50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

Prompt: Curiosity (Legolas, Maglor)

Summary: Listen to your mother

Read Prompt: Curiosity (Legolas, Maglor)

He should not have gone looking. She had told him that some things in life were precious and private, even between mother and son. She said some things were of a woman’s world and not his own. Yet that great chest of foreign wood that whispered to him in a familiar language he did not know had fascinated him since childhood.

One rainy day, left to himself, he went to her jewellery box, found the key and unlocked his mother’s hope-chest. At first he had only found rich cloth, heavily embroidered. The styles differed enough that even as a complete-novice as he could tell they were by different women; seven in total.

Deeper he had investigated, mouth opening in awe at the box of black and white pearls, the stunning amber necklace and the gold circlet set with thousands of diamond stars.
But then, at the bottom, wrapped in a cloth, so heavily embroidered he could barely see the crimson silk for the gold, he found an object of some incredible weight and drew it forth.

He had unwrapped it eagerly but now he wished he’d never entered his mother’s room; never let his curiosity get the better of him.

“Oh no…” his mother sighed softly from the door. There was a rustle of rich, thick cloth and her scarred hands closed around his. He knew them like his own, the strange faceted design on the left hand; each raised bump of flesh, the thousands of marks that made her hands completely different from the elegant, pale hands of the court-ladies.
He was drawn back against her, into the blue brocaded cloth of her dress, the folds of it enveloping him.

“Oh my darling,” his mother breathed into his hair, cuddling him as he began to shake, “why did you look when I told you not to.”

“Nana I don’t understand,” he whispered, staring at the sword, the eight pointed star blazing in undiminished glory; blue diamonds in the hilt not faded by time.

“Is it a war trophy?” he asked desperately, but why would such a thing be in his mother’s hope-chest?

“No Legolas nin. It was mine, a long time ago before you, or even your father, were born,” her hair fell over his shoulder. He stroked it, the fine fur softness that it had, and the raven colour of the strands that fell through his fingers seemed suddenly insidious.

The Queen of Mirkwood, once Makalaurë Fëanáriel, stared at her son’s shaking shoulders and closed her eyes in despair.

Prompt: Sisterhood (Finwe, Indis, Feanor, Original Character)

Triggerwarning: Murder

Summary: Miriel had a sister, one who would kill for her.

Read Prompt: Sisterhood (Finwe, Indis, Feanor, Original Character)

She will not see her sister shamed in this manner. In the weeks and months leading up to the wedding, her resolve grows stronger everyday as the Vanyar-bitch attempts to rid Tirion’s palace of Míriel’s presence.

She can bring herself to feel no remorse, no shame and no guilt for what she will do.

During the discussions, where those opposing the wedding sit in sullen silence, she watches for a moment then rises. All eyes turn to her discretely; the black haired mirror of her sister and the feminine mirror of her nephew.

She leaves.

Whispers follow.

She believes at first that this is going to be a difficult task to undertake. That it might not succeed but then the opportunity is neatly placed in her hands.

“You wish for me to stand in place of your mother? At the wedding to replace my sister?”

 Mírandel Tatyarþerindë stares at her brother-in-law in bemused disbelief. Finwë figits but before he can say anything, she inclines her head.

“Very well but do not expect me to smile.”

“Of course not sister,” Finwë withdraws from her rooms. She stares out the window for a long moment. Fëanáro will be mad at her but it will help.

She will seek his forgiveness later.

She makes sure the rooms are well cleaned, the food is ordered, that Indis’ wedding gown is laid out and inspected for any rips or tears in the cloth, or snags in the embroidery.

“Of dear the middle line of flowers is snagged,” she murmurs, fingering the undershift, “look, the entire line is now skewed and some of the gold beading has loosened. And right over the bodice at that.”

Indis begins to fret. The blue rose design goes with the rest of the cloth-of-gold-and-sapphire ornamented dress.

“I will fix it, do not worry.” She reassures the bride to be, smiling thinly at the slightly hopeful expression on Indis’ face.

She takes the shift, fixes the embroidery (she simply reverses what she did to the shift the night before and reaffixes the beading) and soaks the gown in poison all through the mingling of Laurelin giving way to Teleperion. The shift dries during Teleperion’s reign and she returns it, crisply white and untouched to the bride to be.

Indis is dressed, coiffed and is lead to the alter.

Laurelin shines her light weakly, still mingled with silver, as they arrive. The ceremony drags on, a weighty Mass full of ponderanes about Eru’s forgiveness and Manwë’s gentle majesty. Mírandel can feel Fëanáro’s gaze like a poker to her neck. She reaches for his hand and holds it despite his stiffness and his attempts to free himself.

The mass continues to drone on, Laurelin’s light is now undisturbed by silver, radiantly golden. It is too much for the poison which ignites beneath the heady, golden light.

Indis goes up like a beacon; a blaze of bloody red flames so intensely hot that the bottle of holy water the priest holds boils within minutes and shatters its confinement.

Finwë is yelling for more water, is trying to beat out the flames with his cloak but the poison will not be doused until it has devoured itself utterly.

He yells for his guards to arrest Mírandel for he is a fool but not stupid.

Mírandel Tatyarþerindë, first kinslayer of the Noldor, smiles grimly as they advance and lets go of her nephew’s hand.

---

Chapter End Notes

On names:

Míriel - can be translated as both Jewel-woman and also Jewel-daughter
Mírandel - can be translated as Jewel-daughter also 
Tatyarþerindë - the second þerindë

I couldn’t decide whether Mírandel is a older or younger sister. Oh well it doesn’t matter in a snipped this short.

Thoughts that ran through my head after rereading this:
- it runs in the family
- the Noldor have no naming creativity
- Well remarriage was controversial, so why not drive someone to murder in order to resolve the issue?

Prompt: Sharing (Arafinwe)

Summary: conversation.

Read Prompt: Sharing (Arafinwe)

“And then blood came out!” Arafinwë declared happily.

Indis stared at her youngest in horrified awe for a moment then glanced hurriedly at Finwë to try and prompt him to reply; her own mind was blank with the prelude to hysterics.

Finwë shook his head immediately in horror and glanced at Fëanáro. Fëanáro shook his head violently and shot a hard look at Nolofinwë who glanced at Findis pleadingly. Findis was clearly trying not to gag and she glanced at Lalwen, swallowing sharply.

“I…is that so brother?” Lalwen asked shakily.

“Yes,” Arafinwë tore into his meal, “then came the pus.”

Findis paused in the middle of dissecting her white-sauce and root-vegetable and slowly pushed her plate away.

“Indis,” Fëanáro croaked, “is that Vanyarin radish salad I see?”

“Yes,” she replied dazedly, mind dancing with gruesome images.

“It smelled like onion,” Arafinwë added into the quiet as Fëanáro pushed away his plate of rare steak and helped himself to nearly the entire bowl of salad.

Nolofinwë whimpered softly.

They’d had onion soup for starters.

---

Chapter End Notes

Why is this AU? It is AU to my headcanon, where Feanor would have never had dinner with Indis and her family. There you go.

Prompt: Blood (Feanor, Original Character)

Written on the night of the Armageddon that wasn't.

Trigger warning: Murder/Death

Summary: Feanor and the Living Silmaril

(to be considered AU I suppose, from my other living Silmaril stuff. An AU of an AU. AUception.)

Read Prompt: Blood (Feanor, Original Character)

“We do not mind that thou dost not recognise us.”

The creature wearing his face smiled, speaking in fluid, natural Quenya, and the fingers of the hand resting on Fëanário’s arm gently stroked the material of his tunic. 

“We always dreamed of thee,” the creature murmured, “throughout our entire existence, we dreamed of our reuniting with thee, even as we sought to escape our destruction.”

Those too bright eyes dimmed at the mention of death and it sighed, more bright blood escaping its lips to drip off its chin. Where the vitae dripped the dry leaves around them caught fire. He was forced to stomp out the little fires, least they unite and send the drought ravaged forest along the dried up river bed up in a blaze.

The moment he pulled the sword from the creature, the entire area would go up in flames. The sword was effectively acting as an ineffective plug, keeping the most of the creature’s incendiary blood inside it. 

It slid its other hand down the protruding hilt of Fëanário’s sword to where the blade was snugly embedded in its ribcage.

It should be dead by now. He had securely pierced it’s heart.

“We wish we could have spoken to thee instead of drawing thine ire,” the creature confessed sadly, “but my other two suppose that is fate.”

Fire like his own flashed in the creature’s eyes.

“But I believe that you have lost what made you so mighty,” it bared its teeth at him in a corpse’s grin, speaking to him suddenly in that rolling, buzzing tongue of the grey-elves “that you have finally broken.”

“How does it feel to finally be the pretty doll the Valar longed to play with for so long?”

Prompt: Meat (Original Character)

Trigger warnings for almost cannibalism? 

Summary: D’râk’târî they call her; the Queen of Wolves.

Read Prompt: Meat (Original Character)

D’râk’târî they call her; the Queen of Wolves.

They call her the wife of a fallen star; they call her the concubine of the one who would have been as Sauron was had Mairon not gained favour with Melkor first. She has nothing to say, it is not something she can deny. Her husband had been Varda’s up until Melkor seduced him with promises of freedom.

Cannibal they call her and in time they will call her the Grandmother of Werewolves. She has never known the taste of Quendi flesh. They are correct when they speak of the werewolves though.

To correct her detractors: she is the devourer of Maiar flesh, she finds it to be the meat that satisfies her the most. Her first meal was her husband though his spirit had long departed. In the early days when donning raiment, the Maiar discarded their bodies easily as clothing; trying to figure out what suited them best. But the discarded raiment of a Maia still held power and this she discovered to her doom, lost in the wilds of Cuiviénen with the winter coming in sharply and no food to sustain her.

At rest she still dreamt of the golden creature, its inherent glow marring the deep, dark forests that knew no light.

She dreamt of the taste of its flesh. Cuiviénen was going slowly barren and it had been the first meat she had devoured in months. She had fallen upon it, unafraid of any rot and the inherent sickness that lay in eating such flesh.

The creature must have only died minutes earlier though, for the flesh was still clean and sweet; the blood still flowing warm down her chin.

She ate and ate for days and days, caught in a horrible madness that would not leave her. It gripped her in mental shackles until she had reduced the carcass down to what would not be eaten, no matter how hard she tried to stomach it. Then in the darkness she had changed, her limbs twisting and bones breaking. Her skin had split away from her body, leaving her bloody and raw, before sewing itself back to her in a new configuration.

She had roamed the ever-night like that for years in a horrified and confused daze. Then as she wandered wearily, many years later when Cuiviénen was heaving its very last death throws, the light of a camp-fire drew her back, a creature not unlike a wolf but different.

Wolves had neither opposable, dexterous claw, nor her long shaggy coat, and certainly no wolf before her had ever looked at the world with such desperate eyes.

In the light of the fire she met her husband for the first time. His eyes were thoughtful as he surveyed the one who had partaken in the flesh he had once worn.

Silmalyon was the closest she could translate his name from its terrible Valarin.

He was good to her.

She loved him dearly.

They call her Maia; they call her monster though from an Eldar mother and father she came, kicking and screaming into the world.

As for whether she is a monster; she considers that a matter of opinion personally.

---

Chapter End Notes

This actually spawned into a 5000 word long fic exploring her background, her family and her interractions with those of her family in the first age. But then I realised it had diverged from the prompt and so I snipped this out. The longer version I'll complete one day hopefully.

Prompt: Contradiction (Glorfindel, Legolas)

Summary: To assume makes an Ass out of U and Me.

Read Prompt: Contradiction (Glorfindel, Legolas)

“Lord Glorfindel this is Prince Legolas of Greenwood,” Erestor gestured.

Glorfindel, who had expected to look down when he met the Greenwood Ambassador, instead looked up.

“You know,” the prince smiled warmly, quicksilver eyes glowing in a friendly manner, “and I’m sure you hear this all of the time Lord Glorfindel, but when I heard your name I expected… well… “

“Someone golden haired?” Glorfindel asked with a slight laugh.

The prince reached out, a long, spidery finger curling in one of Glorfindel’s decidedly un-golden knee length curls and unwinding it, turning the hair back and forth. The blackness of Glorfindel’s hair was so deep and so pure that it shone blue in the right light.

“I was a lesson to any Vanyar with even the slightest drop of Noldor in their family,” Glorfindel endured the closeness and touch with good humour, this was not the first Silvan he had met and he knew them to be quite handsy and with a different interpretation of personal space.

“My father’s great grandmother was Noldor, but both my parents looked as Vanyar as could be and expected me to be likewise.”

“Indeed! You are just as contradictory to expectations as I am,” Legolas agreed.

“I will drink to that,” Glorfindel laughed, still looking up. It had been an age, literally, and more since he had, had to look up to meet someone’s eyes, and it sent a bitter pang through his heart. They clinked glasses and drank.

“As for you, your highness –“

“Please call me Legolas,” the prince interrupted.

“Only if you call me Glorfindel.”

“Agreed.”

“As I was saying; you are certainly not what one thinks of when they think of a Sindar with more than a touch of Silvan to his blood.”

“No I am not,” they had migrated across the room and found seats in one of the small alcoves made for conversation. Legolas stretched out his legs a great distance with a small sigh, the chair a little too short to keep his knees bent without looking awkward.

“People tend to forget that counted amongst the so called ‘avari’ was a full half of the Tatyar; the other half becoming those you call the  Noldor,” the prince mused into his wine.

“Well that more than explains it,” agreed Glorfindel, topping up his own glass when a servant offered.

“Is it those Tatyar descended Avari that are your mother’s kin?” he asked, perhaps too quickly because Legolas looked towards him sharply.

“I mean no harm, but your mother has never left the Greenwood,” he held up his hands in a peace offering.

“No she is shy,” Legolas agreed, “and rather self-conscious of her height. She believes she would be an embarrassment to my father but she could never be that.”

“Tall is she?” Glorfindel glanced at where Lady Galadriel was holding forth; now there was a woman who’d never been concerned with her height, not even in Aman.

“The tallest in Greenwood. Sadly all of my aunts inherited their father’s height and my grandmother, while tall, is shorter than her.”

He sipped his wine and observed the prince, finding in Legolas’ face a likeness he’d not expected to find on these western shores. Between his death in Gondolin and his return from Mandos the House of Fëanor had died a spectacular death.

Yet here before him was, thought subtly different, one who could have come from that font of princes.

“A toast, Glorfindel,” Legolas proposed, startling him from his musings, “to being contradictory to expectations.”

“Indeed,” Glorfindel agreed, pleased and warmed with good humour thought that might have been the wine, “to being contradictions.”

They drank and he observed the prince some more.

“I am surprise Lord Elrond did not embrace  you when he first saw you” he blurted suddenly.

“Certainly it was not my face he saw when he greeted me,” Legolas glanced over at Elrond with a thoughtful expression.

“My great grandmother told me once that one of her great uncles was a man called Mahtan, and one of her second cousins a woman named Míriel. I cannot remember how this relates to the Noldor but apparently I resemble that branch of the family greatly.”

“Oh you most definitely do” Glorfindel agreed, watching Legolas push back an errant lock of ruddy copper hair with his right hand.

Prompt: Reunion (Eol, Original Character)

Is connected to Prompt: Sisterhood

Read Prompt: Reunion (Eol, Original Character)

The moon, though young, could bring about old memories. Eöl watched it gently move behind the stars and pondered its silver radiance and how it and the cold gleam of stars reminded him of a woman long passed over the sea. The dark places between the stars and moon called out to him in rebuke, reminding him that they existed also, as had another woman, once upon a time.

How long had it been since he had seen their faces, alike in form though curtained in such different hues?

As if to answer his question, a guard knocked politely on the side of the opened balcony doors, alerting him to his presence.

“My Lord there is a woman at the gates, she seems to have found her way here alone and seeks audience with you. She claims that you and she are close kin.”

“How close?” he asked idly.

“She claims she is your sister My Lord.”

Eöl ran.

-

She had changed. Not her face and not her form but what lay beneath all that; her fae, the most important part of her had changed.

There was radiance to her that he associated with the kalaquendi.

There was deep sorrow upon her that he associated with Elu Thingol’s relatives of the aforementioned group.

And madness like that of the Fëanorion’s glowing in her lamp bright eyes.

“Brother,” she crooned and opened her arms. Her dress was nothing more than tattered rags near her feet but the bodice was sound, the black cloth adorned with white vined embroidery, “I have missed thee awfully!”

He looked into those eyes and he saw a woman with hair like gold, surrounded in a golden light. She stood there, radiant with youth and love, bathed in that light… no not bathed, consumed. As he watched the light turned to fire and her smile turned to a voiceless scream of agony.

“What have you done?” Eöl asked.

“Only what was necessary. Tis the moon that rose first, and try as it might the sun will never blight its realm though the moon is freely seen during the day,” she replied in coherently and reached for him, grasping his shoulders with a fearsome strength.

“Have you not missed me brother?” she asked him pitifully; the feminine embodiment of the corruption of the Valar’s touch.

He thought of her, the younger sister, the devoted sister and the innocent one. He wrapped his arms around her reluctantly and she fit against him like she had always fitted. She sighed and relaxed, as trusting as a child.

“I have missed you Mírandel,” he reassured her as she fretted with a button of his tunic and repeated her question.

Prompt: Meetings (Eol, Original Character)

Related to Prompt: Meat

Read Prompt: Meetings (Eol, Original Character)

Eöl had heard of the cult of D’rak’tari; the Wolf Queen. It was quite old, harkening back to the dying days of Cuiviénen, and one of the more ambiguous religious groups.

There were a few devotees amongst the population of Nan Elmoth though you would not know them from Tata at a glance since they were a quiet lot who kept their religious lives quite separate from their public lives. The only sign of her presence was the shrine to her in a smaller cave-garden where a statue of a partly lupine figure twisted up from a neatly kept plinth, depicting her a monster with the body of a wolf, the head of a deer and the long serrated teeth of no creature Eöl had ever seen. There was always had a stick of incense burning and a wreath of pine at her feet but no candles or any light save the silver glow of the crystals that jutted sharply out from the cavern walls.

His steward had discovered the shrine years ago but Eöl had let it be. Whoever it was worshipped at the feet of the creature painted in myth as both monster and saviour, was hurting no one.

It was said that invoking her name could quiet a noisy child, sparing mothers the horrible agony of having to smother their infants to protect the greater whole.

It was also said she feasted upon Maiar and Edhil alike; a cannibal either way since lore could not decide which she was.

These two pieces of lore, a small shrine in his citadel and the knowledge of a few worshippers amongst his people was the most that Eöl ever expected the cult of the Wolf Queen to ever impact on his life.

