Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble by Raiyana

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Chapter 1

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”Brings heat to the bones,” Celegorm said gleefully, eyeing Curufin’s cauldron with anticipation in between glancing out at the blizzard that seemed content to linger for another four weeks without abating.

“Well, it should,” Curufin muttered, stirring the roiling boil with a large stone spoon. “But I won’t promise it’ll be exactly the same as the Formenos Warmer. The ingredients in Finrod’s storage cabinets hardly compare to what we grew in Aman.”

“Pfft!” Celegorm scoffed. “They’re grown under the Sun, but that’s the only difference, I bet – you know Finrod brought a bunch of seeds along from home. How bad can it be?”

 

Famous last words.

 

Celegorm groaned, trying to dislodge whatever object seemed determined to burrow into his spleen.

“I’m guessing that means you’re awake again,” Curufin’s dry voice greeted. It was precisely as unsympathetic and utterly unwelcome as it had been whenever he showed up the morning after Celegorm had gone out with Tilion and the lads.

“G’ay,” Celegorm tried, attempting to lift his hand to swat him away like a gnat.

The annoying cretin had the gall to laugh at him.

And his hand didn’t obey his orders, either.

“Try to sleep a little more,” Curufin murmured, pressing a cool cup against his lips.

Water, clean and a little metallic from the rocks, had never been so tasty.

 

 

His brother blinked, eyes back to their normal green colour, and Curufin breathed a sigh of relief at the sight. Finrod, too, seemed to have returned to the realm of the living, accepting Orodreth’s help at sipping water – though Curufin would bet that the stream of low-voiced incensed words didn’t much register – although neither of them yet seemed capable of supporting their own cups.

“They’re… going to be well?” Celebrimbor wondered, poking his head through the door, Finduilas perched on his hip with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes as wide as an owl’s still, seeking her father’s bent form for reassurance.

Orodreth looked up, managing a smile for her.

“They’ll be better soon, sweetling,” he called, “but you must stay with cousin Celebrimbor for a little while longer, alright?”

“Hear that?” Celebrimbor asked her, the worry smoothed from his face by a mask of calm joviality that Curufin at once loved and loathed seeing; too much like his mother, the boy was, capable of keeping the truth of his heart from anyone’s sight.

But Curufin could see the lines beneath the surface, see the cracks his son couldn’t quite hide from him, though little Finduilas did not seem to notice. “You know what that means,” Celebrimbor continued, grinning happily as he bounced her on his hip, making her giggle.

“Dancin’!” she called, small arms waving with enough grace that it was clear she would grow to inherit her mother’s fluid movements, a born dancer in all ways.

Celebrimbor grinned, turning away and walking off towards Finduilas’ rooms.

But he looked back at Curufin, just for a moment, just long enough that Curufin’s nod of agreement with his nephew’s words allowed his shoulders to drop, tension bleeding out of his frame.

Thank you, Atto.

 

 

“What did we do?” Celegorm asked, once he’d regained the power of speech.

Curufin wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.

How do you tell your brother that he and his cousin, high as kites – higher than anyone he’d seen smoking at Maglor’s parties in Tirion, for sure – had not only ripped their clothes off, painting their bodies with intricate if senseless symbols made of a blueish clay he still didn’t know where they’d got, but actually believed that said symbols enabled them of flight?

And then how did you explain to them that the distance they had then covered – Huan had tracked them, because no other hounds could keep up – would indicate that they had in fact sprouted wings?

The Eagles could have made that trip, though horses would have been hard pressed… two elves on foot, even if they were under the effects of dubiously brewed Formenos Warmer, however? Impossible.

And yet they had done so.

And slaughtered about a hundred orcs somewhere along the road.

Without any weapons.

Curufin sighed.

“You remember how you specifically promised me that you’d try the brew under my direct supervision, you absolute walnut?” he asked, quite pleasantly in his own opinion.

Celegorm winced.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But-”

Curufin’s raised hand stopped any excuse he might have made, which was for the best.

There was no excuse good enough to make him forgive Celegorm for this.

None.

After all, until the kind-but-incredibly perturbed Súldil had brought them back, he’d been entirely convinced – along with every other inhabitant of Nargothrond – that they’d seen the last of the two hare-brained fopdoodles.

