Five Golden Rings by herenortherenearnorfar

Skipped Number

Read Skipped Number

“I have wondered, ” says Annatar, sitting back in a chair and surveying his work. “You did not craft the Five.”

Celebrimbor is half delirious— has been half delirious for hours, since he lost 2 pints of blood and the use of a kidney. It was an accident, Annatar had reassured him, really, an unfortunate side effect of his own attempt to wriggle out of the orc’s grasp. Accident or not, his partner had let him bleed for a while before moving in to help. 

(Annatar’s help was a tricky thing. Celebrimbor had known that even before the Gorthaur reveal and had only discovered new depths of sly wordplay, intentional misconstruction, and tactical withholding since then.)

Dehydration and starvation hadn’t affected Celebrimbor much but he did need blood. Annatar was increasingly exploring his exact limits on that front. How long before he got woozy? How long until he became insensible? 

Right now they’re right between uninhibited and hypovolemic– coincidentally right where Annatar likes him. 

Because he is not in his right mind, he answers. “Three was a much more auspicious number. Simpler to work with, geometrically sound. It’s the basis of a triangle which is nicer than a pentagon.” It’s too easy to banter with Annatar, to fall into old habits. This is not his friend anymore —only it’s hard to remember that when his vision is spinning. The air is cool against his wounds, he’s not being hurt for the first time in hours, and Annatar’s golden face and Tree-bright eyes are the only solid things in view. 

How strange that he can glow like Laurelin once did when he— an exile and a turncoat— never even saw it. 

Annatar scoffs. “That’s a poor excuse, Celebrimbor. Your actions betray your misgivings. Tell me, did you not wish to work on such a great project without me or did you fear what more rings could do in the wrong hands?”

The second, always the second. He’d known in his heart how dangerous their creations were, and how careful the creator must be to bring more into the world. Even before certain minor details of identity were revealed, it had been clear that what Eregion was forging was power. You didn’t have to be a survivor of the great war to know how dangerous that was, though it certainly helped give some additional perspective. 

Five was simply too many. 

“I wanted…” his tongue is leaden and clumsy. “Three was a good number. The first three tribes of the Quendi. Water, fire, and air.”

“Three Silmarils,” comes the smooth response. “I know the wanderings of your thoughts, all your pride and foibles. You cannot hide from me.”

They’re getting back into the territory of gloating. It’s boring, Celebrimbor thinks sleepily, as he watches blood dry tacky and dark on the flagstones. Annatar was never this boring but evil has a way of making people so dull. 

It’s a shame to lose a friend to banal meanness. 

 

The evil is defeated, the ages turn, and Celebrimbor finds himself retreating to the forge at Formenos. Now that the city of Tirion is buried along with an army fit to conquer the world, Formenos is the largest of his grandfather’s remaining workshops. 

It is a dismal place— even the newcomers from across the sea who prefer chill winds and solitude avoid Fëanáro’s old dwelling place. A few loyalists remain there but most have settled on the wandering isle or made new homes for themselves even further in the north. 

Celebrimbor is left alone. It has been long enough since he emerged from the halls for his relatives to relax, long enough since Barad-dûr fell for the last questioning glances and soft reassurances to cease. His grandmother looks askance at him as he leaves but he smooths away her worries with a joke about missing holly trees. They don’t have the climate for them  in the new city on the slope of Antaro or among the mansions where Aulë’s people dwell. 

It takes him several weeks to make the forge serviceable again; time takes a toll even in Valinor. Here the trees do not wither and the stars never dim but dust does accumulate. The rusting is far more minimal than it would have been in Middle-Earth and the animals have not intruded on this precious place— he takes these blessings from the eternal land and is thankful for them, then sets to work. 

Only once he’s certain the forge is in impeccable order does he face his fears and look into the treasury. More than three ages have passed. Celebrimbor is no longer a child, being carried away from a scene of gore with tears running down his face. 