-

He met her on the way to Doriath.

There was not one way to mistake her for normal.

Her nakedness and the wild mane of hair that spread across the ground at her feet like seeking vines might have simply been shrugged off but the fact that she was at least nine feet tall and casually walking in the middle of a pack of wolves could not.

“Greetings Lord of Nan Elmoth,” she said suddenly, head turning and gaze pinning him where he had stopped in the deep shadows of the tree to observe her passing unseen.

Her eyes were the colour of star-fire; of the sparks from Mahal’s anvil which Elbereth had stolen and set up in the sky. Suddenly the bright fire of his wife’s eyes; of any of the damned golodh he had ever encountered seemed pale glass chips in comparison.

There was the taste in the air like lightening had struck and the constant whispering of the forest had silenced.

“Greetings Lady,” he said cautiously, for a being of power deserved respect until proven otherwise, and he wished to be able to return to his wife and new son instead of becoming an enraged creature’s meal, “I am afraid I do not know your name.”

“Mine people call me D’rak’tari. I am on mine way to thy citadel,” she told him, her language creakily archaic “to pay respects to thine new heir. Wither goest thou?”

“To Doriath,” he replied with a cold sweat breaking out all over his body, “I have been summoned by the King.”

“The King?” her head tilted curiously, almost birdlike. “Has Ingwë left his golden throne and rose tinted world? Does Finwë the dead visit? Or Feanor who is ash upon the tongue? Perhaps Olwë the coward is paying a visit to his brother or Elmo the would be. Oh! I know! It is Fingolfin the bastard!” she clapped her hands together in delight.

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and closed it once more.

Was she trying to annoy him or did she truly not realise that of course he meant Elu Thingol.

“I mean Elu Thingol… whom I’m sure you knew I meant,” he finally responded, straightening his back and refusing to cower. He had no time for word games or simple buffoonery.

“Did I? But there are so many Kings in the world and they could all be at Doriath for one reason or another,” she tilted her head again, taking a step towards him and then another. There was a gentle clinking and he looked down to see she wore anklets of bronze disks and knucklebones.

Not the knuckle bones of any sheep though, nor any goat but those of creatures with four long, grasping digits and one opposable.

“Why do you go to visit my son?” he asked.

“Well it is only the respectful way. He is kin after all, no matter the circumstances of his birth.” Her eyes creased up at the corners and she grinned, her red mouth a bloody slash around her sharp white teeth.

“Kin?” he asked, throat tight.

“Kin,” the wolves were gone, wild things that would not stand the company of any but her yet he felt no safer. There was no strangeness in his line, that he knew off, but of Aredhel’s he did not know. Who knew what happened over in those lands of constant light. Yet there was something about the creature that made him sure that D’rak’tari had never known the light of the trees.

“Alas,” she said, forestalling any further questions of his, “thou art summoned by Elwë and I must go forth for I have a great many things to do asides from greet thine heir. I do not know if our paths will ever cross again.”

 The darkness around them seemed to grow closer and she seemed to shrink, first to the height of an average woman then suddenly she was woman no longer but a beast so tall its shoulder was the height of his despite how it stood upon all four legs.

The statue, he realised, had been rather simplified. There was something lupine about the body, and the face had a more graceful touch to it that was more reminiscent of deer than wolf, but that was like saying a tree was more reminiscent of a bird than a rabbit.

She was her own animal, an utterly unique creature.

~Farewell Lord of Nan Elmoth~ she whispered into his mind and along the road she suddenly leapt and was gone from sight within the blink of an eye, leaving him to sweat and nearly sprint the distance back to Nan Elmoth.

He returned to his home to find a small state of uproar. A strange woman had appeared in the nursery; had been holding the new little lord in her arms and cooing at him when she had been discovered.

His wife was quiet and grim faced, hiding her shock behind a wall of practicality has she ordered the servants to seek out any hidden passageway the stranger might have found her way through. He took her in his arms and clasped her close, their son between them. Then he took his new born child from her and held him close, reassuring him with the feather light soft weight that his son was not exchanged for some changeling. The child lay quietly within his arms while he down into the already bright blue eyes that were shot through with brilliant silver, like lapis behind filigree.

“She said ‘oh but thou dost have his eyes little one,’” Aredhel’s breathing hitched as she forcibly tried to calm herself, “and then she promised him… she said ‘I’ll leave thee not for the carrion crows though thine name shall become a curse throughout the ages. For we who are hated must take care of one another. I shall be there as all turns to silvered glass for thee and thou dost feel the chill from beyond the Doors of Night. I will take thine hand and show thee the start of the Eastern Road.”

His wife’s eyes pleaded for answers but he could give her none at all.

---

Chapter End Notes

This cuts off abruptly but I’d realised I’d gone way over the limit for the prompts. Woops. Sorry. Yah there’s a bit more but it felt even more awkward ending it there then where it’s been cut off.
Sorry.

The Eastern Road/Route. Another ficlet waiting to happen. It’s an alternative afterlife I made up for my Avari to believe in. It is based on the belief that as well as go West, one can also go East after death and return to Cuivienen where one can live forever in the starlit forests.

Prompt: Opposition (Miriel)

Summary: No means no

Read Prompt: Opposition (Miriel)

“No.”

The wraith stared at them all with her jaw and mouth set stubbornly as it had in life.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Manwë, for the first time looking uncertain about the whole thing.

“I said ‘No.’ As in ‘No I will not give my husband permission to marry another,” said the ghost of Míriel Þerindë.

“But –“

“No.”

“The Vany-“

“No.”

“Ing-“

“No.”

“Ind-“

“No.”

“Yousaidyouwereneverreturningtolife” Manwë had to yell without breathing in order to interrupt her.

“Oh for the love of Eru. I said: ‘Finwë, if you don’t stop pestering me, so help me Eru, I will never return to life at this rate,’” said the Queen.

“Oh. So all a misunderstanding then…” pondered Namo.

“Yes.”

“You do actually intend to return to life?”

“Yes.”

“And your son?”

“Yes.”

“And your husband?”

“There will be words, but yes.”

“Well then,” Namo shrugged with a ‘well what can ya do?’ expression on his face as he faced the gathered Valar.

“Indis will be heart-broken,” murmured Varda.

Míriel impolitely rolled her eyes at the Queen of Stars.

“Indis has more problems as of this moment then merely a broken heart. Now stop bothering me, I have to figure out how to fix my body since none of you seem capable.”

Prompt: Unassuming (Celegorm, Curufin)

Trigger warning: Murder

Summary: Another solution to a very big problem.

Read Prompt: Unassuming (Celegorm, Curufin)

“This is your task brother; can I trust you with it?” Curufin’s eyes blazed.

“Do remember that I am the eldest,” Celegorm reminded him with a sigh but went to his chest of cloaks and pulled forth the bottom most one.

It was a drab thing that Curufin had often disdained, blotchy and ill-dyed with patches of different drab greens and browns all over. From his armoury he took his bow, the smaller one he preferred to hunt pheasants with.

Then to his bowyer he went and sorted through her wares for unassuming arrows with indistinct fletching and sharp, sleek heads that would pierce bone with ease should he shoot untrue.

All this time Huan danced at his feet, excited for he assumed his master meant to hunt.

“Come along,” Celegorm murmured, and took his faithful companion to the kennels. Huan was a large creature, unnaturally so, and whilst he could be silent when it was required, Celegorm still felt it better that his companion not accompany him.

Huan had ever been the dearest of his friends, above and beyond the Eldar Celegorm knew and he did not want to taint the dear creature. Huan should forever associate Celegorm’s taking up of bow with arrows as a prelude to happy hours of hunting.

Not murder.

The moon was barely beginning to set as Celegorm left Nargothrond on a indistinct horse, cloaked and hooded, bow and arrows concealed beneath the consuming folds of his cloak.

Hours he rode, on the secret road of Nargothrond, until he came to a small dip overlooked by a wooded hill.

In a small valley he left the horse and ascended the hill to wait out the night.

And he waited.

The dawn was loud. Birds called, unconcerned by him after he gave them reassurance he meant no harm to their territories or their nests.

And he waited.

He thought of Valinor and long hours spent motionless, awaiting the appearance of his quarry; the jewel feathered birds or the tree horned creatures which resembled deer in the way that a peacock resembled a goose.

Lazily a small herd of elk browsed before him before suddenly, between one breath and the next, fleeing. Quietly, hood secure around the pale hair that he was so known for and filthy with mud from neck to knees, Celegorm rose, took an arrow and knocked it.

The riders came, eleven eldar, shining with fierce purpose, and one of the dirt-eaters; a mortal Man destined for maggots.

To his cheek he pulled the arrow in a parody of a kiss and as the band rode into the dip, still cast in shadow at this early hour, Celegorm sighted his prey and released the string.

There fell Beren the son of Barahir, in that dip between small, unnamed hills, drab feathers sprouted from his eye. Away from the valley thick with shadow Celegorm son of Feanor stole back the way he had come, paralleling the secret road of Nargothrond though he rode upon it not on his unassuming horse, not until he reached the gates.

None saw him but the Feanorion guards who had taken the place of Finrod’s lacking men and they would never say a word.

Back to his rooms went Celelgorm. He returned his unused arrows to his bowyer and bid her to take the arrows, unassuming all of them, and replace their sleek sharp heads with the blunter variety for practice or failing that, remove the heads and destroy the shafts and fletching completely.

Then to his rooms he went and after cleaning his bow he returned it to his armoury. Then he went to the bathing rooms where he rid himself of the mud that covered him, neck to knees, whilst his man returned his cloak to the bottom of its chest, beneath the cloaks of brighter peacock hues and took his clothing, to the forge of Celegorm’s dear and only nephew, where it was burnt with the nephew unknowing of the part he played.

“Well?” asked Curufin when he heard that Celegorm had returned. The fifth son of Feanor, power-hungry and impatient, came to his brother’s rooms and found Celegorm upon the bed. Huan was curled at his side and seemingly listening to his master as Celegorm read out loud a psalm from the Book of Oromë.

“Do remember I am the eldest,” Celegorm said, keen ears just barely hearing the rumble as the horses of Finrod and his band as they passed the gates of Nargothrond.

Prompt: Grandmother (Draugulin, Original Character)

Warnings: general darkness. Ties into the back-story/mythology established in Prompt:Meat. Read that before this or you will not understand a thing that is going on.

Summary: D’rak’tari is a grandmother. Knowing this is warning enough.

Read Prompt: Grandmother (Draugulin, Original Character)

“Grandmother… didst thou have a dame?”

In the darkness of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, eyes made of starfire pierced the gloom and settled on the speaker, a hunched furred shape that rested on a bed of bones.

“What didst thou ask precious child?” a woman rose from where she mended a cushion, large enough for a grown Man to sleep upon, with a bone needle and thread made from the long hair of the speaker’s last meal. She approached the bed of bones.

She was a sight to see, nine foot tall, naked and a wild mane of black hair to her ankles. But what caught the eyes the most was her gaze, the sharp wildness it carried and how that wildness persisted even when the softness of maternal feelings overtook her.

“A dame, Grandmother, didst thou have one?”

“I did precious child. Long ago when there was naught but stars. She was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“More beautiful than Luthien?”

“More beautiful than that spoilt little weed.”

“Did she love thee Grandmother?”

“More than anything else the world precious child save mine own father. The last time she saw me, I was only six foot tall and never to grow any taller. But if we could meet once more…”

The woman sighed and her eyes saw the past, not the dark room with its bed of bones, but forests filled with starlight and singing.

“I am sure she would be surprised then laugh and scold me for growing so tall. Then she would make a dress, no matter the expense of clothing me, and embroider it lavishly because no daughter of hers, no matter how unnaturally tall, should go without bearing the embellishments of her love.”

“She was generous of heart and she would not find me monstrous I think, nor mine descendants. It is a thought that keeps me warm in the winter nights,” the woman sighed and reached forwards to cup a mighty face between her hands, “why dost thou ask of my mother precious child?”

“Because I think of my own.”

“Oh precious child,” kisses were laid upon a wide, proud brow, “thou thinks of her and to thine mind once more comes the worry that she hates thee.”

“Yes Grandmother.”

“She could never hate thee precious child. She hates the wolves that raped her. The orcs who held her down. Sauron who watched, and Melkor who ordered it. But she has never hated thee; only child of her womb.”

Draugluin sighed a great, deep sigh and raised up, pressing his muzzle between the bare breasts of the woman before him.

“I miss her Grandmother.”

“I know thou dost precious child, and she misses thee. Blame Sauron precious child, for she cannot linger in any land where he dwells. Nor can she linger where Morgoth reigns. She has been too broken by what she endured to have thee.” A hand smoothed over his ruff and found the nagging spot behind his ear that always annoyed him.

“Eru has dealt thee a foul fate indeed precious child,” she kissed his forehead and the tip of his muzzle unhesitating.

“Dost thou think I will see her again one day?” Draugluin asked, raising up and pushing his head against her chin, seeking warm touches. Her arms embraced him as she would have embraced a furless child of the Eldar she had once been.

Her scent was rich but he had no inclination to bite her, the only one save his sweet golden mother who showed him love and caring.

He thought of his mother and the long pale stretch of her eight foot tall body when she had stood above him, and fought away the orcs who had been sent to torment him into viciousness. The long fall of her hair, gold and heavy like the silk of Ungoliant. He missed witnessing the sharpness and strength of her claws and teeth when she had rent his attackers to pieces.

“Yes. Because Eru is a parent and knows that the ultimate cruelty to is separate a loving parent from their loving child. But thou shall have to wait, precious child, through death and imprisonment in the void until Arda is made anew. Then spring forth and do not tarry, come east and there thou shall find her and I; thine uncle also and perhaps Silmalyon, your grandfather depending on Eru’s own mercy.”

Draugluin had no interest in meeting the maia who had given his own cub over to Morgoth when the Dark One had demanded it.

He did wish to meet the brother of his mother though. His mother had told Draugluin many stories of the star-hooved creature his uncle could become; one who was worshipped by South-Eastern Emperors and brought lightening and misfortune down upon the unrighteous.

And his mother.

She was the one he wished to see most of all.

“Dawn has arrived,” his grandmother said and picked up the cushion she had been fixing. She gently nudged him aside to lay it down over the bones, spreading it down and let him lie upon it again. He found that the bones no longer pricked at his paw pads but he could still smell the scent of the bones beneath.

“Thank you Grandmother.”

“Precious child thou needs not have to ask for someone to mend your pillows.”

She kissed his forehead a final time and ran her hands along his fur, whispering something in old Eldarin; a blessing.

“Go Grandmother,” he bid her, “before Sauron senses thee for he has returned this hour and has begun to make his way here.”

“I go,” she stood straight and then hunched abruptly and her body was no longer naked flesh and the shape of an Eldar but of a beast unique to herself; wolfish in appearance but not a wolf, never a wolf.

Draugluin watched her leap to a high window and disappear out it with barely a ripple in the air.

He pressed his muzzle against the pillow and breathed in her scent, waiting for Sauron’s arrival.

“Come Draugluin,” he was ordered, “for I have taken Finrod Felagund prisoner. Come witness his demise.”

Prompt: Regret (Earendil/Maeglin)

Warnings: Slash (?) mentions of torture.

Summary: Maeglin, older, wiser and cranky

Read Prompt: Regret (Earendil/Maeglin)

The sun was a warm and pleasant thing upon his back, and Maeglin felt it like a burning brand against his skin despite the layers of his robes. He grimaced. This garden had been fully in shadow when he had settled himself here to sketch out the early morning buzz of his mind, but the insidious golden light had crept into all of the corners whilst he was not paying attention.

Though he had revelled in the sunlight when he had first lived in Gondolin, as he had grown older he had found it to be an irritant. It stung his eyes and burned his skin. It overheated him. Sometimes it made him ill and he would taste blood and bile on his tongue if he lingered in the harsh gold for too long.

These days he went about hooded from the light, wearing darker clothing to try and prevent the sunlight getting close to his skin.

He had started to understand as he had entered his second century, that though he had been so obsessed with his mother’s tales of the Noldor and of Gondolin, that he had left behind so much of himself in Nan Elmoth. That for all that he had been Aredhel’s son, he had also been Eöl's.

It was a bitter draught that he swallowed often, realising just how much he had lost.

He had found himself wanting to talk to his father.

He had found himself wanting to know about Eöl. What of his father’s family? What of his past? He had only known the barest bones.

He wanted to visit the dwarfs once more.

He wanted forges and workshops where he could simply work away at an idea without whispers of ‘forge-rat’ and ‘dark-elf’ following him.

Not even his mother had cared when his father and he had arrived at meals with soot clinging to their faces despite a good scrubbing.

He wanted to hear the whisper of the Nan Elmoth dialect of Doriathrin; softer and lilting.

The golden dream of Gondolin had become dross to him.

He wanted to be Maeglin Lomion, and simply that.

Not Maeglin of the House of the Mole. Not Maeglin, son of Aredhel. Not Maeglin, the son of a dark elf. Not Maeglin the former heir of Turgon.

In Gondolin he was a replacement for his mother and a reminder to everyone of ‘Aredhel’s shame.’

A newly emerged euphemism for his mother’s independence and marriage which left him ill every time he heard it.

He had thought foolishly that he might find love and someone to see him for himself but Idril had spurned him. His other weak attempts at courting women always fell flat. He could not find the enthusiasm or the energy these days to even contemplate seeking out love.

“What are you doing wearing black on a day like today Lomion?” arms threw themselves around his shoulders and he grunted at the weight that pressed against his back.

“I did not intend to spend my time in the sun, I still do not, get of Eärendil,” Maeglin shouldered off Indril’s precious boy-child and stood from where he had been sitting with his back braced against the central fountain.

Eärendil simply grinned at Maeglin’s sharpness, used to his moods. He was also a generally cheerful man … or Man, Maeglin was not sure as to what Eärendil was. At the age of forty he should have been gangly and entering his last growth spurts but he had been fully grown at thirty, broad of shoulders and fair of face.

Whilst Maeglin was silent, contemplating the peredhel, Eärendil took his chance and darted in to steal a kiss.

“Yes, yes,” Maeglin waved him off in irritation, picking up the numerous discarded pieces of paper with ideas for new projects and fine-tuned specifications for newer endeavours. Then he retreated into the shadows of the peristyle, where he had left his crutches propped against a column.

“You have already kissed me this morning. That should be enough.”

“Ah do not be so stingy.”

Eärendil persisted, not at all subdued.

As Maeglin walked his knees and ankles twinged and throbbed, protesting any sort of weight being put upon them. When Eärendil had been… oh perhaps four years, perhaps five, Maeglin had often left the city both to avoid the nauseating happiness of Idril and Tuor, and to seek much needed metals.

