“Mama, Why did Fluff die?” the tiny elf child sputtered.
Ahmo shook loose her long brown hair, took up the diminutive form clutching her knees and forced a cheerless and wan smile, kissing away tears, clutchng the babe close. Miquelsiel's* cherubic little face was beet red from weeping over her cat, which had been savaged by a wolverine. Despite much effort on everyone's behalf, the feline could not be saved and so the family and several of the neighbors stood about a small gilt wooden cask that had once held a gift from Elrond himself. It was decided by Arthandron, little Aamu's father, that a burial would impart a lesson about the cycles of mortal life in Arda.
Whatever lesson may have been imparted that day, and whatever remonstrances and explanations were proferred, Ahmo's daughter was unconsolable.
Arthandron, Miqeulsiel's father and idol in all things slowly shoveled earth into the little grave, with an expression no less stern than when once he had built a cairn in the uplands of Dorthonion for a fallen comrade. His every move was mindful of lessons imparted to his child.
Ahmo comforted and held and sang sweetly as she cradled her little one. When the grave was at last complete, the three of them and one of the neighbor's children, raised a small pyramid of stones from the riverside. Arthandron, who was accomplished in the plastic arts, had fashioned the form of a sleeping cat from a bit of marble. This he placed as a capstone. Ahmo's warm cloak was drawn about the small sobbing form as puffs of steam from their breathing lazily resolved upward in the cool autumnal evening as they all made their way in solemn silence up the path to their house.
At their crimson painted door with its gold fittings, Arthandron and Ahmo exchanged a nod. The babe, limp from a surfeit of grief was put into her bed with her favorite toy, a dragon whose head Arthandron had carved from a stag's horn and a body fashioned from leather, complete with a facsimile of bat's wings. Aamu believed it protected her and would not hear it when one of the neighbors explained that all dragons were creatures of evil. This one was good, she said. Pressing her mother on the matter, Ahmo explained that nothing begins evil but all things have their shadow. Sometimes the shadow consumes their heart and they become cruel and wicked.
As with other small children, elves or mortal, dwarves or hobbits, these discussions led like gopher tunnels into labyrinthine warrens, most parents were ill equipped to navigate. Even elvish parents in latter days fell upon recitation of comforting myths and cliché illusions. Emotionally potent though they were, they served to deaden curiosity, wall off enquiry and make life a simple and dimensionless passage through the world of sensorum.
Miquelsiel's parents, however, had been married beneath the Holy Mountain in the days before the darkening, oaths, strife and war. Idlyllic existence was transformed as the Noldor entered back into the world ruled by Melkor. By time. By toil. Sadness and gried punctuated with moments of joy an exultation.
None of this mattered to the little girl who clutchd her toy as she fell into a deep slumber.
And fell.
And fell.
Aamu's bright blue eyes flashed open with a start. It was utterly silent and still. A shaft of golden dawn through the shutters bathed her round face in a diffused golden light.
Somewhere not far, the music of harps sounded. She sat upright and turned in her little bed, toes touching the cool slate floor. The music was so beautiful she had to hear it. The door to the hall opened on silent hinges and there was Puff, looking expectantly. Aamu gathered her emerald silk night robe about her, tugging the sash and ran to her little cat.
“Puff! We missed you so! We worried so! Why did you pretend to be dead? How did you get back?”
The cat turned, leading the elf child into the hall. The front door was ajar. Puff led Aamu outside onto the portico, teasingly wending her way through the chairs and tables where they family ate in summer weather.
“Little Puff! Mother will be so angry with you for tricking us so! We're not supposed to be outside now!” Aamu suddenly realised mother and father were nowhere about. In the back garden maybe. But her focus was on Puff.
Aamu's remonstrance had no effect upon the orange feline who led her down the steps onto the communal pathway of marble tiles that led ultimately, path by path, to the Homely House of Elrond.
Aamu felt a sense of momentary panic. Puff could not be allowed to get away again, but no matter how she called and followed, the cat continued up the path while the insistent melody of the harp grew louder against the backdrop of the Bruinen falls.
