The Ice Between by Nibeneth

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Chapter 5

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When Fingon was alone at last, he slammed the heavy door behind him and sank to the floor, knees drawn up to his chin. He couldn’t breathe. Each breath in seemed to stick in his chest, building on the last, trapping and suffocating him. He could still hear Maedhros calling his name.

Fingon. I am so sorry. I did not mean to say that.

Outrage flared to life in him again, but it could not cut through the fog of panic and helplessness that choked him, though it would have been a welcome relief.

How dare he. How dare he say any of that to me. He has no idea what he is talking about.

He rubbed his hands together. Even considering the walk back up to the keep and his pounding heart, he was cold all over. Detached. No, he couldn’t do this again, he couldn’t let himself retreat into the coffin of ice that had kept him safe for so long. He couldn’t go back. Not after what it had taken to break free. If he slipped under now, he didn’t know if he would ever taste fresh air again—

Stop it. Stop. Pull yourself together. Breathe. Breathe out.

Unable to stop shaking, he pressed his palms to his eyes and they came away damp.

You are a hero to my people! You are a hero to me!

The words reverberated in his mind, bringing not the warmth and pride that Maedhros’ voice usually instilled in him, but waves of shame. Fingon tried to make himself count his breaths, but he kept losing track and returning to the scene of the workshop, a pleasant tryst gone sour, Maedhros’ thoughtless words.

“Stop,” Fingon said aloud. His voice seemed to be coming from a far corner of the room. He registered unfamiliar furniture, a cold fireplace, light coming in the tall window at a strange angle.

I did not mean to say that .

He knew it would hurt. He knew Fingon feared it to be true.

“Stop it,” Fingon said again to himself. His voice shook. His whole body shook. He still had the Helcaraxë in him, in his blood and bones and heart, and the harder he tried to fight it, the tighter it gripped him with claws of broken sea ice. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Breathe.” Put it in a line. How did we get here. Don’t get stuck. Don’t get trapped under the ice.

 

Slowly, Fingon managed to wrestle his panic back down, and for a long moment he sat with his eyes closed, counting his heartbeats, going through it all over again until he had a sense of why it all came to a point now. The room was still. His breath was deep and even. The door behind his back was solid and helped to anchor him, but he still did not trust his body to do anything but sit and try to stay calm. Focusing on the room was helping. He could feel his limbs again, and no longer did he feel like an observer to the life of a stranger. He was here, everything was slowing down, and while it was all still fragile, he was in control again.

The sunlight coming in the window had shifted its angle. He decided he must have been here for a few hours. It took him a moment to register where he was: the chambers set aside for his use, though he had not used them and had only been here once to stow an extra change of clothes, in case some necessity forced him to stay here instead of with Maedhros. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this.

No. He wasn’t going to think about it just yet.

The room was comfortable and well-furnished, but it lacked the lived-in familiarity of Maedhros’ chamber. Still, at the moment it was everything he needed: a place to be alone. They were going to have to talk eventually, but the thought of that stirred coals of anxiety in his gut again and he shook his head hard.

“Not now,” he said aloud. He had just won back control of his own mind and body. He was not going to lose it again.

Methodically, he took stock of his physical state. His mouth was dry and his tongue was sticky, A little water helped to clear his head and also to wash the lingering taste of Maedhros’ kisses from his lips. It was late afternoon and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but the thought of food made him a little queasy. Besides, hunger did not bother him like it used to, before he had been hungry enough to devour a raw, steaming seal’s kidney without hesitation.

“Stop thinking about the Ice,” he told himself sternly before it got out of control. He needed to eat something. That was not optional, and there were sweet and savory snacks in jars on the table. No excuses.

He was cold, now that he was thinking about it. The sun in the window brought a little warmth to the room, but not much, and the fire had not been lit since his arrival as no one had actually expected him to use this room. The need to be warm was what eventually got him off the floor. There was no need to call a servant; he could light a fire in any conditions using almost anything as fuel, and soon thin flames took hold of the pyramid of firewood he built on the hearth. He sat with his elbows on his knees, watching the fire strengthen and spread, willing it to hold off the ice that still threatened to seal away his heart.

You did this , something said, and Fingon’s mind showed him an image of a frail elf coated in frost, found frozen to their bedding after a bitter storm that whipped out of nowhere.

