Memories Burned by Nixie Genesis

Catharsis

In the middle of a seemingly forgotten shelf, sat a wooden box. A layer of dust coated the shelf and helpful spiders made their cobwebs beneath it. The box appeared as though it had been placed atop the old wood only yesterday.

Nerdanel plucked the box from the shelf in her rough hands as the kiln outside her workshop had finally reached the exact temperature she needed. She set the box upon her workbench and opened the hinged top; it had been some time since she did anything other than open the box and lose herself in happier memories and days before the darkening. From within, she gently removed a single braid of soft, copper-colored hair tied with a dark green ribbon.

“If you must go, all I ask is for a lock of your hair, to have you with me still,” she remembered asking her eldest. It had been the only thing she could think of that was distinctly of her sons.

Maitimo had been more than generous and handed her the braid he cut from the nape of his neck with some grief in his eyes. “You do not have to stay,” he said. “You can come with us, even though you and Atar are estranged he would not refuse you.”

But the journey to Arda was not her path. The realization had been painful enough but more so when she begged Fëanáro to allow her two youngest to stay. Her husband was stricken with grief and rage, his words cut but they were the words of a man who was cornered like a wild animal; a man who finally saw the world for what it was and not for what it was made to be. She could not fully blame him. It was why she returned to Formenos after spending some time in Lórien when her own anger tempered and her grief softened. The place she and her husband built was far enough away from the other Noldor and the Valar that she did not have to hear the rumors from Arda. Both Finarfin and Anairë attempted to convince her to stay in Tirion, she refused. Nerdanel always enjoyed going off on her own anyway, it was how she met Fëanáro.

Nerdanel pulled heavy gloves onto her hands and past her elbows, she took a pair of tongs and crossed to the kiln. Her tongs grasped the white clay urn and quickly pulled it from the heat, she placed it on a stone table and began to work. She pulled small strands of hair from the braid and placed them on the still hot pottery. The red locks burned black against the white, the carbon bonding with the porous clay, leaving a unique pattern with each strand placed. It was almost appropriate, she thought morbidly.

Nerdanel hadn’t had plans for the hair until the news came as she still visited Lórien. One of her youngest, Umbarto, now dwelt in Mandos’ Halls. Her twins kept their hair shorter than their older brothers, but they gave her a braid of their locks all the same. News of Fëanáro’s death sent her reeling with both grief and fear. Though she knew Maitimo would care for his brothers, it was little consolation. She had not asked Fëanáro for a lock of his hair, they were estranged by the time he left, but she did have some from earlier days together. She placed his clay urn next to his son’s on the mantle above the hearth in the living area of their home.

Making the urns gave Nerdanel a sense of catharsis and creativity was always her escape. Elves buried their dead from the kinslaying, but Nerdanel would receive no bodies to bury. Years passed before her heart, three times over, felt the pang of grief once again. Her brave Tyelkormo, beautiful Carnistir, and smart Atarinkë all answered Mandos’ summons and three more urns were made and placed by their father and brother. Some years later, Ambarussa joined his twin. Each one of her son’s hair, though very different, all burned the same way along the hot clay. Maitimo’s was by far the most difficult for her heart to bear; her firstborn and the one who suffered the most, even in the end. When she finished, Nerdanel left the urn to cool.

She looked into the box once more and brushed her fingertips along the sleek, black braid still within next to a smaller, dark braid. She wondered how much time would pass before she made two more urns to join the other seven, for the time would come. Of that, Nerdanel was certain.