The Beginning of the End by Urloth

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Part Three.

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The rain which had been a prelude the morning of his father’s departure, came back with extra as they crossed the border and made their way towards the house of Galadriel.

They moved amongst the early, broken refuges of Doriath. Liltafinwë, whose heart had disappeared from his chest overnight, found not an ounce of sympathy for them within himself.

Not when the world conspired to take his father from him.

Physically.

Mentally.

And now legally.

“Inglorion,” he repeated dully to Hlusserë. “She knows who my father is. Why must I call myself Inglorion?”

“The prince didn’t tell him,” someone whispered hoarsely at the back of their little caravan, and Hlusserë’s face twisted in horror.

Of course, he might have guessed, in time, at the truth. There were little clues; little nuggets of information scattered through his memories which he had discarded.

The smell of his mother’s grief had always been fir tree and white rose; the scent rising from a foreign white silk tunic with yellow sapphires around the neck which she said had come from Nargothrond.

But that had been when he had been young. And the smell of her own damask rose had pleased his nose more, and he had never thought much about the tunic. In time she did not take it out so often. In time she stopped weeping quietly when they were alone and she did not have to be strong for everyone.

In time…

In time his mother had …

She had disappeared. And his father had replaced her. Gildor had not minded, nor ever mourned this. Nothing had changed for him despite the switch over. His uncles continued to cherish him with an endless well of deep love, and his father's love had been a warm blanket to wrap around himself as he snuggled into Tyelkormo's arms during the bitterly cold nights in Himring.

He did not react outwardly to the news. He remained stiff and unmoving on his horse. Then he turned away from them all and would not speak for the rest of the day.

The day they reached his aunt’s house was especially heinous. As the lightening flashed and thunder roared, he pulled the seal furs he wore tighter around his body. The rain was beating against him like fists.

He remembered how his father had taken him away when the hunters had gone sealing, not liking their methods. But ever practical he had still taken the offerings of fur, and the marvellous smoked silver of the furs had been complimented by the silk lining with bands of blue embroidered waves inside.

Quietly his father and uncle had wondered if it was cruelty to sew the ocean upon the skins of gentle creatures who would never return to it. Then shrugging Uncle Moryo had said that he had simply sewn what inspired him.

Anybody who thought princes could not, and should not sew, were clearly not friends of Uncle Moryo, not that he seemed to have many friends.

He said he had inherited the skill from his grandmother, and that he was not ashamed of what he could do with silk thread and cloth. Liltafinwë had never stopped to ask why people thought Caranthir should be ashamed.

His ears ached slightly from the weight of the earrings through them. Hlusserë had taken out the plain gold rings marching up the side of his ears, all six, and the ones through his lobes, and replaced them with heavier and more expensive jewellery.

A lot of it looked like it had come from Uncle Moryo’s cache of dwarrow tax pieces.

His observation was correct.

And that was how he had discovered that the news had come down the line that his uncle was dead.

Who else was gone?

Did it matter?

No one mattered after his father. They were drops into an overflowing bucket.

Or so he had thought, steeling himself for any more bad news, but the news of Caranthir’s dead hurt like a punch to his throat, and left him wheezing and breathless.

But why the jewellery?

“We have to make sure she knows you are wealthy in your own right,” gentle Moicalócë explained, weaving mithril chains with hanging opal drops through his hair so they hung down like a diadem upon his forehead. She was his father’s accountant and she had always had a way of understanding Finwean minds that made her the go-to for translating the latest Fëanorion upset.

“She needs to know that if she turns you away, you do not care. She needs to know you are doing this as a favour to her. Not her to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The house of Arafinwë,” Moicalócë explained, “has exactly one member living in Middle Earth right now. Well two, you as well, but your Father denied her custody of you when she asked about you. She is alone, save for you.”

Father had kept him.

Father had wanted him as a son. Not as a replacement for a brother lost.

That was what Liltafinwë read into her words.

She wrapped a great necklace around his neck, loops and loops of diamonds upon segmented platinum.

Whispers started up when the caravan saw his tunic pulled back so his neck was well displayed in its garish glory. “Felagund adorned himself so.”

It was hard not to rip the necklace off.

“Did he?” he asked.

“Yes,” Moicalócë confirmed, “he preferred tunics that framed his neck, and he would adorn his throat with necklaces of great beauty and detail. It was a unique preference of his.”

