It's About the Journey by Rocky41_7

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It's About the Journey

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“Take the exit.”

            “What?”

            “The exit.”

            “Yes, I heard what you said,” Nerdanel said, as though she were speaking to a particularly dim dog. “There is no upcoming exit.” She waved along the right side of the freeway.

            “There, on the left,” Fëanor replied, pointing.

            “Left?” Nerdanel screeched. “Exit left? You’re mentioning that now?”

            “It’s just five lanes, we have time,” Fëanor said.

            “I can see the exit right there!”

            From the back of the car came the same thumping that had been ongoing for the last ten minutes as Curufin bounced a rubber ball of the wall of the car, finally resulting in Maedhros craning around in his seat to snap:

            “Curvo! Stop that, Ammë is trying to drive!”

            “Atar, will you skip this song?” Caranthir asked, to no response from the front seats as the van passed quickly through two lanes and began to gain on a third.

            “We can make it,” Fëanor said. Nerdanel clenched her hands around the steering wheel.  In the back, Amrod had grabbed the rubber ball from Curufin and was tossing it to Amras over Curufin, a game which was abruptly ended by Curufin swatting the ball out of the air and sending it rolling under the seat of Maglor, who remained as oblivious to this as everything else, glued to his phone in a way that could only suggest prolonged contact with his latest romantic target.

            “We’re going to die in this car,” said Celegorm, not sounding terribly disturbed by the possibility. He slouched down in his seat, stretching to put a foot on either side of Maedhros’ head on the back of his seat.

            “Atar, will you skip this song?” Caranthir asked again.

            “Tyelko, put your feet down,” said Maedhros. Celegorm wiggled his toes, and Maedhros jabbed the arch of his foot with a fingernail, which was rewarded with their withdrawal.

            “One more lane!” Fëanor exclaimed. “Come on, you’re so close!”

            “You are a terrible navigator,” Nerdanel replied, jerking on the steering wheel and sending them sailing into the next lane and directly over into the exit, to vigorous honking from someone behind them. Nerdanel swore colorfully at the honker, turning back to do it, at which point Fëanor put a hand on the steering wheel to make sure they stayed on the road proper.

            “There, I told you we’d make it,” Fëanor said when Nerdanel was facing front again and they were zipping down the highway.

            “No thanks to these assholes who won’t let me in,” she grumbled.

            “Atar, can we eat soon?” Celegorm asked.

            “We left, like, twenty minutes ago,” Maglor said.

            “You have snacks back there,” Fëanor said. “Eat your apples.” Celegorm groaned the groan of wishing they could hit a fast food drive-thru instead, but eventually he did go for the Tupperware with the apples in it. “We are going to be on the road for at least three hours before there is any stopping for food.” Judging by the noise in the car, no one was especially satisfied with this proclamation.

            Fëanor continued to combat the rising demands for a lunch stop for the better part of two and a half hours before they pulled off the highway and his progeny exploded out of the car as if they had just been released by would-be kidnappers. They took up three tables on the patio and Amrod and Amras took the chance to experiment with how many French fries they could stuff up their noses, which did not stop them from then eating the fries in question. Maedhros busied himself with chastising Caranthir and Curufin for climbing on the fence until Nerdanel demanded he sit down and stop trying to be a third parent. She allowed Caranthir and Curufin to continue climbing for exactly two minutes before she took over telling them to get off the fence.

            Corralling the seven of them back into the car took twenty minutes, ten of which involved trying to track down Caranthir, who emerged with a different toy than the one which had come with his meal, and also with an additional five dollars.

            “Hey. Hey, Kano. Look at this,” Celegorm said as they navigated back to the highway. Knowing it was not going to be worth his time, but thinking that shutting Celegorm up might be worth it, Maglor turned over the seat to look at his brother.

            “What?” he said.

            Celegorm used Caranthir’s toy to shoot its projectile with impressive speed at Maglor, who he had intended to hit in the forehead. However, the figurine’s fist lost steam and only hit Maglor in the chest.

            “Hey, Tyelko, watch this,” said Maglor, and reached back into the second row of seats to wrench the toy out of Celegorm’s hand and throw it under Nerdanel’s seat.

            “Aw, come on,” Celegorm whined.

            “That was mine!” Caranthir exclaimed. “Thanks a lot!” He kicked Celegorm in the calf, which devolved into a squabble broken up by Maedhros snapping at them to stop being so immature.

