Beauty Pierces Through

An unexpected family reunion in the Isle of Balar helps Ereinion make peace with his legacy and find his purpose. A sequel of sorts to “Resist not Evil”

Isle of Balar, around year 514 of the First Age.

“My mother was home to me… I tried to let go of many memories after she passed into Mandos’ care …”

Ereinion cast a quick glance at the elleth, bit his lip, then continued climbing, oblivious to the beauty of the sunrise around them.

He had no memories of his own mother, only tales of her poise and kindness and a quickly sketched portrait in one of his father’s treasured letters. Having no words of sympathy to share with his companion, he wasted none. “Careful, those stones are slippery with morning dew!” he warned instead.

Needlessly, since the tall elleth jumped nimbly without missing a graceful step.

“Silvery footed indeed” he thought grudgingly, shifting the pack on his back and pressing on, up the narrow path.

“My father, though, he was called the Wise, and for long I believed he had all the answers…”

Fathers were a different matter and Ereinion had no intention of discussing his with the elleth. He was relieved to spy the little stone cottage after a bend on the path; a merry column of smoke beckoning up the forge’s chimney. Without thinking he picked up the pace, stomping on the soft wet soil as if trying to escape his inner turmoil.

He was angry and confused since yestereve. After a few long hard days high at sea he had come home to Cirdan’s humble wooden cabin, only to find it full of golden-haired people who had greeted him with a mix of earnest respect and tearful familiarity. The tidings they brought with them had left him reeling.

After a restless night filled with unwanted visions of fire and despair, he had thought to get an early start to clear his thoughts…only to find the golden-haired Calaquendë he had at first mistaken for his father’s renowned and estranged cousin Galadriel sitting on the bench by the gate, watching the sunrise and all too eager to join him on his morning errands.

“You may want to wait here,” he suggested as they approached the cabin.

“Oh, I do not mind at all, this looks very different from the village,” she replied, following Ereinion across the well-tended garden that struggled to grow in the rocky terrain and against the salty sea breeze. “Miluin said that you always bring him part of your catches.”  

Ereinion froze. “Of course, Miluin,” he thought, annoyed; “that’s how she knew where to ambush me this morning but…would Miluin actually tell her whom I am visiting?”  A relative of Cirdan’s, Miluin was certainly aware of the not always friendly relationship between the different Noldorin houses, so while Ereinion guessed she had actively encouraged this particular meeting,  its purpose he could not fathom.  

Before he could say anything, the heavy door opened to reveal his dark-haired, annoying relative standing there, watching them with a strange expression in his drawn face that unsettled Ereinion.

He had barely had time to register the absence of the familiar sneer when two silvery voices broke the morning quiet as one.

“Celebrindal!”

“Celebrimbor!”

Was there grief mingled with fondness? Ereinion stood speechless as the dark-haired elf rushed past him looking poised to embrace the elleth. He stopped short and took her hands in his instead.

“It is true, then… I heard the tales yesterday, of the host of refugees arriving at Sirion, but did not want to believe it... I am grieved for your loss, Celebrindal,” he said in a deeply mournful voice.

Turgon’s daughter bent her head, accepting their cousin’s condolences graciously. “I can see the ennin have not been kind to you either, Celebrimbor,” she said.

He let go a short, bitter laugh. “Much has befallen since our paths last crossed, back in Eglarest, dear cousin..."

Stopping him mid-sentence, she pulled on his hands and embraced him briefly. Too stunned for words by the emotional reunion, Ereinion slipped into the cabin, closing the door quietly behind him.

The austerity of Celebrimbor’s abode always gave him pause. The Fëanorian’s haughty, imperious, refined manner always made Ereinion think of Tree-lit palaces in Tirion,  elegant clothes, finely crafted tapestries,  bright jewels and graceful crowds that populated the tales his grandfather would share when the mood struck. Somehow Celebrimbor fit in those tales, like his father and grandfather had.

Nothing remained now of those riches but the demeanour of someone accustomed to such trappings for most of his long life; the mannerisms of one expecting to be surrounded by beauty and abundance at all times.

Instead, Celebrimbor now dwelled in a humble stone cabin with rammed-earth floors, and made a simple living out of exchanging food and basics for tools and handcrafts with Cirdan’s mariners.

