Pine-Brother
By: Eärillë

She yearned for him all her life. Was it so wrong to want to know about one's brother? What was so terrible about him that people never deigned to talk about Evanzadí, firstborn son of Evandar and Islanzadí?

Notes: This story is dedicated to RestrainedFreedom, as a belated birthday gift, fruit of two years work. It is meant as a celebration of goodwill for Christmas and New Year as well, so here I bid you all merry Christmas or Yule and a happy New Year. And to me, myself, it also serves as a memorial that family ties are to be cherished all the time since we know nothing of what the future may bring, as suddenly some families and even one or two cases of direct three generations were wiped off in the recent, quite horrible aeroplane accident in Indonesia (flight from Surabaya to Singapore) while I was trying to wrap up this ficletty story. (It freaked me out, still does actually, since I've been in Surabaya this week, and my aunt and uncle are due to leave from Surabaya to Singapore tomorrow (2nd of January) while the weather is still uncertain.) So happy birthday and many returns for you, RF, and I apologise for the attachments tagged onto the gift that were not supposed to be there, when I intended to give it to you.

1.

Every elf had a name unique to him or her own, given on his or her birth by parents, relatives, or – occasionally – close friends or some important personage. No name was the same, even when it was based on a present or deceased name; combinations or small tweaks were done often when one was to 'borrow' a pre-existing name. This name was supposed to mimic the person's basest True Name, the least likely parts of the True Name to change, hence the exclusive quality, and thus more often than not these names were not shared widely.

Arya knew of that by the age of two, at the same time that she knew that she had a father and elder brother, and they were not coming back to her, ever. Her mother was trying to distract herself from her grief that night by telling the baby girl, upon the said baby girl's persistent asking, why the reading of the family tree upon her father's funeral rite had been so long and boring. Islanzadí told her about the true-names, birth-names, self-names, after-names… but what what attracted baby Arya's attention was only one topic:

Maerzadí, Faelanin: Kiamordí, Izlarún: Islanzadí, Evandar: Evanzadí and Arya; Evúldar, Anuír: Eldanvír, Vinnás: Evandar, Islanzadí: Evanzadí and Arya. Why Arya then? Where had it come from? No other name of her ancestor – or even her elder brother – matched hers!

"Why is Arya different?"

A simple, innocent question, in the little one's opinion. But her mother took a very, very, very long time to answer, after an indeterminate expanse of teary, grief-stricken silence in which the mother clung desperately to her tiny daughter, nearly suffocating her in the process. But Arya waited patiently. She wanted to know, wanted to be introduced to her dead father and probably-dead brother even through just history, wanted some accompaniment tales and titbits to the fuzzy, half-forgotten memories she had of those two males that had briefly filled her life, wanted to be connected to them in some way even only by the history of her own name.

And at last, her patience bore fruit, although it would have seemed a measly reward were she much older than two years old.

"Your brother named you thus, when he held you for the first time two springs ago. He named you after Shur'tugal Arva, a rather close acquaintance of his, and said that you were going to be his little wild girl, just like his frumpy-but-fierce friend, or so he said. Your father and I agreed with the name; but we named you for the word 'star' in our old tongue instead."

It was the last time that Islanzadí was willing to talk about her firstborn son, sadly, And Arya heard nothing else about the missing males in her life until she was much older than two years old. But from then on, the Queen wore crimson dress, crimson cape, almost crimson everything, defying the norm of forest colours prevalent among the elves, unheeding of the displeased looks directed to her by the courtiers.

Arya heard nothing of the reason for that, too.