            “Alright!” Fëanor announced. “I’m putting on the audiobook, so all of you can be quiet and listen. You might learn something.” All hope that this might be something genuinely entertaining died a quick death when what started to play was A History of Metallurgic Symbolism of Noldorin Royalty. The worst part was that, with nothing else to do, they found themselves actually listening along.

            Interruptions were remarkably few, which possibly had to do with Fëanor glaring at anyone who talked over the book, until his phone buzzed and he exclaimed:

            “Who has used up seventy-five percent of our data?! It’s the fifth of the month!”

            “Kano,” said Maedhros, Celegorm, and Caranthir at the same time.

            “He’s streaming music,” Maedhros added.

            “Kanafinwë!”

            “Atar,” Maglor whined in response, flashing a glare at his brothers. “There’s nothing to do in here!”

            “Listen to the book!” Fëanor said. “You are forbidden from using any more data on this trip.”

            “But Atar—!”

            “No buts!” Maglor groaned as if he had been shot and melted in his seat, his earbuds drooping despondently down on the floor beside him.

            “Thanks a lot, Tyelko,” he hissed. Celegorm stuck his tongue out.

            By the time the audiobook was wrapping up volume one, they had pulled off the main highway and were on a far less well-paved road with only the occasional fruit stand or branching dirt road along the sides.

            “Psst. Tyelko.” Amrod kicked the back of his seat as gently as could be managed.

            “Knock it off,” grunted Celegorm without opening his eyes.

            “We want to fly this kite,” Amrod said. “But my window is stuck.”

            “You busted it,” Celegorm reminded him in case he had forgotten, shifting his arms folded over his chest.

            “Yours opens,” Amrod said. “Will you stick the kite out for us?” Celegorm’s eyes cracked open and he glanced towards the rearmost seat.

            “What’ll you give me for it?” he asked.

            “This Jolly Rancher?” Amras offered.

            “What flavor is it?”

            “Red,” said Amras.

            “Is that cherry or watermelon?” Celegorm asked. “Check it.”

            “Cherry,” Amras reported. Celegorm snatched it out of his hand, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.

            “Kay. What else?” The twins were silent. “Come on, didn’t you guys go to a party yesterday?” he asked. “What’s Telvo got?”

            “Blue raspberry,” said Amrod.

            “Give me that. What else?”

            “We don’t have anything else,” Amras whined. “Come on, Tyelko!”

            “Give me your toy from earlier,” said Celegorm. “What’s Curvo got?”

            “Nothing, I’m not involved in this,” said Curufin, a scowl on his childishly round face so Celegorm knew he disapproved both of this plan and of these demands of bribery.

            “Alright, alright, fine. Give me the stupid kite.” Eagerly, Amrod passed the bright pink kite up to Celegorm, who rolled down the window. “You holding on?” he asked.

            “Yes!” chorused the twins in a hush.

            “Okay, here it goes.” He launched it, whereupon it was immediately seized by the wind, jerking the string taut and making both twins shout and laugh at their success.

            “Fëanáro. Fëanáro, what is in the rearview mirror?” said Nerdanel.

            “What the f—fire tongs?” He quickly rolled down the window to look back at whatever was following them, then traced the line back into his own car. “Turcafinwë! What are you doing?” Sometimes, Fëanor asked this question in a very engaged way, wanting to see what his children were working on and hear the logic of their thinking. Other times, he asked in a way that suggested you should immediately stop whatever you were doing. This was one of the latter times.

            “I’m not doing anything,” said Celegorm.

            “Get that kite inside and shut the window,” Fëanor said, and so the twins’ dearly-bought venture was quickly ended. “Entertain yourselves some other way. Morifinwë and Kanafinwë are managing.”

            Maglor and Caranthir had been passing a piece of paper back and forth for the better part of twenty minutes.

            “What are you writing on that?” Maedhros asked, if only for a brief break from nodding along to Fëanor’s audiobook.

            “It’s art,” said Maglor.

            “Not if Moryo is part of it,” said Celegorm.

            “Shut up,” Caranthir said.

            “I guess it’s almost done,” said Maglor. “Shall we display it?” Caranthir didn’t protest, so Maglor snapped open the notebook paper. “Viola! It’s Fingolfin.”

            Even Maedhros couldn’t disguise his snort of laughter, although he quickly followed with: “That’s really immature, Kano.”

            “Hey, Atya, look,” said Kanafinwë, passing it forward. “It’s Uncle Fingolfin.”

            “We should put this on the fridge,” said Fëanor with a laugh as he examined the artless sketch. “Is that lightning? Nicely done, Kanafinwë.”

