Work Text
There was a saying that beneath the rose always laid the thorn. That even the prettiest of flowers could pose a danger greater than any other known: the vibrant poppy called Opium that so easily enslaved the will, blushing Oleander that stirred seizures in the calmest of beings, dainty white snakeroot that passed toxins from the eaten to the eater, pale throated Datura that conjured illusions until reality met its end, lethal Belladonna bedecked in black jewels, the more lethal Aconitum painted deep blue, Daphne with its clustered pink heads bringing coma and death-The names rolled through Maedhros’ thoughts as easily as the sharp voice that had listed them. The Maia Lieutenant of Morgoth had a clinical mind and a curious one, ruthless in its pursuit of knowledge and horrific in the experiments it devised. As a favoured subject of testing, Maedhros had been pushed forever to the brink of death, but never near enough to go over. What unnatural magic had ensured this, the elf did not know, only that when he had first been brought before the Vala of Darkness he had felt the being’s eyes rest over him and, as a burnt hand had waved, a binding more constricting than the Oath around his fëa.Oh! How the Simarils had shone down upon him in that moment, bathing the eldest son of Fëanor in their brilliant white light. Such beauty had not been seen in any light before it and later Maedhros had wept for the wickedness it had revealed. For he had learned his lesson well in Angband: that which was beautiful was deadly as well.“Why should we care for Thingol’s opinion? He is not using the land.” In the present, Curufin crossed his arms. Beyond him Turgon nodded, for once in agreement with the elf most like Fëanor.“We care because it is better to have even a neutral stranger by your side than an enemy,” Maedhros said almost tiredly. His recovery had been a long one and the claws of weakness still gripped him steadfastly. Or perhaps he had just grown less patient with the foolishness of others. “Many Sindar are loyal to Thingol or allies with him and should he rescind an invitation in this, then others might as well, and we will find ourselves pushed to other more treacherous lands.”“He is right,” Fingolfin said and in saying so, unwittingly sealed the dissenting opinions against them further.His brothers’ faces were fair, but Maedhros knew what treachery laid beneath them. In Losgar it had shown itself, spurred by the madness in the air. It still showed itself in their anger towards him for relinquishing the crown. A pretty picture the eldest of them had made in kneeling for their uncle, their half-uncle as Curufin had pointed out, still diminished from his time as a captive and the harrowing events of his rescue, speaking pretty words on succession and age and reparations for wrongdoings he himself had not done (but he had not stopped the flames either in standing apart from his father, had not kept his uncle’s people from freezing in the-)Fingolfin was King now and his word was final. It was a wonder they were not also cold.Ice was pretty, Maedhros had decided once long ago in another realm and another time when staring at a frozen puddle was an adequate was for a child to spend the day. He had decided again when staring at the fixed face of Lake Mithrim in the dead of winter, escaped for once from the rooms that had housed his healing form and the elves that hounded after him to recover. How it could catch and throw the light in so many ways took his breath away. How it could reflect the stars in absolute stillness invoked a sense of calm. Yet, ice was also deadly and Fëanor’s eldest had learnt that well for the blame laid upon his then still healing feet in the place of his father’s ashen ones. There was much to be atoned for, if countless years under whip and chain was not atonement enough.So it was that he said, “I will go and speak to this Sindar King.”“Are you certain?” the others asked, and their eyes betrayed the doubt inside them.Maedhros smiled and it was a lovely thing. “I am certain.”For loveliness was not to be underestimated. Like those deadly flowers, a sweet smile could as easily beckon death. Morgoth’s smiles had been sweet when he had played his crueller games. It was as great a weapon as a sword in disarming others, hiding secrets behind the perfect countenance that deceived as easily as the shifting ground that appeared steady to the eye, as easily as the swirling fog that laid thick upon the plains, as easily as the quiet that blanketed everything in the moments right before an ambush was to be struck. Aye, it deceived as easily as the dark.So many had been caught inside the traps it spun, long webs that stretched from Angband to the borders of Doriath itself. So many had fallen for the beauty that showed itself for but a moment before the great maw of the wicked Vala closed around them with a snap. One beautiful Silmaril and a treaty. One illusion of a loved one’s face. One scattering of precious stones not yet recorded by elven script, enough to draw the curiosity of any scholar of the earth. There had been singing birds, one slave had told Maedhros, just outside the safety of Melian’s shroud – the most beautiful sound the elf had ever heard. He had gone. It was not birds that had been singing.Such tales were not as horrific as other things in Angband though. Beneath the fair light of the moon that streamed through his always opened window, Maedhros dreamed or, more accurately, remembered in his sleep the names. Those names that Morgoth had drilled into him as he was forced to watch their undoing, forced to watch as dainty ears and pretty eyes were morphed into the visage of an orc. The redhead elf had heard some argue that the orcs were evil because of their ugliness. Yet, even they had been beautiful once. Even they.