The Star-kindler's Daughters
Title: The Star-kindler's Daughters
Author: Dwimordene
Characters: OC Dúnedain of the North, Halbarad, Aragorn.
Sources: LOTR, Appendices for setting; Semper Fidelis, Triage, and Violations for the back-story of Thorondis and Eledhril (modified timeline, because it just works better this way…)
Warnings: shifting metaphors, it’s a society under siege…
Rating: T
Summary: “War must be while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all.” And all must war in every way needed if there is to be deliverance. Thanks, aliana1 for helping make this one possible.
The Earthly Lights of Elentari
The Elves tell how Varda kindled the stars above. But the Dúnedain tell how she scattered starlight upon the earth - sparks that she planted in Men’s hearts.
And she bade her handmaids to tend the lights of heaven that she laid.
In the Angle, men stand the Long Watch, learn to guard those heart-fires. For they water that seed of Númenor, Telperion’s fruit, liberally with blood - their own and their children’s. The Dúnedain have built the life of their people about such labor as must bring deliverance from the Dark Lord.
That is their standard, the measure of all things...
Keepers of the House
Home is where the hearth is, say the women of the Dúnedain. Daughters must learn all that feeds the hearth: the woodyard, axe, and oilpress; the pot, pan, poker, and smithy; the storehouse, the fields.
Tend the flame that feeds the household, that gives warmth, that is life.
Tend the lass, and she shall deliver the homefront.
And she will defend it: fathers teach bow and staff - the arts of slaughter.
‘Tis for mothers, though, to teach their daughters that zeal, which flinches not from duty.
Varda Star-kindler laid the heart’s hearthfires, they say. Fan that flame - hold your ground!
Amdiriel
Thorondis learns to keep house young. Her mother teaches well: when to plant and reap, when to make linen, against winter’s cold how much wool, how to keep winter stores against starvation. How from shared hours sweating behind the plough to forge a bond against the Darkness.
And she learns, too, that against failure, lies the duty of judgment. She knows, for Valaris teaches: how to ration, how to plan attrition. A captain knows triage, says Valaris. Wives must, too, for ignorance costs lives - more than any choice.
Thus on Yuletide, Thorondis lights candles to honor hope in hard labor.
The Homefront
So Thorondis learns her craft alongside the stories of her people, for whom hope dies last, but is hard-lived. Ancient lays - so sweetly sung! - gain new meaning when war comes home.
Then she learns how ruthless are hearth-rite duties!
When the Ranger company limps, bleeding, home, Valaris orders the household into battle, staunching wounds. And she takes her husband’s hand, commanding: Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare let go your life, that is the easy path - our enemy!
He screams himself sick, but she’s relentless: her face hard beneath her tears, her hands red, Valaris wrings victory from bloody bandages.
~0~
And when Tíriel lies ghost-white in scarlet sheets, too spent to weep as two days’ labor bleeds out between her legs, Valaris gathers her in her arms, presses cheek to cheek, whispering, No fear now - you fought for life, and you delivered!
Thorondis, fifteen and terrified, clutches the squalling babe in its swaddles, strives for courage, as Valaris closes her eldest’s eyes.
Eyes tear-bright, Valaris tells Thorondis: No fear, my daughter. This is your duty; this, your war, to keep the hearthfires unto the last.
She tries. To grieving Laerondir, Thorondis urges, “Love her, and your daughter be your tribute!”
~0~
Laerondir named Tírien finally for her mother after a year; but she’ll carry her family name of Mailiel, remembering her coming to the world.
Her niece grows swiftly, and Thorondis marks her by her milestones:
Her first word - ‘Who?’ - brought her father nigh to tears, for both joy and pain that she asked it of him, reaching for his Ranger’s star.
She’s well-suited to be Questioner at Yuletide. Six year-old Tírien asks to the point, if not the rite: “What are we waiting for?”
For Envinyatar, who means many things…
Valaris lights the last candle, as Laerondir answers:
Deliverance.
~~~~~~~~
Mailiel - “Daughter Dear”
~0~
They hunger for deliverance.
Their ranks have thinned since the Fell Winter that laid Argonui low, for the trolls took Arador, and the orcs, Arathorn. White stones multiply in the graveyard, and the Angle’s wives grit their teeth in anguish and give to the last measure in childbirth - again and again, and younger now than before.
And when they’ve bled in bed, they shoulder the bow to work field and forest, for roving wolves and orcs raid heavily. All know the law - Bring not our enemies home!
And mothers teach the Homeguard tradition: Let none live to tell of you!
~0~
The way of leithian
Deliverance has but two paths - for a man, death; for their people, victory alone suffices.