With a deep sigh, Ereinion unshouldered his pack and sat down heavily at the table, trying to sort his feelings, stung by something he knew not yet to name as jealousy.

Until last night, when he had come home to find Idril and her family deep in emotional conversation with Cirdan, Celebrimbor had been the only one of his surviving close kin he cared about.

Their unlikely, tentative friendship had begun after the refugees from Doriath arrived at the Mouths of Sirion, where Celebrimbor had been living with survivors from Nargothrond. The dour Noldo, aware that his ancestry would stir unrest amongst the new arrivals had sought -and received- Cirdan’s permission to relocate to Balar.

Eschewing the packed Teleri settlement around the docks, he had chosen a solitary spot up a hill looking north to build his house and forge, and mingled not except out of necessity.

Encouraged by Erestor -whether because his tutor was firmly convinced that it would be good for him to expand his knowledge of Noldorin lore from a direct source, or rather hoping to free some time for himself away from his pupil, he did not know and was wise enough not to ask- Ereinion had volunteered to help Celebrimbor settle down and had ended up enjoying a long apprenticeship with the talented artificer.

To his surprise, beneath the grim bearing Ereinion had discovered a stern but willing mentor. Working with Celebrimbor, he had learned to design a building with the same care and attention one should devote to a whole city;  had learnt to choose the right stones and carve them carefully, lovingly, to suit their purpose. Celebrimbor had looked unimpressed -but had nodded in agreement nonetheless- when Ereinion pointed out that Cirdan’s mariners nurtured the trees they chose for their ship-building since saplings in a similar manner.

Seeing him so close to Idril now brought back the feelings of rootlessness that had plagued him since he had been sent away from his people and his father into Cirdan’s care in the Havens. It made sense that those two were friendly -they had known each other for long back in Valinor, but acknowledging that only reminded him how far removed from his family history he was, even if he was expected to hold up their honor and share in their doom.

“Self-pity is unbecoming in one of the house of Finwë” he mocked himself. It had stung to be hailed as the new High King of the Noldor by Idril, implying somehow that even isolated in his hidden city Turgon had still considered himself High King of those he had left behind in Serech, those abandoned in Hithlum and Dor-Lómin and across Beleriand, left to fend for themselves against the Shadow.

As the familiar wave of grief that had threatened to drown him when the news of Fingon’s demise reached in him in Eglarest started to swell again inside, he jumped to his feet to busy himself, unpacking the the pot of brined fish that Miluin had prepared from last days’ catches. He searched the cabinets until he found an empty, clean jar, stored the fillets carefully and placed the jar on a shelf in the cold-room, taking a moment, as he always did, to appreciate the beautiful carvings of birds and fishes on the wooden door.

Though sparsely furnished, tables, chairs, shelves, chests, cabinets and even doors in Celebrimbor’s cabin were exquisitely finished and finely decorated with a skill that surpassed anything Ereinion remembered ever seeing.

It had been that attention to detail, the time and dedication devoted to such fanciful carvings and decorations that had caught Ereinion’s attention and prompted a deep lesson from the craftsman.  

“It soothes our fëa, the beauty of things we craft with our own hands, of things we devise with our own minds. We preserve time and memory through the beauty we create,” Celebrimbor had explained after Ereinion found him one day deeply engrossed in carving an intricate pattern of leaves and branches on the back of a chair. Celebrimbor made it look easy, effortless, speaking slowly, thoughtfully while his hands worked almost on their own accord. “Were it not such an irony,” he would add,  “I would say that this is our role in the Music: to bring out and enhance the beauty of Arda with the gifts that were granted to us... But that would be philosophy,” he grunted, struggling with a particularly strong knot in the wood, “and this is carpentry. Sturdy, well-carved furniture will serve its purpose, but making it beautiful will also brighten our faer with memories of other beauty that we have known and carry within. This is who we Noldor are, Ereinion: reckless, restless seekers of knowledge and beauty to preserve in our hearts with the works of our hands.”

Looking at those carvings now, while listening to the silvery voices of his cousins as they reacquainted themselves after such long separation, Ereinion thought of the treasures that held Celebrimbor’s memories of beauty in that almost barren chamber; the memories from his long life in Valinor that he still carried around in the long ennin in exile, chased from one home to another, rejected by all.