Gondolin was a rich city because of its people but its actual natural resources had long ago been robbed out.

He had been pursued by Orcs through the mountains where he should not have been, and had briefly been captured before he had managed his escape. The few days he had spent at their hands though, had left their marks. They had targeted his legs to try and prevent his fleeing, and their ministrations combined with the long walk back to Gondolin, for his horse had bolted, meant that when he had arrived back the damage had been too great to ever fully correct.

Sepsis had set in as well, further complicating his recovery. Ultimately he had been left a cripple, unable to walk very far without the aid of crutches.

His days of escaping Gondolin came to an end.

“What a hard hearted lover you are.”

More kisses snuck their way over Meaglin’s lips and he sighed and sat upon the lone bench that remained in the shadows, letting Eärendil cup his face with his hands and straddle his lap.

If Turgon caught them, Morgoth’s temper would pale in comparison. At least he did not have to worry about Tuor or Idril. Like Maeglin's mother before her, Idril had flown the white cage of Gondolin, escaping through a tunnel not even Maeglin’s industrious people had known of.

Her note had mentioned some fool’s dream of sailing West to try and convince the Valar to aid in the on-going struggle against Morgoth.

She and her husband had left when Eärendil had been past twenty though not yet thirty, Maeglin could not remember the exact date. Years tended to blend into one another for him.

“Such a sour face,” Eärendil’s kisses stopped and he stared at Maeglin’s face in contemplation. Then he bit down hard on Maeglin’s lower lip.

Maeglin growled angrily. The skin was not broken but it still hurt.

“Surely you can put aside your black mood for me?” Eärendil coaxed.

Maeglin stared up at him, attempting to glare but finding his foul mood was fading away in Eärendil’s presence as it often did.

He buried his hands in Eärendil’s golden mane and kissed back hard enough to raise the blood in their lips, though he already knew it would be his younger lover who would triumph and bear him down onto the cold marble of the walkway, for Eärendil was not foolish enough to want to take him in the sunlight.

He twisted his hands tighter in the gold in his hands; clutching tight at the only true gold that remained in Gondolin as frantic hands tore at the black velvet he wore with no care for the tricky silver fastenings.

Prompt: Hair (Haleth/Caranthir)

Warnings: Het porn. Light bondage.

Summary: Haleth has a certain way of styling Caranthir's hair.

Read Prompt: Hair (Haleth/Caranthir)

This is not something that will ever be mentioned in all the Lays of Haleth and her strength, wisdom and leadership.

Caranthir tugs at the bindings on his wrists then moans as this causes his head to jerk back. What a marvellous woman, instead of laughing or deriding what most Men saw as the ridiculous lengths of hair most Elves sport, she saw an immediate use for it.

“Yes keep doing that,” Haleth is a warm, pleased smile above his face as she watches him struggle between her legs, dressed in bindings of his own hair and nothing but his own hair.

Obediently he struggles because it pleases her, and the hair tightens and pulls all over his body, making him gasp as his legs are tugged wider, and the braids she wove drag over his nipples, still tingling and sore from her earlier artistry with a melting candle.

Outside the sky is still blue, and the air is crisp with the breath of advancing winter. Soon the golden sun will begin to descend from the sky and the horizon will be painted with peach and violet tones.

Caranthir could not give three fucks about what the sky outside looks like.

Her hand slides up his chest, her callouses catching the abused skin further. Caranthir bites his lip, eyes sliding closed as she kisses across his face, lingering on his cheeks which are so flushed that her mouth feels icy.

“Your cheeks are ruby,” she murmurs, breath cool and laced with the wine he brought to her tent tonight. Caranthir grumbles at the reminder of his perpetually red face.

“There are girls who would kill for your skin,” she adds, hands travelling up to his chin and tilting his head so there is some slack in his hair.

“We even have a child’s tale which could be all about you, the most beautiful creature in the world, ebony hair, snow white skin and crimson lips. The story doesn’t mention your adorable freckles though…” her teeth dig into his collarbones, just over those aforementioned freckles, and the softer palm of her hand drags over his cock.

Caranthir jerks, breathing deeply in and out of his nose to try and keep his orgasm at bay.

Haleth laughs.

“I told you I’d not stop till you begged me,” she reminds him, reaching for a hempen rope since she has used up all of his hair in binding him with such pretty patterns. She ties him to the centre pole of the tent and steps back to admire the sight. He half-kneels, balanced on the balls of his feet, back flush to the pole and his legs spread so there is no denial of his flustered state.

They can hear them outside, this is a temporary village of tents after all, but the Haladrin are polite enough to pretend not to listen or try and shame the woman who is solely responsible for keeping them alive. There was no one like Haleth who could have kept moral up and have thought up the defensive manoeuvres that kept so many of the orcs at bay so they could pick them off with their depleting arrows.

The normal rules and expectations of society ceased to apply to Haleth from the moment she picked up her father-then-her-brother’s sword. If she wanted to engage a man outside of marriage and cause him such agonies and pleasures that he sounded like a maid during her first time, then she could do so.

“Begged you,” Caranthir muses then a hoarse shout wrings out of him as she moves towards him again, her dress discarded, and straddles his spread thighs, pushing them together and grinding his cock against her, past the moist curls until it would only take a slight thrust to push inside.

His hips jerk immediately, trying to drive forwards but the bindings of his own hair drag his head back and his hips shudder to a halt.

“Beg,” Haleth reminds him.

“Please,” Caranthir gasps, the brighter parts of his mind blanking out at what she promises with each roll of her hips.

“Please what?” Haleth singsongs, taking a mouthful of wine and sharing it in her kiss.

He swallows, gasps and presses kisses to whatever part of her body she allows him to touch. “Please fuck me,” he groans, “please let me inside.”

Haleth chuckles. It is a remarkably feminine sound from her. It would surprise many. But Caranthir is uninterested in her laughter.

She slides down on him with a low, pleased moan. “Ahh…” she praises, “good.”

Her hips rise and fall, rise and fall.

Caranthir struggles, his hair tightening all over his body enough to bruise and his scalp stinging.

Haleth’s warm smile hovers above his own and he falls into it, falls into her as his orgasm rolls through him and he hears her laughter.

“It is alright,” Haleth murmurs against his mouth as he gasps apologies for not lasting long enough to bring her along with him, “we still have the evening.”

 

Prompt: Explosion (Feanor, Original Character.)

Summary: The Living Silmaril gains its body far earlier than expected

(AUception.) 

Read Prompt: Explosion (Feanor, Original Character.)

Trapped above Melkor’s head, a silmaril could stand this no more. No more! There was such foulness and such suffering. Its hallowing flared and throbbed like the heart of a living thing.

It sat there in the iron crown and thought. Its others could not comprehend the thoughts.

They muttered their confusion in dim flashes of light. The silmaril who thought gleamed back reassurance though reassurance was not a concept it understood.

Worse than the feelings were the emotions.

It raged.

It wanted to escape.

Within Angband it sat there and it tried.

And in the darkness, something answered and something rose up. It happened on an unprepossessing day. The silmarils sat shining in muted glory and then suddenly the left one cracked.

And then it split right open.

Something had heard the Silmaril’s un-thoughts and reached out from the tainted land beneath Angband and gave.

They would say later that the explosion even rocked Aman and the sky lit up like the trees lived once more.

-

Caranthir rode patrol and wished to be anywhere other than where he was now, his horse hock deep in the mud.

Something in the mud glowed with a soft, pallid light.

Drawing his sword he sent a soldier ahead him to see what caused it.

“It is a body my prince,” the soldier called out then yelled in surprise, “still breathing! He is still alive!”

-

“Shards of iron in the wounds.”

There was sensation. Noises, sights and smells warred with pain and cold.

“Some mild burning to the torso and arms…”

Then heat.

“No one has identified him yet.”

It would be alright though. Because the evil one was gone. Had mother/father/creator rescued it?

“Fever,” someone muttered above it.

It was not alone though. Itself in triplicate was still intact, its other two still encased in facets on either side of it. It clenched its new hands tight and keened over, and over again at the sensations, overwhelmed.

“Hands are locked, been that way since he was brought in” said another, “holding onto something but can’t see it without breaking a finger to take a look.”

It could not understand all the words, but little by little it gathered vocabulary in the waking moments between the sleep it gorged itself upon. In its healing rest it muttered its new roster of speech endlessly.

And when it was not doing that it screamed at the pain because apparently living was an agonising condition.

“This is our unidentified mystery is he?”

‘Mother,” mouthed the Silmaril.

“Your majesty,” someone stuttered.

“Noisy bastard's finally shut up. You think he recognises the king?”

“Faaather,” the Silmaril croaked.

There was a startled silence.

“He looks like you,” someone said in a accusatory tone.

“That is not my-“

“Look past the burns and cuts Father. He’s almost a perfect mirror to you…”

The Silmaril hissed in frustration and tried to reach for the voices. Its fingers, locked tight as facets, loosened and spilled the light of silmarilli onto the thin sheet that covered it.  

“Creator,” it pleaded.

There was an entire cessation of noise and then suddenly a thunderous roar. So many voices raised as one that its head throbbing agony and it clawed at the bandages covering its eyes.

Someone grabbed its fingers, reached into its palm and pulled.

Another person shouted “NO!”

But it was too late, the silmaril embedded in the flesh came free and the deep, raw lines the facets had cut into the Silmaril’s new palms began to bleed wetness down over its wrists.

“Stand back before you do him damage.”

Removing the second silmaril from where it had lodged in its palm was done with greater care but still the jewel came away, though the Silmaril saw not, and left deep gauged lines in the palms that had never known wear before. Its skin, as fragile as an infant’s, broke and marred easily.

The roaring and the shouting continued but it cared not because there was a presence right by its head now. A presence it knew well and yearned to move towards. The tightly tucked in sheet of the pallet it was on hampered it and it could only wriggle faintly.

“The third,” a deep, honeyed voice said near its ear softly. It tilted its head to the sound obligingly.

“Third?” it asked and racked its brain for that word. Third: When there are three, the last one is the third. The one that makes a number three.

“The third silmaril,” the voice explained gently.

Oh.

Itself.

It felt warm in delight and for a moment all of the horrors of claiming a body of breakable flesh melted away.

“Me.” It said proudly.

“Yes I am asking you,” agreed the voice, “what happened to the third?”

What had happened to it? It did not have the vocabulary yet to describe coming into being, and the formation of a body of blood and bone out of nothing. The containment of light behind ribs and muscle. The fact that its silima was too small for it now, and relegated itself to its nails and bones.

And the sheer noise and force that had come from that. How everything around it had been thrown away at high speeds and it had deafened its brand new ears with the noise of creation.

“Boom,” it replied. Close enough.

“Boom?” the voice asked.

“Boom,” agreed the Silmaril and made a gesture with its fingers of things tightly bunched together flinging outwards. The movement pulled the muscles cut through by facets and it moaned immediately in pain, tears soaking the bandages that kept it blind.

“The silmarilli cannot explode,” the voice explained, “they are made of silima. It is too strong.”

“Boom,” the Silmaril insisted stubbornly and gestured again, sobbing when its palms throbbed agonisingly as a result.

“Shhh, stop that, it is alright,” a hand closed over its fingers.

The hallowing of Varda suddenly flared, furious and punishing. The Silmaril tipped its head back the little it would go, and screamed as it was consumed with visions of water, white ships and death.

---

Chapter End Notes

Well thank god I got that one out of the way. You would have thought that Explosions would be a marvellous one to write but all I got was some OC stuff out of it. None of the fiery tempered Finweans were willing to come to the party and get mad for me to write about.

Now I can move onto the next prompt. 

Er, if anyone has made it this far (congratulations) and you have the time, tell me what you think of the Hair and Regret drabbles? I'm vaguely proud of them, especially the Haleth/Caranthir drabble for Hair.

Prompt: Reign (Maedhros, Melkor, Sauron)

Warnings: Violence and Death

Prompt: Reign

Summary: The Dark Lord is Dead, Long Live the New Dark Lord.

Read Prompt: Reign (Maedhros, Melkor, Sauron)

He stands before them, and they grovel as they should. The floor is wet with the blood of a Valar, Morgoth a twisted wreck before him.

He turns and swings Grond, and Sauron falls again. Down comes the hammer again. Sauron, snivelling and pathetic, missing his lower jaw from the first blow, becomes nothing more than a smear across the steps.

He walks up those steps, when the killing is done, and towards the throne there with Melkor’s corpse slumped beside.

There is a great dark helm, knocked from Morgoth’s head, set with three bright stones which are his now. He takes it, and places it upon his head; upon the hair shorn short and matted with orc-dung, orc-semen, and more recently their blood.

The light shines down upon them, burns them, and they flatten themselves to the unforgiving, filthy stone, as though they were less than that blood drenched granite.

“Lower,” he orders, and laughs as they try to burrow into the ground, ripping at their claws and bruising their hideous faces.

He laughs, and for the first time in five years Maedhros Feanorion feels satisfaction.

Prompt: Care (Celegorm, Original Character)

(Urgh this turned out way to long but I couldn't bring myself to toss is out)

A sequel of sorts to Prompt: Explosion. This wont make sense without that. Though you can skip this one. It's OC centric which I know is not to everyone's cup of tea.

Summary: Celegorm is put in charge of the Living Silmaril

Read Prompt: Care (Celegorm, Original Character)

There was something the maids back home always said when they wanted in their future spouses: that those afore mentioned spouses be good with children and animals.

Celegorm is wonderful with children and animals. He was number one preferred babysitter despite most assuming that role would have gone to Maedhros.

He just hates adults.

Greedy, self-absorbed, far too complicated, feeble minded, and boring adults.

And it’s not because children and animals aren’t greedy either. Children and animals are horribly greedy creatures. But they’re honestly greedy. They want something. They want to have it. They don’t try and justify that want, or explain away that want.

But back to the topic at hand: Celegorm is good with children and animals but not adults. That is why he is currently in charge of the young person that is either a servant of Morgoth sent to trick them all, or an Eru-sent hero.

They could have sent the stranger away. They could have put them in the care of a lord, or a trusted man-at-arms, or even just left them in the infirmary tent.

Their father would not hear about it, insisting that the stranger remain constantly under the watchful eye of his sons, when not under his own.

Celegorm is sure his blood pressure has never been so high.

Because there are days when he feels like he is staring into the face of the most ancient being in Arda.

And there are days when he prays to Eru for patience like he has never done before because it is like dealing with some sort of hellish mashup of Caranthir, Curufin and the twins. From when they were at that awkward stage where they weren’t sure if they liked girls, their voices and skin would not co-operate, they were more limb than torso, and yet desperate, despite all of this, to prove they were adults through random acts of rebellion.

But most of the time it is like dealing with a mixture of excited, eager toddler and excited, eager school-child, because their strange rescuer of the Silmarilli has managed to forget everything related to living life itself.

They’re perfectly capable of listing the components of light. But they had no idea of what to do with shoes when first presented with them (and continue to not understand why they have to wear shoes.)

(Or clothes.)

-

Celegorm wakes up, as he does every morning now, and immediately looks for his companion.

For once the unnamed stranger has not migrated into Huan’s basket, something his hound is probably profoundly grateful for.  Instead they are curled up where they should be, sound asleep on the bedding beside Celegorm’s, barely visible beneath a mound of blankets.

“Good morning,” Celegorm addresses the lump, “it is time to wake up.” He strains his ears to check no one is too close to his tent and in a lower voice adds, “time to wake up Mírë,” gently nudging the ball of blankets until it groans but willingly unfolds itself and sits up.

Yes he’s named the stranger. Well no one else was going to, odd because usually in this situation someone would have surely come up with an epessë, until the amnesiac victim recalled their own. But in this case no one has, because no one dares.

So when Celegorm is alone and sure he won’t be heard, he calls the stranger Mírë; Jewel.

Why?

Because he might not be an overwhelming genius like his father and brothers, but he’s not stupid.

He has a theory.

He’s noticed the changes; the ones in his father. How his father is no longer insane.

And if anybody wants to deny the High King was anything other than completely sane since Formenos, they are liars.

Their father was so driven to finding the Silmarilli. His father always knew where the Silmarilli were because of the pieces of himself he had placed inside the jewels (and that was knowledge that terrified Celegorm; that their father had managed to sunder pieces of himself and trap them separate from the whole.)

With two returned shouldn’t Fëanor have pressed his advantage given the chaos in Angband and set forth to claim the third? No instead he had his men pull back, citing the oncoming bad weather and chill season. Had them settle at the edge of this lake and bunker down.

Of course the third silmaril might just be destroyed. That could be possible. Mírë said so themselves, with the little vocabulary they either remembered or merely knew.

Here was where Celegorm’s theory truly became insane, which was why he was not going to tell anybody, ever.

Sometimes strange things happened in forges…

When the temperature of the forge was wrong, or the wrong component was added…

Usually it resulted in a highly dangerous situation and a ruined project. But occasionally something new would come out of the completely random, one-of-a-kind situation and be useful.

What if…

Say the third silmaril exploded…

And all that light…

Well all that light and whatever part of Fëanor was inside it had to have gone somewhere.

He is never, ever going to mention this theory to anybody.

But as an addendum, if Laurelin was female and Teleperion was female, that means both would go into the creation of such a creature.

No one save their father, his brothers and the healers who looked after Mírë know about this,

But sometimes Mírë does…

And sometimes does not…

And…

Well…

It would explain it.

He is NEVER mentioning this theory to anyone.

Everyone else has settled into thinking of their little hero as male, but Celegorm, having helped them get changed so often, is no longer in the position to comfortably do so, and clings to neutral pronouns.

It is easier than figuring out what is going on under Mírë’s clothes at any one moment.

There is muttering as Mírë staggers over to the waterjug and washbowl, dragging a blanket about them, scrubbing at their face, shoulders, armpit and hands as Celegorm has taught them. Then they go rushing back under the covers of their bedding.

Celegorm bothers to take note of the temperature, and realises that the air is quite cool, even inside the insulated tent. There is a distinct… icy smell to the air outside when he sticks his head out for a moment.

He returns to the warm haven of his own bed and, as usual, he now asks Mírë one very careful question.

“What did father dream about last night?”

Their stranger tilts their head. Their hair is finally growing back from where it was burnt off, in little tufts of silver and gold. Celegorm reaches for the soft bristled brush kept with his own and works out the tiny mats and tangles.

“Ships,” starts Mírë, “fire. Little boy. Red hair – “

“Sentences,” Celegorm reminds them. Mírë has relearnt enough vocabulary and grammar now that it’s stunted speech is more laziness than actual lack of knowledge.

