The Pet from Next Door by Rocky41_7

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The Pet from Next Door

The languid, late summer peace drowsing over the estate of the high king of the Noldor was broken with the ruckus in the workshop of Lady Nerdanel, which began with discordant crashing, followed by incoherent bellowing and a frantic flurry of noise. There was the distinguishable sound of something smashing, and then:

            “Feanáro! Feanáro!”

            The crown prince, to be found as usual in the sweltering depths of his forge, did not hear the distressed cries of his lady wife. However, young Caranthir, passing through the hall, did, and promptly abandoned his present task to run down to his father’s forge.

            “Atar! Atar, Ammë needs help,” he declared over the clanging of his father’s hammer. Fëanor glanced between the child and the twisted strip of metal he was working over.

            “Well, her assistance will need to come once I’ve finished this,” he said.

            “It sounded important,” Caranthir reported. Fëanor looked between the metal on the bench and the door while Caranthir shifted from foot to foot. Then, cursing a blue streak under his breath, Fëanor tore himself away from his project and shot off deeper into the house without troubling to remove his gloves or his apron.

            “Nerdanel! Nerdanel, what is it?” It was a safe assumption she was in her studio, and his guess was confirmed by the squawking from inside. When he threw open the door he was promptly assailed by something beating about his head and shoulders, blinding him from the rest of the room and accompanied by shouting from his wife. “Nerdanel!”

            “She’s done it again!” Nerdanel was snarling. “This time she shall have it from me! She’s done it again!” It was then that Fëanor registered, as he was kicked in the face and his attacker finally moved away from him, the white feathers littering the floor and the situation jerked into full focus.

            His sister-in-law.

            Nerdanel was hollering again as the swan that had been doing its best to concuss Fëanor landed on one of her sculptures, which was promptly stained with swan shit.

            “Help me catch them! Get that tarp!” The swans must have come through the open window again, Fëanor thought. “Quickly! Before they break something else!” While Fëanor registered the home invaders’ most likely route, one of them made a dash for the door, still slightly ajar, and Fëanor flailed backwards as it charged between his feet, knocking the door closed and jostling the swan enough that it decided he was worth biting in the leg.

            Then distracted by exclaiming in pain, Fëanor missed the flurry of motion that resulted in more screaming and gesticulating from Nerdanel.

            “It’s on my workbench! Feanáro!”

            “Stop yelling!” he yelled. “Stop moving!”

            “Help me get them out of here!”

            “You’re alarming them!” A swan swooped overhead, coming within a noodle’s breadth of kicking Fëanor in the head (again) on its way, and Nerdanel hurled a chunk of clay at it, possibly in the hopes of scaring it away from joining its fellow on her workbench, causing it to make a truly wretched sound although it wasn’t hit in the slightest. “Nerdanel!”

            For a moment they paused and the swans continued to panic around them. Gradually, though, they seemed to grow slightly calmer.

            “Come here,” Fëanor breathed. “Slowly.” Keeping quiet, Nerdanel shuffled across the studio over to where her husband was observing the chaos. For another few moments, they watched the swans until one knocked over another of Nerdanel’s smaller works, and then Fëanor could tell it took every single part of her not to start shouting again.

            “Help me with this tarp,” she said, grabbing two corners of it off the floor. “Help me remove them before they break something else! But touch or frighten them not if they’re on a sculpture!”

            Between the two of them, they managed to trap one bird, but it set the rest to panicking and honking again, and Nerdanel swearing as they soiled the studio and knocked her things about.

            “The door, the door!” she cried, and fumbled to open it without letting go of her corners of the tarp, while the ensnared swan thrashed about, beating its wings and screeching. She managed to throw it open to be confronted by a very concerned Maedhros, to whom she exclaimed, “Maitimo, stand aside!” as though he had specifically been planning to hinder her effort to remove the swans. “And shut the door behind your father!”

            A swan honked threateningly from inside and Maedhros hastily shut it, but before he could ask any questions, his parents had hurried off down the hall with the wildly swinging tarp.

            With a great heave, they flung the bird out into the yard, where to Nerdanel’s relief, it rushed away from the house.

            “Three more to go,” she said.

