Work Text:
June 11, 1849
Dear Celegorm,
It is your turn to write me, but I am bored and can sometimes convince my tutor to shorten my singing lesson if I plead having much correspondence to attend to.
I heard that Huan is almost full-grown now! Will you bring him to New York for Grandfather's birthday celebration? I hope you may. I miss him very much. Certainly more than I miss you.
I also heard that your father dismissed your family's servants as spies. That is very shocking, but I suppose the fact that I know about it at all means that he was right.
I asked Fingon & Turgon if they wished to be remembered to you. Fingon sends you his best wishes, though I will have you know he did so with a face as sour as if he’d bitten a lemon in two. Turgon—who pretends to be such a gentleman!—sends you no greeting at all. Now, ordinarily, it would be very rude of me to recount such things, but I imagine they will make you laugh very hard.
Which of your brothers say hello to me? I see Maedhros and Maglor the most here. Maglor teases me a little. Maedhros is always very polite when he visits our house, though he sometimes slips up and calls me Irisse, which I only allow my father to do willingly. (My brothers do it too, and it is very annoying. If you even try, I shall burn every letter you have ever sent me, and the world would not be much poorer for it, since I have never seen a clumsier hand—and in pencil!)
Galadriel—since turning thirteen she has begged to be called by her middle name, and I am supporting her—has embroidered a very beautiful cushion that I am sitting upon as I write. As you know, I am not very skilled with a needle. I spent too much time out of doors with you, Mama says, though since I rarely see you above twice a year, I do not see how that can be! I do think it is a little unfair that Art Galadriel is better at a feminine accomplishment than I am when she loves to shirk her lessons almost as much.
Argon is whining as if he is much younger than he is. Now I must go and entertain him, for Fingon is never around these days—too busy with his ‘studies’ (as if he hasn’t been studying since he was 16, and much too young) and with trying to hold his liquor as well as Maedhros.
Fingon is not very good at holding his liquor.
Sincerely,
Aredhel
P.S. That rascal Eol has sent me another posy. Please thrash him when you come.
July 1, 1849
Dear Galadriel,
Thank you for your notes. I have been very remiss in replying, I know, but I haven't known what to say. I have dreams at night, that Uncle Feanor does fire the gun, and that Father—
See, this is why I have not replied to your letters. I cannot even write the whole of my last sentence.
You asked if I wished never to see any of my cousins again. Sometimes I think so. Other times—other times I miss them very much, though I will not speak of this to anyone but you.
You may call if you wish. As Mama says, we are ‘well enough to receive visitors’ now. If you come, you’ll see that Father put the pistols back on the wall.
Sometimes I hate our whole family dreadfully.
Love,
Aredhel
July 5, 1849
Dear Maedhros,
I am writing to you because someone has to and nobody else will. Please come and visit Fingon. He wants to see you and is too stupid to find a way to tell you. You are also a boy, and therefore you are also rather stupid.
(I know that you are 18 and 21, respectively, but I am 14 and do not respect you.)
This is not serving very well as an olive-branch, and that is because I am angry at your Whole Family, especially Celegorm. But all the same I do owe you a debt for something you probably don’t even recall, seeing as it happened—well, before that happened at Grandfather’s birthday dinner.
I really am grateful for your intervention with Eol; I should have known better than to ask Celegorm to thrash him, since of course he was going to come and do exactly that. Never mind that Eol is your age at least! It was good of you to be both diplomatic and terrifying, though I am still not quite sure how you did it.
Anyway, now you are receiving a letter from me, and we will consider my debt to you discharged. Fingon mopes about and is sure that his favorite cousin has deserted him. I assume that, over at Valinor Park, you are also moping about, sure that he detests you.
(Disregard all the foregoing if you are, in fact, in league with your father’s plans to murder my family.)
Please come and call. Father will not forbid it. And I will bear your presence amiably, even though it always makes all my friends insufferable. They want to know if you are already someone’s beau. They are such little fools.
In the hopes that we may be cordial,
Aredhel