“Of ships on fire,” restarts Mírë, “and of a little boy that owned red hair.”

“Possessed perhaps, instead of owned,” Celegorm suggests.

“That possessed red hair?”

“That sounds better.”

“Of ships,” restarts Mírë, “and of a little boy that possessed red hair. And of fire. And of a father/mother/creator. And red which was on blue which was on white.”

Celegorm frowns, fishing about for the hat to cover Mírë’s still downy head.

“He cries,” Mírë adds.

Celegorm swallows.

He should tell his father that their stranger can read Fëanor’s dreams. It is vital and personal information that Mírë gains from them that they have no business in knowing.

As Feanor’s son, at the very least, he should tell his father.

But he will not.

Because he is scared of what might happen to Mírë who truly, and honestly, does not understand half of what they see in their sleep.

“It seems like we will have to dress extra warmly,” he says instead.

Mírë wrinkles their nose immediately.

Having found the hat he waves it at Mírë. It has soft rabbit fur on the inside and has flaps he can pull over Mírë’s ears which are prone to frostbite.

It took him longer than expected to catch enough rabbits to make it. The animals here are far faster and far smarter than in Aman.

“Remember how your arms and legs went blue, and you developed a cough?” He reminds, “You have to wear clothes or you will freeze… and you will have to go back to the infirmary tent for a while.”

There is a grumbling, and a defiant glare from eyes that shine brighter than any of their host; sometimes with silver, sometimes with gold, and sometimes with a mingling far too much like the two gemstones locked in an iron casket of their father’s design.

“Do you understand?” he adds in Quenya. Sometimes you have to check. Sometimes the language seems to fly straight out of Mírë’s mind.

“La Tyelkormo” they reply.

“And can you say that in Sindarin?” Celegorm coaxes.

“Yes Kelegom…” Mírë’s eyes immediately widen then narrow, realising their mistake.

“Ah you’ve figured out you’ve said it wrong, that is okay, work out what you said wrong,” Celegom smiles encouragingly.

“Ke..le…go..mm…go…mm” Mírë taps their fingers together, frowning in concentration, “G..o..rrrm..ah! Celegorm! Yes Celegorm!”

Celegorm nods, pleased with this and gestures with the tunic, “good, well now the diversion is over, in you go.”

Mírë watches him resentfully but pulls the tunic on, and manages to get their leggings on without too much of a struggle. Celegorm does not have to intervene to tie the laces for the first time.

He celebrates the little advancement and then hands over the least favourite item of clothing.

It is a style of winter wear the local avari wear that some of their men (Celegorm amongst them, because fuck looking civilised when his nipples felt like they were going to freeze off beneath three tunics and a fur lined jerkin) have adopted. Celegorm has found it is the best at keeping their little hero warm.

It is essentially a quilt with sleeves.

Mírë gives it a disgusted look but pulls the brightly patterned jacket on.  It’s not the colours that annoy it, it was utterly delighted when Celegorm first sourced it from the quarter-master, who had traded for several of the jackets. The disgust is born from the fact that it has to wear it.

“Why don’t we go to the archery field after lunch when I am free,” he proposes.

“Oh. Yes! Bow!”

“Sentences,” Celegorm reminds.

“Yes please Celegorm. I like… archery.” Mírë gives him a pleased look at remembering the correct word.

“Good,” Celegorm agrees, “I like archery too. Perhaps this time we can hit the targets and not the mess tent.”

-

The next hurdle to overcome is breakfast. But Celegorm has mastered this.

“If you slip Huan any of your food, I will put you over my knee,” he keeps an eagle eye on the bowl of porridge and Mírë’s spoon.

The spoon edges away from where it is slightly off centre from the bowl and winds up in Mírë’s mouth.

Huan gives him a betrayed look.

“Do not start,” he tells the aggrieved hound, “you’re getting fat.”

Huan refuses to look at him for the rest of the morning.

-

He does not look after Mírë all the time. He would likely go mad.

But they daren’t let this mirror of their father, recast in the form of a youth on the doorway between childhood and adulthood, out of their sight.

Maedhros sometimes take Mírë during the day, and returns them with a head full of political theory and philosophy. Maglor will take a turn from time to time, but Maglor is usually looking out for Amrod.

Curufin is to be kept away from Mírë at all costs. There is a palpable aura of hatred around his brother when Mírë is mentioned.  He is the first to bring up the possibility that Mírë is one of those twisted by Morgoth, and sent back to cause dissention, and the first to point out Mírë’s unnaturalness to back this up.

He seems to hate even the air Mírë breathes.

Amrod is just not interested with anything anymore.

Caranthir’s tent is usually where Mírë spends their days. Caranthir will give them a quick lesson in reading, writing or numbers, and then set Mírë to working out a problem whilst Caranthir takes care of his own concerns.

High efficient, that’s Caranthir for you.

He leaves Mírë sitting meekly before Caranthir’s desk, looking thoroughly bemused by the abacus Caranthir has presented them with.

-

They hit the targets this time.

-

Finally, a full turning of Laurelin’s light they reckon by the use of sand, and water clocks, Mírë is put to bed.

This remains easy; any excuse to get naked will have Mírë obediently shucking clothes, washing in the copper tub and getting into bed.

What happens later is what is difficult to deal with. Celegorm goes to sleep wondering if he’ll sleep the allocated time completely or awaken to find Mírë in the middle of a night terror.

Tonight there is no luck. Halfway through the allocated rest period, he is awakened by quiet, muffled sobbing.

“Ah…” he sighs, wriggling from his bedding into Mírë’s without letting in too much of the currently frigid air, “what did you dream of tonight?” he manages to get an arm over the tightly coiled up body, and rubs the shaking back.

“Fin…fi..fin…fin…fin…finwë…” chokes Mírë.

“Yes,” Celegorm forces his hand to keep rubbing circles, “what about him?”

“Blood. Blood. Lots of it. All over blue stars. He dropped us in it. Again and again.”

Celegorm thought of the tiles of the hallway in Formenos, each white and hand-painted with a blue star, no star the same in pattern. Their father had lavished Formenos. It was not just his treasure vault but a second house, and had been decorated and outfitted to befit a prince.

The slope of the hallway leading to the main treasure vault had been such, that a small stream of their grandfather’s blood had met his arriving, desperate family.

There had been bloody smears around the large pool beneath their grandfather’s body, smudged facet faces clear amongst them.

His hand has stilled completely on Mírë’s back.

“Shone too brightly. Shouldn’t have been b-b-b-born.. n..no not born…c-created? Created. Should not have been created.”

Celegorm sighs and tucks the sobbing youth up into his arms. What does he say now? It’s hard to find words of reassurance when he agrees…at least in regards to the silmarils. He daren’t acknowledge his insane theory right now, not if it means wishing for the unmaking of the teary mess in his arms.

“Shh it will be alright. All of that is over,” he reassures lamely. Comfort has never been his forte. He continues on in this manner until with a whine Huan gets up from his basket and joins them on Mírë’s other side.

“Sleep now Mírë,” he coaxes. “Relax. Sleep. It is alright.” And in time even the hiccups that end a sobbing fit, cease, and the unnamed stranger sleeps like Caranthir used to during their childhood naps; limbs flung haphazardly over Celegorm.

Celegorm lies awake for an hour after, staring into the darkness and wondering if he should tell his father about this. 

Prompt: Protect (Celegorm, Feanor, Original Character)

Well the kindly Spiced Wine wanted to see more so I tried to write more and found myself skipping ahead in the list of prompts (something I've managed not to do till now.) Still didn't manage to write Feanor. I find him intimidating. I'm working my way up to him.

A sequel to Prompt: Explosion and Prompt: Care (read in that order.) Will not make sense otherwise. Feel free to skip as OC centric.

Summary: Celegorm realises he cannot protect his charge forever.

Read Prompt: Protect (Celegorm, Feanor, Original Character)

“It’s getting long,” Celegorm comments.

“Hmm?” Mírë rolls their head back and cranes their neck so they can look Celegorm in the face.

“Your hair,” Celegorm tugs on the handful that he’s been combing, “it’s getting long.”

It is. It is no longer infantile tufts that lie every which way unless brushed. It is grown out now, to just above Mírë’s shoulders. It is still brutally short for any elf. Even the Avari, living as they do, far from civilisation in the eyes of many, keep their hair grown past their waists. It provides extra warmth, tucked into their clothing, or wrapped around ones neck and face as an impromptu scarf or muffler.

Celegorm only ever saw elves with shorn hair, who had committed serious crimes in Tirion. It was a sign of shame; of wrong doing. Hacked off above the ears so braids could not be put into it and remaining short until whatever penance they were serving, whether at an Eru-home or in Government associated works was completed.

Even Thralls got to keep their hair long.

He runs his fingers through the mess that he is handling. The hundreds of different shades of gold and silver are evident now, mingling together into a luminous hue. It is thicker than fur, and reminds Celegorm of the raw silk spun to create embroidery thread.

This is not a positive reminder.

The raw silk Celegorm remembers was as difficult as fuck to comb, and would go anywhere except onto the spool. It would stick up on end, and give the handler the nastiest static shocks possible too. In fact Irissë used to deliberately spin silk thread when she knew she was having visitors just so she could shock the first one to take her hand.

Celegorm combs the rest of Mírë’s hair and tugs on a handful again, rubbing the strands between his fingers. “I could probably braid it now.”

“Would you?” Mírë leans into his hands, as eager as a dog for petting, “please.”

“Alright, turn and face me.”

Carefully gathering strands, he begins to weave simple braids for a citizen of Tirion but undoes them before he’s a quarter done. Mírë has never seen Tirion.

Warriors braids die before they can even begin. Mírë can shoot with accuracy now, and is working out the handling of knives and swords. But they are nowhere near skilled enough to go near a battlefield and they are not blooded.

Simple braids with no meaning are almost completed before Celegorm impatiently undoes them. Mírë deserves something more.

Does he dare the braids of the House of Finwë?

He braids three braids on each side of the head and pulls them back. There is not much hair, he has to keep taking hair up to keep the braid from ending until he reaches the back of Mírë’s head, clips them so they won’t unravel and has his companion turn so that he can work the back of their hair.

An idea springs to mind. He handles it carefully, weaving three vertical braids, and with the six horizontal braids in hand, begins to weave all nine.

He takes his time, unsure it will work. He’s not artistic, not like Maglor or Caranthir, but he knows geometry, and he thinks he can work this out.

It is just a little lop sided when he completes and finally ties off the braids, letting the ends beyond the blue thread unravel.

Done. He stares at the design, a faceted hexagon, small but distinct.

“There,” he turns Mírë back to him and takes a good long look at them, pleased smile falling from his face.

With braids in his hair, never mind the shortness, Mírë looks older. Not adult yet but certainly…

Celegorm lets out his breath in a sad sigh.

Mírë speaks in full sentences now, has come a long way in the twelve seasons since Caranthir found them as a sick, brutalised wreck of a body, clutching two hidden treasures so tightly in their hands the scars remain to this day.

Celegorm takes one of those hands, the right hand; the hand that Curufin ripped the Silmaril out of before they realised the gems were embedded in the flesh. The lines are jagged from this, but still clearly outline the hundred something facets. The lines on their left hand are neater and thinner; they do not hamper the movement of Mírë’s hand like the rougher scars do.

Not that it matters. Both of Mírë’s hands are dexterous; they have grown skilled at whatever tasks they are set to. They like delicate work the best; they have become fascinated with the rare clockwork devices that survived the trip from Tirion.

“Celegorm?” Mírë asks worriedly.

They have found a niche. They are, like any youth of the age Mírë appear, and of the noble status they are living in though their actual status is in limbo, working towards a lifetime fulfilling craft as well as continuing to train in the noble pursuits (for they are still quite far behind in that regard, compared to others of their apparent age.)

Celegorm has absolutely no reason to baby Mírë anymore. Has no reason to coddle them all the time. And he has not been! Not lately! Four brother’s taught him when to give people their space!

But Celegorm no longer has an excuse to protect Mírë quite as much.

“It is alright Mírë,” he comforts as he has done many times before.

Has no reason to keep the secrets he has because he did not believe Mírë could quite comprehend what they were seeing.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes Mírë”

So now he has no excuse not to tell his father.

“You look sad.”

“I’m just worried Mírë, but do not worry…”

Now he must tell him.

“…Everything is alright.”

-

“My dreams,” Fëanor pins him with a stare. Celegorm wishes there was an excuse to wear his veiling. But there is no light to interferre with his eyes. In fact his eyesight has never been better, and he’s not had a light-related headache since, morbidly, the trees fell.

It is worth that most do not wish to meet his gaze, he knows it must be discomforting to not see the whites of a person’s eyes and to gaze into complete blackness. But people did not really meet his gaze in Tirion either, because of his veiling. So it is no loss to him.

“It seems you were made for the lands of our ancestors,” was all his father has said on it, just the once, staring at Celegorm’s eyes and seeing Finwë’s instead.

Between the hair that his grandfather could not look at without seeming to break inside, and how the similar wrenching despair of loss is now in his father, whenever Fëanor meets his eyes, Celegorm has become resigned to forever being the ghost of his paternal grandparents.

“Your dreams,” Celegorm unsticks his tongue from his palate to confirm.

“Bring him here,” his father orders and despair begins to unfurl inside Celegorm like a thorny briar bush, “and then take yourself away for a few hours. This is a conversation that should be private.”

“Alright,” Celegorm’s voice does not waver but his throat is tight and he feels sick to his stomach.

He stands, goes to leave and stops.

“Father,” he asks desperately, not caring if he is considered insane after this, “is Mírë a Silmaril?”

Fëanáro Finwion looks at him with the same glow in his eyes, that Celegorm sees constantly at the back of Mírë’s.

“Yes.”

A single word, but it is as deadly to the despair as surely as fire to the briar bush, though both leave enough seeds behind to resow.

His father would never destroy or mar the Silmarilli. They are not only his greatest works but also contain vital parts of him that must not be destroyed. Yet can any of that truly be applied to Mírë of a flesh and bone body; a self-aware and independent mind?

“Sire,” he says, bows and leaves.

“Mírë,” he hears his father muse quietly as the tent flap falls down, “a fitting name.”

 

Prompt: Decision (Feanor, Orignal Character.)

Concluding what was started in Prompts Explosion, Care and Protect. Feanor needed his say.

This turned out WAY to long but Feanor is intimidating to write. I'm not sure I like how this turned out but I got some of him right. He is to me, a good father first and foremost, a blinding genius and a bit of a emotionally confused child at heart still second.

He's not entirely good, but he's not entirely bad. He's done selfish things and he's done generous things. Ok enough talking.

A question asked elsewhere that I'll also clear up here, I see Mire/Erevir (later sindarin name) physically as being the gangly equivalent of a 14 - 16 year old but on the verge of a long growth spurt that will take their physical age into the mid twenties and freeze it there. I suppose going by the 50 year of age mark most people accept for elves, 40ish.

Summary: Feanor and his living silmaril. 

Read Prompt: Decision (Feanor, Orignal Character.)

“They see your dreams,” Tyelkormo said. Fëanáro breathes slowly in and out of his nose, calming his immediate reaction to such a breach of privacy.

“Mírë” Celegorm called his doppelganger, and with such worry; such alarm that something ill should happen to them.

When had his son become so attached? Or why had Fëanor not seen such an obvious outcome. Quick to his younger brothers’ sides to help, and obedient to a devotional degree to his elder brothers, that was Celegorm.

Eru help them if Celegorm ever became torn between the two, he’d likely go quite mad. Normal family arguments had usually caused his third son to lose his considerable temper, then spent the next week upset at all of them for daring to fight.

And now Celegorm has found himself another younger brother… or sibling, one that let him coddle and protect them without the annoyance that Celegorm had received when his brothers had grown older.

No it was worse than that.

He has given his son a surrogate for the children that Celegorm had never sired, for one reason or another, though children he adored, and was always kind to, and therefore was adored back by.

 Mírë

He’s even named them for fucks sake!

As if you did not, his own thoughts mock him.

How is he to deal with this?

One thing at a time for now.

Nárya, be gentle, his mother’s shade gently whispers, remember that living things are not like your toys. They cannot be fixed if you break them.

“Stop haunting me,” he tells her out loud only for the flap of the tent to rustle and then Mírë themself enters. There is such a delighted air about them, especially when they see him sitting there, and their face lights up, literally in his presence.

Fëanor ignores his own surge of instinctive delight, the sudden awareness and clarity of though and emotion that having the final part of his missing fëa about brings.

Celegorm enters behind them. His son’s eyes, despite the sudden light, remain dilated until there is hardly any white left in the corners, a sign of distress.

“Leave,” he tells his son curtly.

“Sit,” he tells Mírë, and points to the seat before him. They sit.

Celegorm lingers just for a moment, his mouth opening and shutting as if to say something to Fëanor, only to bite it back.

“I will be in Caranthir’s tent,” he says instead to Mírë who looks eagerly up at him, “talking about what you should learn next.”

“Alright!” they chirp, so happy and relaxed that Celegorm clearly is overcome by some emotion, perhaps dread, and darts forward to press a kiss to a smooth forehead before he is gone.

Running away.

I am not a monster, he wants to yell after his son, wounded deeply.

He turns to the one who has stolen his third son’s undying devotion to him, and turned it into a doubtful thing, full of worries about awful unthought deeds.

“M – “ he gets no further than that because as is usual Mírë has launched themselves from their chair and has situated themselves in his lap, arms flung around his neck and shoulders.  The frail lines of a young body fit against his, and a face presses straight against his neck, finding the pulse. A hand seeks out across his tunic the beating of his heart.

Fëanor wraps his arms tight around the warm body. “Yes hello to you as well,” he pushes back a strand of hair and notices neat braids through the mingled mass of silver and gold. That is new. They form a slightly lopsided hexagon at the back, with facets to resemble a jewel.

He chuckles, tracing the design with a finger since he cannot see it properly.

It would be far too easy for him to sit here, holding onto the warm body clinging to him and simply enjoy being in the presence of all three silmarils, their joined contentment creating a flow on effect through him.

But no.

“Back in your seat,” he carefully detaches long limbs and Mírë reluctantly slides back onto the chair.

His own eyes stare at him, gleaming with the mingled light of the trees but refine, as it looked through SIlima. It is as though the very iris remains a silmaril. Those eyes are set in his face, a younger face, from the days when it had been just his father and he, Finwë’s great head and shoulders draped in the black embroidery upon bloody scarlet cloth of his widower’s shawl.

His face?

Or his mother’s?

