Waste Paper by Himring

Chapter 1: Maedhros

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Dear Mother, forgive me, I ought to have contacted you long ago but

Dear Mother, I apologize for the delay in

Dear Mother, I realize I owe you a

Dear Mother, you have every right to expect

Dear Mother, I know I have disapp

Dear Mother, I confess I have failed you in every way, only

Dear Mother, I should at least expl

Mother, I beg leave to report that

Dear Mother, I believe you should have the chance to hear

Mother, would you allow me to

Dear Mother, how could I

Dear Mother, I can’t even

Mother, do you think you

You cannot know what it was like, you

You see

It wasn’t

Please

What is the point? WHAT IS THE

 

Findekano quickly scanned the contents of the wastepaper basket under the desk and sighed. Then,   once again, he carefully fed the crumpled pieces of paper into the fire one by one. No need to upset the staff with this.

So far Maitimo was still insisting that he had to write that letter himself. But if he continued in this fashion, Findekano would have to take some kind of action.

Chapter 2: Nerdanel

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Nerdanel glared at the formless lump of clay, gave another vicious twist to the crumpled piece of paper in her hand, scrunched it into a ball and hurled it into the far corner where two dozens of its ilk already lay assembled.

‘Nerdanel?’ Mahtan’s quiet voice came from the doorway.

‘Yes, Father. Is it time for lunch?’

‘Nerdanel,’ her father said again, ignoring her reluctance to discuss the subject this time. He had been watching her proceedings without comment for weeks. ‘Why now? For thousands of years, you’ve sculpted the Valar, you’ve sculpted men, women, children, animals and plants. Why now, when at last there is a live flesh-and-blood son awaiting you in Tirion? Why does there need to be a statue of Feanaro now, right now, when you have felt no need to try, it seems, since he died?’

Nerdanel stared at the lump of clay on her worktable.

‘For thousands of years, Father, it did not matter. It did not matter whether I should never have married Feanaro in the first place, whether I should have seen his madness coming and done something to prevent it, whether I should have refused to bear his children. Or whether I should have fought him harder for them—for every single one! Or whether I should have stayed with him and gone to Formenos with them, whether I should have followed them to Middle-earth…

It did not matter. It was over and done with. To continue to ask these questions would have been pointless, mere self-indulgence.

But now I have a live flesh-and-blood son awaiting me in Tirion. And I need to know, I need to know how I feel about these things, I need to know what my position is. I cannot just go to Tirion and stand in front of Maitimo and let my feelings overwhelm me—whatever they happen to be!

I do not even know whether this lump of clay wants to be a statue of Feanaro. But before I have found out what it wants to be, before I have finished this piece of sculpture, I will not know and I cannot go to Tirion and face Maitimo.’

‘Very well, Nerdanel’, said Mahtan, heavily. ‘But I myself have a flesh-and-blood grandson awaiting me in Tirion, you know. I have questions, too, but I won’t get any answers to them until I go and see him face-to-face. I don’t at all wish to have to explain to Maitimo why I am here and his mother is not. But if it takes you much longer, I won’t wait for you. I will go to Tirion by myself.'

Chapter 3: Reunion

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She walks in on them unannounced, still in her long apron sprinkled with marble dust and patchy with clay, having forgotten to take it off when abruptly she downed tools and dashed out after Mahtan, only to discover that he was too far ahead for her to catch up with, however fast she ran.

They are sitting at a table in the garden, the three of them, when she arrives, Mahtan and Findekano and Maitimo in the middle with the teapot in his hand, about to pour. They look up at her startled and guilty, as if they had been caught out in a boyish prank. Immediately a whole series of boyish pranks of long ago flashes painfully before her eyes, at the same as she wonders distractedly whatever Findekano thinks he has done to feel guilty about.

‘A cup of tea, mother?’, Maitimo asks politely, with just the tiniest hitch in his voice.

‘Yes, dear’, she answers automatically and sits down heavily on the fourth chair.

Trying to order her thoughts, she watches him pour. There’s something odd about his movements, she thinks, but what is it? And then she realizes he’s left-handed now.

‘That’s it!’, she thinks with a huge rush of relief. Of course it is! How could she have failed to realize?

The sculpture that was giving her so much trouble—it was always going to be of Maitimo’s hands.

Chapter 4: Sculpting

(I thought I'd finished this sequence, but then another chapter came to me...)

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He sits for her, holding his hands still, in plain sight, so that she can sculpt them.

This is something he used to do sometimes, casually, routinely, when she needed a model, a gesture, a pose. He remembers how. It is not something he did in Beleriand. In Beleriand he was himself the artist and his art form drama; he went on enacting himself until eventually all poses fell away.

They have not spoken much yet. She thinks she is finding out things, though, just observing how he sits, how he moves, how he holds his hands. She focuses on the hands.

The hands begin to tremble. He seizes his right with his left, trying to steady both.

'Have I made you sit too long?' she asks. 'Do you need a rest? You should have said something.'

The hands go on trembling, harder. He turns his head away.

She comes and sits beside him, wants to reach out, but he is all hunched up, untouchable.

'I know,' she says helplessly. 'I know.'

He takes a deep breath that ends in a single sob.

'You don't,' he says. 'I don't even...'

He holds the back of his hand against her cheek, almost not touching.

After a while she goes back to sculpting.