Another Side of the Lady?

Sprained. The ankle was most definitely sprained. Manadhlaer, Lady of the Houses of Healing, handled the swollen, empurpled joint herself with long fingers, probing the Arrow's leg as delicately as possible. "Filegris," the imposing Telerë asked her reclining patient, "how ever did you strain every tendon at once? That is quite a feat, but not normally one I would expect of your order."

Filegris, lately of the Woodland Realm, grimaced; the pain-draughts were only just beginning to take effect. But she was eager to impress, and her mouth could still run easily. "Oh, I slid down an icy slope in the Hithaeglir. Captain Sáranasse had heard all the rumours of Goblin unrest -- you know, Lady, how people bring news to the Hall of Fire -- and she dispatched me to thin their numbers a bit. I found --"

Filegris halted mid-sentence, wondering what she had said. Manadhlaer's mouth formed a hard line, and time itself seemed to stop as the tall, silver-haired Lady stopped moving. While she halted, holding the Sinda's ankle in the air, Manadhlaer seemed to have a fire in her bluish-grey eyes -- not that of her second and dearest friend, Lady Norliriel, nor yet the welcoming fire of Lord Elrond's hall. Perhaps it was only a memory of fire, but now it glowed hard as coals.

"Goblins." Manadhlaer, infinitely slowly, replaced Filegris's leg on the pillow. She turned her back on the Arrow for a moment to retrieve a rolled bandage from a cabinet. Athelas, steeped in bowls of boiling water about the room, now swirled and eddied through the air, and Filegris blinked as the tall, proud form of the Lady seemed to waver.

"Goblins in the Hithaeglir." Manadhlaer turned back to Filegris, a living study in contradictions that perhaps the gentle Elloen would have shrunk from painting. For while she applied salve and began wrapping the ankle tightly with absolute care and tenderness, the banked fire still burned in her eyes, and she looked her patient in the eye with a dreadful eagerness. "Did you destroy many?"

Filegris struggled for an answer that would satisfy, and settled on the one that was true. "Many, Lady! And many a Warg as well, in a howling blizzard between Hrimbarg and the old Dwarf-keep south-west of there."

Manadhlaer paused in her careful wrapping, then kept going. "You destroyed many Goblins?"

"Oh, yes, Lady. So many that my arrows began to splinter, and could not be pulled out of their vicious little bodies. That is when I turned for home, having that statue to steer by."

The ankle was being bound just tightly enough to compress it, to support the damaged innards and to push excess fluid out of the bruised area. Manadhlaer's demeanour softened just a bit, and a slight tilt of her head showed her interest in this new topic. "You did well, Filegris. Tell me of the statue."

"Goodness, Lady, I thought everyone knew of it. It depicts an Elf-sire, larger than life to be sure, but looking tall and proud and even a bit kind. The stone there is hard and rough, but somehow the carver even added the swans of our House to his chest. I always feel better when I see that statue. Gossip says it was a Hammer who fell in mighty battle, sculpted by some other Hammer who no longer serves our House. But he doesn't look deathly." The pain-draughts were definitely taking hold now, making Filegris woozy and even looser-tongued than usual. "He looks most alive, to me. As if when I saw him, I knew I had help, I knew I had protection, if only from the Dwarves in that little ruin."

Finishing her binding, Manadhlaer affixed two curiously hooked pins to the bandage, which would neither come loose prematurely nor stick the patient in an already painful spot. She stroked her finished work almost proudly, as though it were one of the Noldor-jewels which most members of Vanimar got when they swore their oaths -- although she herself, on the front of the shoulder-wrap she wore as a badge of rank, had a jewel, it was not her swan. That was curious for a Lady of rank: a piece of flattened metal, hammered and dented, with clear marks of breakage and resoldering. It was an oddly crude badge, but it was worn as proudly as the pink diamond on the other side was.

