Chapter Text
When she opens her eyes, everything is very dim and soft.
She sits up, and it feels like wading through clouds of gossamer, everything all muted and grey.
"Lómiel Irissien, Princess of the Noldoli, Lady of Nan Elmoth, Lady of the House of the Mole."
Blinking, she looks up at the grey figure sitting on a throne before her. No one has called her Lady of Nan Elmoth in...actually, no one has ever called her that, despite it being technically true.
"Who are you?"
The figure tilts it's head to the side, and though it's face is concealed by a hood, she gets the feeling it would be frowning if she could see it.
"I am Námo, Lord of these Halls."
Námo.
Her stomach gives a frightening lurch. "I'm dead then."
Dead, and in the same place as him.
She shudders.
The Doomsman shakes his heas. "Have no fear. Eöl Moriquendë is held in a seperate part of the Halls to those you will reside in until your release."
"M..my release?" Surely, after what she did, she would never be sent out among the Quendi again? "But, my Lord, I caused the fall of Ondolindë. The blood of my uncle's city is on my hands."
Now Námo stands, and kneels down beside her. She backs away a little, frightened by the sheer mountainous size of the Vala. "You are not to blame, daughter of Aredhel. The fault lies on those who attacked your home, not on you."
Lómiel feels her head shake ever so slightly, not believing his words, and Námo sighs.
He pushes his hood back, and she is surprised to see that his face isn't shadowy and dark and grim like she had always imagined it to be, but noble and tired and a little sad.
"I foresee that you will remain here for many years, little lost one. But come, your mother has been waiting to see you ever since you arrived."
Shrinking to only a little taller than the average nér, Námo helps her up, and leads her to a door she hadn't seen before.
It is all more than a little strange.
This is not how she had expected this to go.
Not in the slightest
But then the door swings open, and her eyes (does she even have eyes here?) fall on a familiar figure.
Tall and slender, and glowing white even in this dim, quiet, grey place, the White Lady of the Noldor paces up and down, up and down, up and down, midnight hair swirling behind her as if she's submerged in water, fingering her bow nervously.
Before Lómiel can do more than inhale sharply, or make a sound something akin to it, Irissë whirls, and her face lights up.
"Lómiel! Oh my daughter, my beautiful child."
And she sweeps up the smaller woman into a fierce embrace.
Námo melts away, content leaving Lómiel in her mother's care.
Irissë holds her daughter tight, weeping as she rocks to and fro. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my beautiful daughter, I should never have left you, I'm so so sorry."
Lómiel can only hold onto her mother, crying herself. "I missed you Ammë, I missed you so much."
For a long time, they stay there, hugging and crying, mother and daughter reunited at last.
But Irissë was never what one could call easily content, and eventually she pulls back, and links her arm through her daughter's.
"Come on darling, let's go and find the rest of the family."
"The rest?" Lómiel queries hesitantly. If she has to see him again, she's flinging herself into the Void.
Irissë's eyes open wide as she catches the stray thought, and she tugs Lómiel closer. "Oh darling, no. You will never have to see him ever again. The Dark Elf is in his own halls, set aside forever unless he truly reforms, and even then we will only ever see him on our terms. Didn't Námo tell you?"
Now that she thinks about it, he did.
Her mother smiles brightly, the kind that Lómiel associates with bruises and eyes glistening with held back tears. "Well, anyway, enough about that unpleasant business. What do you think about our new accommodations?"
Taking the blatant subject change for the boon it is, Lómiel grabs it and runs with it.
"Mandos is not how I expected it to be. From your stories, I expected Námo to be...different."
Irissë throws back her head in a full-bodied laugh.
"Well, yes, he is rather. I think the scale of what his Doom wrought on us rather shocked him - Haru Finwë says that he used to be a lot less gentle, even though he was always good. Apparently Námo learning just as much as we are, but as long as I don't have to see that" here she used several Quenya words Lómiel had never even known existed, "of a Moriquendi again, I don't really care."
Lómiel cannot help but laugh too. She had forgotten just how lively her mother was, and even in death it is not affected.
"I missed you, Ammë."
The taller woman's face sobers a little. "And I missed you, my little nolpaya. I should never have left you, iel-nin, I'm so sorry."
"No, Ammë, it wasn't your fault. I just...I missed you awfully."
Wrapping her arm about her shoulder, Irissë presses a kiss to the dark head.
"I love you my little one."
They have been walking all this time, and at this moment the dim, quiet corridors give way to a larger, brighter, louder hall.
Several Noldor are gathered around the centre, cheering and shouting as two dark-haired néri wrestle in the centre of a make-shift ring.
Lómiel looks quizzically at her mother, more than a little confused, but Irissë just smiles. "Welcome to the Hall of Finwë's House, my darling. This is where Námo has assigned all of our family for the duration of our stays here. Those who followed us are scattered in other halls around this area." Lowering her voice, she whispers in her daughter's ear. "Myself, I think he just wanted to contain the chaos as much as possible."
