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As of Year 3029 of the Third Age
On the banks of the river Celon, north of Nan Elmoth, was born Wendimiri, daughter of Lehtanon the forester and Ravennë the huntress. Gwenivyr they called her in the Grey-Elven Tongue, she with her eyes like crystals, and the prismatic clarity of her voice. She was born in the early days of the Long Peace, an auspicious sign to her parents. She inherited her mother's silent stride early, and her father's thoughtfulness; in her youth she was as much at ease out on the plain with her bow in hand as she was up among the branches of the trees, walking their heights with scarcely a downward glance. Language had not fully dawned on her, then, though her lamatyavë was refined as any Noldo's.
And then upon the plains of Amrod and Amras there came a white, damp morning, and with it came Gwenivyr with her quiet footsteps and her arrows sharp in the quiver, hunting quail. She did not know it, but she had wandered close to the encampment of Bëor's folk, the first Men to enter the West. Through the fog she heard them before she saw them, and the sound shocked her straight to the core. An unknown tongue, alien, strange... yet not so strange. There was a shape to some of the words that she recognized, barely discernible amid the odd cant of their inflections and the roughness of their voices. Something stirred and changed within her, irrevocable.
Silent, Gwenivyr walked toward them out of the mist. Silent, she walked into learning.
Halabor, kinsman of Bëor the Old, was the first to teach her a new tongue, the tongue of the Eldest House of Men. Taliska, they called it. At that time Finrod Felagund of Nargothrond had come to abide with Bëor in Estolad, and by the king's consent she attended him as a serving-maid, and rode often with his hunting party, and learned all she could of Taliska in every spare moment. When he returned to Nargothrond she went also, for her fealty had come to lie with him.
Her learning soon turned to other tongues, and more, and though she bore little love for Fëanor or his Lambengolmor, her skill grew nigh to theirs, and in due time she became counted but a little beneath them in learning. During this time also she met her husband the jewel-smith Ortanano, called Orthannen in Sindarin, and they were wed in that city. He gave her the epessë "Mirellë", which means Little Jewel. Some said she had married him as much for love of his house as for him, and this was not wholly false, for Orthannen's father Tietéro was a lover of speech as much as she. She learned much from him in his house after their marriage, and loved him as a second father.
They had two children, a girl and a boy, and once their children were grown they took to traveling, seeking lore of all the peoples of Beleriand and compiling written records. From Ossiriand to Doriath to Falas they journeyed, and found the joy of learning and of language wherever they went, though Gwenivyr found little joy in Thingol after living ten years under his ban against her beloved Quenya. It was some hundred years after she first swore fealty to Finrod that she received word of his death, fallen in battle-by-song with Sauron. She wept bitterly for days, and did not speak, but her heart was too clear to hold darkness for long, and her fëa too bright. The sorrow enriched her, and she went on. She and Orthannen returned to Nargothrond to be with his parents.
The Nirnaeth Arnoediad struck soon after, taking many of her kin and those dear to her, Orthannen's father Tietéro among them. Her husband Orthannen had desired to fight with the host of Nargothrond, but she begged him not to, and afterwards he was both glad and sorrowful that he had followed her request, for though he loved his life, part of him bore the guilt of those who narrowly escape death while their loved ones perish. Such guilt as this lay heavy on the heart of Orthannen's mother, Liltaiwë, and she lay herself down in her bed and did not eat or drink or answer to any word spoken to her, until her fëa faded from her hroa.
Then Gwenivyr and Orthannen abode in Gondolin with their children, her parents, and other kin, and while Orthannen took up his jewel-smithing once again, she turned to music and the bardic arts. But little time did they pass there before Morgoth set his dark hordes upon that city. They and a few others escaped the fall of Gondolin and followed Tuor to Sirion, and Eärendil was their lord after Tuor. Then, though they both loved Eärendil greatly, they sailed to the isle of Balar where Círdan's folk were, and under his reign prospered for a time and were at ease. After the Kinslaying at Sirion those of their kin who survived came after them to that isle as well, and again there was much sorrow and much gladness mingled together in their reunion.
To Círdan their fealty ever remained from that time, and at the coming of the Second Age they traveled with him to lay the foundations of Lindon and Mithlond, and dwelt in Harlindon with Ravennë and Lehtanon Gwenivyr's parents for many a glad year. The wealth of knowledge she and her husband had gathered and preserved in writing or in memory were the beginnings of the great library in Mithlond, and in 200 S.A. they went to live there and oversee the library, undertaking the great task of setting down once again upon the page all the lore that had survived only their minds, and restoring what scrolls and books they had managed to keep from complete ruin.
As this task neared its completion, ships of the Númenoreans began to appear off the coasts of Mithlond, and Gwenivyr hastened to meet them and learn their language, Adûnaic, the descendant of Taliska which was her first non-native tongue. In time she was made Círdan's chief diplomat, and functioned as liaison between the elves of the Lindon and the Men of Númenor until the 20th century of the Second Age. When Númenor fell, she counted it in part a personal failure, for she had been unable to maintain the good relations between her folk and theirs. Thus, she resigned her diplomatic position and was a Loremistress again, devoting her days to studying old manuscripts. She dwelt in Lothlorien a few years, and when word reached her of her husband's participation in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, she shut her ears to it, anticipating failure. But time proved her wrong, for Sauron was defeated, and her heart slowly began to awaken once more to her fondness for the Secondborn.
Still, it was several yéni before she left Lorien, for she had great need of the peace she found there. Her husband joined her in the Golden Wood, and they were blessed by the presence of Galadriel, Finrod's sister, though their fealty remained with Círdan. Over two thousand years they passed there in unmarred happiness, and then returned to Harlindon and were reunited with her parents before taking up residence in Mithlond proper.
In the next thousand years she watched as Middle-Earth became ever a darker place, and she remembered the ruin of Beleriand and was ill at ease. Paradoxically, it was in the beginning of the 4th millennium of the Third Age that she began to travel those dangerous lands, forging friendships with the Dunedain and studying the tongues of the Beornings. Her husband remained in Mithlond, ever the dedicated Jewel-Smith, and so she returned there often, for the two of them could not be long parted. Also she had grown to love the sea, and in her great age the call of the West was a constant desire within her, not easily resisted. It comforted her to stay beside the water, knowing that she could sail West whene'er she wished, but the restlessness in her drove her to travel, to learn, to find new roads. And so she does.
She is 6799 this year.
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