[Weeks later. Evening by the Taurion]
[Selas POV]
While all of this churned forward, the time came to address the citizenship question of our Vanyar immigrant.
Ilvëa had learned Avarin by now. Clumsy in places, accented in others, but functional. All that remained was full acceptance of Avari culture, and her assimilation would be complete.
"For most Avari, everyone born after the Exodus, she's still an outsider," Eol said.
"Knowing our language and culture doesn't change her kindred," Vertalas added, moving a chess piece without looking up from his game with Yalinim.
No surprise that over all these years I'd "invented" games like chess, checkers, and the like. Entertainment for myself and my people, and good mental training besides. The craze for board games had cooled from its initial fever, but the habit remained.
More importantly, it had sparked the Avari to create original games of their own, for adults and children both. Although I shouldn't have shown them card games. That was a mistake.
The gambling epidemic lasted three months and nearly caused a minor diplomatic incident between two clans over a disputed hand of something they'd named Starfall. Although, if we ever opened an official gambling house with a proper cut for the treasury… no. Wrong line of thinking entirely.
"Selas, have you worked out the Rite of Becoming yet?" Thoron asked directly. He sat with Celestia, both of them watching the chess match.
"I'm thinking we follow the model of the Farewell at Cuiviénen. Modified."
My friends fell quiet, remembering.
"That worked well," Mireth agreed, her voice subdued. She trailed her hand through the water, watching the ripples she made.
"That's when we all truly became Avari," Eol said.
"Then the Farewell can serve as the basis for the Rite," Thoron shrugged.
"My Chief, this isn't just about the Vanyar, is it?" Vertalas asked.
"You see far, Vertalas," I said with an approving smile. "The first Sundering of the Quendi showed that our race can divide not only by origin into the three original kindreds, Minyar, Tatyar, and Nelyar, but also by choice into Eldar and Avari. Then we learned from the examples of the Nandor, the Eglath, the Falathrim, and the Mithrim that even a single kindred can splinter into many different peoples for many different reasons."
Mireth's hand had frozen in the water the moment I began speaking, and hadn't moved since.
"Clearly, the Quendi divide along various lines of identity and belonging. The Falathrim fell in love with the sea and live on the shores of the Belegaer. The Mithrim settled by their namesake lake in the cold north near the mountains. The Eglath found their lost lord and settled in forests laced with rivers. Those distinctions make sense. Simple enough if a Quendi just wants to relocate and live in another kingdom, or serve a different ruler."
I let a beat pass, then continued.
"But what if an Eglath wanted to become Falathrim in essence? What would they need to do? Would the Falathrim even accept them as one of their own?"
I swept them all with a questioning look. My friends thought harder. The topic was genuinely complex. And soon enough the Noldor exiles would arrive with their three Houses and numerous kings. Why not establish a tradition now?
Create a path for immigrants to earn Avari status and full citizenship. To integrate completely into our society and assimilate into our people. Sooner or later, Quendi from other realms would want to change their allegiance, including to ours.
"So when such Quendi want to become Avari, we'll already have the traditions, the rites, and a living example before their eyes: our Avari Vanyar, the Refused Fair One."
"You've thought about the conditions?" Thoron asked.
"Some. The candidate must live among us for no less than five years before the Rite."
"Five years?" Celestia raised an eyebrow. "That's nothing."
"Long enough to prove sincerity. Long enough for us to know them."
"Know them how?" Vertalas asked.
"Language first. Full fluency in Avarin, spoken and written. Then our history, our customs, our laws. Amalaë and her teachers will design the curriculum. A candidate who can't tell you why we refused the Valar's summons or recite the names of the first families of Cuiviénen has no business calling themselves Avari."
Nods around the circle.
What I didn't say aloud was the rest of it. The part that lived in the back of my mind, where the Chief's calculations ran cold and quiet.
We would need watchers. Not just teachers. An organization, quiet and professional, whose job it was to observe newcomers. To trace their pasts, verify their stories, and watch for the kinds of inconsistencies that marked a spy or an agent provocateur.
Not tomorrow. Not next year. But eventually, when more Quendi learned we existed, when our secrets became worth stealing.
Trust, but verify. A principle as old as civilization itself.
