Post by Admin on Jan 9, 2021 20:13:55 GMT
Author: Mirima Grey
Summary: Growing up in Imladris can be confusing and little Estel has a few questions.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Tolkien.
Estel found his mother in the library, reading something that appeared to be a very ancient scroll of parchment. Her face looked distant and tired whenever she studied those old tales of kings that lived a long time ago on lost islands, Estel had noticed, as if she was looking for an answer to a tricky puzzle. Lately, he had noticed a lot of things about his mother, about how very different she was from the other females in Rivendell. How her hair was like his, bouncy, not perfectly sleek, and how she never wrote poetry or wandered the gardens singing. How sad she looked, sometimes, when she thought he did not see her.
“Mother?” he interrupted the studious silence of the Great Library of Imladris and Gilraen lifted her head with a smile upon hearing his voice.
“What brings you to the library, Estel?” she inquired. “Did you not talk of chasing your brother around with your new sword as soon as the sun was up?”
A fleeting look of guilt passed across her son’s face, mingled with a proud smirk, which made her believe he had done more than enough chasing for even the most patient of Elves. The thought made her smile and yet she could sense that there was something troubling him. There was an unusual restlessness about his demeanour, as if his mind was in turmoil, struggling with something he could not grasp.
“Elrohir and I were fighting a bit”, he nodded and she knew that for him, fighting was still playing with a blunt wooden sword. “But…” He stopped and wrinkled his nose – a sign that something irritated him – and his intently concentrated expression made her flush with emotion. He was still so little.
“Come here.” She gestured for her son to sit by her side in the bay window, her preferred place of study, and he made himself comfortable next to her. “Is there something troubling you?”
Estel still appeared to be thinking hard about something until, suddenly, he held up six fingers in the air. “I am six years old”, he stated, tentatively, and his mother agreed with him. “Well”, he seemed satisfied for a moment, then looked up at her. “You are really old, naneth, aren’t you?”
She smiled. Indeed, every child had to discover the concept of age at some point. Gilraen held all ten fingers up in the air, then closed her hands slightly and opened them again twice, three times ten fingers. “I have lived for 30 long summers and winters, autumns and springs.”
Estel looked at her with his big, keen eyes and then down at his hands again, trying to imagine how long he had to wait until he was as old as his mother. He met her gaze again. “Elrohir said something I do not understand this morning. He said, I was good for my age, with my sword”, a proud grin was quickly flashed at her. “And I asked, how long I will have to wait until I am as old as him and Elladan, so I can be as good as them and then…” Her son looked truly puzzled and slightly offended. “Then he said he was really old. Ten times ten fingers and then, ten times all those fingers and then double that and…” He halted, staring at his hands again, trying to come to terms which such large quantities. “And then even more. He said a really big number, two thousand and, um, hundreds, um,… some hundreds. That is much longer than a tree needs to grow! I don’t understand, nana, why is he making fun of me? He cannot be older than a tree!”
Gilraen could not suppress a smile. To her son, she was old, as all grown-ups are old. For him, the millennia that lay between her and Lord Elrond mattered not. They were a father and a mother and parents were always old in the eyes of a young child. And Elladan and Elrohir, as his brothers, must surely be closer to him in age. His confusion was understandable.
She had felt a time of explanation was dawning upon her when she had discovered her son inspecting his ears in a looking glass. Only last week had he asked her why he was so little. Why he was the only little one in all of Imladris – and Gilraen had realised with a sudden pang of grief that her son had never been in the company of another child. Always in the presence of beings that were decades older, he was starting to see differences between him and his surroundings.
“He was not making fun of you”, she said warmly and could not resist stroking her son’s hair lightly, even though she was aware that he was in a stage where motherly affection seemed to embarrass him. Even if there was no one around to see it.
“But”, Estel interjected unbelievingly before she could carry on, “If he is that old, he must have a beard, like the old kings in your tales!”
A rare chuckle escaped Gilraen and Estel looked upset. What was it with this day, why was everyone making fun of him?
“Oh, my sweet little son, I am not laughing at you. It is the thought of your brothers with beards that amuses me. They would not like to be adorned with such a dwarven feature!”
“No, they wouldn’t”, Estel reluctantly agreed with a grin, the image vivid in his mind.
Taking a deep breath, Gilraen became serious again: “Do you remember the betrothal of your brothers’ companion Golradil to the Lady Linwë in the spring of last year? When you asked me why Lord Elrond and I do not kiss?” Estel remembered this confusing conversation with his mother very well and nodded. “And I explained to you that your adar and I were not joined in marriage; that Lord Elrond was your adar by choice rather than by kin?”
“You said it made him an even better adar, because he choose to”, Estel added enthusiastically.
