A great clashing of sound shattered Haleth’s sleep.  She leapt to her feet, reflexively searching the knife strapped to her wrist. To her shock, the blade was missing.

There was no enemy to be seen in the dim light.  The only person in the area seemed to be Inglor.  He was lying on his side, his head propped on his hand, watching her wild alarm with mild curiosity.

She had no memory of where they were, why she was wearing borrowed clothing or, most importantly, where her knives had gone. She would have asked Inglor but the noise, which she now recognized as the ringing of many sweet bells, prevented conversation.  There was nothing for it but to wait until the music stopped.  If the enthusiasm of the ringing, tolling and pealing were any indication, it would be some time. 

Haleth glared at the city walls, the stone a muted grey in the deep morning twilight.  When that had no appreciable effect on the level of noise, she glared at her surroundings instead. 

A circle of dark, regularly spaced forms loomed to the west.  They were suspiciously chair-shaped.

The events of the previous evening returned and Haleth slowly sank to the ground, overwhelmed.

‘The bells of Valmar greet the return of Anor,’ said Inglor as the clanging tapered off enough for him to be heard.

‘The Valar do not seem to approve of slugabeds,’ said Haleth dryly.

Inglor’s face took on an expression of mild bewilderment.  It was so heartbreakingly normal that Haleth was almost moved to embrace him even as she prepared for the inevitable question.

‘There are no slugs in Valinor.  In any case, why would anyone want to put slugs into their bed?’

‘It’s an expression of speech, Inglor.  It refers to those who would rather remain asleep in bed long after the sun rises and everyone else is about their day,’ she said, smiling in spite of her exasperation.

‘The Valar do not sleep,’ said Inglor.  He sat up with one swift, graceful movement. ‘Nor do any of the Ainur.’

‘But the elves sleep,’ said Haleth.  ‘Surely there must be one who would rather stay in bed in the early morning hours.’

‘Possibly,’ Inglor said.  ‘Although those who chose to remain in bed beyond the rising of the sun tend to have company.’

A very shocked Haleth examined him from the corner of her eye.  Had just he insinuated what she thought he had just insinuated?  He seemed as innocent and unconcerned as ever, his far-seeing eyes gazing across the landscape.  Before last night she would have dismissed the idea out of hand.  Now she was no longer so confident. 

‘There are no slugs in Valinor?’ she asked to change the subject.

‘None what to speak of. It was quite surprising to discover them,’ he said.  If he was disappointed by the turn the conversation had taken he gave no sign of it.

Haleth nodded in silent agreement and cast about for something intelligent to say. ‘I imagine the gardens in Valinor do not suffer from their absence.’

‘It is said nothing in Valinor suffers,’ he said.

It was an interesting choice of words and, now that she had so much time, one that Haleth knew she should ponder.

The pondering would have to wait. The demands of her body were commanding all of her attention. The talk of gardens had reminded her of food.  ‘Do you suppose one of those insufferable gardens has something edible in it?’ she asked.

‘Why do you ask?’ wondered Inglor.

‘I’m hungry?’ said Haleth.

‘Oh,’ said Inglor. 

Haleth marveled at his economy of communication.  In one, short syllable he had managed to convey a bewildering combination of confusion and disappointment.  If she had been less hungry, she would have been offended.

‘Shall we go to Valmar?  Or do the Ainur not eat?’ she asked as she began to make her way towards the city gates. 

‘The courts of Yavanna are filled with every fruit known to Arda,’ he said as he fell into step with her. 

‘Will she be angry if we take some?’ asked Haleth.

‘Why would she be angry?  The fruits are hers, yes, but they are gifts meant to be eaten,’ said Inglor.

‘Half a moment,’ Haleth mumbled as they entered the western gates of Valmar.  The tent she had used the day before was still there.  She ducked through the flap to retrieve her belongings. There were many useful things stored in the hidden pockets of her clothing and she had no intention of leaving them behind.  She hesitated before picking up her knives.  Were weapons allowed in Valinor? 

Presumably they permitted.  Eonwë must have known of her blades and he had allowed her to carry them this far.  If nothing else, she would need an eating knife. The throwing knives could be passed off as utensils.  Besides, she had not practiced with them since she had awakened on Tol Eressëa.  Now that she had recovered her health, she would have time to work with them again.

Time.  All of the long ages of the world opened before her mind’s eye. 

Haleth hurriedly collected the rest of the things and fled into the morning light, nearly bumping into Inglor who was waiting just outside of the tent.

‘Are you well?’ he asked, taking in her wild-eyed expression.

‘Yes.  I’m fine,’ she lied, adjusting her burden to keep from dropping it.

‘Allow me to help you with those,’ he said. Before Haleth could object, he relieved her of her knives and old clothing and placed them in his pack.

She was still frowning when he completed his task.

‘Are you certain you are well?’ he asked.

‘I don’t recognize any of the birds songs,’ she said, hoping it would lead to a lecture on all the types of birds in Valinor.

‘The change can be disconcerting,’ he said with surprising sympathy.

