Animal Skins by Ilye

Bird of Prey

Read Bird of Prey

Time was meaningless up here, tethered to his eyrie. But even so Prey-Bird knew by rights he should be dead.

It was the dearth of living things that was killing him more than anything else – not, he thought with a strange, grim elation, that he’d be allowed to die if he wanted to. The bedevilled manacle was doing more than just suspending him from the cliff.

When the birdsong came after so long, he wanted to weep for the first time since he’d been captured. But birds didn’t weep. Since he’d been lifted from the pit, bleeding and broken and plucked, and hung on the side of the mountain, the only voice had been the wind’s and the only song that of the rusted chain. The songbird sonata would have been innocuous enough on a Spring day in Valimar, but here in Moringotto’s cesspit, it stuck out like a Silmaril.

His heart took wing in hope. He sucked together what little spittle he could muster, after an eternity surviving on insects and rainwater, and whistled back.

Silence fell. Probably lost and now scared away. Prey-Bird shuttered his eyes and was about to screech a familiar string of curses against the stone, when there came another curious tweet.

Hello?

He dropped his skull back against the cliff with a clunk that resonated in his ears. That was no bird.

Who goes?

He held his breath, straining his eyes through the constant grey gloom towards the outcrop where the sound had come from. There was a scramble; a skittering of slate; then a tattered cloak appeared over its brow with a great hound at the traveller’s side, and Prey-Bird’s weeping turned to chittering laughter.

Falcon! Trust you to march in here singing like a starling! Quiet, else they’ll hear you!

Irissë’s response came with all the dry humour he’d missed.

Does the Dark Lord speak avian, then? But her song hushed nonetheless and she pivoted, searching. Prey-Bird called again.

Up! In the eyrie!

Irissë’s head snapped up and her hood flopped back, opening her face to the veiled sunlight and Prey-Bird’s aerial view. Her eyes widened as she took in the cliff face and her lips parted as though she were about to speak. Huan leapt forwards and loped up to the rock face. As Irissë joined him he reared up, front paws scrabbling several ells above her head. Irissë set her hand upon his back and murmured something to him, and he quieted with a whine.

How do I get up to you?

Prey-Bird flapped his free wing, vaguely. Climb. Fly. I don’t know.

Even from this far up he could see her scowl. But climb she did, steady and sure, until finally she perched on the ledge a few handspans below his dangling toes.

“Tyelko – oh!” She inched her way closer on the ledge. He reached for her shoulder and caught hold of her, and they both took a moment to draw breath. Their eyes met, and he was struck with the sickening feeling that she was about to say something intimate and unstomachable.

“What did you bring him for?” he snarled at her as a diversion, gesturing with a kick to where Huan paced at the foot of the cliff.

Irissë’s eyes hardened. “He brought himself. He’s the reason I found you as easily as I did. What did you leave him for? Chained to a tree, no less?”

“To look after my brothers,” he replied. Irissë stared at him blankly, so he elaborated with a hiss, “He’d have died if he came with me, Irissë!”

Died, like the rest of them. His heartbeat swelled in his ears. Battle sounds rent the background, the stench of blood and fire thick in the air and the acid taint of humiliation sour on his tongue. Irissë continued to stare at him. He looked down to her hands, balled into fists at her sides, and chuckled.

“Hit me then, if it helps you.” He meant it, but it seemed to startle her anger from her. She blinked at him, her grey eyes dove-soft, and swallowed.

“Valar, you sound like a raven wheezing.”

“No birds here, Falcon – only you.” He thought of the scar on his right side and twitched; the instinct to commune with the wild things warring with that of survival. “Even the vultures gave up and left.”

Irissë’s grip tightened. He couldn’t read the emotion on her face – once upon a time he might have done, but that was when he’d been more Elf, less creature.

With her other hand she fumbled at her belt. Her cloak brushed against his legs, scratching and ticklish as a bird’s flight feathers.

“Drink.”

The water in the skin was clean and cool – she must have filled it far away, in a greener place where the birds still sang. He slurped at its sweetness, the logic of his Elf to drink not too much battling his animal to take as much as he could. Irissë, it seemed, was still all Elf, for she withdrew it before too long with murmurs that he’d otherwise be sick, and turned her attention to his captivity.

She set her hands on either side of the iron band chewing into his limb. Prey-Bird only knew she held his wing because he could see it – he’d given it up for dead long ago. The longer bones closer to his body, though, they were more tender. With gritted teeth he watched as she traced the badly-healed scars, fingers stumbling over the mosaic of shattered bone beneath and sparking jolts of pain up to his scapula.

“You won’t undo it,” he told her. He’d cut the tips of his free wing to the bone many times trying. “Amputate, it’s the only way.”

“I could just take the thumb and slip the cuff.” Irissë spoke almost as though she were thinking aloud and hadn’t heard him, forehead knitted as she manipulated his unfeeling fingers. Prey-Bird gulped down another shock of pain.

“No point. It’s dead. Cut the whole thing off.”

“That doesn’t make my job easier.”

“Does.” He grabbed at her hand. She caught her breath in surprise and looked down with wide eyes, but didn’t flinch when he dug between the small bones of her wrist. “Here, disarticulate the joint. You can lever the knife – much easier. Otherwise – you’d have to saw it off.”

“Studied this, have you?” Irissë’s eyes were two bright points in the day’s grey backwash. The softness of her voice was telling. Prey-Bird let go of her wrist.

“Tried to hack it off myself, but the rock was too blunt and then I dropped it.”

Irissë’s face iced over, as though she were only really looking at him for the first time. Then the shock melted, and her expression thawed into something else that Prey-Bird couldn’t read any more, but which he knew he wasn’t going to like.

She was hesitating. He couldn’t afford that.

“What’s the matter, Falcon?” he hissed, more goad than query. “I swear, if you don’t get me down because you haven’t got the stomach for it, I’ll –”

“Shut up, Tyelko!” Her eyes flashed and her jaw locked with the determination he’d hoped to see. “I am trying ! Believe it or not, you’re not my first amputation. But look at you – if you were an animal, you’d tell me to put you down rather than get you down!”