Liltafinwë pulled a face then realised why she had adorned him so. He had to look like this faceless sire for his …aunt. Moicalócë was not as sure of their welcome as she had made herself sound.

They left most of the group to find accommodation and hostelry at a nearby inn, and Liltafinwë walked the distance to his aunt’s house with only three people, wise Moicalócë, loyal Hlusserë, and kind Hunaiwë.

Moicalócë knocked upon the door. There were words. Shouting. Someone ran for someone else and then he saw her for the first time.

She was… beautiful, tall and of course, she was proud.  She held herself almost in the same way as his father and uncles, but he could not feel anything about that. He did not know what to feel about her at all.

The lightening flashed about them, and the rain continued to fall. He glared in consternation, confused by her.

“Findaráto,” she breathed suddenly.

His throat caught and his back stiffened in outrage. Too late she realised her mistake but the damage was already done, and their relationship took a great deal of time to ever leave the awkward, frigid beginning of it.

-

News of the final death came five days later.

It was brought by one of the infamous female Lords who had found power beneath the star of Fëanor.

Sárómë rode into the town with no care for the Fëanorion stars blazing on her armour. Her beautiful face was further slashed, black lines of stitching crisscrossing the older scars. She cradled a sodden lump of silk in her arms.

Galadriel’s husband had words about the housing of one of the lords that had just attacked his home. Who had murdered his people. Hearing his grief, Liltafinwë felt a flicker of unease, for a first time, about Doriath.

“It is for Gildor,” he heard his aunt whisper, crouching behind her solar door to eavesdrop.

“Why is it for Gildor?”

“Because it is for Gildor she came!” snapped his aunt, “she shan’t be here long!”

Sárómë slept for three days, awoke on the fourth and presented him with three standards.

The first was her own, a black pine tree against a green background. The second was the standard of Prince Morafinwë, four black eight pointed stars on a scarlet background. The final one was of her own Prince Curufinwë, a white eight pointed star within another white eight pointed star upon a black background.

“What of my father?” he asked her.

“The gardens he went into after Dior were set alight,” she shook her head, “nothing has been recovered.”

She took his hand and kissed the ring finger. “I will return,” she promised, “when you are of age. And you will have my allegiance.”

Then she stood. Out of the door she walked that day, still as beautiful as a child’s doll beneath her scars; shining black hair, blue eyes and pink lips. He did not see her again, as promised, until he was of age.

Sárómë had fought in Alqualondë when her father tried to turn her back, and she had crossed the sea and watched swan ships blaze. She had lost her father, her two brothers, three male cousins and a nephew before finally Curufinwë had placed the standard of her family in her arms and pronounced her his Lord.

She was not the only lord to have such a history.

She and Hunaiwë of all his uncles followers had been brave and not stayed, unlike those cowards until their deaths, those traitorous people who deserved their fate. in Nargothrond.

Laureyávë arrived next. These female Lords of the Feanorions moved with impunity. They were fierce, feminine and fatal to those who underestimated them. This had been the downfall of many an enemy. Doriath had been no different.

But as always, people forgot of them in the aftermath. If they did not wear their armour they were not questioned by the border guards; people paid them no mind at all.

Sárómë had taken advantage of the confusion to ride in her armour, but Laureyávë was forced to adopt a dress for her travels.

She licked blood from her cracked lips, and watched his aunt from the corner of her eye. Laureyávë’s hair shone a lurid gold; brightly and cheerfully Vanyar gold. Her father had, had the honour of being the husband of Ingwë’s favourite niece, and her mother the dishonour of not being Ingwë’s favourite niece.

Shame-born Laureyávë had fought for a title at Fëanáro’s coming of age ceremonies and she had been triumphant. Never had she looked back at the spineless man who had abandoned her mother and her. Never had she bowed her head again to a Vanyar, or any with Vanyarin colouring.

She and his aunt sneered at each other, and moved around one another like predators.

She presented him with a missive from his uncles. Then she left, blowing a kiss at Celeborn who went almost puce in response.

The missive was nothing important. An official declaration of what he had already found out.

We love you, said the final line.

We love you. Be good for Cousin Artanis.

I will be good for you, he promised.

