Manadhlaer remembered well the time Lord Elrond himself had had to be summoned to the Houses of Healing for a Perian with a wound even she and Norliriel together could not touch. When the great Peredhil emerged from the poor little thing's chamber, he had looked drained but briefly reported that the patient would survive, and athelas steam would not go amiss until the small body regained consciousness. Then he looked Manadhlaer in the eye -- she was so tall that the two were nearly of one height -- and said in the Old Tongue, "Healer, heal thyself." Lord Elrond had passed out of the Houses after this without a word of explanation, but Manadhlaer was certain that he knew her wound and whence it came.
In support of her friends' musical efforts, especially as many others were both healers and singers -- Norliriel, of course, who had on one profound occasion put her own fëa into a healing song, but also dear Elvealin -- Manadhlaer had gone to the concert put on by Lindamar to mark the entry of summer. She had let her hair down and adorned it with alfirin, which some Men called "evermind" (legend had it that the Horse-lords placed the flower on the barrows that marked their burials), and even flown a kite! Oh, how long had it been since she had indulged in such sport? She had danced with Lord Anglachelm, who had tried, with a painful smile, to imitate the flashy dancing style of Themodir. One song the musicians played, something about separated lovers, had undone her so much she had gone aside and wept. But otherwise, she had... was it possible? She had danced in company and enjoyed herself.
Today was a little more solemn. She had resolved to keep the anniversary of Themodir's death, the fourteenth of June by Men-reckoning, just as she had the first -- by keeping an old custom of the Teleri. At Alqualondë, when a ship was expected that might have to arrive by night, or had been delayed enough to make those on shore anxious for its fate, the Teleri gathered on the bluffs surrounding the city and lit lanterns, keeping the vigil that the sailors might have a bit more light by which to steer themselves home. Norliriel had been with her last year, and she knew it pained her Tûr even to stand near the cairn, so Manadhlaer dressed in the dark blue of a stormy sea and carried her lantern up-hill by her lonesome.
Or had she? As she took up her place by the pile of rocks whose capstone was now a brilliant red, dyed so by a single drop of the antidote to the Daegûr poison, Manadhlaer heard a creaking whisper -- the susurration of thousands of tiny metal links. She would know that sound anywhere. It was some one in a chain-mail hauberk. Manadhlaer turned, and felt new strength flood into her, seeing Losgael -- whose tabard, of course, bore the black of the Hammer just as Themodir's had.
"I hope I am not intruding, elder kinswoman." Losgael was so very deferential, when in fact she was not so much younger as to require it.
"My dear Losgael, your presence is never an intrusion," Manadhlaer said with feeling, her free hand over her heart. "How did you know?"
"Lady Elvealin guessed you would keep the vigil again, every year, as long as you remain in the Vale," the warrior said simply.
Her dear Elvealin, gift-giver supreme! Without Elvealin, Manadhlaer would never have thought to befriend a real live swan, but Rámarillë, at one time Elvealin's own boon companion, was the friend of Manadhlaer's loneliest hours and really seemed to listen to her meanderings.
"Of course you are welcome, though I would not have asked it of you. I assume you are free from your regular duties?"
"Lord Tindir himself agreed you would likely want..." Losgael stopped herself, clearly meaning to say "protection" and yet halting for fear of giving offense. "A companion, as Lady Norliriel is still away with the Lady of the Pillar."
Lord Tindir had passed Manadhlaer one of the grim reports from that party himself, so she well knew that the strange and sudden journey might entail peril. Manadhlaer bit her lip. "He was not wrong. A grief shared is a grief lessened."
"Through you, Lady, and the look in Sergeant Daegond's eye when you two speak of him for a mere moment, and the stories of his valiant deeds we tell in the Hammer Hall under the gaze of his portrait..." Losgael's bearing softened a bit. "I can almost feel I knew him. I have told you what a great honour it would have been to serve at his side."
Manadhlaer surveyed the cairn again. One of Dolthafaer's arrows still stuck in the ground, although its fletching was now worn almost off from two years of wind and rain. What a different Arrow-lord Carniquesse was, and yet similar in some ways. "I can only deem," she said to Losgael with her gaze still fixed on the cairn, "that he would have been honoured in his turn by your bravery and noble heart -- hist! Who comes?"
The swish of heavy layered silk robes announced Meluilindelë even before he shone his lantern on his face. "It's only me," he said to Manadhlaer, and then to Losgael, "Dove." The single word from the quiet healer carried much weight, and yéni dropped from the Hammer as she turned to smile at her husband. Manadhlaer's heart carried at once a pang for her own hurried wedding and lost -- no, no, severely delayed -- wedding-night, and pride in her family. She tasted the word over again in her mind. Family.
"You have not brought the rabbit, I hope?" Manadhlaer said lightly, to keep from weeping from the mix of passionate emotions.
Melui flushed. "No, no, she is being watched. We saw to that." He gestured vaguely at the bluebells and purple iris that grew around the cairn -- the colours of Themodir's noble house in Gondolin.