"And if one of our Avari wants to become Eglath or Falathrim?" Vertalas asked. Another sharp question.
"Then that will be the will of an Avari." I shrugged. "We're a free people. No one forces anyone to stay."
But even as I said it, I was thinking about the other side of that coin. Freedom to leave, yes. Always. But we couldn't afford to let our knowledge walk out the door uncontrolled.
The answer wasn't chains. It was loyalty and education. A sense of belonging so deep that leaving felt less like freedom and more like amputation. Amalaë's schools were already building that foundation in every child born on the March. The culture we'd forged over twenty years of shared hardship was stronger than any oath of secrecy.
But for the rare cases? The ones who chose to leave regardless?
There would need to be rules. Oaths of silence regarding sensitive knowledge. Consequences for breaking them.
The other Quendi would learn about Light eventually. Every secret has an expiration date. But later was better than sooner, however selfish that sounded.
"To prevent it from happening too often, we raise our children right and guide our youth well," I said aloud, keeping my voice light.
We talked it through and agreed that Amalaë Talkrimael and her teachers would handle the cultural foundation, just as they'd done during the March. Noldor, Teleri, Eglath, it didn't matter what kindred the candidate came from. What mattered was that they became Avari. We closed the discussion on that principle and wrapped up for the evening.
"About the Fair One," Mireth said to me as we stood to leave. "Don't put off the Rite, Selas."
All I could do was nod.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[The next day. Near the Tree]
[Selas POV]
I found the golden-haired woman at the sapling.
I wasn't in the mood for drawn-out conversation, so I asked her straight.
"Ilvëa, do you want to become Avari?"
I appeared to have struck something deep. The level of astonishment on her face was profound. Several of Balga's farmers tending the Tree nearby looked equally stunned.
"What do you say? Do you want to be one of us?"
After the second time, Ilvëa only nodded.
"Good. We'll hold the Rite tomorrow."
And I walked away.
We talked it over with my advisors, then spent the rest of the day working on the Elders. After that, preparations spun into motion fast.
It wasn't until Celestia and Mireth cornered me at the construction site that I understood the magnitude of my blunder.
"You stale loaf, you just asked her like that? Point blank?" Celestia first.
"Have you completely forgotten how to talk to a woman?" Mireth right behind her.
"I—"
"That's why Ilvëa looks so crushed! I'm going to go calm her down!" Celestia marched off before I could get a word in.
And Mireth gave me a thorough dressing-down.
She wasn't wrong. I hadn't even considered the importance of the moment for Ilvëa.
The Rite of Becoming wasn't a supply requisition or a construction order. It was the most significant decision of someone's life, the act of leaving one people and joining another, and I'd delivered it with all the emotional weight of a man ordering lunch.
I hoped she wouldn't hold it against me. Women had a talent for being more terrifying than any dragon or Morgoth when properly motivated, and I'd just given Ilvëa excellent motivation.
An hour later, Celestia returned.
She was not calmer.
"You absolute block of granite," she said, and the next two minutes contained language so creative and anatomically specific that even Vertalas, who happened to be passing by, stopped to listen with undisguised admiration. Celestia did not moderate her vocabulary for the audience.
"However," she said, once the verbal assault had run its course, "Ilvëa has graciously decided to forgive your utter failure as a sentient being. She understands that the Chief of the Avari is a very busy and very important elfe with very many responsibilities, and she is willing to overlook the fact that he has the emotional intelligence of a fencepost."
"That's… generous of her."
"It is. Far more generous than you deserve." Celestia jabbed a finger into my chest. "Now go prepare the Rite properly, and if you manage to botch the ceremony itself, I swear by every star over Cuiviénen I will throw you into the moat we haven't finished digging yet."
She stalked off.
What I didn't know, and wouldn't learn until much later, was that the entire crisis had been approximately eighty percent Celestia and twenty percent reality. But that's a story for another day.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Earlier that day. The Tree]
[Celestia POV]
Celestia found Ilvëa exactly where she expected to find her: at the Tree, wrist-deep in soil, a collection of small clay pots arranged around her in a semicircle.