            “Fuck me,” said Fëanor.

            Between the two of them, they managed to clear Nerdanel’s studio of the invasive swans, with a great deal of lamenting on her behalf about the damage they had caused. The last they tossed out over the back steps to the enormous chagrin of Maglor, who had been approaching from the yard. Falling to the steps as the swan sailed overhead, he managed only to wail “Why?” in a great consternation that his family could not be trusted not to trouble him for twenty-four straight hours.

            “I’m going to have a talk with Eärwen,” said Nerdanel, dusting herself off.

            “I’m going to have a talk with Eärwen,” Fëanor said, which was possibly a challenge, or an agreement; it was sometimes hard to tell with him. Leaving Maglor to crawl up the steps, they set off across the compound so that Nerdanel could bang on the door and Fëanor could shout at the house.

            “Arafinwë! Arafinwë! Show yourself!”

            “This conversation is about Eärwen’s pets,” Nerdanel reminded him.

            “Arafinwë!” At Fëanor’s third shout, a window on the second story cracked open, and sunny-haired Finarfin looked out, placid as always.

            “What happened to you?” he asked with only the faintest quirk of his brow as he looked over the feathers sticking out of Fëanor’s dark hair and the bruise blooming on Nerdanel’s cheek where the wing of a swan had struck her.

            “What happened to us? Your wife’s noxious pets happened!” Fëanor exclaimed. “Where is she?”

            To Finarfin’s enormous credit, he neither laughed nor even cracked a smile, but he did take several long moments of silence through which he seemed to be schooling his face before he replied.

            “Oh, dear. I shall let her know they’ve been a bother again.”

            “The next time I find them in my house, I will cook one of them for dinner,” Fëanor threatened. 

            “I shall pass on the message,” Finarfin said gravely. Then he shut the window.

            “I shall eat your pets, Arafinwë! I shall roast them over a fire with rosemary and chutney! One swan for each of my sons!” How many did Eärwen have, anyway? It always seemed like several dozen, but the four in Nerdanel’s studio had seemed like ten when they were trying to corral them out.

            Irimë, passing through the courtyard at least halfway to observe whatever commotion was going on, looked at Fëanor, who turned and met her gaze. Irimë observed the state of Fëanor and Nerdanel, quirked a brow, and carried on past them without a word.

            “There is no business of yours here!” Fëanor snapped at her.

            Nerdanel sat on the stoop with a sigh and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

            “I wish not to go back and see their destruction,” she murmured. Fëanor sat beside her.

            “Prefer you that I should break one of Eärwen’s windows?” he suggested. Nerdanel uncovered her face to give him a dry look. “In her garden she has a great many of those painted rocks,” Fëanor went on. “Just around the corner.” Nerdanel’s lips were twitching and she bit down on the lower one, trying to school her face. A lopsided grin tugged at the corner of Fëanor’s mouth and he nudged her with his shoulder. “I would bet I can hit Arafinwë from here.”

            “No!” she exclaimed with a quiet huff of amusement. “You shall have us before your lord father again for a talking-to about family unity.” Another sigh as she reconsidered the return to her studio.

            “Perhaps, then, something to protect your works,” he said. At once, she saw his eyes glaze over in the way they did when he was no longer present, but lost in imagined schematics, in some world of pure design. “Something for the windows, to keep them out…”

            “I can provide some ideas for that,” she said.

            “Can you?” he said, pulled back to the moment to raise his eyebrows at her.

            “I have considered a few things while at work,” she replied with a shrug, glancing away. Would anyone blame her for fantasizing about keeping Eärwen’s blasted pets out of her workspace? Oh, she did hope nothing important had been ruined! Fëanor’s arm slid around her.

            “Then we shall armor up!” he declared. “And on the swans’ next assault, it shall be you who is victorious, my lady.” Nerdanel could not hold back a quiet laugh.

            “Indeed, I have great faith in your ability to outwit a large bird, Feanáro,” she said. He stiffened as per the usual when any ability of his was impugned, but relented at the teasing gleam in Nerdanel’s eyes.

            “I should hope so,” he said, and they made their way back to the house to put back together what the swans had knocked about.

Chapter End Notes

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