His eyes came to rest on a soft, well-worn leather pouch that lay on a niche in the wall beside the cot. Ereinion knew that it was emblazoned with the twelve-ray star that was the symbol of their often contentious kinship, and that it contained a set of beautiful tools for delicate crafting. He picked it up and traced the time-softened material that had come all the way from Aman.

As he often did, Ereinion could not help but marvel that after traveling all the way from Aman, the pouch had survived the battle of Tumladen, the routing of Orodreth’s army, the mad flight to the havens of Sirion. But then, he knew the pouch was a treasured memory for Celebrimbor: it had been a gift from his father Curufin, who in turn had received it from his own, the great Fëanor. Curufin had passed it on after foreseeing that he would be surpassed in skill by his own son. The bejeweled knife that lay beside the pouch Ereinion knew to be Celebrimbor’s apprentice piece, the one that had made Curufin acknowledge that his son would soon become second only to Fëanor himself.

Those two pieces contained all the beauty and memories that Celebrimbor held closest to his heart, Ereinion knew; what comforted him and fed his fëa in difficult times.

He sat down on the well-made cot, which was covered with a thick woolen blanket that looked like it had known better days, clutching the well-worn pouch. The closest to heirlooms that he possessed were a wooden box embossed with Finwë’s twelve-rayed star emblem, containing the infamous crown of the High King of the Noldor, and a bundled wad of parchments with letters from his father. Both lay hidden deep in his trunk under his bed in Cirdan’s cabin, grim reminders of the duties that burdened him and the doom that weighed over his house. There was no beauty, no comfort that he could draw from those, only a deeply seated grief and longing for the home he had loved and lost.

Early in his short life he had learnt that brooding helped achieve little practical benefit; it had not brought his grandfather back, nor had served to have him sent back to his father. Out of sheer will, he shook himself out of his despondency and turned his mind to more practical matters, as he did every time dismay threatened to overcome him. He put the pouch back in the niche beside the knife and started rummaging in the cabinets for something to eat.

˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜*˜

He found them in the garden, sitting on the ground, lost in conversation.

“It surprised me that every outpost, camp, settlement we ran into around the mouths of Sirion is set looking North, rather than West…” Idril was saying when Ereinion joined them. The wind was picking up now, whirling yellowed, sad leaves around.

“North is whence the Enemy has come at us each time, dear cousin,” Celebrimbor retorted. “We would be remiss not to keep a close watch.”

“Not that a watch ever served us,” Ereinion muttered, meeting Celebrimbor’s scowl with a half-shrug, laying wooden bowls with some bread, cheese, fruit and nuts he had found in Celebrimbor’s larder before them.

He sat down on the bench that lined the stone wall, a bit apart but still close enough to follow their conversation and picked at his food.

“And yet Lord Ulmo’s words to my father before we left Vinyamar are well-known, at least to Círdan, I would guess,” Idril continued after a morsel. “Remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea” she intoned.

“Is there still hope for the Noldor, then?” Celebrimbor countered, and this time Ereinion could see the familiar sneer back on his handsome face. The tone was soft, though, and caring -as was hers. To Ereinion it looked like a well-rehearsed dance they were slowly, carefully trying again after so many ennin.

“Unless you would gainsay a Vala...”

“I would not even be the first of the Noldor,” Celebrimbor replied almost playfully.

A brief shadow of a wince crossed Celebrindal’s serene face, so fast that Ereinion could barely catch it. She composed herself quickly and looked back at them. “You really think there is no hope of redemption then?”

Celebrimbor settled back and came to rest on his elbows, his gaze lost beyond the foam-crested waters of the Bay of Balar and into the mist-shrouded shores of Beleriand. “While those ill-fated jewels and those oath-doomed uncles of mine are still at large?” he wondered aloud. “There is no redemption for those who swore darkness inescapable -or their followers.”

Ereinion shivered at the veiled warning. Thanks to the Silmaril that Luthien’s grandchild and the survivors of Doriath had carried into safety, the settlements at the Havens of Sirion thrived now in warmth and hope, brighter than Círdan’s village in Balar. Celebrimbor’s words were a sobering reminder of the stark doom that still weighed over them, though, with those merciless oath-takers still roaming free and full of despair. Ereinion tore his thoughts from the jewel and its dangers to concentrate on another thorny issue. “The hope of the Noldor? And what of the rest of the Eldar?” he cried out, outraged not for the first time by those words. “And the Naugrim? the Edain? Their hatred for the Morgoth is no lesser than ours. They fight valiantly alongside us…”

“As well as against us, I am told,” Celebrimbor mocked him. “But you are right, young one; what of the rest of the Firstborn, Idril? The rest of Eru’s creatures? Is Ulmo vouchsafing deliverance for the Noldor alone?”