“No. Stop it, we’ve been over this.” He rubbed his face. Another cup of water and a handful of candied nuts provided a momentary distraction, but he couldn’t shake the creeping doubt that settled into his mind in the raw aftermath of the panic attack.

You did this.

A child went hungry, and her parents went hungrier. An elf wandered into the vast, unending darkness, never to return. Families huddled in crude ice shelters against the shrieking winds that whipped over the ice. Despair, suffering, hopelessness.

You did this.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Fingon said again. Enough people had spoken to him after the horror was over and warm homes and full bellies had become normal again, and they had tried to reverse the damage of decades of unending winter that had settled deep into Fingon’s spirit and, presumably, tried to ease their own guilty consciences.

I couldn’t trust the Valar any longer. You could not have forced me to set foot on the Helcaraxë otherwise.

I fought at Alqualondë like the fool I am, what choice did I have but to leave Aman?

It was Fëanor who betrayed us, not you. It was wrong, but you were close to his son, so… it seemed logical at the time. I apologize, it was unjust of me.

I didn’t think it would be that bad. None of us did. But we couldn’t just turn back, not after we already walked so far…

It had all come too late, however. The barrage of blame and neglect had solidified into Fingon’s deepest fears and regrets and nightmares and it would not be moved with a few words of apology. After hearing the same abuse over and over for so long, it was a part of him, and while he occupied a place of honor and privilege before the Noldor once again, underneath lay a wretchedness that he feared would never leave him.

You did this .

Elenwë’s still face, now blue-gray and rimed with ice where it was once laughing and pink. Her pale hair, tangled with seaweed and starting to freeze to the ice beneath her motionless body. Fingon remembered Turgon’s thin, ice-cold fingers closing around his throat. You did this! This is your fault! He struggled, but did not fight back. He knew it was true, for he had already been told enough times what his recklessness at Alqualondë had brought upon his kin. In the end it was Laurefindil who pried his brother off him, his own voice choked with tears for his sister— No, Turukáno, it is no one’s fault! Not even his! Do not make a kinslayer of yourself ! Once freed and gasping for air, Fingon only just managed to roll over before he threw up what little was in his stomach. He spoke with a rasp for some time after. The bruises on his neck lingered, but even when they were gone he rested with his knife in his hand and always with both eyes open.

He too fell into the sea. Unlike Elenwë, he got out before he got trapped under the ice. He was too cold to move, too cold to think, too cold even to shiver, trapped in the numb dream world between consciousness and darkness. This is it , his muddled mind told him. My hröa releases my fëa. It is better this way. I deserve this. I deserve to be left behind where I can hurt no one else . But he woke again to full consciousness, sleepy and still cold but alive, tended to by Finrod and Aegnor, and instead of relief, shame flooded through him. He should not have been saved by the kindest and least guilty of all his kin. He should be under the ice, tangled in seaweed where at least his corpse would nourish the fish his family needed to survive.

With time he grew strong again, as strong as it was possible to be in such conditions. He carried on. Though his hands and feet froze and his friends and family continued to isolate him, he still carried on.

Did he go searching for Maedhros for his own selfish reasons? If he was alive, he was all Fingon had left, as loathsome as that thought was at the time. Did he do it to feel loved again? To be a hero? To be missed, as he realized upon his return when his father squeezed him close and could not let go? Maedhros kept repeating his name and reaching for him in his troubled sleep, and Fingon hated himself for sort of liking it. He was selfish. He ignored Maedhros’ pleas for death, mutilated him, and brought him home to face an agonizing recovery because he was selfish. It didn’t matter if he was still capable of trusting, or capable of loving. He didn’t deserve to be loved or trusted in return.

The fire was mature and beginning to soak the corners of the room in warmth, but Fingon still sat motionless in front of the hearth with his arms wrapped around his body. It was late and he was weary, but he knew sleep would never come, especially not if he tried to get warm enough to sleep in that big, cold bed alone. Instead he lay down in front of the fire, fully clothed, and tried to focus only on the flames.

