Aicasicil’s mansion, Forlindon, winter morning
Earcalie watched the snowflakes fall lazily on the courtyard, covering the soil in a white blanket. It was one of those days where nothing could really be done until the weather cleared up. It was pointless to shovel snow when it would have filled the shovel tracks in minutes, the horses were safe and warm in their stables and no other elf in sight. No noise was heard but the light crunch of snow falling from the roof and the cold wind. Even the sky looked heavy, the little sunlight that managed to pierce the veil of clouds rendered the landscape… monochromatic, Earcalie thought. She yawned, staring out the window with nothing to do but be bored out of her wits. Letting her mind wander, her thoughts veered towards a memory from many, many years ago…
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Aicasicil’s mansion, Forlindon, winter morning of centuries ago
“Ammë!” a little Earcalie stared out of a window, perched on a stool to see past the window shelf, with a frown on her face. “Why does snow exist?”
“What do you mean?” Her mother was hanging laundry near the crackling fireplace, as the sudden change of weather had her run outside to salvage clothes and blankets from being turned into ice sheets.
“It is cold and damp and I can’t go out and play!”. That wasn’t the first time she saw snow, but anytime it snowed before it was just a light dusting on the ground, that day it was a proper heavy fall.
Mehtarnis chuckled. “Do you know the story of the elleth Nibis?”*
the elfling tilted her head “No?” she sat on the stool and look at her mother inquisitively. A story, even made up on the spot and highly improbable, was a sure way to keep the child's mind occupied. “She was a young sinda elleth from long ago, living in the forests of Beleriand with her family. They were blessed with mild climate and their beautiful forest provided all they needed for survival. She lived a happy life until the dark enemy rose from his sleep, and sent orcs to trouble the peaceful life of the elves in Beleriand”
“Orcs are nasty!”
“Indeed they are. As I was saying, when the orcs started causing trouble, Nibis, her family and friends decided to leave Beleriand in search of a new place to be far, far away from the orcs. So it was that they crossed the Ered Luin into Eriador. Unaccustomed to the harsher climate on the slopes of the Blue Mountains, they wouldn't have stayed if they hadn't found a group of dwarven hikers from Nogrod, who kindly escorted back to their city and provided them with warm clothes, food and directions to find some of their kin that side of the mountains”
“Dwarves helping elves?”
The mother nodded “Yes 'Calie. There wasn't always strife between our peoples. Now, one day Nibis was strolling in one of the open courtyards of the dwarven city. Something extraordinary that she never saw before had happened: that night a heavy snowfall covered everything in a soft, white blanket. Nibis never saw snow in her forest and she stared at the landscape in awe. The snow under the sun glittered and dwarven children played a strange game throwing fistfuls of snow at each other”
“We play snowball fight too!”
“Yes darling. However, her gaze was drawn to a few dwarves in a corner of the courtyard where they were... sculpting the snow, one would say. A dwarf standing on a rock, a boar charging, a tall tree, the designs were incredibly detailed and the elleth couldn't believe something so soft as snow could be molded into sculptures that did not crumble. She had artistic talent, so she asked to try at snow sculpting herself. The dwarves prepared a snow mound for her and tools to sculpt with. Nibis was so enamored by this that she made a statue of herself dancing, her arms aloft as if to catch snowflake.
“It is as if I am made of snow too now!” she said laughing, and the dwarves then gave her a nickname: Snow-elf. Thus the first snowelf came to be. Eventually, Nibis and her elven companions left Nogrod and found the elves of Eriador yet she never forgot of the snowy courtyard in the dwarven city. In winter, she would always visit them, and sculpt new snowelves, until the warm winds thawed the cold of winter”
Earcalie leapt from the stool and tugged at her mother's arm. “Let us go and make a snowelf too ammë * please!”
“I suppose if we stay under the porch we won't be too cold and damp”. So they did and the little elleth built her own snowelf, which was in no way as detailed as the one in the story, nor did it resemble an elf much, but she was proud of it nonetheless. The snowelf under the porch “greeted” them everyday until the winds of spring melted the snow and left the little elfling sulking for days
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Grown up Earcalie chuckled at the memory. The day after, wearing cold weather clothes she went out and gathered enough snow to recreate her childhood snowelf. Now that many years passed and she had better skill to actually make a decent-looking one, she still decided to give it the same wobbly appearance of her first snowelf. And just like so many years ago, it greeted her outside the porch, until the warmer weather melted it away.
She wondered if there was such a thing in the Blessed Lands. Maybe she would still be on the eastern shores, building a new snowelf for years to come, maybe she'd be long gone, lining snowelves up and down the Valinorean mountains. Only the future would tell.
some words:
ammë: mother in quenya
Nibis: snowflake in sindarin
