The room was warm.
Aldric had built the fire up at the fifth bell at Arethil's instruction; the chamber had been cold from the long winter night, and Arethil had wanted the chamber warm before she set the bed and the small low chair and the basin in their morning positions. He had built the fire and he had set the second small lamp on the table by the bed. He had not, since, left the chamber.
It was the seventh bell of the morning.
Arethil was at the bed.
She had her sleeves pushed back to the elbows in the same way she had worn them three years ago for the long night of Cael's coming, and she had bound her hair up at the third hour; the hair was already, by Aldric's reading, coming down on the left side, in the way her hair came down when she had been at the work for some hours. She had two attendants this time — her Elven attendant from three years ago, and a Mannish woman of the keep settlement that Arethil had been training since the autumn — and the three of them had been moving around the bed in the small steady careful way that women who had been doing this work for many years moved around a bed when the work was, by all the small signs they were reading, going to be — by Arethil's quiet acknowledgment at the sixth bell, when she had set her hand on Aldric's shoulder at the long bench and said my lord, this one is being easier — easier than Cael's had been.
Tauriel was on the bed.
She had been on the bed since the third hour of the morning. She had walked, before that, in the chamber and in the small inner corridor outside, in the long slow careful walk of a woman who had been doing this work for the second time and knew the small steady careful patterns the body was going to ask of her. She had walked until Arethil, at the third hour, had said my Lady, sit now. She had sat.
Cael was at the door.
He had been at the door for perhaps half an hour.
He had been, before that, at the small inner alcove of the upper room, with Halbarad's carved wooden horse and the small wooden ring-set Tauriel had given him at the year-mark, and the keep woman who watched him at this hour of the morning had not been able to keep him from the door of the chamber after the fifth bell; he had come, in the small steady careful walk of a three-year-old boy who had been told the baby is coming today and was — by the small careful way he had been waiting at the door — taking the news with the seriousness of a man who had been promised an event.
He was wearing the small wool tunic Tauriel had had cut for him in the autumn, in the same dark grey of Aldric's own, with the small Dúnedain star embroidered at the throat. His feet were bare. He had not, in the small careful way of a boy who had been told the chamber is warm, asked for his boots.
He stood at the door.
He did not, for the half-hour, come in.
He stood with his small hand on the door-jamb, in the small confident posture he had been carrying since the year-mark, and he watched.
Arethil registered him at the seventh bell.
She did not, on registering, send him away. She had told Aldric three days ago, in the small private conversation in the corridor when she had set out the terms of his presence in the chamber today, that Cael was a part of the morning's room and would be admitted at his own pace and not at any adult's instruction. The instruction had been Arethil's. Aldric had not, in the three days, raised it with Tauriel.
He raised it with no one now.
He stood at the long bench by the wall, where he had been standing for the last quarter-hour, and he watched Cael at the door, and the boy at the door watched the bed.
After some minutes, Cael came in.
He came in the way a man came into a room he had been waiting at the door of for a half-hour. He did not run. He did not call out. He crossed the chamber on his small bare feet at the slow steady careful pace of a person who had been told the chamber is your mother's chamber today. He stopped at the side of the bed. He set his small hand on the long fold of the blanket at his mother's hip. He looked up at his mother.
She, at the seventh bell, was at the long inward breath of one of the closer waves; she had her eyes closed; she had her hand on her own belly; she was, by the small steady careful work she was doing in her body, not, in this minute, in the room.
He waited.
She came back into the room at the end of the wave.
She opened her eyes.
She looked at him.
She said, very quietly: "Hello."
"Hello."
He had not said it like that before. He had said the word, many times, in the slow steady careful work of a child learning the small kind small words his parents used to greet each other and him; he had not, until this morning, said it in the small registered voice in which the word was a small careful greeting from one person to another. He said it now in that voice. He did not, on saying it, take his small hand off the blanket at his mother's hip.
Tauriel turned her head a quarter on the pillow.
She said: "Soon, Cael."
He nodded.