Through it all, one doubt overshadowed the others. This could be the end for them. Fingon envisioned them trying to make it work for another year, maybe two, and when the distance and their differing agendas soured what little time they had together, they would end it. Perhaps their love was meant for innocent times and the light of the Trees, and perhaps it was already over, but they just couldn’t admit it yet. They would be allies in the war, as long as their objectives were not in conflict, but barely friends, and certainly not lovers. Fingon pictured himself wandering his chambers alone or struggling to maintain forced friendships with people he could barely stand, just so he would have someone to talk to. He saw himself writing pathetic, desperate letters— I miss you. I wish we were still friends. Will you come and visit me ? Most of them ended up in the fireplace, but sometimes he sent one in a fit of loneliness, and sometimes Maedhros responded, and sometimes he visited, but Fingon knew as soon as they saw each other that whatever they used to have was gone.

“Stop,” he said aloud again. The fire popped, and a spark landed on the back of his hand. He rubbed it away. “That will not happen.”

Really? asked that small, nasty voice in his head. Is that not the false promise you would not accept from Maedhros?

“Stop!” He rubbed his face. Since Alqualondë he always dwelt on the worst possible outcomes for a situation, since not thinking at all was what got him into that disaster to begin with. And he might as well be the one to think about consequences, since no one else seemed to. He only wished he could tell which ones were worth considering and which ones were just anxiety.

Perhaps loneliness was the conclusion of denying Maedhros’ offer, just as the Oath was the consequence of accepting it.

For one single, mad instant, Fingon considered throwing his reservations aside, going back to Maedhros, and accepting his offer on the spot. What did he owe his father’s people, that he should choose them over his love who only wanted to be with him? So what if it meant following the governance of the Oath? He had indeed slain his kin at Alqualondë, he was already damned, was there any point in pretending that he was better than anyone else? If these were truly the only two choices…

No. Those were not the only two choices. He had to believe that there was another. The whole reason he had Maedhros back at all was because he had believed there was another option. He just needed the courage to act on it.

 

Fingon did not eat, sleep, or leave the room. He lay on the rug, wrapped in a blanket, until the sun came up and he could justify leaving the keep.

He shook out the rumpled clothes in his satchel—a golden-brown tunic and dark blue trousers with a blue-green over-robe that fell just below the knee—and got dressed. He splashed some water on his face, smoothed his braids and pulled them into a clasp at the back of his head, and resolved to spend a few hours not thinking about Maedhros, their fight, or memories of the Ice that had resurfaced to torment him. He first took his breakfast at the Red Swan coffeehouse, where he drank enough coffee to at least clear the cobwebs out of his head and spent an hour sketching alternate ways to climb up Himring Hill that might be better than the switchbacks. When he ran out of ideas for the moment, he set his folio aside and let himself be pulled into a conversation about pierced jewelry by two elves who complimented him on the gold rings he wore in his ears: three in one, five in the other, and a small jeweled stud in the very tip of each. The discussion attracted the proprietors, a pair of married men Fingon knew from his days performing in Alqualondë. They were both very fashionable, and referred him to an elf named Gulien when he asked who made their tunics. He still intended to have a few items made by Himring tailors, and he figured an afternoon spent indulging his old vanity would help to dull the prickle of anger and anxiety that still sparked inside him.

Fingon went to her shop for a consultation once he left the coffeehouse. It turned out to be an effective distraction. Talking about clothes was safe territory, and Gulien’s shop was lively but not overwhelming. She took his measurements and he ordered three wool tunics in dark blue, emerald green, and a brighter gold, each one adorned with embroidery in a contrasting color. With the weather growing colder, he had started to see people in warm-looking wraps of striped or plaid fabric over their clothes, and he found it a good look, so he also ordered one with a pattern of thin red and black stripes between broad white ones.

He left the shop feeling like he’d accomplished something. Logically he knew that all he had done was anesthetize himself for an afternoon instead of addressing anything, and the sense of accomplishment wore off the instant he returned to his chamber. The silence and the isolation and the agony of being alone with his own thoughts drove him to the guardhouse to join his guards and Himring’s at their mess.

The guards who had accompanied him from Hithlum at least were easy company. He had hand-picked each of them upon his father’s coronation; they had all fought at Alqualondë and had not been as bad as most on the Ice. Not exactly the most attractive credentials, but the pickings were slim enough already, and their uneasy bonds had at least grown stronger since then. Fingon chose to consider them his friends, and they chose to turn their shame at not defending him on the Ice into loyalty and valor now. The guards plied him with so much beer that he felt like singing again. As the day faded into night they ate, drank, and belted out songs mostly involving revenge for their suffering, and Fingon didn’t dare call it a night until his ears were ringing and he could barely tell which way was up.

