossenol was still with them and almost fully recovered from his injuries except for some lingering weakness in his left shoulder. That would make everything easier, from hunting to keeping themselves stocked with firewood. 

He knew all of that, but it was still too easy to look ahead to the coldest and harshest months and feel like spring would never come. 

The rest of the autumn passed similarly. Some days were easier than others. Every day, Lossenol made sure Daeron wasn’t alone—though he never tried to make false promises or to act more cheerful than he really felt in an attempt to raise Daeron’s spirits the way some of his friends had in Doriath, which he appreciated. The twins also stayed close, curling up beside him and asking for stories that forced him to think of things outside himself. It did help, to not be alone—it was enough, at least for now.

“You seem like you’ve done this before,” Daeron remarked one evening. 

“Done what? Sew something?” Lossenol was patching his cloak, needle flashing in the firelight, swift and sure.

“Well—yes, that’s obvious. But I meant taking care of someone like me.”

Lossenol shrugged without looking up. “Maybe I did. I don’t remember. Is it helping?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

“Not in general. I’ve always been more prone to melancholy than most—my music has always moved the audience to tears more easily than to laughter—though it only got really bad after my parents died, and then worse after I left Doriath. But this year, it’s…I’ve had time now to—to really realize what it means. That there’s really no one left. It feels…”

When Daeron didn’t go on, Lossenol said, very quietly, “Like there’s this great empty space inside you—like something important was torn out, and all you can do now is hope the bleeding someday stops?”

Daeron blinked. “Yes. That’s—if you feel it too, how—?”

“If I go back and I find out what exactly it is I’m missing—who it is I loved and who is almost certainly dead, now—I don’t think I’d survive it. I don’t think it would be slow, but I know it would hurt. And that’s on top of finding out what exactly it is I did. Whoever I was, whatever I had, I like who I am now, and I never want to go back.”

“You could still be who you are now, even if you remembered,” Daeron said quietly, though he wasn’t sure that was really true. The Oath seemed to sleep, with the memory of it locked away, but of course it would waken with a vengeance if that changed. Daeron didn’t even know if the Oath held that kind of power in truth or if they all just believed that it did, and maybe it didn’t matter. The result was the same. 

Lossenol seemed to sense something similar, even if he couldn’t put it into words. He just shook his head. “I don’t think I could. But I also don’t—I really do think—whatever was there, as long as I don’t remember, I can keep the wound closed. If I do remember—it would kill me, and I don’t want to die.” He hadn’t sounded so bleak since those early days after he woke up in the flet. 

Daeron moved before he could even think about it, leaning over to wrap his arms around Lossenol and dropping his head onto his shoulder. For a moment Lossenol froze, but very quickly dropped his mending to return the embrace. “I’m sorry,” Daeron whispered. 

“Me too,” Lossenol whispered back.

Neither of them moved for a long time. Daeron couldn’t remember the last time someone had held him or he had held someone else like this—just after the Dagor Bragollach, most likely, but he couldn’t recall who. 

Finally, Lossenol loosened his grip, and Daeron drew back. “We should go to bed,” said Lossenol as he reached for his mending to put it away in a basket Elurín had made. “It’s late.”

Once they were in bed, Daeron rolled over and whispered, before he could talk himself out of it, “Lossenol?”

“Mm?”

“Can we—I still don’t want you to ravish me, but—”

“Good, because I still don’t want to.” Lossenol rolled over and wrapped an arm around Daeron again, tugging him in closer. “Is this all right?”

“Yes.” Daeron sighed and closed his eyes. Under his ear he could hear Lossenol’s heartbeat, strong and steady; his arms were very warm. “Thank you.”

He slept better that night than he had in ages, and woke feeling more rested than he had in years. 

The winter passed quietly. Daeron felt more like himself as he got used to the bare branches and the frost decorating the windows, and found new appreciation for the stark, harsh sort of beauty that winter brought with it as he saw it anew through Eluréd and Elurín’s eyes, for they were delighted with everything.

Once Lossenol was assured that Daeron would still be there when he returned, he made a journey of his own back west to the mountains. Daeron wanted to ask him not to, but they did need to establish some kind of relationship with the Dwarves there, and they needed to know something of what was happening in Beleriand.