There isn’t a bloodstain on the marble floor where King Finwë fell, not anymore. Of course they would have cleaned that up. Even in the midst of the furious relocation back to Tirion, the household had taken the time to mop up their fallen monarch’s brains. 

Still, the puddle of dark red lingers in Celebrimbor’s mind. Slowly the image shifts, blood becoming more blood until he’s remembering his own viscera spilling out in front of him.

He turns away and locks the treasury door. 

Despite his best efforts, he dreams of blood. His grandfather’s, his own, Orodreth and Finduilas’s, brave Finrod’s, star-bright Gil-Galad’s, and clever Celebrían’s, a river of kinsmen drowning in red. Above the horrific scene burns a never-sleeping eye. 

Formenos will do nicely, he decides the next morning as he wipes the hoar off the windows and goes to kindle the fires. 

Celebrimbor plants the promised holly in the courtyard where an old sapling of Galathilion had withered. It will take a few years before it is in full bloom but he’s old enough to wait. In the woods where his uncles and aunts once held raucous hunts he burns charcoal. The workshop that was the focus of so many of his childhood lessons becomes a place to scavenge materials and tools. There are still loose lead glass stones on the workbench and gold and silver ingots tucked neatly in a drawer amid other metals. The mithril, being more precious, would have been stored with the treasure and sacked by Morgoth. He takes a variety of materials and moves them to the fireside.

There are some signs of habitation in the years since the Trees. Rúmil has clearly been through and tidied the papers, taking some for study. His mother seems to have taken her projects— the small section of the forge that was hers is cleared out and a few of his father’s best tools, abandoned in the hasty return to the capital, are missing as well. The scattered marks of return make him feel less like a ghost. This is not a haunting, it’s a well deserved pilgrimage; one that others have made before him. 

When he finally settles in front of the ready and waiting forge, he finds he has no idea what to make. 

 

Vilya sits on a chain his neck. Nenya and Narya still abide with their old keepers; Galadriel and Olórin having asked if they could hold onto the rings for “sentimental reasons”. Celebrimbor had been more than happy to oblige them. Elrond, on the other hand, had nearly sprinted to hand the Ring of Air over as soon as he set foot on the shore of Valinor. 

“It was never truly mine,” he confided, “Though I appreciate what it allowed me to do for my people. You can return it to Gil-Galad if you wish, though I’m not sure he’d take it.”

Celebrimbor had kept it instead. To hold all three of his powerless creations would have been overwhelming, a reminder of how tightly their strength had apparently been bound up with his murderer’s and how easily his greatest work had been subverted. Just the one he can hold as a memento without lingering over how complicated their history had become. 

Now he holds it up to the sun and inspects the flickering blue depths of the gemstone. The stone is a lighter blue than that favored by the dwarves— cornflower rather than azure, to mimic the highest point in the midday sky. Sauron’s fall has not impacted its beauty, only its potency. 

The matter of the Three Ring’s powerlessness was itself a subject of light debate among academics in the elven cities. That works crafted without the input of evil could be turned to evil ends, and ultimately subsumed by and rendered helpless by the greater force of evil apparently open up several avenues of philosophical debate. 

Celebrimbor, who knows the spells that were invoked and the power put into binding the Rings, does not wonder at how such an achievement was accomplished. The great inverting of his work was a singular, irreplicable event. Never again will any force be mustered that could equal such a show of skill, for the inheritance of Morgoth’s mandate has fallen on far lesser folk in later days. 

As he marshals all these thoughts together, a concept begins to form. It’s risky. There would be little benefit and many drawbacks. Still, the idea fits so perfectly in his unsteady heart that he wonders if this is what he meant to do all along. 

He has the tools, he has the skill. The Rings of Power were not by nature turned to evil. They were made to exist independently, to accentuate one another but not interfere. For the first few years of their existence that is how they functioned. 

Theoretically, he could craft new ones. Now that Sauron is diminished there is no chance that any future rings would be bound in servitude. They would exist in their purest state, made to aid and heal. 