He eventually managed to get back to his chamber at some unconscionable hour, exhausted and finally numb. He collapsed on top of the bed, where he got less than an hour of fitful rest before the cold room sent him to build up the fire again. He still did not sleep. He did not know what hour it was, only that it was dark and cold and that he was miserable.

I need to talk to him, was the thought that came into his beer-sodden mind first. I cannot keep doing this. We need to talk. Soon.

Still, the idea of showing up at Maedhros’ door sloppily drunk and on the verge of ugly tears kept him where he was.

I am his island, his oasis, and his castle keep. He told me. I cannot put my burden on him. I owe him better than that.

Even if he was no longer capable of trust and love, he was capable of taking on more to lessen the burden on others, as was only just. The Helcaraxë taught him that.

When he sobered up a little, Fingon decided to go to the baths. It was still dark and still cold and the fire wasn’t helping.

The hot bath smelled strongly of minerals and helped to clear Fingon's mind when he submerged himself in the deep end of the pool. With his braids floating in a wreath around his head, he let himself float, bobbing in the water with his toes just brushing the tiled floor. He was weightless, cut off from the echoes of the high bathhouse ceiling and the splashes and conversations of the other bathers, as few as there were at this hour.

He tipped his head back a little so just his face was above the water. Above him, the ordered tile ceiling swirled before his eyes as if it actually moved. It was an unmistakably Noldorin pattern of interconnecting geometric shapes, diamonds locking with hexagons and octagons in different colors of blue and green to form a pattern of eight-petaled flowers. Those damn eight-pointed stars were everywhere, whether they took the form of stars or flowers or sunbursts. He could not begrudge Maedhros his family sigils, of course, but it was a reminder of the Oath and the images of Alqualonde that always sprang, unwelcome, into Fingon’s mind: blood on the docks, blood on his hands, blood on his cousins’ surcoats with their eight-pointed stars. They were everywhere.

A small disturbance in the water made him look up. He had company: Maedhros’ advisers Eliadis, Nothwen, and Raemben, smiling at him and looking like they wanted to socialize. He tried not to let his annoyance show. Fingon considered himself a Noldo through and through, but he did prefer the Vanyarin approach to bathing: it was a time for quiet contemplation, not bothering each other with whatever thoughts sprang into one’s mind, but this was a Noldorin bath, so Fingon smiled politely back.

“Prince Fingon, may we join you?” Eliadis asked him.

“Isn’t it a bit late for a bath?” Fingon said, not caring that it was ridiculous to say so while he was in the bath.

“I keep late hours. Raemben was working on a long project and Nothwen was observing the moon.”

Fingon sighed. “You may.”

There was a pause. He looked at each one of them in turn, but said nothing. If they wanted to talk to him, they would have to supply the conversation, because he had nothing to say. It was easier when he had Maedhros to keep the words flowing while he listened and nodded, especially with people Fingon did not consider his friends.

He and Raemben never had much to do with one another. To identify with the House of Miriel was a political act, and one that by definition rejected Queen Indis and her progeny as unlawful. In fact, Fingon wasn’t sure Raemben recognized him at all, as their paths had only crossed a handful of times many centuries ago during his days on the stages of Alqualondë, where Fingon’s costume had been flamboyant enough to render him anonymous underneath it. It was interesting, the things people said when they didn’t know that a grandson of Queen Indis herself was listening. Now, knowing full well who he was, Raemben looked at him with undeniable respect.

Nothwen, in the uncomplicated past, was once his fellow student and colleague over many projects. They disagreed sometimes, as experts did, but never with contempt. It was only in the later years of Aman as they knew it that they drifted apart, with Nothwen becoming increasingly devoted to Fëanor's rhetoric. “This will be a hall of the Noldor, designed only by Noldor, according to Noldorin traditions unsullied by Vanyarin imitations,” she had said, flipping her sketchbook shut when Fingon leaned in to offer his opinion. He looked up, alarmed by this sudden and unexpected bigotry, and found her face cold and shuttered.

