Second Childhood by HannaGoldworthy

---

Chapter 2

---

It was a good thing Sarnai’s farm rested on the fertile feels of Aulë’s mountain; secluded though it might be, it was a drive of an hour or so home from the forges.  Maedhros didn’t think he could take more than an hour of Curvo’s stony silence.  Elros and Elrond had been better conversationalists when he kidnapped them.

 

“So, eh,” he fought for a moment to find a topic that wouldn’t irritate the youth even more, “why green?”

 

Curvo glared, as if the answer should be obvious.  “It, uh, goes with my eyes.”

 

He was probably trying to insult him by mocking him.  Maedhros only bit back a smile, because he was vividly reminded of Aredhel as a child.  “You could have gone for silver, or grey.  Bright green makes you look paler.”

 

“As does black.  And red makes you look like a gigantic orange carrot.  Maybe a little green would add some variety.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”  Sarnai would laugh herself right into a heart attack at the first sight of him…though she did greatly prefer his green cotton shirts, so the kid might have a point.  “Is there a particular astringent chemical or evil magic spell which produces the color?”

 

“You laugh, but this is quite fashionable in the forges.  It helps them tell which apprentice is which under all the soot.  Thorin Oakenshield himself has braids done up in royal blue.”

 

“I’ve no doubt it suits him.”  Who in the great blue blazes was Thorin Oakenshield?

 

“And I suppose that’s supposed to mean that green doesn’t suit me?”

 

Blast, he was quick to take offence; how had Finwë survived this?  “I’ve already said I think it doesn’t, but by all means, shave your head as soon as possible so my eyes can quit bleeding.”

 

Curvo regarded him shrewdly.  “You know, I got the distinct impression you’d be more polite.”

 

“Really?  What convinced you of that, the kidnappings or the murders?”

 

“No, I mean that as a compliment.  Most people walk on eggshells around me.  You fight back.  I can respect that.”

 

Maethros had the sinking feeling that this was going to be a long second childhood.  “Thanks, I think.  Look sharp, we’re here (praise Eru).  Make sure to greet the lady of the house properly; she’s a little less courteous than I am.”

 

Curvo caught sight of Sarnai, seated in her favorite wicker rocking chair and sipping what was hopefully her second cup of coffee that day, and his face lit up like a candle.  “You married a Man?” he exclaimed, jumping off the wagon.  “That’s so cool!  How’d you smuggle her here?  I thought they went outside the circles of the world or something instead of coming here?”

 

Sarnai cracked up laughing, and Maedhros breathed a sigh of relief; it was most certainly her second cup.  “I’m distant dwarrow-kin – if anything, I smuggled him.  My great-great-grandfather is Njall, from the Eastern Mountains; perhaps you’ve met?”

 

Curvo snapped his fingers.  “Excellent goat-cheese maker, rubbish at smith-craft.  You have his ears.”

 

She grinned toothily.  “You compliment me undeservedly.  He has more of an ear for languages than I.”

 

“Says the woman who taught me Khuzdul,” Maedhros put in.  “Curvo, I’m not carrying your luggage.  Fetch it now, or it’s going in the barn with the wagon.”

 

Curvo sighed, rolled his eyes, and practically dove off of the porch to do as he was bidden.  Sarnai glanced cheekily up at her husband, and Maedhros lifted his eyebrows dryly at her smirk.

 

“Don’t forget this was your idea.”

 

“No, it was Curvo’s…the other Curvo’s.  I just encouraged you to accept.”

 

“He’s called Rinko now because he’s short!”  Curvo hollered as he dashed into the house.  “Which room is mine?”

 

“Top of the stairs, two doors down on the left!”

 

“Really, dear?  Elrond’s room?”

 

“Elrond is an adult and usually brings his family, so they fit into the kids’ rooms better anyway.  And you’re always saying you hate the linen in that room, so if he sets it on fire, it’s no great loss and you can always blame your crazy dad if Elrond complains.”

 

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

 

She winked and took another sip from her cup.  “Admit it, you haven’t had this much fun in years.”

 

***

 

Maedhros had often wished his father could have met his wife.  For all his faults, Fëanáro had been a doting father-in-law, and Sarnai would have caught his interest thoroughly, both for sharing his interest in different languages and for being from a far-off, mysterious region he’d not yet had the chance to explore.

 

Curvo was exactly like Fëanáro in this regard, though Maedhros did not mention it out of respect for Curvo’s complete disregard for Fëanáro.  The boy practically waited hand and foot on Sarnai, quizzing her about every topic between the events of her youth to the general practices of old age amongst the Secondborn.  “Or, well, the mostly Secondborn…you don’t really look dwarvish.”

 

“I’ll take that as a compliment, for now.”

 

In turn, Sarnai gave Curvo lessons in scripts from her homeland.  As a rule, Khuzdul was a spoken language, kept fiercely consistent by its speakers; it did, however, borrow characters from the cultures around it when it was strictly necessary that something be written down.  Daeron’s Cirth had not yet reached the Eastern Mountains by the time Sarnai’s people fled them, and so her brand of Khuzdul writing involved delicate pictographs lovingly painted with ink brushstrokes.  Curvo was entranced.

 

“Couldn’t you get in trouble for teaching me this?” he asked one day.  “I mean, I did get in trouble for something very much like this, quite recently.”

 

“Well, a snoop amongst the Ñoldor once rummaged through Aulë’s personal things and found his first manuscripts for the language.  Once my tribe became part of the picture, much later, the elves we knew could already speak it fluently; we just helped them learn to read it.”