“Very right, indeed.”
Gilraen paused. At that time her little son had been satisfied with this simple answer and had not followed up, distracted by some loud noise in the courtyard. He had not been troubled by this question for many months now, for the love he received from his foster family did not make him feel as if he was missing anything. It felt ironic that such a trivial conversation about age with his brother would bring about questions in Estel she would dread to answer.
“Outside, in the garden, the old, strong oak by the pond has lived for many seasons, steady and unchanging”, she began softly. “The flowers that blossom around it in the spring, they come and go with the seasons, different from trees, but equally beautiful.”
Her son nodded again, visibly confused as to why their conversation had turned to plant life. “We, you and I, we are different from your adar and your brothers, and the other folk of Imladris. Different in the way the flowers differ from the trees. We are related in appearances, but we are of a different kind. Your adar and your brothers are like trees, forests, chosen to live long lives since the first days of this Earth. It takes them long to grow, but once they have reached full height, they live long, endure, with little change from year to year. Longer than you and I can grasp.”
Following his mother’s reasoning, Estel’s eyes widened and he inquired: “I am a flower then?” He was not pleased with that comparison.
“Yes, and you should call yourself lucky to be one. See how fast flowers grow? You will not have to wait so long to reach your full height, you do not have to wait ten times ten fingers and more to be grown up and strong.” She winked at him with a playful expression on her face: “Strong and possibly bearded.”
Again she tousled his hair as her son gaped at her with round eyes. “Bearded?”
Gilraen had hoped that this image would prevent his thoughts from travelling down a path where he would question whether growing up sooner would mean a sooner decline, an earlier death. Luckily, he was yet too young to wonder about lives ending. Too young to remember that a life had already ended in the early days of his childhood, that his father had withered, as flowers do, and come to death.
Death, a concept so far from Imladris, and yet ever present for her when she looked at her son and into his future.
“Yes, you will be bearded and wild looking, like a strong warrior from the tales”, she teased. “Not that you presently lack any wildness.” Indeed, not a day went by without her son ruining another set of clothes in his innocent, carefree adventures. Sometimes she envied him. “You will soon enough grow up and best your brother, but you will grow up looking different from him and adar.”
Realisation flashed across his face. “Naneth, is that why my ears look so odd?”
Giving him a conspiratorial look, she lifted her hand and pushed a strand of long hair behind her ear, turning the side of her head towards her son, revealing an ear that was very much like his own: Small and round and not leaf-shaped like all the other ears he had seen in his short life. She lowered her voice to barely more than a whisper, as if trusting him with a secret. “They are not odd at all; they are just of a different kind. We are of a different kind, you and I.”
She lightly touched his ear and he giggled. He was ticklish.
“And that is why Elrohir did not make fun of you”, Gilraen concluded. “It is simply that age for him is different. He has seen the change of the seasons more times than we can understand with both our fingers combined. He has become ageless like the proudest and tallest of trees. You will learn all about the very big numbers soon from Master Erestor, when you tire of your history lessons, but do not fret about them now.”
He cringed at the thought of the lessons with his strict tutor. He loved hearing about the lore of old, the stories of great battles, unaware of the fact that some of his loved ones had seen them with their own eyes. He loved learning about things that had been, but he also really loved learning to fight with his brother.
What did it matter who was older than a tree and who was a fast-growing flower that had only seen six fingers worth of summers? He loved his brother dearly, what did silly numbers matter then?
“Counting years is not important, Estel, numbers are just numbers.” His mother smiled at him, expressing exactly what he had just come to feel.
“I see”, he breathed joyfully, very much relieved to have gotten this confusing problem off his chest, and hopped off his seat next to her. An eagerness to go outside and play had swiftly replaced his worry. Alas, young children did not know how blessed they were with such short spans of attention. “Thank you, mother, I will see you in the Hall later!” He beamed at her with his bright eyes, so full of life and free of burden, and then turned around and sped off. Forgotten was all his worry if there was a tree to climb, a wooden sword to wield.
Gilraen’s eyes followed Estel’s path as he appeared in the garden below her and made for the bushes, already caught up in a new game. Their conversation had left her feeling bittersweet. Yes, if you were but a child, numbers mattered not. But for a widow, counting the short days she had been given with her husband was a constant in her life. For a mother, counting towards a day in the future when there would be no more playful distractions and her son would demand real answers about his father, about death, about himself, was frightening and real. For someone with the gift of foresight, counting towards the day her son would need to face his fate, and, too, be taken from her, was a merciless companion.
Acutely aware of how short life could be for those she loved dearest, every day she could protect her son from the cruel force of time was a victory; every moment spent happily with him was a blessing. And a reminder – a reminder that those days were numbered. Because for Gilraen, numbers meant everything.
