You are fourteen years old. Fey and silent with wild-cat feet, you drive Bero and Nalata mad with your forays to the woods. Silvan as you are, you leave no trace of you: finding you is impossibility when you don't want to be found.
You know that back at the house, Aran Denethor is waiting for you. Waiting to see you before he and the rest of your folk leave for the rivers of Ossiriand. But you're going to the stream today, as bubbling and merry as the ones of distant memory, feeding the rushes that line its banks, the oak-and-beech dappling the brilliance of stars, to pick river- stones. In your room, you keep them in an earthen bowl with water, river grass, and tadpoles, to Nalata's dismay. But asleep, you think you can hear the singing of some far-off river: you think you can remember being held in someone's hands.
Careful, for you know how sharp grass can be, the edges keen to slit open skin, you dip your hands into the water to feel for stones. The water sings, bright and merry, ice-cold against around your ankles and lapping at your hands. You scoop up a handful, watch them glimmer in the starlight, as water runs from your fingers, back into the stream, fry and tadpoles around your feet. Don't kill us today, Little Quendi.
No, you tell them, not today.
You remember the question of tadpoles, and they remember too. Fighting about them with Celeborn in Menegroth, when, out of sheer curiosity, you scooped up a jar of them from a lake to watch. He'd protested. It wasn't right, he said, to keep them there just because you wanted to.
"It's only for a while," you said. And it was true, you'd scooped them up only to watch for a while and then let them go. And you're angry because, out of anyone else, you should be saying that, not Celeborn. You a Laethrim, he a pompous old Iathrim. But some part of you was wondering: their folk will not look after them. Their parents court, spawn, and then, leave them alone to die.
Shouldn't you watch over them?
"It's still not right," he insisted, and furious, you'd splashed water on his face, grabbed your earthen jar of tadpoles and ran away. Later, when Hir Elmo found you, he scolded you for running without telling them where you'd gone and then, taught you and Celeborn to skip stones.
He made no mention of your jar of tadpoles. And so you took them home, to the confusion of your kith and kin.
"What have you got there, khina?" Denethor, turning from Elu and Bero, glancing into the pot to find the tadpoles, murmuring into the water. "What do you have them for?" You never said, but you'd heard snatches of their conversation: it leaves you with a knot of fear that you can't quite articulate.
"To look after," you say, unflinching amidst the combined gaze of these powerful adults.
Pause. "In a jar of river-water?"
You don't understand. "Where else am I supposed to put them?"
Reticence, and then, Denethor laughing uncertainly and reaching out to ruffle your hair. "The ideas these Iathrim put into your head, khina."
"I do not see the harm in it," Bero retorted, before Elu could make a more playful remark in reply. He bought a wooden bowl for you that day, helped you pick river stones, and grass, snails to help keep the bowl clean. All the while, talking of your grandmother, how she loved to pick things like stones and nuts and shells when she was little, and how she loved the trees. Little Travelers, the both of you.
You fought with Celeborn again later when he took you aside and asked why you seemed ungratefully silent. Why, despite everything Bero did, you remained tense: a wolf- pup with its tail down, expecting punishment for some concealed transgression, some unknown flaw.
You do not want to back into the house.
You watch instead, the ripples on the stream as you trouble it with heartbreak, and then, angrily turn away.
Wandering further into the woods, you sing some half-forgotten traveling hymn, mimicking the grandness of your people's journey West, in the manner of the Iathrim minstrels. Fraught with danger, unknown dark things lying everywhere in wait in the woods. But these were children's stories, sung for your delight, and when they sang, they scrunched their faces into the comical mimicry of fearsome things and chased all of you children, shrieking, through Doriath's woods. But you know the adults sing other songs too: their children playing under the protection of new trees, of perfectly ordinary days, where they were merely alert but not afraid, of loves gained, and lost along the way.
Little as you were, you yourself don't remember much of the journey here. You barely remember them. Their faces are blurred reflections in troubled water, though Denethor often spoke of them, guarding against fading memory.
"Your ata and naneth had a game with you," Aran Denethor had said. "You ran to them, they held out their arms for you and then," taking you into his arms, spinning as if in a dance: "like this, Khina! Do you remember?"
But they were gone, and it was Aran Denethor who had occupied the immediacy of Here and Now. He sang you songs of oak and birch, of willow and beech, your namesake, songs of parting and of meeting-again (for in the span of your immortal lifetimes, who can say?).
You didn't understand why, then, at the journey's end, you had to live with Nalata and Bero. Their explanations make sense and don't, the way all adults' explanations do.
"They're your blood-kin, " Denethor had said, "they have a stronger claim on you than I." He gave you a kind of half-smile. "You'll have a mother and father again," he said. "Wouldn't you like that?" But you were only how-old, and it was hard to say what you might like. You cannot say you do not like Bero and Nalata, who are gentle and kind, who were so polite that they asked for your permission to hold you before they did, and treated you with seed cake and honey.
You only grow more confused when the three of them are together. Out of sight they will say only good things about each other. But together, the air grows as tight and taut, as a string about to snap.
You do not want to go back to the house.
Duty says you have to.
Sure enough there's an argument on the wind.
What do you mean he's "not here"? Where are you hiding him?
Denethor, for the love of Illuvatar…
You do not mean to tell me he knew I was coming and still he hid! What have you told him---
We?! Us?
Bero---!
We have said nothing. If the child is angry with you, you only have yourself to blame!
Bero!
But Denethor says nothing. He turns instead, as if he senses you, and sees you standing away and apart, as tightly closed as someone's fist, hanging limply at their side. Bero and Nalata follow his eyes to where you are.
"Aiyo, Oropher," Nalata said softly. They know you've been watching. "Where have you been?"
"In the river." And then, without a further glance at any of them, you walk straight into the house, into your room.
The tadpoles murmur their greetings into the water. They know you by this point, and nibble at your fingers as you offer them lettuce, kept by the bedside. Tiny legs bud beneath the plumpness of their bodies, beneath their shrinking tails.
You'll have to let them go, soon. Another parting.
You're meant to be grateful. If Denethor loved you-at all-if Bero and Nalata love you now, you are to understand that such love is transient and may be removed at a whim. Further, you understand, somehow, that loving either is a betrayal to the other: such is the nature of their claims on you. And no, you don't understand it all. But you're fourteen, a leaf-on-the-wind, and there's so much that isn't meant for you.
You find yourself watching your blurred reflection, the tadpoles uneasy at the taste of your tears. They follow your trail: angry ripples, strewn against the water…and brush against the trembling of your hands.
Notes:
- The Encyclopedia of Arda notes that the meaning of Oropher's name is "uncertain, but likely 'tall beech tree.'"
-On using primitive elvish: Tolkien's notes on the Green Elvish tongue are alas, few and I've followed Marnie's approach in using primitive elvish to stand in for the Green Tongue. Nalata means "radiance or glittering reflection," Bero "valiant man, or warrior." (both taken from Ardalambion.
-Other notes on language: "khina" means child. Atar is listed as the primitive quendian word for father, but unfortunately the primitive quendian word for mother is not listed.
-Iathrim is another term for the Sindar, meaning "fence folk"
-There's very little that we know about Oropher, and it is perhaps, possible that he was Laegrim, or had Laegrim heritage. Tolkien states that there were close feelings of kinship among the Lindar, and Denethor and his folk were welcomed by Thingol as long-lost kin. It's likely the Laegrim had close relatives among the Sindarin, and vice-versa.
