It rained heavily on the way home, and trudging across the windswept shore Círdan could not help but feel a little pleased. Warm and dry under the thick wool of his cloak, the biting winds and freezing rain were little more than an inconvenience, but his insolent charge seemed to be learning his lesson in a most satisfactory manner.

Being as small as he was, Ereinion was finding it difficult enough to walk against the force of the wind, even without taking into account his sodden clothes. His feet were squelching in his boots and one sock had slipped down his ankle to form a wet uncomfortable ball. His hair was soaked and tangled, and every so often the wind would whip it with a stinging slap against his face. Some while ago Círdan had caught him looking pleadingly at him, evidently wishing to be lifted into the warm shelter of his cloak, but it had only taken one particularly ferocious scowl to cause him to concentrate on admiring the shining pebbles in the wet sand once more.

It was only as he stumbled over a stone and landed heavily on his outstretched palms, pausing a moment to gulp back tears before rising once more, that Círdan slowed his pace over the hard sand of the shore.

“Had you…” Standing tall above him, Círdan folded his arms across his chest with a far from sympathetic expression.

“That I know!” Ereinion snapped, suddenly sounding astonishingly like his father. Fierce dark eyes met Círdan’s for a moment, then his face crumpled as he struggled with tears. “I am cold. Take me home.”

Suddenly as uncomfortable as a half-grown soldier, Círdan thrust an awkward hand in the direction of the child, trusting that it would offer what comfort it could.

Sniffling, Ereinion wriggled some very wet fingers into Círdan’s palm and dawdled to make him slow down.

“Hurry!” Círdan snapped, dragging the young prince up the pebbles after him. “Ereinion, I am in no mood to wait for you.”

It was a foul day, and even those who had remembered their cloaks had little desire to linger.

“Wait…” Ereinion wailed, tears starting to trickle down his cheeks.

“For what purpose?” short-tempered though the Shipwright’s tone was, he did stop to allow the prince to catch his breath. The wind was howling past the cliffs now, and blinding sand was being whipped off the dunes. Pleased despite this as there were none on the beach to witness this battle of wills, Círdan’s beard twitched as he stared out to see.

Ereinion tugged Círdan’s hand to his face and wiped his nose on the back of one of the Shipwright’s warm fingers.

“I am little. You are supposed to look after me!”

Somewhat miraculously Círdan managed to hold his tongue.

“Nobody in their senses should have allowed me to go out without a cloak,” Ereinion glared accusingly up at Círdan and gave his fingers an extra hard tug, digging his now sadly blunted nails into his keeper’s hand for good measure, “Naneth said so!”

“Is that so?” Círdan’s long legs made easy progress up the uneven pebbles of the storm beach, leaving Ereinion stumbling behind him. “In my memory, it was you that allowed yourself to go out without a cloak.”

Ereinion’s pale cheeks pinkened slightly. “Well, so did you!”

“Aye, so it was!” Círdan hoisted the elfling so rapidly over a stile that it squealed, evidently quite convinced that it was to be thrown to the floor. “And do you remember what I said then, Ereinion? To your own discomfort be it, and so it has been.”

Ereinion gave him a bitter look, “I suppose you think it serves me right!”

“Aye,” narrowing his eyes at the child, Círdan flung open the door to his home and shoved the little boy inside. “Naturally.”

- - -

Some while later, now warm and once more wearing dry socks, Círdan descended the stairs from his chambers in search of food. Passing by his small sitting room, he caused to glance inside and stopped with a groan. Ereinion was huddled in a ball by the fire, knees drawn close to his chest and hands clenched tightly around them. He had taken his soldiers out of their box, but they were standing quietly beside him, obviously not played with.

“Ereinion!” voice sharp with frustration and worry, Círdan strode to the child’s side and extended a rough hand for him to take. “You should be changed! Have you no sense?”

If the child was as fragile as Ranlhach evidently thought, the last thing he should be doing was lingering in damp garments. Not that Ereinion could be accurately be described as damp. Even a full hour after coming in from the storm, his clothes were sticking wetly to his bony knees and elbows and the straggles of dark hair that fell across his face were dripping steadily into small pools on the floor.