(Later, when elven swords were drawn once more against each other, the eldest of Fëanor’s seven sons would reason that they had already been killing kin, so what were several more? It would not be a proud thought, but not wholly untrue either.)It was no strange idea. From beauty came many wicked and wild things. Indeed, in his first real skirmish since his rescue, Maedhros had frightened his closest brother to such an extent that it was with a pale face and quiet words the other had greeted him after. When the redhaired elf had asked Maglor what picture he had painted on the battlefield to make him react so, his brother had cryptically replied, “You did not paint an ugly one.”Maedhros had looked in the mirror that night and studied the face staring back at him, wondering how eyes so wild had come to rest there and knowing, in a subconscious sort of way, that those same eyes had always lurked hidden away. Valinor had been a place of peace and beauty, and Finwë’s House demanding of the duties it laid upon its eldest sons. There had been no place for such wildness there.But in Arda, wildness ruled.They gave suggestions to Maedhros as he prepared for his journey to Doriath to meet with Thingol. These he accepted in a peaceable manner, storing away the contradictory advice to kneel when he met the King and ensure that his strength was known in an absent corner of his mind. Instead he folded his best robes neatly inside a chest. He had his hair trimmed, though he loathed the presence of any standing behind and touching him. In the same mirror where he had seen those wild eyes, he traced the fading scars on his face and decided, against the advice of others, to keep them bare. The Sindar King might have been an isolationist, but the world, by its very nature, was not.Besides, there was beauty there still between the cracks on his face (even if he did not feel it were so all the time), and beneath that laid his fëa as alive as it had ever been.Maedhros went with a list upon his tongue and returned with blessings upon the land they now settled. How he had done it, no one, not even Fingon the Valiant, was ever brave enough to ask.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There is many a tale about beings that haunt the ever-changing line twixt land and sea. Where the waves turn into foam upon the sand and seep between the cracks of their close pressed grains, there passes – or once passed – a presence that lingers in the minds of all who ventured by and felt the presence there. O! there are aplenty of he who drifts along the shores of realms that have long since faded into the shores of other realms. Perhaps you know of some:In the isles where many a famous knot was painted upon the world, there came whispers of men coloured blue who would wreck the greatest ships, but for a game of riddles won by those they sought to sink. Aye, their rhymes would come swift and polished, their words ever after yours, lest your own were swifter still and rang out last in the air. For poets are these beings, sated by other poet souls who can finish quickly the verses they call out. Those who spy a figure floating the waves as they gazed upon that water stretch, dark hair fanned out like seaweed beyond their distant head, note how quickly it comes to dive below the water face and knows the creature returns home to its caves.Others speak of Nereids atop the foam that call as sailors sail past. Most claim their faces smooth and soft, angled atop a lean frame. Even beneath the weed that lurks in seas and the grime that it stirs up, their beauty, it is said, glows forth brighter than any man’s own beauty could achieve.“They’re woman,” say the sailors who’ve been away from their wives too long. “Sweet voiced things that reach out with one ethereal hand. The other they keep by their side, weakly gasping their clothes.”Perhaps they imagine such things. After all, any man away from home too long and the warmth that awaits him there can begin to see things in the fog.From water spirits to Dragon Kings the road of legends goes. Four Kings for four seas for four points on a compass: azure, red, black, and white – these noble beasts could shift their shape to sharp faced people like you and me, only more beautiful and ethereal than we could ever be. How such legends came about is a matter of debate. Perhaps once such great beasts did roam the world and imprinted themselves on the memories of men. Or perhaps some great illusion cast by a magic song that weaves its way into stories told by fires in our homes, illusions of mountain-sized creatures in the sky that seem to hover over a lone singer not of human stock. Is this their second face when their true forms won’t suffice? It is said they are wise and have great healing abilities, and to seek either out would be a worthy journey indeed if any were brave enough to face their supposed might.Still, not all beings that might walk the coast are so great. Then some others are gods.The Old Man of the Sea was named in Grecian song and myth. A figure half insane, but wise beyond the lives of mortal folk. Captured he would speak of the answers others sought, and to good or ill they would follow the advice his answers brought.
