Day 31 - Trouble & Twins
Aug. 31st, 2024 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grundyscribblingTitle: Trouble & Twins
Author: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Crossover: LotR/Silmarillion
Disclaimer: All belongs to Whedon & Tolkien. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.
Summary: It turns out Anariel does not get along with all her grandmothers. Elured and Elurin try to help.
Word Count: 2025
Note: Didn't quite get here according to my original (slightly vague) plan, but I did manage to end the month were I meant to. Hope you enjoy!
Anariel was definitely not glaring at a blameless stream from her seat on a fallen log. (Or possibly a placed log. Just because the Lindar liked things to look natural didn’t mean they didn’t occasionally help nature along.)
Up until today, even if they didn’t completely understand her, meeting her grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on up the tree (or kudzu) had generally been a good experience. They were excited and happy and mostly wanting to spoil her or try to. (She’d have felt slightly guilty about all of that had Tinu not assured her she’d had plenty of the same for years. And she’d been a quasi only child for it.)
She’d been wholly unprepared for Nimloth.
Yes, she’d wormed the full story of The Slap out of her sister, but she’d assumed when Uncle Red and Uncle Rin first mentioned their mother, the fact that she was back meant she was healed from her experience of death, including the part that had happened right at the end.
That assumption had lasted until Nimloth mentioned her having gotten haru killed approvingly.
Conversation had ground to an abrupt halt as Anariel told her grandmother firmly she didn’t want to talk about it.
She didn’t need her father’s worried warning, but she heard it quite clearly. Fighting the Feanorion fight here was a terrible idea.
Most people would have let the subject of Maglor drop. Nimloth didn’t.
It hadn’t gotten to the stage of ‘nasty fight’ only because Anariel had stormed off after informing her grandmother’s mother that she didn’t run away when she got hit – she’d hit right back.
She then removed herself before it came to that. Even if it was extremely tempting to turn around at the taunt Nimloth directed at her back about running away first…
It was scant consolation to know that in the veritable family explosion she’d left in her wake, Thingol was being uncharacteristically stern, even downright angry, with Nimloth. Turned out that as he hadn’t been alive for her marrying his grandson, he still thought of Nimloth more as grand-niece than granddaughter-in-law, and in grandniece vs however-many-greats-granddaughter he’d named Eluchil, Thingol came down on the side of the Eluchil.
Anariel suspected mentioning her latest (and not actually sought) name had only been fuel on the Nimloth fire.
Melian had been unsarcastically silent. Anariel had expected to hear from her by now. This spot had to be a good couple miles from the entrance to the hall. She’d been pretty cranky when she’d started walking. (Ok, stomping.)
“Grandmother’s letting you cool off on your own.”
She didn’t jump when Uncle Red and Uncle Rin settled on either side of her.
“We thought otherwise. We hear you get bad ideas left to your own devices.”
“Dragon-slaying.”
“Balrog-hunting.”
“Haircuts.”
“Saying positive things about the ship-thieves.”
Anariel blinked, as that last one was entirely new to her.
“Didn’t you know that was what we called the golodrim who followed Faenor?”
She shook her head, lips quirking at the proper Sindarin form of his name.
“Nope. Everyone left in Ennor had a couple ages to mellow about that.”
Not to mention to accept that the House of Fëanor is a subject to tread carefully on in the House of Elrond. Even Círdan had actually offered condolences when she’d arrived home after the Ring War. Less because he had somehow become fond of any son of Grandfather Butthead than because he knew she was hurting.
Also, most of the Noldor were dead by the time she got back from California. It wasn’t quite ‘you can count them on one hand’ territory, but it was close.
“Ah. It may help to recall that Nana has not had that. She only just returned a few months ago.”
“We’re not sure Tinu knows yet.”
“Wait, you said you’re older than my brothers!” Anariel protested. “Like, lived time!”
There’d been a very silly and decidedly unserious argument about which set of twins was the elder. Ada had ended it by pointing out that while it was true Eluréd and Elurín had returned before the twins were begotten (making them older than Elladan and Elrohir), he was older than all of them, so clearly the answer was ‘Elrond and Elros’.
“We were children when we died,” Uncle Rin said seriously. “Once we got over the trauma of being abused and left to die, we were ready to live again.”
“It turns out children bounce back quickly,” Uncle Red said wryly. “Even so, I was ready slightly sooner than he was.”