“I am an animal.”

Irissë made a sound deep in her throat. It sounded like the bear-grunt he’d taught her and would have lifted the plumage on his mantle, if the bastards had left him any.

“Well I’m still going to get you out of here alive. Open.”

He obediently let her stuff a wad cut from her cloak between his beak. That alone was a luxury. She didn’t take her hand away immediately, but held her palm against his jaw for a moment, thumb resting at the top of his throat.

“I’m still furious over Losgar, you know.”

I’d expect nothing less.

He grinned at her as best he could around his bite. To his delight, she grinned back. Then she began to make good on her promise.

~~~

Trapped and injured animals tended to do one of two things: either they fought or they froze. Prey-Bird had waited, tethered, for far too long. As the last of his sinews gave way to Irissës’ blade and he fell forward into her arms, the fight rose up in him again, a desperate beating inside the cage of his ribs, that overwhelming urge to be free.

His right wing flopped limply to his side: broken, useless. Pain shrieked through his wishbone and his blood ran freely from his severed blood feathers, as free as he now felt. Hands grabbed at him but he could only taste the wind, smell the air, feel the thermals. Even with one mutilated wing he could still make a glide; float down from the eyrie and then away… His blood swooped. He spread his flight feathers, curled his talons around the rock edge and keened into the breeze.

“Tyelko! No!”

There was pressure around his throat – then pain exploded across his scapula and he found himself staring up at the grim, grey sky. His Falcon loomed into his sightline, all sleek black plumage and beady-bright eyes.

“You can’t fly.” The words came slow and sobbing, counterpoint to the garrotte of her fingers. “You can’t – you can’t fly.”

He beat at her hand for a moment, then remembered he had fingers and went limp.

Right. Still an Elf.

Slowly, Irissë released her grip. He sucked in a deep lungful of air and released it on a breathless groan. In his Elven skin the pain was far, far worse. The adrenaline buzz began to fade and with the clarity of the sun ducking out from behind a cloud he realised he was naked, smeared against a ledge on the rock face, scarred skin bared to the elements. His right hand was missing and the pain was making him tremble. Below, he could barely hear Huan’s pacing and whining over the chatter of his teeth and his laughter.

“All right.” Irissë’s voice was a woosh of relief behind him. “We’re not a bird anymore.” She began to move. He could not.

She murmured to him, nonsense of home and freedom, as she eased him upright and wrapped him in her cloak. Up close he could see its soft green-brown tones were tattered, frayed, like the vanes of ruffled feathers. It settled around him, swathing his nakedness in layers of primaries, secondaries and coverts, and leaving him feeling less like a plucked fowl. His head listed against her shoulder and the world turned grey at the edges. In the background her heart beat with the bass regularity of great wings. Her breast heaved once beneath him, deeply as though gathering breath, and then she loosed the long, plaintive cry of a prey-bird into the filthy air.

“Eagle.” The pain and the adrenaline were making him feel lightheaded in a way that his tormentors had never managed. He wheezed a chuckle out into the fabric of her tunic. “Y’were always good at that.”

“Let’s hope I’m better than good today,” Irissë said, and pressed her lips against his forehead. “I’m still furious, you know.”

There was another eagle’s call, as though she were proving her point. The air billowed around them. Prey-Bird blinked in confusion and this time, it was Irissë who laughed.

The giant eagle landed on the ledge’s far edge. What little breath Prey-Bird had left stuttered in his throat.

“You –” he spluttered and reached out his fingers almost without realising.

Sorontar, Irissë chittered. We are indebted to you.

Not to me. Sorontar tilted his head and lowered the wing closest to them. 'Tis my Lord Manwë who is gracious yet.

So great was Prey-Bird’s thrill that he hardly noticed the pain when Irissë scooped him to his feet and staggered them towards the eagle. She had to bodily heave him onto Sorontar’s back, where he perched, precarious and stunned, until she leaped up behind him. It was then, as she wound her arms and her cloak tightly around him and Sorontar shifted towards the empty air, that his heart finally broke free. He wore the skin of a prey-bird, and they were going to take flight.

The wind ripped the joy from his lips as they dove, swooped and then soared. Sorontar’s wings, each longer than Prey-Bird’s own armspan, beat in the air like sails, and under his skin the glossy feathers held a downy warmth. He found himself fascinated by the way the minute twitches of the flight feathers matched a change in direction or height; how the plumage was arrayed just so. Everything was going numb, towards that peaceful, insensate place one visited after hard battle or a good lay. He let his head loll back against the support of Irissë’s shoulder – and, just before they disappeared into the clouds, he caught sight of a figure far below them.

“Huan…”

“He found his way here and he’ll find his way back again.” Irissë’s breath was hot against his neck and growing hotter the higher they climbed into the cooling evening sky. Prey-Bird grunted, but there was nothing else for it. It was becoming increasingly hard to keep his eyes from rolling back in their sockets. Sorontar screeched, a sound that made Prey-Bird’s spine prickle. He sagged back against Irissë’s shoulder, chuckling to himself.

“What did he say?”

He grinned, lax and sloppy and weak. “You pr’nounced his name wrong.”

In his ear, Irissë growled. “If you weren’t already bleeding to death by my own hand, I’d drop you off his back and kill you that way instead.”

“King of the Eagles,” Prey-Bird sighed in awe, and passed out.

---

Chapter End Notes

Random animal fact: Birds have a thing called blood feathers, which are essentially new growing feathers with an aterial blood supply. If a blood feather is severed or broken before it finishes growing and the blood supply has closed off, it is possible for the bird to bleed to death unless proper attention is given. Probably not quite as bad as amputating a hand, but still possible.

Lone Wolf

Read Lone Wolf

“So I summoned a giant eagle for you, and the best you could do was pass out on my shoulder?”

Irissë’s voice was muffled through the furs heaped on top of him. He cracked an eyelid, half-buried inside his den. The prey-bird had passed. The wolf had awoken.

He only really slept when they drugged him and Irissë knew it. She also knew that he hadn’t been drugged last night, so instead he would be lurking, half-awake, always on his guard and ready to rush his next assailant until neither could tell predator from prey any longer. This wasn’t Irissë's first attempt to get him talk, but now she'd learned to keep her distance and taunt him out of his den rather than approach and earn herself a set of teeth to her flesh. That half-waking rest was precious as a fresh kill in a mid-winter blizzard and he resented having it disturbed.

Wolf growled, softly. At his side, Huan shifted. Irissë ignored the warning.

“Your brothers want to see you.”

He grizzled again, then finally conceded, “Which ones?”

“Maitimo and Curvo.”

He poked his head out of the den with lips curved in something not quite smile, not quite snarl. It was cold outside; outside the thick pelts that brushed against his skin as warmly as if they were his litter-mates.

“Well,” he rasped, “who am I to refuse my alpha?”

Irissë sighed. “King, Tyelko. The term you’re looking for is king.”

