@baby-dragons-art is running the adorable Tolkien Duck Week, and while I cannot draw I was possessed to write a little something involving Silmarillion characters as ducks, so here it is:
It is the Day of Choosing, and so the pond is crowded. Nerdanel sits with the other hens and tries not to ruffle her feathers as the drakes descend from the sky, taking their place on the opposite side. All of the hens clutch a flower in their beaks: queen’s lace, bluebells, clovers, one even with a lucky sprig of lavender. Nerdanel’s is only a small buttercup, as yellow as a sunbeam, and she holds it tight as her feet paddle nervously beneath the water.
Older ducks, like her father, stand guard at the edges of the pond. The Sanctuary may be safe, but many remember what life was like before the Great Journey, when Finwë led them through stormy skies to freedom. When the Shadowed One, the most terrible of all, hunted them. Him and his black iron gun and his ravenous, one-eyed fox. Better to keep watch, just in case.
Not that Nerdanel is thinking much about that. She has no room to remember and fear old evils. Her heart is too crowded with present worries. She hopes - oh, but it is a foolish hope! The dream of a duckling, watching how happy her mother and father were together. The rest of their eggs did not survive and Nerdanel knows that they wish for her to find the other half of her heart on this day. To be approached by a drake who will shelter her with his wings, to build a nest and create a gaggle of tiny, fuzzy-soft ducklings with. She wishes for that too, for a family loud and large.
But she knows, also, that it is likely not to be.
As the drakes swim towards them, Nerdanel catches a quick look of her reflection on the pond’s surface. Compared to the other hens, she is plainer, uglier. Her feathers are dull, mud brown, not beautiful chestnut or oak or river-stone grey like the others around her. Her beak is large and flat; her body terrible at diving down to fish. So it hurts, but does not surprise her, when none of the drakes approach her. Two by two the couples are paired, each hen presenting her flower to the drake who’s won her heart, until Nerdanel is the last one left.
She cannot face her parents, cannot face their sympathy or sorrow for her, and so she drifts to a quiet spot at the pond edge, waddling out of the water and nudging at the smooth stones sadly with her beak. No one dives out of the sky for her. Not for plain and flat-beaked Nerdanel, the one who makes sculptures from pond-mud and twigs. There will be no eggs in her future, no warm nest to share and snuggle beside another with. Her dream shall remain a dream and nothing more.
A shadow falls on the ground beside her. Nerdanel looks up, expecting her father.
How has she missed him arriving? The most handsome of drakes, the first son of Finwë and one day leader of the flock. His head feathers are a vivid emerald green, his beak more yellow than the petals of a sunflower. Someone like him could have any hen he wanted, and yet, he is seeking out her.
“Nerdanel,” he says, “May I dance for you?”
Buttercup still in her beak, Nerdanel can only nod.
A courtship dance! The oldest of mating rituals, and the most difficult to do! Since coming to the Sanctuary it has fallen out of fashion. Most drakes these days prove their worthiness in other ways to their hens: a gift of fish to show a talent in hunting, or a large collection of twigs to show their dedication to nest-building. For many, a courtship dance takes too much time to learn and even more to master.
But Fëanor has! And he wants to dance for her!
With a swing of his wings he begins, bobbing his head, shuffling his webbed feet. Back and forth, up and down, following the ancient melody that their ancestors first heard, a gift granted to them from the very stars. His chest is puffed out, all his feathers shining in the sun. It is mesmerizing. He is mesmerizing.
It is a tiny thing, a little dip of his body as one foot hits a stone. Fëanor quickly corrects it, continuing his dance, though there is a glimmer of panic in his eyes now. A thread of uncertainty that wasn’t there before.
That mistake - and the determination to keep going - breaks open Nerdanel’s heart to him more than any practiced perfection. Yes, thinks Nerdanel, as Fëanor continues to dance, this is the one I shall share a nest with. Who I will trust to guard my eggs and fly close to when the weather turns cold. On this day, he is the one I will choose.
As the dance ends, Fëanor bows his head. His normal, self-assured confidence is gone. Hope and dread shine in his eyes as he waits. Nerdanel does not make him wait long. She waddles up to him and holds out her flower, the little buttercup she’d picked this morning when all seemed hopeless and yet she’d hoped anyway. Fëanor accepts it, feathers ruffling with happiness.
“Yes,” she says, “I am sure.”
Fëanor’s whole body shakes in excitement, his loud cry no doubt catching the attention of every other drake and hen at the pond. He holds out a wing, the invitation clear. Nerdanel accepts it, tucking herself beneath it so that her chest is warm against his.
So that their hearts, two halves of one whole, are close together.
[can also be read here on AO3]