Yet, how hard is it to catch such a vagabond? No human can hope to match the primal power that he holds inside himself – or so it is said. The ones who’ve seen him say the waves retreat when he walks sometimes, recoil from those feet of his as though they fear to drown him. Other times it’s said he walks through storms that swallow all the beach, cleaved a path through the angry water like a knife through butter sticks. Aye, it is those who say they saw as such, the head and shoulders dark against the roaring of the ocean and the gales that shake it thus, it is they who come pale faced in through the tavern doors and will not speak until they’ve had half a dozen drinks poured down their throats.“That face,” they say, “Those old, old eyes.”And then it takes another drink to steady their nerves again.Was it a sight such as this that inspired Arthurin legends? A man softened by female grace in the words of bards and other storytellers? For it is no hard thing to cast one’s imaginative eye to see a sight so similar when that Lady from the Lake bore forth a sword like no other to a king with timely need and a heart so brave that still we tell of his grandest deeds. And if those men in taverns did tell of other things, of features not quite human – would not this too transfer well into legends of Avalon’s most famed enchantress?We humans are a curious lot, bright and stirred by creativity. We can take one idea and weave it into many different strands. Vodianoi with long green beards mixed with slim and seaweed, who befriended dear fishermen upon the shores and in their boats, safe from the jealously that leads it to sink other ships. The banshees that warn of a death upon one’s House, perhaps spawned from golden wailing not quite human in its sound.Oh, how we fear those fair voices and think them evil things. Throughout history there are abundant warnings of Fae and elven folk that trap unwary gawkers in pockets of frozen time, of nixie who lead well charmed humans to a watery grave, of Fosse-Grim with violins who play the drowning’s funeral tune, of merfolk who coax their listeners to an everlasting sleep. All more beautiful than humans and more deadly too.There are tales of sirens who sing sailors to their doom, but perhaps instead it is doom they sing of, warning sailors where not to go. Still, some deeds must come to evil ends no matter how they started. Some voices are too sweet to mortal, greedy ears and lure them, in any case, to capture the singer of those fairest notes that come above the crashing waves. Or perhaps the simple longing for better times caught up in music notes work like myths of paradise to weary souls. Oh, the corpses that line the coast are many, and many more are they who sink beyond the sun’s bright rays, for waves do close upon those who drift too close to the rocks, and be it through treachery or tragedy, the one who lurks there sees them lost.Come to open sea, dear reader, and hear that forlorn song. The one which stirs the gulls from their roosts upon the cliffs and salt sprayed rocks. It speaks of Ages and of kingdoms come and gone like ocean wind, of empires that rose and fell from ash to ash again. O! hear the song of heroes in a time when heroes were, and how those heroes succumbed to the darkness of the world, and know that he who wanders and sings this tragic melody, alone stays of his people to guide our path from wrong.(Six brothers he had and cousins aplenty, all gone now to the Halls. Alone he stays. Alone he stays.How lonely he must be.)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Forests had always been a place of comfort to Celegorm, separate in some fundamental and ineffable way from the Oath and the bloody shores of Alqualondë. Even after he had first noted how the songbirds hid from him when he passed beneath their roosts, how the foxes slunk away and the rabbits retreated much the same into their burrows as though a foul, repugnant scent siphoned itself from him and cast a shield around, the forest was a place Celegorm could go and break from the hassle of other elven life. Cities of stone were grand and splendid things, but there was something about untouched nature that soothed him. That captured the fraying parts of his fëa and wove them back into a single whole.To the trees he went when his parents argued and his brothers distracted themselves as best they could. To the trees he went when Adrehel ignored him over some more than petty slight. Upon loss and grief and bloodied hands as were all found in Beleriand, to the trees, to the trees, to the trees. He had gone when the Oath gripped him with talons that stung and bit like wild thing. He had gone when Maedhros seemed all but lost and then was rescued by their cousin’s hand. When his father turned ash in his hands, to the trees he had went and like a mother they came to soothe his hurts away with gentle whispers and gentle thoughts. The breeze would blow and move the leaves. The greens and reds and golds would dance their little dances. The light that glared upon him would be hidden by the cool shade, and around this all would hang the smell of wood and earth and mundane life continuing on as vividly as it always had.