The twins were as unhappy when Lossenol left as they had been when Daeron had, only this time they did not have as much to distract them, and the cold weather brought with it constant reminders of the disasters of last winter. Their nightmares came back, and more than once Eluréd broke down in tears, fearing that something would happen and Lossenol would not return and they would never know what had happened to him—just as they were likely never to learn what had happened to their parents or their little sister Elwing. There was very little Daeron could say to reassure them. He had his own fears—Lossenol had not lost himself and tried to wander off in many months, not since Medlinel had looked into his mind, but Daeron had not forgotten it. He had a faint suspicion that it was the Oath trying to wake up, and he feared what might happen if Lossenol heard something of the Silmaril while he spoke to the Dwarves. He had been working on a song of his own that might send it to an even deeper sleep—but it might have the opposite effect if he got it wrong, and so he hadn’t dared to try it yet.

No one’s fears came to fruition. After three weeks Lossenol returned with several bundles that turned out to be cloth—wool, much of it thick and soft and perfect for winter clothes—and a dwarf-made knife that he seemed very pleased with. The dwarves of Belegost still remembered their alliance with the Noldor, and had been generous. “They’re glad to know we’re here,” he told Daeron, “and they said they would send other Elves our way should they cross the mountains—Kóri said it’s likely to come to heavy fighting in the future, and they’ll be glad of Elves they can call upon, no matter how few our numbers.”

“I thought the Dwarves didn’t like us,” said Elurín. He and Eluréd had attached themselves to Lossenol upon his return and had yet to leave his lap.

“I asked about that,” Lossenol said. “I spoke to Dwarves from Belegost that man the outposts on the eastern slopes—only a few at a time, since all the real danger is in the west. It’s Nogrod that quarreled with Doriath, you remember? I think Ifreth found that out. Both cities are working to keep the passes clear for any refugees coming out of Beleriand and to protect their cities, but they’re stretched thin and they don’t know how much longer they can hold out. Neither one is going to be picky about allies.”

“What will they do if they cannot stay in their mountains?” asked Elurín. 

“Kóri said they would try to flee east, to Khazad-dûm. He’s never seen it, but he claims its bigger than any other Dwarvish city ever built, and is ruled by Durin the Deathless—whatever that means, it sounds as though he is very old—and that it will never fall to any Enemy. I don’t know who Durin is, and I did not ask.”

“I know little Dwarf lore, myself,” Daeron said when the twins turned to him. “They keep their most important stories secret, just as they do not share their language with outsiders, choosing to learn ours instead. But Durin is, I believe, the name of one of the Seven Fathers, who woke long ago beneath the stars sometime after the Elves awoke by Cuiviénen—perhaps after the Great Journey, I don’t know. It was well after our people settled in Eglador that the Dwarves first came to Beleriand. I don’t think the Dwarves know themselves when they woke. I can say nothing one way or another of Khazad-dûm or who rules it now—I have not gone that far east.”

“Have you known many Dwarves?” asked Eluréd.

“Once upon a time. They helped us to delve Menegroth long ago—and they were the ones who most appreciated my runes when I first made them. There was little call for writing things down, the Elves thought then, for our memories are long.”

“Why make them in the first place?” Lossenol asked.

“I wanted a way to learn and to teach that did not depend upon speaking to others face to face. How much easier it would be, I thought, to share my songs if I could just write them down and send the copies to the Falas, or to Mithrim, or wherever I wished! And writers there could do the same, and I could read their work in the comfort of my own home in Eglador! There are other uses too—leaving signs in the wood, warnings or directions, or—oh, all sorts of things. I also just wanted to add another element to my songs—that they might be as lovely to look at as they were to listen to—and it was a challenge, to take sounds and turn them into something tangible. The Dwarves took to them immediately, especially since I designed them to be easy to both write and to carve. The Noldor in the west made their own letters, maybe even as I was designing mine, I don’t know—and it seems to have caught on much more widely there. Even among the Sindar, the Tengwar are agreed to be much lovelier to look at than the Cirth.”

“That’s not true!” said Elurín.

Daeron laughed. “Thank you! But it’s all right, I don’t mind. They were made in different places by different minds, and these days they serve different purposes.”