Linquemaril arrived a month after the war. Her patch was set at a jaunty angle across her face and her hair like Laureyávë’s, brilliant in the thin sunlight; it was Vanyarin gold thanks to a Vanyar grandmother

She would not enter the house, not that Liltafinwë though his aunt would let her in. Linquemaril's father had been Arafinwë’s lord, but he had NOT turned back, and so had sworn himself to Fëanáro. She had been her father’s only child to follow.

Upon her breast blazed the diamond and sapphire token of Arafinwë’s vassal lord. His aunt had pressed her hand against the doorframe when she saw it, whilst inside the house all the crockery began to vibrate.

Linquemaril brought Lavarrísë, his father's female lord, with her, tied to her waist in fact so she would not fall off. Scary and mighty Lavarrisë, who had been laid low by two arrows to the backs of her knees, and then a cutting blow to a tendon in her back. She had laid in the mud, barely alive, people running over her until Linquemaril had realised she lived.

There was no glory in war.

Liltafinwë found it very hard to not hate Moicalócë in the aftermath of this. Why did Moicalócë get her wife back? Why not Liltafinwë’s father? And Lavarrísë was one of his father’s lords. She was meant to fall before him!

“I failed,” said Lavarrísë to him, unable to look at him for shame. Her hair was limp against the pillows of the cot she lay in and seemed to have lost its oak-wood glow, almost like the mud she had nearly drowned in had come with her and merged with her mane.

She gave him his father’s gauntlet which she had recovered. An arrow strike had deformed the metal.

What sort of arrows had the damn Þindar been firing?!

It had lost its flexibility, the metal plating forced down where it had cut the top of the hand. Not deeply but enough to stain the metal.

The gripping leather across the palm had been completely ripped off as well. His father must have simply discarded it, finding he had a better grip with bare skin and more flexibility.

“He could have worn his ring after all,” Liltafinwë choked and fled.

The ring's weight pulled the chain tight against the back of his neck, and it leapt against his tunic with every step; a reminder for all he had lost.

Lavarrísë’s appearance, before she and Moicalócë disappeared together, broke the shock he lived in; smashing the cotton-wool wrapped world, he had been half drifting in, to pieces.

Nightmares pursued him. They were horrible things that would have him dry heaving by the end of the night, his sweat sodden, clammy skin burning under the touch of whoever came to assist him.

Then to make matters worse, Morohen, his father's other lord, arrived, with his Cuiviénen eyes like Tyelkormo’s. He came with a banner of silk that was completely untouched. It unfurled to reveal a compass rose.

“Commissioned by your father before he left. I picked it up from the merchant before I arrived. He wished for you to travel beneath something more than a star, for stars can burn out,” Morohen murmured, gaze far away. His cheek had been bisected and then sewn up. Half of his thick, black curls had been burnt away.

He brought Liltafinwë a final gift, a twisted, melted piece of metal that ended in a barely preserved tip, engravings of Teleperion’s leaf just visible, which identified it as his father’s word.

Without a word Morohen disappeared and a spate of unfortunate deaths occurred amongst the refugee population. They were all Lords and people of former high status who had encouraged Dior to deny the Fëanorions.

He saw Morohen once more during that reign of terror; the Lord came sliding like a shadow into Liltafinwë’s bedroom and pressed a bloody dagger into his hand. Then fey, fickle Morohen who had been born in Cuiviénen, died there, and had then been reborn in Valinor decided it was time for him to return to his birthplace.

“East,” said Hlusserë asked when Lilta, panicked, thought the Lord’s abstract words meant he had taken his life, “as far east as you can imagine, and then furthermore so, apparently. That is where he said he was going.”

“Why did he tell you that, and give me a scare?” Liltafinwë grumbled.

“He used to deliberately talk to your father that way to rile him up, he likely forgot you were not him,” Hlusserë stuck him with a pin. He had grown. They were letting his hems out.

The end of spring found him wrapped up in a blanket from his bed in the conservatory on the far side of the house, watching the late spring rain come down on the glass.

Ultimate victory…

Oh no. He thought. His stomach heaved.

Sweet resistance of windpipe and spine...

He bolted for the nearest pot plant and threw up.

Sweet resistance…

He heaved more.

…Fëanárion steel

Heaved again.

Footsteps at the doorway and then someone came towards him.

He gagged, spat and threw up some more because of the taste coating his mouth.

“Oh dear, get water,” Celeborn ordered someone else. His hands came and steadied Lilta’s shuddering body. Lilta sobbed, humiliated.

