Maps by grey_gazania

Chapter 5: Fingolfin

I didn't immediately go to send the message when I left Maitimo's sickroom, for my thoughts were heavy. Instead, I found an out-of-the-way place on the edge of our settlement and stood there, silent, sorting through my own head.

It hurt to see my son in such distress, of course. It also hurt to see what Moringotto had done to my nephew. Maitimo wasn't the first child I'd held — I had younger siblings, after all — but he was the first to call me 'Uncle'. I remembered him clearly, a little copper-haired dumpling with a smile as bright as a daisy. He had grown into a kind, responsible, even-tempered man, one with whom I could trust my own children. I didn't recognize him when Findekáno returned, because I never would have connected my charming nephew to the ragged, bloody bundle of bones and dirt and too-thin skin that my son held.

I could believe that he had argued against the burning of the ships, but even if he hadn't, he had clearly suffered enough at Moringotto's hands that he owed us no penance.

His brothers, on the other hand…

I was both angered and troubled by the fact that Carnistir had lied to me, and lied convincingly. I had always thought of him as honest to a fault. But I had had a nagging suspicion for years now that perhaps I didn't know Fëanáro's sons half as well as I had believed. It angered me, but anger had been my constant companion these past few years — anger at what that family had done, anger on behalf of all my people who had died on the Helcaraxë, anger for all that we had suffered and, most of all, anger that my treacherous brother had gotten himself killed before I could confront him.

It was a heavy load to carry, all that anger, and with Arafinwë in Aman there was no one to share it with. I wouldn't burden my children. They had their own troubles.

I took a slow, deep breath. I needed to calm myself, or at least present the illusion of calm if this situation had any chance of not exploding.