Cinnamon Raymaker and AelKennyr Rhiano
Elwing pours two goblets of the elven cordial she has procured from the cupboard and hands one to her uncle. Olwe crosses the room and gratefully takes the goblet, and wipes the line of sweat from his brow across his sleeve, leaving in its place a fine line of flour. He gestures to Elwing to seat herself at the table and takes a stool across from her. Elwing moves slowly and gracefully to the proffered stool and sits at the table across from her uncle. Taking in the warmth and comfort of the room, she carefully sips the miruvor and looks across to her uncle, stifling the suggestion of a giggle at the line of flour she sees on his face.Olwe walks over to the stool on his side of the table and sinks onto the cushion, grateful for the respite. It would not take long for the bread to bake, but it would give them a chance to continue talking. Olwe sips the rest of the cordial, eager to learn of the rest of Elwing's story. As he sets aside the cup, he notices her eyes fasten upon his brow and says with a blush, "One breaks a sweat when one is a baker." He gestures to a bowl of fruit that someone had thoughtfully set out. "Please, break your fast, niece," he offers, taking an apple and extending it to her. "And please do continue your tales. Tell me more about the fisher elf and about your cousin and my niece, Elmo's child."
Elwing nods. "Indeed, Uncle, you have taken so well to baking that you wear the flour across your forehead." She chuckles. Elwing takes the apple, thanking her uncle with a winning smile. Biting into the fruit, she finds the taste delicious as the juice explodes onto her tongue. As she chews, she thinks back to the beginning of her travels and considers how far she has come. "It feels like I have been travelling for so long, Uncle, for there are many things to tell."
Olwe blushes a little and hurriedly wipes his brow with a hand also dusted with flour, adding to the thin line already there. "Indeed, Elwing, it sounds like you have seen a fair bit of the world."
Elwing recalls her time on Vana and the day that Echuir arrived. "The Lady Echuir's arrival was fortuitous for me, Uncle. It was as though her ship was sent by the Valar themselves. " Elwing looks back into her memory and continues. "The White Sparrow was it named. Another white bird. In my experience the white birds have brought good fortune."
The smell of baking bread fills the room as Olwe takes an apple for himself and polishes in on a flour flecked sleeve. Looking down at the dust coated apple, he gives a small laugh, then quiets to listen to his niece. Biting into the apple, he raises blue eyes to meet hers and nods. "So they have, indeed. T'was white swans which brought your kin to these shores."
Elwing nods to her uncle. "Yes, Uncle, the swans and other seabirds have been watchful guardians in warning or rescuing me from many a scrape. They have also brought me friends I cherish. In this instance, I saw Lady Echuir as a means to help us to further the quest to help you!"
Olwe's eyes lose a little of their sparkle, but he takes another bite of apple, chewing slowly, his face unreadable as she speaks.
"Lady Echuir did relate to me that she had a dream about your palace here in Alqualonde, but her dreams included that you were bedevilled by evil. As you can imagine, that made me even more determined to find you!"
Olwe slowly nods, lowering the apple and swallowing before he allows himself speech. "I was taken by a great evil, whose hold I could not break."
Elwing nods and looks with concern at her uncle. "But it has been driven away now! I am sorry that these things come up in my tale uncle - but they have a marked effect on what transpired!."
Olwe gives his niece a small, gentle, somewhat sad smile. "Do not apologize to speak of has been. It was not your fault, Elwing. And by the Valar's grace, I was restored. For Echuir to dream of one she has never met, indeed, we are facing a time of great peril and darkness."
Elwing looks at her uncle, somewhat alarmed with his words. She takes a slow swallow of the cordial to calm herself before continuing. "I asked the Lady Echuir if she had met any elven kind on her travels. She did tell me that she had met a few from time to time. It was during our conversation that the young fisherelf Nimros made his appearance, probably due to the smell of the eggs we were eating at the time!"
Rising to check the bread and put on water for tea, Olwe gives out a hearty laugh. "Indeed, young elves are driven by their stomachs, I think." He turns back to look at her. "Nimros, did you say? Tall, lanky, somewhat awkward?" he asks. "He sometimes stammers and gives his words tangled?"Elwing smiles up at her uncle nodding emphatically, "Indeed, yes, Uncle! That describes the young elf perfectly! You know of whom I speak?"
