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Eärendil doesn't like it here.
It's always too loud in the tents, too loud and too windy, and people keep coming in and out even when the stars are out and he and Mama are tired. Even when they leave and Mama tells him to sleep, he doesn't want to. The last time he fell asleep, his home and Salgant and Ecthelion and Glorfindel and his grandfather disappeared, and he woke up under a wide blue sky that made him feel too small without the stone walls surrounding him.
Mama tells him that she won't ever go away, but that's what they all told him, too, so even when she's asleep, he tries to stay awake, watching her so that they can't take her away, either. If he can see her, she can't disappear where everyone else went, too.
He wishes he could go back home. The tents are flimsy and sometimes at night, the walls shake around them like they're going to fall on them. Mama promises them that they'll build houses soon. She always looks sad now, so he just nods and doesn't tell her that he doesn't want a new house, he wants his home. He wants Gondolin.
It's hard to sleep, anyways. The tent is thin fabric, and the sound of the sea keeps him awake even after all the people have stopped talking and the lamps have gone out. Mama strokes his hair and tells him not to worry. "It sounds like a lullaby, doesn't it? There's nothing to be afraid of," she murmurs, resting her chin on his head as he curls up in her lap. "It's Ulmo's lullaby."
It doesn't sound like a lullaby to him. At least, not like the lullabies that Mama used to sing to him back home, leaning over him so her hair fell all around his face like a curtain. Or the songs she sang when she thought he was asleep. He used to lie awake, looking out his window at the stars, and sometimes, he thought he heard the stars sing back to her.
The sea isn't like that. He saw it up close once, when Mama went to look at the houses that they were building near the edge of the water. While Mama was talking to the builders, he had wandered away to the cliff side and sat with his legs dangling over it. The wind played with his hair, and he closed his eyes and imagined he was home again. The wind was too cold, but if he squeezed his eyes really tight, it was like sitting on their roof during the winter. The gulls could almost be falcons, if he didn't pay too much attention-
Then the waves thundered against the rock, and in them he heard the roar of flames.
Eyes flying open, he had thrown himself back from the edge and scrambled up. As he crested the rise of the hill, he saw Mama come running out of the shed where she had been talking, frantically looking around and shouting his name, and he had thrown himself into her arms.
"You must be more careful," she tells him that night in their tent. They're lying down face to face, and she strokes his hair back absentmindedly. "The sea can be perilous, especially for a child." Her hand stills for a second. "Eärendil, I-" she says, before cutting herself off.
"Yes, Mama?"
She hesitates, then shakes her head. "Nothing. Go to sleep now. Everything will be fine."
Later, in the space between dreams, he feels her kneel down beside him. She places a hand on his brow, and hears a quiet whisper: "I can't lose you, too."
--------
During the day, he follows her around like a shadow, clinging to her skirts. His mama is always awake before the sun rises, and she goes to sleep long after it sets. He doesn't understand what she does-lots of talking with other people and telling them where to go or what to do. There's a lot of walking, though, and sometimes he gets too tired to keep up with her.
"Go back to the tent, then, Eärendil," she tells him, but the tent is too empty and the walls are too thin and smooth instead of solid and rough like the walls of his home are, and he shakes his head.
"Then get up and walk."
He shakes his head again.
His mama breathes out heavily and closes her eyes. "Eärendil, I can't carry you. Either you get up and walk or you go back home-"
"It's not home!" he shouts, and his mama stiffens in front of him. For a second, he feels bad, because Mama always said not to yell at anyone, even if you were really, really mad, but she always said lots of things like nothing will happen to you and you're always safe with me and Papa and I will never let you get hurt and if those weren't true, he doesn't know if anything she says is now.
"It's not!" He hears his voice echoing in his ears like he's in one of the halls in Gondolin. "It's not home and I hate it here, I hate the tents, I hate everything and I want to go home-"
Mama grabs his arm, tight enough to hurt. "Eärendil. Stop." Her face is white, and there's something hard in her eyes that he's never seen before. It scares him into silence.
She marches him back through the camp, still gripping his arm and ignoring the glances of the people they pass. When they get back to the tent, she spins him around and bends down to his height.
"Listen to me. You will stay in this tent, and there will be no crying, no yelling, nothing, until I come back. Are we clear?"
