All Hues and Honeys by Dawn Felagund

"--north of Falquopelë at least. Would you accompany me?"

Not for the first time, Nerdanel wished to be one of those elegant women with a ready quip upon her tongue to defuse the danger of Fëanáro's request. She would twitch her fan at him and chortle and turn it into a joke. He would flush and laugh and go along rather than unveil the full impropriety of what he suggested.

His eyes simmered at her and awaited her response. It was no joke.

She blinked hard but knew her eyes simmered too. She needn't say a thing, but did:

"Yes."

Varda mustered the dust of Eru's thought and, with it, touched the stars upon the dark--

This far north, on so cold a night, only his breath fogged those stars from view. The words of the ancient lay turned upon itself in Fëanáro's mind; his hands cradled something brighter. Was there a catch of breath, a mote of terror: What have I done?? If so, it was fleeting and subsumed by the ancient words.

Varda mustered--

Light no longer untouchable, confined, imprisoned. A gift to the world. Dust? Nay, crystal adamantine.

Fëanáro uncloaked the Silmarils to the scrutiny of stars.

Finrod still thought of home in terms of comfort: the warm smell of baking lembas, the halting melody of practice at the harp, blankets and bed for a wife. Carrying chisels amid the winding ways of effulgent rock, he tried to temper his disappointment in the unfailingly cool air, the echoing silence, the fish-belly color of the stone.

He poised his chisel over stone and began to cut. The sound magnified and echoed, until it seemed to him the music of a thousand footfalls and calling voices.

This would be not an abode for a wife but for a people.

Traversing the airs of Manwë, Thorondor watched history unfold in miniature: battle plans enacted, migrations undertaken, realms risen and fallen: pieces upon a gameboard. Among the others of the Great Eagles, he wagered on outcomes with a heart impervious as rock, light enough to be borne to the verge of Vaiya.

When he was summoned to Thangorodrim, something changed: the blade, the blood, the screaming, grasping love.

Later, a speck of a king crawled forth upon the road and silently smote the gates of Morgoth. At first detached, Thorondor recalled Thangorodrim, the cousins. His heart stung.

Wings stooped toward earth.

Elwing situated the Silmaril in the lampstand, closed her eyes, and drew the shroud away. Bright enough on its own, now ensconced within chiseled glass, the Silmaril coruscated like a bucket of stars.

Descending the lighthouse steps two at a time, she rushed to the pounding verge of the sea to admire her handiwork. Across the waters, a glimmering path stretched into the utmost West: an invitation.

Or a summons. Home. Come home. Amid the tempests and cruel vagaries of the sea, at least now there was a beacon. Home. You are not forgotten. We need you here.

Come home.

Marula

"You know as well as I do," said Nelyo, "that it is a myth."

He lounged on his elbow under the patchy shade of the tree. Would the wind stir, the shade would shift and splash his face with Treelight.

Findekáno knelt, leaning forward with the fruit balanced upon his fingertips. "Yes. So?" was all he had to answer. The yellow globe--so livid to be almost unreal--was a brilliant focal point upon a backdrop of green that stirred lightly, as with the memory of a breeze.

A droplet of sweat crawled down Nelyo's back.

The myth was that the fruit of the marula tree would begin to ferment before even dropping to the ground, spreading the earth with a bacchanalian feast that would drive the wondrous animals of Oromë's forest to lustful madness. The legend went that, come the Mingling, as the servants of Oromë led the Eldar to the gates, the trumpets and howls would begin to rise as they went. Then they'd gently shut the gates behind all witness, and their eyes smiled as they did.

A breath of wind rising then would cool their skin and carry the syrupy scent of the fruit away and draw their eyes to the trees and away from each other.

But the wind did not rise. "Myth or no," Findekáno said, offering the fruit to Nelyo's lips as he might a kiss, "it's supposed to be delicious."

Windfall

When Fingon turned away, Maedhros opened his eyes.

