Fëanorians in 600 Words or Less by eris_of_imladris

Name

This Fëanorian Week, as someone new to the Silm fandom, I decided to explore a favorite headcanon of mine on each of the days, whether I invented the headcanon myself or found it from somewhere else. Each headcanon will then become the basis of a story that is 600 words or less, as a creative exercise.

Maedhros Headcanon: Nerdanel took a few years to decide on Maedhros’ mother-name, perhaps even a couple of years. When she did finally come up with “Maitimo,” people thought it was such an easy choice for him and didn’t realize why it took her so long. She had a good reason.

“Maitimo,” she announces, and everyone stares back indulgently.

A new mother’s fancy, perhaps, to wait so long to name her child, but considering the child in question, this name is hardly a stretch. He is beautiful, his copper hair shines in the sun as he runs, his toes wiggling in the grass. He is tall, like her father, and has the eyes of his own father that can draw in any who meet them. The bright smile on his face ties his features together, creating a child no less wondrous to Nerdanel than any of the Valar themselves.

But “Maitimo” is not a name of bragging, like his father-name, nor a name meant to point out the obvious. It is a name of kindness.

She had waited for months, years, to feel the moment when she would know something of her son’s future. She imagined his life as wide as the world itself, as bright as his smile when his father scooped him up in his arms and he drew patterns in the soot on Fëanor’s arms.

But what she saw instead was a gasp for breath, his body crumbling even as it lay on the white linens, the sheets the same color as the scars. A limb she could not identify, a ragged edge that she can only tell is a hand when the other raises. The left hand cups the absence of the right, and she gasps and is back in her house in Tirion, and little Nelyo is small, unharmed, perfect as he stands before her.

The shiny scrap he brings her from his father’s forge is in his right hand, and she cups the little fingers and whispers “Maitimo.”

Many years and griefs later, his fingertips touch the ghost of his right hand the first time someone calls him Maitimo. He scoffs, but the name he has not heard in so long makes him recall his mother.

She was always beautiful to him, even when others thought she was not deserving of the High Prince’s attention. But what he misses in this moment is her kindness, and he somehow knows that she would see the child he was under the disgrace he has become.

His time in Angband destroyed his body, but there is something that remains, a small piece of the boy who looked into his mother’s unusually-colored hair and mannish body and saw beauty. Had she seen the same in him? Had she looked underneath and seen beauty even after grief, murder, torture? He does not need time to know the answer.

He feels the memory of the arms he yearns for, and he survives.