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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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.

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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.”