After the dreams her first night in Neldoreth, Anariel didn’t need to be told the reason for that.
“But you came back together?” she asked instead.
“Yes. Aside from an hour or so at the end, we’d never been apart.”
“Coming back without him would have been worse than dying without him.”
Uncle Red gave Uncle Rin one of those speaking looks Anariel was used to seeing on her brothers, a whole conversation had in a single glance. Uncle Rin evidently won, because he was the one who continued.
“Being raised by the sister you remember as only a few years older but is now suddenly a grown-up is an interesting experience,” he told her. “I don’t know that it was very easy on her, either, given what happened with her boys.”
“If you didn’t come back until the middle of the Second Age, that ship had sailed well before you were out and about,” Anariel pointed out.
“True, but no easier on her for being true.”
Anariel mused on that.
“I guess we’re not mentioning to your mother that Tinu’s declared a truce with Celegorm?”
(She hadn’t heard Nimloth’s thoughts on Huan yet. But she didn’t need foresight to know she would at some point, and she suspected they’d probably be at odds with each other all over again for it.)
“Definitely not,” Uncle Red said with a frown.
“You should also not mention your theory that the fight with him was a fair one,” Uncle Rin added. “Yes, we heard of it, little one. She should not.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Anariel said, trying not to be grumpy. She wasn’t completely devoid of sense or sensitivity.
She also wasn’t quite sure how to deal with her family’s past now that it was right there impossible to avoid, not comfortably far removed and theoretical like it had been back when they’d learned it as history in Imladris.
“Don’t fret, we had to say it the once. Though I suppose if Nana keeps intentionally raising painful subjects, sooner or later you’ll shoot back.”
“Or I could just do like I hear the dead do – avoid people you can’t be around without thinking thoughts of violence.”
“That’s hardly a long-term solution,” Uncle Red laughed. “There will be other family gatherings.”
“You can keep other people you like better between you, to be sure, but avoiding her entirely is unlikely.”
“You two are real killjoys,” she grumbled.
“Cheer up, you still have plenty of relatives who think you’re small and adorable,” Uncle Red laughed.
“Including us.”
She rolled her eyes.
“A great consolation. Hey, did Namo make you choose?”
“Of course,” Uncle Rin sighed. “But ‘Choice of the Peredhel’ meant practically nothing to us. We chose to go wherever Nana was.”
Anariel suppressed a frown. That was actually worse than Gramma Elwing’s version of it. That wasn’t a choice of kindred, that was a choice of location, and possibly a choice of which parent they turned to for comfort. This did not improve Namo’s position in her books.
“He didn’t give you an explanation of what he was asking? Not even an attempt?”
“None whatsoever,” Uncle Red shrugged. “It was only later, when we were both alive and older, that we began to understand.”
“When we saw Elbîn missing Elros.”
Anariel didn’t roll her eyes at their pet name for Gramma Elwing. She was sure they had a name in mind for her referencing her smallness, too. But so far they’d had enough sense not to say it.
“Not when you’re still out of sorts, little-one.”
“Not being golodhrim, we have common sense.”
“Pushing your luck,” she muttered.
All three of them looked up at the sounds of someone coming through the woods across the stream – the opposite direction as the hall. Whoever it was pinged as family to her, in the same vague way her relatives several generations back all did.
“More family,” she sighed. “Because things aren’t complicated enough.”
Her uncles chuckled at that, though Uncle Rin looked slightly puzzled.
“Who would be coming from the northwest?” he wondered.
A few minutes brought them the answer – and made Anariel consider if skipping out back to Alqualondë might be viable. Melian wouldn’t help, but someone had to be nearby who could.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Uncle Red murmured, keeping hold of her arm. “We’re not explaining this solo.”
“You’re not Solo, you’re Eluréd,” she said with a straight face.
At his glare, she giggled.
“You’re not small-s solo either, there’s two of you.”
“Ah,” said a new voice. “So this is why Estë insisted we come here.”
“Probably also why she was less than pleased about it. Weren’t you supposed to still be in Tirion?”
The newcomers were also twins, which on the one hand, hilarious that there would be three pairs running around (and amok). On the other hand, not entirely nice for Ada. But on the third hand, which she was borrowing from one of them, yikes. Nimloth had probably not entirely calmed down yet about haru, and he wasn’t even there.