Thus all Dúnedain have a duty towards Envinyatar, towards hoped-for-victory.
Come Springtide they gather, between fear and hope: for every mother, whatever her station, owes the Rangers one son.
Thorondis watches mothers, grandmothers, aunts sometimes tithe a son: Calaith gives Aragorn, newly returned; Marweth, Halbarad; Hiriel, Teigir; Elendis, Eledhril. Valaris gives Dharthandur - her second son to bear a star.
Argonui’s widow, Tarendis, slight but unbowed, her white braids coiled like a crown about her head, gives twenty new Rangers their abiding order:
Leitho ‘waith lín!
~~~~~~~
Leitho ‘waith lín: Set your people free!
~0~
For any deliverance, all must be bound to war’s many needs.
Oxen are rare among a hidden people. Together younger women throw themselves against the yoke, straining every muscle that the home-front eat this year.
One day, Eilis drops in harness - her babe is born of exertion, there in the field. They name her Cefwen, and laugh: “Aye, Eilis is delivered!”
Every day ends in exhaustion, but the Rangers gone, there’s guard duty.
They stand watch, aching from the battle for bread, but there’s hearthfire even in this:
Weep, Nienna, for the orc who would deny us after such effort!
~0~
Nevertheless, effort cannot halt incursions for an islet amid enemy seas.
Thorondis is harvesting late crops when the birds the boys have been stoning rise, shrieking, as orcs spill forth from forest-eaves, under cloudy skies.
Sickles become weapons; the boys sling stones at the onslaught. Thorondis wields her dagger, finds ‘tis not so hard to cut orc-throats.
Far less hard than others’...
“You spared him the suffering,” consoles Eledhril, blooded these last four years on brutal patrols, when he finds her with the boy she mercied.
“And he spared nothing,” she says flatly. “On the hunt, do you the same!”
~0~
(And he does.
By the town’s well, where they bring the bodies to wash, that the Dúnedain remember all the reasons they have for war, returning hunters, victorious, come to pay their respects.
The flagstones are slick with blood and water. Thorondis can tell wash-water from weeping only by the heat, holding a grief-stricken Boriel while Valaris and Tírien lave the gore from her poor lad’s body.
None but Nienna can count the tears
Halbarad and Eledhril approach, and Eledhril grimly sets before them a bloody helm, bearing an orcish death’s head, and offers:
“Swift justice be your comfort, Mother.”)
~0~
Grief, though, is no Ranger, to go swiftly.
The Angle’s women make rounds against darkness in-setting - they sit vigil with Boriel and others who lost lives in the raid, and send husbands with needfuls.
‘Tis hard, the work of mourning that, like alchemy, must turn lead into adamant, grief into hard purpose.
In Vairë’s circles, they weave shrouds, remembering themselves of the enemy’s outrages, sharing stories of grief - for each has one.
Why we fight, say those steeled to it.
“How fares Boriel?” Eledhril asks Thorondis.
“She’ll bear up.”
“And you?”
She taps her dagger: “The Homeguard’s comfort suffices me.”
~0~
They bury their dead after three days’ mourning, and then return to field and farmhold with all the urgency of the season. There’s grain to mill, livestock to butcher, and all the women hang herbs to dry against need.
Other needs, too, there are.
The cold is coming; the Dúnedain turn inward against it. The Lady of the Angle and her councilors consider: how to use winter’s cramped quarters to strengthen resolve.
On Yuletide, women sing the dauntlessness of Emeldir, who delivered her people, and teach:
Envinyatar before us, but Emeldir today - let even children understand: victory demands no less!
~0~
Victory, indeed, demands all.
Patching clothes is no paltry chore - it keeps those who keep the darkness at bay.
If the roof needs thatching, thatch it to spite Him, who would fire the town entire!
Every pail of milk, every stack of firewood, every chamberpot of night-soil - such is defiance of the Enemy, who would wipe the earth of them.
The fight is not only on the Road, ‘tis in the living itself, not to go meekly into the night that threatens.
Hence one evening Valaris sits Thorondis down and says: “’Tis time you married. We must strengthen our ranks.”
~0~
So she does, and discovers duty can surprise.
None expected Eledhril, but he persisted, ‘til she gave a hearing, their mothers chaperoning.
“I’ve overmuch knowledge,” he admitted. “Whatever you’d know, I’ll tell you - who I’ve bedded, where we stand.”
Bold, but she’d asked instead: “Why pursue me?”
He looked her through, fear and hope together, like a wound and its edge: “After that raid… I’ll rarely be home, but you I’d trust should any child of ours - should any of our household - be laid so low.”
Thus Mercy meets the Road …
“Swift justice be your bond, then,” she said.
