vardasvapors:

a good memory that makes them smile

“Oh, well you will think I am bragging, but very happy it was. Do you know the relief of warmth that comes with the lighting of a fire in the woods under the stars? ‘Twas a far greater relief on the Great Journey after the Cracking – that was what we called the wars in the north that broke the land when Cuivienen was lost, before we knew what they were. The winds changed and blew bitter cold, and the hides and weaves of hair we clad ourselves in could not hold together against it, and hampered us when we walked, and trying to tie them together still left gaps that the wind cut through as freezing as ever. We warmed ourselves with the speed of the hunt, and with the cooking fires after, and with sleep wrapped in one another’s arms, and lamented that the heat of our own blood could be only so poorly trapped.

It was on one of these feasts that I found in my share a bone so hard that it seemed it would not split for the marrow no matter how hard I pounded it. But when I used my knife to try to pry it open instead, it slipped and broke of a shard of bone – long and narrow, and very sharp! That was how we made our first stone knives, from discovering which stones could chip at the edges of others. I am not sure what I was thinking at first, but I picked up the shard of bone and carved at it until it was fine and smooth, pointed at one end and notched at the other, and when I pierced the edge of my furs with it, it slipped through easily, all the way from tip to end – I saw the end vanish from one side of the fur as it emerged on the other, and all in a flash it seemed I could see the trail the movement of the bone left in the air, and how good it would be if that trail was solid, and not mere air!

But well, I wanted to show everyone at once, so I did not test it or tell of it first. I jumped up before the songs and storytelling could start and tore a handful of my hair out – it was even rarer then for the Noldor to have silver hair, and it caught the starlight most dangerously and inconveniently when I went hunting, but everyone around the fire could see it. I held up my wrap and tied my hair fast to the end of the bone, and wove it in and out – a simple and clumsy stitch, to be sure – until the edges of the fur that lay along my sides held together tight, with not a gap for the wind to bite through, and did not slip nor loosen, even when I held my arms over my head and spun and danced as fast as I might. Quite an uproar it was! Everyone was clamoring to lay hold of a bone, and plucking out each other’s hair, to try it themselves. These days we have thread, and woven cloth, and embroidering, and we say it is an art of women, and only fit for certain temperaments. But for many wheelings of the stars after that feast, every time we stopped to rest and eat, there was not a single elf who did not sit around the fire to sew. That at least, is one thing I am quite glad to remind anyone of.”