Deciding just to accept it, Lómiel gestures questioningly at the wrestling néri. "And them?"
Her mother just laughs. "Tôrada Fëanáro and my Atar. They get into a fight about every three or four days, and Haru decided that this was the best way for them to settle things."
She looks consideringly at the ring. "Normally I'd favour my father, because all loyalties aside, he's typically much more clear headed and goads Tôrada into doing something stupid. But today, what with, well, everything..." Lómiel looks down, understanding very well. Dead himself or not, the once High King is probably not taking the death of his son and granddaughter, nor the events that lead up them, very well.
Irissë drags her towards one of the néri. "So, anyway, as I was saying, I think today I'd rather bet on my uncle."
The nér turns, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "Did I hear that right, Rissë? You'll bet against Atar."
Lómiel's mother scoffs. "Look at him, Arakáno. He's not going to go more than a round or two in this frame of mind."
Indeed, the taller of the two is faring rather worse than the shorter, his face set in a snarl, and his movements erratic.
Not feeling quite up to having the attention of all these Noldor on her just yet, Lómiel moves into her mother's shadow, praying not to attract Arakáno's attention.
Uncle or no, he is still a stranger.
Seemingly sensing her daughter's wish not be noticed just yet, Irissë keeps between her daughter and brother, chattering away as Lómiel watches from her hidden spot behind the taller woman.
She does note that her remaining unnoticed by all of these elves in a place without shadows should be technically impossible, but she is after all only a fëa at the moment.
The match ends just then, with Fëanáro getting Nolofinwë in a headlock, using it to push him to the floor, and holding him there until a tall elf with red patterns marked on his arms and neck calls for the elder brother's victory.
Lómiel assumes that he must be her great-grandfather, seeing as her mother's tales had only ever included one elf who fit his description and also bore the old clan marks from before the Great Journey.
Panting, and pushing his brother off of him, Nolofinwë stands up, shaking his hair out of eyes.
Once again, Lómiel notices that it floats behind and around him lazily, rather like it would in water.
A peculiarity of Námo's Halls perhaps.
The nér's eyes fall on his only daughter, and a frown crosses his face as he makes his way towards her. "Irissë, when did you return?"
Everyone else turns to look, and Lómiel feels very small and young, hiding behind her mother.
One of the shorter elves, this one with golden streaks in his dark braids, a memory of golden ribbons perhaps, steps forwards. "Did Námo not release Lómiel to you?"
Dark looks cross the many faces of the elves, and a nér with a cloud of pale silver hair cracks his knuckles. "We've defied the Valar before, we can do it again, and this time we have practice."
Irissë smiles, and reaches behind her to grasp her daughter's hand and pull her gently, but firmly, forward.
"No need for that, as reassuring as it is. Lómiel is merely shy."
Reluctantly, she looks up, and into a pair of sharp, steel grey eyes.
Unlike the dreamlike blurriness of everything else she has seen here so far, the eyes of the elf who dealt Morgoth seven wounds are clear and very very real.
She bows her head again, trying to curtsey despite feeling so unsettled by being confronted with her dead relatives. "My lord."
A hand cups her chin, and she looks unwillingly up again, and notices that his eyes are shining suspiciously. "You look like your grandmother."
Of all the things he could have said, this was not what she would ever have expected. "I..."
Turukáno had never said such a thing, nor had Itarillë. And Irissë, her beloved mother, had died before her features had become pronounced enough to pick out inheritances.
Nolofinwë looks deep into her eyes, the same steel grey as his, and then smiles broadly. "It is good to finally meet you, my granddaughter."
And he crushes her in a fierce embrace, folding his arms around her tightly.
She finds to her surprise that she is as tall as him - it seems somehow wrong to be the same height someone so legendary, a warrior who will tower through history until the end of time.
Nolofinwë holds his grandchild, who he had never seen, never even known existed, in life, very tightly, and if he sheds a few tears at finally meeting his daughter's child, at all the missed years and opportunities, no one but he and Lòmiel know.
She shifts a little, because how can he really be so overjoyed to meet her, this great warrior-king, when she is nothing - just an orphaned traitor.
But then he releases her and pulls back, with a bright smile, and the wind is knocked out of her as another elf wraps her in a hug, a joyous shout leaving his lungs.
"Oh how wonderful to finally meet you! I'm your eldest uncle Findekáno."
Golden streaks flash across her vision, and she almost laughs when she realises that she is nearly an entire hand taller than him, this daring hero, who walked into Angband himself for love of his cousin.
And as he pulls back, and another elf takes his place, and another and another, all of them smiling and rejoicing to meet her, she begins to smile herself.
For so long, it has been only her, Turukáno, Itarillë and Laurefindil. Just the four of them, broken and grieving and alone.
But now, finally, after betrayal, torture and death in fire, she has come to a place that feels like home.
She has missed her mother so much, and here she stands, right behind her, smiling as her family greets her lost little daughter with hugs and joyful words.
It feels...good, to have her mother there again.