He did not, on nodding, ask the question that a boy of his age might have asked at the moment. He stood at the side of the bed with his hand on the blanket.
He waited.
It came, by Arethil's later count, at the third quarter of the eighth bell.
Aldric was at the head of the bed.
He had been called to the head of the bed by Arethil at the second quarter of the eighth bell, in the same small flat voice she had called him into the chamber three years ago at the second hour after midnight. He had not, in the calling, hesitated. He had crossed the chamber. He had stopped at the head of the bed. He had set his hand against Tauriel's hand — not in the grip of a man holding a hand, but in the small open palm-to-palm rest a man set under his wife's hand when she had asked, in the moment of the long inward breath, for the small private steadying thing that was the only thing she had asked him to give her at the head of the bed this morning.
She had her eyes closed at the long inward breath.
Then she had her eyes open.
Then she had — by Arethil's small steady running command at the foot of the bed, in the form of two words and one small nod — the daughter in the world.
Aldric registered the moment by the change in Tauriel's hand under his.
He registered it, the second beat after, by the small thin first sound.
It was not a strong sound.
The keep midwives had told him, in the months before Cael, that the first sound was sometimes thin and sometimes loud and that the strength of the first sound was not, by any standard practice, the measure of anything; it was the small first signal that the lungs had — by their own count, in their own first breath — opened. The lungs had opened. The sound came. It went on. It got — by the small careful third or fourth breath — a thread stronger.
Arethil, at the foot of the bed, said: "A daughter, my lord. A daughter, my Lady."
She bent over the small bundle in the linen at the foot of the bed.
She did not, at first, name the further things she had been registering on the way down to the keep all autumn — the small set of the small ear, the small bones of the small hand under the linen, the small thing in the colour of the small eyes that an Elven healer of the Imladris house could read at the first quarter-hour and which a Mannish midwife could not yet. She did not, at the foot of the bed, name them. She wrapped the small bundle. She brought it up to Tauriel's chest.
She set it there.
She said, very quietly, to Tauriel: "She is — my Lady, she is more of your line than the boy was. The ear has the lift. The bones of the hand have the slenderness. The colour of the eye is the grey of your mother's people, by my reading at this minute, more clearly than the boy's was. She is — by the small early reading I will not write into the keep record yet — your daughter."
Tauriel did not, for a beat, answer.
She had her hand on the small bundle.
She had her face in the small set of a woman who had been doing the long work of two pregnancies and who had, at the third quarter of the eighth bell, been given the small careful private thing she had not, in seven hundred and twenty-five years, expected to be given — a child of her own line, in a country that was not her own line's country, in a chamber she had built her bed in with a man who was not of her own line at all.
She looked up at Aldric.
She said, quietly: "Look."
He looked.
He set his hand against the side of the small head.
The hair was very dark. The ear, under his fingertip, had the small upward lift Arethil had named — the lift was further than Cael's, by the small private comparison Aldric was registering against the small Sindar curve that Cael's ear had grown into over three years. The eyes — they opened, for one long beat, in the small steady opening of a thing not a quarter-hour into being a thing — were grey. They were a deeper grey than Cael's. They had, by the small flat private observation of a man who had spent eight years reading Tauriel's eyes by lamp-light, the same long-measured carry.
He registered this.
He did not, on registering, look at the panel.
He said, under his breath — to himself, not to the room — "Another. Good."
Tauriel registered it.
She inclined her head a quarter on the pillow.
She did not, then, comment on the good. She did not need to. The good was a small flat father's word, said in the small steady careful voice of a man who had been registering for nine months that his country had not just been gifted a second child but had been gifted, by the small careful particular grace of the line, a daughter of an Elven house — and who was, at the third quarter of the eighth bell, registering that the gift was good in the small full sense of the small word.
Cael, at the side of the bed, had not, in the long minute, moved.
Tauriel turned her head toward him.
She said: "Cael."
"Mama."
"This is your sister."
He looked at the small bundle.