There is little use for such creations in Valinor, he has to admit, but they do not need to be used. Art for art’s sake can be enough. A test of skill, a demonstration of the practical uses of jewelsmithing in a new age, a way of proving that Sauron’s influence was truly defeated, wasn’t that its own reward?

Besides, he wants to know if the craft behind them still holds, if all his work and artisanship at Annatar’s side was tainted from the beginning. There are questions that need answering, wounds that even his time in Mandos could not heal. Ever since the Dark Tower fell his mind has been uneasy.

A troubled heart is only exacerbated by still hands, as his father used to say. Feeling oddly cheery, Celebrimbor tucks Vilya back under his tunic and goes to start sketching plans.

At the top of the first sheet of drafting paper, he writes, MAQUA . 

 

The Nine could be roughly divided into three groups of three. The first three had been exploratory endeavors, as their smithing team had begun to fully realize the potential of the Rings. Even taking into account their smaller previous treatises in ringcraft— the lesser rings of invisibility, far seeing, strength, and invulnerability— they still had much to learn about the finer techniques needed to make truly exceptional works. 

The second three had, almost by accident, incorporated many design cues and aesthetic principles from the mortal denizens of Ost-in-Edhil. A few talented goldsmiths of the Dunlendings had taken up house in the city in that century and took an interest in the ring project. Their advice was much appreciated, as was the fascinating spiral based iconography favored among the courts of the Dunlending kings, and the idea slowly began to form that the Nine ought to be a tribute to their human neighbors. In hindsight it was hard to remember exactly who had suggested it— mostly Celebrimbor knows that it wasn’t Annatar. That remains some small comfort. 

By the time they began work on the final three their minds were made up. The Nine would imitate human styles and human motifs, and in time be gifted to human allies. Always excited to make an already complicated enterprise more difficult, the craftsmen of the Mírdain began to involve the handful of human students who studied among them. After thoroughly picking the brains of every human in the city, there had been trips south to visit with human chieftains and treaties hastily arranged so that their smiths could go and apprentice under human experts for a few decades. 

It was strange to look back on those happy years when art had been a way to bring all peoples together and find a peace that could unite Arda, knowing what misery those rings had brought. 

Once the ninth had been cast, polished, and hardened in the fire, thoughts turned to the next project. There was simply no stopping at Nine, after all. For one thing, it could cause a diplomatic incident. The dwarves were close allies and would not take such a slight lightly. 

It was simply a given that the Seven would be a dwarven collaboration, and that they would be Seven. It was a sacred number to Aulë’s children, the number of the Fathers, the number of the Clans. Besides, descending odd numbers were very satisfying. 

Craftsmen from Moria streamed into the city to offer their expertise on the latest ring project. Whole walls of the workshop were taken up with sketches of dwarven fashion, architecture, and traditional illustration. 

As they’d worked Annatar and Celebrimbor had thrown around ideas for the future of the Greater Rings. There would be a Five, obviously, and a Three, but they struggled to find a good set of inspiration for them. Three was, of course, a very symbolic number for the elves. Five was also quite elegant however. There were five fingers on a hand and five extremities of the body. Both were numbers favored by nature, parts of the Spiral of Sums. 

They’d toyed with the concept of crafting the Five for the Men of Numenor but it seemed terribly unfair to divide the Second-Born in such a manner. The idea of making the Five for the Sindar and Silvan and the Three for the Noldor was also suggested, but once more it seemed at odds with their lofty ambitions of unity. Besides, someone would grumble. Once, half joking, an apprentice had said that the Five ought to be for the orcs. Celebrimbor had been overconfident enough to consider it for some weeks before realizing that it would be impossible to get the same level of input and cooperation that they had garnered from the men and dwarves. 