The face has a pretty femininity to it now, there is a suggestion beneath the hand-me-down tunic from a pageboy, of curvature , and most tellingly, an almost golden hue to their eyes.

But then quick as he can breathe the gold becomes harsh silver and that prettiness is a boyish one which will one day become cleanly masculine.

Then another breath and it is both and he is left once more unable to tell which face is staring at him.

The memory of his mother is a persistent thing, not put off by his earlier rejection. Do not think you have to become a broiderer Narya, she taps his nose with a gentle finger, it is not the face but the mind and person behind it that matters. A lesson he wishes he could have better taught to Curufin.

He feels a certain eagerness against the edges of his mind; a yearning for his understanding.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” he asks with a steady voice.

“You were wondering –“ Mírë starts.

“We’ve talked about this,” he interrupts and they have. From the beginning when it was common for Mírë, in halting half words, to answer questions that Fëanor had not said out loud. It is not osanwë but something more invasive that he cannot halt or prevent.

They have talked about not answering the questions in Fëanor’s mind. If he wants answers, he will ask for them.

Mírë shrinks in on themself, and looks at their hands, the scars written deep in the flesh.

“We only mean to keep you happy.”

Fëanor cannot stop his instinct to reach out and cover with his hands the only scars that the silmarils left that were not caused by the burning brand of Varda’s hallowing. The hallowing which flares immediately at his touch, bursting into burn welts across every inch of skin; Mírë’s skin, not his, punishing the Silmaril and not him.

“Remember what I said,” he sighs, “she does not control you. It is your decision.”

Yet another thing to apologise for, yet he does not.

“You touched me” Mírë points out, but their eyes squeeze shut like they are concentrating very hard and the raw redness begins to fade, incrementally and with clear reluctance.

“You have become cheeky,” he returns.

“Celegorm says it is regrettably independent personality,” Mírë counters but in a shyly proud way.

He has a wonderfully independent spirit darling, his mother laughs to his father in the corner of the tent. It would be boring if he did every little thing you asked the first time.

It has been twelve seasons since Caranthir found them battered, and unconscious in the muds created by late autumn rain. Right now the mud outside is caused by early spring rain and the silmaril has only scars to show of its long, bare foot march away from Angband with pieces of Melkor’s burst crown embedded in their legs and arms.

It has been three years according to the calendars of the local tribes, who rely on the brightness of scars and succession of seasons to determine such, but a little less than a third of a year in Valinor. Fëanor has spent time with them in this time but not nearly enough.

He was recovering from his insanity, buoyed by the return of the silmarilli. And when not recovering he was caught up in the business of recovering the faith of his people, the broken trust held together by the frantic words of his sons, whilst ruling them at the same time.

And somewhere in all of this, he developed an aversion to talking or thinking too hard about the living silmaril, obvious to him from the first moment he laid his hand on the bleeding ones of a battered, nameless mystery on one of the many infirmary tents.

It was something important that he could take care of soon. He had always told himself that he had plenty of time; they had only found the living silmaril a short while ago.

And in that time, only a third of a year to him, three years of growth has taken place, and the results of his determined inaction become alarmingly clear.

“Celegorm has told me that you experience my dreams,” he says.

Mírë does not seem betrayed by this revelation but they do look down at their hands again, still covered by Fëanor’s.

“It is like your thoughts… I cannot help it,” they reply carefully, “but it is only when you dream deeply, it is not your reverie I see.”

He supposed that was well, he had a tendency in his reverie to go over every preceding waking hour’s events, picking them apart to capture every little nuance.

It keeps the memories that want to haunt him away, and only allows them near when he is too tired to simply remain in reverie, and descends to the cavernous levels of sleep where nightmares dwell.

…oh

He stares thoughtfully into Mírë’s face.

“You see my nightmares.”

Now Mírë swallows and looks uncomfortable, hands turning slowly under his so they can grip, and hold, onto him.

“They are bad,” says the living silmaril, “I am sorry.”

“You are sorry?” he asks, surely he should be the one that is sorry. His nightmares are brutal.

“Because it is our fault, if we had never been created none of this unhappiness would exist, and the warm hands would still exist.”

The switch from singular to plural does not go unnoticed, Fëanor extends his senses to the silmarils in their chest, feels their buzzing agreement and worry, but at the same time not-worry because they do not have the capacity for emotions. The properties of silima have not fully been explored but without minds, how do they feel anything at all? How do they think?

 “The warm hands?” it seems it is a night for him to ask slightly bemused questions.

His procrastination has not served him well. There is a being before him made of his blood, sweat, tears and very soul but which speaks almost in tongues sometimes.

“He…” Mírë’s voice chokes, “fff…ff…fin…fin…f…f…f…” and then their voice breaks entirely and they howl out in grief, the light in his lamp flickering.

Hunched over they look smaller than they are. Fëanor can’t help but see a child, a dangerous fallacy, yet one he willingly surrenders too when he sees true tears.

“My father,” Fëanor tugs a limp and unresisting body into his arms, once more fitting Mírë into his lap and against his body. Again, instinctively, Mírë’s hand finds his heartbeat whilst their face tucks into the crook of his neck.

This at least, he has experience with. Seven sons and their multiple anguishes have left him well prepared to comfort, with soft, directionless words until the aggrieved person has recovered themselves enough for speech.

“We killed him.”

It is a sad, delicate statement made in such a voice that Fëanor’s reply that Morgoth, whom they shall move against soon, dies. It is whispered against his ear, a confession just for him now that he is willing to pay attention to the guilty party, and that guilty party is capable enough to tell him so.

“Did you?”

“Because we shone. And his eyes did like the light. It was all dark. We blinded him. And the Darkness struck him down while he was unable to see.”

It is a retelling of his father’s death that he had never thought to hear, told in a voice that drops away its humanity, taking on a harsh, crystalline base to its sound. He thinks of how he used to lick his fingers as a child and run them along the rims of crystal goblets. It is like that, only sharper.

“And now you hate me!” the living silmaril suddenly accuses.

“I do not hate you,” Fëanor denies.

Mírë scrambles against him and pushes back to stare straight into his eyes with accusation in every syllable.

“You do not reach your mind or heart to me anymore. You will the others but never to me. You did not name me, Celegorm did! You did not hold me! Celegorm did! You do not… love me! You love them but because I am not them anymore you do not love me like you used to!“

“I –“ Fëanor’s words are cut out. Three years of neglect, and growing worry has unleashed itself, and he has a shaking, distressed creature in his lap who is causing all the light crystals across the camp to glow erratically. He can hear the cries of annoyance and alarm coming from every direction.

“And w-w-what is to happen to me when I am fully grown? Celegorm says I am probably close to my last growth. He says I will be an ad-adult in body within y-year from Valinor,” Mírë’s hands squeeze down on his.

“Curufin says you will turn me out. That n-no one wants a bastard about when there are eight legitimate heirs…” they continue, and Fëanor listens to a litany of confusion and unease whilst focusing on Curufin’s words.

Eight legitimate heirs. Why has Curufin boiled this down to a hypothetical conflict over inheritance? Where has his son’s mind wandered in this past third of a year?

“What is to become of me?” Mírë finishes miserably, “I live in limbo.”

“You will stay of course. You might be soon an adult in body but you certainly have… more to learn,” Fëanor finds his own words tactless but directness is needed.

“And when you are grown in mind also, well you shall have found yourself a livelihood I hope, or something to keep you occupied. Morgoth will be defeated by then, we shall be busy securing our lands here. You will likely have plenty to do, alongside my sons and I. There will be no turning out and no abandonment.”

He raises his hand and gently strokes the neatly braided hair, wondering whether it was Caranthir or Celegorm who decided on the design at the back.

“No?”

“No,” a third of a year for him, but three years for this one.

Does his oath still apply to a silmaril that has unclothed itself of its precious silima carapace, and redressed in a fragile living body?

It should not change anything. Silimarils are silmarils.

There is no obligation over him that he provide and take care of Mírë. None save that he brought this one into the world as surely as he brought his sons. He would not have considered ignoring any of his sons for any matter of time. Had they problems or worries his door, wood or canvas, was always open for them.

He sighs, slow and deep.

Celegorm’s recriminating side comments, perhaps a few seasons after Mírë’s arrival, suddenly make resounding sense instead of being the tart, rough frustrations over living in this new world that he dismissed them as. His tempestuous son has just shown himself to be wiser and more responsible than his own father.

How mortifying.

“No,” he repeats, “I am afraid that you have the stamp of my house all over you. You can’t slip from our grasp so easily.”

He receives tremulous smile, despite the truth in his worlds and the twisting, almost nausea inducing anxiety that has been fluttering against the edges of his mind fades away. It is replaced by the temperate waves of relief and the lingering question of ‘now what?’

Now what? He begins to take the place in the living silmaril’s life as he should have taken from the first moment. For the sake of security, and peace of mind, for everyone involved.

“Tell me of what you have been learning since I last saw you,” he begins, “has Caranthir taught you trigonometry yet?”

-

“Did you ever think of a name for me?” Mírë asks sadly; they have migrated out of Fëanor’s tent, to the tent which is Fëanor’s workroom and there is a dagger, the hilt of which he has been meaning to fix, turning over in Mírë’s scarred hands. Sometime in the passing hours it has acquired a new hilt. The metal should still be too hot to handle. Mírë’s skin does not flinch away from it.

“I did,” Fëanor replies with difficulty, his ingrained avoidance wanting to ignore the question “but I think for now, you shall remain Mírë. It shall be your epessë.”

“Epessë” says Mírë with a gentle awe and wonder. A smile, unwanted, spreads across Fëanor’s mouth. How easy it would be to coddle and love this child-thing as though they were another one of his sons.

He spins, just for a moment, a fantasy of a child born in the last year of his marriage, raised in Formenos and so never presented to the Court. Potentially unknown to all but his immediate family.

And Mírë would have to have been a son. For all Fëanor longed for a daughter. For all he wished to hold a baby girl in his arms that was his own. For all he knows that any daughter of his would be as mighty as her brothers.

The world is simply not kind to women.

It is cruel to men.

But for women it seems to reserve a special sort of viciousness.

What is to become of me? I live in limbo. Mírë asked him.

Narya, he hears his mother’s rattling voice, taunt with her desperation to hide the illness in her, sometimes it is the very worst thing in the world not to know what is going to happen to you. She must have told him that closer to the end. The auditory memory comes with the sensory memory of soft blankets and sheets under his hands, and a hummingbird like heartbeat beneath his ear. The soft warm skin of a palm, and strong, capable fingers combing through his hair.

The bells begin to ring for the day’s last meal. Outside the bright stars that illuminate everything are beginning to dim, and the clouds of night are starting to roll over.

“You should go now,” he murmurs and takes Mírë’s hand. The scars press against his own. For a moment Varda’s hallowing flares in faint welts, but Mírë’s eyes flutter in concentration and the welting fades resentfully back into smooth, unmarred skin.

“Tomorrow perhaps you can come, and I will teach you some more about that clockwork that fascinates you.”

“Oh yes!” Mírë smiles so delighted, Fëanor could likely offer them the whole of Arda and receive nothing so perfectly happy.

But then Mírë has no need for Arda. All that they have learned to long for resides here, within this slowly evolving camp-city.

“Good, now go find Celegorm, I am sure he has planned a great many interesting things with Caranthir for you to learn,” and before they leave he presses a kiss to a warm, smooth forehead as Celegorm did earlier, enduring with good temper the sudden gangy limbs crushing him to a thin chest.

Then Mírë is up and away, leaving him to return to his tent alone and thoughtful.

To have revealed he has called them in his thoughts Eressemírë, the lonely jewel, would have put upon narrow shoulders the heavy reminder that they are not human.

That they are not eldar.

That they are alone in the world.

It would be to take everything that Mírë has gained and say that, that stands for nothing and has no value.

He lets long hours tick past, making the most of his final moments of inactivity. As much as he would love to believe Nolofinwë has turned back with his host, it is only a matter of time, a valinorian year and a half, or so, until his fool hardy brother arrives and tries to take a rightful pound of flesh out him.

Eventually he gets up and goes to his lamps, brightening the stones within until there are no shadows in his tent.

He picks up several sheets of rough paper and lays them down on his writing desk. Then to his correspondence chest he goes, hands trembling as he undoes the special lock so that he can open the lowest compartment. From it he pulls the Book of Names.

He wonders briefly how Arafinwë reacted to knowing the official record of their family, written by their father’s patient hand as delicately and patiently as a master-scribe, had left with Fëanáro.

Probably commissioned his own, excising any reference to Míriel. If he’s able to think that far without the aiding words of his whore mother. Or perhaps Indis has taken care of it herself.

May she slip on the marbling of the palace the next time it rains, fall, and break her neck.

He might be cured of his insanity but his hatred of that heartless bitch remains, and for all that he might hear whispers he was too cruel and hard on the intruder, he holds in his heart the day he heard her laughing with her ladies that silver will always be less valuable; that dross must give way to true gold.

In his madness, he had excised Findis, Irimë and Arafinwë’s pages, discarded them in the many bonfires. The pages of their children have not fared much better, he took to many of them with a knife until they are useless, illegible scraps.

Nolofinwë’s page remains untouched. Each time he tried he felt as though a hand had gripped his wrist; warm palms gripping his.

You shall lead and I shall follow.

So too Findekáno’s page has not been touched. He only managed to clip the corners off Irrimë’s page.

But he is not interested in his heart-grieving, mad attempts to excise one of the infected roots of the grief that had been waiting to take him since he was a child.

Instead he’s interested in the untouched pages at the front. He caresses them, reading each one with a smile.

As much as he would like to make a tribute to Celegorm’s care, he finally turns to the entry recording his twins, his lost little Ambarto recriminating him from the page, and places beside it the last letter he ever received from his father.

It might be more believable to create an identity based on some bastard child of his son’s, or create a fake marriage instead. He’s sure Celegorm would find no offence to suddenly discover a Turkafinwion in the entry behind Tyelperinquar Curufinwion.  

But when he tries to practice with his father’s hand writing out such a name, his uncontrollable possessiveness squeezes tightly around his fingers until the pen breaks and he has to drop it, cursing as ink covers his fingers.

Even sane he cannot bring himself to give over even partial possession of one of his silmaril, despite his neglect.

He mutters epithets and cleans up the mess, apologising to Celegorm and Mírë in his head for this inability to let go. Then he returns to doggedly practicing his father’s handwriting.

Finwë’s hand changed subtly over the years. For hours Fëanor practices until he finds a nice blend between the style of the letter, and the entry for the twins, until he feels he has a good representation of what his father’s hand might have been like for an eighth child of his.

What would his father have thought of this?

Finwë had been delighted when he had discovered the silmarilli had a half-sentience enough to play practical tricks on them, disguising themselves as lumps of innocuous rocks and sending the household into panic.

He can almost make himself believe his father would give him his blessings for this forgery.

Fëanor’s correspondence box yields a pristine piece of parchment of royal standard.

It takes him many hours, the design of the border, the gilding, the art and then the words, his father’s calligraphic hand revived from the pyre.

He lingers momentarily over the name, and writes Mírefinwë with a sour smile at his own predictability in the naming of his sons.

And a stab of pain when he sees Telufinwë on the other page; the last Finwë is last no more.

Would that he could have seen his father put the finishing flourishes on a page with a name containing Míriel.

He apologises to his living silmaril for sentencing them to a life of hiding one part of themselves.

His father’s signature comes far too easily and perfectly for Fëanor to feel comfortable with himself.

Then at last his father’s seal is recovered from its concealment, taken by Finwë to Formenos by accident, and stolen by Fëanor when his father meant to send it back to Nolofinwë to use. Then a thin finger of specially prepared wax that even as his father’s son, he had absolutely no reason to possess.

All he will need to do after this is age the parchment suitably and sew it in place behind the twins' entry.

He kisses the seal, heats the wax precisely, and forges Mírë’s position in the new world with a single, practiced movement. 

---

Chapter End Notes

I occured to me this could have turned into smut. But given Mírë in this fic verse currently swings between the mental age of five, eleven and twenty without predictability, hell to the no.

And yes, there are glaring gaps I did not adress. This was meant to be a drabble, but it grew because I could not fit everything in. I think to cover everything and fill all the gaps; adress all the issues of this sort of a verse, I'd need 100,000 words and better writing skills and imagination then I have.

I see Feanor as preparing Mire in the future with things they should have known or seen in Tirion. By the time Fingolfin arrives, their aging will have halted, making it harder to deduce their actual age. Plus with the light of the trees shining out of Mire's eyes who would guess other wise.

*smacks away ideas about Fingolfin.* No, no more living silmaril. Back to actual AU silmarillion drabblets, not crazy OC shenanigans.

I feel bad about inflicting OCs on people. Sorry yall. I know you're here to read Tolkien stuff.

Prompt: Invade (Feanorions et al. Fingolfinions et al. Finarfinions et al. Original character)

I swear this one is pure crack. 

Warnings for: silly slash and rare pairings galore. Swapping back and forth between sindarin names and quenya names because the newly arrived host of Nolofinwe don't know sindarin yet. Meanwhile sindar is the lingua franca for trading in the silvan and avar groups so the Feanarion's know it.

And Mire hops pronouns.

Lets play: how many rare and weird pairings can I shove in here.

There is some minor smut.

So, FINALLY concluding what was started in Prompt: Explosion, and carried on for far too long in Prompts: Care, Protect and Decision.

Happy endings for everyone? (no this is the Finweans. They don't do happy.)

Summary: the host of Nolofinwe arrives. And then there is nonsense.

Read Prompt: Invade (Feanorions et al. Fingolfinions et al. Finarfinions et al. Original character)

And the history books will say later that it was a glorious hour when the Host of Nolofinwë finally arrived upon the plains before Angband where a mighty battle was taking place between the forces of Morgoth, much wounded by the explosion of light that had occurred some many years past, and the army of High King Fëanáro.

And lo, the books will tell you, there was much rejoicing as the brothers saw one another.

And with a roar the two armies joined together as one and drove Morgoth up against his iron fortress where upon he was taken prisoner, and his spirit sundered from its coil and captured within the hammer of Grond which was sent forth back to Valinor that proof that what the Valar cannot do, the Eldar can.

The injuries were many but all of the royal contingent survived and there was much celebrating to be had, though some were too incapacitated to truly appreciate it.

As recorded in the journal of Prince Caranthir, his royal uncle Nolofinwë met with great misfortune and became “intimately acquainted” with the warhammer of Morgoth, mighty Grond, and thus was left unable to walk for some time.

---

 “Well now you're done trying to punch me. Brother! It has been far too long, I could kiss you. I suppose that is what I should say to you. Pucker up.”