He'd felt the fire as a wind on his face without heat. Skin over bone, there was no room for blood to run between them. Fingon stood before the flames, alongside a basket of windfall apples. He cupped one in his hand; with his thumb, caressed away the frost from the sun-touched blush upon its wizened face.

They used to call it windfall wine in Formenos: gathering the apples from the ground, knocking bees from them that staggered away, too drunk to sting. They crushed with no force, the windfalls, the scent of their ferment heavy and hot. From maple casks they were poured in celebration, tasting first as a tingle on the tongue, then a rush of saliva and sweet.

"What are you celebrating?"

Fingon did not startle at the words, Maedhros's first since their return from the Mountain. The windfall tumbled into the kettle over the fire. Already, its scent began to banish the stink of blood.

"So many things."

Chapter End Notes

The connection to the "comfort food" prompt is, of course, obvious in the content of the story itself. However, the inspiration also ties in with the prompt. Since this covid disaster started, my husband and I, nearly every night, play a board game and very often have a drink to go with it. When we lost my father-in-law a few weeks ago, that drink was gin and tonic in honor of him and his taste for gin. Lately, for me anyway, it's been amaretto sour, and the drink seems to anchor something steady and warm in the midst of this uncertain time. From this came the idea of similarly exploring the connection between libation and ritual.

A second, lesser connection: I first learned of marula watching The Great British Baking Show, and it doesn't get much more "comfort food" than that.

The little freshet had once been easily forded by a log footbridge rolled crookedly across it. But snows had been heavy that winter, and the spring thaw champed at the land, the footbridge long swept toward the sea and the freshet--now a river--uncrossable.

To the south lay Tirion, a meniscus of light seeping into the starry dark. Nerdanel turned the ring on her finger. The gold ring.

This was a difficult conversation--a revelation--a betrayal?--(certainly a defiance!)--deferred. Beside her, Fëanáro looked no less regretful. Nerdanel slipped her arm around his waist; kissed his throat. The river surged and roared.

Before she was Finwë's wife, Indis ran her finger along jars that chattered together.

Before she was a mother, she selected one and smoothed out sand soft as silk, glinting as diamonds.

Before she was a stepmother, the alleged architect of another's pain, she extracted the paper towers from another, creased them sharp, applied the glue with a fastidious brush, to keep the folk within safe.

Before she was Queen of the Noldor, she nestled the paper tower sturdily into sand, drew her hands away and watched it stand, and she thought she knew what it was to be queen.

The view was so familiar from afar that Carnistir's heart leaped like clipping the string on a balloon. His knuckles dug at his chest. It hurt, not so much the sudden forgetfulness of centuries--as though he were yet a boy coming home late from a hunt with his brothers--but the remembering, just as sudden, twice as sharp: murder and exile and betrayal and death. He doubled over with it upon rock-bitten knees.

The Light of the Trees was never strong here. The silver light eking over the mountains might have been Telperion's gloaming.

From afar and in such thin light, the wrack of Morgoth was not evident. Perhaps time's slow hands too had smoothed away the tumults of Finwë's contest with the Dark One, restoring the palatial fortress to its former splendor. There was that balloon-string feeling again: the certainty that, were he to pry back the gate and go inside, the halls would still redound with laughter. Carnistir crossed the plain, edging closer, watching for the moment when it changed, when home became a ruin and his past collapsed back upon him.

The moon rose over the shoulder of the mountain, just a bright spot at first. Caranthir stopped to watch it come fully into the sky until it stood bright and perilous as a scythe. He let his gaze drop back to Formenos, to his former home.

Coming here was always such a revel: the winnowing of their lives in Tirion to what could fit upon a pack saddle, the long journey, the bonfires that held the bitter nights at bay as he dozed in his mother's arms--or his brother's, or his father's--and tried to blink away sleep, not wanting to miss a--

He blinked now. Rána full-risen offered no balm to the imagination. There it was: the ruin. The halls tumbled into themselves the way a carcass left to the air shrinks into its own ribs. The towers slumped, wearied by what they had seen and could not forget. The iron gate adorned with his father's crest, wrenched on its hinges, and climbed all over with honeysuckle.

