50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

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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.

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“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.”

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“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.”