Father taught her to fight as Grandmother had fought, with a knife and bow, to loose arrows on the run from any position in the trees and how to parry and strike with a long knife, though the one he gave her was sharp Dwarven steel, the best craftsmanship of Gamil Zirak in the treasuries of Uncle Thingol. This knife-work he taught also to Mother and her younger brother Oropher.

Nimloth practiced with her mother, and Oropher when he visited Ossiriand from the court, having them toss her targets and fresh arrows. She was not as swift as the Laegrim of her grandmother’s people, though they considered her and her father one of their own. Her footsteps never had the same silence as the green hunters, but everyone said she was improving.

Sometimes she swam over to the island to play with Dior and practice their blade-work. She never defeated him, for he was an uncanny prodigy with a sword, which baffled and worried his father. Nimloth liked the mortal, Beren, almost as much as her own father. He did not smile and laugh as often as Galathil, but when he did, and the lines and weariness evaporated from his face, she understood why the princess fell in love with him. Beren had a gentle and powerful manner with living creatures, able to call birds to rest on his shoulders, deer to feed from his hand, small things that crawled come up to warm his feet, and even the bears bowed to him in peaceful greeting. The Green Elves were in awe of him. Nimloth loved him. Therefore when she visited Beren, she did not bring her bow, and kept sheathed her knife. Weapons, and the war they reminded him of, seemed to make the mortal feel older, more worn and quiet like an old oak in deep frost. She liked when Beren smiled, and she liked when Dior only seemed a normal, if unbelievably beautiful, boy. And Tol Galen was the safest place in Beleriand, so she did not need her knife.