Olwe nods, giving a rueful smile. "Oh, yes, the lad is known to me. Three turns of the year ago, while I was aboard his father's fishing vessel, discussing a redesign that Nole had in mind, the boy slipped a knot off the mast by accident and the next thing I knew, I was flyng off the boat and into the water." He gave a laugh and shook his head. "The boy was completely abashed, the father shouting, and I was treading water."
Elwing sees a picture of the comical young elf making just such a mistake, and her uncle splashing into the water, and she cannot control the laughter bubbling through her. She chuckles and shakes her head, trying to have at least a little decorum, but not succeeding very well. "I can very well see the young elf doing such a thing, Uncle!" She giggles. "Though as I said, I believe him to be of noble intentions, just a little clumsy."
Olwe sees her head shake and adds, "Do laugh, it was very funny...later." He bends down and grabs the hot pan of bread, jerking his hand back with a soft and heartfelt exclamation. Looking about he snags a cloth and removed the pan quickly, crossing to the table. Placing a loaf on two plates, he sets one before Elwing. "He is a very good lad, and of parents both loyal and stout of heart. The lad spoke to me, once, of being in my court and learning the way of my guards, but his father did gainsay it." He then returned the pan on top of stove, on a ledge, to cool. Coming back with the water, he filled the teapot, the aroma of the tea mingling with the smell of the baked bread. "I could not usurp the father's wishes. They had but the one child."
"Aye, and I hope they still do! I wish I knew what has befallen the young elf!" She continues. "There was something he mentioned to us that might be of interest to you, Uncle."
Olwe returns to the stool and nods at Elwing to eat. "What was that?"
Elwing looks up to her uncle, with a serious expression replacing the bubbling laughter she had just experienced. "He related to Lady Echuir and myself that he remembered being in Alqualonde. The very last thing he remembered was that he was repairing fishing nets with his father when a strange light filled the sky. He said that when he next awoke he found himself far from home."
Olwe bowed his head, staring distractedly at his bread, hands still in his lap. " I was in Sylvahara. We had lost all contact with all the trading posts still in Middle Earth save Sylvhara, and I had gone there to speak with Comet, to try to determine why. While I was there, a missive came to me from my seneschal. 'The skies are growing lighter over Alqualonde,' it read. So I sailed fast for the Swanhaven. When I got here the sky was the eternal twilight of Aman, and Alqualonde was empty."
Elwing takes a slice of the warm bread, the scent of which has assailed her nostrils, and bites into it savouring the morsel. She then takes another bite of the juicy apple, and chews thoughtfully, trying to recall what else the young elf had mentioned in their conversation. "He made the remark that he had seen the disappearance of the morning star from the heavens, and three full moons passing since he first set to sea. But he did not mention whether that was from the time the light appeared nor whether it took him that long to make a vessel after he found himself on a new land somewhere."
Olwe reaches up and tears slowly at the bread. "I can answer that, Elwing, I saw the disappearance of the morning star. I was foretold it by the Voice which held me in its grip and sought to take me from the Grace of Eru. I had been poisoned with wine aboard my own ship while on a trip to Sylvahara, after the return of Nole. We had gone to speak of my dreams with Comet. On the return from the trip, I was taken ill, and Nole had to turn the ship around and make back for Sylvahara's shores. It was there I fell under the spell of dark flowers which had stricken many in Comet's realm. " He pauses, watching his hands as he continues to tear the bread into small pieces. "I was returning home with Nole to prepare to die."
Elwing looks with pain in her eyes at her uncle, finally gaining some sort of recognition of what he has been through in his ordeal.
"The Voice it was who bade me to go topside and witness as the ship winked out of sight. The Promise of hope...gone."
Elwing nods and thinks back to her visions as she had lain on the shores of Alqualonde. "I told you of my landing at Alqualonde, Uncle. When I slept, Lord Irmo spoke to me in my dreams and told me about your plight. He said, 'His body rests within the world, but his mind wanders often away from it, I have no control over these dreams. They rest all visions and feelings of joy and peace from his mind.' This Voice was responsible for all of the terrible things that have happened to you?"
Olwe nods, and when he speaks, his voice is quiet, devoid of emotion. "I am convinced that the poison and the flowers were just vehicles by which the Voice gained entrance into my thoughts, my ...my being," he finishes after a pause. "It was constant in its torment, ceaseless in its taunts. It kept me from sensing the presence of the Valar and the Maiar. Even Tilion I could not feel." Olwe leans forward and looks Elwing full in the face. "I understand now, how the Dark One corrupted some of our kind. I know the despair he must have evoked in them. I have felt it."