Wolf ignored her and pawed the covers aside so he could sit up. His chest and foreleg had been done-up in a leather contraption that immobilised his shoulder and bound his limb across his underbelly. He stared at it, then dropped his head and sniffed at it. The leather smelled like it had been a horse, once.

“Does it hurt?”

Wolf flicked an ear at her. “I’ve had worse.” He lifted his head again to ease the strain on his neck, although his muzzle was still filled with the tangs of new leather and old blood. He ran his tongue across the unevenness of his teeth, fighting the urge to tear the bandage from his limb and lick at the wound.

“I tried to chew it off myself when I was hanging up there, you know.”

Irissë’s eyes ticked down to his bandaged stump and back up again. He grinned and bared his snapped-off canines. “Didn’t do me much good. The bastards broke my fangs.”

Her jaw tightened and her expression grew somehow more streamlined, as though she were pinning her ears back in displeasure. She stalked up to his den and dropped to a crouch at its opening so she could look him in the eye. From her, the only one with whom he’d ever considered himself mating as a pair, it was no threat. She stared at him for a moment as though she were gauging what yet lived in their depths.

“I thought you were an eagle when you were hanging up there?” she said finally. He cocked his head; not confused, but canny.

“I was.”

Her brow creased, like she was on the cusp of comprehension. Something visceral inside him twisted and, for just a moment, he pushed Wolf away and reached for Prey-Bird.

Sometimes I still am.

Her eyebrows lifted; then realisation softened her features and at last she nodded.

“But today you’re a wolf,” she said carefully. He returned her nod. She let her breath out across her teeth.

“I’ll warn them,” she said, and ducked outside.

His brothers appeared moments later. He smiled at them, or thought he did, but Maitimo’s lips tightened and Curufinwë’s eyebrows drew together in an enviable impression of their late father.

“Snarl at me all you like, Tyelko,” he said, and settled gracefully onto a stool at the side of the bed. “I’m not one of the healers to be intimidated by your ways .”

Wolf sent a bark of laughter up to the ceiling. “And what are my ways? If you’re intimidated by that, whelp, you should see me when I’m trying.”

“I didn’t say I was intimidated,” Curufinwë said mildly. “Irissn5; says you’re a wolf today.”

Wolf grinned like the thing you didn’t want to meet in the dark.

“Better listen to her, then, just in case she’s right.”

Curufinwë lifted an eyebrow, but his eyes were bright with a fervid curiosity and the cutting remark Wolf expected never came. It reaffirmed Wolf’s decision that he disliked Curufinwë the least of all his brothers; Curufinwë at least treated him with interest, like he were a puzzle to analyse.

On the other side of the bed, Maitimo huffed to a halt in a swish of red and gold. Regal, he was, and arrogant with it. Wolf found it at the same time oppressive and exhilarating. When he closed his eyes he could see another kind of red, the kind that ran foaming and hot, and another kind of gold that glistered wicked in the night. He’d been the red and fought the gold; fought the red and been the gold. Something lurched awake beneath his breastbone and began to slaver quietly.

“Stop it, Nelyo,” he snapped, fighting to keep his hackles down. “You’ve got that pitiful expression on your face. It's making my bollocks itch already.”

Maitimo’s back straightened. “Glad to see your humour survived,” he muttered. “As well, apparently, as your bollocks.”

“He’s just jealous because he can’t lick them like wolves can,” Curufinwë murmured under his breath, without moving a muscle in his face. Wolf snorted, and Maitimo’s face rearranged itself into something soft and sad that Wolf had forgotten the name for. He curled his lip over one broken canine.

"I heard what you said last time, Nelyo. I don’t want to hear it again. I'd've abandoned me too. It's what the pack does to anyone stupid enough to get themselves caught."

Maitimo regarded him for a moment, even and cool. "I don't believe you really regard us as your pack any more," he said then.

"No," Wolf agreed, "I don't. My pack was massacred when Moringotto trapped me."

“You led them to it, Turkafinwë,” Maitimo said, “like lambs to the slaughter.” He spoke with narrowed eyes and pulled up to his full height, but Wolf had seen far taller, far darker, far hotter, and was not cowed.

“Lambs do not follow.” He cocked his head slowly; dangerously. If he’d still had his fangs, they’d have been glinting by now. “They flee in the opposite direction. They were wolves and I was their alpha. They chose to follow me.”

Maitimo threw his hands up with a splutter of annoyance. “And in your monolithic stupidity, you got every last one of them killed!”

“They weren’t animals,” remarked Curufinwë, sanguine. He had begun to inspect the leather limb brace. “They had free choice.”

Celegorm snickered. “Only one of those statements is correct.”

Maitimo’s breath hissed over his teeth and he spun on his heel. Wolf thought he was going to leave, but he just stood tense and quivering like a creature deciding whether to fight or flee. He was a rabbit in the lamplight. Wolf licked his lips as the glory of the chase and the kill howled deep in his soul.

“Why are you here, Nelyo?” he drawled. Maitimo’s head turned enough that he could glance back at Wolf over his shoulder. “Are you going to apologise again? Are you going to flagellate yourself for leaving me in the enemy’s hands for twelve years?” Maitimo flinched and something inside Wolf yipped an early triumph.

“I know how you love to suffer,” he pressed on. “You’d be wallowing in self-made misery by now if it were you in my place – but oh, you’d never be stupid enough to get caught in the first place, would you? Well, stop making yourself feel guilty over this so you can palm yourself off to it later. If you had any kind of mettle as a leader at all then you’d acknowledge the advantage and take credit for this because I know what we’re up against. I have seen the enemy, I have met him in the darkness, I have fought and I have won .”

Maitimo spun around, then froze. Silence clattered down around them. Wolf was vaguely aware that Curufinwë’s hands had stopped moving, although they still rested on the leather brace. Maitimo stared for a heartbeat, before his face closed down to marble.

“So help me, I’m not sure we haven’t brought the enemy into the heart of our camp,” he muttered, just loudly enough for the edge of Wolf’s hearing. Then he stalked out in that flurry of red and gold, and left the air frigid behind him.

“Don’t mind him,” Curufinwë said, reaching again for Wolf’s forelimb. “He’s just concerned that you’ve turned into an Orc.”

“The bastard!" Wolf tore himself from Curufinwë's grip. "How very dare he!” He threw the covers aside, ready to bound after their eldest brother. Huan leapt up, startled by the sudden rush of cold air and instantly alert to his master’s purpose.

Curufinwë’s sigh came just before his forge-hardened grip seized Wolf by both shoulders. Relentless fingers bit through the leather brace and wrenched his damaged joints hard enough that he collapsed back into his den with a whimper of pained surprise. Curufinwë simply patted him on the chest as he let go and, with academic patience, reached again for Wolf’s limb.

“Well, I can see how he might,” he said, as though the violent break in conversation had never occurred. “You are a bit of a savage these days.”

Wolf glared, still catching his breath, but Curufinwë was already too engrossed in his thoughts. “Yes,” he murmured under his breath, gently manipulating the elbow joint, “yes, I think it could work.” He looked up, and his grin was every bit as sharp and canny as one of Wolf’s own pack.

“What say you to a prosthetic paw, then?”