“You did not.”

Celegorm winced, and if Curufin’s tight grip on his wrist – ostensibly taking his pulse – was the cause, so much the better.

“You could have died…” he whispered, and suddenly the rage left him, leaving only cold ashes of despair behind. “You left me.”

“Curvo…”

But Curufin had left, the door swinging on its hinges.

 

 

“Near as we can tell,” Orodreth said, some time later, voice low though loud enough to startle Celegorm out of his doze. “You decided that walking out into the blizzard to find the sun was a good idea.” He paused, long enough to let that sink in. “You then decided – and I don’t know whose idea it was, so don’t ask – that finding the sun required magic symbols to be written on your skin; presumably to let you fly up to the sun and drag it back down.”

“Arien’d never fall for that,” Celegorm scoffed, refusing to look at Orodreth or Finrod both as he crossed his arms over his chest. Huan laughed at him.

“Be that as it may,” Orodreth continued, “we found your clothes and a bucket of blue pottery glaze just outside the gates. Far as I can tell, you poured the rest or Curufin’s cordial into the paint, too.”

“Well, symbols need a bit of magic to work,” Finrod nodded. Orodreth did not seem appeased by this display of logic, though Celegorm admitted it made a certain sort of drunken sense that he was familiar with from spending time with Oromë’s hunters; Tilion had always been stellar at such leaps of thought, too.

“You then went north,” Orodreth continued sharply, cutting across any other defences Finrod might have offered.

Celegorm suddenly felt very glad it wasn’t his nephew sitting there haranguing them for their foolishness.

Though Celebrimbor would have been harsher, he knew, too like his sire and grandsire in anger.

Not that they hadn’t deserved it, he admitted, vaguely remembering the feel of feathers beneath his fingers, the taste of fresh blood in his mouth.

“How long were we gone?” he wondered.

“A week and four days,” Orodreth replied, and his smile was not a friendly one. “Somehow, you made it to the crossing of Taigel,” Orodreth said, looking like he couldn’t quite work out how, which was fair, because Celegorm had no idea either.

The crossing of Taigel, even in good weather was nearer a month’s journey if not two from Nargothrond.

Finrod didn’t have a quip for that, either.

“From there it gets fuzzy,” Orodreth admitted. “Huan could probably tell you, but we’d no real means of tracking your movements.”

“I think I remember… teeth? Orcs?” Celegorm tried, though it was hazier than even Tilion’s best homebrew had ever managed. Just what had Curufin invented in that giant cauldron?

“Yeah, the eagle said you came across a roving band of them, no more than a hundred.”

“And we were naked.” Finrod gulped, and Celegorm began to understand just why his little brother had been so terrified for him.

“And weaponless,” he added, his mouth dry.

“And victorious, thankfully,” Orodreth muttered. “But – and I’m not sure why you decided to do this, but that seems like a common theme to this escapade, so let’s take that for granted, shall we?”

They nodded.

There wasn’t really anything else to do, in truth.

“You then climbed a mountain – or so you raved; we have doubts – and jumped off a fucking cliff.”

“…”

Celegorm felt utterly blank. By rights, doing even one of the things he’d purportedly done – he was too weak to think Curufin had brewed them a sedative and made up a good story, unfortunately – he should have woken in Mandos, not in a sickbed in Nargothrond.

“I… guess we landed on the eagle?” Finrod asked weakly.

Orodreth just nodded.

No one spoke, digesting the story for a while.

“Next time, we’re diluting the Warmer,” Celegorm muttered fervently.

“Hear, hear,” Finrod coughed.

“Next time?!!”

Ah. Oops. Curufin was back.

Celegorm did his level best to appear asleep.

He fooled no one.

 

 

Singing an old song he thought his mother had taught him, Celebrimbor danced around Finduilas’ room, spinning his smallest cousin into reams of giggles loud enough to drown out the blistering heat of Curufin’s voice thundering at Celegorm in his sickbed down the hall.

He grinned.

Serves you right, Uncle, he thought, inwardly crowing that he was not the target of Curufin’s well-crafted – and usually well-earned – scolding. I’m glad you didn’t die.