 

That snoop had been Fëanáro, but she didn’t mention that.  Nor did she mention the fact that she’d only discovered Maedhros could understand Khuzdul when he’d expressed discomfort at a particularly nasty cuss word; their first proper conversation had been a heated argument over such language.  This was because Curvo hated it when the two of them shot “goo-goo eyes” at each other in his presence over such treasured memories, so they made a game of flirting subtly enough not to catch his notice.

 

The youth settled fairly quickly into a typical daily farm routine: up with the cows (and the goats, and the spoiled-rotten horses, and the thrice-accursed chickens who thought they owned the place).  He made a point of making his bed immaculately every morning, even when he was becoming accustomed to getting up early; he also made a point of loudly decrying Elrond’s taste in home décor whenever he did, just in case they’d slept through the obnoxious rooster.  “There’s not enough color!” he whined.  “It’s all beige and pastels and washed-out rubbish!  Where are the reds and purples?”

 

“In our room, where they should be!  Shut your mouth or you’re sleeping in the henhouse!”

 

“Good!  The hens have better taste!”

 

As he had in his past life, Curvo worked hard without paying attention to his own physical or mental limits.  Maedhros had a feeling that that tendency had played a royal in the defacement incident…in a lot of incidents, to be honest.  So, in order to force the boy to relax, he mandated that they spend at least an hour in the garden every day before breakfast.  Curvo would not dare disobey the rules until he had some gauge of his new wardens’ weakness, and therefore minded the rule.  Soon enough, he seemed to be getting some sort of peace there, although whether it was because he liked gardening, or because he wanted to forge a connection with Maedhros, was still very much in the air.

 

“I don’t get the layout of the rosebushes,” he said one day, as they were rooting around preparing the vegetable plots for planting.

 

“What’s not to understand?”  It was a nice line of rosebushes around the vegetables, and they’d grown in nicely this year; if nothing else, they’d deter the chickens from eating his seedlings.

 

“There’re eleven bushes.  Why an odd number?  Or a prime number at that?  If I’d been planning it, I would have done perhaps an even dozen.  And they look like they were planted haphazardly; each one looks years older than the other.  And there’s even space left!  The whole thing seems pretty poorly planned.”

 

“Does it?”  The kid was one clear thought away from the answer, and Maedhros wanted to see his reaction.

 

“Being mysterious will not help, you know.  I’ll find the answer eventually.”

 

“Oh, I know that.  But I’m not going to ruin your train of thought.”

 

Curvo stared quizzically at him for a moment, and Maedhros could see the moment where the gears shifted in his head to change interrogation tactics.  “You know, I never figured you for the farming sort.  I know Rinko was the one most skilled in smith craft, but didn’t you know at least a little about jewel-making?”

 

“And you guessed that because it says in the records that I was tortured for my father’s secrets, correct?”

 

It was a mild question, but Curvo’s crestfallen expression showed that he had been trying to avoid the topic.  Maedhros, seeing no reason that talking about the past should warrant punishment, smiled secretively.

 

“That was a ruse on my part.  I knew that the whole thing was probably a trap, and I guessed that Morgoth would be after that particular secret since he’d lost most of the jewels to Ungoliant.  Getting captured would put me in a position to learn about most of his current weapons and tactics, and get me close to the Silmaril, and he’d have spent the entire time questioning me about a topic I knew very little about.”

 

“Except that he had no trouble torturing you for thirty years for absolutely no reason at all.”

 

“Well, I was young and naïve and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”  Stupid was the word he was thinking, but he’d promised many good-intentioned people not to talk himself down in front of others, and it had done wonders for his own self-respect.  “We were all young and naïve.  Unfortunately, the path to wisdom is painful, more for some than for others.”

 

Curvo frowned again – confused that Maedhros was not showing any more emotional distress – then got back to his digging to hide the fact that he was confused.  “So, what was your passion, really?”

 

“Teaching, with a dedicated hobby of gardening.”

 

“So all the time you spent with Faenor in the forge was a lie, then?”

 

And that question was fraught with pitfalls – no less because Curvo, characteristically, preferred the correct Sindarin translation of his old name rather than the ungrammatical hodgepodge that history gave him.  Maedhros put that aside, and answered as casually as he could manage.

 

“Nah, it was more like an effort to make a connection with my father and brother.  Our family was…tempestuous, at best, and my friendships were a point of contention.  I thought to ease that discontent by being able to ‘talk shop’, and it worked, for the most part.”

 

In other words, Maedhros had guessed at Curvo’s real reasons for working so hard on the farm and learning from Sarnai.  From the blush that rose in the boy’s ears, Maedhros guessed he got the point – another oddity, because his father had been fairly clueless when it came to such subtleties.  But then, second chances usually came about from learning from one’s mistakes.

 

***

 

“He really is a good kid,” Sarnai said one night, as she curled up as much as she was able.  Likely the chill spring air was hurting her arthritis again, and Maedhros took her hands in his to warm them.

 

“Does that surprise you?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.  Truth be told, he seemed like he made an effort to be the perfect kid the first time around, and the pressure got to him in the end.  Reminds me of someone I know.”

 

He smiled as he rolled his eyes.  “I like to think I’ve grown past that.”

 

“And you have, in many ways.  Now you just focus on being the perfect husband.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

“I’m blessed, and honored, and grateful.  And exasperated, because I want nothing more than for you to be happy, and you’re not.”

 

He brushed her white hair behind her ear, with the goal of making eye contact.  Once he got that, he held it steadily.  “You worry too much.  I’m as happy as I need to be, right here.”

 

She shook her head and closed her eyes.  “I wish I could believe that as much as you do.”