"I’m on my way to remembering who I am"

---

By Araman, our feet trudge heavy, clamping to the earth with each step. But this is the way, I tell them, this must be the way. Not north—I know the route to the Outer Lands, traced it upon my father's vellum maps many times, but the way to remembering who we are.

We are not children of Valinor, of comfort and ease. Our heritage is not eiderdown and diadems. We exist not to adorn, to embellish, to grace. We exist to make, to form, to shape, to change. We test ourselves against the same stuff of the earth molded in the hands of Eru, as we ourselves were made. We are not the children of the Valar. We are the Children of Eru.

When He globed the world within his hands, we came too, with Light, swept and hoarded by the Valar into vats until all was squandered save three pinpricks I shaped. I imagine I can see them, glimmering sharp and strong within the clot that marks the North.

From earth. To earth. We clod and trudge into new realms that we will shape and form from the earth itself, and then? We'll set a heart of Light.

Chapter End Notes

The opening line (not counted toward the 200 words) comes from Vienna Teng's "Goodnight, New York."

At first, leaves like blades nudged aside the final tracery of snow. Eyes undimmed by his torment, Maedhros could loll his head just right and see them.

"They arise each year from a knob in the earth," Fingon told him as distraction when the healers were up to the painful work of changing his dressings.

Then a single flower unfurled, a golden trumpet belled toward the sun.

He clutched Fingon's hand and watched its chin lift.

"They give me hope," he might have said, once, in his sentimental past. Now, he gritted his teeth against a shout. His heels dug into the bedclothes. A yellow spot throbbed in a red haze.

It snowed that night.

It heaped like a quilt upon the single yellow flower with its face belled toward the sun. When it ebbed away, the flower drooped, defeated, proud green sword-arms shriveling and its trumpet face tipped toward its grave.

When the healers came, he didn't kick, he didn't shout, he simply and silently wept.

Morning: the sun simmered like a furnace over the sea. The bell face lifted in fanfare.

Maedhros let a leg slide free, toward the floor, touched its icy breadth with just a toe.

Fëanáro was a riddle, Nerdanel thought after their return to Tirion, newly married and Nelyo beginning to walk. Rivalry set his father's house afire as Finwë's craftsfolk strove against a new-returned son honed to a fighting edge by his apprenticeship in the North.

Nerdanel met him for luncheon on the Treelit palace lawns, Fëanáro acrid with the scent of smoke and contention, eyes overbright as he declaimed against the shortcomings of his now-peers. Nothing was good enough.

Until Nelyo tottered over with a daisy, accepted as though the finest gemstone, Fëanáro's eyes brightened with—what? Something unfamiliar, gentling.

A riddle.

I.

Nineteen leagues and the Pelóri to cross. Nerdanel wasn't wrong to feel exhausted contemplating such a journey. She'd taken not even one step past her doorway. She'd never understood sea longing--it was the mountains she missed--but this weariness wasn't a lack of sea-longing. (And she'd never been normal, never like other Elves.)

But the Peredhel was arriving in Eldamar Bay. She had to take a step, then many more. She had to be among the dignitaries who would greet him.

Dignitaries who all shared some connection to him. She didn't.

Dispossessed shall ye be.

Exhaustion towered, but she stepped forth.

II.

Ribbons fluttered in the breeze off the bay. Bunting for each royal house. (But not hers.) Buffets piled with fruit and cheese and bread.

There went Arafinwë, then Olwë, to greet Elrond Peredhel. There was a certain symmetry to the way they bowed, clasped hands, spoke in gentle, detached terms of long-past allegiances once the linchpin of victory or fall.

I need only imitate them, Nerdanel consoled herself, though what to say? I'm sorry my sons drove your mother into the sea?

But when she approached, bowed, her chin knocked his shoulder? He was embracing her?

"For my foster-father. Macalaurë.

Nelyo:

All I learned I learned from you.

Truly.