“Will you use your right name when we have dealings with the Dwarves?” Lossenol asked. 

“I don’t know yet, but probably not. I doubt there are any left who I once knew—Dwarves are long-lived, but still mortal, unless one’s name is Durin the Deathless it seems, and it sounds as though they’ve lost many to the war. Did you not speak of us to them?”

“I did, but I didn’t use names. They seemed to understand.”

Daeron was not as good at sewing as Lossenol was, but if his stitches were not pretty they were strong, and as he made new clothes for them all he hummed songs of strength and warmth and comfort, feeling them sink into the cloth and thread, and finding more satisfaction in both the singing and the making than he had in a long time. Lossenol made fur-lined hats and mittens for them all. There was far less snow on the eastern side of the mountains, at least that year, and so when it did come it was more of a chance for play and pleasure than anything else. The twins made little snow fortresses to hide in, and populated the village with snow-people with sticks for arms and stones for eyes and mouths. As their Quenya lessons progressed, Lossenol earned a nickname: Lossë, a word for snow, which the twins were delighted to find was so similar to Sindarin’s loss. 

Since permission had been granted, Lossenol grew increasingly tactile, often slouching against Daeron or slinging an arm over his shoulder as they stood or walked somewhere. It was all purely friendly, but also intimate—intimate in the way of family, of brothers or dear friends. It was nice. It made it easier to hold himself in the present, to remember that that he both could and wanted to stay alive and himself, rather than fading way into the winter woods.

Daeron tried to recall if Maglor and Maedhros had behaved in the same way, but couldn’t. Of course, they had been at a very public event, even if it was not quite as formal as it might have been. But he thought he remembered Maglor, at least, often reaching out to Maedhros, laying a hand on his arm or bumping their elbows together. Certainly they were always looking at one another, sharing laughter or having entire conversations in the space of a glance. Then he thought—perhaps Lossenol was a glimpse of Celegorm as he had once been in his happier youth, surrounded by brothers and cousins and friends. And then, of course, he wondered what all of his brothers had been like. He wondered what Fëanor had been like before it all went wrong—brilliant, of course, one of the mightiest born of all the Eldar, or so it was said, but all the actual tales Daeron had heard of him spoke of someone fey and fell, fierce and proud and terrible. 

So his sons had been too—at least Celegorm and Curufin, in Nargothrond. But they could not have all always been that way. Daeron wondered how it was that someone could fall so far.

“What are you thinking about?” Lossenol asked, dropping down beside Daeron in front of the fire. “You look very serious.”

“Oh—nothing in particular. I’m just sick of the cold.”

“I heard ice cracking up the river somewhere today. It won’t be long now before spring comes.”

“How long before it never comes again at all?” Daeron murmured without thinking. 

“That’s cheerful.”

“Sorry.”

Lossenol glanced at him, expression serious. “Speaking of cheerful things,” he said, “I keep dreaming about light. I don’t know what it means, but it—it frightens me more than the dark.”

“What kind of light?”

“I don’t know. Maybe—you said I had seen the Trees? Across the Sea? Maybe it’s that. It feels familiar, and it’s beautiful, but it also…hurts.”

“Maybe it is the Silmarils you dream of,” Daeron said carefully. Lossenol grimaced and looked away, but the mere mention of them didn’t seem to have stirred the Oath. “I’ve never seen one, but they are said to be very beautiful—they’re all that’s left of the Trees’ light, now, so I suppose it’s really more or less the same, whether you dream of one or the other. I can only imagine that is why Elu Thingol chose to keep it after Beren gave it to him—he had seen the Trees once, too. It was foolish—but, oh, I don’t know. That Light was what all our people crossed the world for, even if some of us never finished the Journey. It doesn’t surprise me that you would dream of it, or that it would be painful in its beauty. Fate seems to bend strangely around them too, if that makes sense—even when they aren’t present. I could feel it before I left, though I did not know what it meant.”

“I wish I wasn’t dreaming of it. I hate it. But how could you feel it?”

