The Maia and the Aulendili by Huinare

The Marble

Young Nerdanel shows her early work to her father's friend.

Nerdanel put the glazed decorative marble on the floor. It was not to be rolled carelessly as one might a ball made of hide, so she finished setting it down lightly before giving it a deliberate one-handed push.

The large marble, four of Nerdanel’s finger-widths, rolled toward the grownups who hunkered fixedly, on spindly metal-framed chairs which her father had made, over an unfurled diagram on the table. It rolled past Mahtan’s chair–he heard it, glanced down in time to see it amble past, and said absently “oops!”–and toward the feet of the visitor, who eyed it with a look of mixed surprise and annoyance and just managed to stick a foot out in time to gently arrest its progress.

Nerdanel hesitated. The visitor, someone whom her father had identified to her privately as an important Maia associated with Aulë, struck her as quite serious. When he occasionally came to call, Curumo always sat with Mahtan over diagrams, and later the two would walk somewhere outside. The Maia never paid Nerdanel any mind; perhaps it was his air of somber focus that interested her, ironically prompting her to roll the marble at him with an infrequently-exercised playfulness. Now he reached down to take up the object in one hand and bring it closer to the level of his eyes.

“Nerdanel made it herself,” volunteered Mahtan.

Curumo suddenly seemed to take more of an interest in the marble, using both hands to turn it around as he studied it. “The entire process?”

“Her mother helped apply the glaze and put it in the kiln for her, but she shaped it entirely on her own.”

“This is a remarkably uniform ellipsoid,” decided Curumo, still turning and eyeing the thing, “nearly spherical in fact.” For the first time, his dark eyes came to rest on Nerdanel in a way that seemed to register her existence. The Noldorin girl stood as straight and tall as her toddler legs would allow, both warmed and worried by the remark; it seemed like praise, but she was not quite sure. Curumo glanced sidelong at her father before addressing her directly, “How did you shape this?”

Nerdanel stood silent. Her parents had asked her the same, and it had seemed a silly question, or maybe just an invasive one.

“She wouldn’t tell us,” Mahtan interjected after the Maia and the child had stared each other down for some moments.

Curumo raised an eyebrow, but almost as quickly the corner of his mouth twitched upward just slightly. “I see.” He paused judiciously and set the marble back on the floor, addressing Nerdanel in a tone that was most convincing, “Your work is commendable.”

Nerdanel stood grinning a bit ridiculously, not sure what “commendable” was but reckoning from the context that it was good. She nearly forgot the shiny marble before noticing that its trajectory was angling gradually away from her as it trundled in the direction of the fireplace. For a very important Maia who was good at studying diagrams, Curumo had a poor aim. Nerdanel scrambled to retrieve her work, just in case it should chip itself connecting with the raised hearthstones. When she looked back to the table, her father and the Maia were again engaged in their discussion.

Her inquisitive nature prodded by the visitor’s evidently positive reaction, Nerdanel proceeded resolutely toward the grownups. She clambered up onto the bench which paralleled long side of the table farthest from the fireplace, across from her father and to Curumo’s right, met only with mildly curious glances. Nerdanel stood on the bench and watched for a short while as they talked and gestured over the large unrolled page. Slowly, she reached out and put the fingertips of her left hand against the pale cloth of the Maia’s sleeve.

Now Curumo turned his head to stare imperiously down at her, looking annoyed. “I beg your pardon?”

Nerdanel quailed and almost backed off, but she thought better of it. This Maia seemed to like her work and therefore he must like her. He was just very serious, that was all. She stood straight again on the bench, nearly at eye level with him, and said with the appropriate severity, “What are you made of?”

Curumo hesitated eloquently.

Mahtan again explained, maybe a bit sheepish, “I told her that Ainur aren’t made of flesh and blood.”

“Ah.” The Maia met Nerdanel’s gaze with a seriousness that was suddenly not at all severe. “I do not know, precisely.”

“You don’t?” blurted Nerdanel, made slightly uncomfortable by this almost painful candor in a way that caused her to unleash a burst of laughter.

Curumo appeared to wince just a bit. “Do you know what you are made of, beyond flesh and bone and blood? What makes those things? As I said,” he resumed when Nerdanel could provide no answer, “my knowledge is imperfect. However, I think, it would be the same things you are made of–the same small things, smaller things than you can see–but in different ways.”

“So you’re not clay?”

Mahtan, to Nerdanel’s annoyance, stifled a laugh; but Curumo responded with dignity, “Well, no, clay is…” and rattled off a list of very technical terms which Nerdanel did not know.

“Oh.” The girl nodded vigorously. “All right. I just thought, clay can take any shape and also I heard Ainur can take any shape, so maybe you’re the same.”

The Maia appeared to stare very fixedly at nothing in particular. “Only superficially.”

“That means two things only seem similar, but really they aren’t,” said Mahtan.

“So, you are not similar to clay,” Nerdanel tried again.

“No and yes,” Curumo responded softly and a little unhelpfully. It would be quite some years before Nerdanel could begin to comprehend and appreciate the broad applicability of such an answer.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter does not incorporate any of the Fanworks Day prompts which gave rise to this story, however, it was necessary to what the story was trying to accomplish. Plus, this scene had been lurking in my head for about five years, and it seemed an ideal time to get it out.