"Not to know the Valar, too feel such evil." She shudders. "I speculated at the time that you were greatly troubled, perhaps by this same force which brought me to Alqualonde, then again drove me to Vana. The only thing that kept me going from Alqualonde was the words of Lord Irmo, he said 'Set your mind free of darkness, and remember all things, however dark, are more hopeful in the light.' "
Olwe nods softly. "It was Lord Irmo and his sister, the Vala of Compassion, Nienna, who found me after I was turned away from the Halls of Mandos and saw me safely reunited with my body."
Elwing looks to her uncle, hearing the gratitude in his voice, "Thanks be to Iluvatar that the Valar did not desert you in your time of need, dear uncle. I hope and pray that such a positive outcome will present itself for my beloved and thus for all of elvenkind."
"I cannot begin to know the pain in your heart, Elwing. But I know that the Darkness means to take the world away from the Children of Iluvatar and see the destruction of the elves. I believe the elves cannot abandon Middle Earth and fade to the West. It would mean the utter destruction of the Atain, the children of Men."
Elwing looks at her uncle and can understand his fear for the races of Middle Earth. She nods at his words and takes another sip of her cordial. Olwe slowly takes a piece of bread and chews before he eats. "What sort of place is Vana?"
Elwing places her goblet carefully back on the table and searches her memories of her time at Vana. "Well, Uncle, Vana is unique to say the least," she begins.
Olwe takes another bite of bread, listening. "Are there elves?"
"At first I thought it an elven outpost, as I saw a shelter with elvish runes on it when first I landed. I quickly changed my thoughts on this when I met Princess Fur - who describes her people as a tribe and herself as the Guardian of the Woods."
"Fur? Of what race is she?"
Elwing thinks back to the conversations she has had with the princess who was both compassionate and helpful over her time in Vana. "Princess Fur is Fae, Uncle. She has magic and sings the forest for the good of her people. Her Goddess is Luna, whom she sees as the loving moon herself."
Olwe stops as he raises a piece of bread to his mouth and breaks into a smile. "Tilion as Luna," he muses with a hint of a bemused expression. "Wonder if he knows he is a goddess?"
Elwing chuckles at her uncle's words. "Princess Fur told me of Fae and Woodlings who inhabit the forests - where of course I immediately felt at home recalling the forests of Doriath where I spent a goodly time. She also told me of orc, goblins and dragons which can be seen at times and warned me of several places which might be dangerous if I ventured out."
"Orcs and goblins should have fled when their Dark Master was defeated. This bodes not well."
"She told me also of a race she called Drow, a race of fallen elves, she described them as." Elwing shudders at the recollection of those words Princess Fur spoke, "She said they fell to the Abyss, to a dark of spiders, and their god is Lloth. "
Olwe sits forward. So many memories of what he experienced while hostage to the Voice were fading, but he remembered something: spiders. "Loth?" he asks, "Who is Loth?"
Elwing looks at her uncle and holds her palms upwards, "I know only those words Princess Fur spoke, Uncle. I did not have time to uncover more information. Though..." she shudders uncontrollably as she recalls a memory she had buried deep within her consciousness, "... I believe I found a place reminiscent of such evil workings - its very walls and the walls of the caverns surrounding it had been infused by evil."
Olwe reaches for the teapot, and pours them each a cup of the herb tea. As he pushes a cup and saucer over to her, he nods and pours his own cup. "I understand. Could you find again this Vana, Elwing?"
Elwing thankfully reaches for the steaming beverage to warm her hands, which have turned icy cold with the reminder of that encounter. "I think not, Uncle. Lord Ulmo himself returned me to Alqualonde. I had little idea where in Middle Earth I was, although a mage I met told me he knew the route from Vana to the lands of your cousin, Queen Comet. Perhaps looking in the seas around those lands would lead us finally to Vana."
Olwe takes in the way Elwing holds the tea, the discomfort found in her body language. He nods and takes a sip of his own tea. "It is time to unite the elves of Earth, Elwing, and it seems that Sylvahara is the key in the search for our kin." He puts the cup back down. "But this day, this moment, let us finish our bread and tea and give thanks we are safe and that we are ever under the watchful eyes of the Valar."
> Next Elwing > Next Olwë