I am not merely trying to lift your spirits! I truly have.

(The italics show I'm serious!)

Insight: When you knew you loved me. I was just a muddle of confusion but that night in Arafinwë's wine cellar? YOU kissed me first.

Strategy: When sneaking out to see you, knowing which of the servant's passages to use based on meal services, laundry days, &c, &c.

Oh and knowing when to ply you, when to wile and beguile, when to turn my shoulder in indifference (though you were still the only one I could see).

Bravery: We stood against the gods, you and I, but that isn't what comes to mind when I hear the word courage. It was before that. A time to be brave in love. When you took my hand in the square. Kissed it for all to see.

Curufinwë's planning for this evening put the word meticulous to shame. To begin: the asking. He'd written it out and rehearsed it until, when he caught her eye passing beneath the arch to the library, the words rolled from his tongue with graceful, practiced ease. And she said yes.

Then the finding: a park of grass uniform in species and green, a pond of swans not too numerous and well-fed (to minimize encroachment on their picnic blanket and hissing and honking), a bridge over a cascade (small; not too loud) over which he planned they'd have their first kiss.

Now: ​​Terentaulë beside him on the blanket. His father's best food on his mother's best tableware (neither knew). They looked everywhere--the grass, the swans, the damned bridge--but at each other. Tongue-twisted.

He'd forgotten: the conversation starters.

"That blueprint," he said at last. "You saw it? What do you think of it?"

Chapter End Notes

In the Felakverse, they eventually marry, so she must not have minded. :D

I was never entirely sure how to write the youngest sons of Fëanor, the twins. Even in Valinor, they rarely came among their people and were something of an enigma—or so says Rúmil. I was well aware that, using only the scraps of rumor that trickled like icemelt over the high walls of Gondolin, what I wrote of them was mostly a contrivance, and so I sought to steer from characterizations of convenience.

And so I did not give them magical powers. I did not have one flinch at the faraway injury of the other. Their isolation in the eastern wilds of Beleriand had nothing to do with vestiges of sentiment from their brothers—a desire to preserve their youth and innocence—but was simply opportunistic on the twins' part. After all, sixth and seventh in a family as ambitious as theirs, very little responsibility need trickle as far down as they. They wiled away the centuries in idle pursuit, as they must have as young men of leisure in Valinor: hunting, feasting, cavorting in the drunken revels of the local Avari. The effort to entice them otherwise would likely have not been worth their brothers' efforts.

Therefore I must confess that, as the Fëanorions descended upon Sirion, I watched for them most of all. At first, I flooded with the other refugees toward the docks and boats while the warriors among us held the village as long as they could. Then, I will confess, I idled. The danger felt small, and my curiosity overwhelmed me. I saw Maedhros and Maglor and others of their company whose names I knew from writing their histories. But I did not see the twins.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of fighting amidst our warriors. Our defense was breaking with the shock of a thunderclap on a blue summer day. And there they were.

They'd been there all along, concealed among our warriors somehow like snakes amid the fallen leaves. While their brothers were bright scintillae in their armor and crimson cloaks, they'd insinuated themselves among our own men. Unseen.

A spray of blood pattered along my jaw. I do not know which one it was who came nigh to me. He was neither an innocent youth nor a man of leisure. Even as I watched his approach my eyes struggled to fix on him. I blinked. Ornisso? Egalmoth? His appearance shifted like looking directly at a star and not seeing it. It is only as I looked away that the scrap of red hair escaping from his helmet wrenched him right in my perceptions: a Fëanorion, his face hardened and lined by malice and hurt, the dark blade at his side a warning to run.

Yet I stood idle, a rabbit quivering in the grass.

He came so close I heard his breath. "Write of it," he said, before he let me go.

When Caranthir dove into the lake that morning, he didn't intend to swim far. The water still moved sluggishly with the memory of ice, and he had letters to answer. And he hadn't told his daughter Amarwen he was going.