She didn’t answer for a while, looking at a leaf she had been twirling in her long fingers. Only the birds and the breeze from the sea could be heard while each dwelled in their own thoughts.

Watching his cousin’s pensive face closely, Ereinion tried to find traces of his own father and grandfather beyond the golden hair and blue eyes; tried to picture how his uncle Turgon might have looked like, tried to imagine how those two, who seemed so unexpectedly close, might have been in their youth in the West across the waters -and failed. He awaited in silence, painfully aware of the unbridgeable chasm that separated him from his Calaquendi kin; how closer he felt to Cirdan’s mariners, to Nargothrond or even Menegroth’s refugees in the camps at the mouths of Sirion.  

When Idril spoke at last, it was in a slow, sorrowful voice.

“I would not presume to know the designs of the Valar, Tyelpë,” she began, and Ereinion wondered at her sudden switch to the Fëanorian’s Quenya epessë. “But I do believe that it is us Noldor who are in need of redemption, who must repent before being delivered… It was us who challenged Manwë’s counsel…We who must seek absolution before we are allowed to look upon the fair walls of Tirion upon Túna again…”

Celebrimbor bristled at her words. “Repent? Seek pardon? Were I not banished from the Blessed Realm by cause of that ill-conceived oath, I would still think that forsaking Aman was the right course for the Eldar. Not the timing, perhaps, nor the manner, but still right… You were still very young then, Idril, but I always wondered why your father came, if he felt so strongly against it!”

“We came because we would not abandon our people to the madness of Fëanáro, you know that well, Telperinquë!”

“And yet your father went and hid somewhere in the mountains and left his closest kin to fight the Morgoth by themselves…” he retorted.

Guided by the sense of honesty and fairness that had been instilled in him since he was an elfling, and against his self-made vow of keeping himself out of this discussion, Ereinion geared up to speak out on behalf of Turgon, only to be beaten up at it by Celebrimbor himself.

“I apologize,” he said. ”It is true that he came out once, and that was more than I did at the time. And yet I am told that his city in Nevrast also looked West into the Great Sea… So what is it that you were doing up there in the Hidden City, Idril? Just reminiscing and longing for Tirion that was?”

She shook her head sadly. “Why would that be wrong? Do you not long for Tirion the Fair?”

“Do you forget that I am banned from Aman while Arda endures? Why would I pine after what shall not be?” Celebrimbor replied, bitterness in his voice. “But you, even if you repent, and the Valar grant you passage back to the West, there is no going back to what once was, Idril…Why would you? It is in the lands of Hither that there is beauty to craft and lands to discover, even against the evil that besieges us..”

“You now sound as your grandfather,” she replied softly. “And I need not remind you the grief Fëanáro’s madness brought to the Noldor…”

“Not just to the Noldor,” Celebrimbor added softly, smirking as Ereinion bit his lip, having readied himself again to protest. “But have we not also brought strength of arms, and support to the settlements, and knowledge? Great deeds of war, indeed, but also beautiful cities, and jewels, and works of art?”

“And where are those now?” she countered, looking around sadly. “Where are now all the works of our hands? Gondolin is no more, and no one walks the halls of Nevrast, of Barad Eithel, nor any of the beautiful cities that our kin built in Beleriand…where is that beauty now but in the West?” she wondered, and she sounded wistful.

Celebrimbor shook his head, forced a faint smile. “Where is it? Have you not seen it everywhere around?” he wondered, jumping to his feet and waving around expansively. “Can you not see it in the refugees in the Havens of Sirion? How they hold on to the memories of the beauty that once was, loving it even deeper because it is no more? And yet ready to fight and rebuild and start anew time and again?” he said in earnest, raising his hands for emphasis, his face more animated than Ereinion had ever seen.

“He really loves the lands of Hither” he thought, “and so do I” he admitted, startled out of his self-contemplation to acknowledge the truth Celebrimbor’s words had kindled inside him.

