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“Why are they digging up the soil?” asked Finrod.
Balan smiled. “It's not just soil, it's hyacinth bulbs.”
They sat on a log. The wind brought smells of decomposing leaves and early frost. Balan’s wife and two sisters worked with shovels in a distance, singing a simple work song about the sun setting and rising.
“You eat hyacinths?” For the Eldar they were one of the many plants of Beleriand that proved somewhat toxic, but maybe the Men reacted differently?
Now his friend outright laughed. “Do we look like fools? They are for growing. To have some color in the winter.”
“But they're dead.” The bulbs were dark and lifeless, with nothing green to them.
Balan glanced at him with knotted brows, as if suspecting Finrod of joking at his expense (he had done this a couple times, and despite it being always friendly, he probably shouldn't have).
“I am not jesting. I genuinely do not know how to grow anything from a dead bulb.”
Balan sat silent for a while, then his face relaxed. “You don't have winters, do you?”
“Yes and no—” Finrod ignored the usual sigh. Despite what Men said, ‘yes and no’ was often a good answer to questions. “We— Aman does have snow, but the plants don't die, unless they're needed to.”
“Our plants have some tricks… But you'll see.”
The snow fell silently outside and Finrod warmed his hands on the …Men would probably call this unshapely thing a vase. It was filled with warm water and stood near the heath, but not too near. On the top of the vase sat a pale purplish bulb, and on the top of the bulb emerged a tiny green sprout.
Balan entered the room with a bundle of wood, dropping snow everywhere. “See? I told you they have some tricks.”
Mid-winter passed and days grew longer, but not yet warmer. The Men barely had enough food., But they had flowers. There was something both foolish and beautiful in this.
In the four containers — Finrod still couldn't force himself to call them vases — purple hyacinths bloomed, filling the tiny room with their spring-like smell.
Balan whittled a wooden creature for his nephew and hummed.
“Shouldn't they be growing in the ground?” Finrod asked him. Outside the snow was patchy after a short-lived thawing.
“Yes, but it's still too cold. We'll plant them back in the spring when the high frost stops coming, and then they'll bloom even better, and in more colors.”
“And then in autumn you'll dig them out again?”
“If we're still here. We move a lot, you know.”
Finrod turned from the window back to Balan. “I wonder… would you like to move to Nargothrond for some time?”
“I— But—”
“If you don't want to, I understand! Please, don't feel as if I demand anything from you. It was just a thought, I didn't mean to offend you.”
“Offend me? I'd love to. But I'm just a man.” Balan looked down at his whittling, uneasy.
“And I'm just an Elf. And I'm inviting you for a visit, as long as you wish. You can bring some of those hyacinths with you. They’ll remind you of home.”
