Of Nerdanel by Rocky41_7

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Of Nerdanel

For the Finwean Ladies' Week event on tumblr!

This is sort of a companion piece to First Ruins of the Noldor, but you don't need to have read that one for this.

I've just always been interested in what happened with the Elves who stayed behind in Valinor, and I imagine it was particularly rough for Nerdanel. This takes place before Findis and Indis leave Tirion to live with the Vanyar.

I also talked a bit here about my interpretation of Nerdanel's interpersonal relationships within Finwe's family if anyone was curious.

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               There is the clink of their forks against the plates. There is the sound of a goblet being replaced on the table. There is the smell of buttered squash.

               There is Findis’ eyes on her, a stare that Nerdanel will not meet.

               There is clay dust under Nerdanel’s fingernails, and silence where the other two had been speaking, before she entered. There are half a dozen empty chairs around them.

               There is a long walk back to Nerdanel’s quarters—now just hers, just Nerdanel’s—and all the empty space she has to fill.

               There are Indis’ flickering, furtive looks, which she cannot decide if she wants Nerdanel to notice or not. Nerdanel will not acknowledge them.

               When dinner is over and the walk is done, there is silence. Nerdanel sits on the floor, in the middle of the hallway, because there is no one to trip over her, and no one whose path she will block.

               Later, she dozes on the carpet, her head pillowed on a wine stain.

***

               Nerdanel sits in the garden, because she supposes the fresh air is good for her. Plants do not interest her much; she and Fëanáro always preferred the things of their own creation, and so her eyes seek out the statuary—her own additions to the landscape—and she picks at the grass.

               The sky is still dark.

               Across the neat stone pathways and whimsically-trimmed hedges and bright flowers, she can see Anairë on her balcony. It is possible Anairë can see her from there, but also possible she does not. She is draped in blue, her favorite color, and her thick, tight curls are pulled back into a pouf on the back of her head, ringed in gold. Beside her is Eärwen, still wan and listless, looking about with doe eyes as though still begging for answers about Alqualondë. Nerdanel is too far off to hear any of their conversation, but she sees the touch of Anairë’s hand on Eärwen’s bare shoulder, and in her mind’s ear, she can hear the way Anairë says sister.

               When they go back inside, Nerdanel does too—this is enough air for one day.

***

               The studio is once again in its usual state of order—which is to say not neat, but functional. The floor is clear. In the side room, Nerdanel has thrown sheets over a number of pieces that escaped her grief, and has not determined yet if she means to put them with the others, with the broken chunks it took her days to sweep out of the studio, or if they will stay in the storage room, a deafeningly silent testimony to dreams that have passed.

               Nerdanel sits in front of the same hunk of marble that has stood sentinel in the center of the room for the last three weeks. She stares, and as always, tries to visualize what it will look like when finished—what she wants from it.

               Once, the stone could give her what she wanted. She ran her hands over it and shaped it in her images; she whispered and it leaped to obey; it was a reflection of her, of her joy, her anger, her awe. Perhaps that’s it, then—it is nothing, because it reflects her, and she is nothing. She is hollow, devoid of being, the sheath from which a blade is drawn.

               She touches the marble, lays her cheek against it, as if to say it is no fault of the stone’s that she can draw nothing from it. Aulë has given her a perfect material.

               The fault is only hers.

***

               “I’m going to the market.” Indis looks up from her book, and Nerdanel stands in the doorway, the basket hanging limply from her arm. “What can I get for you?”

               Indis just looks, and there is an empty seat by the hearth where once Irimë lounged, passing quiet time with her mother; an empty rug where once Nolofinwë had lain on his belly with wooden building blocks, and then later, Findekáno.

               “Nothing, thank you.” Indis has not been to the market in days.

               “We need many things,” Nerdanel says. “Tell me, and I will get them for you.”

               “I will go later myself,” Indis replies.

               Nerdanel stands in the doorway with an empty basket, and in some little chamber of her inner heart, in the part of her that is not nothing, in the part of her that is Nerdanel, she has a thousand biting replies, and she can picture Fëanáro’s wicked smirk at each of them, but Nerdanel is not that anymore.

               In silence, she takes her leave.

***

               Findis is just another ghost in the house, her mournful moaning echoing around the halls like the groan of ice underfoot, until one marvels the house does not collapse around them all. But the ghosts of Nerdanel’s children spend more time around her. She does her best to keep them at bay, but they all have Fëanáro’s stubbornness. Fëanáro himself stays away, perhaps because Nerdanel does not wish to see him, or possibly because she cannot picture exactly when she lost him. Was there a day? A day when he was no longer her Fëanáro, but a stranger consumed, with his eyes dug out by the burning fingers of avarice and pride, blindly ordering his troops into ambush?