Summary: Growing up in Imladris can be confusing and little Estel has a few questions.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Tolkien.
Estel found his mother in the library, reading something that appeared to be a very ancient scroll of parchment. Her face looked distant and tired whenever she studied those old tales of kings that lived a long time ago on lost islands, Estel had noticed, as if she was looking for an answer to a tricky puzzle. Lately, he had noticed a lot of things about his mother, about how very different she was from the other females in Rivendell. How her hair was like his, bouncy, not perfectly sleek, and how she never wrote poetry or wandered the gardens singing. How sad she looked, sometimes, when she thought he did not see her.
“Mother?” he interrupted the studious silence of the Great Library of Imladris and Gilraen lifted her head with a smile upon hearing his voice.
“What brings you to the library, Estel?” she inquired. “Did you not talk of chasing your brother around with your new sword as soon as the sun was up?”
A fleeting look of guilt passed across her son’s face, mingled with a proud smirk, which made her believe he had done more than enough chasing for even the most patient of Elves. The thought made her smile and yet she could sense that there was something troubling him. There was an unusual restlessness about his demeanour, as if his mind was in turmoil, struggling with something he could not grasp.
“Elrohir and I were fighting a bit”, he nodded and she knew that for him, fighting was still playing with a blunt wooden sword. “But…” He stopped and wrinkled his nose – a sign that something irritated him – and his intently concentrated expression made her flush with emotion. He was still so little.
“Come here.” She gestured for her son to sit by her side in the bay window, her preferred place of study, and he made himself comfortable next to her. “Is there something troubling you?”
Estel still appeared to be thinking hard about something until, suddenly, he held up six fingers in the air. “I am six years old”, he stated, tentatively, and his mother agreed with him. “Well”, he seemed satisfied for a moment, then looked up at her. “You are really old, naneth, aren’t you?”
She smiled. Indeed, every child had to discover the concept of age at some point. Gilraen held all ten fingers up in the air, then closed her hands slightly and opened them again twice, three times ten fingers. “I have lived for 30 long summers and winters, autumns and springs.”
Estel looked at her with his big, keen eyes and then down at his hands again, trying to imagine how long he had to wait until he was as old as his mother. He met her gaze again. “Elrohir said something I do not understand this morning. He said, I was good for my age, with my sword”, a proud grin was quickly flashed at her. “And I asked, how long I will have to wait until I am as old as him and Elladan, so I can be as good as them and then…” Her son looked truly puzzled and slightly offended. “Then he said he was really old. Ten times ten fingers and then, ten times all those fingers and then double that and…” He halted, staring at his hands again, trying to come to terms which such large quantities. “And then even more. He said a really big number, two thousand and, um, hundreds, um,… some hundreds. That is much longer than a tree needs to grow! I don’t understand, nana, why is he making fun of me? He cannot be older than a tree!”
Gilraen could not suppress a smile. To her son, she was old, as all grown-ups are old. For him, the millennia that lay between her and Lord Elrond mattered not. They were a father and a mother and parents were always old in the eyes of a young child. And Elladan and Elrohir, as his brothers, must surely be closer to him in age. His confusion was understandable.
She had felt a time of explanation was dawning upon her when she had discovered her son inspecting his ears in a looking glass. Only last week had he asked her why he was so little. Why he was the only little one in all of Imladris – and Gilraen had realised with a sudden pang of grief that her son had never been in the company of another child. Always in the presence of beings that were decades older, he was starting to see differences between him and his surroundings.
“He was not making fun of you”, she said warmly and could not resist stroking her son’s hair lightly, even though she was aware that he was in a stage where motherly affection seemed to embarrass him. Even if there was no one around to see it.
“But”, Estel interjected unbelievingly before she could carry on, “If he is that old, he must have a beard, like the old kings in your tales!”
A rare chuckle escaped Gilraen and Estel looked upset. What was it with this day, why was everyone making fun of him?
“Oh, my sweet little son, I am not laughing at you. It is the thought of your brothers with beards that amuses me. They would not like to be adorned with such a dwarven feature!”
“No, they wouldn’t”, Estel reluctantly agreed with a grin, the image vivid in his mind.
Taking a deep breath, Gilraen became serious again: “Do you remember the betrothal of your brothers’ companion Golradil to the Lady Linwë in the spring of last year? When you asked me why Lord Elrond and I do not kiss?” Estel remembered this confusing conversation with his mother very well and nodded. “And I explained to you that your adar and I were not joined in marriage; that Lord Elrond was your adar by choice rather than by kin?”
“You said it made him an even better adar, because he choose to”, Estel added enthusiastically.
“Very right, indeed.”
