Moments of Healing by eris_of_imladris

Chapter 1

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“Is Nerdanel within?” Elrond asked. The woman at the door couldn’t possibly be her, even though he’d asked around enough to know that she worked in a studio here, at the very least. Whether or not she actually lived there mattered little.

“Why do you want to know?” asked the woman at the door. She was tall and slim of figure, with mousy brown hair tied haphazardly into a loose braid.

“I wish to see her.”

“For a commission?” she asked, pulling out a list from somewhere and running down the names.

“Who are you talking to?” asked a sudden voice, just as Elrond was about to break his silence and tell the woman why he had come.

The newcomer wore a leather apron that was scratched on the front, and had a similar hairstyle to the woman at the door, albeit with flaming red hair that he recognized immediately. It was the same hair she had passed on to three of her sons, although he had only ever met one.

The expression on her face hadn’t exactly been carefree before she saw Elrond, but once she saw his fine robes, she tensed. Even as she continued to pinch and prod at a glob of clay, her movements were hurried, unindicative of her true skill. “Who requires my presence, and for what?”

“No one requires you to do anything,” Elrond said, watching as she squished her tentative creation between her hands.

“Truly? Arafinwë did not send you as some sort of means to convince me to go to something?”

“No,” he said. “I come on my own behalf.”

“For a commission,” interjected the woman at the door.

“Not quite,” Elrond replied. “My name is Elrond, and I have wanted to meet you for some time.”

“The son of Eärendil and Elwing of Sirion?” Her words were firm but he could feel a vulnerability within, almost as if she expected him to strike her.

“I do not come for that,” he said hastily, but there was no change in her tense posture.

“Then why would you come here?” Even as he stood his ground, Elrond noticed the woman from the door slowly approaching him.

“I have some things that should belong to you,” he said. “Things given to me by ones who you love.”

“How could you have possibly gotten - ” the woman at the door began to interrupt, but Nerdanel raised her hand, and she quickly stopped speaking.

“I heard you were wise,” she said. “How could someone possibly think it wise to carry heirlooms of the house of Fëanáro?”

“I have borne one proudly for quite some time,” Elrond said, holding out his hand with the ring entrusted to him millenia ago.

Nerdanel stared at Elrond for a long moment before gesturing for him to follow her. She guided him down a weaving hallway, full of twists and turns, until they eventually wound up in a small sculpting studio. There was no sign of the wealth she must have possessed thanks to her family, but there was also no sign of them anywhere, whether in the designs or the sparse decoration around the room. The only two chairs were wooden stools; she waved him towards one and then sat down herself, looking at him intently.

“Sidhel means well,” she eventually said, “and there have been others with less… amicable intentions.” She paused, never moving her intense gaze. “Why are you here, Elrond?”

“I have some things given to me by your sons before they… Maglor never died, but…” His words fizzled out as he realized he had no clue which names Nerdanel might wish to hear used for her children. The mother-name seemed appropriate at first, but it could be a painful reminder of what she had lost; the father-name could be a source of even deeper woe, and he had no way of knowing. The woman in front of him was mysterious, with few being able to give her insight into what she wanted or needed.

“How would you come to have gifts from my children?”

“They are letters,” Elrond explained, reaching into his bag and pulling out two very old pieces of parchment. They had been folded and unfolded many times, but he had taken care to flatten them along the journey west.

“It is true that I was born in Sirion, but I have no particularly fond memories of that place,” Elrond continued. “I met your two eldest sons when I was a small child. They could have chosen to kill us, or keep us as hostages, but instead they raised us and educated us.”

“I thought you were the herald of Gil-Galad from your youth,” she replied.

“They gave us - my brother and I - to Gil-Galad when we were ninety. A minority still for elves, but for half-elves, we were already grown mostly to adulthood. He gave this when we were turned over,” he concluded, giving Nerdanel the old envelope atop the aged parchment.

“Maitimo,” she said immediately, then her eyebrows narrowed. “My Maitimo never would have smudged his writing,” Nerdanel remarked quietly.

“He was…”

“I know what happened,” she interrupted. She opened her mouth again, but then shook her head lightly and closed it, running her fingers down the smudged letters. Elrond stayed quiet as she read, taking the time to observe his surroundings. There were pieces for display, and some that looked like works in progress, but there were also a great deal of what looked like experimentation, unfinished tests and globs of strange material he didn’t quite recognize.

