Animal Skins by Ilye

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.

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 ~