---

Chapter End Notes

Random animal fact: The alpha wolf theory is turning out to be more myth than fact. The initial experiments observed alpha behaviour and dominance battles in captive animals, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that wild wolves don’t act like this. The closest known behaviour in wild wolves is amongst family groups, where elders (sometimes seen as alphas) exert dominance over their juniors in the way that human parents do over their children and dog owners do over their pets. When the pups mature, they don’t overthrow the alpha to become pack leader – instead, they disperse and form packs of their own.

That all seemed remarkably fitting for the Fëanorian situation, which from wolf-Celegorm’s point of view is unnatural and uncomfortable.

White Hart

I subscribe to the fanon that Celegorm the Fair is actually albino – I feel it goes a long way towards explaining the genetics in the family.

Read White Hart

Join me in the forge, Curufinwë had said. A statement innocent enough, reminiscent of the elder days when Curufinwë had wanted to inspect damaged weapons after a hunt and strive for their improvement.

It didn’t occur to him until he had prowled inside the forge that it might have been a bad idea, when a firelit silhouette wielding tongs turned to face him. Something kicked blindly inside him and he scrambled into the anvil, knocked ironwork clattering, and Deer awoke.

He’d never liked being Deer. Deer was most use in the sprawling plains or the woods. Deer needed space to run and leap and blend and hide. Deer was no help in small confined spaces or the dark because Deer had prey instincts and felt terror and froze. Deer’s heart fluttered in his mouth and Deer’s stomach turned over and over and Deer’s muscles quivered just standing still and– and–

Deer panicked. Deer ran.

Deer’s instincts carried him far, fleet-hooved. Inside an Elven encampment it was loud and busy and full of people and noises and weapons and hounds and he just had to get away . He flashed white out of the camp and into the fields beyond where he blended with the silvered long-grass. It whipped at his fetlocks as he dashed through it, catching and scratching and whispering things. The wind brought him no scent of his herd and so he ran more, ran through the fear and the memories of bad things and into the open freedom until finally, finally , he stopped, far enough away for safety, and slept.

He came back to himself at the fringes of a wood, curled into a shallow hollow in the ground like a fawn. His antlers were gone and he was alone and there was still no hint of his herd.

He hated being Deer.

The grass waved gently in the breeze above him, pale against the grey sky. The trees susurrated behind him – and a short way off, he heard footsteps .

He braced, ready to bolt again. The footsteps paused, and Irissë said loudly and deliberately,

“My goodness. Whatever you are today, it certainly blunders around.”

He tightened his lip over his teeth. The grass swished again, then parted to reveal Irissë’s concerned expression. He didn’t look at her. The outstretch of her hand made him jump. She stopped moving.

“Prey animal.”

He nodded, head dropped and eyeing her sidelong. Irissë hummed soothingly.

"That's all right." She held out her hands, palms open. “Friend, see?”

He stared at her for a few quick breaths. He knew she spoke the truth. There was something in her posture that exuded warmth and kindness. She felt almost maternal.

With a sigh, he knuckled himself upright. Irissë settled onto her knees in the grass before him and looked him up and down.

“You're bleeding.” She gestured to where his right forelimb was buckled in its brace across his belly.

Oh. Was he? He looked down. There was a red bloom on the thick linen bandage swathing his stump. Must have been where he banged himself on his way out of the forge. Adrenaline had anaesthetised it thus far, but with the sight of the blood came a dull throb that he knew would soon blossom into a delicious, stinging ache.

“Will you let me look at it?”

He thought for a moment. She was no threat. He licked his lips and let his breath out on a sigh, so that his posture slackened. She took it as the acceptance it was meant to be and shifted closer, slowly and without making eye contact.

“I’ll need to take your brace off, all right?”

He nodded and dropped his head to let her. The first brush of her fingers tickled and made the skin twitch like shaking off a fly. Irissë smoothed her hand over his good shoulder, reassuring, before she undid the buckles and unwrapped the padding between leather and living hide.

He watched her with a detached kind of interest as she dabbed lightly at the amputation site with the edge of the bandage. He’d grown almost used to having just three limbs; regaining the fourth, however impotent, was alien and it didn’t feel like it was part of him. There was no urgency to her movements, so he drew his limb back and cradled it in his hand to examine it. The wound didn’t seem to be bleeding any longer, and it looked clean. He dropped his head and sniffed it. It smelt clean. Just to be sure he licked at it a few times – then caught himself.

Deer didn't do that – Deer must be sleeping again. But Wolf also slept, and Prey-Bird, and Bear and Boar and Hare who he'd been at times in the Pit. Prey-Bird had been plucked of his feathers, Wolf skinned for his pelt and Deer’s antlers shed and stolen. He wore none of their skins any more. He was naked.

“I was Deer.”

“Was?” She said it with a gentle kind of curiosity in her voice; not pressing, but encouraging. He flicked his eyes sideways to acknowledge her astuteness. She pursed her lips. “But not any more?”

He looked up again, and this time met Irissë’s patient eyes. He shook his head. She smiled at him – she was the only one who did that, these days.

“So what are you now, Tyelko?”

He frowned, thoughtful. Animals were designed to survive. They fought for it, right up to the last. He'd seen it many times, in the frenzied kicks of a hart brought down by his hounds and a speared boar's furious squeals that only drained away with the last of its blood.

You will not have me, they'd all said, as he approached with his knife to end it. I am not yours! You will not have me!

He'd repeated those same words, over and over, through strangled cries and snarls and laughter. And when the pain grew too much to bear, he’d let his animal instincts take over in the dark, in the depths of Angband's pit. He’d slipped on the skins of the animals he fought with; ran with; spoke with. The long teeth in the night were much easier to handle when they were his own.

He tightened his one remaining palm around his mutilated forearm. The scars there would never smooth out. Some he’d put there himself, but the rest were made deliberately, or during a scuffle he would inevitably lose – etched there, whipped there, burned there, always without his permission. He had never minded the honour of battle scars, but to have one’s camouflage removed against one’s will…

Fury bubbled up, scalding the back of his throat. His eyes slammed shut. Like biting insects, his fingernails nipped into the underside of his forearm, anchoring against the roar of pain beyond his control and his shrieking laughter in the face of it, urging it on, taking the reins into his own hands again.

It was suffocating – in his animal skins he never had to dwell on the injustice of it all. But none of those fitted him now. The skin he wore was no longer the pristine white of a gull’s breast. It was marked, scored, mutilated beyond recognition; it had belonged to somebody else. Now he needed a new skin of his own. His eyes lit upon a patch to the inside of one elbow where black streaked beneath his own pale skin. Similar patterns marked his knees. He’d earned them right at the start of his captivity, when he’d refused to kneel to Moringotto. A blow to the back of the head had sent him sprawling across the throne-room floor, scoring his flesh and embedding ash just beneath the surface. It was painless enough now that it had healed, but it was still there twelve years later and showed no signs of fading soon.

