A Mere Shadow by Elisif

Chapter 1

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“Laurë!”

Maedhros leapt upwards from his desk, crossed his bedchamber in a few broad strides to take his younger brother into his arms in a tight and rib-cracking hug, which Maglor—soaked by the late winter sleet falling across Himring, wet malformed snowflakes clinging to his cheeks, braids and forehead— affectionately returned.

“Thank you for coming to visit me,” Maedhros finally as he loosened the embrace and looked to locate a suitable peg for his brother’s sopping cloak and gloves.

“It’s no trouble,” said Maglor, blowing against his chapped knuckles to warm them as he moved closer to the fire at Maedhros’ urging. “And I did not know until I rode through the bailey about your unfortunate squire breaking his ankle, more’s the better.”

“And I thank you for it,” said Maedhros. He turned towards his brother, still standing with his knees half-bent so he could outstretch his palms over the fire in the grate. “Brother, if I may be terrible uncorteous – I’m in rather a rush and I need someone to braid my hair for me.”

His fingers flicked uncertainly behind him to lift a comb, the cream-coloured bone engraved with an image of the Two Treas at the base, from an open chest his dressing table and hold it outstretched in front of him. Maglor looked up at once, took it from his fingers without hesitation and ushered him to sit down. Maglor then deftly loosened his hair from the stark pinned style in which he had been wearing it, let it fall down his back in a loose and tumbled wave, began to gently separate the long red strands with the comb.

“I am sorry to rush you when you only just arrived, but I have some Sindarin emissaries and dignitaries to dine with tonight. You— you will join us, won’t you?”

“I will do so gladly,” said Maglor as he passed the separated strands of hair into his left hand to reach and take some ribbons and pins from the small bone-chest on the dressing table with the right.

“A pity you weren’t there to see their faces when I told them they were in time to see Maglor Fëanorion perform, their jaws positively dropped. You will, of course?”

Maglor paused, meeting his brother’s eyes in the mirror, his hands stiffening as he held a length of hair between his palms off the back of his brother’s head. He sighed, and then, averting his eyes, firmly said:

 “I will play for them, yes. But only play. I will not sing, nor will I recite any composition of my own devising.”

Maedhros sighed, felt a sharp pang in his chest; he reached up to take his brother’s stiff and thickly callused fingers gently into his own, twined them together against his shoulder.

 “Makalaurë. You should not let it pain you so much.”

Maglor tugged his fingers free, separated off another strand of red and with his other hand less than gently drew the comb through a length of tangle.

 “I’m a poet, next to music, my language is my soul.”

In other circumstances, Maedhros might have laughed— the words might as well have come from Tyelkormo’s finest melodramatic Laurë impression— but he knew that for Makalaurë, for his brother who crafted and forged in words as others did in ores and gems, the ban on their native tongue was a wound still gaping, still bloody. A blow impervious to salve, though that did not stop Maedhros from attempting to offer him one.

 “And yet you are praised no less highly in Sindarin than in Quenya. Perhaps—have you ever considered viewing the reputation you’ve gained writing in your second language as an achievement, a triumph against an obvious limitation?”

Maglor paused, a thumb-thick scarlet tress rolled between his thumb and forefinger as he positioned the next braid. He met his brother’s eyes in the glass.

 “Perhaps. But that cannot change that I am a mere shadow of myself when I perform in their tongue. In my own—“

He averted his eyes, laid his hands on his brother’s shoulders.

“Sometimes— I hate Sindarin, brother, I hate it. And I hate myself all the more for doing so. Did I not inherit Father’s passion for languages, feel thrill when one offered possibilities of expression lacking in our own? Did I not rush to learn Sindarin at his side, take pride in and find in mastering it solace when I found it nowhere else in those first months on this shore, feel it become a part of myself? I should not feel such resentment, but— it is the ban. Always the ban. So long as it is not a choice,their words will burn cold against the fire of my own, and it will be as though a part of me has been cut—“

His fingers halted with the comb halfway fixed into the braided knot at the back of Maedhros’ head. After a moment’s pained quiet, Maedhros reached for his hand.

“You do not need to censor yourself in my presence, Makalaurë, you know I hate it.”

He drew a deep breath.

“It was a worthy comparison— however much the ban angers me, I cannot imagine—“

“What it is like to be forbidden from openly performing my best work? To be barred from representing the achievements of our people?”

Silence. Maglor fixed the comb in place, sharply withdrew his fingers from his brother’s hair.

“Finished,” he said. As Maedhros tilted and turned his head to inspect the style in the mirror, Maglor withdrew and fetched his still-wet cloak from the peg, shivered as he drew it over himself.

He was halfway to opening the door into the swirling white of Himring’s sleet-soaked bailey when he heard Maedhros say:

“Makalaurë.”

Maglor toyed with his cloak.

“What, Maedhros?”

“I had— I had a writing desk ready-arranged in your chamber. Should you have had ideas on the journey over that you were in haste to write down— it is waiting for you.”

 “I thank you, for I have. But those ideas will have to wait: right now, I have a harp that needs tuning.”

With a slight bow of his head, clutching his cloak against his chest, he turned and left the chamber.