The Precious Baby Phenomenon Unpacked: A Treatise on Obstetric Care in The Returned by I.L. Finwiel and the Istar Institute by herenortherenearnorfar

Hungry

Read Hungry

The thing is, Celebrimbor has never been good with babies. Only his lack of actual experience prevents him from calling himself Bad With Babies. Celebrían, his dearest younger cousin in an admittedly sparse field, had the courtesy to be hip-high and self-sufficient by the time they met. He got to play the doting relation for a few years but he was secure in the knowledge that she was old enough to keep her hands to herself in the workshop and not pull off and swallow small bits of the toys he gifted her. Before that… well, people weren’t in the baby having mood for most of the preceding age.

He can recall great-grandfather mediated play dates with Idril that felt more like hostage negotiations, held at a neutral location between Formenos and Tirion with all the adults watching as if the two of them were going to bludgeon each other to death with their blocks. That doesn’t count, he was a baby then too. There was one time when he visited Himring and a harried human woman shoved her sleeping infant into his arms but she’d quickly realized that he wasn’t the elf she was looking for and took the baby back. He first met Eärendil as a child of just ten; since he aged as men did he was already half grown. Even Narvi’s young relatives, who Celebrimbor dutifully sent birthday presents to, were only usually introduced to Celebrimbor once they got their first aprons.

He doesn’t understand babies the same way he doesn’t understand ship-building or horticulture. It’s a lovely field of study, vital really, but not one that he’s ever needed to get through his days. Nor, if he thinks about it, one that he’d be especially interested in pursuing.

And yet there’s a baby sitting on his workbench (his husband’s workbench, technically) amidst scorch marks and shattered black glass, staring at them both and screaming.

“Sairon,” Celebrimbor begins, using one of his sharper acquired epessës, though not as sharp as the ones Galadriel likes to devise, “What did you do?”

It’s a small comfort that Alyahtar, once Sauron, is just as alarmed as he is. “I was using that scrap of prototype palantir—the one we found in the old mountain cottage— and the box of discarded rings from Elrond to see if I could scry out what happened to my power when it was destroyed—“

The baby starts wailing louder, kicking its legs and throwing out a chubby arm to shove tiny dishes of sorted seed gems cascading to the floor. Celebrimbor gives his husband a look of immense disappointment.

“Just out of curiosity!” Alyahtar protests. “We’ve been having such lovely chats about the nature of power lately that I thought; where did mine go? If we agree the initial energy of Eru’s creation cannot be destroyed within the bounds of creation then it either dissipated back into the all of materiality or was removed from the circles of the world.”

“And then?” It’s difficult to talk over the high pitched infant screams but it’s also important to establish the specifics of the problem before you proceed to solutions.

“And then I got up with you to answer the door and have that very long and riveting conversation with the mailman. Then we came back, and…” Alyahtar makes a small circle with his wrist, handily encompassing the situation. His arms are crossed defensively but he’s managed to arrange his posture so that he looks insouciant and unruffled.

There are times when, despite all that has grown between them, Celebrimbor feels as raw as he did when he first saw his killer remade. Right now he’s very tempted to throw up his hands, leave the room, and call Olórin, turning this whole mess over to authorities higher than him. It would be even more tempting if the baby wasn’t so clearly his own.

In spite of his sparse experience with infants, Celebrimbor can recognize his mother’s nose on the baby’s scrunched up, red face. Whenever it blinks her eyes open, assessing them before returning to crying, they’re grey as the sky after snow, even clearer than Celebrimbor’s own off-green. Its toss of hair is dark, its small curled fists angry, it even has Celebrimbor’s ear lobes, which weren’t something he was aware a baby could steal. There are flashes of Alyahtar too, in the canny watchfulness, the set of its mouth, the way its hair curls into one rogue ringlet above its left ear, the faint glow of power.

“I can’t believe you made us a baby.”

“I could try to unmake it, if you insist,” Alyahtar offers, with a twitch of a smile. His sense of humor can be a blessing and a curse.