That was their agreement: If he swam more than a mile beyond the shore, he'd tell her before he went. "You did not survive calamity and war," she said, "and journey halfway around the world to die of a charlie-horse while dog-paddling about the lake." Her voice was light but her eyes as somber as the bitter waters.

But swimming did something to his mind, like an animal circling to curl warm in a nest of its own trampling. Politics, kinstrife, even worries over what to cook for dinner—none were permitted entry. His mind circled and circled and circled upon itself until he'd gone farther than he meant to and, upon surfacing and discovering this, plunged his face back into the water and went farther still.

The sun was a white light behind the winter clouds in the west when he surfaced and saw his house on the shore. No smoke unfurled from the kitchen chimney. Amarwen paced the shore but stopped when she spotted him. There was a fur cloak draped over her arms.

Wordlessly, she shook it open when he staggered onto the beach. He held out a hand. "I'm fine, quite numb actually."

She smiled kindly. "Let me help with that." And punched him in the jaw.

Blossoms littered the plant's base, otherwise stern and hale.

"A plant stressed will abort blossoms, Artaresto," Yavanna explained.

He caressed a leaf—deceptive, green—sorrowfully.

—

Celegorm and Curufin's voices whispered like mice in the walls. Orodreth rushed upon them. Finrod had again borne their double entendres with a smile but—

—

"You must remove all of the buds except one." It hurt to pinch away their little lives, but Artaresto did it. Then one may flourish.

—

The tirade that unspooled like vines clutching at his mind, where had it gone? It always withered.

But what remained stammered, then flourished:

"I know."

The silver betrothal ring Fëanáro had forged for Nerdanel always seemed to lie cold under her gown.

"When?" had become the backbeat of their lives. "When? When?" Politics, family, tradition, appearances: all were unrelenting Considerations, a whole clamoring suite of them, discussed in hushed moments, usually stolen in the dustiest corners of Aulë's workshop. Then, passion too easily replaced planning, until the dead ashes in Aulë's forge seemed to glow with new fire—but they were no closer to announcing their engagement.

"When?" It could not be tonight. It was Arafinwë's begetting day. (One.) Two, there was some political machination that obligated Mahtan and Finwë to feign distance from each other for the time being; joining their families would upset both's schemes. Then—three—the royal family traditionally announced betrothals in the spring, a tradition going back to Cuiviénen.

It was autumn.

The silver ring pressed cold. Nerdanel made small talk with a young woman stonecutter and, across the room, Fëanáro worked through a list of politically expedient dance partners.

The song ended; he caught her eye. He was weary.

She realized that she was too. It had been months now. "Pardon me," she said to the stonecutter, who trailed off in surprise from a one-sided discourse on the foliation of marble. As Nerdanel walked toward him, they reached wordless accord. It was like matching two voices in harmony. The weariness left his face. His chin lifted; his eyes flashed.

To hell with Considerations.

They caught hands and she rose to kiss him.

"You mention him a lot. Fingon."

It was naturally Elrond who first noticed. Elros asked the questions that pushed their history lessons beyond the edge of the page. Elrond, though, took every word, spoken or written, and turned it like a gem in his fingers, letting each facet flash.

Nelyo Maitimo Maedhros knew the tendency to embroider every anecdote with the name scribed in one's heart. It's how Nerdanel sussed out his crushes in his youth, sometimes even before he knew them himself. He'd kept Fingon intentionally beyond the margins of the page. He'd even thought he was doing well at it.

It was not a conversation he wished to have, not when the thought alone of Fingon felt like being wrenched open, his soft insides seized, crushed.

"I—"

Darkness fell. He did not speak. Elros asked no questions. Elrond turned his silence, flashing, like a gem in his hand.

Facing northward, I gulp the air and try to taste the ash. I squeeze my eyes shut. I try to taste the ink.

Four centuries, I worked over the books in that library. (And the books there weren't just mine and weren't so young as a mere four centuries.) Most of my life. Surely, that should leave some trace of smoke on the wind? Some blurring of the green of spring, some bitter note on the tongue?