As long as she was borrowing hands, on the fourth hand, at least this pair twins looked nothing like the other two. The red hair was a nice change. (Whoever thought twins were rare among the eldar had clearly never met her family.)
She was about to find out for herself just how much trouble the Fearsome Foursome made when they were all in one place.
Given how Aunt Trouble’s return had gone – Tinu and Maeglin had told her most of the story, but Nana, Grandmother, and Arador had filled in some of the parts they missed, and boy were those interesting – she should probably brace for just about anything.
“Ambarussa!” Uncle Rin exclaimed. “You were permitted to return at last!”
Her uncles hopped up to hug her other uncles. This would have all seemed a lot weirder before the dreams. At some point she needed to get them all talking. She needed a reason why this was in no way surprising to her. She was pretty sure Tinu didn’t know anything about them being besties, which made ‘my sister told me’ implausible.
“Indeed,” one of the twins – Anariel couldn’t tell which one – replied. “Lord Namo finally gave his grudging permission. And told we needed to see this one first.”
He gestured in her direction.
“Though not why,” the other one added, letting Uncle Rin go to hug her – and size her up. “Our choice would have been Ammë first.”
“And probably my grandmother and Aunt Trouble next?” Anariel prompted.
The twins exchanged a glance.
“If you mean Artë and Irissë, yes.”
“Good.”
The Ambarussa were experienced troublemakers. At her cheerful tone they eyed her suspiciously.
“Sorry you got done out of your first choice, but at least I can offer you the second. There’s a family reunion going on at Thingol’s place. You two are crashing it.”
Ambarussa looked slightly dubious at that, but Anariel grinned and silently prompted Uncle Red and Uncle Rin to step in to help get them moving.
If she thought about this too much, she might be tempted to chicken out and beg Grandmother Melian to whisk them all to Tirion.
Then again, Namo might have told them to look for her, but Estë had told them where.
If Estë had known she was here, she had also known Nimloth was here. And evidently the Healer didn’t think it was unreasonable to send Amras and Amrod here anyway. Maybe seeing them was part of Nimloth’s healing.
Or maybe the Valar still didn’t understand elves or therapy.
Wouldn’t this be interesting?
Author: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Crossover: LotR/Silmarillion
Disclaimer: All belongs to Whedon & Tolkien. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.
Summary: It turns out Anariel does not get along with all her grandmothers. Elured and Elurin try to help.
Word Count: 2025
Note: Didn't quite get here according to my original (slightly vague) plan, but I did manage to end the month were I meant to. Hope you enjoy!
Anariel was definitely not glaring at a blameless stream from her seat on a fallen log. (Or possibly a placed log. Just because the Lindar liked things to look natural didn’t mean they didn’t occasionally help nature along.)
Up until today, even if they didn’t completely understand her, meeting her grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on up the tree (or kudzu) had generally been a good experience. They were excited and happy and mostly wanting to spoil her or try to. (She’d have felt slightly guilty about all of that had Tinu not assured her she’d had plenty of the same for years. And she’d been a quasi only child for it.)
She’d been wholly unprepared for Nimloth.
Yes, she’d wormed the full story of The Slap out of her sister, but she’d assumed when Uncle Red and Uncle Rin first mentioned their mother, the fact that she was back meant she was healed from her experience of death, including the part that had happened right at the end.
That assumption had lasted until Nimloth mentioned her having gotten haru killed approvingly.
Conversation had ground to an abrupt halt as Anariel told her grandmother firmly she didn’t want to talk about it.
She didn’t need her father’s worried warning, but she heard it quite clearly. Fighting the Feanorion fight here was a terrible idea.
Most people would have let the subject of Maglor drop. Nimloth didn’t.
It hadn’t gotten to the stage of ‘nasty fight’ only because Anariel had stormed off after informing her grandmother’s mother that she didn’t run away when she got hit – she’d hit right back.
She then removed herself before it came to that. Even if it was extremely tempting to turn around at the taunt Nimloth directed at her back about running away first…
It was scant consolation to know that in the veritable family explosion she’d left in her wake, Thingol was being uncharacteristically stern, even downright angry, with Nimloth. Turned out that as he hadn’t been alive for her marrying his grandson, he still thought of Nimloth more as grand-niece than granddaughter-in-law, and in grandniece vs however-many-greats-granddaughter he’d named Eluchil, Thingol came down on the side of the Eluchil.