He lifted his arm up before his face and examined his skin in the daylight for the first time. Yes, they had modified his camouflage, but wounds could be reopened and scars could be remade. And Irissë still awaited an answer.

What are you now?

“I don’t know what I am, yet,” he murmured, then looked up with a grin that felt too wide, too bright for his face. “I might even be something you’ve never heard of before.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Random animal fact: White deer, or white stags/harts, are important in many cultures’ mythologies. The Celts believed that a white hart is a messengers from the otherworld and would appear when one was transgressing a taboo. According to Arthurian legend, white harts have a perennial ability to evade capture, and pursuit of one represents mankind's spiritual quest. It also signalled that the time was nigh for the knights of the kingdom to pursue a quest.

This may or may not be a hint about where I’m taking the Silmaril plotline. I suggest you don’t read too much into it (unless you want to!)

Celegorm

Please note: This chapter contains reference to self-tattooing, which could be construed as self-harm.

Read Celegorm

It had been several days since he'd fled blindly from the camp. When he’d first tried to stand after Irissë found him, he’d swayed on his legs like a newborn fawn before his knees gave out and he collapsed back into an ungainly heap in the grass. He’d laughed, but she tsked that it was no wonder he’d exhausted himself, and had wrapped him up in her cloak and left him there whilst she went hunting and built a fire.

After Irissë had fed him the rabbit she’d caught and cooked, and banked the fire to make the charcoal they’d need, he lay with his head in her lap and simply watched the stars.

That first night out in the wild was the first time he’d ever felt really free since before his capture. Ithil carved a wide arc high above them whilst he rested there with her, content to simply be. Irissë’s fingers were in his hair, soothing against his scalp. They’d cropped it short in the name of hygiene, but despite numerous attempts at washing it still retained a yellow-grey tinge. It was obvious in the daylight, when it flopped into his eyes and got on his nerves, but the moonlight purged Angband’s lingering taint and bleached it back to its original silver-white. He hadn’t been able to see the stars or moon whilst he hung from Thangorodrim, obscured as they were by sloughs of greasy grey clouds, and he’d barely moved beyond his bed since he returned to his brothers’ camp by the lakeside. The cool breeze seemed to ventilate his very soul and the starlight sparks in the darkness masked everything that was terrible and hurt.

He was naked, at ease in the night, and he may have worn an alien skin, but he wore it under an Elven cloak.

He eventually came to realise that Irissë was watching him. He transferred his attention from the stars to her shadowed face and tilted his head in query. One hand slipped from his hair to his face and she traced her fingertips lightly over the scar that bisected his mouth and pulled his top lip up into a permanent sneer. He snapped playfully at her fingers. She snatched her hand away, but tweaked his nose as she did so. Without really thinking he smiled at her, but the movement made him overly aware of the scar and he brought his own hand up to follow the path her fingers had just taken.

“That was the first mark they put on me, you know.”

“What did they do?” Irissë asked, her voice even and no more than a whisper. If he hadn’t felt her other hand tighten momentarily in his hair, or heard her swallow hard before she spoke, he’d have thought her unaffected by the thought of his torture.

“The Orc captain struck me to shut me up,” he replied, and smirked. “Didn’t work, though. Just set the tone of things to come.” He fingered the scar again. “It’s going to be the first one to go.”

Irissë’s eyes twinkled as she blinked and nodded. “All right, then.” She scanned his face, lingering on his right cheekbone where they’d enjoyed backhanding him most; on his left eyebrow, split when they’d slammed his face into the floor; on the clipped and ragged edges of his ears.

“Do you remember where they all came from?”

He scoffed, and swept his hand towards the white-hatched disaster that was his bare torso in the moonlight. “Too many to count, Falcon. I couldn’t possibly remember them all. There are a few –” he caught her hand and pressed it against the brand on his chest, “– like this. That’s where they tried to mark me as their property. And this –” he moved her hand up to the thick stiff band around his throat, “– was from the iron collar they made me wear.”

He’d said it all lightly enough, but Irissë’s expression had crumpled into dismay. Her hand clenched into a fist where it rested against his neck and she bit her lip to hide the hitch of her breath. It made his innards twist as he realised in alarm that, beyond the jesting and the tough love, she cared enough to be saddened by what had been done to him. It seemed as though she were the only one, most of the time; his brothers’ attitudes ranged from Maitimo's detachment through fear that he’d come back either corrupted or insane, to Carnistir’s casual disdain that he should pull himself together, to Curufinwë’s cold curiosity at the new workings of his mind.

He looked up at her as kindly as he remembered how and took her hand in his.

Of course you cared enough. You came for me, when noone else would. You understand me.

“And then there’s this.” He guided her hand down and wrapped her palm over his bandaged stump. “I’ll always remember this one.”

“So I should think!” Irissë sniffed and swiped a few flyaway hairs from her face, her chin lifted vixen-proud. “Sometimes I wonder why I came for you, you know.”

“Because I burned the boats with my father, you mean?”

She glared at him and twisted away, no doubt stung by his bald admission.

“Ships,” she said finally. “They’re ships; don’t let Círdan catch you calling them boats .”

“I have no intention of letting Círdan catch me at all – I’m sure he’d have more to take insult at than because I misnamed his vessels.”

He thought of white sand stained and foaming with something far thicker than water, slick and oily in the flaming torchlight – and then beyond, to the roar and crackle of a bleached wood inferno and the sea that steamed and hissed as they turned their backs. And he felt absolutely nothing at all.

“Your people must hate us.”

She nodded. “They do. They can’t understand why I insist on returning to see you.”

He reached up and set his fingers against her jaw.

“I’m sorry they died and I didn’t.”

She caught his hand in hers and cupped it around her cheek. The smile that swelled it into his palm was soft and sorrowful.

“I think a little bit of you did die, you know.”

“The bit that makes me Elven.”

That sad smile again, and another nod. He was right. She understood him.

“And that’s why you’re not angry over the ships.”

“Oh,” she laughed then, bitter and wild, “I’m angry. But I’m not angry at you – I can’t be, not anymore. You’re not the same person – animal – that you were then. There’s no point.”

He’d gazed up at her, and all his words had died on his lips because nothing he could say meant anything. She squeezed his hand, then let go and went back to combing her fingers through his hair. Then she’d drawn a deep breath, and he’d fallen asleep to the sound of her nightingale song.

The next morning, they’d set to work.