“No!” Too many moral issues there, none of which Celebrimbor can think about with the screaming still grating on his ears. He shuts his eyes for a moment to clear his head and opens them almost immediately as the screaming suspiciously stops.

Alyahtar has scooped up the baby in a makeshift swaddle of his work smock and popped a finger in its mouth, which it’s now gnawing on happily as it pats at his face.

“You shouldn’t do that, you don’t know where your hands have been.” Celebrimbor reprimands, driven by some ancient memory of being parented.

Alyahtar bounces the baby, to positive effect. The idea that Sauron has more experience with babies than he does… it raises some pressing concerns which will need to be addressed at a later date. ‘Good with kids’ is a much less appealing trait when you remember that he spent most of the period in which children existed as a torturer and warlord. “I know exactly where my hands are at all times,” he says cooly. “Ah, her teeth are sharp. You’d have been hurt. We should make a note of that.”

“Are they not supposed to be sharp?” Celebrimbor helped Narvi make teething rings for her nephews to ‘cut their teeth on.’ That implies to him some degree of dentile danger.

“Not sharp enough to take a finger off.” Alyahtar braces himself against the bench and settles the child a little more. “I think she might be hungry.”

“Well, what do babies eat?” Up close he can better see the white flash of her teeth behind her lips, sharp as promised, and the slightly lucent quality to her huge watchful eyes.

“Milk, but with these teeth I wouldn’t trust her with a rubber bottle.” Celebrimbor’s husband shrugs. “Orc children can eat raw meat by this age.”

“No raw meat.” She reminds him too much of a little frog or a squid, now that she’s relaxed into Alyahtar’s arms and let her limbs go boneless, her focus mostly on rending his flesh into something edible. A carnivore, perhaps, but a vulnerable one, squishy and soft.

“Hmm. We could ask her?”

“Newborns don’t talk, Sairon.” If this one does he’s prepared to blame it on the other side of the family.

“She’s not a newborn.” Again, Sauron’s confidence is off putting. “She’s half the weight and a third the length of a similarly developed elven child but look at her core body strength. She can sit up on her own, perhaps even stand. And she’s coordinated, and aware too, she was watching us.”

“Yes, she gets that from you,” Celebrimbor quips, even as he casts a more measured eye over the baby. She does have a developed chunkiness that puts him more in mind of a one week old kitten than a one day old one. And the hand that she’s wrapped around Alyahtar’s knuckles, anchoring his hand at her ravenous mouth, is dexterous. She appraises him right back, eyes catching on the pins in his hair, the polishing grease smeared across his chin. “Very well. We’ll ask.”

It takes some struggle to extract Alyahtar’s hand from her mouth and prop her back on the table. They move with coaxing slowness, making hushing and shushing noises, and bribing her with a distracting set of jeweler’s tongs.

“Little one,” Celebrimbor stumbles at the first words. How do you address a nameless infant of mystical origins? They can’t understand complicated words, can they? “Food? What do you want to eat?” He mimes spooning food to his mouth and is met by miserable misunderstanding. To be safe, he repeats the question in two other elvish dialects, and the Westron of later years. Kneeling next to him, Alyahtar in pressing images of eating into the doughy surface of the baby’s mind, not quite breaking the surface yet, just passing information.

He’s about to start asking in Valarin (though he hasn’t got the hang of all the trills) when the baby opens her mouth wide, revealing those pointy teeth. The both stop, waiting, and she freezes too, alarmed by the attention fixed on her.

“F-f-“

Ah, she’ll say food, Celebrimbor thinks, disappointed. It is reassuring that their baby is a quick learner, at the very least.

“Fish!” their baby shouts, awash in tears once more. “Fish! Want fish!” Her uncooked bread soul is pushing back at them now, conveying a flash of silver wriggling in the hands, flesh raw and warm in the belly.

Alarming as the preference is, her communication is hazy, her revealed mind even more confused than theirs. The insight actually puts Celebrimbor at ease (he will ask later why his husband is so troubled).

