Tales of Fear and Woe by lightofthetrees

Chapter 2: Stars hide your fires

A young Celebrimbor tries to process what he witnessed at the First Kinslaying. His grandfather is not helpful.

MACBETH [Aside] 
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step 
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, 
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; 
Let not light see my black and deep desires: 
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (1.4.55-60)

“Tyelpë.”

He tried not to act startled at Fëanáro’s approach, and did not meet his eyes. Instead he watched the white foam of the wake left by their ship. “Grandfather?”

“We did only was necessary, Tyelpë.”

Despite his feigned indifference, the young elf turned towards Fëanáro, confusion and hurt in his glance. “What? I –”

“You’ve been avoiding me. Avoiding all of us,” he snapped. “Why.” It was not a question.

Tyelpë chewed at the inside of his cheek. How could he tell Fëanáro how disgusting this all felt, how wrong, when the embers of rage still glowed in his eyes like that?

“Were you expecting us to gain freedom without struggle?”

Tyelpë’s throat burned with bile and he stared out over the waves. “Struggle? Grandfather…that was a massacre.”

Fëanáro’s jaw tightened, and Tyelpë knew he had misspoken. “Would you have rather stayed in Tirion, wallowing in darkness for all your days?” his words were sharp, all pretense of familial concern gone.

“N-no.”

“Then why do you whimper like a child still?” he snarled.

“Their blood…”

“Was the price of our liberation!” Fëanáro’s eyes blazed bright with furious conviction.

Disgust roiled in Tyelpë’s stomach, churning like the waves, and he could no longer bear Fëanáro’s presence, the steel of his will, the fey light in his eyes.  

Without a word, Tyelpë bolted across the deck, fleeing for the safety and silence of the cabins below, where not even the stars could see him. The stars knew all the foulness of the deed the Noldor had done, and their wan light was like the weight of their wrongdoing pressing down upon him.

Tyelpë hadn’t wept the day the Trees had been extinguished. He hadn’t wept the day his father had told him to pack his things, that they were to leave. He had borne his mother’s tearful kisses and pleas to stay behind with stoicism.

This night, he lay in his bunk on the stolen ship and wept, wishing only for the kisses he had so gruffly rejected, wishing to be soothed and told it was all a bad dream. It didn’t matter that he was nearing his majority. He would give anything to be back in Tirion with his Ammë, Oath or no Oath. He felt so sick, so small. So vile for what he had witnessed.

The footsteps and voices of his family on the upper deck rolled above him like thunder.

Macalaurë. “He is still a child, Atar!”

Macalaurë, again. “You just cannot bear to see the guilt on his face! It is the guilt we all feel, and it grieves you. It should grieve you.”

The hollow sound of an open palm – Fëanáro’s – meeing Macalaurë’s face. Shocked silence.

There was no more talking.

Tyelpë’s eyes drifted shut, drowsy with his crying, but the memories of what he had seen, what he so desperately wished he could un-see, lurked behind his eyes, ready to spring upon him in his weakness.

Tyelpë had not taken up a sword – he was too young – but he could see the carnage from around the knot of guards that had formed about him. The blood of the Teleri had shone so brightly, so abundantly. He had not known there was so much blood in a body. The cacophony of clashing steel and battle-shouts fell as a deafening deluge on his ears, punctuated only by the low splashing of armored elves falling, being pushed from the piers to drown in the heaviness of their armor or swim back to shore and re-join the fray.

He looked desperately for his father’s face, any face he knew, but he could not find them. There were only monsters.

Chapter End Notes

Bonus points for finding the other Macbeth reference in here.