Being Their Daughter

     Plinnlim enjoyed the relaxing bath, but in her mind she was tense. She tried to listen to her parents in the room next to her, but all she heard at first was her mother not being happy at all while her father tried to calm her down. It was only when her mother's voice became less agitated that she could understand the words.

 

     "But how can they write such a thing? She is our daughter!"

     "Gerich gûr nîn be hen. But remember the dreams you had, when we had conceived her. Did it never occur to you that they may not have been nightmares at all, but indeed the prophetic dreams you were waiting for? You saw her fighting evil creatures and were scared by that. And now look at her! That is what she does. And she is actually quite good with that from what I hear and from what I read in this letter. Also, the other day when I talked to hîr Sidlinn and hîr Calenhen they did praise her bows. They may not be the best bows you can find, but for her age, they are really good."

      Plinnlim smiled as she heard that. Her father spoke on. "And remember her first words. She said nana and ada first, and elo. I guess we said that a lot after she was born. But her fourth word of all words was plinnlim. That was what she said when she saw an arrow shot from a bow string and that was what she was most fascinated by from her first days on. That is why I changed her name to Plinnlim - not because she said pilinn lim in that funny way, but because that was what she loved most. A fast arrow."

     "But look at us, herven nîn; we are so much unlike her!"
     "She may be unlike us. But only because she is no gardener. Look at us, we do what we do with all our heart, and we are quite good at it, too. We can forget everything else when we work with the plants; when we tend hedges or water the flowers. Don't you see that she is doing the same? All her heart is in her bow and arrows, and a good heart it is, too. How often was she home late because she forgot everything while hunting? You know she did not only gather wood all that time, don't you? She is not so much different from us there. She is our daughter." After that, her parents went downstairs and their voices faded.

 

 

     When Plinnlim followed later, dressed in her new red dress, she was beaming. Now everything made sense and everything was right, just as it was supposed to be; and the looks from her parents told her the same. The wink her father gave her also told her that he knew she had overheared them. Happily she hugged them and went outside, almost dancing through Imladris and surprising some of the other elves like hîr Sidlinn and hîr Calenhen by hugging them, too, out of the blue.