He held precious silver in his fist. by Urloth

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He held precious silver in his fist.

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Ilvanindil knew all of the risks, of course she did. She was a healer and when finally she sensed the presences inside her and found two, she had been alarmed, knowing the risks of a first time birth coupled with a twinning to be high.

Yet she had hoped. This was no draining pregnancy like her father-in-law’s had been to his mother. As the months progressed everything developed naturally and she wallowed in the sensation of those two little presences inside her, waking Curufinwë up in the middle of reverie when they were particularly active.

Two children, she had thought in delight, and one a girl, much needed in this male heavy family. Poor thing was going to be spoiled rotten.

“We will have to make sure they do not wrap her up in silk and weight her down with gemstones,” her mother-in-law laughed with her, “and make sure her poor brother does not feel jealous because she will surely garner more attention than him.”

That was how her pregnancy was, the whole year, slightly concerned for it was her first and twins, but happy, laughing and confident that she and they would be alright.

But they were not.

Ilvanindil awoke from a drugged sleep, empty and in pain beyond her expectations.

Her husband was at her side, his hand twinned through hers and his lips on her knuckles. He held a bundle to his chest, wrapped up in blankets embroidered with the crest of Finwë and Fëanáro.

A bundle.

Just the one.

Just her little boy who was a bright star presence in her mind.

“Where is she?” Ilvanindil whispered.

Curufinwë raised his head, eyes tearless but there was heartbreak in the shape of his mouth, and Ilvanindil heard herself screaming denial before he had finished the first word.

Why? Had the umbilical cord caught? Had the placenta choked her?

Curufinwë did not know.

Had she been born first? Second?

Curufinwë did not know this either.

Ilvanindil felt the grief come upon her like pillow pressed down over her face and she suffocated.

Sometime had passed when she arose from the fugue of denial and grief, dragged forcibly out of it by the sound of a child screaming lustily for food.

“Have you named him?” she asked, voice wavering as she guided her son to her breasts and watched him latch on. His movements were sluggish and weak compared to what she had expected. She fancifully imagined he too was grieving the sister that had been his companion for the year within Ilvanindil’s womb.

“No,” Curufinwë shook his head, “we said we would decide together when they were born, and that is what we shall do… my family have been visiting. They are all assembled outside in fact.”

“I don’t want to see them,” she said, suddenly repulsed at the thought of leaving this room; of sharing her space with anyone more than Curufinwë and their children.

“Then you do not have to,” he replied looking away out the window sightlessly. Then a sigh shuddered through him. “Father is devastated.”

His father was devastated. Ilvanindil knew the natural reaction to this would be fury at Curufinwë for bringing his father into this but instead she felt relief and kinship with her fey father-in-law, for Curufinwë’s eyes were dry and…

“Father is devastated,” her husband repeated, “and you are devastated, the whole family is devastated, grandfather collapsed, mother cannot speak and I cannot think for grief Ilvanindil but…” his face crumpled and his voice broke, “I am so happy at least one of our children survived. Do you understand Ilvanindil? I am sorry I cannot cry for our little girl yet because all I can do is thank Eru for tiny mercies because we came so close to losing our little boy as well, yet we did not.”

“Forgive me,” he begged, still tearless but he was grieving as well. The tiny bud of hatred for him died.

“I want to see her,” she said instead, “don’t tell me the healers took her away.”

“They wanted to; they said it was not healthy for you to see her and that in seeing her you would focus on the dead and not the living. But father would not let them, he said that was a decision you should make.”

“Bless your father,” she said, “I want to see her.”

“Of course.”

He walked over to a cradle that was to the side of the bed, beneath the warm golden light of Laurelin and picked up another little bundle the size of her son. She sat for a while, not daring to look down, the warm weight of her son in one arm, filled with the unconscious movement of living, and the weight of her daughter in the other, no warmth, no chill, and no movement.

“Curufinwë,” she begged, “tell me what she looks like.”

“She is beautiful,” Curufinwë told her, “she has your nose, and my mouth, your mother’s chin and definitely my father’s eyebrows,” he took a shaking breath, “and her hair is silver.”

Ilvanindil made herself look down.

Curufinwë was right, she was beautiful, so very beautiful and her hair peeking out of her blankets in downy tufts was the silver of captured starlight and old wishes.