               Perhaps it was the day he had first looked on her with contempt, as though she were too foolish and limited in scope to understand him. (Nerdanel, who knew his mind, who knew his soul, who was the other half of his beating heart.)

               Perhaps it was the day he had struck Atarinkë for breaking the crucible which Fëanáro needed then for his work. (Atarinkë, who shadowed his father’s footsteps like a duckling and modeled everything he did off his father’s example—even the way he raised his own child, poor Tyelpë.)

               Perhaps it had begun, simply, with the Silmarils. (The Silmarils will always be the image of evil in Nerdanel’s mind, for it was not Morgoth that cost her her family, but the Silmarils.)

               Was there a time she could have stopped him? Was there a moment, a turning point, a threshold crossed at which he became too far gone to save (and if there was, how had she missed it)?

               Ghosts, Nerdanel is learning, are just another kind of poison.

***

               There is the dinner happening without her knowledge. Nerdanel stumbles on it going to fetch a bit of cinnamon for her tea from Indis’ kitchen, because she herself is out, and there are Findis and Indis at the table, with a simple spread laid before them.

               “Oh,” says Nerdanel. “I had not realized it was time to eat.” The Elves are looking at her. She is dressed for work, although she has worked not at all thus far, and her hair hangs limply from a half-fallen bun.

               “I wished not to disturb you,” Indis says.

               “You seem busy,” Findis adds, looking at Nerdanel with a narrow gaze (Nerdanel is too tired to be goaded into a fight, though once she considered bickering with Findis an excellent outlet for her frustrations.)

               “No,” Nerdanel says, and she realizes then it was the wrong thing to say.

               “Well, we wouldn’t wish to disturb you anyway,” Indis says. “Did you need something, dear?”

               There was something that Nerdanel had come over for, something she had meant to borrow from her family, from the family that Fëanáro had rejected, from the family which Nerdanel realized now she was entirely untethered from, but she watched the floor crack apart, watched the canyon yawn open between them, and could not remember for what she had come.

               “No. Forgive my intrusion.” Back in her apartments, she realizes there is nothing for dinner, and so she has an apple she had meant to save for breakfast, and a glass of milk, and tries to take stock of what she needs for the pantry, but all she can think of are foods and treats for children who will be by no more (things that never seemed to stick in her mind before, when it was important, but which she could not now forget if she tried).

               Cinnamon, she thinks. That’s one thing.

***

               When Nerdanel comes in the front door, Eärwen goes out the back. She stands on Anairë’s front step, and wonders if she ought to knock, and thinks perhaps it is presumptuous, and maybe she doesn’t wish to speak to Anairë anyway, but before she can turn away, Anairë is opening the door.

               “Nerdanel,” she says, and Nerdanel looks over her shoulder to see to whom Anairë might be speaking.

               “Anairë.” The two Elves stare. Anairë is wearing mismatched earrings.

               “Do you want to come in?” Perhaps it was several minutes that had passed, before Anairë makes the offer, and Nerdanel should say no, because if Anairë had wanted her to come in, she would not have waited so long to say it. “Come in.” Before Nerdanel can walk away, Anairë steps aside to permit Nerdanel to enter, and she hears the back door open and shut.

               In the kitchen, there are two cups of tea on the table.

               “Indis says you’ve withdrawn from the arts council,” Anairë says, pouring Nerdanel a cup of tea without asking if she wanted one.

               “I have nothing to offer them,” Nerdanel says, unwilling to take a seat in front of the discarded tea. Anairë clears it away, and then Nerdanel sits. “I never liked it.”

               “I don’t think that’s true,” Anairë says, stirring a spoonful of sugar into the tea. Nerdanel says nothing, and Anairë sets the tea in front of her, and resumes the seat in front of her own cooling cup. She takes one of the mismatched earrings out and tucks it away on her person.

               Anairë could sit in silence for days at a time, and once Nerdanel had been driven mad by these long lapses in conversation, and she and Fëanáro had exclaimed over this frustration, and wondered how Nolofinwë ever came to know and love an Elf who spoke so little, but now that Nerdanel had nothing to say, it is a relief not to have to continue trying to form responses.

               An hour passes before Nerdanel speaks again, and there is no sound of Arakáno’s footsteps overhead, or Irissë practicing her shot in the yard, or Findaráto’s singing, or Findekáno running in and out the door with Maitimo to break the quiet.