Since Alyahtar is now staring at the walls in distress, Celebrimbor must step forward. He has no idea how to talk to a baby, much less hold one, so he places her inside a study basket for easy conveyance and addresses her like a confidante on the eve of war.

“Maitamië, it saddens me to say,” Hungry crumb, for she’s started gnawing on his tongs. “I do not think we have fresh fish in the pantry but I may be able to acquire you some liver sausage, or perhaps some aged duck eggs.”

Holding the basket by the handles he starts towards the door, pausing halfway to call back to his husband. “Melamando, aren’t you coming?”

At the sound of his voice Alyahtar looks at him, then looks around frantically for the baby. “In the basket,” Celebrimbor assures him.

For his trouble he receives only teasing. “Your parenting is second to none.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Celebrimbor reminds him, reminds himself. “It just has to be enough.” As they walk he glances down at his cargo. She’s trying to stand, clinging to the wicker sides of the hamper and swaying. Her eyes, shiny and smooth and big as silmarils, familiar in a way he can’t place, are fixed on his oversized emerald brooch. She seems to have a fondness for jewelry.

He’s never yearned for children. Truth be told this whole situation has him on edge. But no one gets everything they want in life, people disappoint you, fiancés torture you to death. In this, of all situations, he thinks he could be enough.

 

 

 

 

In the kitchen, sated and less suspicious, she shows off her third word. “Precious,” she says, tugging at Alyahtar’s earring. “Mprecious.”

Alyahtar still does not quite have the hang of guilt for anything short of murder. Dignified embarrassment prevails here, as it often does.

Standing in the kitchen of his home, past the end of his world Celebrimbor reaches for his mug of tea. “Fine. Good. We’re keeping her but we’re calling backup.”

Bitsy

Inspired by some tags undercat left on a little talkback post (#!#this is hilarious#the very best#your tags!#really the second best thing about post-canon silvergifting reconciliation is that sauron and galadriel can interact again#i was pondering... hobbits might be useful#to acquaint baby gollum with gollum's proto-hobbit cultural heritage#second breakfast can be precious too#otoh there's the whole bagginses issue#(atya might have a baggins issue too so maybe celebrimbor can just do finrod-like anthropological studies)). Had to do a second chapter, for second breakfast.

Read Bitsy

Age is creeping over Gimli Treasurefinder, reshaping him as water reshapes a cliff. With his knees starting to ache he can’t meet with Celebrimbor as often as they once did, in the early days of their friendship. Celebrimbor knows he isn’t helping either, he should by rights come to Gimli and Legolas’s home but raising a child puts a crimp into a person’s schedule.

In the end it’s Elrond who forces both their hands by throwing a small party for Maitamië’s birth-begetting-appearing-day (Alyahtar refers to it as their collective comeuppance; he needs to stop being glib now that she’s old enough to understand three syllable words). Birthday parties are not a terribly elven practice, a begetting day might merit a celebration among family but not an evening long, gift giving extravaganza. All the practices are cribbed directly from the hobbits, a copy of their traditions cobbled together from Olórin’s guidance and memories of Bilbo Baggin’s excessive 150th birthday blowout bash.

There will be a designated party tree— Celeborn (Celeborn the elf always puts up with comparisons to his arborous equivalent good naturedly). There will be food, a spread of delicacies from four ages and seven lands but especially the Shire. They’re even promised fireworks, Olórin’s treat. The only thing the birthday girl— and given her age this includes her parents by default— is asked to provide are the presents, and the task of making a few hundred clever little mathoms keeps Alyahtar from growing restless in the weeks leading up to the event. Maitamië even helps, in distractible spurts, bouncing between the library, the workshop, and her aquariums. They are still working on the idea of giving away birthday presents instead of keeping them, she can have a greedy streak, but it’s been two months since a biting event so her refusal won’t hurt anyone

On the boat to Tol Eressea Maitamië kicks her feet in the water and hums a song neither of them recognize. At her happiest she looks like a sleek seal child, fine dark hair plastered to the back of her neck and over the tops of her toes, lanky legs and still chubby hands, huge eyes and flashing teeth.

