Rings by eris_of_imladris

Chapter 1

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Rings never made sense to her. A complete circle, no beginning or end, no room to change or grow, not even a way to unfasten it partially if a flaw was found. They came all or nothing, no way to tweak or alter without shattering, no way to remove from a hand without a clean break. Even the ones with gems inlaid kept their basic structure, a circle with an empty center, and she failed to see how anyone could find a ring interesting.

Curufin had been the same, at first. When she first beheld him, she saw a young man trying to impress his father, who in turn was trying to impress his. A cycle that had stayed the same, a linked chain between the generations, and yet she soon found something about Curufin that intrigued her. He was not nearly as uniform as she had originally thought, and his complexity came from trying the impossible, pushing the boundaries of his crafts and his mind and never reaching the same result twice.

He came to her not long into their courtship with a ring, not a plain one but one more suited to her style, and she had analyzed it as he praised her dark hair and green eyes, and she traced her fingers over the emerald he had set so painstakingly into the twisted band. It was nice, for a ring – not too simple, but a weave of golden filaments, bright and gleaming as she allowed herself to see the future.

They were wed for only a short while before the silmarils were presented, and she understood the look in Curufin’s eyes, the desire to match the wondrous works. She too itched to take her tools in hand when she saw them, resplendent and bright, shining impossibly in their containers, the creation of a Vala from the hands of an elf. Utterly unexpected, even for Fëanor, but she liked the change in his son. If her Curufin, who worked ten times harder to make up for the ease of natural talent, set himself the same task, what light could he capture? What could they create, together?

Those were her halcyon days, each pushing the other to work better, think stronger, put their minds together to create more than either could alone. And with the burst of inspiration and passion, Tyelpë had come, and she had marveled at his innocence, at how he seemed to be free of the chain that bound Fëanor and his same-named son together. Perhaps there was hope for Curufin yet, she thought, even as the good times waned, and she sat alone in Formenos waiting for them to return.

But Curufin, in the end, turned out just like the ordinary rings she thought he could so easily surpass. He fell back to her first impression, a lapdog who followed his father heart and soul, who danced on the same line of madness but strayed from the brilliance that had drawn her in. Her break with him had been sudden and swift, a pull from a finger and a cleaving in two, and as he left her on the bloodstained ships, she returned to navigate the new maze of life in Arafinwë’s Tirion.

She quickly decided that she would not hide like Nerdanel, sending out sculptures when she had the energy, mustering her will from behind a closed door. No, she would exist openly, live in the complications and the contradictions, find a new answer for each remark and stare, dwell in the discomfort to continue to live. Only in open wounds could she heal, for the truth remained that she was still the wife of Curufin, son of Fëanor, and for a great while, she had much more to live for than any of the rest of his kin.

When she heard that her son’s downfall had been in rings, she laughed for the irony as she wept for his innocence. The easy smiles of his babyhood had led to his doom, and she could see it clear as day, her smile and his father’s brains, their greatest experiment gone wrong.

She wondered, on some days, if she was merely part of the chain of the house of Fëanor, if the past was too severe and too set in its course for any of her actions to change anything. But she was the last one truly living rather than following the patterns of grief and shame, and her work was not yet done.

She was no ring, but a necklace, broken and fixed at once, and her story would be told in strong works, not swept away in storms of tears. Curufin’s ring would watch her from atop her workshop, a cautionary tale, and she would draw it down from time to time to dust it and remember, but she still lived, and there was work to do.