Not only did she now pretend that she had done no such thing, but she also sought his input on her projects as if she had not once told him that his Vanyarin blood made him an unfit architect. And, of course, she approached him in the bath as if their easy friendship had never changed. Perhaps she had forgotten. Perhaps she hoped that Fingon had forgotten. He hadn’t. Not that he was in any position to judge anyone else for behaving badly in those days, but he had to wonder. He looked between the three of them, trying not to feel resentful.

Of the three, Eliadis was the only one who had not insulted him or his family and suddenly wanted to be friends now that Fëanor was dead and Maedhros was back and the old controversies had fallen mostly into obscurity. Fingon remembered her, however. His memories of Alqualondë were a fragmented haze most of the time—when they weren’t all attacking him at once in crystal-sharp clarity—but he still remembered her crouched like a cat ready to strike behind Maedhros’ shield, using her small stature and a long spear to defend him even as he defended her. They made an excellent team in the slaughter, focused and deadly. Did she regret it, or did the Fëanorians hail each other as heroes on their voyage afterward? Did they hail each other as heroes to hide their regret?

Stop it, Fingon, this is pointless, he told himself. You cannot know another’s mind. And even if you could, it would not be yours to judge.

Very belatedly, he realized that the three interlopers were smiling expectantly at him and he wondered if he had missed a question or a comment he was meant to respond to. Bless them, they can’t tell I haven’t slept in two days. “I’m sorry,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “The last few days have been… busy. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I just wondered whether you found Himring to your liking,” Eliadis said.

“Yes. It seems like a good home,” he replied.

All three of them nodded at that. “Part of that is due to your architecture, of course,” Nothwen said, and Fingon had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. You told me I am an unsuitable architect because my grandmother is a Vanya, he wanted to say, but he just gave her a polite smile and inclined his head.

“All Noldor in Beleriand are united in exile,” he said instead. “Regardless of our ideological differences.”

She had the grace to look away.

There was a long pause. If they expected him to lead the conversation they were going to be disappointed, because he had barely enough energy to stay friendly. “We haven’t had a chance to thank you,” Eliadis said at length.

“Thank me for what?”

“I… well. The three of us have been close to Maedhros for a long time, and it’s good to see him happy. You make him happy,” she said, suddenly and openly earnest. “He hides it when he’s not, I think he doesn’t want it to affect anyone else. But it’s hard on him.”

“He is fortunate to have loyal friends who are concerned with his well-being.” Fingon was speaking in his Crown Prince voice, and he could not make himself stop. If he even wanted to stop. The ice that encased him also protected him. If he did not let anyone get too close, their eventual betrayal would not hurt so much.

Are you even capable of love anymore?

He bit the inside of his cheek. Don’t start down that road again. Not now .

There was another long pause. What did they want from him? You are a hero to my people , Maedhros had said. Surely that included these three, and rather than being comforted by the thought, Fingon was annoyed. He hadn’t done it for them. At no point did he consider the benefit to any of Maedhros’ followers as he traversed the ash and rocks and bitter air of Angband, wracked with hunger and thirst and fatigue, searching with no plan and no hope of success. Either he would find Maedhros, dead or alive, or he would search until his bleached bones littered the dead earth under the mountains’ shadow. Even if he found Maedhros, he did not expect to return. For most of the search, he had envisioned lying down next to his remains and following him into the darkness. After the Ice, there was nothing left for him, and surely that was the best either of them could hope for.

What other reason could they have to approach him like this? Had Maedhros put them up to try and convince him to stay? No, that was a ridiculous notion, out of all his brothers Maedhros was the only one who did not have a manipulative bone in his body. As he had said, he was not his father, and Fingon knew that to be true. He was kind and selfless and somehow still optimistic, and if anything, he was more likely to fall for the manipulations of others. Still, he might have told them about the fight, or that he had asked Fingon to live with him. Fingon was not confident that they would understand why he had declined.

“I had better go up to the tower,” Raemben said ruefully after the silence had run its course. “My colleagues will skin me if I don’t get back to work soon.” They swam toward the tiled steps and got out of the bath with exaggerated reluctance.

“Are you still watching for snow?” Nothwen said, nose wrinkled in sympathy.

Fingon shuddered at that.