‘It’s going to take some time for me to grow accustomed to this place,’ Haleth sighed.  In truth, she doubted she would ever be accustomed to it. That, she realized, was thinking in mortal terms.  Surely somewhere down the centuries she would come to accept Valinor as her home.  Eventually her memories of Middle-earth would fade and what was now so alien would become normal.  A lump rose in her throat.  

‘If you wish to learn, you must begin with the language,’ said Inglor in Quenyan.

Haleth groaned and rolled her eyes.

‘It is the language of Tirion and that will be your new home.’

Haleth stopped dead in her tracks and glared at him. 

‘That’s odd,’ she said, deliberately using Westron. ‘I don’t remember Mandos or anyone else telling me I had to live in Tirion.’   Inglor seemed to be making an awful lot of decisions for her.  It seemed to be becoming a bad habit.

‘Your family is there,’ he said.

‘There’s only one member of my family here, Inglor. As he is dead, he is beyond caring where I live,’ she snapped.

‘No,’ said Inglor, shaking his head, ‘You have a number of relations in Tirion.  I have heard they are most anxious to meet you.”

Haleth’s stomach growled loudly.

‘It’s too bad none of them thought to bring us breakfast,’ she said.

‘Shall we search out the Courts of Yavanna?’ Inglor asked, switching back to Quenyan.  He gallantly offered Haleth his arm while she tried to puzzle out what he had said.

‘I guess,’ she said with very bad grace, placing her hand upon his.

No one challenged them as they passed along the wide boulevards of Valmar This surprised Haleth, for any guards worth their salt would certainly have questioned them.  They looked anything but reputable; an elf in dirty clothing and a formerly mortal woman wearing a borrowed gown with overly long sleeves and a pair of moth-eaten boots.

Strangely, no one seemed to mind their unkempt appearance. As they wandered the wide, tree-lined avenues, passersby paid them little more than polite, sidelong attention.   Haleth found this odd but Inglor appeared to take no notice of it. As he knew more of this place than she did, she would just follow his example.

The city had an air of tranquility that bordered on sleepy.  The few pedestrians they saw proceeded at a slow, stately pace and frequently paused to admire one of the many fountains, statues or gardens.  Aside from the bell towers where the bells tolled at irregular, apparently random intervals, there were no visible structures. 

‘This place seems more of a garden or park than a city,’ Haleth said as they crossed a slender bridge that spanned a gurgling rill.  At least that is what she tried to say.  As she had spoken in Quenyan, the results were less than successful.

‘It is somewhat different in Tirion,’ said Inglor after several minutes spent puzzling out her comment.  He launched into a detailed description and quickly lost Haleth in a maze of unfamiliar names and half understood words.

She left him to drone on, lost in her own confused thoughts, deliberately using her own language in her mind.  What galled her the most was that Inglor was, as usual, perfectly correct.  She would need to learn Quenyan.  That and High Quenyan were the languages of Aman.  If she wanted to communicate, she would have to become fluent in one, the other, or both.

Unless she went to Alqualondë, in which case she would need to learn Telerin as well.

She consoled herself with the thought that Telerin should not be that difficult to learn.  It had some similarities to Sindarin. She believed she had recognized a few of the words spoken by the sailors who had brought her from Tol Eressëa.  Maybe she should move to Alqualondë instead of Tirion.  The idea was not without its appeal.  The Teleri loved the water and Haleth had been raised beside the sea.  It might be pleasant to live on the ocean and sail again.  Every day.  For the rest of eternity.

The vast gulf of purposeless future gaped before her. 

She deliberately pushed it aside.  It was far easier to think of other, more immediate matters like an empty stomach.

‘Are we nearly there?’ she asked, interrupting Inglor’s Quenya monologue.

‘Yes,’ he said, gracefully extending his arm to indicate a grove of trees.

Haleth gaped at them, resentment and hunger momentarily forgotten.

The trees in that grove were truly ancient, their trunks as wide as pillars, their branches uplifted towards the sky. It appeared they were standing in a green-roofed hall rather than a forest. The variety was overwhelming.  There were peach trees and pears and several types of fruit that Haleth could not name.  Each tree bore blossom, young and ripe fruit, all at the same time with no regard for the season and the air was heavy with the sweet scent of flowers.

‘Amazing,’ she breathed as she passed beneath the trees, staring into the branches.

A flash of brilliant red caught her eye.

‘Yavannamirë!’ she exclaimed. 

She grasped Inglor’s arm and pulled him until they stood beneath a venerable tree with globular, red fruit.

‘I haven’t seen one since I was a child!’ she cried. ‘There was a tree in my mother’s garden.  It was her pride and joy. Every year my brother and I would climb it and eat until we could barely move. We would always be punished and we would always do the same the following year until…’

‘Until?’ asked Inglor gently.

‘Until we couldn’t,’ she said, smiling wistfully.

‘Its fruit would make a passable meal, then?’ asked Inglor. 