As they’d crafted the Seven there had been a slow decay of trust and an inevitable falling out, Annatar had departed, and all thoughts of more Rings had been shelved. Only years later had Celebrimbor gotten it into his head to begin again the project on his own, and alone the effort and energy needed for the potential Five had been overwhelming. The Three, a small, manageable, perfectable set made for his own people with less outside influence and less need to manage other craftsmen, seemed ideal. 

It was better to make a few perfect works than a dozen subpar trinkets, he’d thought. Across the continent, Annatar had apparently been coming to the same conclusion.

At times it was like they thought with the same mind. 

 

Now he digs all the buried ring lore out of the recesses of his mind and begins drafting. It has been too long since he has forged anything like a ring— it would simply invite too many odd looks even in his Grandmother’s tolerant household— so he keeps the designs basic. Smooth bands, perfectly circular to increase the annular flow of power.

Celebrimbor stares at the paper. 

“Void damn you,” he mutters, and scrawls some additional charcoal lines to indicate coiling carved vines. 

The medium is an important choice. The metal must be well suited to the conduction of power and the ordering of will. Mithril is ideal for communication, silver for magic, iron alloys for strength, and copper for channeling, but gold is wonderful for all sorts of work. It’s ductile, transmits all manner of energy, and remains stable in its form. 

Gold will do, he decides. If it brings to mind the work of another then it’s only Celebrimbor’s fault for dwelling on the past. 

Ring crafting is not a simple process. First molds must be made out of wax and rubber and clay. All the rings will be identical, which simplifies the process slightly, but the complex runes and invisible spells upon the surface of the ring take time to carve out. The metal must be heavily treated before it can be used, to make it impervious to high heat and the wear and tear of life (After some thought, he dials the heat resistance down just a little. Entirely invulnerable magical rings are a proven mistake.)

To simplify the process of strengthening the gold, Celebrimbor designs a series of enchanted crucibles. It’s a neat solution, one that he almost wishes he’d thought of 5000 years ago. Any clever ideas thought of back then would have only made the world worse but that does not change his wish to share them.

It is a complicated matter, being a Ringmaker. There are few people who truly understand. Galadriel sympathizes but her sympathy has always been tinged with an unspoken “I told you so” which makes her hard to talk to. 

The hobbits on Valinor’s shores know what it means, but they are few and fading. Even the land of eternal summer cannot make a mortal suffer on past his time. The elder Mr. Baggins speaks wistfully about his final journey and— although they were never the closest— Celebrimbor cannot stand to watch another mortal friend fade away. It was always his least favorite part— the slow decline and eventual disappearance into the unknown. It was enough to make him want to freeze the world in place. Surely humans and their ilk did not deserve to leave so soon. 

Of course, the will of The One (different than the One that was destroyed) cannot be subverted. Here, of all places, order must be kept. 

He isn’t entirely sure this little project is in line with the rules of the Valar but if Manwë doesn’t like it then his all-seeing self can interfere. Just to make sure they’re on the same page he gives a wave in the direction of distant Taniquetil. 

“I’ll stop any time you like,” Celebrimbor offers. There is no lightning from above. It’s practically an endorsement. 

 

“Are you certain you fare well here?” 

Tercenís is as old as the keep of Formenos. She looks it too, with the greying hair and fine peach fuzz of old age. Many of the others who dwell in the nearby town traveled to Beleriand and then back again. Tercenís stayed. 

“Quite well, thank you. It’s quiet about the old place but at times some quiet is what the spirit needs.” 

The older elf looks unconvinced. “No one else could bear to stay there. It is why we built Formirin. Old darkness has made a home among those stones.”

“All the more reason to drive it out,” Celebrimbor says cheerfully, hoisting his groceries onto his hip. “Tell my mother I said hello.” Age and excuses about needing to look after her plum orchard aside, everyone knows the real reason Tercenís stayed. She picked a side and still stalwartly backs it, though Fëanor’s in-laws are much further from power these days.

“Middle-Earth has made you cheeky,” she grumbles and slips an extra plum into his sack of food. 