Noldor silver, a rare colouring that was different from the silver of the Royal Teleri or the white-blonds of the Vanyar. The colour of a Queen, not a pretender.

“Just like your grandmother,” she murmured, “Tatyamíriel.”

“A good name.”

“The name of a princess,” agreed Ilvanindil and took an unsteady breath. She leant down and kissed the skin of her daughter’s forehead, humming a lullaby for little ears to never hear. It took some effort and time to relinquish Tatyamíriel back to her father.

Curufinwë sat, quietly rocking the baby in his arms for a while, then his head bent, black falling forwards around his face like a curtain and he finally cried, shoulders heaving as he sobbed, raw and roughly.

That was how they spent the next few hours. But eventually their son demanded another feeding, and a change, and they attended to those respective needs.

“Do you want my family to leave?” Curufinwë asked as the lights began to mingle, “they are still in the house.”

“I will see Tyelkormo if he is here,” Ilvanindil could stand the brother who was closest emotionally to her husband. Tyelkormo was very, very good at pretending not to be a Fëanorion if the situation called for it.

Tyelkormo came into the room making her immediately regret her decision for she would forever be ashamed of how she broke down when he entered the room and the light caught upon the Noldor silver of his hair and…

And it just was not fair.

Why had this happened? Why her little girl? Why her Tatyamíriel?

“Ca…” Tyelkormo cleared his throat, rubbing her back and helping her sit up in the aftermath, “Carnistir had to help with the delivery. The healers yanked him into the room when they saw his hands.”

Ilvanindil thought of Carnistir’s hands, long and narrow, very dexterous and perfect for getting into difficult places. She choked on a wet giggle at the thought.

“Did he say which one of them was born first?” she asked.

“He said,” Tyelkormo licked his lips of the salt of his own tears, “he said that they were born together, face to face and arms over each other, as though embracing.”

“No wonder I hurt so much,” Ilvanindil murmured.

“Yes,” Tyelkormo agreed, “no wonder.”

"Have you all held her?" she asked.

"Yes," Tyelkormo sighed, "we all have. We have all said our goodbyes."

"If you would like to hold her again, you may," Ilvanindil offered.

He held her Tatyamírel for over an hour, touching her hair repeatedly and humming a tuneless hunting song under his breath.

Ilvanindil glanced down at the swaddled bundle in her arms after he had left. Her living child was awake, lying quietly in against her chest and occasionally hiccupping. There was viscera still smeared around the edges of his face. He’d clearly not been bathed, only quickly wiped down before being wrapped up.

“You held your sister in your arms for a year baby,” she murmured, undoing his wrappings and reaching for the wet cloth that had been left for her to wipe her face with should she cry some more, “longer than the rest of us. Yet you won’t be able to remember it. How cruel is Eru that he does this to us?”

She stroked his sides and up to his tiny arms with the wet cloth and paused. His hands, perfect though miniscule and already showing a fineness of bone that mimicked his Uncle Carnistir’s, twitched before her eyes. She had not seen them before, they had been tucked into his swaddling securely but now she saw the little digits, still sticky with remnants of birthing fluid.

Silver glittered between his fingers which curled up into a fist as though to hide their treasure from her. Gently she tugged away the small strands of downy hair.

He began to cry, long mournful shrieks of unmistakable loss to her ears.

Quickly she bundled him up, tucking him to her chest and as Curufinwë came stumbling into the room with his haste to see if there was a problem, she began to cry as well, head throbbing from dehydration but her body still finding ample tears to shed.

“Tyelperinquar,” she told her husband, having wrapped the cobweb like strands of hair around her wedding ring so she would not lose them.

“Silver-fist?”

“That is his name,” she said, “that is what he shall be called. You may pick another name containing Finwë but I shall call him Tyelperinquar.”

“Then Tyelperinquar he shall be,” Curufinwë said without argument and without prompting he took up their daughter from her cradle a final time; for Tatyamíriel’s funeral pyre had been assembled in the Eru home and the priests would come for her soon to place her on it;  they would not see their daughter again until the funeral.

She moved slowly, painfully to the edge of the bed, ignoring his protests, so that she could sit beside him properly, his arm around her and hers around him and their children in their arms.