There was a strange peace to forests, even in Beleriand. Even during war.Yet, this peace was tainted by other things. There would come a time where men would think trees just inanimate wood, but in the time when Fanor’s third son walked the trees, and indeed all plants, were seen as living, breathing creatures as wholesome as an elf. They could feel pain. They could feel longing as potent as an oath. Roots were full of nerves that went deep into the earth and drew from it the memory of all that trod upon its top and all that bled there too. Leaves were as good as eyes for knowing when the sky was blind, first by the ever-dark until came that blessed sun, and then by the fog and smoke that drifted from the fortress of the Dark Foe. Oh, these sensations spoke of twisted things and wrought a solemner air to the forests on the wrong side of the sundering sea.Celegorm would walk amongst these trees, would listen to them as a Sindar might and wept as no Sindar did. For he remembered other trees that were free of pain and grief, whose long-lived lives had been counted in bliss in the peaceful years of Valinor. Their cries of fear and sorrow he had heard upon the death of the greatest two and Yavanna had comforted them as well as she could in her own state of mourning. Yet, they had not screamed as the trees of Beleriand did. Nor had the animals known such fear and feyness as those who ran through this marred land.It was the absent touch of the other Valar more than Melkor’s own present dark one that the elf felt acutely in the wilds around him. The trees that had not felt Yavanna’s care. The creatures that had not glimpsed nor played with Oromë when his hunting bow went unstrung. There was an absence of love, of the quiet dedication each Valar had paid to those things that fell inside their realm of power in Valinor. It was like a vast hole filled with nothingness, a void that one could be so easily lost in if they but trod the wrong path.The air was full of yearning in the forests of Beleriand, a deep and woeful thing. Around it twisted shadows dark and ugly. Celegorm felt this yearning every time he wandered away from civilisation back to the place where his people, all peoples had begun. He could feel its thirst as it desperately drank from the cup his heart had to offer, though it was tainted by the Oath. In some ways, that knowledge was worse, for here was a place full of life so desperate for what others had neglected to give that it would take that giving from anyone, even an elf twisted and marred himself like the land had been by forces greater than their wills. But he gave anyway. How could he not? There was no one else to give.So, he strode through the forests and pressed his hands to the trees, his forehead to their bark and murmured things of peace. He wept his tears and let them fall to clean those things coated in the Dark Foe’s smog. The leaves he was gentle with, stroking them like he would Huan’s ears or a butterfly’s wings, telling the trees at least – if not the animals who avoided him – that they were not so alone. The trees, in turn, wept back to him and spoke of their darkest days.It was in these moments Celegorm’s anger at the Valar grew.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Carnistir felt as though he were on top of the world. His body felt as light as a feather, as the bubbles conjured by soap suds mixed with water and the dandelion heads children would blow into the wind. He was happy, elated, tingling at every nerve with a sense of fulfillment he had not felt before.“It is wonderful to have found love,” he said to the general air, spinning atop one of the many balcony’s that were in grandfather’s palace.“Who has found love?” a voice asked behind him, curious and familiar.Carnistir stopped spinning. He turned to see his grandfather’s bright face and those keen eyes so suddenly attuned to his every move.“Who else of my House has found love?” Finwë asked, “For it must be someone among those you call kin for you to react so, unless it is you who has found someone to grasp your interests?”“No!” the word came out before Carnistir could think and he silently cursed his suddenly anxious self.