It is good to venture into the town every few days. Slow steady days of work in the forge test his muscles and mind. The droning pattern of modeling, testing, and refining is intellectually challenging but emotionally rather draining. 

“Even elves work harden, Silverhand,” Narvi had told him once. “People must anneal themselves in the fire of friendship to keep their flexibility. A tired metal is a brittle metal and a tired person has a brittle soul.”

Celebrimbor, who had been known to lock himself in the forge for hours on end, had marked it good advice. Though anecdotal evidence was not the basis of a strong thesis, experience proved that often brilliant breakthroughs came from slowing down, taking a break, and listening to a friend. 

His zest for project collaboration had lessened somewhat since the Annatar affair but he cannot discount the preeminent importance of an outside perspective. 

When he gets back to Formenos he turns his attention to the treasury. Though the great doors with their broken locks have long since ceased to startle him or haunt his dreams, he still keeps them firmly closed. There is a darkness within, stickier and more permanent than the Great Spider’s unlight. 

Now he casts the doors open and lets  the weak northern sun illuminate all that’s within; the dusty vaults and conspicuously scrubbed marble floor, the empty caskets and shattered chests. 

In the absence of a way to die, elves can either wither or heal. The long slow fading and effacing of the spirit is easier, true, but less than enjoyable and frankly rather undignified. So most chose to mend themselves. It is the best way to survive. 

Celebrimbor has pieced together his own broken self more than once. The last bout of recuperation was particularly intensive by necessity; Mandos is picky about who he lets walk out of his home and Annatar was so very thorough. Nevertheless Celebrimbor still experiences the odd moment of abrupt insight, like some missing fragment of knowledge long lost (or never there) slotting into perfect place in his heart. 

The work of the wise in this regard is never done. 

Right now he knows exactly what he must do. 

 

The cleverest thing about the design of the rings is how easy they were for Sauron to hijack. The interlocking systems of dependence, the manifold interrelationships between the rings themselves (they were always meant to foster unity), even the little catches and twists to the spells that were always meant to play off of Annatar’s exact nature; what were designed as avenues for greater functionality and catastrophe control (if you had a Maia why not enable them to minimize the effects of any disastrous technical failure?) became ways for Sauron to exert his will. 

Celebrimbor leaves every one of the backdoors open, does not close a single loophole in the spellwork. If anything, he widens the gap for outside interference. He had a chance to glance at the One during his ordeal and he incorporates similar, less invariably corrupting versions of the open vessel construction. 

The souls of elves and men are rather picky about where they dwell but the Ainur flow like water, filling up whatever container they choose. All they require is some metaphysical space, and in the five Celebrimbor leaves plenty. To counteract the negative side effects of being separated five fold as well as the possibility of too many spirits in one jar he adds gates and locks. 

The end result is a set of rings with safeguards to ensure no incarnates accidentally end up where they don’t belong and that no greater spirit is rent asunder or trapped against their will. 

Most of the theory work is actually owed to Mr. Frodo Baggins. He is not a craftsman or a great theologian. What he does have us hands on experience that none of Celebrimbor’s fuzzy memories of the Ring wearing Sauron can match. 

They don’t often speak of the One, or of its maker. The younger Mr. Baggins is a literary sort and most of their friendship is based on old elvish poetry and equally old stories. The kinship they share— the reason Frodo prefers Celebrimbor to the hundreds of other ancient, well versed elves— goes largely unspoken. 

But on especially long nights when the wine was good and Mr. Baggins didn’t have too many admirers dancing attendance on him, he might look up from a book of old love poems and say: 

“There was a desperation to the Ring in the mountain. It knew what it meant to be destroyed and it didn’t want to die. At the same time that it felt like it was melting my thoughts and reforming them into a new shape it was also rather sad. Pathetic and powerful all at once, can you imagine that?”

And, mouth dry, Celebrimbor would say, “Yes, I think I can.”

“It reminded me of someone else I knew, that's all.” Frodo had told him. “Someone very intense and yet rather fragmented, more instinct than thought. It’s not a happy way to live, clawing at everything around you.”