Idril seemed unconvinced. “There is more to Ulmo’s words to my father than what you may have heard,” she sighed. “Words that he also failed to heed in the end…” The sadness in her voice managed to catch their attention. ¨‘Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart, and remember that the hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea’ were his exact words” she continued. “In the end my father could not bring himself to accept the warning that Tuor brought, nor would he desert the city that kept us protected nor all the beauty that we wrought there,” she wept, hiding her beautiful face in her hands.

Her words froze Ereinion inside. Was she right before? Were the Noldor fated to be despoiled of even their ultimate hope until they utterly surrendered to the Valar’s mercy before the Valar accepted to succour them? And was that a price the rest of Beleriand was also bound to pay? A soft chuckle distracted him from the boiling rage.

“How predictable of Ulmo,” Celebrimbor said drily, kneeling down beside Idril and pulling her into a comforting embrace. “That is what one of them would say, of course… I did not think that your father had it in him, to gainsay a Vala. I almost pity him now for that, poor, stubborn Turukáno, refusing to abandon his city...”

“You cannot help yourself, can you?” she half-laughed half-sobbed.

“Challenging the Valar at every turn runs in the family, Idril, in yours as well as in mine…”

“We were warned.. he built it in remembrance of Tirion…  we knew it would not last forever…he should have heed the warning,” she sighed, tears still rolling down her cheeks freely.

“Pride runs deep in the family, too,” he observed without releasing the supporting hold on her. “Pay attention, young one,” he winked playfully in Ereinion’s direction, “lest you too fall pray to that family weakness.”

“How can you joke about such things?” Idril asked, and she managed to sound both outraged and distressed at the same time.

“How can I not? The Valar never understood us, cousin,” Celebrimbor sentenced. He pulled her up along as he stood, looking her in the eye, willing her to follow his reasoning. “How dare they, who retreated behind the Pelóri to protect the beauty they created, expect your people to abandon the safety of the city they built with their own hands?” he claimed. “How dare they warn us to love not the works of our hands and our minds when that is the essence of what we are? If love is the source of our ills, then I will rather be doomed to love endlessly, hopelessly until Arda is remade than be confined again behind the Pelóri… I will not forsake all the beauty that lies untended and forgotten in the lands of Hither!”

Ereinion awaited her answer with baited breath, suddenly aware that two very different views of exile where confronted there, and that he fully aligned with none.

“We learnt everything from them, Tyelpë,” she chided, wrapping her arms around herself, her voice shaking with emotion. “All that beauty in our memories comes from them, from the beauty in Valinor…”

“That too came from Eru’s mind, or so they taught us,” Celebrimbor replied roughly. “There was once beauty here that they stole and hid in the Blessed Realm because they loved their creations too much! Was not love what made Aulë create the Naugrim and hide them from Eru? Love, what made Yavanna ask for my grandfather’s Silmarils to restore her beloved Trees, and love for his own creations what made Fëanaro refuse her? Time and again their misguided love for the work of their hands and the devices of their minds has turned to evil, why would we be different, if we all come from Eru’s mind?”

“Their love for us led us to Valinor, Tyelpë, and we repaid that love with rebellion…” she retorted.

Again the wind filled in the heavy silence, bringing in droplets and scents from the sea and the wailing of seagulls down at the pier. “The night fleet must be back!” Ereinion fretted while his cousins argued about things he did not completely understand. ”Erestor will have my skin if I am not down there to help!”

“So much that was beautiful has been lost,” Idril whispered, her eyes lost in the distance. Ereinion could sympathize. His own memories of the fall of the Havens were harrowing and vivid even after forty sun-rounds.

“Nothing has been lost, cousin,” Celebrimbor retorted, “it still lives here,” he said, pointing at his head, “and here,” pointing at his heart, “as long as we keep the memories of what once was.”

“Memories are a painful weight, though…”

“No, they are not if you carry them willingly, use them to enhance what is already there, for such is the way of Arda as time goes by, Idril, to love our creations only to lose them and then start anew. All beauty is mingled with grief and comes from the same sourcein Arda marred…" Celebrimbor replied hotly. " We can seek redemption by healing the wounds caused by darkness, enhancing the beauty that Eru first conceived with the work of our hands, even if we are doomed to lose it every time...or we can beg for their forgiveness, go back to the stale contentedness of Valinor, hide idly behind the Pelori and abandon the rest of Arda to the Dark Enemy again.”

