Sunrise Before I Ever Saw the Sun by Himring

Sometimes Semantics

Maedhros teaches Fingon about the meaning of words, but the teacher is not always wiser than the student...

Maedhros:

He perched above me on the garden wall, swinging his feet, drumming his heels against the bricks. I ought to have told him to stop doing that, to save his boots. Just then, I could not make myself do it.

‘I am tenacious and conservative’, he told me seriously. He paused to demolish another slice of bread-and-butter and continued: ‘I am going to love you always.’

I smiled and passed the platter upwards once again. It was only the day before that we had discussed the different implications of the adjectives tenacious and stubborn.

‘They do that to you, children’, I told myself. ‘Don’t hang your heart on it. He was lonely and homesick, looking for a hero. Give it a few years, and he’ll have figured out all your flaws and weaknesses. You’ll just be another cousin to him.’

Should I have known better? He was Findekano—and, just occasionally, words turn out to mean precisely what they seem to say.