B2MeM: 'Girls Do Not Like Pink' by Himring

[hhimring]

B2MeM Challenge: B1 Women of the House of Finwe (Women of the Silmarillion)
Format: Teaser (extract from WIP The Bird In Her Cage)
Genre: Family
Rating: General
Warnings: fluffiness, anachronism (see note)
Characters: Aredhel, Maedhros (brief mention of Galadriel)
Pairings: none
Summary: Aredhel remembers her youth in Valinor and a significant contribution she made to Maedhros's education

He leaned over her and draped the blanket around her shoulders. She pulled it more tightly around herself.

‘Hmm’, she said appreciatively. It was woven in a distinctive style, from a particular kind of wool that she thought she had not encountered before. ‘Warm and soft! You can give me that, too.’

He did not answer immediately, and abruptly she lost the confidence she had so far shown in dealing with him.

‘If you want to’, she added uncertainly and glanced up at his face.

But all she saw was an answering gleam of amusement.

‘Of course I do.’

 

She recalled the time when she had first joined the sons of Feanor—there had not been seven of them yet—in their exploits. Maitimo, she felt at the time, had been quite unduly impressed by the fact that she was not only the youngest member of the group, but also a girl and had given in to the temptation to try and coddle her, assisting her over stiles and showering her with little gifts and favours.

Given the fact that he had chiefly been blessed with male siblings and cousins, except for herself and Artanis, she now supposed he could hardly help it, perhaps. But at the time it filled her with indignation and disgust. Fortunately it turned out that, unlike some others of her family and acquaintance, Maitimo responded to training.

‘What is wrong with it?’, he asked her, when she held the frilly pink scarf he had just given her gingerly by a corner, with the same kind of expression with which her mother might have held up a rat by its tail.

‘It’s pink,’ she said in profound gloom.

‘Pink is not good?’, he asked.

She drew herself up to her full height and looked up at him.

‘Girls do not like pink’, she pronounced with an air of absolute finality.

‘Really?’, Maitimo asked her anxiously. ‘Do you know that there are a couple of girls that have told me that they do like pink? Do you suppose they were lying to me?’

For the sake of truthfulness, she felt obliged partly to retract her statement.

‘Well, some girls do like pink’, she said grudgingly. ‘I don’t.’

He plucked the offending item from her grasp.

‘All right’, he said apologetically. ‘No more pink.’

‘Maitimo’, she called after him.

‘Yes?’

‘No frills either. And no lace.’

‘Understood’, he promised solemnly.

She figured out afterwards that he had been pulling her leg a bit, of course, especially when Nerdanel’s latest apprentice gushingly thanked her for the gift of the scarf:  Maitimo said you had noticed I like pink. So kind of you to notice that it is my favourite colour!

But there had been no more pink or frills or lace.

After a while, she had decided that she could put up with being coddled a bit, as long as gifts took the forms of perfectly balanced hunting knives. It would have been rather heartless to discourage him completely, after all.



Note: Although the Noldor in Valinor seem to represent quite a patriarchal society, as far as I know there is no indication that they subscribe to the association of girls with the colour pink. I am not aware that there is any evidence they don't, either. What we do know is that if there is one woman of the House of Finwe who would object to being expected to wear pink, it would be Aredhel.

 

Comments

[hhimring]

Thank you!
Aredhel would certainly have wanted to avoid appearing heartless, under such circumstances...