As the little girl followed her cat on the path toward the music a gentle autumn breeze came up, stirring the dead leaves into motion. She was struck by the way the leaves swirled round her in a loose circle until it was as though they danced merrily about her as she walked and she was tempted to join the joyful round but onward Puff went. The harp music changed into a new sound in the air, like a droning of a multitude of bees caused Aamu's round little face to look upward. A shining silver lenticular thing was there and she suddenly stood stock still while Puff brushed playfully against her robe. She did not know wether to be afraid or not but while she looked on, the ovoid object slowly turned into a cloud which scudded slowly toward the vast bulk of the Hithaeglir which loomed just to her left.
It occurred to her that no one was about but with that thought, three tall elves in sable robes could be seen at the Spire of Meeting. She picked up Puff and cuddled the cat tightly, the comfort of he soft fluffy fur against her jaw made her braver while the three tall elves in black moved purposefully toward her.
The one in the middle had black hair and a ghostly white face that spoke of blighted beauty. A face that was hard and impossibly sad like frozen anger and regret. The Child was overcome by emotion, eyes admitting a tear. She wanted to help him somehow.
The tall elf sire touched his fingers to her closed eyes and all her grief was suddenly gone. She wished father would come and take her and Puff home now. Then the three of them together said in one voice; “Don't tell anyone, Miquelsiel,” and with that they vanished, leaving her and Puff alone on the lawn beneath the Spire, amidst faerie rings where the leaves had done their spectral dance.
Now, as Aamu decided they must make their way home before they got into trouble, a shadow blotted the sun. She looked up with a start to the sky above the big red roofed house- toward the very House of Elrond, who her mother often said was the rightful King of the World. There, people she knew who seemed strange to her and and also many others she did not but who seemed somehow familiar looked up in terror as a vast black winged shape descended with a horned head crowned by garlands of red flowers. The dragon settled to earth before her, wings furled up behind.
While the people around ran away in fear, she stood upright and resolute, still in the spell of comfort the black haired elf had put upon her. The looming monster looked upon her with one of its fearsome crimson eyes and said with a voice that sounded only in her mind, “In time you will earn your place upon my back and I will take you into the sunset on the straight way. This is our secret and you must never speak of it until you are full grown and strong.”
Aamu, holding Puff, climbed upon the dragon's back through some inner urging, fearless and knowing that this was her dragon, sent by her father to bring her back home at last for breakfast.
A sense of sudden vertiginous rush toward a glorious golden sun and Aamu saw all the world spread out below in a flash. She saw every river. Every hill. She was aware of orcs hiding in all the lonely cold hidden places. Lovers kissing in the last blush of summer, her friends at play on the heath by the forges, little people with hairy feet (who were these?) dwarves with broad belts and hands full of bright gems, also she saw the elders of the gentle race of which she was a part of (“never forget!”), the mighty eagles who lived on the other side of the mountains flew by them. She saw then bearded mortal men who lived surrounded by sacks of silver coins in houses that crumbled too soon. She saw forests with Dull trolls, trees that walked and hummed songs...a dreadful thing far away southward that seemed at once terrifying and full of fear. It seemed from this height nothing was hidden and she felt so potent and wise that she had become her mother.
Her dragon descended thn in a sudden precipitous drop, stooping like a hawk.
The sensation of falling from a great height brought little Miquelsiel to a sudden wakefulness with a terrified shriek. In a moment, Ahmo and Arthandron rushed into the room to see her amidst a tangle of bedding, clutching her totemic toy as she had been when tucked in mere hours before.
“It's alright,” her father soothed. “A dream”
“I know,” said Aamu. “Everything will be alright now,” she repeated in her small child's voice but with a steady confidence they had not encountered in her before.
Ahmo looked toward the shutters. There was a bit of orange cat fluff drifting on the gray polished slate floor though there was not the slightest stirring in the air. How did that get there? She had cleaned the child's room with a greater than usual thoroughness.
*mother name of Aamu, daughter of Ahmo.