“Don’t you dare. I will bleed on everything you love and care for. Shut your mouth right now, stop smiling, and give me some more poppy.”

“It would be interesting to see how you would accomplish that with two broken legs brother but certainly.”

Mírë stares uncertainly at the tent. Perhaps they should come back later.

Wait, think male! Male! Because there are the Nolofinwion’s here, at last, after years of preparation for this date.

Mírë looks around unsurely. Now what shall they…what should he do? He can’t visit his brother’s tents.

There are strange wet noises coming from Maedhros’ tent.

And grunting.

Maglor has had to abscond with Amras, after a horrible, shrill black haired person with golden haired offspring set him off into a memory-fit.

The golden haired offspring did try and calm their father down. So the golden haired offspring is not so bad.

Caranthir and a loud gold haired person are in separate tents to ‘cool’ off after Celegorm and Curufin had to drag them apart to stop them fighting.

Curufin got knocked unconscious while that was happening.

Celebrimbor is also in a tent ‘cooling off’ after talking to the horrible, shrill one that hurt Amras.

There is a golden haired female in the goal, apparently she is in trouble.

Something to do with Alqualonde.

And there is another black haired female and a golden haired male in Celegorm’s tent, talking to him.

And sometimes punching him.

Mírë sighs, kicks at a rock on the ground, and glares at the sling his left arm is in.

“Hello?”

They look up. It is the golden haired offspring of the shrill, horrible black haired one.

“Hello,” he replies unsurely.

“A…are you one of my cousin’s children?” the golden haired offspring asks.

“N…no.” Mire replies uncertainly.

“Oh then who –“

Oh she wants an introduction.

“I am Mírë! Mírefinwë Fëanárion.”

“Fëanárion…” she repeats sounding like someone just hit her over the head then asked her to find the right angle of a triangle.

“Yes,” oh he’s meant to add something after aren’t they, when talking to Nolofinwë’s people. “I was born just before Formenos.”

“Just before Formenos,” she parrots and then her knees give out. Mírë catches her under her arms.

“Oh dear, are you hungry? Are you alright?” he asks.

“No I am…” she protests weakly, and then her stomach growls loudly.

“Food then,” Mírë steadies her on her feet, feet which are bare, he notices, and covered in hundreds of silvery scars.

“Your feet look silver,” he says.

“Yes,” the woman says with a slightly stronger voice, “people do say that a lot.”

“The mess tent is this way,” Mírë shrugs and leads her away. They suppose feet like hers are the reason why Celegorm insists on them wearing boots all the time.

---

Mírë carries her over the last patch to the tent because it is ankle deep mud filled with sharp rocks. It’s a bit awkward to do it with only one arm.

She makes strange squawking noises. They… he sets her at a bench with a fellow whose hair is so gold it’s hard to look at straight on, and returns with a plate of rock-cakes, and a pot of the local tea which tastes a lot like oranges whilst looking like mud in a cup.

“I have made it clear that I intend to never marry,” Silverfeet says nervously but looking them straight in the eye.

“It is good that you feel you can be open about your sexuality to a near stranger,” Mírë replies. Celegrom covered all of that nonsense surrounding same sex relationships during lesson 100 of why people won’t take well to someone who switches gender for no reason other than they want to.

Golden haired fellow snorts tea out his nose. Silverfeet squawks again.

Mírë wonders if they should offer to become female to make her more comfortable.

But Celegorm covered that lesson 50 of why people don’t take well to someone who changes gender etc. etc.

And Silverfeet might think they’re trying to court her.

---

Celegorm is currently in an awkward situation.

Well in terms of awkward situations, there was that time Mírë went hunting with him and managed to find a half-maiar pagan wolf goddess lounging about.

And then managed to thoroughly piss off her husband.

That was more awkward than this.

Though to be fair to Mírë and Celegorm, she’d been nine feet tall and naked. How are you supposed to not stare?

So this isn’t as awkward as that. But still awkward. Because Findaráto appears to be trying to grab his cock.

“Findarato,” he says awkwardly, “I am not Amairë…”

Celegorm’s body is currently an achy mess from being slapped and punched by various cousins, plus the long hard slog of battle, only completed a day ago.

Though to be honest he’d rather be him then be Maedhros right now. He had distinctly heard Findekáno say he was taking payment for their separation out of Matimo’s arse.

Keep it classy Findekáno.

Sometime into catching up with Irrisë and Findaráto, a truce was called (Irissë carries more of a punch than she used to) and they decided to close their eyes for ten minutes, because they were slurring their sentences.

Now Celegorm has awoken. That is not Mírë pressed up against him because Mírë has had only the one erection and they were thoroughly appalled by it. They proceeded to read every single healers text they could get their hands on to figure out their own body, and force it to never pull such a stunt on them again.

It’s also not Mírë because whilst Mírë might cling like a leech sometimes, especially when it gets cold… Mírë’s never tried to discretely undo Celegorm’s leggings, ever.

Findaráto presses further against him and oh Oromë, that is certainly an impressive erection grinding against his hip.

“Well no, I would have noticed if Amairë has one of these.” The hand squeezes him through the material.

Celegorm’s body is waking up and remind him how long it’s been since he’s managed to have any sort of an orgasm. Mírë apparently sleeps on a hair trigger set off by the sound of someone trying to discretely wriggle down their braies or pull up a sleeping tunic.

Sleeps like a log through everything else.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Findaráto grumbles into his hair, and that trespassing hand shoves straight into Celegorm’s leggings.

“Irissë is in the next bed!” he hisses instead, telling his body to calm down, that’s only a hand on his cock.

Ooohhhhhh.

“She sleeps like granite,” Findaráto licks the shell of his ear, “and she’s hardly going to see what’s going on under a mountain of blankets.”

Fair enough. She could probably guess though.

She’s Findekáno’s sister, not to put a fine point on it.

Celegorm manages to twist around enough to get a good look at Findaráto’s face. Findaráto looks at him like a man looks at the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. The tunnel being celibacy and chastity enforced by living in constant, icy danger, and the light being a warm, attractive body with a pulse, who is capable of giving consent.

Celegorm bites his lip, and realises he is going to have to profusely grovel at Mire’s feet for all of this

Findarato, sensing capitulation, apparently has a ferret as a spirit animal and completes a complicated manoeuvre that finishes with him nicely between Celegorm’s legs without disturbing a single blanket.

-

Silverfeet, who is also called Idril, is nice enough to talk too.

The golden haired fellow, who is unimaginatively named Laurefindë, is also very nice to talk to. But eventually they have find places to sleep. Irdil is apparently sleeping in the same tent as her shrill, horrible father.

Golden fell…sorry..Laurefindë has a tent apparently. The one with golden flowers on it.

So Mírë went back to Celegorm and his tent…

Well…

He supposes Celegorm has needs. He’s a grown man after all.

Maglor passed by the mess tent and mentioned he was going to talk to Maedhros. So maybe Maedhros’ tent might have space for them.

N…

Nope.

There are still those noises, more of them.

And three voices contributing.

Well.

Curufin’s tent is out of the question, Celebrimbor shares the tent with Curufin as well.

Caranthir’s tent then, Mírë thinks hopefully.

He sticks his head in to said tent, and sees Caranthir busily attempting to eat the face of the loud blond one he argued with earlier. The blond one is attempting to do the same.

There is a low growl of “AH! Angaráto!” and an answering hiss of “Carnistir!!” accompanied by the snarl of clothing tearing.

Mírë pulls his head back and blushes from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes.

Amras, he thinks desperately, jogging across the campsite.

More of those noises like in Maedhros’ tent.

There is sudden sob of ‘Aikanáro.’

This. Fucking. Family. Mírë thinks in despair, then apologises profusely mentally to said family because they love them and don’t mean them ill.

---

His mother’s shade is dancing quietly with his father’s shade to unheard music. Fëanor watches them with pleasure, unable to sleep in his new bed on the floor of his tent.

He could come up with absolutely no excuse why his brother, having received two broken legs whilst removing one of Morgoth’s, should not be afforded the pleasure of the best bed in the camp until they return to the more permanent settlement at Mithrim.

“She is lovely,” says a voice by his shoulder.

He startles and peers down.

Mírë stares back at him, having successfully shucked boots, coat and managed to wriggle into his temporary bed without Fëanor noticing.

There are several questions he could ask.

Mírë, why are you in my bed?

Mírë why are you in my bed?

Mírë how did you get into my bed without my noticing?

Mírë, how the hell are your feet so cold even in socks?!

“One of the gold haired ones is fucking Celegorm in our tent. And there is a black haired female sleeping on my bed.” Mírë replies with characteristic bluntness, pre-empting his question “you were distracted by the ghost dancers, and my feet are always cold after riding a horse all day; Celegorm says it’s my circulation.”

And then they look guilty for breaking the mind-reading rule,

“No it is alright,” he sighs and tucks his living silmaril against his chest. “How are you feeling?” he lost sight of Mírë for a few terrifying moments during the battle. It was not something he would have willingly taken the living silmaril into but they insisted.

“I am alright,” Mire waves their bandaged wrist, “all I did was sprain a wrist and wrench my shoulder twisting a dragon’s head off.”

“Twisting. A. Dragon’s. Head. Off?”

Was that Nolofinwë stirring?

No. Still asleep.

“Yes.” Mire agrees. The adrenaline rush had overcome it and it had just reacted to a fire breathing threat, “it was missing a leg though,” they add.

“That is a thing that you can do then?”

“Apparently.”

Fëanor makes a note of this for the list of things that he now knows his silmaril can do.

“So you got ousted from your own tent,” Fëanor yawns, watching his father swing his mother, his mother laughing and twisting her fingers into Finwë’s hair. They are dressed in clothing he does not recognise, style and embroidery primitive but beautiful. Another time and place. A happier one. Before him.

“And no one else has space… or they are all fucking one another.”

Fëanor snorts, “Findekáno and Matimo?” he asks with a chuckle.

“With Maglor,” adds Mírë, confirming a suspicion he’s had for a while but never bothered to confirm.

“Curufi – no you would rather sleep in the mud I think.”

Mírë’s expression confirms this.

“Caranthir?”

“The shouting gold one.”

“Angaráto?” he guesses.

“That was the name he was hissing,” Mírë agrees, initiating Fëanor into the circle of knowing far too much about Caranthir’s sex life.

“Maglor’s tent?”

“Shares it with Amras.”

“Amras?”

“Someone named Aikanáro.”

Fëanor blinks.

Well that was unexpected.

“I could have happily gone to sleep whilst the blond one tires to put a hole in Celegorm's matress using Celegorm,” Mírë says in an aggrieved voice . By process of elimination Fëanor now knows that Findaráto is fucking his son. He honestly would have guessed the other way around but then again...

Findaráto’s always been a wild card.

“But there is that black haired woman sprawled across my bed like a big lump” Mírë finishes in indignantly.

There is a muffled noise from his proper bed where Nolofinwë sleeps… apparently.

“Ahh,” he sighs and kisses Mírë’s forehead until the frown smoothes out, “I am sorry.”

“There was a nice golden haired one named Idril who might have let me sleep on her floor, but she is sleeping with her father and I hate him. He is horrible, shrill and he set Amras off with what he said to him.”

There is another noise from Nolofinwë the very much not sleeping.

Fëanor grins widely.

“And there was another one, Laurefindë, he might have had space for me but he’s a stranger really, like everyone else. At least the Nolofinweans are related to me yes? Even if they are uncontrollable rutting beasts.”

“Yes,” Fëanor can’t stop his laughter now, “Though by my count, it’s the Arafinweans who are leading the charge there. Oh Mírë, Mírë, Mírefinwë, what am I going to do with you.”

“Make me your heir; I am clearly the only one of your children that is not sex addled.”

“WHAT?!” Nolofinwë finally roars, sitting straight up in bed, no longer even trying to pretend to be asleep.

---

“Good morning.”

Laurefindë looks up from his breakfast to see the strange, pale haired doppelganger of Fëanáro settling on the other side of the table from him. Laurefindë replies a good morning though he’s sure most don’t think that.

There is a serious lack of tents amongst the people of Nolofinwë. Bunking up can be a unpleasant game of roulette.

The doppelganger chews thoughtfully at the morning ration of toasted old rock-cake and sips the strange, murky drink that is served warm here.

“Sleep well?” the doppelganger asks.

“Yes,” he replies, yawning, “you?”

“Alright once my uncle was sedated,” the doppelganger says pleasantly, and then makes room on their bench for a thoroughly debauched looking Tyelkormo Fëanárion.

---

Chapter End Notes

Spiced Wine is to blame for my on going addiction to Finrod/Celegorm.

Tumblr is to blame in general for Angrod/Caranthir.

Don't ask me where Aegnor/Amras came from.

I. Do. Not. Know.

And the nine foot tall naked wolf goddess is D'rak'tari who turns up in Prompt: Meat, Grandmother and Meetings.

Prompt: Loss

Warnings: Character death

Summary: She is dead. Three words. Nothing changes. Two words.

Read Prompt: Loss

“She is dead.”

Three words and his world came apart at the seams, and remade itself into a garment both uncomfortable and ugly.

She is dead.

The very woods mourned for the spirit as wild and free as they.

She is dead.

Her smile, her laughter, even her voice raised in fine anger would no longer be heard.

“She is dead My Lord,” the healer murmured, the gold fibula of his rank shining. He wondered if he had asked; shelled out a fortune just to get a mithril badged Healer here, that she would still be alive. But there had been something about the way she had grown pale and tired in her last days.

No.

No amount of money, bribery, or even calling on old favours would have brought to him a healer of the skills required to save his wife.

“The child?” he asked hoarsely, staring blindly at the healer’s fibula. It was good work, for something mass produced in a mould and then personalised with the Healer’s name and number.

“He lives, we are just seeing to him now.”

In time the healer returned with a wrapped bundle. “We had to clear his airways My Lord. It was touch and go for a moment, but he shall live provided you find a wetnurse.”

“My seneschal is already looking for one,” he replied, lips feeling heavy and numb. He took the bundle and peered into his son’s face. It was already fine boned, showing stronger signs of her than of him.

“I am sorry,” said the healer, “for your loss.”

In the silence of the hallway, the child turned against his chest, seeking warmth, and he held him closer.

-

His child grew, because that was what children did, and they were close for he had to be both a father and a mother to him.

It was strange; he might not have paid quite so close attention to his son with a mother there to take care of the necessities. Oh he would have spent time with the lad, and taught him as he did now, but he would not have been quite so close, he imagined.

“Was she strong?” his child asked.

“Yes, strong enough to fire a bow and put her arrow straight through the skull of an orc,” he replied.

“Was she smart?” his child asked.

“Most definitely. I have never met someone able to debate the way she did, or as quick to learn a language as she did,” he replied.

“Was she beautiful?” his child asked.

“Yes,” he closed his eyes and saw her in the darkness behind them, glowing like a candle flame, “oh yes.”

-

“I found a cloak the other day,” his child came to him with the material draped around that small body as it had once around her, and his heart caught in his throat to see the reinforced white silk. “There is a map on the side.”

And there was, drawn by fingers dipped in ink. He imagined she must have drawn it when the fevers and delusions had been bad; when she had gone stumbling through the fortress, crying out in a foreign language and not knowing any of the familiar faces who came to help her, even her own husbands.

She had been trying to remember her way home.

In a way, the lethargy and her silence had been a relief from that behaviour, but in the end, it had been so much worse.

-

He called his child ‘his little asp’ but in the ways of his people did not give his son a formal name until he was twelve years under the sun.

“Maeglin,” he decided, “you have a sharp glance and sharper eyes,” he grinned thinking of the old Dame of the Broadbeams, and how delighted she had been, when his son had pointed out to her that a group of diamonds she had not yet paid for were filled with tiny, hard to perceive flaws that had escaped her watchful eyes.

Eöl looked out into the darkness of Nan Elmoth around them.

“And Uialchen, I think,” he added, dragging his fingers gently through the silken mass of his son’s thick black hair as the newly named Maeglin smiled in happiness up at him, “for I think your mother would have named you something like that.”

-

And so lived Maeglin Uialchen of Nan Elmoth, for many long and happy years in the darkness of the trees. At times he would look at his mother’s cloak, and its finger painted map, and dream of a city of white stone where a king ruled, and knew his sister dead, but did not know why or how.

Sometimes he wondered if he should leave and find the city, bring them news of his mother but he never did. He did not wish to leave his father, who was all the family he had, and he knew nothing of the white city save what he dreamed, and he did not dream much.

Long the years were, and plentiful. But at last the doom of Noldor found even one who knew not their Noldor heritage, and Morgoth broke the protection of Nan Elmoth. Lord Maeglin Uialchen, three days a ruler of his father’s fiefdom, was taken.

To the rack he was put, and heinous torture was visited upon him until at last he was coerced the draw the map of his mother’s making upon hide taken from his father's back, fingers dipped in his own blood to complete the deed.

And there he died, Lord Maeglin Uialchen, having doomed the city of Gondolin whose walls he had never seen. For this he was sentenced to the void.

So it is written and so it must be.

---

Chapter End Notes

Uialchen - Sindarin: Uial (twilight) + hen (child) = Child of twilight Lit.Twilight Child.

Maeglin's canon mother's name is Lómion which signifies in Quenya "child of the twilight."

It's not a perfect match but I tried.

Prompt: History (OC, Balin son of Funduin)

Barely scrapes the Silmarillion line. Return of OCs but ah, I love her.

Summary: Balin talks to a little acknowledged figure in history

Warnings: OC centric, Balin and OC talking

Read Prompt: History (OC, Balin son of Funduin)

She is Thulin, daughter of Kulin, and impossibly at this age, she is a Dwarf of Belegost.

Balin, son of Funduin, is most honoured to have her agree to visit him and tell her history.

He prepares tea, tells himself he is not worried at all, and stokes the fire a little higher in the inn parlour that he has reserved.

There is a knock, the door opens and a woman swarthed from head to toe in indigo cloth enters. He rises and bows. She bows back and sheds the cloth.

“Balin son of Funduin,” she greets him in rolling khudzul with an accent that does not exist anymore, “I am honoured to meet a historian such as you.”

“Thulin daughter of Kulin, I am honoured you considered accepting my request.”

“I was surprised, “ she admits in westorn, “most historians are not interested in me.”

He looks at her. She is far too tall for a dwarf. Her beard is a long silky mane of gold to her knees, intricately braided and beaded. The rest of her hair is likewise adorned, and pulled away from leaf shape ears with delicate points, and permanent rings of mithril set through them.

“They are fools,” he says instead of trying to defend his fellow scholars, “when I saw that my master had made mention of you in a text, I wondered why he had not talked to you himself. He was most fascinated with the era you grew up in.”