“We sat idly, as you put it, and contented, for countless ennin in Valinor, Celebrimbor, created works of unsurpassed beauty -and also lost them there…” As their argument gained in intensity Ereinion felt drawn deeper into his own thoughts and experiences. 

“Because we did not know what we had left behind!” Celebrimbor shouted

“You and I have listened to the tales of those who awoke in Cuiviénen and cchose to follow the light,” she reminded him calmly.  “We were contented, until darkness hit Valinor, then we forsook the Valar in their hour of need…”

“We came to fight the Enemy, rather than sitting in the darkness, weeping and lamenting what was lost!”

“And yet here we stand, defeated and dispossessed, cowering between Morgoth's orcs and the Belegaer! And now the only hope for the Noldor indeed lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea…I will not sit here and watch our people die if pleading for forgiveness on behalf of the Noldor is what will deliver us from Morgoth!” Abruptly, she turned away from Celebrimbor. “What do you think, Ereinion?”

A heavy silence fell. Ereinion looked away, over the tangled thickets of wiry bushes that struggled to grow in the rocky orchard, northwards. The wind had picked up again, bringing a cold drizzle in up from the sea. Everything looked dark, doleful, dreary. Grey ceaseless waves poured a fury of foam against polished grey basalt; towering dark clouds hurried from the north, dragging along a raging curtain of rain that must have slashed its way across the ravaged plains of Beleriand. Even as he looked, a solitary ray pierced the pewter dome of clouds and glistened on the beaded curtain of rain, washing the hidden shores, the tumultuous skies and restless sea in a silver and golden glow of infinite hues.

“Look,” he said at last, pointing ahead. “Beauty pierces through, everywhere you turn to, like Arien’s rays through those clouds. And she is hailing us from the north, baiting the Enemy, reminding us where we come from, what we came here for…” He sighed and stood slowly, looked back at them, ignoring Celebrimbor’s outraged look. “Much has been lost indeed, but we who were born in Beleriand will always long for our home, as you do for Aman. We will not abandon it to the Enemy, as the Valar did, nor forsake the Hither shores without a fight. It is praiseworthy that you would be willing to ask for pity for the Noldor, cousin, but the Valar are indebted to all the peoples of Beleriand, who were fighting the Shadow long before the Noldor returned to the shores of Hither. If not out of pity for the Noldor, then they should come into our succour for the love they purport to hold for all of Eru’s children!” He straightened his back, lifted his head and faced them in earnest. “Be as it may, we will continue to fight the Enemy with all our strength and all our hope, ready to rebuild until whatever is in the Music comes into fruition.”

A stunned silence followed his words. Neither Celebrimbor nor Idril seemed to know how to reply. She recovered first.

“Your father would be proud of you Ereinion,” she whispered, a wistful smile adorning her beautiful face. Celebrimbor just shook his head as if speechless, pressed his forearm in a warrior’s grip.

“Resist not Evil; fear not defeat.” Fingon’s words in his last letter echoed in Ereinion’s mind. And for the first time the deep meaning of those ominous words was clear to him, gave him strength and a sense of purpose where before had only filled him with dread and despair.

“I know he was… And so is Círdan, I am told,” he added with a cheeky grin that would not hide the deep joy he felt inside for the first time in so long.

Celebrimbor nodded in approval and at last Idril let go of the formality that had kept her in check and embraced him tightly, laughing and crying at the same time.“I am sure he is, cousin,” she chuckled in between sobs, “and so am I!”

Ereinion held her tight briefly then let go, smiling openly and chuckling nervously. “The night fleet must be on the dock already and I am in charge of careening and refitting. I am sure that you two still need to have a long conversation, but I hope I will see you both for dinner, Celebrimbor?” he dared to ask, aware that he was pushing his luck.

Elbereth was smiling down on him today, because the dour smith smiled and nodded, accepting the invitation for once. “I will be honoured,” he said.

Feeling impossibly light of heart, Ereinion bowed briefly before his kin and made ready to take his leave from them when Idril’s silvery voice caught up with him.

“Would you mind picking up my family on your way to the docks, cousin? I am sure they will both love to explore Cirdan’s ships.”

The End