“Shh Gildor,” Celeborn’s hands massaged the tensing muscles of his back, “spit out what you can and take deep breaths.”

“You’re not telling me to try and fight it?” he croaked. That was what he heard all the time. He couldn’t! They did not realise he could not just see it but he felt it and he smelt it.

The blood on the dagger Morohen had given him was tacky, and hard to wash off his hands.

He gagged some more.

“I’m not stupid,” Celeborn continued to rub his back.

A maid came with water and Celeborn thanked her then dismissed her. Liltafinwë felt pathetically happy. He did not want anyone else to see this.

He drank the water.

A sword slammed through his chest…

He threw up water and bile.

“Aiyah,” Celeborn went back to bracing his body and rubbing his back. “This is why we do not have children during wartime. The mental bond between parents and their children is a profound one that we do not know much about.”

“You’re not denying my father then?” Liltafinwë spat out more bile.

“I can’t exactly deny it. He took you and raised you from birth. He managed to replace the bond between you and my brother-in-law. I am aware that with…current events, people do not want to think about bright martyred Finrod Felagund’s son loving the Fëanorions. But I can’t deny what is happening in my own household.”

He sounded utterly bitter about it. Lilta felt a pang of shame for he had caused a great deal of upset to their lives. They hadn’t had to take him in. Honestly if he had been them he’d likely have tossed his arse out by now.

Lilta hiccupped and managed to drink a glass of water without it returning.

Celeborn held him against his chest until the final shudders left him. His heart beat was a steady thud but did not sound like Tyelkormo’s at all. But maybe that was for the best.

“Gildor I know you have not been happy since you have arrived here, as is natural with your grief,” Celeborn said quietly, “and with … well I know you have not met the most inclusive people. I am sorry that you have had to put up with the slurs that you have.”

Bastard. Liltafinwë had never been called the word until he had arrived here. His father had jokingly called him his love-child once or twice, and he had known his parents were not married. He had not realised there was a stigma though. He had been protected, wrapped up in silk like his father had wanted, raised in an almost fantasy world where your birth status did not matter.

“Your aunt and I are thinking of leaving the town for a while, there is a lake a few days travel from here, we sometimes camp there. Would you like to come with us and escape awhile?”

“Aren’t you needed here to help with the refugees?” Liltafinwë asked.

“Someone else will be taking over while we get away, this is for my health as much as yours. Alatariel’s orders.”

“I am sorry,” Liltafinwë said though he wasn’t sure what he was sorry for.

“I am sorry as well,” Celeborn moved, very hesitantly, and pressed a dry kiss to his forehead. “Gildor will you allow Alatariel to look into your mind tonight and quiet the nightmares?”

“…alright,” Liltafinwë murmured.

“Good lad,” Celeborn squeezed his shoulders and gently released him. Liltafinwë rose to his feet, unsteady. The ring on its chain knocked against his muscles in a steady thump. He had not worn it outside of his clothing since his aunt had seen it. She had ordered him to turn it over so she could lock it away for safety, and he had refused, sensing he would not see it again if he did. Their argument had been... loud.

“I am sorry I am a burden to you both,” he said suddenly, “I’ve brought nothing but trouble. And I cause nothing but trouble.”

“You cannot help being what you are,” Celeborn said, “and you are not trouble before you misinterpret me,” he added swiftly, seeing the storm close in on Gildor’s face.

“But you are a Finwean by blood and a Fëanorion by your raising,” he shrugged an eloquent shoulder. “What do people expect from you? Not a single line of Finwë has ever been a roll over.”

Liltafinwë bit down all mentions of Arafinwë with such thoroughness he deserved a commendation for it.

Above them the rain was picking up and it made a completely different noise on glass than on canvas.

Celeborn’s hair was the wrong silver, too strong and undiluted. There was not a strand of cream colour to break up the metallic gleam of it.

“Come along lad,” Celeborn held out his hand. He did not smile hopefully. But he looked him in the eyes and saw beyond Liltafinwë’s anger at the world and his grief. Liltafinwë hesitated.

“Gildor?” Celeborn coaxed.

No more Lilta, Liltafinwë thought, no more ‘little dancer’, no more ‘my star’, no more ‘darling son’ when I am in trouble.

He took Celeborn’s hand and let him lead him out of the conservatory, the sound of rain growing muffled by the thick roof of his aunt’s house.