“It’s my birthday, so I get my precious,” she tells them as they near their destination, speaking with all the authority of a just-turned six year old.

“We’ve discussed the birthday gift policy, hecilnya, and while I agree it’s a bit silly we do have to obey cultural strictures to reap cultural rewards,” Alyahtar explains.

“No, I have my precious—“

They can go on for some time like this. At times listening to his husband and daughter argue feels like listening to Sauron argue with himself. Celebrimbor doesn’t exactly ignore them, he’s just… developed a talent for monitoring their discussions without paying attention to the details. As the debate on property rights continues unimpeded he scans the shore for familiar faces.

There’s Galadriel waiting for them, Elrond must have been too busy finalizing party preparations to greet them in person. Next to her are her grandsons, Elladan and Elrohir, and caught between them, valiantly resisting efforts to put him in a headlock, is Legolas. Where Legolas is… yes, Gimli is just visible above the sea wall, his white hair shining in the sun.

Not just white hair, Celebrimbor notes with sadness. He’s balding where he wasn’t just three years ago, though, Smith keep his promises, his beard is still full and healthy.

“Auntie Galadriel!” Maitamië shrieks, tearing away from her father, flinging herself across the boat, and then, before either of them can stop her, diving into the water.

Queen of stars help them. At least she can swim; she barely needed any teaching. The oarsmen on the boat slow their pace to ensure she won’t be caught up in the churning water and by the time they dock she’s already pulling herself ashore. Hair dripping into her face and silk dress waterlogged to dull darkness, she resembles a salamander emerging from a pond, an odd amphibian surging out of the sea.

“Sinyerna,” Galadriel says formally, using the term for a one who left the halls in child garb, though Celebrimbor and Alyahtar’s ward is not in quite the same situation. She kneels and lets the child drip all over her pristine white dress with barely a grimace. “Have you changed your name?”

Maitamië shakes her head. She does go through spells of different appellations—old and new. She’s been Smië and Gollon and Pirindë, but usually she returns to the hasty nickname Celebrimbor gave her when she was first thrust upon them. At the end of the day, her tendency towards habit seems to overwhelm her half-processed memories. It’s easier for her to leave her name and gender in the configuration circumstances dictates. For now she’s limiting her explorations of identity to comfortable weekends at home.

“Still hungry?” Elladan, Celebrían’s son teases as Celebrimbor and Alyahtar clamber out of the boat.

“I am always hungry,” Maitamië grumbles, peeking out from underneath Galadriel’s arm. “Always, always, even since the dark days. It’s why I need second breakfasts! I am still growing.”

Legolas takes advantage of the distraction to extricate himself from Elrohir’s affectionate embrace. “Lord Elrond prepared a great deal of food according to Master Gamgee’s own recipes. I don’t know about second breakfast but we’ll be having third supper if he gets his way. Does that satisfy, tadpole?”

There are, by Celebrimbor’s count, five grown ups around his daughter now. The path back to the ocean is blocked. He takes a few steps back towards Gimli Elffriend, who he hasn’t seen in years. The dwarf’s smile hasn’t been changed at all by age. “Well met, stranger,” he says.

“Well met yourself,” Celebrimbor whispers back jovially.

A few paces away Maitamië has been emboldened by the wealth of adults paying attention to her. “I’m never satisfied. Never ever. They stole the happy part of me out and they won’t give it back.” She pauses, thoughtful. “But it is my birthday. That’s nice.”

Gimli wheezes, the sort of noise that it’s never encouraging to hear from an elderly friend. As Celebrimbor leans over him in concern, he hears, “More like Frodo by the day, Gandalf didn’t lie.”