Anariel suspected mentioning her latest (and not actually sought) name had only been fuel on the Nimloth fire.
Melian had been unsarcastically silent. Anariel had expected to hear from her by now. This spot had to be a good couple miles from the entrance to the hall. She’d been pretty cranky when she’d started walking. (Ok, stomping.)
“Grandmother’s letting you cool off on your own.”
She didn’t jump when Uncle Red and Uncle Rin settled on either side of her.
“We thought otherwise. We hear you get bad ideas left to your own devices.”
“Dragon-slaying.”
“Balrog-hunting.”
“Haircuts.”
“Saying positive things about the ship-thieves.”
Anariel blinked, as that last one was entirely new to her.
“Didn’t you know that was what we called the golodrim who followed Faenor?”
She shook her head, lips quirking at the proper Sindarin form of his name.
“Nope. Everyone left in Ennor had a couple ages to mellow about that.”
Not to mention to accept that the House of Fëanor is a subject to tread carefully on in the House of Elrond. Even Círdan had actually offered condolences when she’d arrived home after the Ring War. Less because he had somehow become fond of any son of Grandfather Butthead than because he knew she was hurting.
Also, most of the Noldor were dead by the time she got back from California. It wasn’t quite ‘you can count them on one hand’ territory, but it was close.
“Ah. It may help to recall that Nana has not had that. She only just returned a few months ago.”
“We’re not sure Tinu knows yet.”
“Wait, you said you’re older than my brothers!” Anariel protested. “Like, lived time!”
There’d been a very silly and decidedly unserious argument about which set of twins was the elder. Ada had ended it by pointing out that while it was true Eluréd and Elurín had returned before the twins were begotten (making them older than Elladan and Elrohir), he was older than all of them, so clearly the answer was ‘Elrond and Elros’.
“We were children when we died,” Uncle Rin said seriously. “Once we got over the trauma of being abused and left to die, we were ready to live again.”
“It turns out children bounce back quickly,” Uncle Red said wryly. “Even so, I was ready slightly sooner than he was.”
After the dreams her first night in Neldoreth, Anariel didn’t need to be told the reason for that.
“But you came back together?” she asked instead.
“Yes. Aside from an hour or so at the end, we’d never been apart.”
“Coming back without him would have been worse than dying without him.”
Uncle Red gave Uncle Rin one of those speaking looks Anariel was used to seeing on her brothers, a whole conversation had in a single glance. Uncle Rin evidently won, because he was the one who continued.
“Being raised by the sister you remember as only a few years older but is now suddenly a grown-up is an interesting experience,” he told her. “I don’t know that it was very easy on her, either, given what happened with her boys.”
“If you didn’t come back until the middle of the Second Age, that ship had sailed well before you were out and about,” Anariel pointed out.
“True, but no easier on her for being true.”
Anariel mused on that.
“I guess we’re not mentioning to your mother that Tinu’s declared a truce with Celegorm?”
(She hadn’t heard Nimloth’s thoughts on Huan yet. But she didn’t need foresight to know she would at some point, and she suspected they’d probably be at odds with each other all over again for it.)
“Definitely not,” Uncle Red said with a frown.
“You should also not mention your theory that the fight with him was a fair one,” Uncle Rin added. “Yes, we heard of it, little one. She should not.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Anariel said, trying not to be grumpy. She wasn’t completely devoid of sense or sensitivity.
She also wasn’t quite sure how to deal with her family’s past now that it was right there impossible to avoid, not comfortably far removed and theoretical like it had been back when they’d learned it as history in Imladris.
“Don’t fret, we had to say it the once. Though I suppose if Nana keeps intentionally raising painful subjects, sooner or later you’ll shoot back.”
“Or I could just do like I hear the dead do – avoid people you can’t be around without thinking thoughts of violence.”
“That’s hardly a long-term solution,” Uncle Red laughed. “There will be other family gatherings.”
“You can keep other people you like better between you, to be sure, but avoiding her entirely is unlikely.”
“You two are real killjoys,” she grumbled.
“Cheer up, you still have plenty of relatives who think you’re small and adorable,” Uncle Red laughed.
“Including us.”
She rolled her eyes.
“A great consolation. Hey, did Namo make you choose?”