No. I sigh. Open my eyes. The metallic shhhing of my pen nib against the ink vial and my fingers begin to write.

The Forgotten God

The wind moaned across the cave entrance like the lowest note played on Maglor's biggest flute, the note that required fingers splayed and fingerpads turned just right to cover the holes. The kind of note that shivered one's insides.

"I know," said Maglor in consolation. Or, what passed for consolation. Used to be his voice could reach the full range of human emotion. Now it was like a boulder plunked in the sand, always.

But the moaning wind died as though listening.

"People used to remember you. They used to remember me too." He straightened his weary spine like he was preparing to sing. "Salmar."

Salmar had marched forth during the War of Wrath with a contingent of Noldor from Tirion. Resting by a mere to play his harp, the notes were beautiful as the rain of Laurelin so that even he was ensorcelled. So smitten, he was ambushed, dragged down. So the legend went that he was drowned by Morgoth himself in the mere, its waters still enchanted so that it refused even to raise a ripple in acknowledgement.

Or, that's how the story went. Truly, Salmar had disappeared from the Eldarin legends at some point: the god who marched forth to war and brokered the peace between the Fëanorians and Manwë and taught music to Maglor himself. First, he became an ellipsis to save time and paper. Then he became nothing at all.

"They've forgotten us," said Maglor, "so that they can turn us into the lesson they intend us to teach." The wind moaned in answer. Maglor flexed his hand and would have pitched a rock (one of his favored forms of rebellion against the myth he'd been made into) but a noise behind him made him turn.

"I have to go, Salmar."

His children were calling.

Chapter End Notes

Salmar, in the Lost Tales, was a pretty active fellow, and this triple drabble uses those early stories and assumes that the later "Silmarillion" texts are likewise later in the Eldarin tradition. Salmar (also called Noldorin) was a warrior-bard who marched forth to chain Melkor, loved the Noldor and taught them what they know about music, and penned the song that swayed Manwë to forgiveness after they fell for Melkor's lies. While Tolkien never completed his story, outlines indicate that Salmar (alone of the Valar, save Tulkas) did not abandon the Noldor during the War of Wrath but went forth to fight on their behalf. The outcome of that depends on what set of notes/outlines you read.

By the second draft of the "Silmarillion" materials, Salmar was almost gone, reduced to the maker of Ulmo's conches and that's it. (In the published Silmarillion, the conches are mentioned more than he is.) In this ficlet, I wanted to consider why he was dropped from the story and, as always, what it means to read Tolkien's legendarium as actual historical texts.

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?

The stairs in the lighthouse turned tight upon themselves. Elwing climbed, hating each one. Hating the lighthouse. She shouldered through the too-small hatch into the lantern room. The mechanisms that turned the immense lens creaked and moaned. The chemicals used to clean the lens and lamps stunk. The wind punched the lighthouse and pitched her toward the hatch and the steep, winding stairs, and she stared down the possibility of Death and thought, I fucking dare you.

Outside on the walkway, the wind hid the dyspeptic groans of the lighthouse's inner workings. The light swept silently overhead: a five-second flash pattern. It portioned her day into five-second intervals of longing. The wind buffeted again, but she knew its tricks and was already clutching the railing. "Stupid wind!" she mocked aloud. The wind took her voice.

The sun westered. She watched for him, in a viscera-pink sky rotting to gray twilight. Once, in Tirion, they'd watched the inferior sun sink into the west, and she begged, and he spoke nobly and loftily of sacrifice. How they'd both rise to it.

This is marriage, she thought, as he eased from the night.

This is affection.
This is love.
This is
it?

Chapter End Notes

This double drabble uses the idea from the Felakverse (an idea that mostly exists only in my head, so far) that, while Eärendil did his whole star-ship thing, Elwing was a lighthouse keeper on one of the far Twilit Isles. Elwing's characterization as a traumatized child (turned adult here) was explored in my story The Ship of Light.

The gathering of craftspersons was small, and they were not the best. Those had mostly gone with Fëanáro. These were the failed philosophers and artists who painted walls and pounded out horseshoes. But they were here.