"That statue was -- is -- my husband, who is now a guest of Lord Ñamó in the Halls of Mandos." Manadhlaer's eyes no longer blazed. Maybe it was the little Arrow's imagination, maybe the draught she had been given, or just the swirls of athelas in the air, but she would have sworn at that moment the eyes of the Lady of the Houses... watered?

"Oh, everyone has heard of Lord Themodir, my Lady!" Even aching and with her leg now propped at an awkward angle above her heart, Filegris craved approval above all. "He was a great hero! He even carried a wounded Son of Man on his back, I have heard. His portrait hangs in the Hammer Hall, they say. If it is at all like the statue, it must fill people's fëa with pride just to see it. I must go and have a look, maybe in a few days."

Manadhlaer's head raised. "He was not just a warrior, my dear. The tales in these last few years have all been about the end of his life, and you see over there" -- the Lady waved elegantly -- "the antidote Lady Norliriel and I finally devised for that poison. It is right in her portrait."

Filegris looked at the portrait with attention for the first time. All Elves were fairer by far than mortal Man, yet she suffered a flicker of jealousy -- would she ever be as beautiful as the dark-haired Noldë? She was useful, but had never thought herself beautiful. She finally looked at the beaker of antidote in the painting, which almost seemed to glow from within as it did in life.

"That is not work for such as I, Lady. I could never do what the two of you do."

Manadhlaer concealed her worry; her friend had been out of the Vale for far too long, as she considered it. Instead she went on. "We tell the tales of his fall, of how Lord Anglachelm said the marriage-words as Themodir lay dying in my arms. If my duties allow me to attend the story-telling gathering at the Pillar Hall this week, I must tell other tales. Oh, he loved to dance! Of his comrades, only Lord Tindir was his equal at dancing. He would whip around on the turns, flinging out his long silver hair. How he wanted to be noticed! And he was no warrior at all when he played the theorbo, save for his absolute focus on his task."

"He played the theorbo?" Filegris was properly groggy now. "How lovely! And dancing. I would not have guessed it. The statue's arms are open in welcome, not dance."

Manadhlaer busied herself putting things away, even things that had not necessarily been out of place before. "Do you know, I have not been able to see that statue yet? I am not allowed to make the journey myself without a guard of Hammer." She reflected. "And perhaps a good Arrow or two." Her mouth twisted briefly when she said "allowed."

"I will volunteer, Lady. I could find that work of art again with my eyes tight shut! How he must have suffered. Not your husband, I mean, Lady, but the ellon who had to stand out in that nasty weather and carve it all bigger than life, and make that awful rough stone smooth on the face."

A sigh escaped Manadhlaer as she wondered about Ráolor's fate. She had loved him as a brother of her husband, not to the extent of Daegond, but loved him nonetheless, and had tried very sweetly to dissuade him from joining the assault on some fortress off in the Shadowed southern end of the Woodland Realm. "It was no easy feat, I am sure." She turned back to her patient, all business again. "Can you stay lying down like this? Are you quite comfortable?" The Lady had, of course, divested her patient of the leather padding Arrows wore in the field, beneath their drab camouflage. "The celebrant is quite fresh. I can make you some tea from it."

Tea sounded good. "Thank you, Lady. You are too kind to a simple tool of the Order."

Manadhlaer took out a copper kettle, and filled it from one of the jugs of fresh water by the door. She bent for a moment to put the kettle on the hob of the fire that warmed Filegris's weary limbs -- one in particular wearier than the others. "Nonsense. You are my patient and my responsibility. Duty, Filegris, is how you were injured, and how I have repaired you. Bone on bone, sinew on sinew, vein on vein."

Though the Lady spoke gently now as she usually did, Filegris pictured her again as she had been a moment ago in her -- was it a lust? -- to hear the Arrow's kill-count of Goblins. As the room grew fuzzy around her, and she decided she might nap for a few seconds before the tea, she still made a mental note: the Lady of the Houses could be scary.