~~~

He came back to the encampment still wearing Irissë’s cloak over his bare torso. “I’m resigned to you bloodying all my clothing these days,” she’d said with a twinkle in her eye, as she’d carefully replaced the padding over the new wounds on his right arm and buckled his brace back up. Though they’d made straight for his quarters upon arrival, and slipped through the camp unhindered, it was not long before his brothers arrived.

He folded himself cross-legged on top of his animal skins as Irissë let them into the room, hood drawn over his face and eyes glinting as he watched. They clamoured at her, asking after his health and his sanity, and he just listened, smirking. He didn't flinch as they approached, or when Makalaurë reached out saying, "Let me look at you," and threw back the hood.

When they all finally fell silent, gawping, he laughed and thrilled at the way it pulled the new, self-made scar across his mouth.

“Well, brothers? Aren’t you going to ask me what kind of creature I am today?”

Silence. A cleared throat; an awkward shifting of weight. Irissë rolled her eyes, but the drama was his alone and he was going to savour it.

“Ask me,” he pushed, then again more loudly when still no answer came, “Ask me!”

“Well tell us, then,” sniped Curufinwë from the back of the room, then affected a sing-song. “What kind of creature are you today, Tyelko?”

“Today…” he grinned, and the distance grew greater between him and them. “Today, I’m a Celegorm.”

Makalaurë stared at him. Maitimo was frowning, not fiercely but in that soft, confused manner he had when he was trying to puzzle out an academic problem. It was Carnistir who broke the moment as he swore and spat on the floor.

“Filthy Wood-elf language!”

"It’s the language of the thralls, actually," Celegorm replied lightly, with a leer of malice just below the surface. "Sindarin – I learned it in the Pit, don't you know?"

"Oh, I see.” Maitimo stepped forward now, his expression suggesting that everything was clear to him now. Celegorm suspected his brother had it all wrong. “Well, that would explain why you look as though you've been rolling around in the embers." He reached out as though to touch the marks that striped Celegorm's cheekbones, still raised and livid beneath the charcoal streaked into them. "What happened, Tyelko? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine – better than fine, in fact. I am well ."

The furrow between Maitimo's eyebrows deepened and he shot a backwards glance at where Irissë stood, impassive. "You don't look well . Whatever you've been doing, you've opened up all your wounds again–" he gestured to a patch of skin now visible through the cloak opening, "and you've got dirt inside them – you're filthy! I shall call for a bath."

He turned towards the door

"If you like, though they won't come out."

Maitimo looked back at Celegorm over his shoulder. "Pardon?"

"The marks. They're permanent."

What do you mean? How–

"Stop asking such stupid questions," Curufinwë cut in, elbowing past a glowering Carnistir to step in front of Maitimo and take control of the situation as easily as that. He raised an enquiring eyebrow and held out his hand. "May I?"

