#âruphel

[anghraine]

NOT YOUR SORT OF THING but here's a thing anyway

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Åruphel had grown up in the Hyarrostar, not far from the shores of the great river Siril--there were other streams in Númenor that were called rivers, but nothing to the Siril. She hardly considered them to count. In her home they spoke Adûnaic, and they had little statues of the kings and queens in the windows. She knew Sindarin and Quenya, of course, since one of her several degrees was in Elvish languages, but none would look at her, or hear her stories of home, and think she might be an Elf-friend. 

In fact, her family and neighbours held to the old ways and always had. The names of the Avalôi were revered, and her parents and their friends mumbled discontentedly when the king stopped going to Minul-tarîk. Even in later years, few understood why she had gone to Arminalêth and less why she had settled in at the university.

The university wasn't everything she said in her letters, which were largely intended to keep them from worrying about her. She was startled at the outspoken contempt for the Nimruzîrim, as if one could not think well of the Elves or honour the gods and study the old stories with proper academic rigour. One particularly obnoxious girl had a name that sounded almost exactly like Åruphel's; to add insult to injury, the professors constantly confused them, and their work. Åruphel had to constantly filter her opinions and spend hours writing establishment rubbish to have any hope of a patron and a future career of her own. She spent hours straining to read under flickering candles. 

But she couldn't imagine anywhere she'd rather be. The university was home, somehow, in a way her father's house had never been.

One day, as she trudged home from (censored, bowdlerized) History of the Wars of Beleriand, she found a note in someone else's handwriting. Terrible handwriting, as it happened, but Åruphel quickly realized it was in forbidden Quenya.

It said:

Tar-Telemnar will not live forever, and his heir is a friend to us. Carry on and have hope! 

(Burn this note.)

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(Åruphel = princess in Adûnaic :D)