“I cannot.” Turning a tearstained face up towards his guardian, Ereinion sniffed and spoke in a distinct whine. “I cannot reach the towels and I cannot reach my clothes and I cannot make the water hot and…”

“Oh very well.” Tone softening slightly in face of the child’s complete uselessness, Círdan hauled Ereinion to his feet and rather to his surprise managed to correctly interpret Ereinion’s scarecrow-like outstretched arms as a request to be carried.

It seemed that he would find cause to fashion small stools before long, as well as pegs.

- - -

“Ereinion!” Arnil snapped at long last, “It would be appreciated if you were to try.”

Once more warm and dry and with a bowl of vegetable soup inside him, Ereinion stared dreamily out of the window, allowing his tutors reprimands to wash over him as easily as waves on the shore. He had barely had time to finish his bread roll before Círdan had risen and announced that since he would begin lessons on the morrow, he should first meet Arnil so that he could find out what he knew.

Círdan’s library was a warm and comfortable room in the westerly wing of his house, with the high arched windows looking out over the gardens and the fields and hedgerows of the nearby farms. There were three Scots Pine trees standing in a circle outside the leftmost window, surrounding a tarnished copper sundial. Not that there was any sun today to work it, of course.

“Ereinion!” Arnil rapped his fingers sharply on the table. “Do you wish me to tell Lord Círdan how disobedient you have been?”

“Are there no books for elflings?” Ereinion asked politely. It had struck him as he had squirmed around in his chair that among the thousands of books and papers shelved in this great room, he could not see any smaller or more laden with pictures than the rest.

“No, there are no books for elflings.” Arnil glowered at the young prince and shoved a piece of slate under the elfling’s nose. “And small difference it will make to a child who cannot read.”

“I can read!” Ereinion wrinkled his nose at the librarian. “It is just that you write strangely.”

He had not chosen to live in this horrid place where people made the curves of their letters curl in different directions or made the proud straight pen strokes stoop. It was not his fault that he could make little sense of the words, and he had no intention of ever writing likewise.

“Do I indeed?” scowling himself now, Arnil tapped his chalk on the slate sending tiny fragments of dust spattering across the dark stone. He had heard of the arrogance of the Noldor before now, but even so, finding such a tiny elf so sure of his own superiority had been a shock. “In which case I suggest that you learn to read strangely, and quickly.”

Ereinion glared at the slate, the unfamiliar letters blurring as his eyes filled with tears. He did not feel like reading today, and in truth he doubted that the letters would ever be familiar as the old ones had been.

“I do not want to!”

He the slate across the old wooden table as hard as he could, sending it sliding into Arnil’s chest. The chalk bounced off the librarian’s red robes, leaving a dusty shadow, and rolled under a bookcase.

Arnil rose with a kind of forced calm, picked up the chalk and pushed his chair firmly beneath the table.

“In that case, I suggest we wander outside a little while. Perhaps you shall fare a little better with trees and flowers.”

- - -

"Lord Círdan," Arnil rapped sharply and pushed the door open, ushering Ereinion in ahead of him. "Come along, Ereinion."

The prince had not hurried forwards as expected, instead choosing to dawdle in the doorway, tracing a finger around the edging of one wooden panel. Voice tinged with annoyance now, he gave the child a little push forwards. "Ereinion, Lord Círdan is waiting."

It had been a long day, and the time spent with the young prince had not improved his mood. Tutoring a bright, interested and well-taught elfling had been a prospect he had agreed to readily enough. Dealing with a small, stubborn child barely able to recognise his letters was an entirely different matter.

Ereinion ran across the room to the most distant corner of the window seat and scrambled to safety, drawing a cushion in front of him in an unconscious effort to hide. There was a neatly folded woollen rug on the seat beside him, made of woven threads of blues and greys and greens. It looked almost like the sea if he screwed up his eyes in the right way, and the dangling tassels at the edge could be waves - or a waterfall.

