"A Song About Kingfishers" & "Kingfisher in Flight" by Himring

The door of Feanaro’s study slammed shut behind him.  Nolofinwe’s glare slid away from the impervious oak and hit Maitimo, who had just come into the hallway with a drawing in his hand that he had meant to show his father. Maitimo shook his head in confusion, his ears ringing a little as if he had been slapped. Nolofinwe gave an angry snort and stormed out of the house.

Maitimo looked at the drawing in his hand and discovered what he guessed he should have known already. Even if it had not evidently been the wrong moment, his drawing of a kingfisher in flight was not good enough to show his father. Looking at it dispassionately—now that the first flush of creation had passed—what he saw was an engaging enthusiasm in the underlying sketch, several flaws in the execution and a distinct lack of originality overall.

He swallowed his disappointment and, drawing still in hand, wandered out into the garden where he found Makalaure, who had somehow escaped his mother’s supervision again, sitting on his behind in the dirt and mulling over the question whether he was lost and whether he should start yelling now or maybe put it off a bit.

‘Look, Kano, I drew a bird’, said Maitimo and showed him the drawing.

Kano’s face lit up.

‘Bird’, he said and reached out and grabbed.

In no time, the paper had crumpled and torn in his pudgy little fists.

‘Bird gone’, said Kano uncertainly.

He felt this was a greater crisis, potentially, than being lost.

‘No’, said Maitimo soothingly, picking him up and settling him in the crook of his arm, ‘the bird is not gone, Kano. It’s still out there.’ He pointed off into the hazy distance where—somewhere—kingfishers flew and dived.

He began carrying Kano up and down the garden path, singing a song to him about kingfishers. It wasn’t a very good song and he didn’t sing it very well, but that did not matter, because Kano liked Maitimo to sing to him. Kano cuddled against him to listen.

They forgot about the drawing. Rain came and washed away the colours and soaked the paper. Their father’s anger lasted longer than that.

Work Text:

Nerdanel frowned. There was something she had forgotten, she felt sure--not a rare occurrence, right now!

Feanaro? No--Feanaro was all right, as much as he could be, tonight. He had finally calmed down after that last shouting-match with his brother--half-brother, he kept insisting, despite the fact that it was a typical quarrel among siblings: a sizable volcano erupting from some microscopic molehill, a drama in seven acts about nothing much at all. And besides, she thought she had already spotted the glint of a new project in his eye.

Makalaure? No, baby Kano was all right, too. He had escaped her vigilance only five times today--it had been six the day before--and had been successfully located and retrieved twice by herself, twice by Maitimo and once by Feanaro before he had managed to do himself any damage--although, that one time, he had taken quite a lot of convincing that he hadn't. Now he slept peacefully in his cot. 

Maitimo? Nerdanel went looking for her older son.

She found him rinsing the dishes. This set off a familiar train of worry, because she wasn't sure just how many nights running he had been doing the washing-up, but she batted that thought away. That, she was fairly sure, was not what she had forgotten.

'Maitimo?'

Her son looked around and, to her relief, it finally came to her.

'That drawing you mentioned--a drawing you were going to do--what happened with that?'

Maitimo blinked at her. He looked almost as tired as she felt.

'Drawing?'

Not clear enough--she tried to focus more closely on the memory that had been eluding her.

'Bird. You were planning to draw a bird, I think?'

His face changed, but in a way that disturbed her.

'Oh that. It wasn't very good.'

He shrugged.

'Will you let me have a look, anyway?'

He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead.

'I can't. I gave it to Kano...'

'Gave it to Kano?'

Proud mother of two that she was, the artist in her was--just a little--horrified.

'It was a kingfisher, wasn't it?' she remembered. 'It was a kingfisher you were going to draw?'

'Yes,' said Maitimo. 'A kingfisher.'

He looked upwards for a moment. There were the remains of soap suds clinging to his hands. 

'A kingfisher in flight...'

The new sculpture was called 'Kingfisher in Flight'.

'It's not a bird, actually,' noted young Penlod. 'It's a boy.'

Salgant, his companion, stepped heavily on his foot.

'What did you do that for?'

Salgant didn't answer. He was gazing fixedly at Nerdanel's latest statue.

The boy's features were indeterminate, almost unformed. He was raised up on his toes, his spine arced gracefully, but most of the expression was in the hands. They were lifted up before him and appeared to be about to take off straight into the sky.

Salgant fetched up a sigh. It came from somewhere deep down and stuck halfway in his throat.

Nerdanel was feeling a little sick. It had seemed so intuitively right while she was working on it! Like something understood. 

And everyone had been extremely complimentary about the result--including her son. Too precocious by half, her Maitimo--he had gravely commented on the quality of her work in terms as polished and eloquent as if he were Rumil himself.

Only, he hadn't at any point seemed to acknowledge... Maybe she had simply been wrong to do it. Art, after all, did not justify everything.

Now everyone had left and it was quiet. Maitimo looked over at her.

'He doesn't look like me', he said. 'I didn't lift up my hands like that, either.'

Suddenly he darted towards her--an awkward peck of a kiss glanced off her cheekbone--and, quick as a bird, he was away and fled down the hallway.

Chapter End Notes

Besides being a direct sequel to "Song of Kingfishers", this could also be read as a (less direct) prequel to my story "Waste Paper".

This story basically happened when a half-formed response of mine to a comment by Samtyr on "Song of Kingfishers" (on AO3) somehow collided with my regret that I hadn't managed to write anything for the Skills and Talents prompt posted at this year's Legendarium Ladies April.

[To clarify, just in case: the part about the "microscopic molehill" refers to the immediate occasion of the brotherly shouting-match. That is, not Miriel's death, the underlying issue, which Nerdanel would not be disposed to make light of.]