Work Text:
A light snow was falling, and the afternoon was darker for it. Earwen was silent because Finarfin was; she did not want to speak until he did. They walked arm and arm in the direction of their own house. It was too far a distance on foot in winter weather, but they had not yet hailed a coach.
“It was never a question of my going,” Finarfin said at last. “I do not think, even now, that I would choose to uproot us for such an uncertain cause.”
“No,” Earwen said. “You would not have left your mother, or our home.” She did not think this was a weakness; she never had. She only wished she had understood better what Finrod thought of the whole affair, before he departed for a second time. She loved her firstborn dearly, but they were somewhat too alike to be unguarded with each other.
She had been like that with her own mother.
“It was not…” Finarfin patted her hand, curved around his elbow, and went on, “I have long dreaded one conclusion, Earwen: that it was my duty to persuade them to stay.”
“Feanor would not have listened to you or anybody. He was deaf to reason.”
“Fingolfin might have.”
She could not tread there. Could not, even now, hazard a guess as to the inclination of Fingolfin’s heart. Had not its compass led him west? “You are a help to Nerdanel now,” she said. “I daresay that you and Indis both were a comfort to her, during that dreadful half-hour.”
He stopped now, his shoulders stooping a little. He flung his left hand out, waving for a cab. “I do not remember much of what I said at first,” he admitted, over the din of hooves rattling obligingly near. Then, when they were settled in the dim quiet of the coach, he added, in a puff of cold breath, “It was a shock.”
“Of course it was.”
“Feanor dead,” Finarfin murmured. “And Manwe…I have been blind and slow, Earwen. No—do not excuse me. I have looked for friendship where I wished to see it. I should take at least one lesson from my poor dead brother. He trusted nobody. I shall not join him in that, but I could stand, I think, to trust a little less.”
“So you think the Governor had a hand in all this trouble?”
“A hand to shake the hands of those who sign military orders,” he answered gravely. “Depend upon it, Earwen. Melkor is what he is to this nation because of Manwe. Because of Manwe’s blindness.” He shuddered—she could feel it, pressed close beside him. “Our boy,” he whispered. “Our boy is there. Artanis, too.”
“Finrod is clever and practical,” she assured him. “He will look after himself and his sister.” When Finarfin worried, Earwen must forebear. Even if it meant stifling her own fears.
“I know that. But oh—he and Maedhros…Fingolfin and Fingon…what brave enemies they will make, of a man with more ambition and more power than is good for him, or for the rest of the world! I am tempted to thank God, quite pitifully, that Manwe made no mention of Finrod’s name. But I did not read the letter, of course. We cannot know…”
“We can trust in each other, and in our son,” Earwen said, clasping his gloved hands in hers.
He kissed her cheek tenderly. Then he said, “Dear Finrod,” and they rode in reflective silence, thinking their own thoughts of the son—and daughter—so far away.
It was only when they had arrived at their door when Finarfin said, his voice gone low and urgent again, “Earwen, I confess I am much afraid of what Melkor Bauglir will be.”