He was not sure he was ready for his grandfather and the rest of his kin to know.“Then who among us has found love?”At that moment, another elf had drifted up behind Finwë, tall and with a head of copper hair. There was a curious light in Maitimo’s silver eyes and no hope that he had not overheard.“Nelyo,” Carnistir squeaked out, half unconsciously, willing his face not to turn red.A look of shock, then apprehension, then quickly hidden fury crossed his brother’s face, and he went strangely pale behind their grandfather’s back. Finwë, on the other hand, looked utterly delighted and Carnistir felt a twinge of guilt for raising his hopes. Still, he sent Maitimo a look of desperate pleading, hoping beyond hope that he would play along for now.“That is wonderful news!” the Noldor’s king sung, spinning to where his eldest grandson stood. “Now, my dear Nelyafinwë, there is no need to be so shy. Tell me about this lovely being who has caught your affections.”“I would rather not, grandfather,” Maitimo said and his face asked not that he be pressed further.Finwë deflated a bit, but his smile remained wide and bright. “Is it only newly begun?” he asked. “That is well. It is quite a thing to be in love and the first stretch of it can seem a daunting thing. If you have need of advice, I would gladly give it, your father too, should you ask. His courting of your mother was apparently no easy thing. A simple word, from me if you are too shy to-”“Please, do not tell anyone of this.”Their grandfather had the audacity to wink. “Of course not, dear child. I know well how the stirrings of love sometimes profess themselves to secrecy and coyness. It is half the fun, I suppose. Ah, I shall take my leave should you want to diverge more details to your brother. Morifinwë.” With a graceful nod to the younger elf, he strode from the room.When he was gone, Maitimo turned to look at his brother, one perfect eyebrow raised. Beneath it, Carnistir felt himself turning red.It’s not fair, he thought as his will wilted in the face of his most beautiful brother. He felt rather like a radish left before a boiling pot. Still, in fairness, he could acknowledge that perhaps this time it was deserved.Finwë had long bemoaned the single state of his eldest grandson in all matters romantically inclined.“He will be insufferable now,” Maitimo finally said, though the words were fond for their grandfather was nothing but well-meaning. “And all for something that is simply not true.”“Still no luck with love then?” the younger of the two asked, almost nonchalant.
“No, but you clearly have found an abundance.”
Carnister grimaced, yet he could not have hoped to avoid this.“I am sure our brothers and parents would be keen to learn of the latest dalliance within our family,” Maitimo said. “And grandfather would love to share his novel ideas of romance with you.”“Please,” Carnistir begged as he so rarely did. “Just for a little while can you help me keep this secret.”His eldest brother sighed, looked at him and sighed again, dropping his silver eyes to the floor. Ever would he aid his brothers should they request something from him in such a way. “I will. For now, on one condition,” he stipulated, raising one stern finger. “You will have to tell grandfather soon and tell him too that I still have no romantic interests.”Carnistir winced, but it was a more than fair trade. He did not wish to scare off the lovely nis with his over-eager family before he had a chance to court her. “I will.” Then, because it was needed, “Thank you.”“Ah, who am I to deny a brother of mine in love?” Maitimo sighed. He looked a little worn around the edges and Carnistir felt that guilt again, wondering how poorly court must have gone to have painted those faint lines of stress upon his brother’s face.“At least I did not ask you to aid in weaving an arch out of roses, thorns and all, so me and my lover might have something poetic to walk under in our garden during the Mingling of the lights,” he said as a sort of means to smooth them, another apology for making his brother’s life that much harder.It worked.
Maitimo snorted. “Not yet anyway. Though I did get a ballad out of it and that new cuff I had been wanting.”Carnistir wondered if he wore it now beneath the fine robes of court, around one arm that he would bare easily if they were back at home. There was no such pressure to appear as the Princes the Noldor envisioned them as, all pressed and proper and civilised as all city-dwelling Noldor should be. Diplomacy was a good look on his eldest brother, yet it could not sate him, not really.The younger elf opened his mouth, wondering if he should say something, if there was anything he could say to alleviate burdens Maitimo frequently found himself bearing. Their father had had another disagreement with their uncles, both this time, and whatever it had been required the smoothing of several Lords’ feathers. Whispers followed the incident as they always did, and these could not have helped. It could not have made for an easy task or day. Carnistir went to speak, but his brother got there first.“Tell me about her,” Maitimo said. His manner was soft and gentle, though it still struck a chord in Carnistir that made him want to withdraw. He was never very good at conversations.“She is a seamstress I met just weeks ago,” the fourth son of Fëanáro muttered.“And is she a Noldo or of another fair people?”“A Noldo,” Carnistir replied, “With the loveliest grey eyes I have ever seen.” The young elf blushed a bit more at that.His brother smiled, another soft and gentle thing. Sometimes it seemed that all that was needed to make Maitimo content was the contentment of his family (and yet, to think such was to overlook all the other things the copper haired elf kept hidden away.)“How did you meet?” he asked.Now Carnistir’s face turned truly red, the motley shade of scarlet that he had come to hate over the years. The answer was embarrassing, and he turned aside to avoid that silver gaze, but knew he owed it to his brother to say. Their grandfather was no rose thorn, but still an inconvenience in this. “I was appreciating how Laurelin’s light reflects off the buildings here when I tripped and fell into her. We landed on the ground in an undignified heap and it was only proper that I should help her up and inquire after her health.”Maitimo did not laugh, but it was clear this was only out of politeness. Still, he was grinning. “And what did you say, and she, that enraptured each of you with the other?”“I apologised, of course,” Carnistir replied. “And she accepted my apology. I saw she had scraps of embroidered cloth with her and a conversation was struck. I do not know when exactly our politeness turned to something else.”Yet that was a lie. He knew and the memory always made his heart grow warm.
