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grundyscribblingAuthor: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Summary: Anariel is not quite what the Noldor expect in their princesses...
Word Count: 1020
Note: Did not get to this during Fic A Day - I didn't mean to leave Anariel and Ecthelion un-friends.
Elenwë smiled as she passed Anariel the salad Anairon had assured her the girl would like. Watermelon, fennel, and a cheese he’d been working on for some years with Tindomiel. It was a recreation of one popular in California, and Anariel was known to be fond of it – and pizza, which Anairon had learned a great deal about in Ondolindë. That had been the inspiration for his work on the cheese in the first place.
Perhaps that might be a sweetener to induce the girl to visit once she had settled in. Ondolindë had turned into what Tinwë called the ‘pizza capital of Aman’. Once the kitchens of the Mole had led the way (occasionally with innovations from Lómion once Tinwë had explained pizza ovens) the cooks of the Wing, Golden Flower, Hammer, and Harp had all taken to the new food with gusto. Elenwë was assured that while her husband’s house did an acceptable pizza, they were not quite to the same standard as the others.
Of course, once Anariel could be persuaded to visit, there would be the problem of her and Turvo to deal with. That promised to be every bit as tense as Irissë’s first time in the city – though hopefully with fewer kicks or punches.
For the moment, Elenwë would settle for something less ambitious. A peaceful meal with her daughter, son in law, Laurefindil and Ecthelion, and of course her smallest granddaughter would do. Besides spending time with Anariel, she wanted to give Rillë more time with her, and get the girl and Ecthelion talking with something more than polite civility.
And she wanted that to happen before Anariel did what her younger sister and Miryo had been predicting for the last week and decided to go exploring anywhere that wasn’t Tirion. They’d been correct about enough so far that she had a sinking feeling they were right when they said Anariel had been remarkably patient by her usual standards.
Thus this afternoon’s late luncheon.
Ecthelion had sighed when he accepted the invitation, with a look that said this was not quite under duress but should be chalked up to keeping his mate happy. Laurë had been trying to reassure Ecthelion it really would not be that bad.
Anariel had looked equally dubious when she heard Ecthelion would be present, but humored her grandmother. Elenwë knew perfectly well the girl was thinking she was less pushy than some grandmothers.
Elenwë was also aware it helped that she had Moryo’s endorsement, which carried more weight with the girl than she’d have expected. It had by all accounts taken Tinwë several days to warm up to Moryo. Anariel had simply accepted he was an uncle and that was that.
“She was the most open-minded of them,” Laurë murmured, catching the direction her thoughts ran.
“And you put in a good word for your cousins,” she smiled.
She suspected that hadn’t included Turvo – or at least, not without reservations – but it was just as well someone had been telling Elrond’s children there were other perspectives on their kin than history as it had been known in Middle-earth.
Anariel looked as pleased by the food as Elenwë could have hoped. She was content to listen to the conversation flow around her as she ate, and accepted all Rillë’s fussing with good grace.
She perked up when the conversation happened to mention the building of Ondolindë – the one in Beleriand. Happily, this was a subject which had to be left largely to Ecthelion, as no one else at the table had been present for it.
Anariel seemed intrigued by the notion of building a new city, and Elenwë was cautiously encouraged that she asked a few questions, even if they were more about the logistics of moving people and building materials than the construction itself.
“It’s hardly unique,” Laurë told her eventually. “All the Noldorin strongholds had to be built from the ground up. Even Imladris was once nothing more than tents next to the Bruinen.”
That looked to have thrown Anariel for a loop as much as the notion of Gondolin being a valley without so much as a woodcutter’s shed when elves first arrived.
“Surely cities in California also had to begin somewhere,” Tuor suggested gently. “They don’t just appear, complete?”
Elenwë had to stifle a giggle. Judging by the girl’s expression, that hadn’t helped at all.
She caught the merest glimpse of what must be a city in that other world, a bewildering labyrinth of glass and stone and metal. And yet something about that brief flash of memory suggested the city she’d seen was younger than Ondolindë or Imladris. Intriguing.
“How would you begin, anarya?” Elenwë asked. “If someone asked you to start a city?”
“Probably sit down and have a good cry,” Anariel said frankly. “Then go find Ada or the boys. I don’t know the first thing about building cities, elvish or California. I didn’t even play SimCity.”
Ecthelion beat everyone else to asking.
“What is Simsity?”
Anariel gave the slight sigh that Elenwë already recognized as meaning the girl had realized a split second too late she’d just said something they had no context for.
But she didn’t hesitate, launching into the explanation, helped slightly by Laurë, who could at least show the rest of them what a ‘computer’ looked like even if he hadn’t known they could be used for games.
Elenwë would not have expected an obscure game of California to be the catalyst to Ecthelion thawing – or possibly it had been the acknowledgement of Anariel knowing her own limits that did it? But against all odds, that seemed to be what was happening, as he began peppering her with questions about games played on computers and the city-building game in particular.
“Intriguing that this would be a game for young people, when you claim so many had no idea how much of the structure of those cities worked,” Ecthelion mused. “How could they be expected to succeed without understanding how cities function?”
“It wasn’t one hundred percent realistic. I don’t think you would like it much,” Anariel told him, wrinkling her nose. “It was based on California ideas of how cities should look like and work. Actually, ideas specific to a particular region of California. And I don’t think the Noldor would agree with half of those even before the fiction-y bits like alien attacks.”
“Ah, but think of all the fine arguments they’d have about it,” Tuor pointed out before Ecthelion could ask what she meant by ‘alien attack’. “Nothing more Noldorin than that.”
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Date: 2025-01-15 03:39 am (UTC)Thank you again for doing these, I always enjoy your writing.
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Date: 2025-01-16 12:43 am (UTC)