“I don’t really know. It was like hearing a key change in a song. At the time it felt discordant and wrong. I don’t know anymore if it was only my fear that made it seem so. There’s…there is an echo of the Great Music in all the waters of the world. You have probably heard bits of it here and there—most Elves can. If you know how to listen, you can hear more. Sometimes—it used to allow me to understand better what was happening, or what might happen in the future. But when Beren came I didn’t stop to listen—I was too afraid of how different the Esgalduin suddenly sounded.” He hadn’t tried to listen in the years since, either. Sometimes he thought about going to spend a few hours learning what the Lhûn might tell him, but he never did.

“Why did you leave, though? I don’t think you’ve ever actually explained what you did that was so bad.”

Daeron breathed a sigh, and moved over so he could lean against Lossenol, grateful for the arm that immediately came up to wrap around his own shoulders. In the other room Eluréd and Elurín laughed, busy at some game of their own invention. “I saw Lúthien with Beren in the woods, and I heard the change. He brought Doom on his heels, and I was afraid for her. So I went to Thingol, and I told him of Beren—who should not have been able to pass through the Girdle, let alone unnoticed. He was angry, and when Lúthien brought Beren before him he demanded a Silmaril as a bride price. It was not his to demand, and—really he just wanted Beren to leave and to never return, in spite of the fact that he had promised Lúthien he would not harm him. The Silmarils were all then still in the Enemy’s crown, impossible to retrieve, or so we all thought.”

“I don’t think I like Thingol much,” Lossenol said.

There was much Daeron could say in Thingol’s defense. He had been something like an uncle—a teacher, a kind and steady presence—as well as Daeron’s king, all his life, for Daeron’s parents had been friends and fierce supporters of his by Cuiviénen, before and during the Great Journey, and then afterward, when Eglador had been established. And of course he had been Melian’s student for many years—he had loved them both, just as much as he had loved Lúthien. There was also nothing he could say in Thingol’s defense, because he had acted foolishly and even cruelly, when he should have listened to Lúthien or at least to Melian. “He was as afraid as I was, I think,” Daeron said. “I don’t mean to defend what he did, or what I did, because I knew Lúthien better than almost anyone and I too should have let her make her own choices in her own time. I should have spoken to her, rather than running to her father. But I did go to him—twice. Because Lúthien grew determined to go after Beren, and when she told me of her plans I betrayed her trust. It was still just fear—fear that she would make it all the way to Angband and then not be able to get out again. That was the worst thing I did, because by then I knew more, and she had trusted me, and I betrayed her—she could forgive me before, but not after that. When I left Doriath it was in an attempt to follow her, to try to make up for it somehow, though I really don’t know what I would have done if I’d managed to find her. But the Girdle caught me and turned me around and spit me out in the east, and…”

“You didn’t want to go back?”

Lúthien had been so angry. She didn’t get angry like her father—he had never actually seen her with such fury in her eyes, cold as ice and frighteningly dark, voice gone low and dangerously quiet. And everyone knew that he had been the one to inform Thingol, at least the first time. Mablung had probably known, at least, that it had been him the second time too. “I don’t think I would have been welcomed back,” he said quietly. “And I thought…then I still trusted that the Girdle would hold. That—that it would be there, if I ever changed my mind.” It had been as foolish a belief as any of his others, then. He’d known that Doom had wound its way through the trees, following on Beren’s heels—that it was only a matter of time.

It had just seemed so impossible that Menegroth would fall. That Melian would leave, that Thingol could possibly be slain. 

He felt Lossenol take a breath and said, “Don’t apologize. You already have, and—if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. Even if the Oath had never been sworn and no blood of kin had ever been spilled—there is still the Shadow in the north.”

“If it weren’t for the kinslayings and the Doom of Mandos,” Lossenol said, voice barely above a whisper, “there might be a chance of winning.”

“I don’t think so. Not unless the Powers in the West choose to act—which they could have done by now, if they really cared.” Daeron heard the bitterness in his voice, but didn’t know how to quell it. He wondered if Melian had returned there—if she had tried to plead before the Valar, or if she knew that it wasn’t even worth trying. Maybe she just wanted to await Thingol outside the doors of Mandos and did not care anymore what she had left behind. Maybe grief had done to her whatever it was the Maiar suffered rather than fading and death.

He lifted his head, but didn’t pull away. “I have songs that can chase away dreams, if you’d like a night of uninterrupted rest.”

“That…would be nice. Thank you.”