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Tuor had been in Gondolin for nearly two months now. He had almost stopped getting lost, but still looked at all the buildings with admiration, and inadvertently broke off a conversation when coming upon the King’s tower or any halls or towers that were new to him and particularly large or beautiful.
Idril had appointed herself his watchdog, which was an endlessly entertaining job. He was so very young, so utterly out of his depth, but could somehow charm his way out of any awkward situation just by being… honest, and open and by finding his own social shortcomings just as funny as everyone else did.
Not that there were no moments when his darker side came through. She was slowly piecing together the gap he had left in the story he had told them of his earlier life. It was not pretty. She could see why he had no wish to talk about it. She was also happy to respect that and to offer him support if he needed it, which only turned out to be once or twice, but she was there and was glad she was.
Others, unfortunately, were less perceptive, less considerate or just…well. She need not go there. Manners were manners, and being rude benefited nobody.
It was usually one of the younger nobles, of the ‘hunt all day, drink all night’ type, or the older, more austere ones, who couldn’t quite work out what this human ruffian was doing here anyway, or Maeglin – brilliant at so many things, but not the best at tactful silence – who somehow managed to take their questions a little to far, or make some comment.…
And Tuor would freeze slightly, and you could almost see him fighting to keep the memories from swamping across his field of vision, and why was nobody talking?
And inside she would cringe backwards into herself and want so desperately to step in, but all eyes were on him, now, and she would just make it worse, and it was all up to him and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but it has to be you, just keep….
And then he would smile and shrug and neatly change the subject. She could see how much it cost him, how easy it would have been to give in, but he did not.
And then he would find some thing new to look at, ask what these flowers were, or how you made those beautiful lamps, and who made them and where.
And then he was no longer a boy bewildered in a strange world, but a soldier. A survivor.
A man who had been through trials that would have sent some elves into decades of solitary recuperation. And yet he could somehow shake that off into the past and live in the present, or the future.
He just seemed to know, with some wondrous certainty, that the stars would rise in the evening, and that even if the night was dark, the dawn was never far away.
He knew not to mourn something before it was gone. He knew that sunlight in droplets from a fountain would sparkle just so, only once, but he was not sad, for it had been, and had made the world more beautiful with its brief flash of life, and he knew that to grieve for its passing was to insult its brilliance while it lived.
He knew how to laugh, while there were things to laugh about.
It was wisdom, she thought, that many of her kindred would do well to learn.
And she learned it too. She realized how much of the life in the city was lived in longing, in emulation of the land far away that they had lost. She saw that the pain this caused so many, outweighed the comfort it brought to some.
She saw how many of her kindred still wore nothing but white and grey, and dark, starlight colours, in memory of those distant lands, and those people who had not made the journey, by choice or by fate along the way. She still wore the white and grey that her mother had worn.
But when he was there, looking at everything new, it seemed brighter somehow, and fresher, and she wanted to be part of the glorious kaleidoscope that he saw.
And as she realized that grey was not bright enough anymore, so she realized that she would forever be her mother’s daughter, but she need not be her mother.
And that hurt at first, but she knew in her heart that it was what Elenwë would have wanted.
Tuor had told them that the city was not eternal, that it would come to an end, and they would have to move on. Maybe it would, and maybe then Idril would return to longing and grief. But for the time being, there was life here as there could not be life anywhere this side of the sea. The city and the grass and mountains were as bright as new gems, the sky as blue as… as Tuor’s eyes.
There was a feast a month later. Idril made herself a new dress and dyed it the blue of water in a river and the indigo green of the depths of the ocean.
Turgon blinked, but only once. Her smile melted his heart, even though – or maybe because – it was not meant for him.
Tuor looked stunned. She laughed. He smiled, and it lit up the room and her face like the first sunshine of a new summer’s day in the waterfalls of Cirith Ninniach.