               “Eärwen does not wish to see me.” She did not mean to sound like a broken child, but Anairë looks at her with pity, and Nerdanel wishes she could be angry. What a relief it would be, to be angry!

               “Eärwen is in pain,” Anairë says. “She is not much pleased to see me either, truth be told. They were her family, Nerdanel.”

               “I slew them not,” Nerdanel says with defiance, raising her chin to meet Anairë’s eyes, the dark blue of waters beyond the reach of the Elves. Still Anairë looks at her like a pitiable infant.

               (She should have stopped him. She should have spilled blood to spare her people. A loving sacrifice; isn’t that what princesses do?)

               “No, you didn’t,” Anairë says at last, and swirls the dregs of her cold tea in its cup.

               “Still, she will not speak to me.”

               “No,” Anairë says. “She will not.”

***

               There is the patter of rain on the stones, against the windows, on the leaves of the trees. There are the clouds, graying the light, softening the edges of everything. There are Indis and Findis before the hearth, and the fire that brings no warmth, and the silence that presses on the room like a weight, like a damnable anvil.

               There is Nerdanel, sitting on the loveseat, her shoulders hunched, her hands clenched against the silence like a scolding, with no idea why her lower lip is trembling, why her throat is aching, why she would sink down through the floor if she only could.

               The room is so loud she can’t hear herself think, and no one makes a sound, and the burning in Nerdanel’s eyes grows more acute by the moment.

               There are Findis’ eyes on her, as though Nerdanel might lean forward and cough up the blood of Findis’ brother and sister, now lost to Middle-earth, and the remains of Arafinwë, nearly broken to splinters by Alqualondë. As though Nerdanel might raise her head and show her bloody teeth and lick her lips and breathe over Findis’ face the breath of her devoured family.

               Nerdanel shivers and her toes curl in her slippers but it is her place too, it is her home too, even if Fëanáro no longer sits at her side and Macalaurë no longer at her feet and Ambarussa no longer in her lap.

               It is her home too!

               But her jaw is quivering and her nails are digging into her thighs and her eyes burn as if with detritus from the fire and at last she is worn down and she flees the room, and no one follows but the ghosts.

               There is the rain striking the windows, and Nerdanel’s wobbling breaths, and she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand when Arafinwë came back with his gory and blasphemous tales that they had slain her too; she didn’t see it then, not then but now, now she feels the blade in her breast and she understands that Fëanáro has killed her too.

***

               Arafinwë does not look at her, and she does not look at him. Arafinwë is easier to blame for the Kinslaying, because he is here, but Nerdanel cannot bring herself to do it. The carnage at Alqualondë was a making of Fëanáro’s (How well Nerdanel could always recognize the work of her husband’s hands!), and if Nerdanel had once tried to make accusations of Arafinwë, she could not sustain them.

               She knows Fëanáro too well for that.

               (She knew his heart best, and she should have seen what he was becoming. Perhaps she was afraid to see, to look, and Nerdanel had no mercy for cowardice.)

               It comes to her that it is not Findis who is the ghost (It is not Findis who has been destroyed). She walks down the street in silence; she does her shopping in silence; she tends her house in silence. They hate Fëanáro for what he did, but Fëanáro is not there to hate. Indis was never beloved of Fëanáro and counseled against his oath from the start. Arafinwë is king, and it is difficult to hate one’s own king. But Nerdanel is nothing, and it is easy to dump hate into nothing; to make her a receptacle for the burdens that should be Fëanáro’s.

               She stands in the street and watches them pass around her and sees that Fëanáro has slain her too, and she is a phantom in her own city, and she is watching herself be erased from the Noldor. She who once stood ardently and resolutely in his defense, now cast out alongside him.

               Nerdanel would have fought. Nerdanel had a fëa as bright as Arien’s vessel; Nerdanel bore seven children without losing herself; Nerdanel had a will to bend Fëanáro into submission, and to convince the rest of his greatness (But not, she thought, when it truly counted).

               But this Elf is not Nerdanel.

               This Elf is nothing.

               This Elf is no one.

               This Elf is weary, and wishes no more to fight.

***

               “Where are you going?” Anairë asks as Nerdanel places another box into the back of the wagon.

               “A new place,” Nerdanel says, grunting quietly as she pushes the box as far back as she can. Anairë’s eyes flicker over the scene, and in her lingering, dolorous way, she reaches out to Nerdanel.