Frodo. There are many ghosts haunting this experiment in child rearing. Frodo Baggins is the most spectrally active of the bunch. Though the hobbits have not dwelt in Valinor in two hundred years, they left deep marks on the land and people.

At times Maitamië can be generically hobbitish; she eats like a furnace and laughs like a bell, she’s fiendishly good at disappearing and reappearing where she’s least expected, she thinks of shoes as an invention for other people. Other habits are entirely Frodo. There is the quiet way she listens and the anxious way she chews her cuticles. The solitary spirit, the tendency to walk alone at night when she can’t sleep. Even the way she talks, at her most dismal, is a cross between Frodo’s dolefulness and the nostalgia of Tree-sick elves.

(“I am not allowed to want things, I have been forbidden, even though it is my birthday,” she says in response to a question about what she’s most excited for. The martyrs of Gondolin have nothing on her long-suffering mien.)

The Ringbearer was much in demand yet he still made time to speak with Celebrimbor. They spoke at first of little things, the Doors of Moria, word games, a hobbit invention called crossword puzzles. Later they talked of grief and guilt, the feeling of not having done enough and yet having done too much to ever bear within a lifetime. When Frodo was very old and close to leavetaking, Celebrimbor caught Sauron in a jam jar, beginning the long process that ended in an unexpected wedding. After that they had a conversation about second chances and Frodo said to him, “I am not sorry that Sauron should get an opportunity to remake himself, but I do feel that others are more deserving. Gandalf would say that we never deserve, we simply receive— still, when I think of poor Gollum…”

Sometimes it seems those words echo in his ears every time he looks at his child. He wonders if Gimli ever had a similar conversation with his friend, if there is some old debate on fate or mercy running through his head.

“She comes by it honestly,” Celebrimbor says, hedging around the common factor uniting Frodo Baggins and the poor soul that makes up most of the amalgam he’s raising. Gimli really doesn’t need any more excuses to hate Alyahtar. It’s difficult enough keeping everyone civil without reminders of all the terrible crimes! And though Celebrimbor’s husband can and should defend himself, Maitamië shouldn’t have a(nother) birthday ruined by past atrocities.

“That she does,” Gimli admits, “Your rings warped people like nothing else I’ve seen.”

Nothing like dwarves for a bit of frankness, Celebrimbor winces.

“Ah, don’t fret,” Gimli advises when he sees Celebrimbor’s dismay. “Nothing time and the Maker can’t fix.”

Fix is a strong word. Fix implies that Sméagol of the river people has been brought back, fresh and right and unharmed. Instead there is a child, who is a little Sauron and a little Celebrimbor, a bit of the other elven collaborators on the rings mixed in, some general malign influence, possibly some extra scraps of houseless spirits in there (they’ve caught her humming songs older than Mordor itself), but mostly Gollum. Gollum confused, Gollum furious, Gollum trapped in a maelstrom of power and looking for an out. Making a happy, healthy child out of that means making it not what it once was.

None of them are what they once were. You can only try to follow the curves of the old as you carve something new.

Their group is starting to move, Galadriel wringing out her dress, Elladan and Elrohir swinging Maitamië between them as they stride towards Elrond’s house. Celebrimbor nudges Gimli, “Do you need help?”

“I’m not that old!” Gimli complains as Legolas arrives.

“Of course not,” Legolas remarks dryly as he lends his hand. “By some counts you’re younger than the lady of the hour.” Despite his protestations of vitality, the handholding does seem to help him— between the support and his cane he moves slowly but surely after the rapidly disappearing twins.

Perhaps he will not leave. Valinor would be poorer without him, and in truth Celebrimbor doesn’t know what he would do without people who remember hobbits, who remember Frodo, as something more than curiosities.

Rather than contemplate death in the Undying Lands, he turns to Alyahtar. “Shall we go get our daughter?“

When they catch up to Elladan and Elrohir, Maitamië pulls away from them and sprints to catch both of their hands. With strange solemnity she presses the backs of their palms to her cheeks. “There,” she says, “my precious. For my birthday.”