“He wrote kindly of you,” she said, several long moments after she reached his signature at the bottom. There was a strange look in her eyes, almost as if thousands of years of memories were flooding into her mind all at once, the joy and grief mingling until they were almost indistinguishable.

“He loved us both,” Elrond replied. “And we loved him.”

“It mentions a brother, did he sail as well?”

Elrond shook his head. “We were given the choice between mortality and elvenkind. He chose the Gift of Men long ago.” In his hand there was another letter, once hidden in a tiny slat between two bricks at the end of a trail only Elrond could have found, as only he had learned Maglor’s particular brand of tracking that had apparently originated from Celegorm.

“He wrote to me when Elros died,” Elrond said, reading over the familiar words once again. How many times had they served as comfort and inspiration when he felt too weighed down by grief to even lift his head?

“The bravest choice?” Nerdanel asked.

“He said this one was the bravest choice because I was choosing to live after my brother, my twin, died. He said it was the bravest thing to do, to live through a pain like that and make the choice to keep living.”

He said no more, but knew Nerdanel would see her own name in the letter, an example of the utmost bravery. She looked like there were words in her mouth trying to burst forth, but nothing came as she continued to stare at the letter. The words there were smudged too, for a completely different yet no less painful reason, and yet it seemed she could not even say this.

“I heard from him one other time, when my wife departed… I tried to find him, but my scouts could not follow his trail, and I was in no shape to.”

“She died?”

“Her fëa needed healing long ago… she returned here for care and spent many years with Fin - with Arafinwë, her grandfather.”

“I have never met her. It is likely that a granddaughter of Arafinwë would want nothing to do with me.”

“Her mother and I get along quite well,” Elrond replied. “Her mother, Artanis.” The name was so archaic that he almost never used it, but here in the West, it somehow felt wrong to use Sindarin, especially when speaking to someone like Nerdanel.

“The daughter of Artanis would definitely not wish to meet me,” Nerdanel shook her head.

“She told me otherwise, long ago, when I told her I wished to see you. She would be here now, but she was needed in the revision of a new song of our daughter, from Bilbo. He wished to know of her early years.”

“He could not simply ask her?”

“She too chose the path of mortality, and my sons are yet undecided,” Elrond explained.

“I cannot understand that particular pain of losing a child by choice, but…” Nerdanel paused. “Perhaps I can.”

Elrond twisted the ring on his finger. “Maglor would sing us to sleep and taught us to read and write like princes,” he said quietly. “He was Atya and Maedhros was Atar, more stern perhaps, but no less protective. Quiet and hurt and determined to get revenge, but no less determined to see to it that Elros and I were educated and knew our way around a battlefield. The choice behind this letter was painful, but they never left us by choice, only protected us from what his fate would lead to.”

“Why are you here?” she asked again, after a long silence.

“I wished to meet my grandmother.”

Only her eyes questioned him. Nerdanel stayed silent, waiting for an explanation.

“Maedhros was my Atar and Maglor was my Atya, and Tyelperinquar was my beloved friend. I always considered them more of my family… when people spoke of them as being obsessed with the silmarils, I could never understand why,” Elrond said, noting Nerdanel’s small flinch and quick return to control. “I had one pair of parents who abandoned me for the gem, and one pair who could have lost their very souls by not chasing it down, and chose to raise me instead.”

Countless emotions flashed across Nerdanel’s face - pride, shame, love were among them, as she considered his words. Elrond, as she knew, was someone who had lost more loved ones than just about any elf she knew, except maybe herself. And with all the reason in the world to reject her and her whole family, here they were sitting on the two stools as equals, perhaps one day as friends.

Sidhel peeked in a short while later to find the pair sitting hand in hand. From the back, it almost looked like Nerdanel’s husband had returned, but she and Fëanáro rarely sat so quietly together. Between their two minds there was always something brewing, and yet here, there was no need for industriousness or even for speech. There were simply two hands intertwined, his palm atop hers, a single finger of hers on the blue gem, whether to caress it or hide it from view Sidhel could not tell, but the other four touched warm, living skin, perhaps not quite the burn she yearned for, but a comfort nonetheless.