The Maia and the Aulendili by Huinare

The Palantír

Curumo and Maitimo have an awkward talk precipitated by Fëanáro's latest invention.

With thanks to Himring for allowing me to write one of her scenes from my own protagonist's POV (please see chapter endnotes). Most of the dialogue herein is hers, from "Maedhros and the Palantír."

Curumo exhaled in relief as he found the hallway empty. Behind the door he’d just closed in his wake, the incessant chatter arising from the occasion–small talk, speculation and debate, covert political maneuvering–became muffled. He considered trying to incorporealize and make a rapid escape through the hairline crack between the finely-crafted main door and its frame, but discerned that he was too unhinged to easily shed his present physical guise.

The intensity of light and sound spiked as the door he’d just passed through reopened. He hastened to turn away, but too late; “Lord Curumo,” someone began.

The Maia wearily angled his gaze back round to note Maitimo standing just paces behind him. A fine thing, such courtesy, he reflected to himself, coming from somebody whose mother, as a young child, had managed to upend a bucket of plaster all over Curumo. He found that this tangible reminder of his failure to sustain his connection to the house of Mahtan, following Nerdanel’s marriage to a character whose very presence Curumo found obnoxious, only disconcerted him further.

Maitimo was diligently emitting some other courtesy which Curumo did not quite hear properly, and so he responded, “Ah, yes.” Well, that was awkward. He could at least attempt to seem engaged, though he was resisting the urge to turn and all but barge out of the home of Fëanáro. “I hear you are to be congratulated, Nelyafinwë Maitimo,” he tried again, with formality.

“Thank you–But for what?”

“You collaborated with your father on the palantíri, did you not?”

“No, not really, Lord Curumo,” Maitimo replied, evincing little more relish for the conversation than Curumo felt. “As you know, Father had already discovered the salient principle.”

The Maia subdued his impatience with effort. He disliked any intimation of humility, nearly as much as he disliked the open and casual self-assurance with which people like Fëanáro–and Mairon, of old–went about their existences. In fact, when it came down to it, Curumo disliked a great many things. However, the eldest son of Nerdanel seemed an intelligent and charismatic individual, though perhaps not quite so aware of these qualities in himself as would behoove him, and so Curumo suggested, “Are you sure you are not being modest?”

“Indeed, no!” demurred Maitimo, who went on to briefly recapitulate the palantír’s development, to which he alleged to have contributed no substantive research, as a device for instantaneous long-distance communication upon the commission of Olwë. It was unfortunate, the Maia thought, that the progeny of his friends should have become so unfamiliar to him. The only familiar thing about this one, really, was the superficial trait of his unusual hair color. Of course it was only Curumo’s own fault that he’d landed up in this awkward interaction. He probably couldn’t have declined the invitation to the reception, as a ranking Maia in Aulë’s household, without appearing rude; but, he could have kept his head down and lurked in some corner, instead of taking the first opportunity, when all eyes turned briefly in the direction of a florid and rather inebriated toaster, to reach a hand out to hover inches away from the palantír. Indeed he wasn’t entirely sure what had compelled him to engage with the dark, spherical object. Supposedly it would not work until its counterpart was activated. Perhaps it was no more than a desire to appear indifferent to Fëanáro’s intellectual and creative output when others were observing, combined with Curumo’s damnable curiosity.

But, the palantír had worked, or at any rate it had distinctly done something, whether its creator had intended that as one of its functions or not.

“–and so instant communication with Avallonë is only going to be a matter of weeks!” Maitimo ended up.

Curumo, reflecting upon what he’d seen in the palantír, had again nearly ceased to hear him. The Noldo was giving him a peculiar look now, so he attempted to pull himself together. Something needed to be said, and most of the things running through his mind were nothing he cared to air aloud, so he grasped at one of the more neutral sentence fragments that surfaced in the jumble of his thought–”The hands and mind of Fëanáro.”

He wanted to hide his face in his hands. That wasn’t even grammatical, and he’d been fluent in Quenya long enough to have lost his accent, so there was really no excuse. At least he managed to sound profound. He was adept at that, if nothing else, after millennia spent subtly honing the weird distracting or lulling effect his voice seemed to have on others.

“Yes,” Maitimo attempted gamely, visibly quashing a brief look of bewilderment. To Curumo’s relief, he followed this up presently with, “I will bid you farewell then, Lord Curumo, at this time, but hope you will honor us with your presence again soon.”

