Quilt of Growth by AdmirableMonster

Maedhros opens his eyes to the warmth of a summer day, with the cicadas droning in his ear.  He feels as though he has been dreaming.  The last memory he has is of fire and his little brother’s shattered face, but it is distant and far away. The trees are groaning with fruit, and his body is free of pain for the first time that he can remember since Alqualondë.  He’s alive.  He sits up and looks around.

“Welcome home, Nelyafinwë,” says a cloaked figure.

Where is the guilt, Maedhros wonders, but in his heart there is only an apology.

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The water flowed.  Celebrimbor knelt at its side, staring down into the arid valley below.  Stinky twined around his knees, meowing loudly and excitedly.  It had taken the Dwarves nearly a year, and all the ingenuity of their hands and Celebrimbor’s, but the water flowed.

“There, you dratted monster,” Celebrimbor said, laying a hand on Stinky’s head.  “You are not so skilled at destruction as you thought, are you?”

Behind him, Lobelia snorted awake on her litter.  “You’re cosseting that cat again, aren’t you?” she creaked out in her most crotchety voice.  “Oh my, look at that river.”  She snorted.  “He’ll get wet.  He’ll hate that.”

Stinky meowed in indignation.

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The mesa was charred from top to bottom; the lightning strike had done a lot more damage than one bolt by rights ought to have been able to.  Maglor tipped his hat up and rubbed the back of his neck.  “Gonna be a right mess to clear,” he opined.

“Mmmyep.”  Hal pulled a face.  “Least none of the folk died.”

“Yeah.”  Maglor gave him a sideways look and then sought his hand, which was not something he normally felt comfortable with.  Hal decided not to comment, in case it would make him self-conscious.  

“So,” he said, instead.  “Guess we’ll get some folk up later, start rebuilding?”

Maglor nodded.  “I’ll make sure Elrond gets somethin’ to eat,” he said thinly, and Hal didn’t comment on that either, but he smiled to himself.

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“Are those mushrooms?” Trygve asked, scratching their beard.

Celebrimbor nodded absently, leg twinging vaguely unpleasantly. Stinky lashed his tail in excitement, circling the mushrooms with a very predatory look on his face. For a moment, Celebrimbor wondered if he would destroy the whole patch, but he reached out delicately and plucked just one of the fruiting bodies, laying it on the ground and then slicing it open with a claw. Celebrimbor tried not to see how the paw moved like a hand that he remembered skillfully wielding a knife.

“There’s gold inside?” Trygve stared at the glittering fragments inside the dissected mushroom.

“Poison,” Celebrimbor said softly. “They take it into themselves to heal the land.”

Stinky purred proudly.

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