Chapter Text
Aredhel glanced again at the letter and willed herself to keep still, not to tap her foot on the ground nor her nails on the wood of the fallen tree where she sat. Was she not a huntress? How was it that she could be still and silent for hours in stalking her prey, but now fidgeted after mere minutes?
The letter had not moved, only waved slightly in the breeze, mocking her. Had she misread the date and time, the thousand times she had gone over it? Had something gone wrong? Where was--
At last a Maia appeared from between the trees of the Grove of Reunion, dressed all in robes of gray. Aredhel stood.
“What news?” said she.
The Maia said, “Allow me to congratulate you. I bring with me Maeglin, whose care Lady Nienna and Lady Estë have charged me with during the process of Return.”
Aredhel ignored him then, and would have shoved him aside had he not politely moved out of the way, revealing the elf behind him. She rushed over -- yes, this was Maeglin, with the same pale face and dark hair, looking only a little older than she had left him, and all her questions and pain and blame vanished for the moment, for she was too overwhelmed and too busy embracing her son.
Her son?
For, on a second glance, when she pulled back to look again, something had changed that she could not quite name, but Maeglin was now clearly to her eye a woman.
“Do I know you, my lady?” said Maeglin, in a voice at once too familiar and too foreign. The tone was so good-naturedly puzzled in a way Aredhel had never heard her child sound that she almost missed the words.
“Indeed, I am your mother,” she said, and glared at the Maia in a demand for answers.
“Princess Maeglin has been returned in the form of her choice, but without her memories, as was deemed best by Lord Námo,” said the Maia. “I am to see to her acclimation to life, that the natural return of recollection over time does not harm her. I am Olórin.”
Aredhel’s questions returned in full force -- why had Maeglin never told her of her desire to change herself? Why did she remember nothing? Why, why had she sworn herself to Morgoth and betrayed her kin and her people without any sign of regret -- but she did not voice them. Instead she said, “I do not have a home suitable for such a recovery, as I ride with Lord Oromë much of the year. My brother and I shall find a suitable place for her.”
“Then allow me to come with you! I have aided the Returned before, I think I may be of help,” said Olórin.
Aredhel inclined her head, but spoke no more to him. As Lómion would no longer do for a name, she said, “Come, my Maeglin. We are to your uncle’s house.”
With a smile more innocent than Aredhel had seen since long before her death, her daughter followed.