Slowly, he nods.
"Good." And she lets go of his arm and strides off quickly towards the other camps.
Slowly, he walks back into the tent and sits down on his bed. His fingers dig into the dirt as he bites his lip, blinking back tears. Don't cry or Mama will be angry.
It doesn't work. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he shakes as tears run down his face. He has to stay quiet. That's what Mama said. She'll come home if I'm good, he thinks. She'll come back if I stop crying.
The tears won't stop coming. Curling tighter around himself, he presses his mouth against his knees to muffle the sound. His sobs blend into the ocean outside. Ulmo's lullaby, that's what Mama called it. It sounds like crying, he thinks, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He wishes it would stop.
The waves feel like they're getting louder. Angrily, he stands up and picks up a rock, throwing it hard at the wall of the tent. "Stop it!" he shouts, and his voice is lost in the roar of the sea.
When Mama comes back in late at night, she finds him curled in her bed, one hand wrapped around her blanket and tearstains on his cheeks. With a heavy sigh, she gently sits down next to him and pulls him into her arms. Eärendil stirs, rubbing his eyes and looking up at her blearily.
"...Are you still mad at me?"
Mama closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Slowly, she cups his face with her hand. "No, Eärendil. I'm not."
He nods against her palm, and they sit in silence for a while.
"Do you want to stay in the tent during the day?" she finally asks. "I know walking so much is tiring for you. I-If you don't want to be alone, I can ask someone to stay-maybe Papa can-"
"No," Eärendil answers quickly. "I-no, I can stay alone."
Mama frowns a little. "Did something happen between you and-"
"No," he says again. He presses his face into her arm, and after a pause, Mama sighs and sits him up, pulling him into a hug. "I miss home too," she murmurs, rubbing his back.
He falls asleep there, with Mama still singing under her breath in his ear.
----
He can't find Mama.
The streets are on fire and people are screaming and it's so loud he wants to go home but he can't, he needs to find Mama first-
-running through the city, crying, coughing on thick black smoke-
-Papa said to protect Mama but I can't find her or Papa somebody help please-
He turns the corner and someone grabs him around the waist and yanks him up, and over the sound of battle he hears Uncle Maeglin's voice shouting something but when he looks back it's a man with Papa's face holding him over the edge of the wall and the building next to them collapses in a roar of flames-
"-wake up, Eärendil-Eärendil!"
Everything is dark when he opens his eyes, but in the distance, he can hear the fire roar, and he squeezes his eyes shut again, rolling into his side with a gasp. Fire and smoke and screams and burning-
"Eärendil, it's alright," Mama murmurs, gently pulling him into her arms. He clutches the fabric of her shirt tightly. "We're in Sirion, not Gondolin. Everything's fine. We're all fine."
He gulps for air as she slowly rubs his back. "...fire?"
"Shhhh, there's no fire," she reassures him. "We're right by the sea. No one would be able to set fire to this camp."
The front flap of the tent opens, and Papa crawls in. For a second, Eärendil stiffens against his mother as the feeling of a hand clutching the back of his shirt flares back up-it was just a dream, that was Uncle Maeglin that did that, not Papa, not Papa, he thinks to himself. Mama looks down and frowns a little, but doesn't say anything.
"Is everything alright?" Papa says quietly, kneeling in front of them. "I heard shouting."
"Nightmares," Mama answers.
Papa nods, then stretches out his arms. "Here. I'll take him."
Mama hesitates a little. "You need rest, too. You haven't been-I can hear you tossing and turning outside, too-"
"You need rest more than me," Papa answers. "You're running this camp almost singlehandedly," and there's a note of something that Eärendil can't place in his voice.
"I get enough sleep-"
"Idril. Let me take him. Get some rest."
Mama closes her eyes and sighs, then gently lifts Eärendil up and places him in Papa's arms. "Be careful," she says quietly.
Papa nods, and the two of them make their way out of the tent. Once they're out, Papa stands up and shifts Eärendil until his head is resting on Papa's shoulder and his arms can wrap around Papa's neck easily.
Instead of stopping at the neat bedroll where Papa sleeps, though, he takes them away from the camp, following a small trail downwards in the dark. The roaring of the sea gets louder, and Eärendil realizes where they're going. His grip tightens around Papa's neck.