Unaware that the shipwright had looked up from his papers at the frustration in Arnil's voice, and was now gazing at him thoughtfully, Ereinion twisted his fingers into the strands, moving them this way and that, weaving himself into the pattern. It was only as the librarian cleared his throat that Círdan broke away his attention, and turned to the librarian with a grunt.

"He is still a little tired from his journey, I am sure." Arnil said apologetically, trying to school his frown into a smile. "Much is yet unfamiliar to him."

The shipwright did not suffer fools gladly, and he could not help but feel sorry for the child. Círdan had little enough time for elflings as it was, but for a child so obviously slow...

"Aye?" Círdan's bushy brows rose suspiciously. It was rarely a sign of fair weather when one began with excuses.

"He is somewhat behind what would be expected," Arnil began gravely, then caught Ereinion's furious glare, and switched smoothly into the tongue of the Falathrim.

No longer able to follow the conversation by ear, Ereinion peeped surreptitiously out of the corners of his eyes, watching Arnil’s serious expression as he spoke quietly and calmly to the shipwright. Círdan was listening hard, he could tell, but every now and then those dark grey eyes would flicker towards him, and when the librarian at last fell silent, Ereinion found his eyes met by a very long and appraising stare.

Cheeks flushing and no longer able to meet the shipwright's eyes, Ereinion returned his attention to the rug, where his fingers were clenched too tightly around the brightly coloured strands of wool. He wanted to shout out that it was not fair, and that he was not stupid, and that he could read and write and understand things, at least as well as any other elfling, but there was no point. He had not been able to read what Arnil had written, and he had not known any of the tales that he had been told. Círdan had at least looked surprised when he had looked at him, something that Ereinion was fiercely grateful for, but that did not change anything. The people of the Havens spoke a language that he could not follow, and lived in an unfamiliar land with trees, flowers and wildlife that he knew nothing about.

Círdan and Arnil were talking together now, quietly and rapidly. Making plans perhaps, surely concerning him. They had switched back into Sindarian, but Ereinion no longer had the heart to listen. If the blanket was the sea, then the smooth golden wood of the bench could be the beach. It was a different sort of wood to the furniture back home too, but he liked this. The fire had been lit in the grate and the warm flickering light made the polished wood look like honey.

Sometimes in the winter evenings, when his Ada had been away and his Naneth had been up on the turrets, waiting, he and his grandfather would go and snuggle by the fireplace in his grandfather's room. They had toasted bread on the flames sometimes, and smothered it in melting salty butter and warm runny honey before sitting back on the rug together and munching happily as they had told stories. He had told his Agi all about the adventures he would have when he was older and was allowed to go and ride by himself, and Fingolfin had told him all about the adventures he had once had with his brothers. It reminded him of that, this wood.

"It may be a little soon, for that." Arnil's voice cut through his dreams, sounding amused, but not the sort of amused that he had heard before. "He has little grasping of any tales, even those of his own family. They may have had little time for him, but..."

“Be quiet! Be quiet!” up and on his feet before he even realised what he was doing, Ereinion charged at the librarian, butting his head against the elf’s knees, causing him to stagger back into the shipwright’s desk. “You do not know anything!”

Faced with a small, haughty and self-righteously furious elfling, Arnil made the grave mistake of allowing himself to smile.

“They did have time for me!” flushed with anger, Ereinion grabbed the nearest object from Círdan’s desk and flung it at the librarian with all his strength. “You know nothing!”

The little bottle spun in the air, cut glass catching the glint of the firelight. For a breathless moment, all three pairs of eyes watched its descent and then as it hit the ground in an explosion of shards of glass and black ink, Ereinion turned and ran, his socks slipping and sliding on the polished wood.

“Ereinion!” Círdan rose to his feet so rapidly that his chair was pushed back with a harsh squeal, and bellowed at the swinging study door.

There was no response except for the distant clap of the back door as it slammed shut in the wind.

Suddenly looking very weary, Círdan tidied his papers and strode wordlessly to fetch his cloak and boots. It was only as stepped out into the storm that he added behind him, “That was not well done.”

- - -

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