Five Fires by Elleth

Chapter 1

The First

When he was a child, barely beyond the blur of first memories, there was an incident in the kitchen, and he and his brother had stood quivering and afraid, hand-in-hand and mind-to-mind before the closed door to their parents' bedroom while his mother and father were screaming at each other within. One of the snatches he distinctly remembers is his father's accusation that his mother had burned the food - and his mother's reply that she was tired.

Later that night they both stood in the kitchen and watched their mother slosh the water in the sink and scrub the pot in vain. The next day – it was raining – she went to live with Grandfather Mahtan for a while.

The Second

'No other race shall oust us!'

The muscles in his jaw hurt when he forced them apart to shape and mold the Oath from air.

Later that night, with the crowd dissipated, his father admitted a moment's defeat: The omnipresent torch rolled from his hand to gutter on the pavement. 'Hold on to it,' he was told by his twin, who handed his father's fallen torch on to him. His hand clenched around it until the flames licked at his fingers for lack of other fuel, and he could not blink back the tears.

The Third

'Where now is Ambarussa my brother? Did you not wake him?'

Hearing the answer he stood straight and met his father's eye, but even the blaze on the water that night before had been nothing compared to the fire that now threatened to engulf them both. The swanships stood as blackened skeletons in the firth, and he waded out as far as possible, then swam, then dived.

The water, he was told later that night, was icy and it was a miracle that he had not drowned. No, not he: His brother. He had found Ambarussa at last, unscathed by the fire and half-buried by a fallen beam that had smashed the swanship's hull and hurled him into the water, where he, unconscious from the smoke already, had found a quick end.

At his bidding, they had salvaged a number of hardly-burned planks of the ship, and sent his brother out to sea. His father never came.

The Fourth

The Oath again. His father burned, and later that night the torch fell from Maitimo's hand on the march back. It guttered out in a puddle left by recent rain, and he turned away.

Interlude

Ever since, Ambarussa had sat outside the circle of light of camps and bonfires, and on Himring Maitimo - Maedhros now - gave him the seat furthest from the fireplace. The smell of roast meat made him retch, and he avoided to look at ashes. He rather sat by the window when it rained.

The Fifth

The Halls of Mandos are blessedly cool, for fëar need none of the comforts of the body: No food, no fire, and in consequence - no ashes. He has learned to ignore Grandmother Míriel's weavings and their depictions (mostly of fire), until one day a flash of different red among the threads catches his attention: Maedhros, a brilliant light in his left hand, teetering on the edge of the abyss, falling and tumbling into the chasm of fire. There is no water in the Halls of Mandos, either.

He freezes before the image on the tapestry, until Maedhros himself, ungainly in only-spirit form like a toddler learning to walk, approaches him and his twin (always a shadow by his side since his own death at the Havens of Sirion).

'Are all of us here now?'

'Save for Makalaurë.'

'Is he -'

Ambarussa catches a glimpse of blue on another of the tapestries.

'- By the sea.'