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

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Hungry

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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.”