The Vanyar was running another of her Light experiments. She'd been at it for weeks, testing how channeled Light affected the growth and yield of fruit-bearing saplings, young apple and pear trees mostly, planted at varying distances from the Tree's roots.
{Image: Ilvëa tending Light-infused saplings}
The clay pots were tagged with strips of bark noting dates and Light dosages. If it worked, we'd have orchards producing fruit unlike anything Middle-earth had seen.
It was meticulous, patient work. The kind of work Celestia would have gone insane doing after the first afternoon.
"He asked you," Celestia said, dropping onto a root.
Ilvëa didn't look up from the seedling she was examining. "He did."
"And?"
"And I said yes." Her voice was perfectly calm. She turned a pot, studying the root growth visible through a crack in the clay. "The apple tree is responding better than the oak. Interesting. You'd think the oak would take to it more readily, given the Tree's own nature."
Celestia stared at her.
"That's it? That's your reaction? The man walks up to you, asks you to change your entire identity like he's ordering a new pair of boots, and you're thinking about apple tree roots?"
Ilvëa set the pot down and finally looked up. Her expression was amused.
"Celestia, what exactly did you expect to happen?"
"I expected you to be upset! Hurt! Offended! Something! Mireth and I are ready to skin him alive on your behalf and you're sitting here conducting horticulture?"
"Why would I be offended?" Ilvëa shook her head. "I wasn't upset, Celestia. I was stunned. When he said it, my mind went completely blank for a moment. I just stood there trying to understand that it was actually happening." She shrugged. "The farmers saw a woman frozen in place with a strange look on her face and assumed the worst. That's all it was."
"Because—" Celestia sputtered. "Because he asked you the most important question of your life as if he were ticking a box on a supply ledger! No feeling. Just 'do you want to be Avari, good, we'll do it tomorrow,' and off he walks like he's got a meeting about drainage ditches!"
"He probably did have a meeting about drainage ditches."
"That's not the point!"
Ilvëa sat back on her heels and brushed soil from her hands. The Tree's light caught her hair, turning it from gold to something warmer.
"Celestia, I've known Selas since before either of us could speak a complete sentence. I watched him at Cuiviénen. The way his mind works, the way he processes the world. He thinks in systems and structures, and when something matters to him deeply, his instinct is to handle it quickly and move on before the feeling catches up."
She picked up another pot, examined it, set it aside.
"He didn't ask me carelessly. He asked me the only way he knows how when something is too important. Just directly."
Celestia opened her mouth, held it that way for a good three seconds like a fish pulled out of the Taurion, then closed it.
"Besides," Ilvëa continued, a small smile forming, "if I'd wanted a man who brought flowers and made speeches, I'd have stayed in Aman and married a Vanyar lord. I chose to stay in Middle-earth. I think you can guess why."
"Because you're as stubborn and reckless as he is?"
"Because I fell in love with a boy who looked at the stars and saw something nobody else could see. And that boy grew up to be a man who leads three thousand people across half a continent and still can't figure out how to have a conversation about his own feelings." The smile widened. "I knew exactly what I was getting. Today surprised me not at all."
Celestia let out a long, slow breath.
"You're too good for him, you know that?"
"Possibly."
"He's an oaf."
"He's my oaf. Or he will be, once he figures that out." Ilvëa's eyes glinted. "Don't rush him. He gets there eventually."
A pause. The Tree's light pulsed gently above them, gold and silver interweaving.
"So you're really not angry?"
"I'm really not angry."
"Not even a little?"
Ilvëa tilted her head, considering. "Ask me again after the Rite. If he manages to botch the ceremony, I reserve the right to reconsider."
Celestia laughed.
"Fair enough." She stood, brushing off her leathers. "But I'm still going to tell him you were devastated. He deserves to sweat a little."
"Celestia."
"He does!"
Ilvëa smiled and said nothing.
"Fine." Celestia pointed at her. "Fine. But I'm still going to yell at him. On principle."
"I wouldn't dream of stopping you."
Celestia turned to leave, then paused.
"Ilvëa?"
"Hm?"
"Welcome home."
The Vanyar's composure cracked. Just for a moment.
"Thank you, Celestia."
Celestia nodded once and walked away. She had a Chief to terrorize.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[End of Chapter 12.2]