"Well now," said Nerdanel.

She found herself saying that a lot lately, like she needed to drag everyone forward and anchor them in the now, to find them in the darkness. But she never knew what to say next.

She couldn't make out their faces or their eyes in the dark.

She turned and opened the lantern behind her, flooded the room with light.

Memorial

Nerdanel woke as the sun painted the beach in rose/fleshtone/like the inside of an exsanguinated wound.

Once, the beach was populated with groups of Teleri, children following the sea as the waves stranded jewel-bright shells, mothers mending nets upon patchwork blankets, fathers ladling up fish chowder cooked over open fires on the beach.

Now the sea chewed at an empty beach—her husband's doing.

Nerdanel's trembling fingers missed a button on her work shirt.

How to conceptualize what had been? Wives, sons, fathers whose footprints would mark the sands of Alqualondë no more. How to remember what was lost

Across the shattered land of Beleriand, the deluge ceased and stilled. Where there were loud forests and busy villages, water stretched now, so still that there were two dusks, the colors of blood and bruising, one above, one below. The sun went into the water and seemed to devour itself.

The Haudh-en-Nirnaeth was at last silent. The crumbling clanks and groans of the heaped-up weaponry went unheard now. The grass waved below the sea until it too died and decayed. Sometimes Ossë slaps the shore and it sounds of mace upon shield. A reef grows, peopled by black fish. Unseen.

He'd pushed Rochallor to breathlessness; running hooves thundered amid the dust. In the distance, Thangorodrim edged up from the horizon, shadow metastasized.

He remembered as he rode. They'd come in dark and ice and despair, but there'd been hope too. Fëanor wasn't the only one who pondered what self-governance might bring their people. His journals from the Ice were filled with bureaucratic musings, safety and order to busy his mind so he did not fear which step might shatter the ground beneath him.

He came to the limits of his world. The gates before him were the sky. He shouted.

Nerdanel tiptoed through the morning, the anniversary of what the Noldor called their Unqueening. It was a delicate day for Fëanáro.

She was never sure how to act.

She tried quiet acts of love. Brought a mug of tea, swept his workspace when he retreated to the library for a science text. Left his favorites in the lunch basket. Didn't question when, that evening, he disappeared altogether.

She let herself into the house, to fix a cold supper for herself. Fëanáro was setting the table for two. To Nerdanel's look of surprise: "Time with you is more important than grief."

Tyleperinquar wove the door into his room in Nargothrond with sorcery, coaxing and convincing each iota of wood that it was obdurate as stone until it was—it was stone. Fingers trailing the wall, he could detect no crack or clue.

The wood was easily talked down to plain wood and a copper knob again. The spell had worked.

He spent his day, content that his father, his uncle, no one could discover the secrets he kept there. Returning, he placed his hand to the wall and—

Fire!

Flesh transformed to blood and weeping, he clutched the burned hand to his chest. The silence of the hall—he hadn't so much as gasped—eased aside for low laughter.

"Train a thing to conviction and it may surpass your intentions." His father's voice oozed from the shadows. He passed fingers over his son's ruined palm and restored it to working order. But no matter how Tyelperinquar begged, he would not restore the door to wood or even cold stone.

"This is a lesson all who would craft must learn," his father said.

Tyelperinquar tried, but the stone hovered on the edge of molten and would not be calmed.

His secrets were lost behind fire.

Chapter End Notes

Tyelperinquar = Celebrimbor

She had a persistent dream of dark dripping down the sky and, one by one, the stars were devoured.

Cold nights, the deer were running, and she was scouting where the Valacirca dipped beneath the trees. The air was toothed with cold and smelled of the sweet decay of once-crimson leaves gone brown, then gray. The cave scooped from rock seemed a place where she might stay warm for the night.

Closer, though, she saw it was not a cave,

The dream—the foresight?—of the slow-dripping dark. The stars,

it was a tunnel.

gone.

A fulgent hand closed on her ankle.