            “Moryo helped.”

            “You too, Morifinwë.”

            “Kiss ass,” whispered Celegorm, too low for either of the three in the backseat to promptly announce to mom and dad that the word "ass" had been overheard. Maglor stuck his tongue out, and Caranthir quickly copied him. With one magnum opus for the car ride completed, Maglor went back to his phone and Caranthir to staring out the window, distantly listening to volume two of Fëanor’s audiobook. Eventually, Caranthir was so disenchanted with this that he dug his undone math homework out of his backpack to occupy himself with instead.

They went on in such a fashion, until as the car was puttering down a curving road between a thin wood on one side and an open field on the other, a sharp pop! exploded in the car, followed by the acrid tang of smoke and the sound of Caranthir shrieking and flailing. This was presumably the reason the van suddenly swerved off the road into the grass, with Fëanor grabbing onto the handle above the window to shout:

            “Blessed fucking Elbereth, Nerdanel!”

            “Who is shooting at the car!” she screamed in reply, while Maglor wailed incoherently, doubled over in his seat, and Celegorm, equally incoherent, grabbed Maedhros’ shoulders from behind and shook him with an effort to impart something of urgency, which may have just been terror. Maedhros craned his view back through the smoky air, trying to see if he needed to launch himself into the backseat for something.

            The twins were making some noise in the back and Fëanor jerked around through the haze of smoke to ensure that all seven of them were still in the car.

            “What are you doing back there?” he bellowed. Maglor lifted his head with tears in his eyes, and Caranthir immediately began jabbing a finger in the direction of the backseat and insisting it wasn’t him and also that something had hit him in the back of the head.

            “Are you bleeding?” Nerdanel demanded as the car lurched to a halt.

            Fëanor looked back at Maedhros and Maglor, who turned to look back at Celegorm and Caranthir, who turned to the backseat, where Curufin pointed at Amrod and said,

            “He set something off!”

            “I followed the instructions!” Amrod protested. “It said to point it away from your face and I did!”

            At the same time as this protestation, Maglor was demanding in a very high-pitched tone to know what was wrong with them.

            “You pointed it at my head!” Caranthir snarled, lunging towards the backseat before Fëanor ordered him to stop. Fumbling with his seatbelt buckle for a moment, he got out of the car while Nerdanel appeared to be attempting once again the “calming” breathing technique Eärwen had been trying to impart on her for the last several years. Fëanor opened the side door and held his hand out so that Amrod could drop into it whatever had just been loosed in the car.

            “If I die on this trip, I am writing all of you out of my will,” Maglor said.

            “Oh no, we’ll miss out on your collection of modified sheet music,” Maedhros said, unable to resist rolling his eyes.

            “This is a firework,” Fëanor exclaimed after examining the lightly smoking thing in his hand, snapping his attention back up to the twins.

            “Nuh-uh, we didn’t light anything on fire!” Amros said.

            “It’s a party popper, Atar,” Maedhros said. “They must have gotten it in the party favor bags.”

            “And you thought setting this off in the car was a good idea?” Feanor’s gaze nailed his youngest to the backseat. Amrod shuffled his feet and hunched his shoulders as though to indicate he no longer thought it had been a good idea.

            “This is your fault,” Nerdanel said from the front seat, where her heart had yet to return to a healthy pace, and she began to think it never would.

            “My fault!” Fëanor exclaimed.

            “Who else in this blasted country would have given me children that set off fireworks in the car?” Fëanor, speechless at this treacherous slander out of the left field, blustered for a reply.

            The words I would never have…! burned on his tongue, but he knew he could not convincingly make this argument to an elleth who knew he had once set them off in his father’s garage and caused a great deal more damage than Amrod just had.

            “We’re never going to make it before nightfall at this rate,” he declared at last, throwing the spent popper back into the car. He turned back towards the twins on a second thought. “Give me those party favor bags. And any other things that smoke you might have. The rest of you, too!” Reluctantly, they emptied their bags and Fëanor shoved a pile of plastic junk into the glovebox while Celegorm and Caranthir pulled confetti out of their hair.

            Fëanor leaned over and murmured something in Nerdanel’s ear, and without another word they exchanged places.

            “That was really irresponsible of you,” Maedhros said to the twins as Fëanor reversed the car out of the field it was in back towards the road. “You could have gotten people hurt. Ammë could have wrecked the car.”

            “Do you hear that?” Maglor demanded. “We could have all died.”