Gilraen paused. At that time her little son had been satisfied with this simple answer and had not followed up, distracted by some loud noise in the courtyard. He had not been troubled by this question for many months now, for the love he received from his foster family did not make him feel as if he was missing anything. It felt ironic that such a trivial conversation about age with his brother would bring about questions in Estel she would dread to answer.
“Outside, in the garden, the old, strong oak by the pond has lived for many seasons, steady and unchanging”, she began softly. “The flowers that blossom around it in the spring, they come and go with the seasons, different from trees, but equally beautiful.”
Her son nodded again, visibly confused as to why their conversation had turned to plant life. “We, you and I, we are different from your adar and your brothers, and the other folk of Imladris. Different in the way the flowers differ from the trees. We are related in appearances, but we are of a different kind. Your adar and your brothers are like trees, forests, chosen to live long lives since the first days of this Earth. It takes them long to grow, but once they have reached full height, they live long, endure, with little change from year to year. Longer than you and I can grasp.”
Following his mother’s reasoning, Estel’s eyes widened and he inquired: “I am a flower then?” He was not pleased with that comparison.
“Yes, and you should call yourself lucky to be one. See how fast flowers grow? You will not have to wait so long to reach your full height, you do not have to wait ten times ten fingers and more to be grown up and strong.” She winked at him with a playful expression on her face: “Strong and possibly bearded.”
Again she tousled his hair as her son gaped at her with round eyes. “Bearded?”
Gilraen had hoped that this image would prevent his thoughts from travelling down a path where he would question whether growing up sooner would mean a sooner decline, an earlier death. Luckily, he was yet too young to wonder about lives ending. Too young to remember that a life had already ended in the early days of his childhood, that his father had withered, as flowers do, and come to death.
Death, a concept so far from Imladris, and yet ever present for her when she looked at her son and into his future.
“Yes, you will be bearded and wild looking, like a strong warrior from the tales”, she teased. “Not that you presently lack any wildness.” Indeed, not a day went by without her son ruining another set of clothes in his innocent, carefree adventures. Sometimes she envied him. “You will soon enough grow up and best your brother, but you will grow up looking different from him and adar.”
Realisation flashed across his face. “Naneth, is that why my ears look so odd?”
Giving him a conspiratorial look, she lifted her hand and pushed a strand of long hair behind her ear, turning the side of her head towards her son, revealing an ear that was very much like his own: Small and round and not leaf-shaped like all the other ears he had seen in his short life. She lowered her voice to barely more than a whisper, as if trusting him with a secret. “They are not odd at all; they are just of a different kind. We are of a different kind, you and I.”
She lightly touched his ear and he giggled. He was ticklish.
“And that is why Elrohir did not make fun of you”, Gilraen concluded. “It is simply that age for him is different. He has seen the change of the seasons more times than we can understand with both our fingers combined. He has become ageless like the proudest and tallest of trees. You will learn all about the very big numbers soon from Master Erestor, when you tire of your history lessons, but do not fret about them now.”
He cringed at the thought of the lessons with his strict tutor. He loved hearing about the lore of old, the stories of great battles, unaware of the fact that some of his loved ones had seen them with their own eyes. He loved learning about things that had been, but he also really loved learning to fight with his brother.
What did it matter who was older than a tree and who was a fast-growing flower that had only seen six fingers worth of summers? He loved his brother dearly, what did silly numbers matter then?
“Counting years is not important, Estel, numbers are just numbers.” His mother smiled at him, expressing exactly what he had just come to feel.
“I see”, he breathed joyfully, very much relieved to have gotten this confusing problem off his chest, and hopped off his seat next to her. An eagerness to go outside and play had swiftly replaced his worry. Alas, young children did not know how blessed they were with such short spans of attention. “Thank you, mother, I will see you in the Hall later!” He beamed at her with his bright eyes, so full of life and free of burden, and then turned around and sped off. Forgotten was all his worry if there was a tree to climb, a wooden sword to wield.
Gilraen’s eyes followed Estel’s path as he appeared in the garden below her and made for the bushes, already caught up in a new game. Their conversation had left her feeling bittersweet. Yes, if you were but a child, numbers mattered not. But for a widow, counting the short days she had been given with her husband was a constant in her life. For a mother, counting towards a day in the future when there would be no more playful distractions and her son would demand real answers about his father, about death, about himself, was frightening and real. For someone with the gift of foresight, counting towards the day her son would need to face his fate, and, too, be taken from her, was a merciless companion.
Acutely aware of how short life could be for those she loved dearest, every day she could protect her son from the cruel force of time was a victory; every moment spent happily with him was a blessing. And a reminder – a reminder that those days were numbered. Because for Gilraen, numbers meant everything.