I rub my eyes, and hold the candle closer to the page. It is a book on the history of tongues and the separation of the speech of the Teleri and the Noldor. I might be interested if not for the fact that I am so very tired. I spent the morning on lessons with Atar, the afternoon running around the garden until I was sweaty and gasping, and now in the evening I sit with my eyes staring at the pages and my mind trying to take in all in.

There are times when I want to shout Enough! and throw everything down. Sometimes I feel the whole thing ridiculous: I am expected to be skilled in all matters of craft and know lore and excel in strength and stamina of body, all at the same time. The weariness is almost unbearable. Almost. But the look on Atar's face when he learned that I had failed the entrance tests of the Lambengolmor last year is enough to make me keep going for now.

I remember that day. It was high summer, just after the annual tests in the spring. The Lambengolmor, which Atar himself founded, is the most respected school of lore in Aman. I am the youngest ever to apply, though I suspect that Cáno may try yet younger. I went that year, full of hope which dwindled to panic as I found that there were so many things I did not know. The letter which announced to us my failure had been very official. Atar read it through and put it down, then sat by the window and stared out into Telperion's silvery light.

He did not speak sharply to me, as sometimes he did when I failed some exercise he set. It might have been easier if he had. Instead he looked as a man who has been disappointed in some great hope, and that I could not bear. I ran to my room and locked myself in, muffling my sobs into my pillow until Carnistir crept in and huddled his warm little body against mine, whimpering against my chest.

"Nelyo?" That is Amil. She worries, I think. Sometimes in the night, when my candle has burned down to almost nothing, I think that I can hear her voice and Atar's speaking softly. But when I listen carefully I cannot hear them, and then I wonder if I dreamed. "Nelyo, I've brought you some fruit." She smiles at me, her cool hand on my cheek. "Do not weary yourself."

"I shall sleep when the candle burns out, Amil," I promise her. I see her glance at my candle, which has a good hour's time left in it. Every night for the past few months I have read for the time it takes for two candles to burn to nothing. Amil knows that, and I notice that she has switched the candles that we are accustomed to using for thinner, shorter ones. I shall have to use three.

I sigh mentally, and try to take notes, but my hand will not obey me and the quill slips. It makes a blotch on the paper. The paper is ruined, with a dark spot of ink in the middle of it such as those Turko produces when he tries to write his name. I envy Cáno, who is now asleep in the room we share, and which I do not return to most nights for fear of disturbing him. I sit back and close my eyes, trying not to cry out in frustration and wanting to throw my inkwell across the room.

I think I must have fallen asleep, for I wake to the bright light of flames before me. The heat comes in waves, pounding at my face. My book is burning. In a panicked reflex I slap at the flames, screaming as my hands blister.

Footsteps pound in the hallway. I am seized by the waist and hauled away, and the book is snatched from before me and tossed into the fire. Atar, some part of my mind says fuzzily. I feel myself pushed back into my chair, and Atar is kneeling before me, taking my hands in his. "Nelyo?" he says, and his voice is urgent, even through the strange daze that I hear him through. My hands hurt, but it seems very distant.

I am confused. "The book--" I begin, fumbling for what I remember rightly, wondering what happened. The candle, I remind myself. The candle must have fallen.

"Damn the book," says Atar, in the intense voice he uses sometimes, when he is either angry or grieved. I do not know which it is this time. My hands are still impossibly hot from the fire, for Atar's fingers seem cold to me, when he usually radiates warmth like the fire he is named for. He pries my fingers away from my palm and runs his calloused fingertips over the blisters. I make a noise of protest, and he stands. I hear him leave the room and enter again, and there is the hollow sound of scraping glass as he opens a jar. He takes my hands again and puts salve on them, cool and soothing. He gathers me up from my chair. I stand as tall as his shoulder now, but he carries me as effortlessly as he would hold Carnistir, all the way back to my room, where Cáno is snoring lightly.

Atar puts me on my bed, and I feel the depression of my mattress as he sits on the edge. I protest-- I have not finished yet-- but he shushes me. "Nelyo," he says, and his voice is so serious that I open my eyes and crane to look at him in the darkness. "I will not have you tiring yourself senseless, nor ruining your health for this or for anything else." His fingers brush lightly against my hand. "It is not a good exchange."

"Atar," I begin, and stop. How can I tell him that I did it for him? That I wished to impress him and give him reason for pride?

"I know," he says, as if in answer to me. "I do not wish that for you." I inadvertently catch a thread of his unguarded thoughts, which I know he does not mean for me to see. I was the same once. I can see scenes in my mind, memories that are not mine: a boy sitting at a desk, poring over papers and memorising texts; reciting and showing the work of his childish hands to his father, with a strange desperation that ill-suited the occasion. Atar, Atar, look! But his father's gaze always strayed to another: to the woman who sat by the window, her golden hair shining in the light of Laurelin. And the boy would fall silent and leave, to sit alone in his room and in a broken whisper vow to try harder. Then the scene is gone from me, tucked quickly and almost guiltily out of sight.

Atar holds me against him tightly, as if fearing that I might melt into nothing, and I can hear his heartbeat. He kisses the top of my head, his breath stirring my hair, and I close my eyes, content to let my lessons lie for now.