He had been blushing furiously, that damned unruly tinting of his face giving away his embarrassment of confusing the stiches she had sown. Her work was as clever as it was fine and he could only imagine how her slender fingers wove the threaded needle through the material in such vivid patterns. Sewing was a great interest of his, rivalled only by numbers and their keeping, and to make such a mistake was humiliating.
Perhaps he had been distracted by her beauty, he came to reason, distracted by the way her grey eyes seemed to glow like two jewels inside her dainty face, a straight nose leading down to curving lips that were as lovely as the rest of her. This only made him more self-conscious. Compared to her fine features, his own were plain and bland and overshadowed by the very thing that had made a good game for other elflings to stir him up.
“You are quite red,” she had said, as though she could read his shielded thoughts. For those words had seemed another way to phrase his lack of ugliness despite the glaring blush. Then she had laughed, a faint blush of red tracing her face as well. “I like red. It is a fine colour.”
Carnistir had found himself unable to disagree.“She is good and kind and sings to the birds that fly by her window as she works. Her stiches could hold a thousand walls upon their backs, so tight and close are they pulled across the fabric,” he said, thinking of that blush of red. His own face was graced by something sweeter. “Oh, Nelyo, I think I will marry her!”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
He watches the child blink up at him with big grey eyes like those of his father and his grandfather before him. There is a curiosity to those depths, the same deep desire of knowledge Curufinwë recognised in his own eyes that sent him to the forge and the books and all manner of things that could sate such a desire. One of his fingers stroked the babe’s nose and a tiny hand reached up to touch the ring placed there. Though clumsy and weak, it seemed to probe the metal and the jewels encased within it. It reminded the fifth son of Fëanáro of his own first vague memory: a dangling chain with a series of pendants shaped like eight-pointed stars on the chest of one with whom he had always safe.His infant son babbled nonsensically.
“Yes, my little one,” Curufinwë said with a smile. “I think you and I are much the same indeed.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They have regrets like anyone. Ambarussa regret all the frogspawn they left in Maglor’s lute that one time when they were young, regretted the harsh scolding of both their parents and having to clean the lute out with their hands. They regretted eating the honeyed loaf they had baked as a surprise for Celegorm’s begetting day. Skipping Maedhros’ lessons was another shared regret when their eldest brother took the blame for them in the face of their parents’ more irritable moods. Squabbles with cousins and cold shoulders aimed at too-patient grandfathers and all those things in-between when the turmoil of their family grew beyond any sane bounds – these things they regret like the last meal one might take before their queasy stomach gives in and throws them to the metaphorical wolves.Amras regrets the elven maid he never courted before he left. Amrod regrets that he never got around to counting how many flowers grew in his mother’s garden. Someone regrets the way they left things, and someone else regrets the fact that they left those things. In another world, another storyline, one might regret the burning of ships too. Yet, they both live and their regrets seem the same (though they aren’t, not at all).They regret the arguments they had when Maedhros was imprisoned. Regretted not going anyway, even if one of them was too much a coward to do so.They regret that their older brother had to give away the crown, and they regret their coldness towards him afterwards. He had been so fragile then beneath that scarred exterior of his. He had always been fragile in a way, delicate in a manner none of the rest of them were though he hid his hurts well beneath the beauty and the facades he wore. He had been hurt much then, would be hurt more. By them, no less. Yes, they regretted that they had never apologised for their harsh words those bitter days (Maedhros had never asked for an apology).
