Tedium by Lyra

Tedium

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What I like best about visiting grandfather Finwë’s house is that he has servants who do all the work. Cousin Findekáno says it’s the same where he lives, and all he has to do at home is attending his lessons. When he comes to visit us, he has to help with the chores as we all do. We have to sweep the floors ourselves, wash the dishes ourselves, make our beds ourselves; we have to put our worn clothing in the laundry, and fold our clean clothing and stack it in our wardrobes. We have to help cooking, and we have to take the peels and shells out to the compost or to the pigs. We have to clean the stables and the forge and the bathrooms each in our turn, except for Moryo and Curufinwë, who are too young yet. I wish I were too young, too.
“But you were too young once,” Father says, laughing, when I tell him so. “And Nelyo and Cáno envied you, then.”
There’s no point in complaining to Father, even when I point out that I could focus on my studies much better if I didn’t have to scrub floors or pans all the time. “You could focus much better on your studies if you spent less time running around like a wild horse,” is Father’s reply. “And you’d bring less dirt in, too, which would in turn make for less scrubbing.”

When Father was young - he told me after a visit to Tirion, when I was especially annoyed by my chores - he lived in grandfather Finwë’s house and had everything done for him. Then he went to study and work with grandfather Mahtan and did not even know how to sweep a floor. “Everybody was laughing at me,” he said. “Imagine that: Almost a grown man, and no idea how to hold a broom.” He picked up the broom I’d thrown across the room by the wrong end, pushing a piece of fluff around with the handle while the bristles stuck in his face. I had to laugh even though I was angry. “See?” He grinned. “I swore that wouldn’t happen to my children.”
“Well, but now I’ve learned how to sweep a floor, so now you can find someone to do it in my place.”
Father’s face grew serious again then. “So you’d rather make someone else do the work you’re too lazy to do? And why should somebody else want to do it?”
“Well, someone must like it. Grandfather Finwë has servants after all, and so does Uncle Nolofinwë.”
I knew I had lost as soon as I said it. If your uncle Nolofinwë does something one way, your father is bound to do it the other, Mother once said. She was exasperated then, but she is with father on the topic of chores. She thinks it’s a good thing for us not to grow up as spoiled princelings. She was probably one of the stupid people who laughed at Father for not knowing how to use a broom back in the day, one of those without who we wouldn’t have to sweep floors or fold clothes in the first place. I actually asked her about that, just like that, but she only said “Without whom, Tyelko”, and neither denied nor confirmed my accusation.

We are going to stay with grandfather Finwë for two blissful weeks. I find myself daydreaming about the long, work-free days at his house while my empty trunk yawns at me (at grandfather Finwë’s house, even the packing would be done by a smiling servant). Every day I will go to sleep in a bed someone else made for me, and when I wake up I will put on clothes someone else cleaned and folded for me, and wear boots someone else polished for me, and eat food I didn’t have to help prepare from plates I’ll never ever have to wash. By the third day Father will get fidgety and insist on one of us – or even himself – helping in the kitchen, and grandfather Finwë will put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to relax. “You are spoiling us,” Father will say, and Grandfather will say, “Someone has to.”
If I carry dirt in from playing outside, someone else will have swept it away before Father sees. I’ll look after my own horse, but someone else will muck the manure. The baths will always be sparkling clean even though none of us will move a finger. It will be perfect.

I am torn out of my reverie by Nelyo, who strides in without even knocking. “Have you taken my coronet again?” he says before he’s properly inside, and stops short when he is. “Good grief, Tyelko, have you even started packing? Do you even own clean clothes?” he asks, picking up a tunic I discarded earlier and straightening it out. “Wait, this is clean. How many times did I tell you not to crumple your clean things like that?”
Almost as often as Father, but I don’t want to answer and I don’t need to anyway because this is what Father and Nelyo call a Rhetoric Question. Instead I watch him picking up my clothing, strewn around on the bed and the floor, sorting them by looks and sometimes by sniffing at them. Worn and dirty things drop back down, clean things are folded (much better than I could do it, anyway). Before I know it Nelyo has packed my things, and put the rest back in the wardrobe. “Put the dirty things in the laundry before you start throwing your clean things on the same heap,” he says. “Now, where’s my coronet?”
“Carnistir,” I say, pointing to the wall. Actually I took it so Moryo and I could have a treasure hunt, but Carnistir was the one that hid it so well we didn’t find it again, so I don’t see why I should face Nelyo’s wrath.
“Right,” says Nelyo, turning around, ready to attack Carnistir. I look at my trunk, miraculously filled with neatly folded shirts and tunics and doublets, noticing with horror that Nelyo packed my awful festival robes, not the nice green ones but the boring brown ones with the stupid high neck. They’re all the way down, where I’d have to take everything else out to reach them.
“Hey! I didn’t want to take that ugly brown thing along!” I shout at Nelyo’s retreating back.
“Well, that’s what you get when you let someone else do your packing,” Nelyo says and leaves me, scowling, in my room.

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Chapter End Notes

Names are in Quenya, as per usual:

Findekáno = Fingon

Tyelko (Tyelkormo) = Celegorm

Nelyo (Nelyafinwë) = Maedhros

Moryo (Morifinwë)/Carnistir = Caranthir