Da Capo by Lordnelson100

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Chapter 1

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Da Capo - musical term: an instruction to play over from the beginning

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 They bore him over hill and valley in a crude sort of stretcher, and the stars shone above in their glory and indifference.

“Seven sons, and I did not think to make any of them a healer!” he said to himself, and inwardly laughed. Even the idea of laughing hurt: his chest was all crushed from the balrog’s blows, and every breath was a desperate wheeze.

At one point he drifted in delirium: again he was a child holding Finwë’s hand. Father, impossibly tall and stern and graceful and wise. Hand in hand they climbed a winding street in Tirion. Flowers cascaded over white walls. Someone was singing in a garden, invisible to the eye. Father’s stride was very long and he all but ran to keep up.

What would Finwë have said to him now?  He could vividly imagine his face, framed by long dark hair; saddened, disappointed: Where is your brother, Curufinwë?

He should not have burnt the ships.

He should have left Nerdanel the twins.

He thought of five different ways he could have better worded the Oath, so as to more effectively bring home vengeance to the Enemy.

The silver lamps made rings of light on the quays of Alqualondë . The need was painfully urgent, why would not Olwë understand? The terrible wrongs of Morgoth, the cold silence and inaction of the Valar! 

Were their people to be slaves, to be craven animals in a pen, watching the wolf with bloody jaw devour the bodies of their beloved, huddled in the corner with frightened eyes?

No, a thousand times—but then he saw his sons with black-gored swords, and his own weapon, wet. The blade had seemed a bright thing, fell and noble, when he wrought it.

When he drew it on his arrogant brother, and saw the shock in Nolofinwë’s face—

Nolofinwë had been a pretty little boy, hanging on Finwë’s hand. They were walking up a steep street in Tirion again (the same? he did not know): and his father’s robes flowed and his stride was long. Nolofinwë had reached out his free hand to Fëanor, who was tall as their father by then, and—

What a curious accident of the mind, to bring such inconsequent moments before him now: he would liked to have asked Estë if it were always so for the wounded, and if so, whether there were some interaction between the damaged flesh and the seat of consciousness —

But he had had sons of his own since then. Why had he not taken the small boy’s hand? Was he himself really so little, so petty?

The next time he saw Nolofinwë he would —

In his mind’s eye he saw his sword again, blooded, and before him lay a dead sailor. A poor weak thing, with a chain of shells around his neck and a fishing spear and a surprised look on his face. What right had he to look surprised, so? He had come at Fëanor as a bird will fly at any great ravening thing that comes near his nest. And been struck down by the beast’s paw, predictably.

Wait, that was not right, it was Morgoth who was the wolf, not he—

Nerdanel would never forgive him now. The rebellion against the Valar, she would have; but not that dead sailor. Her heart was like that.

There must have been a different way. He was Fëanor — it was in him, always, to invent and to create mighty things beyond the limited imaginings of others. Reason therefore argued that there must have been another way to solve the equation, a different path to other results: if only he could take up a fresh blank sheet, and start again.

They would have taken the Silmarils from him! Before they knew the bloody jest that Morgoth had made, the fools he made out of them all—

Now, so far from the Trees, it did not seem so important after all. Not compared to — to Father.

Father’s ruined body and the empty case that held his greatest work: it was all wound together.

The spoiled wreckage of the Trees came before him, the living, murdered things— poor Yavanna with her hair of leaves and flowers, and Aulë had his fists clenched— his great bearded face wroth. And yet he had a moment of pity for Fëanor, maker to maker— not so mighty, so untouchable as they seemed, these Vala. Perhaps a bridge might have been made out of the sense of loss itself, a union against the author of their bereavement.

But the hour was late, and the ocean wide. His head hurt dreadfully; he knew he did not reason well.

All around him he saw glimpses of his sons’ faces in the starlight.  He would have liked to say their names aloud one more time. They, they were his greatest creation, in the end.

There was this: he had brought them to a new land, wide and grand and free, far away from the sterility of Aman. His sons would here do great deeds, make new things: when they had overcome the Enemy. Perhaps even greater than all his creations: all his stolen works, that seemed in the end less precious and beautiful then their faces.

He saw a field at home in Formenos. Late afternoon, a meadow of long grass touched with the red and gold of autumn in the slanting sunlight. All the boys were running (it was a race — or a game? he had forgotten) and the tall youths fleeted fast, their hair streaming, and the little ones chased after, their hands out, wait for me, wait for me — Nerdanel beside him laughed: See your sons Curufinwe! They are none of them willing to yield.

In the present, in the wide strange lands of Beleriand, they set the litter down. Every limb was on fire with agony: he feared he must have groaned aloud against his wish.

He gasped, with a great painful effort. He tried to speak:  “Again. Over again. I would — my sons — again—”

And around him he heard their fair voices raised. Great was his dismay, as he listened:

Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean,
brood of Morgoth or bright Vala --

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Chapter End Notes

For Tolkien Gen Week 2018 on Tumblr. Prompt: Familial Relationships