"With three whole heads of lettuce, besides! We would not leave her with a friend all night without some sort of distraction." Losgael finished Melui's thought.
"It is good of you to come, kinsman." Manadhlaer managed a smile for her sole, so far as she knew, living blood kin: the son of Ayandil, who had saved her life by steering the two of them on a makeshift raft all across the entire Great Sea. Not, of course, without the providence of Lord Ulmo and the hosts of Ossë. She closed her eyes for a moment, silently thanking the mighty Vala.
"My father taught me the custom." Melui was as laconic as always, yet Manadhlaer appreciated his words the more, knowing they were never given lightly. "Besides, I could never have let my dove come without my help."
Manadhlaer now grimaced at the second "dove," and hid it by glancing off into the twilight. "If you call her that so much, she will grow wings and fly away from us."
"I have wings." Losgael dropped Melui's hand for a moment to tap the swan-wings on the front of her tabard. "And I could not fly anywhere without carrying my brave soulmate."
"Stop, stop! You sound as if you will begin to lay eggs." The name Galadhion came unbidden to Manadhlaer's mind, and with great effort of will she forced it away.
"Has your swan lain any eggs?" Melui, outside the pressure of a crowd (it was like pulling Dwarf-teeth to get the shy healer to come to the Hall of Fire when folk were gathered), always had the most curious questions.
"No, no, we kept her apart from Elvealin's bird Falas this spring, for both fowl are young, and her only other swan-companion is Daelith, who of course is female." Manadhlaer had been present when Tindir gave Daegond a black swan along with the shoulders that denoted his new rank of Sergeant. Daegond insisted the bird was male, though Daelith was in the habit of laying oddly coloured eggs every time one turned around. Manadhlaer briefly wondered what the troops were eating these days. "Why do you ask?"
"I thought my d -- " Melui changed his wording at a glance from Manadhlaer. "I thought Losgael should have one." The warrior actually blushed at this, and exchanged a long glance with her husband.
"Why not you, yourself? After all, you are the one who, according to legend, undid the Sergeant with a single glance, or kicked him indelicately into the Bruinen, or sent him there with a flurry of sword-blows. It all depends on who tells the story." Manadhlaer gave her kinsman a sly smile, knowing the whole incident of single combat to win Losgael's hand rather embarrassed him.
Indeed, it was his turn to blush. "I do not know what happened. I merely listened to advice, and did not charge him, but stood ready."
Manadhlaer, who had of course been there with part of her heart belonging to each combatant, was not sure herself, and pondered how to answer this. It should have been a massively unbalanced fight, with Melui's sleek head perhaps tumbling from his shoulders. Many was the nightmare Manadhlaer had had in the week prior to the incident, knowing Daegond's strength and ferocity.
"I do!" The fire in Losgael surfaced, as if her lantern had ignited her suddenly. "It was your sheer bravery and confidence! Yours is the soul of a gentle healer, but that day you fought with honor, with your fierce glance alone!" Nothing could work Losgael into a veritable tornado like the subject of that "fight," in which the Hound of Vanimar had suddenly tumbled off the bridge before delivering a single blow.
Melui said nothing, but took Losgael's gauntlet to his face and kissed it. Losgael swayed on her feet for the briefest moment, then regained her military posture.
"I deem..." Manadhlaer spoke slowly. "I deem that he would be proud of both of you, and delighted to be your relation by marriage. He would have pestered the two of you to dance together in the Hall of Fire. He would have helped name..." Manadhlaer could not quite say "your heir" without wobbling, thinking of the Galadhion that was not now, but might someday be in the Blessed Lands. "Your rabbit's kits."
The couple exchanged looks. Losgael explained, "As you did with Rámarillë, we kept Almë strictly indoors at the height of the spring fever. She is young still..." Losgael trailed off and smoothed her tabard down over her hauberk, though it was not wrinkled. While Losgael fought for the Hammer, the couple might not bear children, as a young family -- younger than herself, anyway -- naturally longed to do.
"There will be a time, Losgael, I believe this wholly, when the shadow in the East has gone, has been defeated utterly. And then there will be time. There will be time." Manadhlaer reflexively patted Losgael's arm, as much to reassure herself of such a thing as to bolster Losgael.
A passer-by that night would have seen three lanterns, and perhaps wondered what the figures on the hill were celebrating. For with the three together, exchanging gentle words, it was harder to sink into the despairing grief that had nearly faded Manadhlaer from Arda's shores entirely. It was easy, rather, to imagine the three figures as Onodrim whose branches inter-twined, two younger ones keeping a third from falling on the pile of stones. No passer-by could have imagined how many flower-tokens of purple and blue, following the first three, had been left at the feet of Themodir's portrait in the Hammer Hall, as these figures kept vigil for a ship that would not come again to this port. Perhaps come morning, Lord Tindir or Lord Veryacano might unlock the great hall and with a sigh order some recruit to gather up the heap of blossoms -- but carefully, and with the greatest respect, or else.