               “Has Indis sent you away?” she asks softly.

               “My time here is done,” Nerdanel replies, and she picks up another box from the entry way. It is full of old things of Carnistir’s, as she had given each of them their own box when she packed up the house. Each one she labeled with a chalk mark, and kissed as she placed them in the wagon.

               “But where?” Anairë asks.

               “I have a place,” Nerdanel replies. When all the boxes are loaded, she climbs into the wagon and takes up the reins.

               Anairë comes to stand beside it.

               “I wish you well,” she says. “You must come and visit sometime. Soon.”

               “Thank you,” Nerdanel says. “I believe you are the only one.” The sun glimmers off Anairë’s night-dark skin, and off the sapphire of her headpiece, which rests against her forehead. Anairë, among the fairest of the Noldor; Anairë, shrewd and thoughtful and measured; Anairë, abandoned by Nolofinwë and her children, at the command of Nerdanel’s husband. What a fool he was to leave you, Nerdanel thinks to herself. “Take care, Anairë. You were a good sister to me.”

               Anairë frowns, but if she wishes to say this sounds too much like a forever goodbye, she does not have a chance, for Nerdanel is urging the horses onwards, cutting Anairë loose from her, cutting them all lose, so that she can sink, and sink, and sink, and do not as Fëanáro did, and take no one with her.

***

               It takes several days to establish her things in the new house, and she is glad she took not everything, for the new house is much smaller than the old, and it would be overcrowded with all their things in it. Some of them are not for display—many of them. The boxes of her children’s things go into various closets and cabinets, along with a box of Telperinquar’s old baby things which she had found lying about quiet places in the house, left behind by Atarinkë or his bride or Telperinquar himself.

               When it is all done, arranged about her like a shrine, Nerdanel sits at the head of the dining table, and is queen of her small court, presiding over a council of apparitions and long-lost things.

               There is room at the table for more, but there is none but her, but the Elf who carries the ashes of Nerdanel, and unobserved, she may now allow the silence to break her to pieces without shame. There is no one for whom to hold herself together; there is no one to spite with her resilience; there is no one for whom to put on a show. It is just her, and the throbbing in her chest where Fëanáro has broken off seven of her ribs and is using them to stab at a Vala who thinks little more of him than a chittering squirrel.

               When she lays her head on the table, the waves wash over her, and she can almost feel Ulmo’s hand combing through her hair, the way she once had for her own weeping children, murmuring empty words of comfort and reassurance, standing between them and the pain of the world.

               Alone in her empty court is the only place Nerdanel may mourn Fëanáro; in the face of the pain he has caused, it is the only place. Who else would weep with her for Fëanáro the Kinslayer? Fëanáro the thief of their spouses and siblings and children? Fëanáro, the prince who abandoned them at the Darkening? That is all he is now: she is nothing, and he is a kinslayer, and nothing else either of them have done will ever matter again. If assigning to her her the hate and blame they would hurl at Fëanáro if they could will begin to heal that pain, who is Nerdanel to fight them?

               She is no one.

               (She could not stop him. She should have stopped him.)

               It was not fear, though, that had stayed her. Worse, more insidious, more dangerous—it was hope. That some part of Fëanáro—vivacious, bold, brilliant Fëanáro—remained, and that the good in him would outshine the bad.

               Nerdanel has seen always the best in him, but Fëanáro loves an argument and hates to lose—and so he has proven her wrong. He has proven her wrong and left her with no rebuttal, with no room to parry or repost, with no shield to block his final blow.

               She feels the weight of the ocean against her chest, against her back, and she tastes the salt of it on her lips, and the blackness of it closes over her eyes, her ears, her mouth, and she thinks that to be rocked to sleep by the Vala of the sea would not be so terrible a way to find rest. Is there a difference between the taste of seawater and the taste of blood? She tastes the salt of the depths on her lips, but when she comes to again, it is only her tears.

               The silence of the house feels like a scream.

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Chapter End Notes

I've talked in the past about Feanor/Nerdanel but I believe they had a super tight relationship for a long time. Nerdanel was perhaps the only person who really got Feanor, and she felt that with him, she could be completely herself, with no shame and nothing hidden. So when they started to have problems, it was very upsetting. And I can't help but feel that what happens in the end would feel so much like losing Feanor to his very worst instincts. This Elf who was so brilliant and could be so eloquent and gave so much to the Noldor, consumed by the absolute worst of what he could be. For someone who loved him, that would hurt a lot. Seeing someone you love taken down by their own demons is painful.

Thanks for reading! <3