Papa stops. "Is something wrong?" Even in the dark, his eyes shine as he looks down at Eärendil. "We can go back, if you want. You don't have to come down." He pauses. "Is it the sound of the waves you don't like?"
Eärendil pauses, then nods. "They sound like...fire, when I'm sleepy."
Papa doesn't hug him, or rub his back or talk quietly to him like Mama does. He just nods, once, and says, "Sometimes that happens to me, too," and Eärendil feels a little better, because Papa is brave and strong and if Papa feels like that, it's not strange for him to feel like that too.
"Do you still want to go down?"
Eärendil hesitates for a second, then nods. He can be brave like Papa, too.
"Alright, but tell me if you want to go back," Papa says, and they keep going down the slope. After a while, the steady thump of Papa's footsteps gets softer, and when Papa places him down, the ground is soft and loose beneath him. It's like the rocky parts of the streets in Gondolin, but the rocks are smaller, and they tickle his skin.
Papa sits down beside him, placing an arm around him as Eärendil leans onto his side. From where they're sitting, the roar of the waves is even louder, but now that he's closer, Eärendil realizes that they don't sound like fire at all. They're loud, but then they go away before coming back, then going away, then coming back. He counts the seconds between the swells. It's the same every time, and the thought comforts him.
Having Papa next to him helps, too. Eärendil rests his head on Papa's side and feels the quiet rise and fall of his breathing, in time with the waves. He closes his eyes, and the sharp salt air chases away the fire from his dreams.
"Do you always come here at night, Papa?"
His father shifts a little. "When I can't sleep. It helps me think, sometimes."
"What do you think about?"
There's a long pause. "The same things we all think about," Papa finally answers. “Probably the things you think about, too.”
Yawning, Eärendil snuggles closer to Papa. "Really?"
Papa nods. He's looking at the waves, even though Eärendil thinks he can't see them in the dark. "Everybody dreams about those things, I think. Flames and swords...and falling," he adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Falling?"
Papa doesn't say anything, like he hasn't heard Eärendil, only he must have because he's right there. When he talks, his voice is quiet. "A cliff, that wasn't-better if I had just put a blade through his neck. Quicker for him."
"For who, Papa?"
Papa starts a little, like he's forgotten that Eärendil's there. "No one that matters any longer," he finally answers. "Not any more."
It's not a real answer and they both know it. "Uncle Maeglin?"
Papa nods stiffly, slowly.
Eärendil sits silently for a second. "He wanted to hurt me and Mama, didn't he?"
Another nod. Papa wraps his arm around him a little tighter.
“...is that why you killed him?"
Papa looks at him. "Is that what you have dreams about, Eärendil?"
Eärendil shifts a little. "...sort of."
"Sort of?"
He's not afraid of Papa. He knows that Papa would never hurt him.
He just doesn't know why he keeps having those dreams.
"What are you dreaming about, Eärendil?" Papa's voice is soft. It doesn't sound like how it did when he found them on that wall. Eärendil still remembers the steel in his voice, how loud it got and how angry he sounded. He'd never heard Papa sound like that before. The Papa he knew only shouted when he was pretending to be an Orc and chasing Eärendil around, and even then his voice sounded like he was laughing. And when he caught Eärendil, he swung him up and tossed him into the air and caught him, instead of watching him fall without any expression on his face.
He doesn't know which one is his real Papa.
"...have you killed people before, Papa?"
Silence. Finally, he feels Papa nod. “During battles.”
"But Uncle Maeglin-that wasn't during a battle."
"That was different," Papa says, and Eärendil wonders if he's agreeing or disagreeing. "He wanted to hurt you and Idril."
Eärendil knows. He remembers being held over the wall, remembers looking down over the edge and seeing the drop under his feet that made him dizzy when he looked too long.
He remembers that Uncle Maeglin looked as scared as he had felt when Papa had pushed him over.
"...Uncle Maeglin didn't like heights," he says quietly, dragging a finger through the little rocks on the ground.
Papa's silent, so Eärendil keeps going. "And the wall we were on was-it was really tall-"
Papa reaches up and rubs a hand down his face. "I don't regret killing him, Eärendil. If he were right in front of me now, I'd do it again."
That's not the end of it, he knows, so he stays silent.