“Of course,” Uncle Rin sighed. “But ‘Choice of the Peredhel’ meant practically nothing to us. We chose to go wherever Nana was.”
Anariel suppressed a frown. That was actually worse than Gramma Elwing’s version of it. That wasn’t a choice of kindred, that was a choice of location, and possibly a choice of which parent they turned to for comfort. This did not improve Namo’s position in her books.
“He didn’t give you an explanation of what he was asking? Not even an attempt?”
“None whatsoever,” Uncle Red shrugged. “It was only later, when we were both alive and older, that we began to understand.”
“When we saw Elbîn missing Elros.”
Anariel didn’t roll her eyes at their pet name for Gramma Elwing. She was sure they had a name in mind for her referencing her smallness, too. But so far they’d had enough sense not to say it.
“Not when you’re still out of sorts, little-one.”
“Not being golodhrim, we have common sense.”
“Pushing your luck,” she muttered.
All three of them looked up at the sounds of someone coming through the woods across the stream – the opposite direction as the hall. Whoever it was pinged as family to her, in the same vague way her relatives several generations back all did.
“More family,” she sighed. “Because things aren’t complicated enough.”
Her uncles chuckled at that, though Uncle Rin looked slightly puzzled.
“Who would be coming from the northwest?” he wondered.
A few minutes brought them the answer – and made Anariel consider if skipping out back to Alqualondë might be viable. Melian wouldn’t help, but someone had to be nearby who could.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Uncle Red murmured, keeping hold of her arm. “We’re not explaining this solo.”
“You’re not Solo, you’re Eluréd,” she said with a straight face.
At his glare, she giggled.
“You’re not small-s solo either, there’s two of you.”
“Ah,” said a new voice. “So this is why Estë insisted we come here.”
“Probably also why she was less than pleased about it. Weren’t you supposed to still be in Tirion?”
The newcomers were also twins, which on the one hand, hilarious that there would be three pairs running around (and amok). On the other hand, not entirely nice for Ada. But on the third hand, which she was borrowing from one of them, yikes. Nimloth had probably not entirely calmed down yet about haru, and he wasn’t even there.
As long as she was borrowing hands, on the fourth hand, at least this pair twins looked nothing like the other two. The red hair was a nice change. (Whoever thought twins were rare among the eldar had clearly never met her family.)
She was about to find out for herself just how much trouble the Fearsome Foursome made when they were all in one place.
Given how Aunt Trouble’s return had gone – Tinu and Maeglin had told her most of the story, but Nana, Grandmother, and Arador had filled in some of the parts they missed, and boy were those interesting – she should probably brace for just about anything.
“Ambarussa!” Uncle Rin exclaimed. “You were permitted to return at last!”
Her uncles hopped up to hug her other uncles. This would have all seemed a lot weirder before the dreams. At some point she needed to get them all talking. She needed a reason why this was in no way surprising to her. She was pretty sure Tinu didn’t know anything about them being besties, which made ‘my sister told me’ implausible.
“Indeed,” one of the twins – Anariel couldn’t tell which one – replied. “Lord Namo finally gave his grudging permission. And told we needed to see this one first.”
He gestured in her direction.
“Though not why,” the other one added, letting Uncle Rin go to hug her – and size her up. “Our choice would have been Ammë first.”
“And probably my grandmother and Aunt Trouble next?” Anariel prompted.
The twins exchanged a glance.
“If you mean Artë and Irissë, yes.”
“Good.”
The Ambarussa were experienced troublemakers. At her cheerful tone they eyed her suspiciously.
“Sorry you got done out of your first choice, but at least I can offer you the second. There’s a family reunion going on at Thingol’s place. You two are crashing it.”
Ambarussa looked slightly dubious at that, but Anariel grinned and silently prompted Uncle Red and Uncle Rin to step in to help get them moving.
If she thought about this too much, she might be tempted to chicken out and beg Grandmother Melian to whisk them all to Tirion.
Then again, Namo might have told them to look for her, but Estë had told them where.
If Estë had known she was here, she had also known Nimloth was here. And evidently the Healer didn’t think it was unreasonable to send Amras and Amrod here anyway. Maybe seeing them was part of Nimloth’s healing.
Or maybe the Valar still didn’t understand elves or therapy.
Wouldn’t this be interesting?