Curumo managed to refrain from saying that somehow he rather doubted that, and mumbled instead, “Good evening,” although both parties were already turning away to depart in their separate directions, and made for the door. The painful awkwardness of such an interaction with one of Mahtan’s and Nerdandel’s own line left a bad taste in his mouth. However, Nelyafinwë Maitimo soon left his thought entirely as he made his way down quiet streets and examined in his memory the image which the palantír had so forcefully and randomly conveyed to him.

There was a rocky shoreline somewhere, and a horseshoe crab which had been laid out on its back by a wave. Its ten legs flailed as its long spike of a tail sought for purchase on the rock, that it might lever itself onto its front. A much larger creature with one fewer pairs of legs stood over it, rendering the somewhat ghastly-looking horseshoe crab pitiful. The spider prodded the smaller animal with the bristly end of one leg, tearing the rapidly fanning gill tissue, then fell to ripping its prey casually apart with its jaws. Curumo yanked his hand back from the palantír, his sharp inhalation thankfully drowned in a peal of laughter provoked by something the swaying toaster had said or done. He’d then glanced round for any signs that he had been observed, perceived none, and left promptly.

He walked briskly, though with no immediate purpose, northward with the faint silver glow of Telperion from upon his left throwing his shadow at the stars upon his right. Had the palantír malfunctioned? Was the image some lingering impression from the mind of another who had touched the stone, or something pulled from his own mind and reflected back to him distorted? Was Fëanáro aware of this feature, and, if not, ought he to be made aware?

Curumo frowned and pulled his cloak more tightly around himself. The night seemed uncommonly chilly. He didn’t relish the thought of speaking to Fëanáro about this. For one, it would entail the admission that he’d been curious enough about the invention to try and touch it without permission when everyone’s back was turned. Moreover, if Fëanáro would in fact know why and how that image had shown up in the palantír, Curumo couldn’t abide the thought of a person he disliked knowing more about what had just happened in his own mind than he himself did. But! perhaps, being an Ainu, he could interact with the palantír in ways which an Elf could not, in which case talking to its inventor would be pointless anyway.

He had run upon Ungoliant ages ago, and her terrible form and equally terrible insanity had quite tried what little courage he had. Once in a while, the spider still appeared in his dreams. Given his present concern about Melkor’s recent release from Mandos, and the knowledge that a powerful being who could not and would not have truly repented was abroad in Valinor, it wouldn’t be surprising that his dread might manifest itself in the image of one of Melkor’s more archetypally terrible associates. He didn’t think about Ungoliant too often, and never about Ungoliant eating a horseshoe crab, but possibly it was some sort of waking equivalent of the bizarre metaphors the brain liked to concoct in sleep–simply himself showing himself to himself, with the palantír mediating. That was the most likely explanation, Curumo decided, possibly to deflect any sense of obligation to act on the unsettling incident.

It was only after the lights had been extinguished and he would never glimpse again his shadow cast by Telperion or Laurelin that Curumo realized he ought to have told somebody–not Fëanáro, but Nerdanel or Mahtan. He should have used the incident to repair the distance he’d let fall between them, and if he had explained it to them instead of staying silent, he may have gained enough perspective to be able to suspect that the stone had shown him Ungoliant as she actually was, not an obscure symbolism-laden image of her generated in the shadows of his mind, but simply Ungoliant living undetected upon the shores of Avathar.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter fulfills my one of my three prompts for the SWG’s 2015 Fanworks Day participation, “Differing Perspectives” [“Choose a drabble or another work by an author that illustrates a single character's perspective. After seeking the original author's permission, write the same event--using all of the author's original conventions--from a different character's perspective.”].

I owe a debt of gratitude to Himring for graciously allowing me to use the first scene of her excellent story “Maedhros and the Palantír” for this prompt. I am not sure what constitutes Using All The Conventions, but I tried to keep the tone and structure similar inasmuch as I could from Curumo’s POV. Moreover, Himring’s story proved very influential to my writing of the first two chapters of my own story here, because prior to this I had not considered Ainur from an Elven POV (my cozy niche being Ainur from their own POV).

PS - horseshoe crabs are not actually crabs, but they are cool and somewhat scary-looking.