Papa sighs heavily. "But that’s never the end of it, is it?" He laughs once, humorlessly, and stares out at the ocean, his voice getting softer. "He was younger than Idril." He shakes his head. "I don't know why that bothers me. It shouldn't."
Eärendil looks at him, faintly outlined by silver moonlight. His face is calm, like it was that day as he held Uncle Maeglin over the wall. That had scared Eärendil just as much as Uncle Maeglin had.
"He was younger than Idril, and I dropped him off a cliff," Papa almost whispers. "And, you know, Eärendil, it wasn't hard. I let go and I watched him fall and-I watched him fall and I didn't feel anything."
Eärendil is silent. Papa looks over at him. "...is that what you're dreaming about, too, Eärendil?"
He nods quietly, because it feels wrong to say it out loud.
Papa looks at him for a second longer, then sighs. Slowly, he pulls him a little tighter into a hug. "...I'm sorry," he murmurs quietly. "You shouldn't have to think about this. You're too young."
“I am not,” he answers indignantly, but his words turn into a yawn halfway through.
Papa chuckles a little, and his voice sounds less strained than before. He sounds a little more like the Papa he remembers. "Eärendil," he says after a pause, "thank you."
He doesn't understand. "...Papa?"
"For reminding me why I did it. Why I would do it again." He takes a deep breath. "I've been avoiding you and Idril. Because-I hoped it would make it easier. For all of us. That it would help both of you not think about it." He looks down at Eärendil. "I suppose I should have realized it wasn’t the best idea. Eärendil, I'm sorry. I am."
Eärendil shakes his head vigorously. "It's not your fault," he says. and it doesn't taste like a lie in his mouth. Something in his chest loosens.
It was Papa who threw Uncle Maeglin off a cliff, but it was also Papa who slept outside in the cold because there was no room inside the tent and who had carried Eärendil from Gondolin from the fire and the dark into the starry night. They were all the same Papa, and they all loved him.
Eärendil looks up at the darkened figure above him, and is not afraid.
Papa breathes out shakily, his arm tightening around Eärendil's shoulders. For a long time, they sit there in silence. Only the roar of the waves breaks the quiet between them.
"Do you like the sea, Papa?" he whispers after a while, dragging a finger through the little rocks. They tickle against his skin.
"Hmmm?" Papa shifts so that he's lying more comfortably in the sand. "Well, yes, I do. Though I was older than you when I first saw it."
"...when?"
"Years and years ago. Even before I knew your mother. I remember I came up to the waves, and from the depths of the ocean-well, we'll save that story for another time, when you aren't so tired."
I'm not tired, Eärendil tries to protest, but it turns into a yawn halfway through.
"Do you want to go back now?"
Sleepily, he shakes his head. Papa nods. "Alright."
The waves crash on the shore, and in the haze of sleep, they sound like a voice, low and gentle, singing a lullaby.
"...like Mama," he says quietly, and Papa says, "Hmm?" from besides him.
"The waves sound like Mama singing," he murmurs quietly. Papa laughs softly.
"They do, don't they?" He sighs, smiling a little. "She's always reminded me of the sea. Everything about her." He looks down at Eärendil, curled in his arms. "Don't tell her I called her that, though," he says, and his eyes twinkle like they did before. It’s reassuring. Papa’s still there, Eärendil thinks, he was just sleeping for a while before he came back.
Distantly, he feels Papa picking him up, walking back up the trail, and kneeling down to crawl back into the tent. He whispers something in distinct to Mama, who says something softly back, before she kisses him gently on the forehead and he heads back out.
Eärendil falls asleep in his Mama's arms with Papa sleeping peacefully outside, the waves still echoing in the shell of his ear.
That night, he dreams of standing on the shore, feeling the waves brush against his feet, ankles, knees. They carry him out to sea, gently rocking him back and forth between the swells.
And he is not afraid. The sea is wild and strong but it carries the voices of Mama and Papa and Grandfather and Salgant and Ecthelion and Glorfindel and everyone who was left behind. He laughs into the spray, and the glint of the moon on the foam is Mama’s smile, and the waves crest and sing with Grandfather’s voice, and Papa’s laugh echoes in the salty winds that dance overhead.
Eärendil lets the sea carry him away, and for the first time since he left Gondolin, he is free.