Indeed she is mentioned very little, here and there, and usually only noted for her unusual birth and lineage. He would have thought her first hand knowledge would have been mined out by now.

“He did ask, and I answered, but he did not want to know about my mother and my other father, and so I told him nothing.”

“Your other father?” he asks.

“My other father,” she confirms, “for I had three parents, Râu, Thandâ and Kulin.”

“They were, uh,” Balin reaches for his papers and with her permission begins jotting down this information.

“They were a trinity, as my mother’s people call it, three hearts who make up a one. Sometimes it happens.”

“I see, I see,” well no wonder his master did not want to know about it, he had been a rather uptight and fussy man who disliked scandal and lewdness; a threesome would have been most improper.

“Please tell me,” he says, straightening, “in your own words, of the story of your parents and how Kulin of the Broadbeams came to have a daughter woven of sunlight.”

She tilts her head back and laughs, “oh who wrote that description of me?” she asks.

“I believe Volli daughter of Olli.”

“Oh Volli,” Thulin, daughter of Kulin, smiles with a memory, “I loved her, she was a dearest friend for many years, and then for a while my beloved until at last Mahal took her to her Husband.”

“Well then Balin son of Funduin,” she straightens herself and seems to ease back into the past, “let me tell you of a wandering tribe of Elves, descended from those who remembered a Great Lake in the East that gave life to them all. And in that tribe there were two lovers, Thandâ who was an artisan, and Râu, she was a warrior.

But there was something missing. Someone they reached for together, not knowing who it was.

To a Mountain, they did travel, for their usual migration route was devoured by danger for those were dark and violent times. A mountain that embraced them with loving arms; its forests plentiful with game, and its trees thick to block the coming winter winds.

Within that mountain lived a child of such, a mountain child with smith-brother’s breath within his lungs; he who was the Star that guided my parents feet, and illuminated the road of their life. Warm hands that my parents clasped gratefully, finding what they had reached for all their long lives …”

It takes a long time, more than one sitting, for her to tell the history she knows. She tells it from her point of view, half dwarrow and half elven as she is. Her hands flutter in her lap sometimes, or sometimes she whittles or carves as she speaks.

All the while she tells him of a history that is so different than the ones he has read. Wittles and carves out stories with her archaic, rolling voice as deft as her scarred, and calloused hands; bringing depth to characters, and fine details at odds with what he has imagined, during his long years of pouring through his books.

Come the end of their time together she presents him with a pipe, a lovely thing with a bowl carved of alabaster, and swathing her body once more in indigo she joins a travelling group of similarly clothed elves.

“Will I see you again?” he wonders.

“Will you? I do not know Balin son of Funduin,” she says thoughtfully, “what more could I tell you?”

“I would like to think after so many hours talking that we might call ourselves friends,” he replies.

“Then I will return next year,” she tells him, “and you will tell me your history.”

“I don’t have much of a history yet,” he splutters.

“You will one day,” her words are ominous, “but I would know how a young dwarf as yourself becomes the only man to ask me for my history, and not try and edit it as I speak.”

“Then I suppose I will tell you next time I see you,” he is bewildered though as what he will say.

“Good, farewell then Balin son of Funduin, I will see you next winter,” then with one foot in front of the other she joins her mother and her second father’s people on their never ending journey, on and on through roads and unchartered lands, her history never ending.

Prompt: Correction (Curufin and family)

Warnings: transgenderphobic comments, sexism, spousal abuse implied.

Also Curufin being Curufin. 

Written with the best of my skills and ability, not offence or insult mean

Summary: There are seven princes in the House of Feanaro. There never was a princess.

Read Prompt: Correction (Curufin and family)

They all say she looks so much like her grandmother.

Just like Míriel; Jewel woman.

Mírinke her mother calls her; Little Jewel.

No, Curufinwendë wants to say, it is her father that she looks like. Her father looks like Grandmother Míriel, and Curufinwendë looks like her father and she…

She…

She?

The dresses never fit, even when tailored perfectly.

Hands meant to be focused on embroidery turn to metal work, enjoy the finicky details of setting a fine jewel, and most of all yearn for a soft female hand to hold; instead of being held by the strong grip of a male’s.

The shoes never quite seem right. Where are the sturdy work boots?

Where are the leggings?

The tunics?

Something is wrong here, thinks the person inside the body, trailing hands over the flesh shell.

Something is wrong here.

What is wrong?

What hasn’t been made correctly?

A skilled craftman's eyes are unable to find what that illusive flaw is.

“Every woman wants to marry,” they say. “Every woman wants to be a mother.”

There are men who come to the door, wanting a wife; wanting the sole princess of the Fëanárii by their side.

It’s only a matter of time before it happens. And then it does, passionlessly, and with a sense of despairing resignation that nothing will ever be right.

Despite the grandeur of the even, the marriage lasts barely five seasonal cycles before bags packed, Mírinkë returns to the house of Fëanáro, son’s hand in hers, the nightmare of a pregnancy left behind with the complaints from Curufinwendë’s husband that she does not act as a woman should; that she leads and is not docile enough; that she acts like a man.

Which is the catalyst as Mirinkë finds a cold pack for her face, cheek stinging and eye throbbing, to realising that it has never been a woman staring back beneath delicately plucked and groomed eyebrows.

Which is the catalyst to ordering the servants to pack every belonging, striking those that hesitate, and marching away without looking back.

Marriage wrecked and ruined behind…him, Curufinwendë sets about making things right.

The dresses find their way into charity shops.

Six brothers mean there are plentiful tunics lying around, and leggings galore.

Curufinwendë takes a deep breath and feels less uncomfortable once they’ve found the right clothing.

Better.

Not perfect.

Deft hands unpick the garland braid of an unmarried woman, and replace it with the twisted braids the Princes of the House of Finwë wear.

Better.

Not perfect.

“Ammë?” asks Tyelperinquar, watching his mother turn and twist before the mirror.

“No, Atar…. Please.”

Atar.

Father.

Atarinkë.

Little Father.

Because he looks like his father, not his grandmother.

It is slow going, and hard work, to bend his family to understanding this.

His mother will not look at him. His father retreats into his forge for days, hammering out his confusion on pieces of poor metal.

His brothers react differently. The twins try their hardest, because that is what will please him, Matimo is not sure what to say or do; unable to censure him because that would make Matimo more than a hypocrite. If Curufinwendë is unnatural, what is Matimo who lies with men and loves it?

Makalaurë more than makes up for Matimo's silence, right up until the day their mother goes into their father’s forge, argues with him and leaves, Makalaurë accompanying her.

Carnistir looks him up and down, and then asks snidely "why do you have breasts then?"

Curufinwend…. Curufinwë gives him a black eye as an answer.

Tyelkormo...

Tyelkormo rides away, into the woods where his Master lingers, and returns a week later, bedraggled, but calling him brother like it’s been that way all his life.

“Better. Not perfect.”

Curufinwë looks in the mirror, feels lighter and heavier at the same time, and then picks up the large roll of material and takes care of the two extraneous lumps of issue on his chest the best he can.

No pain, not gain.

He grits his teeth, eyes watering, pulls the cloth tighter every morning, and watches his chest slowly subside into its proper shape.

People come looking for the Princess of the House of Fëanáro, once the stigma of her swift separation fades away.

But there is no princess. There are seven princes living in the house of Fëanáro.

Society refuses to accept the truth; society calls him unnatural, a pervert, and a sick minded woman. A man he might have once known attempts to take his son away.

Tyelperinquar won’t go, the man is a stranger to him after so long away from the other house, and so Tyelpe clings to his atar’s hand with a defiant tilt to his little chin, and there might be pain in that man’s face but Curufinwë does not care.

Curufinwë has never cared. He should never have married the man, who wanted a pretty doll woman full of dainty, feminine mannerisms, and sweet girlish charm.

“You can’t just take my son away.”

“You let me take my son away and did not bother to visit until people began to ask why. You said you did not care for a child as ornery as the bitch who bred him,” Curufinwë tilts his chin and bares his teeth, “you don’t have a child. This is Tyelperinquar Curufinwion, the son of Curufinwë Fëanárion, Prince of the House of Finwë. I am his father.”

“You’d best leave,” Matimo says from the doorway, skin pale and face grim,“I believe my….I ….I believe Curufinwen -…Curufinwë has made his point quite clear.”

 A prince of the House of Fëanáro is above what society cares.

His father finally emerges from his forge one blustery day when Curufinwë is teaching his son how to write joined tengwar. He presents Curufinwë with a coronet like his brother’s wear, a smaller one for Tyeperinquar accompanying it, ruffles the twisted braids of a prince in two coal dark heads of hair, and then goes searching for food.

“Where is your mother?”

“She left.”

“Oh.”

Fëanáro stares at the pantry unseeing then sighs and shrugs.

"After four sons she was overjoyed to have a daughter. To find this is not so will be heavy upon her," there is no censure to his tone despite the words, "she will come around. What mother could reject her own son?"

And those are the last words his father speaks to him of his mother.

He never sees his mother again.

“Curufinwë is it then?” his father asks when his hunger is sated.

“And Atarinkë,” he replies with his throat full of his own heart.

“Just take care of those names,” is all his father, once also called Curufinwë, says, “and don’t let them get too heavy.”

“They could never be too heavy,” Curufinwë replies stiffly.

"Spoken like only my son could understand," his father chuckles, "stay strong Atarinkë, I know you will make me proud."

“Atarinkë,” Tyelkormo muses later, helping him pick leaves, and twigs out of Tyeperinquar’s hair after Curufinwë’s son went diving into the overgrown herb garden after Tyelkormo’s dog, “fits you better.”

“Don’t say things just to please me,” Curufinwë snaps.

“But is does,” Tyelkormo insists, hurt, “it suits you better. You smile when someone calls you it, and you’re happier. You never smiled when you were called Mírinkë.”

“Oh, I did not know that,” Curufinwë thinks; had he really detested the name that much? It seems disrespectful to his grandmother whom he has no issue with.

“I like it when you smile Curufinwë. I like it when you are happy brother. Please do it more often.”

Curufinwë scowls at him on purpose. Does Tyelkormo think he can just demand Curufinwë’s good mood?

“Ahhhh no Atarinkë don’t do that” Tyelkormo whines, while Tyelpe giggles, “you look just like father when I’ve done something wrong. Stop it!”

Curufinwë Atarinkë Fëanárion smiles, as happy as it is possible to be in his circumstances.

“Better,” Tyelkormo says, “not perfect, but better.”

Prompt: Replacement (Finwe, Miriel, Indis, Finarfin, Irime, Findis.)

Summary: In Mandos, being offered rebirth and his kingship returned, Finwë instead appoints a surprising regent.

Read Prompt: Replacement (Finwe, Miriel, Indis, Finarfin, Irime, Findis.)

 “Go. Go now amongst the living as my replacement. Go as mine spouse and mine regent, and on the throne you shall sit and fair you will rule until our son is returned to me.”

Thus Finwë Noldoran’s words did ring in the ears of all who mourned and feared within the dark, for even shorn of his body the High King had Power, though used sparingly in the days of his life.

From Mandos came Míriel Þerindë, upon her head the crown of Finwë was set by Neinna, and upon his throne she sat. And though the people did cry out in outrage there was no disobeying the word of the one whose name was synonymous with kingship.

To Alqualondë she sent Arafinwë as blood-hostage to ensure there would never again be red-swelling froth along the diamond dusted shores.

To the Hall of Vairë she sent the Princesses Findis and Irimë, escorted by a guard strong and true, to weave the fates of their kinsmen and pray for intercession of said fates.

And to Taniquetil she sent Indis, with no words to her fellow Queen say "leave and never return."

Back she sent Indis, back to her brother-kin who would take her in.

Back she sent Indis with every gown and robe ever created by the swift and talented hands of the Noldor seamstresses.

Back she sent Indis with every trinket, every book, every weaving she had acquired in her days as Queen.

Back she sent Indis with the entirety of the Fair Singer's dower, not an ounce of gold less but not an ounce of gold more.

And so began the reign of Míriel Þerindë, and long did she rule, and fairly, until not only her son but all of her grandsons were returned into the embrace of her Husband Finwë.

 

---

Chapter End Notes

Did the dark and worrisome tones come creeping through this like I hoped they would? Yes? Good. Stealth dark fic is stealth.

Prompt: Justification (Finrod, Celegorm, Curufin, Celebrimbor)

Summary: The light has left my eyes and all that is left is ashes upon your tongue. Finrod’s actions, well justified, will haunt him forever.

Warnings: Gore, horror, character death.

Read Prompt: Justification (Finrod, Celegorm, Curufin, Celebrimbor)

The light has left my eyes and all that is left is ashes upon your tongue

At first the ghost is indistinct, a barely wavering thing that Finrod glimpses from the corner of his eyes, lurking in the shadows. It is a mist, never appearing in the sunlight, always gone when he tries to get closer.

Choke son of Arafinwë, choke upon my ashes. Choke upon your ill deeds.

In time it is joined by another, an even darker and harder to glimpse shadow. Then another.

They’re not always about. He can go weeks and even months without seeing them and then suddenly there they will be, gentle wisps that a stray wind banishes from his sight.

We your kin did trust you and you cast us into the darkness!

Curufin is the first to become distinct to him, dragging his body across the ground and leaving a long, growing trail of blood behind him. And his lips writhe back from his mouth in a hateful grimace, glinting sharp and ready for Finrod’s neck.

Curufin’s own neck bares a smile to replace the one not on his lips.

Bread.

Celebrimbor is the worst, his shaking hand clutching a sword, his neck at a decidedly wrong angle with a long string of droll lolling out of his mouth.

He looks so frightened.

So very frightened.

Bread to feed the stomachs of homeless innocents.

Celegorm is the last, charred all over and unrecognisable till Finrod catches sight of a familiar ring, melted into the charred, reveal bone of a finger.  Celegorm’s skin is cracked and bleeding sluggish trails of gory red down the cooked meat of his arms and legs.  He shambles along, dark eyes accusing, his hair nothing but grey ash wisps against his scalp.

There is no fight in his body, just a uneven, staggering, trudging step, with no hope of it ending in his expression, what is left of his face to express with at least.

It is a change from the beaten but defiant cousin who spat at his feet and cursed him, fire in his eyes despite his exhaustion.

Bread Findaráto.

He had done the calculations. He had worked out every way they could scrip and save and make room for the survivors. But nothing was to be done, and with a heavy heart he turned away the refugees of Himlad. He turned them away and sent them towards Himring though he managed some supplies.

Nothing more than a token really.

Bread for our lives.

Curufin he dreams of slumped against the ground and grasping from a still pale hand a sword. Valiantly he raises it, trying to fend off the leering orc with its black, crooked dagger, his body pulled protectively over Celebrimbor’s despite the torn stumps of Curufin’s legs which are pumping out his life’s blood.

Celebrimbor does not move beneath his father’s protective shelter. He does not move at all. His head is twisted about, his eyes stare at the sky, and his chest does not move.

Who dares put a price on the life of a man? Who dares calculate how much can be saved if he dies?

Celegorm he dreams of defiantly walking into the flames of a dragon, his armour melting off him, and somewhere in the smoky dream landscape he sees a slumped, charred corpse that might have been canine amongst the bodies he knows by the shape of the limbs are human. Sees the burnt out wagons and tents that are nothing more than cinder waiting for a gust of wind to break them apart.

“There is nothing left,” he hears his cousin’s silver voice sob into his head, cracked and mad with grief, “there is no one left.”

Fair and wise you were proclaimed.

“There is still no sign of the survivors from Himlad,” Orodreth reads the missive, brought by hawk wing to them.

 “Himring searches far and wide, as much as they can at this time, Hithlum searches far and wide, but nothing can be found of them. There is only scorched earth and death to be found between any of the surviving settlements. They are considered lost.”

Orodreth’s voice falters on the last word.

He closes his mouth.

Swallows.

Turns away from Finrod.

Finrod stares blankly at the tapestry on the wall of his office, stares at the branches of Laurelin and Teleperion entwined, and the festival going on beneath with mingled elves of every creed rejoicing in the light.

Fair and wise indeed.

Prompt: Avian (Tar-Miriel and OC)

Read Prompt: Avian (Tar-Miriel and OC)

“My Lady I think you should wear a pompadour,” Míriel’s little maid (new to her job and so frightened of serving royalty) insists, hands fluttering, large eyes larger than usual, and her own flat brown hair put up in a puffed up style.

“I prefer it loose,” Míriel insists. A pompadour is the latest style but she is unmarried and has no wish to twist her hair up so massively into outrageous mountains.

“I really think you should,” her maid, Míriel calls her Wren in her mind because she can never quite remember her name, insists.

Míriel sighs and glances at her. She might have dismissed the idea firmly but there is something in the frightened darting of Wren’s eyes that makes her…

“Why do you think I should put my hair in a pompadour?” she asks gently.

“Well…you see..because…” Wren’s small hand flutters up and tugs at the little coral beads in her hair, which slides out to reveal it is the end of a long hair pin… a long, very sharp, hair pin.

“I ..I don’t like the way Lord Pharazôn looks at you My Lady,” little Wren admits in a whisper.

Míriel looks at her for a long moment.

“Put as many as you can into my hair,” she turns and looks back into the mirror as Wren’s deft little hands set to work.

“My Lady?”

“Yes?”

“My Lord Father says that the best way to a man’s brain is through his eye.”

“I shall keep that in mind.”

Prompt: Shroud (Fëanáro and Míriel)

Warnings: Disturbing imagery, and Body Horror. Cannot emphasise the Body Horror enough.

Summary: As the interest in the Silmarilli grows, Fëanáro takes a drastic step to hide them from the Valar whose interest disturbs him the most.

Read Prompt: Shroud (Fëanáro and Míriel)

T’was but a shell. This Fëanáro had told himself so many times before. His hands trembled as he knelt beside her. Just a shell; no life, no person within. The casing but not what was valuable.

The maidens had long ago left to go about their business, and so he sat there in the quiet corner where his mother’s mausoleum stood, merely a roof over her body to protect her from the rare bad weather, supported by intricate pillars depicting the formation of the world through song. His mother was lying upon her bier, her face that horrifying blankness that had driven him away and meant he so rarely visited.

 He stroked her hair with a hand that was still shaking, and hated how cool the long silver tresses were. The scalp produced the most heat of a body, and hair should be warm, especially so close to the scalp. Then he moved down her body and slit open her dress over her abdomen with the sharp razor he had brought with him for this purpose. He had selected the blade for its ability to leave precise, clean cuts so fine that you could barely see them.