            “Maitimo, that’s enough,” Nerdanel sighed, sliding down in her seat. “As I’ve told you, they have two parents already. They don’t need three. You too, Makalaurë.”

            They made it back onto the road and Fëanor headed the van on towards the campsite. Nerdanel put down the passenger seat window to enjoy a small breeze and close her eyes a moment. Curufin settled for entertaining the twins by making them guess in which of his fists he had hidden a coin. Caranthir had given up on his math homework and was stowing it away in his backpack.

            It was at this moment that Celegorm, with a better view of Maglor’s phone in the low light, shouted, “Kano is sexting!”

            “He’s what?” Fëanor yelped in reply, very nearly jerking the car off the road again.

            “I am not!” Maglor exclaimed, quickly darkening his phone screen as Maedhros shot him an I told you so look.

            “Sexting!” Amros shrieked with the delight of a child who had no idea what the conversation as about. He was roundly ignored.

            “Yes you are, I can see the word ‘panties’ right there!” Celegorm declared triumphantly. The twins screamed with laughter about this particular word, and even humorless Curufin was stuffing a fist in his mouth trying to keep from laughing.

            “Alright, phones,” Nerdanel said, thrusting her hand blindly into the back seat area.

            “But Ammë—!” Nerdanel’s fingers twitched demandingly, and Maglor, with a nasty look at Celegorm, put his phone in her hand, followed by Maedhros, Celegorm, and Caranthir, who were the only others old enough to have one.

            “Amuse yourselves otherwise,” she said.

            “We need to talk about this sexting,” Fëanor said, glancing at Nerdanel as if half-expecting to be blamed for this turn of events as well.

            “Not now, Fëanáro,” said Nerdanel.

            “He is entirely too young for that.”

            “What are we supposed to do now?” Maglor sulked, resting an elbow on the window sill.

            “Play I Spy,” Nerdanel said mercilessly.

            “We’re talking about it later, Kanafinwë.” Maglor groaned as if he had been kicked in the ribs.

            “I spy something,” Celegorm said.

            “Shut up, Tyelko,” said Maglor.

            “I spy something red and shiny.”

            “The car lights?” asked Curufin.

            “Nope.”

            “Is it…Ammë’s book?” asked Amrod.

            “You aren’t really going to play this, are you?” Maglor asked.

            “No. I mean like, really bright. Super shiny.”

            “Is it Russandol?” asked Caranthir with a hint of a smirk.

            “Bingo.” That cracked a laugh out of Maglor, and the twins too, who bounced in their seats and cried, “Copper-top! Copper-top!”

            “That’s a lot coming from two other redheads,” Maglor pointed out to them, which did not deter them in the slightest. Older, they might argue their hair was darker and therefore not as noticeable as Maedhros’, but for now, hypocrisy did not concern them.

            Maedhros rolled his eyes, as if the force of it could stop his brothers from their stupid game. To think he was missing Fingon’s party for this was almost too agonizingly unfair to contemplate.

            “Okay, my turn,” Maglor said. “I spy something like a fiery beacon in the distance…like a glowing sunset on a flat horizon…like the nose of a clown with a cold…”

            “Okay, write your next poem in silence,” Maedhros said while Celegorm cackled and Caranthir grinned at him.

            “This could be my magnum opus, Nelyo,” Maglor insisted. “Just give me a minute…I spy something like an abandoned firetruck in a dump parking lot…”

            “I spy someone who’s getting a talk from Atar once the tent is set up,” Maedhros replied.

            “Hey!”

            Nerdanel, recognizing this sound as only the average chaos of the family, closed her eyes for a moment, the cool wind soothing against her cheeks. After a moment, she felt Fëanor’s hand slide into hers and squeeze lightly. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth and she squeezed back.

            “Hey! I think I see it up ahead!”

            Fëanor’s hand withdrew back to the steering wheel.

            “Nelyafinwë, I want you on tent duty,” he said. “Kanafinwë and Turcafinwë can go pick up the firewood. Morifinwë, help Nelyafinwë with the tent. Pityafinwë and Telufinwë, make sure all the food and drinks are intact. And Curufinwë can help me with the campfire. Are you ready?”

            “Yes, Atar!” chorused from the back. Nerdanel’s smile grew and she leaned her cheek against the seatbelt. Yes, there was a reason they kept going on these trips—it just took her until they arrived to remember it sometimes.

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Chapter End Notes

I wrote this entire fic for the sake of the party popper scene which is a take on something that actually happened to me, except that when my sister pointed it away from her face and pulled the string my mom was trying to pull out of a parallel park job

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