~0~
They marry a year later. ‘Tis a bright moment she’ll hold fast, as they pass within the deepening gloom, seeking a sunlight they’ve never seen clear. They’re Dúnedain - groping beneath darkness, telling stories of light long past.
They need every candle-flicker - the Road’s pitch dark; men stumble, break vows. She’s gutted, realizing his betrayals. How weak are lonely Rangers - single threads, cut from the Angle’s loom of lives, they come undone!
But she married to strengthen her people. Use everything, mothers teach, even her hurt, even her love - Make them weapons against Him!
So Eledhril falters - she’ll bind him tighter.
~0~
And she’ll clutch the ties that bind her, the weft and warp that shape her struggles, that keep her outrage fierce - and focused.
Though the hateful wound he’s dealt will never fully heal, she’s truthful saying, “I love you.” For she hates more their Enemy, who bound them over a boy’s broken body, and loves unreservedly Eledhril’s obedience to his other vow - Leitho ‘waith lin!
Winter nights, lying with Eledhril, she thinks how many generations of husbands and wives have loved through hurt, and hoped like this, between death and deliverance, though their oath-stars dim.
May we be the last!
~0~
Not all, though, shall see that day.
The year Mandos takes Tarendis’s hand, she loses her first child. Worse comes - not two years later, fever scythes the Dúnedain: it takes Calaith; Thorondis fights for Elendis’s life, but fails. Exhausted, she miscarries again.
“All our light are gone,” she tells her husband, who shows his wisdom, mother-learned:
“It’s like this, on the Road. You are their hearth-flame - kindle another, and in you they live!”
They make a child that night - she names him Thelion, in defiance of that nightshade despair.
In time she’ll give their sons - all four - to the Rangers.
~~~~~~~~
Thelion - ‘son of resolve’
~0~
With years, she grows to bless that early trial - not for its losses, but its lessons.
For the days grow darker over years. Eledhril, Halbarad, Aragorn - all their young Rangers shed youthfulness to gain years - and mourn those who do not. Thorondis buries two children, joins a sad sisterhood: mothers of fallen Rangers.
The hearth-keepers close ranks against that narrowed sight that suffering brings, that compassion alone can broaden.
Compassion, though, needs conviction - aurë enteluva, for through our toil, we shall raise the new day! Hold your ground!
And as their mothers taught, they weave their hope of daily overcomings.
~~~~~~~~
Aurë enteluva: Dawn shall come again.
~0~
Release
Until one day, word comes north: Mordor is defeated - Elessar is king.
Let us bind up our wounds, bury our dead, and work for a new Age!
Yet the dead linger, needling. Eventually, she learns the name of that poor shade Eledhril haunts. That old hurt sharpens, deepens - but she’ll be no casualty of war, not now she’s seen sunlight.
Besides, she refused the easy road - enemy lure - long ago.
“I want better, not none, of you,” she rejects his offer of self-exile to Gondor. “That is justice - your best vow.”
“You’ll hold me bound?”
She smiles, fiercely: “I will!”
~0~
The New Age, the Fourth Age, brings hope and new trials - the latest duties, whose aim remains:
Leitho’ waith lin!
So Thorondis leaves her marital hearth to Thelion’s wife, and goes to Tharbad, where the Dunedain build anew the ancient kingdom crossroad.
Beneath open sky, above the weed-grown road that gains new ruts yearly.
“The hidden people no more,” Eledhril quips. “At least the walls are strong!”
Gates are no stronger than their defenders. Tend the lass, and she shall deliver the homefront. So Star-kindler’s daughters teach to steel their daughters, upbring their sons.
And they shall fear no darkness.
~0~
But the time comes to deliver such duties to others.
Thorondis has been daughter, wife, mother, warrior.
“But I never was a widow,” she says, and smiles, wipes Eledhril’s tears. “Now I never shall be!”
“Have I hurt you so, that you leave gladly?”
“You know better.” He bows his head. “Ai, love,” she sighs. “Be at peace! We part as we ought: in friendship.”
“I know. Only, I shall be lonely.”
“He is never friendless, who does his duty by his people,” she reminds, for at the end, she must still be a teacher.
Mayhap he’ll learn this time.
~0~
She has fought the war given her - now she must trust their children to struggle for this Age.
All we bled for!
Warm in Eledhril’s arms, she looks west - the light is fading again, but dusk holds no terror for her these days.
Of a sudden, Eledhril begins singing - low and hesitant, his was never a great voice, but she loves to hear it nonetheless. She feels that song - the Lay of Leithian, of steadfast friendship’s final triumph over even death - vibrate through them.
Thorondis smiles, takes his hand, squeezes. Drifting on that melody, she lets her eyes close, and…