The arguments they had afterwards while defending their realm from all manner of dark things, the times one left to go hunting for weeks on end only to return and find the other overwhelmed by the business of being a Lord at war, their failure to aid the other realms around them as they were raised to the ground as they themselves were being - these things they regret. Drawing a sword in Doriath was another regret for doing so had lost them three brothers. The years spent lost in the wilds were regrettable too as the land turned itself inside out in a vain attempt to escape the darkness that consumed it. Despair and pointlessness and an endless longing. Oh! how that endless longing ruled those bitter, lost years. (There was so much in them to regret.)And Ambarussa come to regret the ending too: one that he would die before they retrieved their father’s jewels, and the other the fact that they had pursued the jewels at all. In some roundabout way, both regretted that they died together, forever ensuring that their regrets (that they themselves) were always referred to as ‘their’ and not ‘his’.(Do they regret being twins? No answer is so simple, but it whispers anyway and perhaps that whispers is not a ‘no’.)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Her fingers brush his first, still rough from the clay she had been moulding at the riverbed they camped by, playing with if the most accurate word was to be used. Fëanáro could have watched her all day. Nerdanel was like no other elven maid he had met. Simpering and fawning and coquettish coyness brought on by a childness even he had still to shed – these the daughter of Mahtan lacked.A simple, freckled face smiled at the Noldor Prince. “What are you thinking of?”“I think of now what in particular,” Fëanáro replied. At Nerdanel’s twinkling gaze he conceded. “Just the stars. They are brighter here, so far away from the Trees.”And indeed they were. Varda’s creations sparkled like a multitude of gems above the softer glow of Telperion, silver specks on a blackened face and as lovely as well-cut crystals placed in light. Yet, Fëanáro did not speak of them.
(“I admit, I have not seen many elves with spots such as yours.”
“They are not spots,” Nerdanel had snapped, her face flushing red. “They are freckles and sunspots and not a flaw at all, no matter what you think.”
“I think they look like stars,” he had said in earnest. “The heavens imprinted on your skin.”)
“Do you believe so?” Nerdanel said.Fëanáro smiled at her, soft and adoring. “I know so.”His own fingers tangled with hers, calloused for Mahtan was a hard teacher, though fair in everything. Finwë’s eldest son would not return with the soft hands of a Noldo Prince, if he returned at all to that dreary and restricting place. As it was, there seemed to be more and more reasons to stay where the politics of Tirion could not reach.Nerdanel breathed and the one whose hand she held imagined he could feel this breath against his fingertips. “Tell me a story about the stars.”Fëanáro smiled wider, beginning to conjure the words in his-“Which one would you like to hear?” came the too-cheery voice of Mahtan from where he laid only a few paces away, “I know many.”The hands of nís and ner dashed away from each other like they had been caught doing something worse (and in private thoughts of all three of those there, this was believed to be only a matter of time). Nerdanel’s face turned red and remained gazing at Fëanáro – who was biting his own lips to keep from speaking – her back to her father.“Would you first saw the stars, please, father?” she said.“Of course,” Mahtan replied. “As well you know, the Lady Varda created the stars in two lots: the first eons before our time and the second to bless the elves with their brighter light as we woke by the bay of Cuiviénen. I remember their reflection first for life had not yet taught me to look up. Unlike others, I was not lain on my back in my waking. Instead, I had been set on my side and so when my eyes first opened it was the rippling waters that I saw in the darkness. Yet, amidst the black there were spots of light that seemed to waver there consistently, enrapturing me and drawing me to my then unsteady feet. It was like hundreds of fireflies were dancing in place upon the lake, kissing it with their fire – though I did not yet know what fireflies were. Then the greater elves who had woken first came to me, taking hold of my shoulder and telling me to cast my eyes towards the sky. So I did. It proved a sight more beautiful than any other I had seen in my as yet short time in this life.”The smith’s voice, originally laced with veiled motives, was soon lost to the wonder of memories long since passed from the world. It cast a grand air over everything that was itself filled with life and some greater desire that went beyond the simple daily things. On he went, waxing poetic about Varda’s lights in a way he did about little else and near to the poetics he waxed about his wife. To him the stars were beautiful, a flawless art in and of themselves meant for more than collecting dust in a hoarder's unappreciative house.
Fëanáro gazed at Nerdanel as his teacher spoke and could not help but agree with his assessment of the stars.(When he returns, if he returns, the first words he speaks to her are no proper things, no apology of Prince or King. Instead, they are words of stars and the brightness of which they glow and how lovely they still are. And perhaps, if he returns, her gaze softens a little at such words and both their fëar glow a little brighter despite the starless sky above, those silver lights long eaten by Ungoliant’s lot.)