“You have a way with words, Master Hobbit.” 

Mr. Baggins had accepted the compliment graciously. “That’s really not true. There are no words for it. Nor the might or the madness seem real anymore. It’s like this world is a pale dream.”

There are many ways to describe Valinor. “Pale” wasn’t one of the traditional ones. The land glared. The colors were always sharp and the enchantment unfading, like a thousand hued sunset that had no end. 

At the same time, Celebrimbor understands what he meant. Some experiences have no equal in all of Arda.

 

Later that spring he casts the Five. With steady hands he guides the roll of molten gold into the molds. His hands are well trained but his mind is quaking. 

 

“The Five. We could still make them,” Annatar tells him just as dawn begins to break. The night has been bloody. 

Celebrimbor is too tired to speak, too tired to move. In contrast, Annatar seems filled with feverish energy. 

“It’s only right to fill out the set,” Annatar continues. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You don’t have to feel guilty about what I’d do with these ones. I was going to give them to you.”

“Five rings would be rather gaudy.” Celebrimbor croaks. Each of the previous Rings of Power was designed as its own focal point, stunning and unique. To layer them would detract attention from the individual masterpieces. 

Annatar reaches over and brushes some hair out of his eyes. “We’ll make them slimmer. Simpler.” The single gold band on his closest hand catches Celebrimbor’s eye, and then just as quickly pushes it away. The One doesn’t like examination, he’s discovered, though it does enjoy being admired. 

“Just silver, maybe some mithril. I’d say gold for anyone but you, Celebrimbor.” There’s an earnestness to his voice as he speaks about the future, even as Celebrimbor bleeds. It’s not quite delusion— his eyes say he knows the truth— but it’s more than optimism.

Celebrimbor will die here; maybe on this floor, certainly in this city (that was once his to nurture and protect). And here is Annatar, talking about ways to bind him up forever. 

He has no illusions about this stomach churning offer. If he were to accept a ring (one ring, much less five), keep it and wear it, and willingly be a part, then all will would taken from him. 

It is not the sort of offer you make to a friend, unless you’re Sauron, apparently. 

Taking great care so as not to disturb the raw muscle exposed along his forearm, Annatar lifts his hand and kisses the back of each knuckle. His lips come away dark red. “Yes, the Five for you, I think. It will be wonderful to work together again.” 

In the dawn light coming through the high window, Annatar shines gold. 

While he dwelt among the elves he wore pastels— mint green and silver, peach and cream. He accessorized with mithril from Moria and engaged in a long, silent feud with Galadriel over who could best wear all white in autumn. In a living city full of dyers and chemists, he looked ghostly, a creature apart. 

As lord of the East he seems to favor warmer, deeper colors. Celebrimbor has seen him in rich red and peacock blue; both of which soak up gore rather prettily. There have been yards of harvest silk and burgundy damask. Above all there has been gold, in gentle dye tones and the glimmer of jewelry, in sheen and shimmer. Now, illuminated by the red dawn, he glows. 

“It would be wonderful,” Celebrimbor admits, for the sake of an old friend. 

Annatar nods. “There. That’s progress. Slow and steady, as the humans say. Unlike them, we have all the time in the world.”

That is a lie. 

 

Polishing and finishing the rings, cutting the carvings, and generally smoothing over the messy frayed edges of powerful magic takes time. There’s no replacement for hours spent sanding away sprues. Celebrimbor finds himself impatient. 

It’s silly. There should be plenty of time here— except a spirit unhoused and weak is prone to fading, and it has been many years since the Dark Tower fell. 

A good scientist should have a plan before they experiment with the laws of the universe. Even the early Ring trials were well documented, properly written up, and subject to basic experimental standards. 

To write up a hypothesis would be to admit, even to himself, what he plans to do, so Celebrimbor forgoes it. 

