Dírhaval plucked absently at his lute, repeating the words over in his mind, trying to force them into rhyme. His mind was sluggish in the heat. Under the midday sun, Túrin’s bravery and misery melted from his imagination. The stars served for better inspiration.
Dírhaval groaned and set aside his instrument. The grime was to thick to ignore, after all. He stripped off his shirt and made his way to the water basin, splashing the warm water against his skin.
“Whoa. You look like Atto!”
Dírhaval jumped, startled by the little voice. He spun to see a boy, golden-haired and bright-eyed, standing between Dírhaval’s hanging laundry. Dírhaval reasoned that the boy had playing in the woods and gotten turned around — few wandered from the main camp. One of the Gondolindrim, given the Quenya.
“And I presume your father is dashingly handsome?” Dírhaval asked with a grin. He glanced over the boy’s head in search of a guardian.
“That’s not what I meant,” the boy said. His eyes went wide a moment later and a fierce flush spread across his cheeks. “No, wait! I just meant… Please stop laughing, sir. My father has hair like that. Are all men that hairy?”
My father, Dírhaval thought, suppressing his laughter. That didn’t make sense. The Gondolindrim were all of the Firstborn, most either of the Sindar or the Noldor. Well, except for—
“You are Túor’s son?” Dírhaval asked quickly. “Eärendil the peredhil?”
The boy regarded him at arm’s length, perhaps wary of a stranger who could guess his identity. Dírhaval cursed his bluntness and tried again.
“Forgive me, lad,” he said, then extended a hand. “My name is Dírhaval, Bar Hador.”
“The House of Hador?” Eärendil’s voice lifted. “Really?”
“Aye, my grandfather fought beside Hador Lórindol at Dagor Bragollach,” Dírhaval said.
“That’s my grandfather’s grandfather!” Eärendil boasted. He stepped forward and took Dírhaval’s hand, shaking it awkwardly. Perhaps Gondolin had used a different greeting. “I am Eärendil, Bar Hador.”
Dírhaval grinned. “Now tell me, lad, what brings you out here? Surely your lady-mother did not ask you to hunt mushrooms all on your own?”
“You can hunt mushrooms?” Eärendil asked.
“That’s what they tell me,” Dírhaval said with a shrug. “But it was not my real question.”
Eärendil pouted. He was painfully out of place in Dírhaval’s sparse camp. The boy was dressed in a fine silk tunic, dyed a bright lilac. Could the peredhil sweat? The boy didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat, much like his elven kin.
“I… I wanted to trick my guards,” Eärendil admitted. His eyes were fixed on his sandals. “But I’ve gotten lost.”
“Fortunately, I know the way back to the camps,” Dírhaval chuckled. He grabbed a fresh shirt from the clothesline. It wasn’t silk, but better cotton than shirtless.
“Why do you live out here?” Eärendil asked as they started walking. “Ammë says it’s dangerous at night.”
“If I was farther out, it might be,” Dírhaval admitted. He slowed his pace as Eärendil scrambled up a fallen tree, then began to hop across its length. “I usually stay with the main camp, but I thought the quiet might help with my work.”
“Your work?”
Eärendil leaped over a cracked branch, then jumped onto a nearby boulder. Dírhaval considered stopping him, but the boy seemed surefooted enough. Besides, Dírhaval had heard his sister complain enough about royal tantrums. He had no interest in experiencing one for himself.
“I am a poet,” Dírhaval explained. “I am writing about your father’s cousin, as a matter of fact.”
“Cousin?” Eärendil repeated. He cocked his head. “My father has a cousin?”
Dírhaval’s surprise was short lived. Of course he doesn’t know, Dírhaval chided himself. Túrin’s fate would not have made it to Gondolin, and there were more urgent matters for Túor to attend in Sirion. It was not his place to tell Eärendil a story that his lord-father might still be unaware of.
“It’s a sad story,” Dírhaval said simply.
“So he died.”
Eärendil was ahead of him, standing on an old stump. He turned to Dírhaval for confirmation.
“Why do you say that?” Dírhaval asked slowly.
Eärendil shrugged. He hopped off the stump as Dírhaval caught up. “Every time someone tells a sad story, it ends in death.”
“They tend to do that,” Dírhaval admitted.
“I guess. But Atto says the happy stories end in death, too. At least when they are about men. He says Haleth and Bëor and Malach all died, but their stories are still happy.”
Dírhaval hummed in contemplation. He could hear the din of the main camps and the soft washing sound from the sea.
“And what do you think, princeling?”
“I think,” Eärendil said, slowly choosing each word, “Atto is right. If stories are sad because someone dies, then the Secondborn can only have sad stories.” He nodded at his own answer. “We don’t only have sad stories, do we Dírhaval?”
“No,” Dírhaval agreed. “We have our share of happy stories, too.”
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