‘Passable?’ snorted Haleth. ‘One would make a breakfast fit for a king.’

She ran to the trunk and attempted to climb it.  Her knee immediately became tangled in her skirts.

‘I wish I was wearing my own clothes.  I’d forgotten how difficult it is to climb in a dress,’ she said.

‘Then I shall climb for you,’ said Inglor gallantly. Before Haleth could comment he was in the lower branches.  She watched him in awe.  It could have been a trick of the dappled shadows but is seemed as though the tree itself was pushing him upwards.

‘Hold out your hands,’ he called from somewhere above, invisible amid the leaves. 

With a great deal of doubt – the fruit was sure to hit a branch on the way down – Haleth held out her hands.  A vermilion yavannamirë fruit instantly dropped into it.  She held it up to examine it more closely.  It was huge; the size of her two fists and far larger than the walnut-sized fruit of her mother’s garden.  It was also the most perfect yavannamirë fruit she had ever seen, round and beautifully ripe.  It seemed to glow in the dappled light.  It almost seemed a crime to eat it.

‘Here’s another,’ he called. 

She had to scramble to catch the second fruit as it plummeted downwards.

‘That should be enough, Inglor,’ she called.  It would not be right to take any more than they needed and she doubted she would manage to finish even one before her stomach was filled.

An incomprehensible reply drifted down from the branches.

Haleth waited, squinting up at the trees.  When it became apparent that Inglor would not immediately return she sat down with her back against the tree trunk and contemplated the fruit. It would be bad manners to begin to eat before Inglor joined her, but the fruit was so perfect that she was sorely tempted to start without him.  Haleth had not stood on ceremony for many years.  She held the fruit to her nostrils and inhaled the sweet perfume.  Her mouth watered as her stomach clamoured to be filled. 

A tiny nibble, she decided, would not be such bad manners. She took the smallest bite she could, barely grazing the skin of the fruit with her teeth. The rich, sweet taste of the yavannamirë filled her mouth.

Manners would have to wait.

She took another bite, then another until her mouth was quite stuffed.  The grove around her was transformed.  She was an awkward, gangly child ineffectually hiding in the lower branches of her mother's yavannamirë tree, savouring the forbidden fruit.  There was a rustling above her; her brother, older and more agile, rested in the higher branches where she dared not go.  The wind rustled through the leaves and, almost at the edge of hearing, the sea waves broke upon the shore.

'Silmariën!'

Haleth’s jaw stopped mid-chew.  She had been caught doing something she had been specifically told not to do.  There would be consequences and they would not be pleasant.  Her father, for all that he was noble, did not believe in cossetting his children, especially when they were disobedient.

With a jolt that was almost audible, Haleth returned to the present.  Her mouth was moist with the juices of the fruit. Leaping to her feet, she wiped her lips with the back of her sleeve while surreptitiously thrusting the fruit behind her and attempting to look innocent.  The expression only made her appear all the more guilty.

A tall, slim, dark haired elf woman speaking rapid-fire Quenya was approaching.  Beyond her old name, Haleth could not understand a single word.

'Inglor!' she cried as she backed away from the onslaught, 'I thought you said no one would mind if I ate this fruit!'  Her escape was halted by the tree trunk.

The elf woman stood before Haleth.  She appeared quite young, no older than thirty summers, except for her grey eyes which burned with a fever of excitement.  She brought up her hand.  Haleth flinched away from the touch but the elf woman firmly took hold of her chin and pulled her around to examine her better.

'No one minds,' Inglor said from directly above her.  He gracefully landed beside them. 'This is Lady Anairë, the wife of Lord Nolofinwë whom you call Fingolfin.  She has come to greet you.'

Lady Anairë was examining Haleth carefully, turning her head from side to side to take in all of her features.  Gentle fingers caressed the skin at the corners of her eyes.  She seemed especially fascinated by the hair at Haleth's temples.

'That is very flattering, thank-you,' Haleth said, her face blazing at Anairë’s intense inspection. 'But why would such an august person be interested in me?'

'Because you are one of the only members of her family to ever return from the Outer Lands,' said Inglor softly.

'Family?' Haleth echoed.

'You are a descendant of Elros, are you not?'

'Well, yes, but...' Haleth began.  It had always been a matter of great pride to be descended from Númenor’s first king.  His father had been Eärendil whose mother was Idril, the daughter of Turgon, the King of Gondolin and the son of Fingolfin.  She blinked in surprise.

When Inglor had said she had family in Tirion, she had assumed he was wrong.  It had never occurred to her that it might be a distant ancestress.

Haleth was suddenly painfully aware of the shortcomings of her appearance.  She had not brushed her hair since the night before.  Her clothing was rumpled and her face likely as not smeared with the red juice of the yavannamirë fruit.

'Lady Anairë,' she said, curtseying as she had been taught so many years ago.  She reflexively smoothed her dress, leaving a trail of red streaks down the fabric.

It hardly seemed to matter to Anairë.  She took Haleth into her arms and crushed her against her.  'My child.  Welcome home.'