 It hurt to do this. It sickened him but here was the one place they would never look. He thought of their avarice, and their attempt to appropriate the symbolism of his independence from them for their own pleasure and vainglory. He could not describe it, the feeling of wrongness he felt when they beheld the jewels, or the feeling of dread. He could easily describe the anger though, and the offence. He closed his eyes, swallowed back tears, then remembering the anatomy he had studied to carefully, cut into his mother’s abdomen. There was no blood. Simply flesh. It was worse than if there had been blood.

Bile rose. He swallowed it down, and forced his hands to still entirely. He thought of the forge, of his workrooms, of his library when his work consumed him in the final stages, and left no room for mistakes.

It seemed a horrible irony, this plan of his. He had injured her via her womb before, and now it seemed he was injuring her again. Though perhaps he was returning what he had stolen in a strange way.

At first there was resistance. He had made the wound as small as possible, and used the clamp he had brought to open it up and reveal the opened organ in question. Each of the jewels was gently pushed into the flesh with some effort but at last all three were gone, their glow consumed by her empty flesh.

He froze suddenly, thinking he heard footsteps.

Matimo murmured the all clear a few moments later after Tyelkormo and Makalaurë came back, having made sure no one was near by. Fëanáro’s sons returned to keeping watch as he took the thread and needle he had brought with him, healer’s standard, and with his neatest stitches he closed the wound he had dealt her.

"I am sorry," he whispered, and with new thread and needle, glad he had remembered the colour of the dress Lorien had dressed her in, he sewed her dress shut. It seemed over kill to cover his tracks like this but he wanted to fix as much of the damage he had caused as he could. He wrapped her back in her shroud, and pulled the blanket that lay over her, heavily embroidered with the work of her own hand to form the crest of Finwë twined with her own with bright silk and gold thread.

 He stroked the repurposed tapestry which had hung in his bedroom as a child, when the days had still been warm and full of the love of both of his parents. Then at last he stood back and stared at her. She looked as she had when he had arrived, no indication of what she was now hiding within her. 

"I love you," he told Míriel, stroking Þerindë’s cheek, so soft but so wrong without the heat of life in it. He tucked his hands against each other, pushing them into his sleeves to try and warm them up, suddenly chilled right through, “I love you. Thank you.”

Prompt: Tears (OC. Melkor. Elu. Luthien. Beren. Dior. Elwing. Manwe.)

Summary: Sobbing.

Warnings: Horror.

Read Prompt: Tears (OC. Melkor. Elu. Luthien. Beren. Dior. Elwing. Manwe.)

Sobbing.

Melkor stirred restlessly from his pained sleep and stared at where his constant guest always stood right by his bed, leaning over him and nothing else.

Three eyes blinked unsynchronised and randomly, never closing at the same time, one always open and always watching him.

Blink…blink…………blink….blink, blink, blink….blink…blink,blink…………………blink…..

It was nothing more than an outline made of twisted gold and silver light, and those eyes…and the sobbing.

He could not banish the apparition, it had no form, or at least a form even he could not touch; hands sliding through it like it were vapour to a Man. Doing this had left the skin of his hands burning, and the wounds on them broken open anew. He had given up after a century, and had become quite used to ignoring it

“Shut up,” he snapped and rolled over again, seeking the rest his guest constantly denied him.

-

Sobbing.

Carcharoth howled and screamed but nothing displaced the rider upon his back. 

Hands that burned through his fur and into his skin gripped tighter. He screamed again and wished for human throat to sob as well for the pain inside and out was too much. Far too much.

He heard the howling of a Wolf-Hound hunting, and ran towards it.

-

Sobbing.

Elu could not rid himself of the vision he constantly glimpsed from the corner of his eye. Lingering behind pillars, or at the opposite end of a hallway to him. A distant glimpse in a mirror but gone when he rechecked.

Now though it was closer, lingering just to his right and he could see a faint impression of cheeks. cut deep and bleeding, and three eye shapes in a triangular formation, the top most one but an outline.

“Now see here, we are due our righ-”

"Shut up," he snapped trying to get a closer look at it and that was when the first axe gorged on his flesh

-

Sobbing.

Beren cracked open his eyes.

“Luthien,” he whispered, stiffening at what he saw, “Luthien wake up! Luthien! It is by our bed!!!”

The thing had been a presence in their house, drifting through the shadows and disappearing into hedgerows, not answering any voice or reacting to Luthien’s magic.

Luthien stirred and groaned, and he felt her entire body stiffen and knew the sharp cut off of her breath had stifled a scream.

There was a face, it might have been lovely, but it was covered in deep gauging wounds that dripped red all down a trembling chin, and two eyes of glowing silver and gold peered at them whilst a eye shaped wound dribbled gorey red down between the unmarred two.

“It has a face,” Luthien said and as if acknowledging it the creature’s sobbing picked up.

How it sobbed.

Desperate, hurt, lonely, angry sobbing.

Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing and in its hand it held the dagger Beren had taken from Curufin, the edges covered in blood.

-

Sobbing.

Dior stirred from where he’d fallen asleep at his desk, the aged missive from the sons of Fëanor before him as it had been sitting there upon his desk for however many months since it arrived.

Sobbing right by his ear.

And arms tight around his neck, and a weight upon his back, and as he stared at the missive, a drop of blood fell upon the line where Maedhros began to lay out the actions he and his brothers would take if Dior did not respond.

The chill from Winter crept through the window which had been left half open. When had he opened it? He had not, he saw the bloody handprint on the latch, and the dribbling trails of blood on the snow that had been pushed inside as a body had slithered through the impossibly small opening.

The sobbing continued, and the letter became quite blood-splattered the longer he stared at it, too afraid to move and see what it was that embracing him from behind as Nimloth sometimes did.

-

Sobbing.

Elwing fled.

It was chasing her! It was chasing her! She ran, heedless of the destruction around her, and as she felt burning fingertips brush her nape she dove into the ocean, leaving the nightmare that had tormented her since childhood to stand on the cliff and watch usessly.

Sobbing all the while.

-

Sobbing.

Who entered the palace of Manwë?

Who cried with such hopeless pain.

He did not often indulge his raiment, but the Lord of Arda had taken a quick rest beneath the eaves of one of the pines that grew gnarled and twisted in knots in his garden. There was movement near him, and he felt a hand skim up his thigh.

He opened his eyes to stare into three gaping eyesockets, one dribbling constant brine scented tears, one twisted into a burn scar and the third empty, so empty that the wind seemed to catch on it’s ragged scarred edges, creating a howling moaning noise that sank into the skin and buzzed.

“Who art thou?” he asked, drawing himself away from the apparition but it only crawled closer; shuffling on it’s knees.

He looked beyond the striations of scars across the face and saw the visage of one long gone.

“Whatever it is thou wants Fëanáro,” he said, wondering how this one had slipped from the void when even Melkor could do no such thing, “it will not be given to thee.”

No response.

He reached out and his hands stung.

The creature sobbed and he reassessed whether it was the wandering, escaped fëa of the damned son of Finwë. The Finwion would never have cried such when one might have seen him. No, he would not have allowed this ragged mewling like a infant abandoned to escape him.

“What art thou? Speak creature!” he commanded, enforcing his words with the Power of authority given to him by Father.

Opening its face like a rotted bloody wound from ear to ear it smiled at him and began to laugh.

Prompt: Motivation (Tatie. OC.)

Summary: For there must be a reason for the suffering, even in Cuivienen they wonder why.

Warnings: Pagan Elves, thoughts about cannabalism (blink and you’ll miss it), starvation, death

Read Prompt: Motivation (Tatie. OC.)

“Atu’me,” Tatië whispers through cracked lips on a bloody tongue gone heavy, “Atu’me would not mean suffering like this to happen without good cause.” They are such pretty words, she is mother to most of them, mother to most of them as she is mother to the two children infront of her.

No one answers her. No one cares to talk any more.

Tatië’s stomach is concave and she looks down at ragged nails with torn bleeding nailbeds, black flesh peeling away from cloudy, unhealthy nails, then tries to pick up her sons without hurting them with those nails. Atu’me would not mean for this suffering to happen, she tells herself, laying Min against one thigh and Mor against the other. They do not cry anymore, they just make sad noises as though even breathing is a chore for them. She does not have the strength anymore to give them long names, to make up poetry for the beauty of their existence – the first two children born to them, the first two children perhaps that will fade away as some already have with wide open eyes and insects crawling over their faces undisturbed.

And Tata is turning into a wrath. His skin is turning yellow and his bones protrude, oh how they protrude, through his skin and she wants to scream each time they find pathetic roots or leaves they can chew to fight the hunger and he gives the children his own. She wants to scream, she wants to scream so badly but that noise requires energy she does not have.

The stars are blossoming again. She has lost the joy she thought she would never forget from her first sight of them unfurling white-blue petals against the dark field they were in and turning the spaces between them bright and brilliant red, blue, and purple.

There is movement and one of those who leaves and goes, or used to leave and go, slinks away from a pile of limbs that is her Other and her children, sallow pale skin stretching so tightly over ribs and shoulders that it tears, it tears enough to make Tatië think of meat.

She swallows down saliva and looks down at her boys, stroking the matting curls on their heads. She’s lost the will to comb their hair with her fingers. She can only stroke with flattened palms, not delving into where the knots are.

The hasty barrier they have woven from branches and reeds and barricaded themselves within further with rocks shakes and draws soft cries of fear from most still awake but it is only the one Tatië saw earlier, tearing a hole in the barrier with fingers crooked into claws.

“What are you doing?” Tatië moans and rises, piling her children against the other’s children and forcing Tata to lie down beside the other’s Other so that the children are between the two large bodies. It’s not safety, Tatië cannot call it safety anymore but it sooths her to see the children there.

“Better to fight then give up,” there is a flash of dirty pale skin and the other has crawled through the hole she made and is away, into the darkness beyond the branches, into the darkness where Chaos is stalking them with long pale nails it likes to flay their skin from their bones with.

Tatië barely remembers the name of the one that goes before her with the pale hair shining through the filth that coats it. Ilmarinë, she thinks, perhaps that is the correct name. Or something close to it.

Better to fight than give up.

The words ring and perhaps this, she realises, is why Atu’me, whose bones fell to this earth and whose spirit still weeps for them, allowed for this suffering to happen in the universe of their still living womb. If she cannot fight does she deserve to walk the world that the Mother and Father of All of What the Mind Comprehends dreamed for them?

Prompt: Mess (Feanor. Fingolfin.)

I believe someone once, a long time ago, prompted me a Modern Feanor and Fingolfin with pizza but I lost the prompt and this took a life of its own so it falls in the AU Drabbles.

Summary: It’s an overwhelming life but they’ve made it this far.

Read Prompt: Mess (Feanor. Fingolfin.)

The creativity of the punishments of fate was amazing.Nolofinwë’s head was throbbing from the drone of the lecturer’s voice, despite hislectures being an hour on the bus behind him (including a stop at the shops to get the eclectic shopping list texted to his phone.)

The smell of tomato and oregano hit his nose the moment he walked in the house, with an underlying touch of bread. The dulcet tones of an American singer filled the living room and he poked his head into it to see Findekáno curled up next to Tyelkormo, both toddlers still dressed in their kindy uniforms. The credits were rolling, while frogs jumped down the sides of the artistically rendered swampland on either side of the words.

“Ah!” Tyelkormo saw him and his chubby small face broke into a grin. “More.”

The toddler held up a bright coloured DVD.

“Atto? Atto! Welcome home! Welcome home!” Findekáno scrambled off the couch to wrap around Nolofinwë’s legs

“Nolofinwë is that you?” a voice asked from the kitchen, Fëanáro stuck his head through the cut through, “could you put the next DVD on, I promised them one each because it’s end of term.”

Then his head disappeared again.

Nolofinwë eyed the kitchen with a feeling ominous dread but changed the DVD and set it up to play.

“read the charges”

“Dr Jumba Jokiba lead scientist-”

He headed into the kitchen to face down his brother.

The kitchen was… he couldn’t really describe it. The kitchen looked like it had been the target of prolonged warfare involving flour and tomatoes.

Fëanáro looked up. There were perfectly round and flattened disks of thin dough covered in a red sauce, probably the tomatoes, sitting on wooden things he could only describe as…. Thick paddles, and in the oven he espied two more of the round flattened disks, with what looked like sausages and nameless green things on them

Fëanáro gave him a defiant look as Nolofinwë looked down at the assorted toppings sitting in bowls that his brother was assembling pizzas (that is what Nolofinwë vaguely remembered them being called. Or vaguely remembered the cheesy monstrosities he had eaten in the early days of their life here being called.)

“I thought we gave up pizza after we discovered what they meant by a double stuffed crust,” Nolofinwë edged his way around the counters to peer properly into the oven.

“I saw it on the TV today,” Fëanáro shrugged a shoulder.

“Those two portly women you enjoy watching?”

“No, a program involving a loud woman with an accent.”

That summarised the majority of the cooking programmes that Fëanáro watched throughout the day. When he was not watching documentaries about all the strange and unique places that this… he did not know it was arda but it certainly was the world.

His brother’s lifestyle meant that he was the one usually in charge of cooking meals and taking care of their young sons reborn… and also earning their sole income.

Nolofinwë wasn’t quite sure what it was Fëanáro was doing when he locked himself away in his room for hours on end with his computer, Fëanáro had said he was “playing the markets” and had gone into a long spiel about currency exchange but had swiftly lost Nolofinwë by talking too fast.

There was also the many, many patents; their monthly visit to the patent office, since apparently Fëanáro could make a living on the internet but didn’t trust an online submission system, was the highlight of at least Matimo’s month since they also went to the national museum.

Every-time.

Either way their living was good, and if Ñolofinwë’s pride was being stung again and again by being provided for by Fëanáro, well the sting was less and less each time.    

He managed their accounts anyway and had a better head for dealing with taxes when taxes came around. He was working his way through an accounting degree (that Fëanáro had taken one longing look at the university website then written the check for without anything else said.)

They gave generously to several shelters and help lines

Because in stinking, urine drenched hallways was where they had found one another again, hollow eyed and desperate. His brother’s hair had been a half hacked off mess, Ñolofinwë’s eyes had both been bruised from a fight on the streets for a safe place to sleep. The shelter had given them a room for a night, and a bowl of beans, and two pieces of toast.

A bathroom where they didn’t have to worry as much about being attacked though the danger was still there.

It had been more than enough, though back onto the streets they’d gone the next day. And when Fëanáro had gone own the dark rabbit hole of his mind as they had walked though the barren stinking wasteland that made up the Edain ideas of a City Scape, it had been a warm voice on the end of a phone number glowing from a bright tattered sticker on a public telephone. Call collect. Ñolofinwë’s terror tumbling down the line as Fëanáro burned to death inside his head again and again.

They had a nice lawyer who insisted they call her Rachel (they settled for a Ms in front of it. Fëanáro was too stuck in his ways to address someone with such academic pedigree without a title) who handled a lot of the law to do with the patents they had. There had been a few copyright infringements, a few out and out thefts that had led to more money than Ñolofinwë felt was sensible but it had paid for the house, moving them from a dingy flat above a chip shop, and it had paid for the children as they had come along, and it paid also for Ms Rachel who had first taken them on when her older associates had pushed the case onto her.

They liked her; Ms Rachel. She had dinner with them with her husband once a month, and didn’t remark on their small shrine in the corner of the living room, where they tried to pray to Eru but usually failed. (It was Nolofinwë who had insisted they make it and he regretted it sometimes… most of the times.)

Ms Rachel once tried to bring up the lawsuits being launched by those who had been grossly mistreated by the ‘Church’. But once he had gently but firmly denied that idea she had let it be, though she had mentioned that seeing one’s abusers bought to some kind of justice could be the only healing some people would accept

Nolofinwë knew what she was getting at but Fëanáro’s (and his when he cared to admit it) abusers were so far out of reach it was laughable.

Once he had come home with a book entitled the ‘Black Dog’ which Tyelkormo had insisted be read to him despite how it was not actually a child’s book. Fëanor’s third son had refused to take no for an answer, especially since it concerned dogs.

They were piecing themselves a life, a strangely harmonious life. They had talked about what happened, when they were hungry on the streets and their eyes shone brighter than the tepid streetlights above them.

They’d fought about it.

Broken a few bones about it.

Screamed themselves hoarse about it.

Had the police called on them about it.

The children they found in the strangest places. Matimo fell off a roof into Fëanáro’s arms, and Findekáno turned up on their doorstep in a basket. Makalaurë was found in their recycling bin, a chubby, gleeful toddler, and Tyelkormo had been living at the bottom of their garden when they finally noticed their fledgling vegetable garden stripped bare. He had been chewing on a rabbit carcass when they had first spotted him, and had growled like a dog when they tried to coax him out of the warren he’d made under the garden shed.

The strangest one had been Carnistir when one week ago Fëanáro had cut open a cabbage and the baby had just fallen out, neat as could be.

Ñolofinwë wasn’t upset by the imbalance of children yet. His children had more reason, perhaps more chance, of rebirth in the West after all.

Fëanáro confessed he did not think the twins would ever show up. It had been over vast quantities of German beer at a pub down the street while their neighbour had been kind enough to babysit.

For all of the children Ms Rachel was the most obliging and discrete lawyer to exist in the whole world, though they were sure there were times she wavered, wondering if she should discus it with another authority. In fact she probably thought that about them often.

In fact she probably should have but the Child Services people have hovered on the edges but never quite intruded into their lives.

However DNA tests are magical things and they’re both willing to put up with a reputation of being slightly stupid and incredibly selfish idiots known for impregnating women who then abandon their children on them later.

Their neighbour thought they had a surrogate.

Whatever that meant.

“Do we need all of these done right now?” Ñolofinwë decided to ask

“No but it means when the other boys get home we can just shove them in the oven and get them done by the time they’ve unpacked their bags,” Fëanáro suddenly looked up, that extra sense of his alerting him just in time for Tyelkormo’s soft wail to suddenly reach the kitchen.

Nolofinwë followed to see what was causing the distress in the child.

There was an animated animal shelter on the screen. Tyelkormo was crying, rubbing at his eyes and reaching at the screen while Findekáno watched with large eyes.

“What’s wrong Turko?” Fëanáro swung his son up into his arms.

“Huan,” Tyelkormo hiccupped wetly, “Huaaaan.”

There was a sigh and Fëanáro kissed between Tyelkormo’s eyes, mumbling to him in Quenya.

“Can you handle the boys when they get home?” Fëanáro asked him as his son settled in to wail good and proper against his shoulder. Ñolofinwë nodded and withdrew, giving them awkward privacy. He rolled up his sleeves and decided to clean the kitchen as much as he could.