Celegorm shrugged his good shoulder and obliged by extending his left arm through the cloak opening. Carnistir drew in closer, peering down at the black stripes that now scored Celegorm’s forearm.

“I see, so you’ve embedded – what, charcoal? – under the skin. Must be important to get the depth correct, I should think. This one here, see? It looks too deep to me. I expect it’ll fade in time.”

“Then I shall have to make it again.”

Curufinwë’s lips pursed, with no clue as to whether he were hiding a scowl or a smile. Maitimo huffed a sigh of frustration, counterpoint to his hopeless expression that suggested he’d have half-preferred Celegorm to stay out in the wilds where he belonged, whilst Makalaurë had withdrawn next to Ambarussa, frowning. It was Carnistir who threw his hands up with an angered cry and spun to face Irissë.

“You let him do this?” he hissed, jabbing a finger towards her, “You helped him do this! Didn’t you? What were you thinking? You know he’s quite mad!”

Irissë’s expression opened with the beginnings of a furious defence, but Celegorm was on his feet and in front of her before she could speak.

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that!” he thundered at his younger brother. Carnistir flushed and had the grace to look intimidated as Celegorm loomed over him, eyes and teeth flashing amongst the new tattoos across his face. “I am not, actually quite mad – in fact, I think I’m saner than I have been in many a year and it’s Irissë you have to thank for it!”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked behind him into Irissë’s calming eyes. He took a breath, but Carnistir had already turned on Curufinwë.

“Neither should you have taken him to the forge!” he hissed. “Didn’t it occur to you that it might send him lunatic again?”

Curufinwë just shrugged. “Bad ideas seem to run in our family, don’t you think?” he remarked placidly. Celegorm gave a self-deprecating laugh at that, then turned his attention to Ambarussa who had appeared at his side like an umber spectre.

"Permanent, you say?" Ambarussa muttered, his eyes fixed curiously on Celegorm’s face. He reached out, and Celegorm let him. “Looks like good camouflage to me. I don’t see why it’s a bad idea at all.” Celegorm made a noise of affirmation that twisted into a thrilled grunt of pain when his brother's fingers caught one of the marks a bit too harshly. Ambarussa’s ears twitched, but he made no apology.

"Whilst I was travelling," he said instead, pushing the cloak aside so he could investigate further, "I visited the lands of Men in the South. There, horse-like creatures roam the plains, white-skinned with black stripes." He looked up, expression impassive. "Zebras, they're called. You remind me of them."

Celegorm's laughter barked through the hush that had now fallen. "No chance of that, I'd say," he grinned. "Never once was I anybody's prey, and never shall I be yet."

“And I bet zebras don’t have our father’s crest marked on their chest, either.”

Celegorm looked up at Maitimo, who stood with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the place where Morgoth’s servants had once seared their brand into living flesh. It had taken some time, but Irissë had finally succeeded in etching the outline of Fëanor’s eight-pointed star over the top of it. It was unfinished and lacking detail, but unmistakable nonetheless. Beside him, Curufinwë was frowning thoughtfully.

“I’m sure I could devise some coloured dyes to finish it off,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. Maitimo nudged him with his elbow and cleared his throat pointedly.

“So, tell me about this Celegorm creature, then.”

Celegorm offered him an arch look, but Maitimo's face had softened into an expression that suggested he was genuinely interested. Irissë shifted her weight at Celegorm’s side and dropped a touch of camaraderie to his back.

“Celegorm was born in the shadows,” he began, “and he speaks the language of the thralls.” He looked around the room. For once they were all listening.

“Celegorm is a thing to be feared,” he continued, and his heart beat joyfully for it was true. “He understands the ways of the animals, and the darkness. When at full strength he can bring down a wolf or an Orc with his bare hands.”

“What is his habitat?” Maitimo asked.

“The woods, the fields, the lakes, the mountains. He is a creature of the wilds, and will likely return there at intervals for it brings him alive. Confinement makes him unhappy, though he can stand it for a time.”

“And what does he eat?”

“Same things as you, mostly, although he can go for periods on insects and grubs if he needs to.” He paused and bared his teeth in a smile. “He is camouflaged and good at catching his own food.”

Maitimo nodded, thoughtful. Irissë and the rest of the brothers were quiet around them in varying states of discomfort. Then Maitimo unfolded his arms from across his chest and laughed, light and relieved, and the atmosphere shattered.

“He sounds like a tough old thing to me, this Celegorm,” he said, stepping close and reaching for Celegorm’s shoulder. “Oh, brother, I think you know what you are, but do you even know what you look like now?”

Celegorm threw his head back and cackled. “I haven’t a clue!” He threw a glance back at Irissë, who grinned back at him. “Well, then, isn’t someone going to fetch me a mirror, so I can admire our handiwork?”

Monster

Apologies for the delay in posting this final chapter. It was a bit of a struggle to get my idea onto the page. One issue was with the names I'd used throughout the fic; please note that I've gone back and changed those used previously from the Sindarin to the Quenya, to fit with the significance of the name Celegorm chooses and those used in this final chapter.

There are a few deviations from canon here around the Celegorm-Curufin-Luthien arc, to fit with the AU-adapted characterisations (i.e. that Celegorm’s a different kind of crazy here). Any other canon deviations are accidental, so please let me know if you spot them because I’m not too familiar with this time frame.

Read Monster

In these wild lands, they all took new skins eventually. Celegorm learned them all.

A Maedhros was tall and lordly, with a fretful kind of diplomacy that came from regular dealings with the heartstung, frostbitten people now called the Fingolfinions. He governed them all with straight shoulders and careful words and tired eyes, and even when he abdicated his crown in favour of their Oath, they all still treated him as a king.

The Maglor was deceptive and spiteful. He was like an over-ripe fruit gone soft and sour on the outside, but with the stone of an impenetrable bite lurking underneath. He was dangerous because had a way with words, which he rarely used except when it mattered the most because that was when he could cut the deepest. To Celegorm, the Maglor’s attempts at cruelty were laughable at best, but from time to time he found himself in the company of a doleful Maedhros or a furious Caranthir after they’d been on the receiving end of Maglor’s weaponised tongue.