“Yes, the atmosphere is doing all sorts of interesting things, and Maedhros expects the report as soon as I have an answer.” They draped their body theatrically in a towel and turned their eyes skyward. “Goodbye sleep, goodbye leisure, goodbye coffee drunk any warmer than room-temperature. I wonder if my husband even remembers what I look like.”

Eliadis splashed some water at them. “Go! Come and drink with us when you’re done!”

“Do you really expect snow soon?” Fingon asked in spite of his earlier refusal to engage with any of the three.

“Very soon, and lots of it,” said Raemben, squeezing the water from their silver-white hair.

“Is it not early to be prepared for a snowstorm?” He intimately knew what could happen if a storm hit without warning. Food stores, gone. Animals, gone. People separated from one another, only to be discovered later, frozen solid. Fires snuffed. Fuel destroyed. Shelters caved in. People crushed—

They shrugged. “No, not exactly, we are used to extreme weather out here. The harvest is already in, but a few late gardens might freeze. That’s all. There isn’t much that can be done but pick what’s ready.”

What would someone who had not crossed the Ice know about surviving the cold , said the nasty voice in Fingon’s head, a vestige of his old anger that had mostly given way to cold resignation. You made the Crossing on stolen ships. We survived decades of unending winter. How could you possibly tell me that you know what it means to be prepared?

Taking it out on Raemben would accomplish nothing, so Fingon squashed it down and made himself respond rationally. “You remember I crossed the Helcaraxë,” he said. “Storms killed people. Especially early storms. I only question whether your people take them seriously.”

“Of course we do. I can show you our weather plans, if you’d like.”

Fingon did not take them up on the offer. Instead he sank deeper into the pool until the water came up to his chin and resumed his silence.

Raemben departed the baths, and Eliadis and Nothwen followed when Fingon continued to resist conversation. He remained in the bath after they left, trying not to worry about the snow. When it snowed in Hithlum he usually barricaded himself in his bedroom, drew the curtains shut, built up the fire, and slept as much as he could, surrounded by his cats. Not even that could completely dull the screech of grinding sea ice or the howling of the arctic winds in his ears or the numbness and pain in his once-frozen hands and feet. You weren’t the only one who lived through it , his mind scolded him. Everyone else can function just fine, why can’t you?

He still could not answer that question.

The hot bath did help. And it wasn’t as if he had not anticipated a cold winter when he agreed to stay the whole season in the Marches. He was a grown elf, and the Ice was far behind him, and he knew that he needed to get control of himself, no matter the weather. He started by unraveling his braids and washing his hair in sections. When loose and combed, it fell to mid-thigh, and tending to it was usually an all-day event, but he enjoyed the effort and the sense of control over his body that it gave him.

As he finished, dawn began streaming through the clouded-glass windows set high in the walls, and more people began coming in to bathe. Fingon bundled his hair on top of his head and left the bath to sit in front of one of the long mirrors that lined the north wall. He set to work gently running a wide-toothed bronze comb through his tight curls, oiling and braiding as he went. Maedhros had sent him that comb. He was always sending him things, usually with little notes: I thought you would like this. This might look nice in your hair. I saw this and thought of your eyes. Didn’t you mention you wanted one of these? The dwarven craftsman said this is a symbol of true love. I’m sorry to hear that the old one broke, so here is a new, better one…

“Was he trying to slowly bribe me,” Fingon muttered at his reflection. He shook his head vigorously and went back to combing. No, that was ridiculous, he had always been that way, collecting things like a magpie for the sole purpose of giving them to Fingon.

Fatigue was making him paranoid. That was all.

He braided his hair into a forest of free-hanging plaits, threading narrow gold ribbons through each one and securing them with tiny gold clasps shaped like oak leaves. It took hours. Occasionally someone greeted him, but he only gave one-word answers and continued working, clearing his mind of everything but making sure the braids were straight and even. Afterward, he ran his hands through the finished braids and, finding them to his satisfaction, went to get dressed. He still had another whole day in front of him, and another night, and so forth, and he dreaded it. He dreaded trying to find ways to occupy himself, trying to sleep, trying to work up the gumption to find Maedhros and talk with him like adults. He could not keep doing this.

He worked with the architects for the rest of the day, moving and drawing and talking as if someone else controlled his body. He was too weary to put in much effort. When the sun went down, he returned to his room, built the fire, dressed for bed, and finally, finally drifted off to sleep.