He finishes work on the first of the Five as winter rolls in again. The others follow quickly after. More than the Nine, or the Seven, or even the Three, they are a set, designed and cast at the same time, meant to work together and falter apart. The quintuple redundancy is another way to prevent abuse and to keep his creation from ensnaring any poor future soul. 

Burnished to a mirror finish, gleaming in the lamp light, the Five do draw the eye. The sharp botanic carvings on the outer surface to little to detract from the dense luster that seems to create light of its own. The inside curve is smooth enough to reflect the forge in minute detail. 

Despite his best efforts they are reminiscent. The carved leaves look like scrawling tengwar if you let your vision blur and the golden glow overwhelms the little notches and idiosyncrasies meant to distract from the fundamental roundness that all Rings must share. 

The past is not a threat, Celebrimbor reminds himself. Many dark things have haunted the world in fairer garb without poisoning the goodness they imitate. 

He slips the rings on, one for each finger of his right hand. The world shifts a little in perspective, becoming sharper and brighter. In Middle-Earth wearing a ring made everything not of great power a little more grey— here in the home of the Ainur it seems to have the opposite effect. 

In spite of the sudden clarity around him, the world is otherwise unchanged. The tugging on his soul he felt between the first forging of the One and the moment he ripped Vilya from his hand is gone. Opposed to the Three, which blazed with power from the moment they were freed from their molds, the Five seem sedate. 

Like a child exploring the space where a missing tooth used to be, he probes the edges of the rings’ power, searching for what he does not fully know. He bounds the circle of magic in his thought and checks every potential weak point. 

Then, hesitantly, Celebrimbor looks for the ghost of Annatar still hidden in the code. It is not his power, exactly, but his presence, the way he thought and the way he moved. More than an imprint and not quite a memory, for power alone cannot remember. A signature, perhaps, buried deep in the core of the craftwork, waiting to be found. 

It’s there, still strong and warm. This is the thread used to take control of their greatest work. The invisible shackle, the secret bond, the last remnant of what was and will never be again. 

Taking hold of it in his mind, Celebrimbor searches farther. He casts himself out, wide as a net, and searches Middle-Earth below for a shadow of malice. 

He finds nothing. 

Dawn is beginning to redden the sky; he has been at his task for hours. Feeling drained, he stumbles into the courtyard and sits beneath the holly tree. 

Formenos is quiet. A little way off, however, he can hear the nearby town waking up. 

“I know thee,” he says to the empty air, to the rings, to the phantasm in his heart. Familiarity rolls so easily off the tongue. Perhaps thought would have been better but he is a creature of language. Desire must be expressed in concrete terms. “Thy pride and folly, thy hunger, thine regret. I know how afraid thou must have been. Powerlessness has never suited thee.”

There is no answer. 

“I made a gift for both of us, for the sake of my conscience and your survival. Perhaps the Five were waiting. For us, for now. And though I know how thou treasures dignity, sometimes it is better to survive than fade. The years of the world are long for our kind.”

The holly leaves rustle. The winter wind blows. 

“If you have ever loved me,” Celebrimbor says, reverting to the more formal form out of panic, for it is hard to admit what has always been unsaid, especially when Varda Elentári can probably hear every word. “Then consider this.” In his mind the words echo again, full of longing. Annatar's contribution to the Rings burns bright as a beacon in his mind. 

“I have made a place for you. I swear not to keep you bound or compelled. You do not deserve forgiveness so I will give you pity.” The stone walls of the courtyard bounce his words back at him, pity, pity, pity . 

“Annatar, precious one…” 

There will never be enough time, for elves or men or dwarves. Dust settles, people change. All of Arda moves forward. 

There is a melancholy to that. It makes waiting all the sadder. 

Celebrimbor tidies up the forge, closes the keep back up, and packs his bags to head home. The treasury door he leaves open, the empty hall could use an airing out. 

After a moment of thought he leaves the rings on as well. They’re a bit gaudy but that’s in fashion these days. 

Besides, he is old enough to wait a little more.