He did not, on looking, do any of the small things a three-year-old boy might have done. He did not reach out. He did not laugh. He did not, in the small enthusiastic way Aldric had been told three-year-old boys did, by the keep women in their kitchen conversations, react to the announcement of a small sibling. He looked at the small bundle in his mother's arm. He looked at his mother's face. He looked at his father.
He looked back at the small bundle.
He said, in the small confident voice of a three-year-old who had been told a thing he had been waiting half an hour at the door of the chamber to be told:
"Sister."
"Yes."
"Mine."
"Yes."
He set his small hand against the linen at the edge of the small bundle.
He did not, on setting it, take his hand away for a long count of breaths.
Arethil, at the foot of the bed, did not interrupt.
She had said, three days ago in the corridor, that the morning's room was the morning's room. She did not, at the third quarter of the eighth bell, by any movement, alter that. She watched, from the foot of the bed, the small boy at the side of his mother's bed with his small hand on the linen of the small bundle of his sister, and she did not, by any movement, intervene.
Aldric did not, by any movement, intervene.
He stood at the head of the bed with his hand on the side of his daughter's small dark head, and his other hand on Tauriel's hand on the small bundle, and the small soft slow sound the daughter was making at the third or fourth breath of her life in the world went on, and Cael's small hand on the linen did not move.
In the corner of his vision the panel had been registering, since the first sound, the small slow steady sliding that was the system's quiet acknowledgment of a thing the system had been waiting on. He did not look at it. The panel slid. The slide closed. The flag — the same half-elven flag that had completed its first slide three years ago at the cot in the dark — registered the second name on the same line. The line did not, by the system's drafting, change. The line had been the line. The line had now two names on it.
He did not, this time, register what name was on the line.
He had not, in the long autumn, decided the name.
Tauriel said, very quietly, with her eyes still on the small bundle: "Lúthien."
He did not, for a long beat, answer.
Then he said: "Lúthien."
She inclined her head once on the pillow.
She did not, on the inclining, set out the long Sindar associations of the name; she did not, in the chamber, name the woman of Doriath whose name they had just given to their daughter; she did not, in the small flat way of a woman who had been holding the name for the count of an autumn, do anything more than say the small confirming syllables of yes, this one.
He registered the name.
He set it in.
Lúthien of Northwatch, daughter of Aldric the Dúnedain and Tauriel of the Greenwood, born at the third quarter of the eighth bell of a winter morning in the early days of T.A. 3007, with her older brother's small hand on the linen at her side and her father's hand on her small dark head and her mother's hand under her father's, and the small slow first sounds of her life in the world going on into the chamber that had, by the morning's small quiet keeping, been ready for her.
He bent.
He kissed Tauriel's forehead.
He kissed the small dark head under his hand.
He did not, then, kiss Cael; he set his free hand on the boy's small shoulder, in the small steady careful way he had been setting his hand on the boy's shoulder for a year, and the boy did not, on the touch, take his small hand off the linen.
Outside the chamber door — Aldric could hear it now, in the long careful settling of the room — Halbarad was in the corridor.
The old man had been in the corridor, by Aldric's later guess from the position of his small holly staff against the wall when he came out, for some time. He had not knocked. He had been waiting, in the small confident careful way of a man who had been the witness-elder at his lord's binding and at the first child's naming and was, on the morning of the second child's coming, in the corridor at the door, to be waited for and not to wait at any door himself.
Aldric registered him.
He did not, at the head of the bed, move.
He would, in the next quarter-hour, when Arethil had finished the small last work she would do at the foot of the bed and had moved the basin away, take the daughter to the corridor and set her — by the small private form of the country that had developed between him and the old man over fifteen years — in the old man's arms in the chair the keep women had set in the corridor that morning for the old man's waiting.
The old man would, by his own count, name her in his own voice.
The country would, by its own habits in three weeks at the naming ceremony, name her by the form.
Tauriel, at the head of the bed, had set her eyes on him.
He drew the slow breath he had been drawing since the second year of the founding, the one Halbarad had taught him, and he let it go.
The morning's small first sounds went on.
The daughter was in the world.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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