A Caranthir was belligerent and easily offended. He always liable to take conflict badly, and had been the only one of Celegorm’s brothers to ever embroil Celegorm in a physical confrontation since he returned from the Pit. But Caranthir's temper flared as hot as his cheeks and though he was quick, Celegorm was quicker. Caranthir had lost that fight spitting and howling, with teeth marks in his neck and a broken hand that took weeks to heal. Celegorm had rubbed green dye his own new wounds as a reminder to them all and from then on Caranthir kept his distance.

The Curufin seemed to be the only one of the brothers who flourished in his new skin. It was as though, like the ores and gems he plied in the forge’s flickering shadows, he too had been wrought into something glorious and deadly-joyful. For, just like his finely made swords, this Curufin was indeed a crafty thing, all casual, glinting smiles over a flagrant, whetstoned disregard for anything except his older brother and the Oath.

Celegorm did not understand the Oath. He understood that he had sworn it once, back in his Tyelkormo skin, but though his brothers tried at length to explain it, to justify it in his name and in the name of their father, he could not grasp its import.

Animals stole food from each other constantly, and water, and living space. They fought for it but, if beaten, there were no grudges held, no pride to wound. They moved on. Celegorm could understand that; it was a matter of survival. The Silmarils, as far as he could tell, were naught save pretty ornaments that had once shone at him through the darkness like eyes hot with malice. Artificial jewels and trinkets were worthless if they had no use beyond aesthetics. He failed to see their use, when one could wander a few short miles into the wild and be amongst the individual, imperfect gems Yavanna had instead provided.

There were shiny things that had their uses, of course. They were the ones with sharp edges: extensions to his talons and fangs. They came in useful as Celegorm hunted and prowled, scouring the lands of the dark fey creatures that slunk relentlessly from the North and threatened their safety. Huan accompanied him on those long campaigns, and Amrod: a quiet and solitary companion who had become nearly as skilled at the hunt as Celegorm himself. Together they roamed the wilds, communicating for years at a time in their own wordless language of growls and whines and something more darkly subliminal. They were fleet and fey, joyful and deadly, and whilst behind stone walls politics were waged, the three of them flourished amidst the bright, unknown dangers of Beleriand.

~~~

When news came of Aredhel’s death he wore his Prey-Bird skin again. He didn’t believe the robin at first, snapping and snarling at it for a false messenger. But then a nightjar came with the same news, and a thrush, and a brace of magpies and a skylark and the chaffinch and then the woodpecker and at last the kestrel, all twittering obituaries until the sound filled his ears and he thought his head would explode along with his heart. So he shook out his feathers and took to the wind, fleeing Felagund’s halls amongst his motley flock and flying through the foothills until he found an eyrie where he could keen the eulogy for his Falcon to the eagles.

And if he returned a little wilder than ever before, then none commented upon it.

~~~

Celegorm was lying on the floor when Curufin found him. His brother’s face pinched into a sort of tired resignation and, with a sigh, he knelt. Celegorm grunted as his head was settled gently into Curufin’s lap, for it pulled at the great wounds in his chest that had incapacitated him.

“Shh,” Curufin hissed, but his brow was furrowed and he had no sense of urgency about him, so Celegorm decided it was meant for comfort instead of stealth.

After all, there should be no-one else left alive in this room.

“Dior?”

“Dead.” There was no emotion in the word. Curufin’s eyes were glassy and his face had gone very still. Celegorm coughed – a stilted, painful thing – to clear his throat.

“Did you retrieve –”

“No.” Curufin reanimated. His lips tightened and white-hot anger lit up his face for a split second. Then he took a deep breath and leaned forward to brush Celegorm’s hair out of his eyes. “But don’t worry about that.”

From this position, Celegorm could see through time by looking into Curufin’s eyes. He saw the child Atarinkn5;, coddled in their father’s arms as he toyed with a freshly-forged trinket. He saw prideful Curufinwn5;, still fresh into adulthood and swearing the Oath with a visceral zest that would never fade. He saw Curufin the Crafty, now the spit of their father and burning to be Fn5;anor’s match after death. He saw his little brother, with Elven blood sprayed across his pale face as he fought glacier-calm and brand-hot, his sword as sharp as his wit and twice as deadly.

Curufin was driven by a fire that Celegorm could never understand, but which flared so hot that he found himself singed by its flames. Curufin had never asked anything of Celegorm since his return from Angband; had never expected anything and never tried to force him to fit in with the new society they’d created for themselves in Beleriand that chafed and grated at Celegorm and made him itch to run for the wilds. And in return, Celegorm had followed Curufin unconditionally, had indulged his fancies and his tempers.

When Curufin had impressed their hospitality upon the Nightingale, Celegorm had accepted it because Huan had liked her, and Huan was always of sound judgement. She refused to speak to them, but when they left she would sing like the Nightingale and so Celegorm had again pulled on his Prey Bird skin and spoken to her in avian. She’d cocked her head at him and watched him with huge, stony eyes, but if she understood him then she never showed it and in the end he’d lost his temper and abandoned that endeavour.

Huan was always of sound judgement.

Curufin was incandescent with rage and embarrassment, but Celegorm found their subsequent exile from Nargothrond no great hardship. Himring was grim, but less so than he’d found the claustrophobia of the caves without Huan’s company. Maedhros kept hounds, which eased the sting of Huan’s abandonment, and reunited with Amrod, Celegorm was glad to escape the chilly stone fortress whilst his brothers played their political chess match.

“Tyelko?”

Celegorm dragged his focus out of the past. Curufin’s face was fixed into a scared confusion again, like the little boy striving to understand something years beyond his genius brain, so many lives and deaths ago. “Stay with me – talk to me. Tell me, what kind of creature are you now?”

Celegorm laughed, dark and wet. Curufin didn’t bother to wipe away the blood that flecked his face.

“I don’t know,” Celegorm whispered, as the edges of the world began to grow black, “but I don’t think either of us is an Elf anymore.”

 

~ The End ~