50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

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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. 

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“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?”

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“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. 

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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.